Dead Men Tell No Tales, Part 2

Posted on Wed Sep 2nd, 2020 @ 4:44am by Lieutenant JG Miraj Derani

Mission: MISSION 0 - History Speaks
Location: Romulan Neutral Zone
Timeline: June 2386
1216 words - 2.4 OF Standard Post Measure

Previously on Dead Men Tell No Tales

“Fire in the hole!” shouted Tserek, and the next set of pirates jumped forward. In practiced synchronization, they let rip a series of adapted grenades, mini torpedoes that had had their original payloads removed, and were now giant frag grenades. There was a series of retina burning flashes, and then hollow booms, and then silence interspersed with the soft crump of the bodies beyond falling to the deck, and the spattering of blood raining down.

Lianej Derani drew her phaser, checked it was set to kill, and followed her howling, baying, crew across the breach.

And now the continuation…

The first dozen or so meters were still and wonderfully silent. Some of the Romulan crew had been crushed under the falling hull section. More were nothing more than shredded flesh on the floor beyond, ripped to pieces by the deck sweepers. But after that, well, it was hard work all the way. There were plenty of fighting men on this ancient warbird. The pirates moved through, playing cat and mouse with the ship's defenders, every corridor filled with phaser fire and screaming and the smell of burnt flesh.

Lianej Derani left her crew to do their job. They would find and subdue the crew, take and hold engineering, sort out the prettiest to take as prizes. She had her own mission. With a group of selected raiders she hurried through the corridors, looking for the captain. The bridge was three decks up. She didn’t want to beam. You never knew what you were getting into. Instead she, a pair of Klingons, and a another pair of Orion men went to the Jeffries tube and started to climb.

The bridge seemed woefully under-defended. The Klingons were through first, dispatching one surprised Romulan by hamstringing him as he emerged from the crawl space and then slashing his throat open. Blue-green blood gouted across the roaring warrior as he moved on to subdue the next victim. His partner barely noticed as he knocked down another and speared the Romulan's guts with the end of his Bat'leth.

As Lianej came onto the bridge she had to shoot one officer she saw reaching for a disruptor. And then all of her men were out on the bridge, and the Romulan crew realised they were outgunned and out-manned. Lianej examined the grim faces arrayed around her. The dark skinned Romulan wasn’t there. She picked one that was left, a woman, a gash across her face, probably taken when they'd rammed the warbird. “You. Tell me where the Captain is.”

“I- I -” she stuttered, The Romulan couldn't seem to focus on anything but the disruptor Lianej was aiming at her face.

Lianej cut her off. “Tell me where he is. And if the next words out of your mouth are not his location, I will shoot you dead.”

“But - " the romulan female began.

Lianej shot her.

There was stunned silence on the bridge, as the Romulan crew took in how swiftly their crew mate had been cut down.

Lianej swung her phaser round to point at another crewman, pretty with delicate features and cheekbones sharp enough to cut. If he lived through the next five minutes, she'd have him sent to her bed. “Your turn, same offer.”

The pretty one learnt fast. “His state room. Deck two, cabin 104, starboard side.”

"Well done," she told him. "You get to live." She gave him a leering smile. "You may not like that arrangement." She made a gesture to the Klingons to keep this one for her.

Then she turned to one of the Orions motioning for him to follow her and headed below, sliding down the ladder to the next deck and took off to her right. She passed cabin 101, then 102 and 103 on the opposite side. She got to 104, and listened. There was no audible sounds from inside. She pried the panel to the door manual release off with the tip of her knife. Her orion crewman raised his disruptor rifle to cover the doors. With a jerk of her wrist, she pulled the release and the doors snapped back.

Her crewman opened up with a barrage from his rifle, filling the room beyond with multiple stun beams. A second later, a return volley shot out. Lianej ducked aside, even though she had cover from the bulkhead. Her fellow pirate was not so lucky. The orange beam of a Romulan disruptor caught him in the guts, and he fell back, screaming and soon to die.

Lianej risked putting her head around the doorway, and jumped back as she glimpsed a shadowed figure snap a disruptor pistol towards her. The shots hit the wall opposite. She adjusted her grip on her own weapon. “Surrender, and I’ll spare your life” she shouted out. “You don’t really want to die here, do you?”

No answer. She wrapped her arm around the door and fired blindly. There was a groan from inside. A lucky hit. “Is this how you want to go out? Burn by burn? Chunk by chunk?”

There was a dry, scratchy, laugh. “The Praetor commands. I obey. I realise you have a low opinion of duty.”

There was a wheeze to the Romulan's voice. She'd done him some damage then. Some slow wound. She grinned. If she could get what she came for, she might drag him back to the Tooth just to watch him gasp his last. “If it can't feed a hundred fifty men and women, it's not much use to me.” He was somewhere to the her right and behind her. Crouched behind something perhaps, with a good line on her should she come round the door jamb. That would make it hard. He’d have plenty of time to shoot her.

She grabbed the leg of her crewman's pants and dragged him closer. The bulky male outweighed her by some sixty kilos. No using the body as a shield. A snapshot lanced out of the room, and nearly took her arm off. She snatched her hand back. No more shots followed so she lunged for the body and heaved. One solid pull, another shot, but she was back under cover, and had got the body close enough she didn’t have to risk another shooting. But his rifle had fallen from his fingers and lay on the other side of the door, where she couldn't reach it without giving that Romulan bastard another shot.

She patted the body of her crewman down. He had to have something usable. She found a knife, and a hypospray of something, and a box of Felicium. From the look and the smell, it was the dried leaves rather than the processed drug. The box was not quite 10cm long and 5cm wide and deep. She hefted it in her hand thoughtfully. The thing looked a lot like a grenade, especially in smoke filled semi-darkness.

What the hell, as a diversion it was weak, but it was worth a shot. If he reacted like he should... She pushed herself up to a standing position, took a breath, and threw the box into the room. “Fire in the hole!”

To be Continued…