Fanfiction: Starship Elyssa MS AU Episode 3 part 3

[kiyda]

_+_+_

“I think you should tell me now,” reiterated Alyssa.

“Greenish skin, freckles, are you part Orion?” asked Morgan, squeezing the arms of her chair.

“My race has nothing to do with this conversation,” said Alyssa, frankly, still in a impassive tone.

_+_+_

Jack moved all the levers and moved items into correct position for beaming. He set coordinates, then dashed onto the pad. He pulled the hypospray out of his pocket and held it tight in his hand again.

_+_+_

“If you do not comply with answers immediately, you will be sent to the brig until we reach a starbase…”

White colors whirled around a place behind Blair as she was talking, and before she could turn around, before the beaming was even done, Jack stabbed Blair in the neck with the hypospray.

Blair froze to the touch and grabbed her neck as she slowly turned around, her heart beat suddenly loud. She stared into deep blue eyes before she began to feel something come over her. She descended into darkness and fell to the floor unconscious.

_+_+_

“Captain!“

Roads was going over metaphorical paperwork on a PADD when Hood was running toward her. Immediately, she looked up, confused at first, but then suddenly, as her eyes widened, she was totally telepathic to her thoughts.

“Oh no.”

“Captain,” Hood immediately started once she reached her, “MERCY is missing. We’ve been breached.”

“The ‘refugees,’” answered Roads. “Secure all intruders, lock the cargo bay, we need no one getting-”

The ship suddenly shook, and the classic horn started blaring a ‘red alert.’ Cannito’s voice rang out over the horn on the intercom.

“CAPTAIN! We’re being attacked, report to the bridge immediately!”

Roads bolted from the wall and ran into the lift, Hood close behind. On the lift, Roads asked her with the seconds they had.

“Guards out?”

“Dead.”

Roads stared at her.

“They were electrocuted.”

Roads opened her mouth, her eyebrows furrowed. “EXCUSE ME?”

The lift opened and Roads flew over to her post.

“Captain!”

“Revert all power to shields at maximum! Fire!” ordered Roads as she flew into her seat. “Hood, make sure the entire bay area is secure! Cannito! Visual!”

A second later, the screen came down to reveal the ship that was attacking them. It appeared to be Klingon, but every moment they were firing entailed they were anything but. The ship shook with every hit, but what was once quakes now were tremors.
Roads touched keys on her arm rest and shouted into the speaker.

“Bitch, it’s a red alert! Where the fuck you at?!” screamed Roads into Blair’s com. Konei sprang into the room like a wild cat. She pounced to Road’s side, gripping the chair for balance as she started yelling over the siren.

“The Cargo bay has been blown from the inside!”

“Oh FUCK!” groaned Roads.

“Precisely! The ‘refugees’ had weapons disguised as undetected peircings and blew the shuttle door open. We closed the airlock to the area, but we lost four men!” Konei reported to Roads. “They have also seem to have stolen the item known as MERCY! How they got it from it’s storage containment unit and squeezed it into the shuttle, I am not aware of yet.”

“You mean they’re out there now?! FUCK! Kissel! Locate enemy shuttle immediately and blow it out of the sky!”

“Captain, they’ve stopped!” declared McQuarrie suddenly as he looked up from his place beside Kissel.

“We’re being hailed!” Knowing that Roads would want them on screen, she instantly, the face of the enemy came into view. It was the face of dark skin, high cheek bones, and long dreads. He was still dressed in the clothes the crew had loaned the ‘refugees,’ and he was hovering over the screen like a home video. He smiled, not with malice, but as if he was bluffing.

“Captain Watson,” he started. Roads didn’t glare. She stared menacingly.

“You have damaged and attacked a federation vehicle, a federal offense. If you drop your defenses and surrender now, we can-”

“We decline. No offense, Captain,” responded the man before Roads was even finished.

“No offense, sir, but we are prepared to fire until destroyed -”

“Oh no, I don’t think you want to do that,” started the man as he turned the camera to face the crowd of people crammed into the shuttle. Their bodies moved aside to show that two of them were carrying a limp green woman with red hair in a blue science uniform. Roads’s bit her tongue to keep from gasping.

“Also if you do hit us, that,” the camera pointed to the large refridgerating unit in the corner, beyond the bodies, “might explode, and that’s 12 billion credits in federation money gone to waste.”

“You are dismissed,” said the man without much else to say, he closed the communication, and his little shuttle began moving again toward the still klingon ship next to them. Roads was frozen, as everyone in the room was staring at her. All of her training, all of her time in space, suddenly seemed like wiped clean palate.

“Captain?”

“Hail them.”

_+_+_

Voices, some familiar, some not. The slowly clearing, focusing vision onto dark pants, and then feeling come back to notice the tight grips on her biceps that were holding her up.

“… if you do hit us, that might explode, and that’s 12 billion credits in federation money gone to waste…”

Oh christ. She might’ve known this would’ve happened. She had been taken hostage by the so called ‘refugees’ and now they had her, in what seemed to be… Blair looked around as much as she could with half-lidded eyes to still feign unconsciousness. The same goddamn shuttle they found them in.

“…you are dismissed.”

As soon as Blair heard that, she realized he had been hailing Roads, which meant there was still hope, if only she could give her a guiding hand. Blair looked over to the strange looking gun not far from her hand that was attached to the hip of one of her captors. She waited, and waited, hoping her captor’s arrogance combined with Road’s pride was enough to get her to hail them back. She’d know the signal.

_+_+_

This time, the man picked up the receiving end.

“You are dismissed, Captain-”

“I HAVE NOT GIVEN YOU THE POWER TO DISMISS ME!”

Just as she yelled that at the top of her lungs over the wire, the sound of a phaser going off came in from the other side. Red lights flashing, an annoyed look over the man’s face and he whirled around, and the blurrying vision of the red headed woman’s hand being peeled from the handle of a weapon, sounds of distress, and then the communication was completely lost. The shuttle was plummeting toward the nearest planet. Roads didn’t seem pleased. She seemed ecstatic. Right away she was on her feet.

“McQuarrie, lock onto Blair’s life line. Cannito, now that the shuttle’s gone, the static should be gone, too. Get in touch with Starfleet Command. Kissel, keep shields up at maximum. Tell Michie to keep targets locked, photon cannons ready. Konei, is the planet habitable?”

Konei was back at her station, and she looked up from her readings.

“Affirmative. Can suppor human life, but hostile. Middle western like climate,” explained Konei from her readings.

“Good. Kissel, you have the con,” ordered Roads as she headed quickly toward the exit.

“Roads, where the hell are you going?!” demanded Cannito.

“Captain, regulations state that the captain and the first officer should not go planetside at the same time in case-”

“Blair is down there, along with MERCY. The item is too important to lose, and nothing can begin to describe what life in this universe would be like without Alyssa,” stated Roads quickly. “Cannito, tell Teixiera to meet me down at the beaming pad.”

_+_+_

Roads appeared down the hall, marching toward the beaming station. She passed by Eli who was following a group of men down the hall toward the engineering department. She grabbed him by the arm.

“Blair has been taken captive; you and I are going planetside to retrieve her and stolen cargo,” she ordered. Eli’s eyebrows rose up considerably.

“The situation is worse than I thought,” he responded, as he started following her into the weapons room. The lights turned on automatically revealing a large assortment of phasers and weapons. Instantly, Roads picked a phaser from the wall, and began collecting another piece of equipment.

“We‘ll beam down, apprehend the prisoners and retrieve MERCY,” Roads stated bluntly. “You’ll use your skills to retain as many prisoners as possible, while Teixiera will beam back the item in question. We’ll pick up Alyssa and beam back before the mothership can send down a party of its own to retrieve the situation.”

After Roads had retrieved her phaser and Eli had procured a rather large long weapon, they headed back down the hall posthaste. When Roads entered the beaming station, Teixiera wasn’t there. She arrived a second later, hair matted to her neck and covered in a fine layer of sweat, but the second was enough to tick Roads off considerably.

“Where the hell have you been?!” demaned Roads, angrily.

“Keeping engines from overheating, what have you been doing?! Get on the damn pad!” ordered Texiera. She moved things around so quickly and easily with her fingers. “I’ve pinpointed their area of impact, you’ll be meters away.”

“Tell Hood have a landing party of security officers ready when I give the word. When the shuttle has landed, I need you to locate the signal of the MERCY, it’s very distinct, and beam it the fuck out of there. And I mean it, as soon as it lands-” but Texiera cut her off.

“Those engines aren’t going to freeze to death, anything else before I beam you to hell and back?” demanded Teixiera. Roads shook her head as she adjusted herself to a still position on the pad. Teixiera started the beaming, and Roads gave one last command.

“I’ll be back.”

“I‘m going to kill you later.”

“Duly noted..”

And then the brother and sister were gone. The crew morale was unanimously turned south. Each member of the bridge and Teixiera returned to their post with haste, Michie was silently praying as she locked her aim onto the looming ship in front of them. Kissel was making adjustments to the level they were at, eyes focused on the enemy vehicle in front. The connection was clear now, but Cannito was waiting for an answer from Command, her brain going over how she could word what was going on here. Konei was bent over her work putting together who these refugees were and how they had obtained a klingon ship, escaped with MERCY, and detained Blair. McQuarrie drew up two more life lines this time, altogether Eli, Roads, and Blair.

_+_+_

The hands on her arms were tight now and she was bleeding heavily from her stomach. The arms that forced her up, held up her weight, also struggled to keep balance as the heat around them burned and the turblence from the plummeting shook the grounding of their feet. Blair knew they had hit the surface when the ship stilled in weightlessness and the blood of her body seemed to rush all to her head before a loud sound overcame her senses, shaking the entire world. When she opened her eyes, the leader was doing a head check, then started talking in a foreign language to Morgan, the girl Blair had been interrogating at the time. Then she looked over and grabbed a familiar hand, ad Blair’s stomach became hollow at first, then filled with fury as she recognized his face.

“….Fuh…” Blair spat out a mouth full of blood onto the floor. She started struggling like, wriggling like a small child caught in her parents hands. “BASTARD!”

The bastard’s face paled at he sight of her struggling, but a captor simply punched her in the face, enough to twist her body in the opposite direction. She started coughing and heaving, but her struggling, which was electric, became a lazy moving. She didn’t know where to go from here, but she knew she didn’t like where she was currently.

“It’s clear she’s no longer useful to us. Get rid of her,” commanded the leader, pressing a hand on the bastard’s shoulder. He glanced down at Blair’s bleeding weak form and nodded slowly. The door opened, and the bastard motioned to bring her with him. One man dragged her by the arm, while he bastard led the way.

_+_

When the lights stopped whirling around them, they immediately unwrapped their weapons, and rushed toward where the smoke was lifting. The criminals were crawling out of the crater the shuttle had made like ants. Eli dropped to one knee, flipped the weapon over his shoulder and aimed. Roads ducked down beside him.

“Don’t fire back until we’re-”

A boom and a crack hit the air as a wirey line of white hit the sky then shot down in the space between them. Struck by lightening. The terrorists rushed back into the vehicle as Eli gave fired at the shuttle, bruising a large hole in its side, but it did not break. Roads pointed two three figures, one of them limp and being dragged, hurrying into the distance.

“They’ve got some kind of lightning control,” Eli guessed.

“You apprehend the refugees. It looks like they took Blair that way. Once Texiera has notified you that they‘ve retrieved MERCY, get in there and don‘t pull your punches,” ordered Roads. “I’ll go get Blair. Come get me if I’m not back before you’re done.”

“Aye.”

Roads scrambled to her feet and rushed toward the distancing figures. A crackle of lightening shot in the space in front of her, and she jumped back. Eli turned his attention back to the shuttle and fired another shot. A second later, she was running again, bracing against the wind through the earth-like grass. She could hear the lightening around her, and she could feel the hairs on her arms standing on end. She could hear Eli still firing.

“God, please don’t let me die during this bullshit!” she muttered to herself. The lightning stopped as she got farther away, presuming they only fired in eyesight. She slid down the hill and pointed her gun, a bold of lightening erupted the ground beneath her. Roads was lucky enough to roll away, but one of the men she was following grabbed the lightening bolt with her hand, encase in a metal like weapon, and cracked it like a whip at her, Roads was caught by the arm, and he electrocuted her arm. She resisted screaming and aimed her phaser at him and shot him in the arm, stunning him. He fell to the ground and groaned. Roads fell to her knees grasping the wound around her arm.

“That’s not normal,” she commented before rising to one foot then the other. She immediately spotted the other one still dragging Blair with him. She started running after him.

From far away she could see her first officer was attempting to get away. She swatted him and was dropped to the ground. He was leaning over to grab her, but she was scrambling away. Roads raced toward them, every second feeling like she was losing, every second feeling like it was one second too late. Once she got closer, she realized all she wanted to do was run farther away.

Indeed all the refugees were dressed in Starfleet uniform, for it was the only clothes on ship, so this last one could be a refugee. But from the way he was standing, the way his hair was blowing over his identity, made her realize he wasn’t a part of the refugee. She knew who he was, and her eyes flew open, and her pace slowed down for an instant, before speeding up. She stopped directly behind him, the phaser locked in her grip as she pointed at him.

“Stop right there!” She commanded. He froze, then slowly turned around, looking up at her, with big blue eyes. She stared at him, confused, shocked, bewildered.

“Catherine-” he began, raising a hand toward her. She flinched and raised her gun, which was now shaking.

“Don’t move,” she warned him. He gave a weak smile.

“Catherine-” he began again, but she cut him off.

“This is mutiny, Jack.”

Blair was coughing, spitting up blood all over the grass and scrambled to get to her feet, but her wounds would not permit her.

“ROADS!” She shouted. “Get away from him! He’s got a gun!”

Roads flinched and Jack raised his weapon, true enough. Roads sputtered.

“What are you doing here, why are you doing this, who are these-” Roads was rambling questions, more than Jack could answer.

“There’s nothing left for me on that ship, Catherine! What are we going to do with this life? Get married?” he asked as if the words were incredulous. “Is that the next step?! We fight all the time-”

“Is this about US?!” asked Roads, screaming at the top of her lungs now. “You joined those people because of US?!”

Jack closed his mouth, and he sighed, he looked down as he spoke the words.

“I don’t... I don’t know if I love you anymore,” he finished, looking up at her. Her lips parted as she stared at him, stunned.

“But…” she began. “You love me, you said you did.”

“Roads, GET AWAY FROM HIM!” Blair shouted though her voice fell deaf in the wind.

“I don’t know, I just don’t know. I don’t know…anymore. I mean, I care about you. But I’m not happy, I don’t know what I’m doing, I’ve got this stupid, stupid job as engineer, something my dad always wanted me to do when I’d much rather be making music, and these guys,” Jack gestured to the distance with his gun, “are up to something more than just engines. They could use me. Together, we can create god knows what.”

Jack moved toward her with some kind of look in him that was more than sorrow and happiness and love and hate. “Maybe… we could even create God.”

Roads was silent, her eyes searching his for some kind of answer.

“Maybe, if we did, he could create a world where we could be together…” Jack whispered almost reaching toward her.

Roads stared at him and gulped hard, her voice coming out cracked on the verge of some heavy emotion. She straightened her arm and aim which had faltered during their verbal trade.

“By Starfleet federation code, I am court-martialing you, Jack James Habenicht of the Starship Elyssa for -”

Before she could say another word, the ground exploded in front of her, blasts were coming from high above from cannons. It was the mothership, shooting down on the planet below using Klingon war mines sent. Jack tackled Roads to the ground behind a boulder for cover, completely forgetting that Blair was bleeding on the ground not far from them. She crawled over behind a broken trunk of a tree. The firing stopped, and Jack’s face hovered over Roads‘s.

“I still care about you.” His painful blue eyes pierced her dark brown ones which were wide and staring at him, but the soft prod of a phaser pressed against his abdomen interrupted his gaze.

“I’ll miss you,” he whispered as the lights started flashing, and he leaned down to kiss her forehead. She didn’t dare close her eyes, and she watched his face disappear with every blinding color. A whirl of wind and the sound of engines. The captain was alone.

Roads found herself alone with a phaser tight in her hands and a bleeding first officer on the ground not far from her.

Two seconds, one, two, slowly in the back of her head, and she was on her feet. She rushed to Blair’s side. She was halfway covered in blood but the look on her face, utter and breathless relief, returned with this numbing look of duty from Roads. Blair’s relief released and gave way to mission. Eli came rushing toward them, with the long weapon gone and no expression to say what he felt, only burnt stains in the fabric of his shirt from the lightning and the knowledge of his sister needing him. When he saw her face, he didn’t have to ask he just assisted her.

An hour later, the Elyssa beamed them back. MERCY was safe on board to greet them, the white machine, tuttering away at a frozen temperature. Konei was ready to see Roads, with a PADD of information.

“As soon as we beamed MERCY, the ship was gone, hit warp speed. There’s no means of tracking them, but I do have their identity. They call themselves Argementalists, a group of evangelist, scientist terrorists who believe it‘s man‘s destiny to create God. They have recruited many top scientists including some Vulcan into their group. They have been spotted and have stolen billions of credits in confidential fenderation equipment. This was their attempt to steal MERCY, by pretending to be refugees in order to get on board and retrieve it. The holes in their ears were methods of carrying a device that uses the electric energy in the body to create special lightning which bends to the will of the holder. The one named Morgan Fatima is not actually her. Her real name is Daphne, and she was able to trick us using her grandmother‘s alien blood, which has known to shape the emotions of others around her...” Everything Konei said fell quietly to Roads as she nodded and gave orders as normally as possible.

No one said a thing to Roads about what had happened other than about repairs and returning to the mission at hand, except Leonard who said it with a soft hand on her back after an hour of patch up. Roads received it without a word, and was last seen hovering over Blair’s bed like ghost, a hand constantly wrapped around hers. When she was too tired, Hood took over for the next six hours.

When Cannito was making her way to the Cafeteria in the middle of the night, she passed the corner and swore she saw Roads sitting on the floor in the rec room next to her brother with three big bowls of synthetic ice cream. The conversation seemed private between siblings so Cannito pretended she hadn’t seen them and continued on her way. Later she would probably give another hug to Roads.

It was only after two weeks did things began to lighten up, and Roads was seen laughing again. Blair was back on the bridge, and all was well.

_+_+_

“Send her in.”

Admiral Pike’s office was comfortable and homey, not messy, not alien like other parts of the academy. He had carpet on the floor, two pictures on his desk, and a bookcase along the left wall with an unorganized collection. His computer was organizing his schedule when she walked in, a young twenty-something Mexican-American female with short black hair and dressed in formal Starfleet uniform with a top, long skirt, and heels.

“Sir,” she saluted, formally. The older gentleman looked up with amusement.

“At ease, Captain. I assume you know why I asked you here,” started Pike, leaning on the front of his desk.

“This has something to do with my latest report,” offered Roads, slightly unaware.

“This has everything to do with your latest report,” replied Pike, more sternly.

“Sir.”

“You lost a crew member.”

“I lost several crew members.”

“This one was mutiny.”

Roads swallowed hard.

“Yes it was.”

“And from what I understand from questioning the rest of your men, you were in a deep relationship with this boy,” explained Pike.

“For one year sir,” said Roads with a bit of a roughness as she cleared her throat.

“You know that fraternization among crew members is not a responsibility of the federation and is not conducive to the workplace nor the policies of Starfleet command?” asked Admiral Pike. “Yet you chose a relationship with this boy anyway.”

“In my defense sir, it was no problem in the academy. He chose of his own free will to stay and of his own free will to leave.”

“I know, Captain Watson, I’m not saying it was your fault. What I’m saying is you should’ve known better,” replied Pike. “You should’ve known your crew better.”

Roads visably swallowed and looked down.

“I apologize sir,” she spoke softly. Pike sighed and rubbed his temple.

“I don’t regret my decision in promoting you early. However, this incident cannot be ignored. You are now on probation,” explained Pike. “If you fail at any point to act with the respect and command of Captain, you will be demoted and sent to a Starfleet base, earthbound. Is that understood?”

Roads opened her mouth in objection. “Sir!”

“Catherine, is that understood?” asked Pike again as he moved to take a seat behind his desk. She closed her mouth and held black her annoyance.

“Yes sir.”

“You’re dismissed."