Post by Scribe on Aug 16, 2009 8:46:42 GMT -5
BATTLE OF AZATI PRIME
Stardate: 18.01.2169
Being in command was about taking the responsibility of making a ‘judgement call’.
As a Starfleet officer, the reality of it held more substance than the uniform, the stars or even the ship to which one belonged. The Judgement Call was that moment every cadet, dreaming his wildest during one of those boring astrophysics classes, prayed for. When the cadet wears his officer's pips for the first time, the excitement of that moment dies a little because it is tempered by fear. The Judgement Call decides whether one lived or died, held ground to fight or simply slink away in defeat.
It was the gauge by which the mettle of every Starfleet officer was tested. Those who could make the Call could aspire to the ranks of the Starfleet elite, becoming legends. Those who could not became foot soldiers to be forgotten by history.
For Alexandra Styles, Captain of the NX-03 Saratoga, the Call was now.
She stood there on the bridge of her ship, looking at the view screen in silent contemplation. Around her, the bridge was a smouldering wreck. Only half the consoles and stations were actually still in operation, while live wires and conduits hung loosely from shattered panelling and twisted bulkheads. The bridge was bathed in a reddish glow, with klaxons screaming out the inevitable death knell of the ship.
In the still functioning view screen, the great monster of their times, the Xindi Planet Killer, hurtled through space, laying waste to the starships arrayed to fight it. In front of her, the Vulcan ship T'Maris lit up the sky by taking a direct hit, the explosion was brilliant. On the bridge, those who witnessed the scene flinched. The Enterprise was making its pass, bombarding the weapon with a volley of photon torpedoes. It did little good.
"Captain!" The frantic voice cackled through her command chair. "This is Engineer Carlson!" We've got containment breach!"
Alex's stomach tightened with the news and then she let out a breath. Slow and deliberate, the news sunk in as it did in the consciousness of everyone present. Everyone still standing, that is.
Engineer Carlson, Alex pulled up the face in her memory. He was 24 years old. Barely out of the Academy, she remembered. A shy young man who apparently played the cello. He had just started dating Ensign Wong. He had a brother named Richard and a dog named Silky. Alex had spoken to him once in the mess, they talked about geraniums and how difficult it was to grow them in the colony. .
"How long?" She asked quietly, no trace of fear or panic, just the need for information to take the next step.
"Ninety seconds!" The young man shouted through the crackling and the explosions she could hear in the background. Parts of the ship were starting to experience explosive decompression. The hull had been compromised in several locations and they had almost no shields. "The last hit took out the calibration module," he tried to explain. "The computer is unable to continue the computations to maintain field strength, the magnetic containment is lowering. Its already down to 50 percent. I can't stabilize it!"
Ninety seconds, no time for escapade pods. No time to transport to another ship because they'd lost transporter capability long before this when the giant aquatic had jumped into the fight and ploughed through the awaiting starships preparing to blockade the Planet Killer.
There was a silence on the bridge as everyone seemed to in that moment, understand their situation better than any effort on her part to explain. There was no leaving this ship. To request assistance would mean having another vessel lower its shields to transport them aboard. With ninety second left on the clock, that would mean perhaps a dozen or more people who would be saved and while the rescue ship lowering its shields to make the transport, would be vulnerable and hundreds could die instead.
No. There would be no transport.
Alex returned to her command chair and sat down. "Lieutenant Singh," she regarded the junior navigator who was the first in his family to graduate from Starfleet Academy. His mother had a bakery in the Soko and would greet Alex whenever she went to the markets. A lady who always smelled of warm bread Singh was also acting as helmsman, having forced to take the station when the officer-in-charge of the post had died minutes ago.
"Put all power to our engines and lay in a course for the Xindi Planet Killer."
Singh stared at her for a moment, eyes wide until he realised that there was no way and he nodded, Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he gulped. "Yes Captain."
She looked around and saw the understanding on the faces of all her crew. Yes, they knew about the Call and sometimes, it didn't lead you to glory but to death. Being able to make the Call, that was what being Starfleet was all about.
Flicking the com switch on her command chair, she opened a channel for ship to ship communication.
"Enterprise," she said calmly. "This is Captain Merrick, our magnetic containment has been disabled and we will experience anti-matter breach in ninety…no sixty seconds. Please advise the fleet to move to minimum safe distance. We are assuming that the blast will overload the Planet Killer's deflectors."
"Styles, wait a minute," Jonathan Archer's voice immediately protested. "We'll transport as many of you off your ship as we can…don't do this..."
"No you can't Captain," Alex said firmly, "you'll have to drop shields to do that and its unacceptable risk under the circumstances. This is how it has to be."
With that, she flicked off the channel ending any further argument the man had to make.
"Captain," Lt. Greenburg who was manning the phaser banks spoke up. "We've got three torpedoes left. Hate to take them with us," he smiled, a look of bravado to mask the sadness. Greenburg, she thought, married with three children. A good father, they talked about their children, she showed him pictures of Lexie, he showed her pictures of Amanda, Winona and Sarah. Three daughters and he and his wife had been trying for a boy.
"Fire at will," Alex ordered, thinking.
"Magnetic containment failure in 30 seconds," Carlson's voice spoke and this time there was no fear in his voice, just acceptance.
There was one thing left to do, one final bit of business before it was all over.
She recorded the message quickly and sent it off to Enterprise. A private note to speak for her when she no longer had a voice.
Ahead of her the Planet Killer loomed.
"It has been an honour," Alex said to all of them. "Serving with you."
No one spoke but the sentiment was shared and Alex faced front, watching the Xindi planet killer grow large in the view screen.
Twenty nine seconds….
She was nine years old, sitting in the old chair in her father's study, taking in the breath of old paper books and worn leather, listening to him recite Tennyson to her. He'd sit there and read to her, steel rimmed glasses perched on his nose, looking at her with thoughtful eyes. She had stayed home from school because she had Rigellian measles and he had made her tea and read to her for the week she was sick.
"Alice," he would call her. Funny how Alex remembered that only now. It was her favourite book and when she was very small. "How's my Alice today?"
Twenty two seconds….
Stupid goddamn MACO jarhead! What the hell was he thinking? She stormed into her apartment that night, furious at that loud mouth jerk that spent the entire day at the Atkins' farm checking out her ass when they went MULK hunting. Behaving like Robin frigging Hood with his best mate Little John, writing new chapters and verses in the annals of chauvinistic behaviour and just..just when she had him pegged as some kind of juvenile skirt chaser... what does he do? He performs some dumb ass Sir Galahad play by throwing himself in front of the dangerous monster and gets skewered.
Now here she was, face buried under her pillow, unable to sleep, driving herself crazy by the fact at how sexy that goddamn accent was.
Stupid, stupid jarhead.
Eighteen seconds…
She could still smell him.
He was all over her skin. The scent of his body on hers. His kisses still lingered on her lips, after he had seen her home to her door like they were teenagers instead of two adults who had just been fucking in a firing range stall like delinquents. The sensation of him, the smell, the taste, it was muddling her senses. She stepped into the shower and thought the hot water would wash him away but even as she towelled off ten minutes later, he was still there.
He had slipped under her skin, branding her as his. Thomas Ian Merrick had slipped through the minefield of her professional persona and found Alice through the Looking Glass.
Fifteen seconds…
Her body broken, blood flowing through her lips and the pain was so intense she thought she wanted to die. She sat there in that chair on board the Klingon warship, believing she was going to end and the only thing she could think of was the fact that she hadn't told him what she felt. That she loved him. And she did love him. So very much. It surprised her really, how easily he had just entered her life and so quickly become so important to her. Her life so filled with rules and regulations, he was the one person that kept everything fresh and unpredictable.
Sure, he behaved like a kid sometimes but when he looked at her, it was like staring into the eyes of someone who had seen too much and looked at you like you were salvation and hope all wrapped up in one package. Alex never knew she could mean so much to anyone, could be everything to him by just being her. It made her feel loved, needed and vulnerable. It made her want to tell him that she was just as scared sometimes. She wished she could live long enough to do that…
Ten seconds…
"I love you know," he had said to her.
"I know," she said wincing. She could feel the baby moving sharply inside her, doing flip flops in beneath the flesh, making herself felt. Her baby real little fighter. Like her parents.
"This wasn't my idea of a proposal," he wanted to remind her, eyes sweeping across the rustic setting, the skimmer they had used for a drive out in the country, smouldering in the ravine. Wisp of black flowing into the sky.
"You had a plan for a proposal?" Alex stared at him, questioning.
"Too bloody right," he retorted, miffed that she would think otherwise. "After McRae called me a dumb arse, I had to come up with one quick, didn't I? I considered asking you at the Beasts, on my knees and everything…"
"Oh God no…" Alex winced at the imagery.
"I'm not a total pillock," Tom rolled his eyes. "Was going to do it at Risa, you know at a resort with candle light dinner and everything. Soft swishing waves and scantily clad birds…"
"Yeah I could so pull off a bikini right now," Alex growled. "Not to throw a damper on this but do you think you could contact the colony now…seeing as how my water's broken!!!"
Five seconds….
She was beautiful.
Soft and pink, a tuft of dark hair, blue eyes that didn't see very well, tiny Juliet rested in Alex's arms, filling her mother's lungs with that wonderful baby smell that all newborns seemed to have. Alex held her little girl and didn't think that Juliet was quite real, that if she attempted to touch the baby in her arms, Juliet would vanish like a dream at waking. A tiny fist shifted, small fingers extending outward and touched Alex's hand. A splatter of moisture impacted against the fresh pink skin.
Alex wasn't even been aware she had started to cry.
"She's beautiful," Tom smiled at them both.
The terror and anxiety in his eyes throughout her pregnancy was now a memory. He looked at her and there was nothing but joy in his face. She had never seen him like that, never seen him devoid of that weary cynicism he wore like a second skin.
"She's us," Alex smiled.
"She's you," Tom leaned down and kissed her. "I love you Alex."
One second…
Alex blinked as the view screen showed nothing but the Planet Killer and as the world contracted into an explosion of noise, heat and eventually pain, her last conscious act before reality faded out forever was to say her final words.
"I love you too Tom."
And she was finished.
THE END