From Lexington With Love
Featuring characters from DavidFalkayn’s Star Trek: Lexington
Sometime in the 22nd Century
“Batteries one through four, fire at will. Stand by photon torpedoes. Aliz, hold your heading and on my mark bring us about hard.”
The gray-haired man in the mustard-colored uniform shirt gave his orders calmly, keeping his voice even while he spoke and putting on display the confidence of a man who had seen everything and done it all. In the infinity of space that was an unlikely proposition but as far as starship commanders were concerned, it could have been argued that this statement was truer for this specific officer than it was for anybody else currently sitting in the center chair of any other vessel.
The confidence the veteran exuded was in desperate demand for neither he nor the young crew surrounding him had ever faced an opponent quite like this before.
It was solely to his credit, his poise, his command presence and his firm leadership that their fears and anxieties in the face of this opposing enemy remained in check and allowed them to stay focused on the task that needed to be done.
“Phaser batteries, firing,” Lieutenant Terrence Lawford replied in a crisp English accent once his fingers had found the bright red buttons on his panel, unleashing cobalt-colored lances of phased energy.
“Torpedo tubes one and two standing by,” the burly Russian first officer confirmed in his low rumbling voice which was so perfectly suited to his burly figure.
The man in the captain’s chair wasted no time. “Fire.”
The bridge crew watched as each of the torpedoes struck their target just seconds after the successful phaser hits.
No matter how massive and seemingly insurmountable their opponent appeared, there was a moment of unspoken excitement in the air after their proud ship, one of the finest in the fleet, had unleashed its powerful arsenal. Surely a statement had been made. You cannot come into our backyard and start attacking our planets without repercussions. And if you were foolish enough to try, the price you would pay was a high one indeed. Surely that message had now been clearly and unmistakably received.
Alas not.
“I can detect no damage on the other vessel,” the graceful, blue-skinned science officer reported after looking through her sensor hood. Her antennae peaking out from underneath her white hair were twirling in a sign of obvious concern. “No damage at all,” she repeated a bit unnecessarily and perhaps only because she couldn’t quite believe it herself.
Some of the officers uttered a gasp or shot her an astonished look. Not their captain however. He remained stone-faced with his eyes dead-locked on the massive device – they hadn’t been able to establish yet if it was in fact some sort of ship – on the screen which continued to bear down on them.
“Ms. Bathory, now. Bring us about. Full impulse,” he said with the same even voice as if he had never expected any other outcome.
The young woman at the helm was already prepared and quickly manipulated her controls to move the ship out of their opponent’s path. And yet it wasn’t quite quickly enough.
“It’s returning fire!” the Andorian cried out.
The captain stabbed a button on his armrest with one fluid motion. “All hands, brace for impact.”
On the screen the massive jaw of the conical shaped ‘thing’ bearing down on the Starfleet vessel erupted in a blinding light and unleashed a torrent of angry pulsating energy, which was catapulted towards the starship.
It was fortunate that the ship had already been coming about as it may not had weathered a direct, frontal hit as well. That was not to say that the crew of the intrepid vessel didn’t feel the impact. Quite on the contrary.
Nobody on the bridge managed to stay in their chairs or on their feet as their ship nearly flipped over under the immense pressures of the impact.
Consoles, one by one, blew out in a chain reaction of fires and sparks.
The bridge was plunged into darkness for a couple of seconds during which nothing but the steadily flashing red alert klaxons illuminated the command center.
The lights returned and the view screen once again shone brightly to reveal the terrifying sight of their enemy who had refused to be intimidated and had dished out far worse than it had taken.
The man in command pulled himself onto his feet and then helped the petite young woman at the helm back into her chair. But not before the two of them allowed themselves just one second to exchange a surprisingly private look nobody else noticed.
“Status,” he said once he was settled in the command chair again.
The first officer responded promptly, the sturdy Russian requiring no time at all to steady himself again. “That hit nearly took out our shields. Right now they’re holding at fifty-six percent. I do not recommend we get punched like that again.”
“So noted,” the captain said. “Commander Zha’Thara, what is our friend doing?”
The Andorian was still picking herself off the floor and then quickly spied through the hood at her science station, which cast a dark blue shadow onto her similarly hued face. “It seems to have lost interest in us for now. It’s heading for the third planetoid in the system.”
“If it does to it what it did to the previous two it will be nothing but rubble once it is done with it,” said the Russian in a grim sounding voice which wasn’t really any different to his regular tone.
“Unlike the others this one does contains a civilization of sentient humanoid life,” the science officer said after studying her readouts.
The ship’s commander swiveled his chair towards the engineering station. “Lieutenant, I need to know what that thing is and more importantly how to stop it.”
The lieutenant turned away from her own station in order to look her commanding officer in the eye. “What we know for certain at this point,” said the woman with the sandy-blond, shoulder length hair, “is that it is definitely artificial but not a starship in the traditional sense. It does not appear to have a crew and is likely controlled either remotely or by a powerful AI. It is about 2,700 meters in length and over 500 meters wide. The outer hull consists out of solid neutronium through which we cannot scan and our weapons cannot penetrate. It emits an antiproton beam which can cut through a solid planetoid within hours and against which our shields cannot protect against for long.”
“Weaknesses?”
“Well,” she said. “It’s slow. So far we have not seen it move faster than half impulse. It also requires massive amounts of energy to use its antiproton beam after which it enters into what appears to be a cool-down period. It was unable to move for almost ten minutes immediately after it destroyed the first two planets.”
“Doesn’t help us much though. Nothing we throw at it had the slightest effect,” Lawford said from his station next to Bathory.
“
Ty che, blyad! Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?”
Every single person turned to see what could have caused the first officer’s sudden and angry exclamation.
He was looking at a woman standing close to the turbo-lift on the upper deck of the bridge. The fact that nobody had noticed the doors opening however seemed to imply that she had not emerged from them. Differently to the ship's crew, she was clad in a black and gray uniform, wearing a golden undershirt and had a chevron-shaped medallion tucked to her chest. She had small ridges on the bridge of her nose and seemed to hail from a race unfamiliar by the surprised bridge officers.
Unfamiliar to everyone but one. The woman at the engineering station jumped to her feet. “Laas?”
The captain also left his chair. He looked the newcomer over and then turned towards the engineer. “Louise, you know this person?”
“Yes,” she said.
That caused the first officer to shoot her an impatient look even while he made sure to keep one eye trained on this unexpected visitor. “You better explain yourself, Lieutenant. And do it quickly.”
Louise Hopkins was at a momentary loss for words. “I’m not sure how …”
“Not good enough,” the Russian said and activated a comm panel. “Bridge to Security, –“
“Computer, pause program,” Hopkins said causing the first officer to stop in mid-sentence as he as well as every other photonic creation on the bridge instantly froze in place.
“No need for security,” the newcomer said with a smirk. “I’m already here.”
“Laas, what are you doing here?” Louise said as she took a couple of steps towards her Bajoran friend she had known since they had been roommates at the Academy.
“I could ask you the same thing?”
Louise frowned. “I’m not the one who barged into somebody’s holodeck program unannounced.”
But Nora Laas didn’t seem to pay her much attention as she began to walk around the bridge, looking over the ancient controls and into the faces of the inanimate people who populated them. “So this is where you’ve been spending all your time lately. This is pretty interesting. What is this supposed to be?”
The engineer relaxed slightly. “This is Lady Lex.”
Laas turned to give her a quizzical look. “Lady Who?”
“Lex,” she said and walked over to the golden-plated dedication plaque next to the turbo-lift doors. “USS
Lexington.”
The Bajoran shook her head. “I’ve seen the
Lexington and it didn’t look anything like this.”
The engineer shot her an incredulous look. “That’s because this is the original
Lexington. 1709.
Constitution-class.”
“Why are you wearing that?” she said as she stepped closer to study her friend’s low-cut, red mini-dress outfit complete with boots and dark stockings.
The engineer’s cheeks blushed slightly while her friend looked her over with a barely concealed smile of amusement on her lips. “This is the standard uniform of that era,” she said and pointed to other female officers on the bridge. “Everyone wore them.”
“That’s a uniform?”
Louise defiantly crossed her arms in front of her chest but before she could comment on the dress code of the previous century any further, her friend moved on towards the man standing next to the captain’s chair, still looking at the spot where she had appeared moments earlier. Differently to his first officer, the captain had not shown surprise or alarm even if it was obvious that every muscle in his body had tensed significantly.
“And this would be?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“History isn't my strong suit.”
“You don’t say,” she said and stepped down into the command well with Nora and the frozen captain. “That’s none other than Commodore Robert Wesley. One of the greatest starship captains in Starfleet history.”
“Wesley,” Laas repeated and looked him over. “Not as good looking as Jim Kirk.”
Louise uttered a heavy and clearly annoyed sigh. She understood perfectly well that this was payback for time when the situation had been reversed and she had intruded on Laas' holodeck exercise program some time ago. In truth Nora probably didn't care much about Kirk or any of the great captains of yesteryear. Hopkins on the other hand had a real fascination for early Starfleet explorers and the rugged starship commands of the previous centuries. Archer, Wesley, Kirk and Kieran Forester were her heroes. The latter she had been lucky enough to meet in person once after he had been time displaced into the 24th century.
In any case, the Bajoran seemed to have a grand old time interrupting her spare time activity and poking fun at it.
“Laas, you haven’t answered my question yet. What are you doing here?”
She turned to face her. “Well, somebody forgot that we had dinner plans today. After realizing the futility of waiting, I decided to come and look for you instead.”
Louise blushed a little bit more. “Oh my gosh, what time is it?”
“Little bit past 1900 hours.”
“I’m so sorry, I guess I got a little bit carried away in here and totally forgot about dinner,” she said with genuine regret obvious in the tone of her voice.
“If this had been the first time you’d done this I wouldn’t have resorted to something as extreme as barging into your little holodeck fantasy but you’ve been blowing me off for over a month now.”
The young engineer shook her head. “That’s not true.”
“Really?” she said and crossed her own arms. “Last Tuesday. Remember that? You were half an hour late. And the day before we never even made lunch. First I thought it was me,” she looked around. “I’m relieved to see that it wasn’t. It’s just that you prefer playing around in here than spending time with your friend.”
“First of all,” she shot back, her embarrassment slowly turning into indignant anger, “I’m not playing around. Not really. This is more like a challenge not unlike those combat simulations you like to put yourself through.”
Nora didn’t seem convinced and Lou knew why. She loved her to bits but she also knew that she had never been one for fantasies. Perhaps it was her rough upbringing during which she had been too busy bashing in Cardassian skulls instead of playing with dolls or whatever else girls were supposed to do during their childhood years. Or maybe it was simply her no-nonsense nature, which didn’t allow her to indulge in what she surely saw as silly fantasies. Sure, she’d visit the holodeck from time to time to hone in her fighting skills but those weren’t elaborate scenarios like the one Hopkins had created.
“A challenge?” she said, clearly intend on calling the bluff. “I’m always up for a challenge.”
Hopkins turned her back on Laas and stepped back onto the higher level. “I don’t know. I don’t think this is quite up your ally.”
Laas followed her. “Why not? Because you think all I’m capable of is bashing heads together? Is that how you see me?”
“Of course not,” Louise said quickly and faced her again even though that had been exactly one of the thoughts going through her mind. But there was another very good reason why she didn’t want Laas to have any part of this and it had nothing to do with her.
“Then why can’t I play along?” she said and then immediately raised her hands in apology. “Sorry, I mean
take part in the challenge,” she added with an amused gleam in her eye.
Lou frowned. “For one you don’t know anything about this time period.”
“What better way to learn about history?”
And then Hopkins smirked, knowing exactly how she could get that silly notion out of her friend’s head. “And you would have to wear one of these.”
* * *
