No Grave But The Stars, part 5

Posted on Wed Sep 14th, 2022 @ 2:12pm by Lieutenant JG Miraj Derani
Edited on on Tue Jan 3rd, 2023 @ 1:24am

Mission: WHAT IF?
Location: The Bassen Rift
Timeline: In another lifetime
3633 words - 7.3 OF Standard Post Measure

Previously in No Grave But The Stars

Mal nodded. But they could very easily get caught lugging the blasted replicator along the corridor. "Ilon and Mij take it aft. Out the nearest airlock or pod and hope they haven't found the Tides. Z and I will go forward, create a diversion."

"No!" Mij said instantly. "They'll kill you! Or worse!"

"They'll kill all of us if we stand around debating." Mal started hunting for anything that could help move the replicator, whilst Zh'erim and Ilon wrestled it onto a short end. "You get out, you get to the Tides, and then you come get us."

"But - "

Zh'erim put a hand on both their shoulders, and gently pushed them apart. "Get going. Mij. You'll be picking us up in no time." He held out a pair of Romulan rifles to Mal, and the two men shared an understanding look.

Miraj looked at them both for a long moment, and then turned away, putting her shoulder to the replicator, pushing it along, staying close to Ilon, concentrating on not looking back.

And now the continuation...

---

Miraj and Ilon slipped across the darkness to where the Stranger Tides was hidden, conscious of the Myriad scout ship that was bathing the remnants of the Scimitar in the lights from its spacing lamps. It was a silent trip save for their hearts thumping against their ribs fit to burst for fear that someone would look around at the wrong moment and see them moving.

But they made it into the Tides, and Miraj was vibrating out of her skin by the time the airlock had cycled, the decontamination had run, and the gravity gently restored so the precious replicator didn’t smash down onto the floor.

With the light green, Miraj ripped her helmet off and threw it at the nearest corner. “We’re going back! We’ll buzz the wreck and try and beam them.” She started to scramble up the ladder heading for the cockpit.

Ilon grabbed her arm and pulled her back. “Mij, slow down!” he waited until she was looking at him properly. “We go in there half-cocked, and they’ll shoot us down. We’ve already lost the orlop. One more hit, and we’re done for.”

“I won’t sit here and do nothing!” She threw his hand off. “That’s the Myriad! Even if all they do is kill them, you know they’ll make it bad!”
The Risian man gave her a look equal parts frustration and sympathy. “I know.

I’m scared too. I promise, we’re not going to leave them, but we have to be smart. They’re in better shape, they have better weapons. We charge in there half-cocked, we all die. We need a plan.”

Miraj took her foot off the lowest ladder rung, and the fight left her, replaced by a slow gnawing terror. “We need a distraction. We have to be right on top of them to beam, so they absolutely have to be looking elsewhere. Or chased off completely would be better.”

Ilon picked up her discarded helmet, putting it and his own back on the shelf. “Neither or us are great shots.” A photon torpedo or two would be an excellent distraction but getting them close enough to worry, without actually killing Malcolm and Zh’erim would be difficult. Probably impossible.

Miraj climbed up the ladder again and headed forward. “I’m thinking. I’m trying to. Sink me, why do we listen to him?” It was a rhetorical question. They both knew why. As brother or best friend, Mal was someone you followed.

“Well, this isn’t the first time we’ve landed in the shit because we do.” Ilon sighed, climbing up behind her.

“It’s not going to be the last either.” Miraj’s tone was firm, making a promise to herself.

If Ilon disagreed with her, he didn’t say so. “So, what are our assets? You, me, the ship.”

It didn’t sound like much. The Tides wasn’t in great shape. Then she gave a sharp intake of breath. “The Myriad have a jenny. Maybe we could sabotage that?”

“All right, maybe we could turn our wireless umbilical to transmit, overload it.” Ilon’s brain was working now, contemplating the puzzle of switching the wireless power receiver from a passive collector to a transmitter. “Reverse a couple of gates on the control board…”

“But wouldn’t that risk blowing up Mal and Z too?”

“Depends on where they are, but yeah.”

“Then no.” Miraj dropped into her chair and glared at the near perfect darkness of the Cube.

She couldn’t bear to think of her brother floating out there with the rest of the drones, in a hellish realisation of Davy Jones Locker, lost souls condemned to the abyss. She stared at the silent impersonal wreck, wishing for a solution.

The rest of the Cube seemed to stare back, beckoning. “We need a better plan,” she said quietly to the dead. “Something that will scare them into moving. And they’re not scared of us…”

“No.” Ilon said automatically, before even hearing the rest of it.

“It doesn’t have to be for real. It just has to look real.”

Ilon rubbed his hands over his face, turning the possibilities over in his head. With a heavy sigh he said, “I’ll need a drone.”

***

Mal and Zh'erim jogged back towards the forward end of the chunk of scimitar. "Who do you think we’re dealing with?" the Andorian asked.

"Hopefully someone with an ego who likes to gloat." Mal stopped at a ladder down and slid down it to the next deck. "Give Ilon & Mij more time."

Zh'erim followed him down, looking around. “Well, anyone prepared to follow us all the way in here is certainly insane enough to have a massive ego." He saw what they were looking for. "There." A panel had fallen away to reveal EPS conduits. They were very faintly orange, the slight current from the emergency power inside them. They squinted at the connections, and then Mal began to pull out cables, reattaching others, seemingly at random.

“They might not hear this, thaloran and space and all. Ilon’s better at this shit than I am.” The human admitted. A misspent youth salvaging wrecked spaceships had given him an eclectic knowledge of clever bodges rather than any real engineering knowledge.

“Hopefully they’ll see it.” Zh’erim kept his eyes scanning both ends of the corridor, just in case they were found whilst Mal was tinkering. Then they bolted up the corridor towards the open end of the wreck, and the Romulan equivalent of a red alert siren began to flash.

Their corridor opened up onto a wide empty part of the internal structure, which had all the markings of a shuttle bay, though only two or three Romulan jollyboats remained, burnt out and strewn higgledy-piggledy across the space.
The rest must have launched when the Scimitar broke up.

Across the open space red lights flashed, but brighter white lights danced in counterpoint as figures jogged through an identical open corridor on the other side of the bay. Mal killed his flashlight, and he and Zh’erim pressed themselves back. By his count, it wasn’t many. Four or so. Four they could handle. But he doubted they were the only ones.

The flashlights, large and bright, swept the bay, cutting through both the darkness and the bloody gloaming of the red alert. As they swooped close and closer to where the human and the Andorian were hiding, Mal held his breath, fervently hoping they’d give up.

The lights just got closer.

***

Miraj had to be quick. They had maybe minutes to set this up. Who knew how long Mal and Z could stay ahead of the Myriad foot soldiers chasing them. Zipping about in her jet boots was just as likely to get her spotted, but there was nothing else for it. To minimise the chances, she dashed further inside the structure, rather than going back into the open bay where the lump of wreckage had been hauled.

She didn’t have to go far. She quickly realised that she’d backed the Tides up against what was an open gallery, and there was an open archway that led off it to deeper in, and she dashed through it.
To a scene of ... Well, it wasn’t carnage, but it was widespread and terrible.

She’d grown up on a salvage ship; despite her father’s best efforts to shield her from the grimmer realities of his trade, she knew what radiation, vacuum and/or sudden loss of environmental systems did to a person. This time it had done it to hundreds of Borg drones.

They had been people once, she thought, as her flashlight played off the bodies as they drifted, slowly bouncing off each other, caught forever in a nightmarish Newton’s Cradle of perpetual motion. The light revealed flesh that had been burnt nearly to ash by heavy thalaron radiation, and then frozen an instant later, the splintering flesh held in twisted shapes. Others had lost flesh entirely, leaving empty gruesome space around the remains of prosthetic bones and other augments. Still others seemed damaged by other things, missing limbs or bits gashed open. Whatever had caused the damage not obvious. Maybe the drones had gone haywire in their last moments, lashing out at everything and anything in their death throes.

She knew Borg drones had decimated hundreds of worlds, and a massive federation fleet had been destroyed at their hands, but it was still a way to go she didn’t wish on anyone, not even Borg.

Miraj shook herself out of her moment of horror. She’d come for a drone, and her brother’s time was running out. There were plenty to chose from, but she only needed one. Most were big, awkward to tow and would be bloody heavy when they hit the gravity. Did she need a whole drone? Maybe not. She spotted one. Female of a species that was hard to identify under the dead flesh. It didn’t have the common additions, no ocular unit, though a bunch of connection trailing down from the back of the scalp. And it was missing its legs, meaning nothing to dangle over her boots and throw her flying off.

It took a moment to push herself off the wall and hook it round the neck. It resisted for a moment, trailing cables caught on something. She didn’t dare tug hard, in case the fragile flesh gave way. She moved over to where the cables themselves were caught, planted her feet against the bulkhead, took a firm grip around the cables, squeezing awkwardly to get to her controls, and fired her boots, hard. There was a moments resistance, and then the drone snapped free, and Miraj shot backwards. Another bulkhead rushed towards her, but she twisted, and scraped through the opening she had come through, a glancing blow jarring her hip so deeply she felt it in her bone marrow.

Wincing, she jetted back to the Stranger Tides, her prize hugged close, and she allowed herself a moment’s triumph as she went through decontamination again and into the ship, depositing the woman’s remains on top of the stolen replicator as Ilon came out from the engine room with a trolley and a toolbox.

Whereupon he gave a shriek, jumped back with an expression of absolute terror on his face and shouted, “Mij! I told you to bring me a drone!”

***


The lights from the Myriad foot soldiers weaved back and forth but always inched closer. Mal squeezed his eyes shut as one blinding beam swept over and past. Elation rushed through him, the hope his prayers to the uncaring universe were heard. And then that hope was dashed, as the sweeping lights converged on their figures.

Mal gave Zh'erim a shove, and they started running, even as the indistinct figures across the way started to jump from the other side of the shuttle bay, and head towards them. They pounded through the corridor, not wasting a second, only to turn a corner to find the bulkheads closed.

Zh'erim ripped open the manual release and hauled it open, but it lost them precious seconds, seconds that their pursuers used to reach firing range. The first wild disruptor bolt passed over their heads and scorched a first sized hole into the bulkhead panelling near the ceiling.

Mal slipped through the gap, and the Andorian followed him, letting the door snap back into place.

Behind them a bright green spot of light appeared in the centre of the bulkhead door. Mal and Zh’erim shared a look then dived for cover into open doorways on the opposite side of the corridor, Mal grabbing for his pistol, and Zh’erim unclipping his ushaan-tor from its holster on his thigh.

The green light held on the door for a moment, and then the whole door dissolved into ash and anti-protons as the concentrated fire of three disruptors destroyed it utterly. The Myriad foot soldiers came through carefully, hunting for their quarry.

Mal glanced at Zh’erim as the nose of a long disruptor rifle began to edge past the door frame. Zh’erim nodded in return.

The Andorian waited until a good amount of the business end was past him, then he grabbed the barrel of the rifle, tugging the Romulan wielding it off balance and forward into the oscillating edge of his ushaan-tor, the vibrating blade slicing through even the tough EVA suit mesh. There was a puff of gas in the frozen vacuum, and the Romulan feel to the ground writhing.

Before that one had even hit the floor, Mal had ducked out of his cover and levelled his phaser at the next target, sending the foot soldier reeling back as it vaporised his head. He dropped to his knees, snapped off a shot that took out a leg on a third, and then another to the same target as it fell, vaporising a fatal amount of chest. Zh’erim threw the snatched rifle over Mal’s head, forcing the last foot soldier to dodge aside, whilst the Andorian closed the distance and delivered a crushing punch to the Romulan’s face plate with the edge of the ushaan-tor. He gasped in vacuum for a second and died.

For a long second, Mal and Zh’erim looked at each other, and the four bodies at their feet. Then Zh’erim offered the human his hand and pulled him up. “Well, that was fun.” Mal brushed at unseen dust on his EVA suit.

Zh’erim grinned at him. “You bring me to all the best parties. Let’s go find round two.”

***

Miraj looked from the remains to Ilon’s horrified expression in confusion. “I did bring a drone! I found a whole room of them; this was just the most complete and easy to lug back here.”

The Risian shook his head. It didn’t change the plan, not really. He picked up his toolbox. “This isn’t a drone, Mij. This is a queen!”

“What? But didn’t the Enterprise kill the Queen like, twenty years ago?”

“Apparently there’s more than one!”

“I didn’t know. I’ve never seen Borg before.” Miraj had only ever been interested in the Cubes, it was the ship that was important to her, not the meat-sacks inside them.

“Arrgh! You…you…Trouble Magnet! Dammit Mij!” Ilon approached with caution, and when the body stayed dead, he dropped his toolbox next to the body and started pulling out tools. “I need to get this probe in. Hold the head up and get those wires out of the way. Hopefully I can do this before she defrosts.”

“What happens when she defrosts?”

“Hopefully nothing worse than smell, crumble, and possibly drip ichor.”

Miraj gathered the trailing bunch of tubes and wires into one arm and used those to raise the queen’s head up so Ilon could slide the slim metal probe into each connection. He started tapping at each bundle of wires, frowning when his probe gave the wrong reading.

A massive bang shook the whole ship. Ilon’s hand slipped, and he jabbed the probe deep into the meat of the of the bundle. He was rewarded with a sluggish spurt of something black and only half defrosted. “Shit!”

Miraj ran for the cock pit, and the clear windows there. There, she was in time to see a mortar launch from the Myriad ship. It streaked off at random further inside the Cube, and she twisted round to follow its path. It found a target some half a kilometre to their starboard and blew a chunk out that went spinning off into space.

A second mortar burst out, arcing away from them to explode further up. Bits of the infrastructure went flying out, a few of them ricocheting into the Tides, the kinetic energy transferring and making them bounce in their hidden alcove like domjot balls.

From the cargo bay, Ilon swore again.

“They’re trying to flush us out!” Miraj reported.

“Hold me steady.” Ilon repeated. “I can’t find the frequency.”

“I have to move. They’re lobbing mortars about!”

“No! That’s what they want!” Ilon’s voice was tight and tense. “Just hold us still.”

Miraj slid back into her seat. Hold still. That was easier said than done. Another bright orb launched from the Myriad ship, this one heading down and away from them. She bit her lip, and then brought up the barest whisper of power to the thrusters. The Cube shivered, a few more drones drifting free, and she recentred them between the struts of their hiding place as gently as she could. The swearing from the cargo bay continued as yet another attempt failed. Yet another mortar launched. Did these things ever run out?

The answer was no, because the launcher swivelled in their general direction, and three were spat out, with barely a pause between them.

***

Mal and Zh’erim were running. There was no sign of pursuit, but Mal knew in his bones it was there, and the bodies they had left behind them wouldn’t be any deterrent. They dashed down the next turn, and the next, and the next, knowing they were rats in a trap. "We need a plan," Mal muttered, mostly to himself.

"Open to suggestions." Zh'erim panted.

Mal found an open door and ducked into it. "I think I’ve got one...” He realised. Before the ship had broken in to chunks and flash fried the crew, this was a laboratory of some sorts. "Remember when Mij failed the academy entrance, and we took her to Risa and got blackout drunk?"

"Oh no." Zh’erim said, a sense of dread settling in his stomach. "No, no, no." But he was looking around too, before lifting a canister, knocked loose from whatever was in progress when the Scimitar had met its end, and scooping up shattered shards of glass from the floor as Mal brought over a pair of sealed flasks.

He held it out, “Argine." He placed the second down with care "Cytomyaline."

Zh'erim looked at the small bottle with extreme caution. It packed way too much bang into its small quantity. Then he shrugged and started stripping the power packs out of the Romulan rifles. "Still not as bad as Risa.”

"Yeah, well, back then we were having a good time." Mal found a cracked test tube, dropped it into a stand, and decanted a tiny amount of the cytomyaline very, very, very carefully.

"This won't be big, even with the argine." Zh'erim pulled the upholstery off a knocked over chair and used a torn scrap to lay over the argine and began backing off. "Not enough oxygen in the parts to really go boom. The power packs will help..."

"Doesn't have to be big." Mal rested the test tube on top, leaning against the mouth of the cannister. The liquid explosive was already leaking through the crack in the test tube. "Just has to give those arseholes a really nasty surprise."

There were vibrations in the floor plates, people running close by. Their hunters had found their trail. The two men crowded into the crawl space at the back of the lab and scampered down as fast as they could. A few minutes later the whole chunk of broken ship gave an aborted jolt as the explosives did their best with the limited oxygen in their own structures. But it was enough; the artificial gravity failed, and they were floating. They shared a grin, and turned on their repulsor boots, now able to fly in the tiny space.

The crawl space ran almost to the end they came in on, and they pulled themselves out to make the last sprint to free space. It was just a quick dash across what had been a two-storey open space, but the Borg Cube could be glimpsed tantalisingly through gaps in the far wall. As one, they put on speed, planning to make a break for it.

Which was when their boots cut out, and they crashed down into the Myriad's waiting gravity trap.

To Be Continued

 

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