The deck trembled under their heavy-booted stomping march. They laughed to each other and pried at the walls with their fingers, dug metal with
their hands and their instruments. Ugly laughter issued through ugly faces for ugly reasons.
They were hurting her.
They were going to die.
Ayel crouched low, coiled, and waited for the lights to move past. He waited until they lifted, until warped red faces craned upward on heavy necks, dark brutish eyes following the beams, the hot white circles of intrusion that twisted uneasily in the wires above.
Then he sprang. The cutter flashed in his grip, a single swift, precise back-and-forth, followed quickly with a tight wrap of his arm. Flesh washed apart, cartilage bared wet and white as throats piped open and gushed out, trapped against his coat.
Couldn't be helped. They had to go down soft.
He kicked the bodies as they fell and wiped the blade on their filthy backs. There was one more, here, somewhere; they always moved in packs of eight.
Where had Nero gone? He'd taken two more, maybe three--they'd been a maze of meat to pick around, to keep from snagging on as he'd drifted past, seeking other prey. A pipe jutted from one, twisted up from the neck at an angle.
There was a scrape of leather on metal. Ayel froze and pushed himself back into deeper shadows, holding his breath.
"Kor? Raloth?"
The words were guttural and foul and too loud, too close.
No, not words; names. Ayel could feel his face twisting, some expression warping his tattoos and pulling his teeth bare.
There! That jagged trace of leather amid the black. Nero's coat. And the stinking hulk lurching nearer, still calling for its friends and getting no answer but the choked, cold silence.
At this rate, the Klingon was going to back into him and...No.
Not again. Never. Ever. Again.
Ayel clutched the blade so tight it shrieked in his grip and flung himself headlong, almost vertical, both feet free of the floor for an endless, breathless instant. He smashed against flesh, bone, gripped thick, greasy hide and plunged the blade down, down, into the skull. It screamed under him, bucking, kicking, but he felt nothing. Only the white-knuckled grip on its scalp as he smashed it down, hammered it into the deck plates again and again.
The shade pitched through the air, and Nero watched it as it came down upon the Klivam beast. Like a bird, predatory and sharp, his talons delivered a killing strike and sent the prey down, struggling and kicking. Two blows rendered it dead, twitching and skittering across the floor convulsively. He heard the hiss of pinions floating with the edge of fabric, fluttering in the stillness as claws gouged dark shapes and sprayed hot fuchsia across the blackened deck. The gap filled itself and the bird became Ayel.
“Ayel,” Nero uttered sharply. The word hung on the air and his eyes drifted away from the fallen man. It was silent, calm. The Narada was not sick, not anymore.
“Liorae.”
Something in the Narada hissed and the thrum of power answered him. The lights flickered back to life, banishing the blackness away with cold amber. He twisted in place, his eyes following trails of pink across silver metal and broken glass. Seven he counted. His eyes drifted back to Ayel. Eight. He stared at the man before him, and the quiet hiss of the Narada's air asserted itself. He could feel it, shifting beneath him, the gentle pull and tug of the new dampening field as the ship started to absorb the umbilical, the warbird, the Klivam meat.
“The ship is hungry,” Nero stated in even standard. They had to clear the warbird of useful materials before the Narada absorbed it. Had to tell the ship what they needed or she would swallow it whole, she was so hungry. The Klivam had fallen into their pit. “We have little time.”
Meaning crashed back to him at the sound of his captain's voice, his own name an alarm, a quiet strong reproach. "Ayel."
He would never get that cutter back--it was bent in, at least twice. He forced his hands open and stood, the filth under him suddenly too heavy to lift.
Nero was right. They had to hurry.
Couldn't touch her wet; the panels were too new, they would spark at him. He smeared his palms dry on his trousers and tapped a brisk sequence on the nearest interface--maintain position and his personal code. He could swear the Narada trembled in reluctance at the order.
"She won't wait long," he agreed, and followed his captain through that yawning barbarity the Klingons had come from. Eight gone; there couldn't be many more aboard, and surprise was on their side.
The klivam had left the door open, all unknowing, and now the night was moving in.
His legs moved before Ayel had finished staying the Narada's teeth, twining through the maze of fallen meat. He scooped up a disruptor, tore it free from a creature as picked across glass, as he neared the yawning doorway. Ayel's steps joined his, fell in line and into sound as they slipped through the hole in the Narada and onto the Klivam flooring. Nero glanced over his shoulder, an impulsive move as light flickered on the periphery of his vision, and paused mid-step as he took in the exterior of the Narada. She was a twisted endcap and the edge of her silhouette felt hollow. He could feel the amputated ship, see her in his mind. Cold rage filtered into his stomach and he moved.
Ayel caught him as they entered passed under the archway of the alien airlock. The Klivam ship was all red and beveled corners. It was the wrong red. The ceilings were strange, too short, and too high, and the wrong shape. It was disgusting, offensive, and it would be theirs. He sneered as he leaned against the bulkhead. Three directions from the airlock. The bridge would be forward, the engine rooms aft. Where Klivam ships kept their stores, he had never bothered to learn. Behind him, the Narada was impatient, he could hear it ushering him on.
“Two more,” he uttered as his eyes twisted across the halls. The stations were obvious, if the Klivam had any sense. They were disgusting beasts, but they weren't stupid. He exhaled sharp, through his teeth, and looked aft. “Take the bridge.” Ayel was best suited for it, numbers and wit. He moved from the airlock silently, slipping down hallways with near soundless steps, disruptor clenched tight in his hand. The metal did not give. If the Klivam knew one thing, it was the manufacture of weapons. The grip creaked under his fingers.
Engineering was easy to find, despite the gnarled letters and designations. The doors to the compartment snapped open, a harsh difference from the slow hiss of the Narada, and Nero scowled in disgust. The engineer was easily found, a shot separated most of his head from his neck. Nero powered down the core, quickly and efficiently, and the light shifted from the calm yellow the Klivam preferred to a harsh red. He cast aside the disruptor in hand and moved away from the body, wiping the spattered blood from his coat as he started his search for the storage bays.
He was off and moving as soon as Nero gave the order. Narada would not wait, and he'd never worked with a klivam ship before.
At least he knew their letters. He'd traced the ugly hooking angles endlessly in his mind's eye, simple things like "waste hazard" and "loading zone". It had been enough to get by, enough to keep him real even as they'd spit in his face, jabbing hot wire and crooked metal into the names of his dead.
His ship would not wait. Nero would not wait. No time for hesitation.
The cloaking device, first--engineering. Nero was headed that way. Purple was the klivam warning-color, and it bloomed under Ayel's hand in fat jagged rows when he touched the workstation screens. Some kind of cipher, but the pass for it was 'honor'. The pass for every damned thing they thought to hide was always 'honor'. No, not quite: 'honorable death'--a good time to die. That was it.
He disabled the cloak's couplings and cut the power to it. That was all he could do remotely; the rest was up to the captain.
Now, charts. Some idea of where they were--not that he knew one klivam rock from another. But it might point out the direction of the real threat. Nero's thoughts would fasten on Spock again, it was only a matter of time, and Ayel had best have answers ready for him when the question came...
A fantastic trumpeting roar was all the warning Ayel got, and then he was flat against the console, his wrist crushed up behind him. A huge stinking arm smothered his face and oh, gods, his head; fire crashed green and white against the backs of his eyes as he snarled and bit down hard. He kicked backward and was rewarded with the harsh wet crackle of a kneecap. A lucky blow, one that sent his attacker staggering. Ayel lashed out with both feet, as hard as he could, struck meat and sprang back before he could be grabbed again. The klivam caught at his jacket and he shrugged his way free, twisting as he landed, pulling his empty sleeve tight across that thick red throat.
The klivam gargled at him, gutter words he knew well from that place, frothing as it spit and kicked. Ayel hissed and hung on, twisting the sleeve against itself. His attacker toppled, and Ayel pushed down with both knees, pulling until something cracked beneath him and the jacket sagged under limp weight. He stood slowly, shook the knots out of his sleeves and tried not to see how awful they looked, green and fuchsia both black under the warbird's hot yellow lights. He pulled his coat on and bent down, stripped the body of the disruptor it hadn't bothered to use on him.
Nero had said there were two of them left. Ayel had been too busy planning to defend himself well. He must avoid that, in the future.
The workstation chittered under his hand, insisting that he repeat the passcode. He sighed, and did it, and called up the charts. The Zone was a fat red ribbon around a shaded area flecked with yellow triangles--klivam stations, if he was reading it right, what the Feds would call starbases, all fairly far behind them. No other vessels. (They would be yellow circles. This one was a yellow circle. Narada, beside it, was a purple circle: the warning color, the color of beasts' blood...)
Right. He had to focus.
Medical. He ought to see what they had. Painkillers would be heavenly. No sickbay--wrong vessel class--but there were stores on the manifest, and those were showing up just forward of engineering.
Now, if he could just work out which of these ugly, unhelpfully blank little wall panels was the comm.
(Klivam - Klingon.) Edited for translation!posting!fail.
The walls were fuchsia, blaring and whining, sharp symbols against his scars as he traveled. The heart of the ship was closed, trapped and blown out so that it could not burn the Narada. The life bled out through the walls as Ayel's voice stumbled down from the vents. Words wrapped around him and he couldn't understand the mechanical Ayel. He scowled and moved, traveling in sharp lines until he meandered to the door he needed.
At least, the one he thought he needed.
It snapped open violently and he slid through it, pulling the air through with him, into the harsh fuchsia light. Boxes, red and rounded glared at him in the shade. He kicked one over, a sharp motion not unlike a serpent, and it tumbled silently. Mechanical Ayel was calling for him, babbling, and he ignored it as the disruptors skittered across the floor.
They were Klivam, but they were new. Untouched.
He gripped a new one, one that didn't offend him, and slung the creaking belt around his hips. It latched with a hissing catch. The next box had food, another: parts. He skimmed over them, waiting as they tumbled down. Finally, familiar shapes slid across the floor before him-offset snips, wide cutters, a hyperspanner. He snatched up a broad bar, a prying tool with a triangular end, and left the storage room.
The cloaking room was different on this vessel, but the Klivam kept all their valuables in the same location. Between the engines and the weapons, in the center of the ship, he found the small chamber with the Klivam kilhra'etrehh. The Narada remembered its own, so much superior to this brutish tube of glass and crystal, but she would need the parts to complete it.
He wrenched the bar into the machine, a familiar move remembered by muscles and bone, and heaved against the lever. The glass tumbled out with a heavy rumble, sliding to the floor in a rolling heap. It hit the wall and the light there jumped fearfully. His tool was cast aside and he gripped the sides of the device. It was something no larger than a hydrogen mine, a bland contraption of Klivam design, and he mounted it on his shoulder as he moved out into the hall.
their hands and their instruments. Ugly laughter issued through ugly faces for ugly reasons.
They were hurting her.
They were going to die.
Ayel crouched low, coiled, and waited for the lights to move past. He waited until they lifted, until warped red faces craned upward on heavy necks, dark brutish eyes following the beams, the hot white circles of intrusion that twisted uneasily in the wires above.
Then he sprang. The cutter flashed in his grip, a single swift, precise back-and-forth, followed quickly with a tight wrap of his arm. Flesh washed apart, cartilage bared wet and white as throats piped open and gushed out, trapped against his coat.
Couldn't be helped. They had to go down soft.
He kicked the bodies as they fell and wiped the blade on their filthy backs. There was one more, here, somewhere; they always moved in packs of eight.
Where had Nero gone? He'd taken two more, maybe three--they'd been a maze of meat to pick around, to keep from snagging on as he'd drifted past, seeking other prey. A pipe jutted from one, twisted up from the neck at an angle.
There was a scrape of leather on metal. Ayel froze and pushed himself back into deeper shadows, holding his breath.
"Kor? Raloth?"
The words were guttural and foul and too loud, too close.
No, not words; names. Ayel could feel his face twisting, some expression warping his tattoos and pulling his teeth bare.
There! That jagged trace of leather amid the black. Nero's coat. And the stinking hulk lurching nearer, still calling for its friends and getting no answer but the choked, cold silence.
At this rate, the Klingon was going to back into him and...No.
Not again. Never. Ever. Again.
Ayel clutched the blade so tight it shrieked in his grip and flung himself headlong, almost vertical, both feet free of the floor for an endless, breathless instant. He smashed against flesh, bone, gripped thick, greasy hide and plunged the blade down, down, into the skull. It screamed under him, bucking, kicking, but he felt nothing. Only the white-knuckled grip on its scalp as he smashed it down, hammered it into the deck plates again and again.
He was no one's prisoner.
They were never going back.
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The shade pitched through the air, and Nero watched it as it came down upon the Klivam beast. Like a bird, predatory and sharp, his talons delivered a killing strike and sent the prey down, struggling and kicking. Two blows rendered it dead, twitching and skittering across the floor convulsively. He heard the hiss of pinions floating with the edge of fabric, fluttering in the stillness as claws gouged dark shapes and sprayed hot fuchsia across the blackened deck. The gap filled itself and the bird became Ayel.
“Ayel,” Nero uttered sharply. The word hung on the air and his eyes drifted away from the fallen man. It was silent, calm. The Narada was not sick, not anymore.
“Liorae.”
Something in the Narada hissed and the thrum of power answered him. The lights flickered back to life, banishing the blackness away with cold amber. He twisted in place, his eyes following trails of pink across silver metal and broken glass. Seven he counted. His eyes drifted back to Ayel. Eight. He stared at the man before him, and the quiet hiss of the Narada's air asserted itself. He could feel it, shifting beneath him, the gentle pull and tug of the new dampening field as the ship started to absorb the umbilical, the warbird, the Klivam meat.
“The ship is hungry,” Nero stated in even standard. They had to clear the warbird of useful materials before the Narada absorbed it. Had to tell the ship what they needed or she would swallow it whole, she was so hungry. The Klivam had fallen into their pit. “We have little time.”
( Ael - Winged. Klivam - Klingon. Liorae - Light.)
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He would never get that cutter back--it was bent in, at least twice. He forced his hands open and stood, the filth under him suddenly too heavy to lift.
Nero was right. They had to hurry.
Couldn't touch her wet; the panels were too new, they would spark at him. He smeared his palms dry on his trousers and tapped a brisk sequence on the nearest interface--maintain position and his personal code. He could swear the Narada trembled in reluctance at the order.
"She won't wait long," he agreed, and followed his captain through that yawning barbarity the Klingons had come from. Eight gone; there couldn't be many more aboard, and surprise was on their side.
The klivam had left the door open, all unknowing, and now the night was moving in.
(Klivam - Klingon.)
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Ayel caught him as they entered passed under the archway of the alien airlock. The Klivam ship was all red and beveled corners. It was the wrong red. The ceilings were strange, too short, and too high, and the wrong shape. It was disgusting, offensive, and it would be theirs. He sneered as he leaned against the bulkhead. Three directions from the airlock. The bridge would be forward, the engine rooms aft. Where Klivam ships kept their stores, he had never bothered to learn. Behind him, the Narada was impatient, he could hear it ushering him on.
“Two more,” he uttered as his eyes twisted across the halls. The stations were obvious, if the Klivam had any sense. They were disgusting beasts, but they weren't stupid. He exhaled sharp, through his teeth, and looked aft. “Take the bridge.” Ayel was best suited for it, numbers and wit. He moved from the airlock silently, slipping down hallways with near soundless steps, disruptor clenched tight in his hand. The metal did not give. If the Klivam knew one thing, it was the manufacture of weapons. The grip creaked under his fingers.
Engineering was easy to find, despite the gnarled letters and designations. The doors to the compartment snapped open, a harsh difference from the slow hiss of the Narada, and Nero scowled in disgust. The engineer was easily found, a shot separated most of his head from his neck. Nero powered down the core, quickly and efficiently, and the light shifted from the calm yellow the Klivam preferred to a harsh red. He cast aside the disruptor in hand and moved away from the body, wiping the spattered blood from his coat as he started his search for the storage bays.
He could hate fuschia, and he did.
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At least he knew their letters. He'd traced the ugly hooking angles endlessly in his mind's eye, simple things like "waste hazard" and "loading zone". It had been enough to get by, enough to keep him real even as they'd spit in his face, jabbing hot wire and crooked metal into the names of his dead.
His ship would not wait. Nero would not wait. No time for hesitation.
The cloaking device, first--engineering. Nero was headed that way. Purple was the klivam warning-color, and it bloomed under Ayel's hand in fat jagged rows when he touched the workstation screens. Some kind of cipher, but the pass for it was 'honor'. The pass for every damned thing they thought to hide was always 'honor'. No, not quite: 'honorable death'--a good time to die. That was it.
He disabled the cloak's couplings and cut the power to it. That was all he could do remotely; the rest was up to the captain.
Now, charts. Some idea of where they were--not that he knew one klivam rock from another. But it might point out the direction of the real threat. Nero's thoughts would fasten on Spock again, it was only a matter of time, and Ayel had best have answers ready for him when the question came...
A fantastic trumpeting roar was all the warning Ayel got, and then he was flat against the console, his wrist crushed up behind him. A huge stinking arm smothered his face and oh, gods, his head; fire crashed green and white against the backs of his eyes as he snarled and bit down hard. He kicked backward and was rewarded with the harsh wet crackle of a kneecap. A lucky blow, one that sent his attacker staggering. Ayel lashed out with both feet, as hard as he could, struck meat and sprang back before he could be grabbed again. The klivam caught at his jacket and he shrugged his way free, twisting as he landed, pulling his empty sleeve tight across that thick red throat.
The klivam gargled at him, gutter words he knew well from that place, frothing as it spit and kicked. Ayel hissed and hung on, twisting the sleeve against itself. His attacker toppled, and Ayel pushed down with both knees, pulling until something cracked beneath him and the jacket sagged under limp weight. He stood slowly, shook the knots out of his sleeves and tried not to see how awful they looked, green and fuchsia both black under the warbird's hot yellow lights. He pulled his coat on and bent down, stripped the body of the disruptor it hadn't bothered to use on him.
Nero had said there were two of them left. Ayel had been too busy planning to defend himself well. He must avoid that, in the future.
The workstation chittered under his hand, insisting that he repeat the passcode. He sighed, and did it, and called up the charts. The Zone was a fat red ribbon around a shaded area flecked with yellow triangles--klivam stations, if he was reading it right, what the Feds would call starbases, all fairly far behind them. No other vessels. (They would be yellow circles. This one was a yellow circle. Narada, beside it, was a purple circle: the warning color, the color of beasts' blood...)
Right. He had to focus.
Medical. He ought to see what they had. Painkillers would be heavenly. No sickbay--wrong vessel class--but there were stores on the manifest, and those were showing up just forward of engineering.
Now, if he could just work out which of these ugly, unhelpfully blank little wall panels was the comm.
(Klivam - Klingon.) Edited for translation!posting!fail.
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At least, the one he thought he needed.
It snapped open violently and he slid through it, pulling the air through with him, into the harsh fuchsia light. Boxes, red and rounded glared at him in the shade. He kicked one over, a sharp motion not unlike a serpent, and it tumbled silently. Mechanical Ayel was calling for him, babbling, and he ignored it as the disruptors skittered across the floor.
They were Klivam, but they were new. Untouched.
He gripped a new one, one that didn't offend him, and slung the creaking belt around his hips. It latched with a hissing catch. The next box had food, another: parts. He skimmed over them, waiting as they tumbled down. Finally, familiar shapes slid across the floor before him-offset snips, wide cutters, a hyperspanner. He snatched up a broad bar, a prying tool with a triangular end, and left the storage room.
The cloaking room was different on this vessel, but the Klivam kept all their valuables in the same location. Between the engines and the weapons, in the center of the ship, he found the small chamber with the Klivam kilhra'etrehh. The Narada remembered its own, so much superior to this brutish tube of glass and crystal, but she would need the parts to complete it.
He wrenched the bar into the machine, a familiar move remembered by muscles and bone, and heaved against the lever. The glass tumbled out with a heavy rumble, sliding to the floor in a rolling heap. It hit the wall and the light there jumped fearfully. His tool was cast aside and he gripped the sides of the device. It was something no larger than a hydrogen mine, a bland contraption of Klivam design, and he mounted it on his shoulder as he moved out into the hall.
Narada needed this, but not here.
(Klivam - Klingon. Kilhra'etrehh - Cloaking Device.)
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