Nero watched Ayel wrap into himself, pulling a coat that was half blood but all living, and his breath rattled deep-this time it was the ship that coughed. A sputtering kick, deep beneath them, thick and far inside the walls. He could hear the distant slide of metal against metal, the jerking hitch as something light caught and attempted to slide by again, or perhaps it was buried in his skull, rattling against his ears.
Was his head full of foreign metal, like his ship?
Nero glanced away from Ayel, down, at the black and green smears across the floor. The capacitor gel did not flicker, not like the forcefields, it did not give him the illusion of movement. Only the clear stillness of death. Green was Mandana's favorite color; it was the color of her eyes. He couldn't hate it but couldn't tolerate the crushing sorrow it fostered in his soul. He could hate the blood, the distant forcefields, the green wheezing sound that leaked from the metal beneath them, scraping, biting, and quietly, listlessly turning.
“Etrevon,” Nero uttered quietly as he stared at the floor. He couldn't taste the malice in his voice. Perhaps it wasn't there. He didn't look at Ayel, couldn't stand to see him wrapped in jade and cold.
The ship wheezed and Nero stepped forward, picking across the grates. Ayel followed him silently, slowly in the bleeding blue light. He moved through glass, around the fallen maze of pipes and pieces of metal thicker than his arm was long. Beneath the third airlock, where the glittering forcefield kept the black at bay, it was coldest. Through his boots, Nero could feel the scraping hiccough of the Narada and he knelt against the green there. It was thicker, jade and bright, barely black at all for the cold.
Without hesitation, he reached into it-it engulfed his hand, icy and thick, dark and impenetrable-and found the panel beneath. He knew the number, the latch, and his fingers were numb as they slipped into the rung and pulled at it. The green slipped through, emptying into the darkness beneath as he pulled up the hatch. Some rational sliver of his mind supplied the name.
Auxiliary Environmental Control
The hatch slipped free silently, struck the floor with a metal-wet thud, and the hole gaped up at him. The ship was wheezing, he could hear it, and he clutched at the rattle in his chest, smearing jade across his shirt. He muttered something in half-conscious standard, something about the fans and the catch in the filters. He couldn't hear himself. All he could hear was the rattle, the wound in his ship, and he climbed down the darkened, sticky rungs into the half-crushed below.
The lights were on here, dim and green and filled with foreign air. It tasted strange, heady, and the blue light was thick. Slowly the air thinned, pouring up through the grate above him, and it was easier to breathe. The smell was raw and bright, but the taste of it was rich and slid like water between his ribs. He stepped off the ladder and, as the light settled, he was back in the Narada as it had been. Nothing broken. Nothing smashed. Lights and flickering switches and everything that worked. The blue light focused as Ayel jumped down behind him, and he could see the green on the black tubes, hear the muttered hissing of the Borg through the wheezing Romulan grates.
Nero started walking, his boots swishing softly through the jade tinted coolant. His coat was heavy in uneven patches, it hung from him like lead. The hallway curved, short and sharp, and the shadows before him didn't make sense as he approached the compressor. The filters were hitching, the great blades of the compressor fan slid loosely, with listless, testing, Etrevon motions. He stepped closer and the light brought them out, sharp and clear, and he saw his friends.
Two, he thought, trapped in the grate and the grind of the atmosphere recycler. His eyes searched for hands, for arms, for a swirl of cohesive black among them, but he could find nothing. They were not his family. Not anymore. He stepped forward and slid the pipe between the slats in the floor, stabbing it down into the coolant as sharply as the teral'n. The light atop it shone evenly as he moved to the machine. It cast his shadow hard across the twisted shapes, more than half Romulan, corrupted and twisted by the technology he'd fitted atop it. The same technology that was maintaining the Narada's pulse, keeping it alive with the beating of a second heart.
He could not hate green.
He took hold of the fan mechanism, the release was frozen shut, iced over in the bitter cold, and dripping with coolant. His fingers dug at it, twisted it, and he pried the stubby hook free from its casing. With a wrench of his arm, the bolt popped out, hissed as it slid away from the tubing. A foreign beep, sharp and complacent, accompanied the debris as it sluessed free from the blades. His legs were numb, or he might have known the touch of dead flesh and ice as it pooled before him.
“Clear the filters,” Nero commanded. He could not feel Ayel behind him and he shivered as he forced the fan back in, locking it in place with a snap that sounded too much like bone. It spun slowly, the rattle gone, and the Narada did not cough as the Etrevon worked.
(Etrevon - Borg, derogatory...or it would be, if the Borg ever had a positive nickname to compare it to. Teral'n - Nero's bladed weapon. The one he speared Robau with.)
The deck reeled under him--no, it was his legs; they wouldn't stop shaking. Gods. He could taste it in the air, clotting on the back of his tongue.
There was a loud, clear, heavy click, and Nero turned and spoke crisply from the side of his mouth:
"Clear the filters."
Ayel nodded sharply. Speaking would only pull the raw, velvet stink deeper into his lungs. His boots stuck wherever he touched down.
The upper vents were clear, frost glittering on their edges. Clean and still. But those were the outputs. The filters were on the bottom. Under...the thought squirmed away from him and hid itself somewhere small and dark. The filters, the intakes, were in the floor.
Threads of green glinted up at him, floating in the coolant like grease on water.
He shuddered. Drove both hands down where he knew one should be, but there was only cold meat. It kissed at his fingers, slick and heavy, thick as wet clay.
Bile rushed up in his mouth. He choked and shoved his hand further in. There was suction, just faintly, behind--he only needed to do this a little more. Just moments more. And anything he could do once, he could do again. There was bone or cartilage something hard jammed deep in the flaps, and that was causing the worst of it.
He turned his face, took a hard swift breath through his nose, and twisted. The thing turned in his hand, began to loosen in his grip. Definitely a bone, sharpened down by the constant grinding of the filter flaps as they strained to close, to repair themselves. Almost pricked him.
He could do this. He could. He must.
Fingertips touched his. Brushed his and floated past, bobbing to the surface. Unattached to anything.
Water lapped his boots. Was it water? It sloshed, thick and heady against the leather around his legs. His eyes drifted downward, away from the idle, conscious spinning of the blades. The shadows around him made no sense. He could very nearly see his reflection, green and brown, glinting in the calf-deep liquid. The capacitor gel shone over his shoulder, reflecting sharply as a star, and he blinked, turning away.
The walls coughed, hissed wetly and sputtered. His expression tightened-why hadn't the liquid cleared? Why wasn't the ship breathing? Nero turned and his eyes caught on the filter gauges. Full up and choking, silent and suffocated. His face twisted and he spun on Ayel. The ship was drowning and....
The image of Ayel crumpled in the liquid was startlingly lucid. The sounds of the ship were separate then, clicking and hissing and mechanical grind. The walls echoed Ayel's coughing, his sputtering, but little else. The coolant swirled around him and his anger bled off into it, leaving only the cold.
Nero moved, silent and blank to the filters on the wall. The intake valves were at his feet, buried beneath thick pads of flesh and twisting spirals of other matter. Nero pulled it aside, breaking ice and tearing skin as he worked. He reached the flaps, jammed clean with a femur, sharp and brittle, and he twisted it aside. His arms were greasy, his legs numb, and his coat was no longer an asset but a hindrance.
The wall whirred to life and green flickered at him as he activated the purge sequence, clearing the tanks. The Narada sputtered and the floor around his feet was solid as the liquid drained away. Metal ground against metal and Nero watched the glittering vents. They shone less as air slid through them-a hot, throaty wheeze in the dimness.
Wordlessly, Nero took in the floor, all the damp, half frozen debris that littered the metal plates. He knew who they were now, he could see a ring on a clenched hand, a whorl of ink and sorrow, an ear with a long-healed scar. Their names, their faces fluttered through his mind and, for a moment, he was there with them. Had Bhaon been waiting for duty on the bridge? He was supposed to change, along with Veyn. It was Tha'liij's birthing day...or had it already passed?
Nero's attention twisted, meandered like a thural from one piece to the next until his vision snagged on Ayel. He sat himself beside the silent man. His eyes drifted upward and he watched the flicker of the Etrevon wires as they slowly threaded through the Narada again. The Narada could breathe, and he could wait. He leaned against Ayel and stared at the jade around them.
He could not hate green.
(Thural - Small aquadic rodent creature. Etrevon - borg. Everything else is a name.)
Was his head full of foreign metal, like his ship?
Nero glanced away from Ayel, down, at the black and green smears across the floor. The capacitor gel did not flicker, not like the forcefields, it did not give him the illusion of movement. Only the clear stillness of death. Green was Mandana's favorite color; it was the color of her eyes. He couldn't hate it but couldn't tolerate the crushing sorrow it fostered in his soul. He could hate the blood, the distant forcefields, the green wheezing sound that leaked from the metal beneath them, scraping, biting, and quietly, listlessly turning.
“Etrevon,” Nero uttered quietly as he stared at the floor. He couldn't taste the malice in his voice. Perhaps it wasn't there. He didn't look at Ayel, couldn't stand to see him wrapped in jade and cold.
The ship wheezed and Nero stepped forward, picking across the grates. Ayel followed him silently, slowly in the bleeding blue light. He moved through glass, around the fallen maze of pipes and pieces of metal thicker than his arm was long. Beneath the third airlock, where the glittering forcefield kept the black at bay, it was coldest. Through his boots, Nero could feel the scraping hiccough of the Narada and he knelt against the green there. It was thicker, jade and bright, barely black at all for the cold.
Without hesitation, he reached into it-it engulfed his hand, icy and thick, dark and impenetrable-and found the panel beneath. He knew the number, the latch, and his fingers were numb as they slipped into the rung and pulled at it. The green slipped through, emptying into the darkness beneath as he pulled up the hatch. Some rational sliver of his mind supplied the name.
Auxiliary Environmental Control
The hatch slipped free silently, struck the floor with a metal-wet thud, and the hole gaped up at him. The ship was wheezing, he could hear it, and he clutched at the rattle in his chest, smearing jade across his shirt. He muttered something in half-conscious standard, something about the fans and the catch in the filters. He couldn't hear himself. All he could hear was the rattle, the wound in his ship, and he climbed down the darkened, sticky rungs into the half-crushed below.
The lights were on here, dim and green and filled with foreign air. It tasted strange, heady, and the blue light was thick. Slowly the air thinned, pouring up through the grate above him, and it was easier to breathe. The smell was raw and bright, but the taste of it was rich and slid like water between his ribs. He stepped off the ladder and, as the light settled, he was back in the Narada as it had been. Nothing broken. Nothing smashed. Lights and flickering switches and everything that worked. The blue light focused as Ayel jumped down behind him, and he could see the green on the black tubes, hear the muttered hissing of the Borg through the wheezing Romulan grates.
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Two, he thought, trapped in the grate and the grind of the atmosphere recycler. His eyes searched for hands, for arms, for a swirl of cohesive black among them, but he could find nothing. They were not his family. Not anymore. He stepped forward and slid the pipe between the slats in the floor, stabbing it down into the coolant as sharply as the teral'n. The light atop it shone evenly as he moved to the machine. It cast his shadow hard across the twisted shapes, more than half Romulan, corrupted and twisted by the technology he'd fitted atop it. The same technology that was maintaining the Narada's pulse, keeping it alive with the beating of a second heart.
He could not hate green.
He took hold of the fan mechanism, the release was frozen shut, iced over in the bitter cold, and dripping with coolant. His fingers dug at it, twisted it, and he pried the stubby hook free from its casing. With a wrench of his arm, the bolt popped out, hissed as it slid away from the tubing. A foreign beep, sharp and complacent, accompanied the debris as it sluessed free from the blades. His legs were numb, or he might have known the touch of dead flesh and ice as it pooled before him.
“Clear the filters,” Nero commanded. He could not feel Ayel behind him and he shivered as he forced the fan back in, locking it in place with a snap that sounded too much like bone. It spun slowly, the rattle gone, and the Narada did not cough as the Etrevon worked.
(Etrevon - Borg, derogatory...or it would be, if the Borg ever had a positive nickname to compare it to. Teral'n - Nero's bladed weapon. The one he speared Robau with.)
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The deck reeled under him--no, it was his legs; they wouldn't stop shaking. Gods. He could taste it in the air, clotting on the back of his tongue.
There was a loud, clear, heavy click, and Nero turned and spoke crisply from the side of his mouth:
"Clear the filters."
Ayel nodded sharply. Speaking would only pull the raw, velvet stink deeper into his lungs. His boots stuck wherever he touched down.
The upper vents were clear, frost glittering on their edges. Clean and still. But those were the outputs. The filters were on the bottom. Under...the thought squirmed away from him and hid itself somewhere small and dark. The filters, the intakes, were in the floor.
Threads of green glinted up at him, floating in the coolant like grease on water.
He shuddered. Drove both hands down where he knew one should be, but there was only cold meat. It kissed at his fingers, slick and heavy, thick as wet clay.
Bile rushed up in his mouth. He choked and shoved his hand further in. There was suction, just faintly, behind--he only needed to do this a little more. Just moments more. And anything he could do once, he could do again. There was bone or cartilage something hard jammed deep in the flaps, and that was causing the worst of it.
He turned his face, took a hard swift breath through his nose, and twisted. The thing turned in his hand, began to loosen in his grip. Definitely a bone, sharpened down by the constant grinding of the filter flaps as they strained to close, to repair themselves. Almost pricked him.
He could do this. He could. He must.
Fingertips touched his. Brushed his and floated past, bobbing to the surface. Unattached to anything.
Ayel crumpled, heaving, and was violently sick.
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The walls coughed, hissed wetly and sputtered. His expression tightened-why hadn't the liquid cleared? Why wasn't the ship breathing? Nero turned and his eyes caught on the filter gauges. Full up and choking, silent and suffocated. His face twisted and he spun on Ayel. The ship was drowning and....
The image of Ayel crumpled in the liquid was startlingly lucid. The sounds of the ship were separate then, clicking and hissing and mechanical grind. The walls echoed Ayel's coughing, his sputtering, but little else. The coolant swirled around him and his anger bled off into it, leaving only the cold.
Nero moved, silent and blank to the filters on the wall. The intake valves were at his feet, buried beneath thick pads of flesh and twisting spirals of other matter. Nero pulled it aside, breaking ice and tearing skin as he worked. He reached the flaps, jammed clean with a femur, sharp and brittle, and he twisted it aside. His arms were greasy, his legs numb, and his coat was no longer an asset but a hindrance.
The wall whirred to life and green flickered at him as he activated the purge sequence, clearing the tanks. The Narada sputtered and the floor around his feet was solid as the liquid drained away. Metal ground against metal and Nero watched the glittering vents. They shone less as air slid through them-a hot, throaty wheeze in the dimness.
Wordlessly, Nero took in the floor, all the damp, half frozen debris that littered the metal plates. He knew who they were now, he could see a ring on a clenched hand, a whorl of ink and sorrow, an ear with a long-healed scar. Their names, their faces fluttered through his mind and, for a moment, he was there with them. Had Bhaon been waiting for duty on the bridge? He was supposed to change, along with Veyn. It was Tha'liij's birthing day...or had it already passed?
Nero's attention twisted, meandered like a thural from one piece to the next until his vision snagged on Ayel. He sat himself beside the silent man. His eyes drifted upward and he watched the flicker of the Etrevon wires as they slowly threaded through the Narada again. The Narada could breathe, and he could wait. He leaned against Ayel and stared at the jade around them.
He could not hate green.
(Thural - Small aquadic rodent creature. Etrevon - borg. Everything else is a name.)
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