The Rift

[fusion]

Nice chapter, love how you made the Star Fleet seem all important then just made them nullified with the Republica. I also like how you described Master Chief and how you wove him back right in after a long absence. Great work now the other chapters. However, I will be sad when this story ends in about a dozen chapters (I can feel it in my bones ).

[Noble Ire]

I loved the bit with Master chief musing about the state of Trek ground forces . I see that you're going to run into the same troubles I had in one of my fics with "The master chief" now being a "Lieutenant general" (Though at least he has a first name, who the hell calls himself "The scotsman" grumble mumble).

I've thought about that problem, actually. I think I might just keep calling him "Master Chief", for clarity's sake; I suppose I might also refer to him as "John", but that obviously wouldn't be an option for most character dialogue.

I really liked this chapter, Ire. I've always been a fan of the 'vignette' style of chapter arrangement, and you pulled it off with aplomb here. I admit that I care for your style of prose much more so than the one I seem to favor, for it is a rare author indeed can paint such a detailed and comprehensive picture of his characters and their environments without giving into the urge to write flowery, over-elaborate 'purple prose'. If anything, you've only improved since the last chapter.

Thanks.

I'm glad I've been able to pull of the vignette style effectively; I find it to be crucial for a story with a seperated, ensemble cast like this one.

Ah, the Zerg. Admittedly, I don't know much of them -- aside from the fact that they remind me entirely too much of the Tyranids -- but this latest move was... certainly unexpected, to say the least. Mind-controlled infiltrators was one of the last things I expected out of them. How did the Zerg queen get so close without anyone noticing?

As DEATH points out, the Zerg Overmind/Queen and her Cerebrates are not the only members of the Swarm with psionic abilities, even if I haven't touched on them much yet. For example, flighted Overlords and lesser Queens can directly coordinate Zerg warriors on the battlefield, acting under telepathic orders from their masters. Kerrigan does not actually have to be close to a target to impress her will upon it.

[Edward Yee]

I've thought about that problem, actually. I think I might just keep calling him "Master Chief", for clarity's sake; I suppose I might also refer to him as "John", but that obviously wouldn't be an option for most character dialogue.

Having enjoyed Master Chief's scene, what'd be wrong with "John-117" or alternately "Spartan-117"? (If there's culture shock, I'm sure that it can't be worse than what his trainees are gonna face...)

[The Vortex Empire]

Excellent chapter, Ire. I agreed with every word of Chief's criticism of Starfleet's military, and as usual you make the characters seem real. An all around excellent piece of work.

[Sean Mulligan]

Where did the Zerg come from? It seems that they came out of no where in the Romulan chapter.

[Hawkwings]

Go back and read carefully!

[Noble Ire]

Where did the Zerg come from? It seems that they came out of no where in the Romulan chapter.

I'm not sure what you mean. I've been establishing the Zerg as an opposing force since the first few chapters; they simply aren't referred to as such until Tassadar enters the story in full.

Then again, if you're talking about where they came from in-universe, well, as far as anyone knows, they just appeared suddenly across the galaxy a few years after the Dominion War. Of course, the conflict isn't over yet...

[TithonusSyndrome]

Another vivid and engaging chapter, Ire. The Master Cheif's assessment of Trek ground forces calls to mind the musings of Starfleet officers on their disparity in firepower compared to the Empire in Wong's "Conquest" fic; an subtly effective, possibly even "big brother lovingly giving a wedgie to younger brother" jab.

[phongn]

I just finished reading - well done!

[Noble Ire]

Chapter Fifty Nine


“All decks have reported in, sir,” the Operations officer said. “Re-supply is complete.”

Captain Jean-Luc Picard leaned back in his command chair. “Very good, Lieutenant. And Engineering?”

“Commander La Forge reports that the last core readjustment improved warp core efficiency by eight percent. We are now running at ninety seven percent capacity.”

Picard turned in his seat and looked up at the younger man. “Just ninety seven percent?”
The lieutenant’s expression faltered. “That’s what he reports, sir. If you require a higher efficiency level, I can raise the commander for you.”

Picard smiled slightly. “No, no, Lieutenant. Ninety seven percent is perfectly satisfactory. Keep me informed of any further developments.”

The man relaxed noticeably. “Aye, sir.”

Settling back into his chair, the captain allowed the smile to linger on his lips. Ninety seven percent operating efficiency was indeed fully satisfactory, and well above fleet regulations. He was simply surprised that his chief engineer had not yet conjured up some method or another of improving the rating by another half percent or so. Geordi always pushed himself and his crew to do the impossible, especially when the need was the greatest. Still, this was a new ship for them both, full of it own quirks and eccentricities that would need to be considered. Looking around his new bridge, Picard felt similarly awkward.

The Enterprise-E’s command bridge was an angular half-circle dominated by a horseshoe of raised control stations and officer’s posts, much like the analogous portion of his old command. Still, this new vessel was truly a ship of its time, and its interior was darker and more regimented, full of sleek metallic lines and black matte. The dimly-glowing emergency lights, the obvious armor-plating on the walls, the precisely refined Okudagram interfaces; this was a warship. For all its armament and all the battles it had seen, the Enterprise-D had been an explorer first and foremost, and its interior had been designed to ease the rigors of lengthy expeditions for its crew. Picard remembered its sloping ceilings, wide viewports, and brightly-colored furnishings with more than a little nostalgia, both for the ship itself, and the time of peace that it had represented.

There was another aspect of that lost ship that he could never allow himself to forget as well. Of its thousand-strong complement of crew and passengers, only a handful remained. The rest were dead, victims of the Zerg menace, or confined somewhere in a galaxy too far away, officers and their families imprisoned for no crime that he could comprehend. Picard glanced at the unfamiliar faces around him and silently reaffirmed the vow he had made what seemed like so long ago.

He would get them back. All of them.

Picard sighed to himself. There were other vows he had to uphold now, though. The lives of billions lay upon the imminent campaign, and he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted by what came after. But he would not forget.

The captain activated the personal interface mounted on the right armrest of his command chair and pulled up the Enterprise’s crew roster. Eight hundred officers and crew exactly, a full complement. With no small amount of chagrin, Picard noted that his was probably one of the only vessels in the Allied fleet with a full roster. Even with the recent influx of reinforcements and able recruits, there were simply too many positions to fill, and even many of the fleet’s command ships were running on barely more than half their normal complement. Picard disliked the idea of being so well crewed when he could easily distribute a few hundred of his more skilled subordinates to other vessels, but Admiral Nechayev had convinced him of the necessity of having the Enterprise as battle ready as possible. It wouldn’t do to have the Federation’s “returning hero” understaffed during their triumphant counterattack.

The politics of being one of the fleet’s figureheads was swiftly becoming tedious, especially for someone who had disliked even attending Admiralty functions in years past, but the position did have some advantages nonetheless. Although Commander Riker was onboard the Republica as the official Alliance liaison, the rest of the Enterprise’s old command staff had followed their captain. The newly-promoted Commander Data was ably meeting all expectations as his second-in-command, Geordi had seamlessly reintegrated into his role as Chief Engineer, and Deanna Troi was doing her best assess and mentally reinforce every member of the crew. Worf had also kept his post at Tactical, despite the urging of General K’Nera and Captain Torgor for him to take command of a ship of the Imperial Defense Force. The move had surprised Picard, but he suspected he knew the reason; Worf felt as he did about their lost crewmates, and he wanted to be sure of a part in their eventual rescue, a role induction into his people’s fleet might interdict.

Picard cast a surreptitious glance at the Klingon as he instructed a lieutenant on the finer points of quantum torpedo combat. Although he appeared to be as stern and collected as always in his yellow-black tunic, Picard knew that a part of the tactical officer yearned to wear the black leather and metal plate of the Klingon fleet. His only sign of solidarity with his people was the ceremonial baldric draped across his shoulder, an ever-present part of his uniform, but one he seemed now to bear with an extra apportionment of pride. The familiar sight seemed to soften the unfamiliar, hard lines of the command deck, and Picard returned to his crew list with the hint of a smile still on his lips.

A few minutes later, as Picard was reviewing the service records of his new section chiefs, the bridge turbolift behind him slid open. The first to emerge from it was Commander Data, three bronze pips glinting from his collar. After him, stooping through the opening to accommodate his height, came High Templar Tassadar, draped as ever in his long, dark cloak.

Picard rose from his command chair and moved to greet them. “Tassadar. An unexpected pleasure.” He bowed and the Protoss returned the gesture gracefully. The two had not had the opportunity to speak directly since Picard had returned from his mission to Romulus. “I thought you were on Deep Space Nine with the Strategic Assessment task force.”

“I was,” Tassadar replied. “And I shall return there shortly. However, before I do, we must speak. If you are to lead a fleet against the Zerg, then I must impart to you all I know of their tactics and deceptions. Even with the Alliance cruiser at your disposal, the Swarm’s tenacity cannot be discounted.”

“Tactical reports on known Zerg combat doctrine and behavior have been dispatched to every command officer in the fleet,” Data said. “These reports were prepared with your advisement, were they not?”

Tassadar turned his gently-undulating eyes on the android. “They were. However, inanimate media does not always adequately convey the full importance of information. I wish to emphasize certain elements of my experience, lest they be overlooked. I do not doubt you captain’s skill or perception, but far too many great warriors have fallen into the horde’s ravening maw, some older and more seasoned than even I. No others will meet the same fate blindly, if my experience is of any worth.”

“As always, Tassadar, your council is more than welcome,” Picard said. “May my command staff join us?”

“They may.”

“Very well, then.” Picard moved to tap the combadge on his chest, but the ensign at the conn turned to him from her post before he could raise his hand.

“Sir, I’m picking up unidentified warp signatures on the edge of the system, bearing 234-011-454.”

“Are any further reinforcements expected from that heading?” Picard asked.

Commander Data considered for a moment. “None have been noted in the arrival logs. However, they may have not transmitted their intensions to Allied Command, or ships from another approach vector may have been forced to readjust their course into the system.”

“Check the warp signatures against all known starship drives,” Picard ordered. There was a great deal of traffic throughout Bajor’s star system, but travel in and out had become increasingly limited as fleet preparations reached a fever pitch. “Could it be a long-range patrol?”

“Negative,” Worf reported from Tactical. “The starships are moving at warp eight point five, far faster than our standard patrols. Even if they were fleeing a Zerg force, they would have dispatched an alert transmission ahead of their arrival.”

“The ships are moving into our sensor range, Captain,” the helm officer relayed. “At their current speed, they’ll be inside the Denorios belt in two minutes. Sir, I’m reading dozens of separate signatures.”

Picard traded glances with his second, who then turned to Worf. “Yellow Alert.”

As the bridge lights dimmed and tinted with the elevated alert status, an officer spoke up from the comm. “Sir, Admiral Nechayev is hailing us.”

“Put her onscreen.”

The chamber’s main viewport flickered to life with the older woman’s visage. Picard noted that the Versailles’s bridge was at a similar state of readiness.

“I trust you’ve detected them as well, Captain,” Nechayev said.

“Yes, Admiral. The ships are unknown, then?”

“I just contacted K’Nera and the other fleet commanders, and none of them have heard of any more significant reinforcements headed our way, and certainly not in the numbers were reading from that group.”

“I suggest we bring the rest of the fleet to alert status,” Picard said.

“It’s been done. We’ll be ready for them when they come out of warp, whoever they are.”

“The Swarm.”

Everyone on the bridge turned their attention to Tassadar, who was suddenly standing quite still, his gaze fixed on something none of the others could see.

“You can sense the Zerg on the approaching vessels?” Nechayev asked.

“There is a mind at work there, but there is something closer as well.”

“Closer?” Picard pressed.

“Within the fleet,” Tassadar said. His pupils flickered with energy, and he drew back, as if in pain. “The Alliance cruiser.”

“We must reach Captain Ryceed. Now.”
-----------------------------------------------------

The shaggy, gray-tinged Wookiee in charge of the Republica’s main cargo bay scanned the small crowd of Starfleet and Bajoran personnel arrayed around him, sniffed loudly, and then began to say something in the growling-mumbling-howling dialect of his species. A heavily-patched silver TC-3 protocol droid situated nearby listened to the towering alien intently, and then translated for their audience in a reasonable approximation of English. Even the most basic of the Alliance ship’s collection of protocol droids had taken a strong dislike to the portable, automatic translators that the Federation and their allies favored, and attempted to bypass them whenever possible.

“Chief of the deck Dapaduuk requests your patience. He has been notified that the starship Versailles has interrupted its normal operations, and is unable to transport at this time. He will now contact Operations control to recheck the status of those of you who are scheduled to depart.”

“What’s going on?” a junior Starfleet engineer demanded. “Why can’t the Versailles transport us?”

The droid’s tinny voice duplicated the question in Dapaduuk’s tongue, and then reproduced his response. “I’m afraid that Dapaduuk does not privy to that knowledge. He was informed that the Starfleet vessel was forced to break from its expected course, and is no longer able to initiate matter-energy transportation. He was told nothing else. He gives his sincerest apologies, and will relay any further information as it becomes available.”

With that, the Wookiee grunted something to himself and returned to the crate of ration containers he had been inventorying before being interrupted. TC-3 remained in position, but its expressionless mask and obviously fatigued posture made the machine seem equally as distracted and inaccessible. The crowd of visiting technicians and officers, momentarily directionless, broke into small groups and shuffled to an out-of-the-way section of the expansive chamber. Out of place and with little else to do, they conversed with each other in quiet and nervous tones, occasionally casting furtive glances at their towering keeper, who, despite his assurances, didn’t seem particularly interested in getting to the bottom of the delay. Most of the Republica’s crew was reasonably amiable with the natives who came onboard, but there were always a few with whom relations were strained. This reticence and suspicion was especially common when the topic of transporters came up; few of the hard-bitten rebels had taken a liking to the idea of being rendered into their component atoms and shot through space, and none of them had yet volunteered to test the system. Even Councilor Organa opted to take a shuttle when she traveled to and from Deep Space Nine.

Lacking colleagues to talk with or delayed duty schedules to complain about, Laura Martin found a quiet patch of deck and propped herself up against a stack of large, heavy cargo containers that dominated half of one high wall. She found to her surprise that the notation tagged in block script on their faces was in Federation Standard, not the strange, geometric lettering that the Alliance used.

“Surplus Yard Coridan, Epsilon Section. Class II re-crystallization equipment, starship-grade,” one descriptive read. The ensign also recognized the numerals stamped on the corners of the crates; they indicated that the containers were made of a relatively dense, sensor resistant material used for protecting delicate machinery from radiation and other damaging factors. She vaguely recalled seeing a collection of similar boxes during a layover on Earth Spacedock shortly before the Zerg emergence.

Laura was absent-mindedly running a palm over the smooth, cool surface of one of the containers when a loud clang resonated throughout the chamber. Curious, she scanned the room to see if the small Alliance crew on duty in the cargo bay was moving any of their charges, but the handful of droids and aliens appeared to be searching the room for the origin of the sound as well. After a moment, the clang echoed again, and then a third time, and Laura was able to trace it to a crate identical to her own a few dozen meters away down the line. Something sounded from within the box again, and then from another next to it. Laura glanced at her companions, but they returned her nonplused look in kind.

When the noise returned, it was harsher and deeper, like something hard and sharp being scraped across the deck plate. When this sound became a continuous din, the Wookiee deck chief finally looked up from his work, and approached the line of containers. Before he had moved a meter, scraping and tearing noises began to resonate from more of the boxes, one after another, until each of the dozen, rancor-sized cubes was alive with an earsplitting racket. Something bashed violently against the inside of Laura’s crate and she stumbled back from it, instinctively reaching for her hand phaser. Finding it missing, she withdrew even further, and tried to encourage the others to do so as well.

The sealing clamps on the rightmost crate buckled and then snapped free, causing one side of the thick-walled container to slam flat onto the deck. Something within chattered and hissed. Then a dozen of them screeched.

Laura ran.
----------------------------------------------

“I need a status report,” Captain Ryceed said significantly. “Now!”

The trio of Operations coordinators worked their board furiously, collating comm transmissions and computer alerts from every centimeter of the light cruiser’s 500 meter bulk.

“Were still trying to bypass the damage to the internal monitoring grids, sir,” one of them reported, not taking the time to look up from her work. “But the junction room on deck eight is tied directly with two of the main diagnostic droid brains, and the other two are having a hard time picking up the slack. The damage we sustained to the slaved internal defenses has also shed onto the mainline comms for forward decks four and five. And we still can’t raise the main cargo bays or barracks.”

“I need internal communications reestablished,” Ryceed pushed. “We can’t have blackouts like this in the middle of a combat situation.”

“We’re trying, sir. All technical teams have been activated and are being dispatched to reroute key comm pathways, but it could still take some time to give you back full communications. I could try to temporarily switch the ship to a remote grid, but I don’t think that the ship’s computers could handle that volume of data directly for long. We’d have to cut back to essential communications only, and maintaining weapons coordination might be difficult.”

Ryceed turned to the bridge’s main holographic projector, a large circular pedestal mounted on the chamber’s lower level. Presently, it displayed the outermost anterior orbitals of Bajor’s planetary system, where the Allied fleet was rapidly forming a defensive line. As she watched, a squadron of frigates that the COM-scan interpreter identified as Defiant-class joined with an element of Romulan warbirds, and the two groups coalesced into a loose arrowhead formation, the frontline of the formative shell. The defense was an impressive one, already comprising more than fifty vessels, but it was also relatively uncoordinated; most of the fleet’s command ships, like the Versailles and the Enterprise, were on the other side of Bajor, along with the majority of the fleet. And many of those ships were in the middle of overhaul, re-supply, and repair; it would probably take half an hour to get the force up to full combat readiness.

The impending threat was not nearly as slow. Ninety vessels of every class and configuration had just dropped from warp, and were hurtling towards Bajor as fast as their drives would push them. The force was too small to have any hope of taking the planet, which meant that they had some other object in mind. It also meant, Ryceed realized as one of the ancillary tactical displays generated a facsimile of one of the lead ships, a patchwork of deep gashes, bizarre and half hazard repairs, and all too organic protrusions, that whatever Zerg mind was controlling the fleet didn’t expect to pull many of its minions from the fray alive. That made the commandeered craft all the more dangerous.

“No, we can’t afford any disruption to weapons control. Just get the mainline bypasses functional. I’ll send Commander Gavplek to coordinate the repair effort from the aft command station.”

The Republica’s captain caught her XO’s attention, and the two exchanged a few quick words. Acknowledging her orders, Gavplek located one of his lieutenants and the two hurried off for the bridge turbolift.

Next, Ryceed moved to the main Communications control, where Commander Riker and a few Alliance officers were staring at a flickering 2D linkup.

“Have you been able to raise Councilor Organa or Allied Command?”

A Sullustan comm officer shook his squat head. “We’re trying to bypass the planetary mass by linking with the planet’s satellite network, but there’s a great deal of interference due to the amount of traffic it’s had to accommodate. We should be able to contact Deep Space Nine in under a minute.”

“What’s the tactical situation?” Riker asked, turning to face Ryceed.

“It could be worse. The fleet should be able to meet the Zerg force on even footing by the time they reach us, and all the civilian ships on this side of the planet are being drawn behind the defensive line. Still, Picard, K’Nera, and Nechayev are still out of range, and most of the fleet with them.”

“What about the internal damage?”

“It’s being handled,” she said simply.

“Alright, then,” Riker said, tugging on his shirt reflexively. “We should move the Republica to the front of the defensive formation. She alone should be able to take the punch out of this incursion, and absorb most of the damage the Zerg might otherwise be able to do. Besides, the fleet needs a rallying point, at least until Captain Picard and the others arrive.”

“Agreed,” Ryceed replied without hesitation.

Riker stared at her, obviously surprised.

“What?” she asked, frowning. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, sir. Nothing at all.” Riker turned away, but Ryceed could swear she saw him grin as he did.

She suddenly felt flustered. Riker could be incredibly exasperating, but Ryceed was finding it more and more difficult to manifest much genuine annoyance within him, despite her best efforts.

You’re going soft, Imal. The Feds are getting to you.

“Alright, I want our squadrons in vacuum. Tell General Solo to take them to the head of the battle line and integrate with the Allied formation. The Republica will join him as soon as internal communications have been restored.”

The Captain’s orders were relayed, and within a minute twenty six pinpricks of light roared away from the cruiser’s lateral landing bay. The two squadrons of starfighters, with the Millennium Falcon at their head, were automatically etched into the light display that dominated the chamber, and she watched as the tiny, blue bezels swiftly closed the distance between themselves and the bulk of the defensive fleet. Beyond their loosely conical wall, on the very edge of the holographic projector’s imaging field, the first hostile blips began to appear.

“The Zerg force will be within weapons range of the Allied formation in forty five seconds,” a tactical officer reported.

Ryceed nodded in recognition, and then made for the short flight of stairs that would bring her down next to the display, where Riker now stood, assessing the situation with intense focus. However, before she had reached the top step, warning lights and signals rippled across several of her control boards, triggering a new flurry of activity amongst the command crew.

“Captain, I have Sergeant Kendic on one of the functioning comm lines,” the officer at the auxiliary Security post said loudly, his voice apprehensive. “He’s issuing a station one alert.”

Ryceed froze, and some of her subordinates began to murmur nervously. Station one was the ship’s highest state of readiness, only activated during times of pitched battle, when the threat of injury to the Republica and her crew was great. It was customary for a captain or executive officer to innate it for combat, or even a member of the technical crew if there was a significant enough internal failure, but it was very unusual for a member of the ship’s marine detachment to order it. Such a directive from the on-duty Watch Captain could only mean one thing: hostile boarders.

Ryceed seized the nearest comm stud. “I need confirmation, sergeant. What is your situation?”

“Zerg, sir,” a strained voice panted from over the line. “I started getting reports of hostiles on deck four, forward section just after the problems with internal security started. One of my teams just confirmed; we have Zerg onboard ship, and they’re spreading.”

Ryceed’s expression was stiff. “How many, Sergeant? Are they confined to deck four?”

“I don’t know, sir. Surveillance for that deck is down, as are all but a few of my men’s comlinks. I’ve got confirmed reports of at least seven of the creatures in lateral corridors 403 and 405, and unconfirmed contact on deck three.”

“Can you contain them?”

“I don’t even know where they’re coming from, sir! They just… appeared a few minutes ago and started spreading out, tearing into anyone they come across. I think they might be heading somewhere, but…”

“Can you contain them, Sergeant?” Ryceed repeated.

“I’ve dispatched all the troops I’ve got to the main transit points on deck four, and I’m trying to recall the ones I sent after Major Truul, but I can’t be sure some Zerg haven’t escaped further into the ship. Communications are a mess, and most of the automated defenses in this portion of the ship are still offline. Still, my men have been sealing blast doors wherever they can and setting up turrets at chokepoints. As long as there aren’t too many of these things, we should be…”

A burst of static interrupted Kendic’s assessment.

“Get him back!” Ryceed demanded.

“We’ve lost contact within one of the remote comm repeater nodes,” an officer reported, typing something furiously into his interface. “I’m trying to switch your link to an independent emergency channel.”

A moment later, the static cleared.

“Captain?”

“I’m here, Sergeant,” Ryceed said. “Something happened to another one of our comm nodes.”

“Sir, I just heard from one of my containment teams. The Zerg are doing more than just hunting down crewmen. They came across a conduit line for the starboard laser grid, completely trashed, and they’re not the only ones. Every junction box and power line the intruders come across, they attempt to destroy. And I think that some of them might be heading even deeper into the ship. We’re sealing off the turbolifts as fast as we can, but if they manage to get into even one of the tubes, they could reach Engineering, Medical, Life Support, and the Bridge in only a few minutes.”

Ryceed barely had time to take this in before a shout rang out from Tactical. “The enemy battle group is altering its approach vector!”

The comm stud still raised to her lipless mouth, Ryceed turned back to the battle display. The host of crimson stars that was the invading force, once a formless wave united only in common direction, was executing an eighty degree turn away from and over the Allied fleet and Bajor beyond. Its new heading placed the careening mass on a course that bisected the orbital path of the tiny, uninhabited moon Derna, and then angled it out of the system. A single point of light fell into their new path.

The Republica.

[Dominus]

Nice work on this one, Ire. I like the juxtaposition you've established between the Enterprise-E and the Republica, switching back and forth as the storyline requires. And Ryceed is as interesting a character as ever. I never thought a Mon Calamari could be so... expressive.

Heh. I wondered if the Zerg were going to try something like that -- I've actually been waiting for them to pull an In Amber Clad on the Republica for quite some time, especially in lieu of what happened in chapter 58. After all, if the Flood could seize a UNSC frigate, that botanical ship in the graphic novel, High Charity, and the Truth and Reconciliation, why can't the far more capable Zerg pull of a boarding and seizure of a Star Wars ship as well? My only lingering question is how they managed to get that far without being detected, given the relative sophistication of SW sensors and whatnot. One wonders if the Zerg haven't compromised or have agents on more than a few ships in the Alliance's fleet...

By the way, what's Cortana doing in all of this? Is she still in the Republica's computer network, or has she returned to the Chief?

EDIT: I agree wholeheartedly with Academia Nut regarding the quality of your writing; reading the Rift was also partly responsible for inspiring me to actually do more than conceptual work for the 40k/Halo crossover that's been sitting in the back of my mind for years now...

[Academia Nut]

Nice job there, was just thinking about when you would update again. Of course, this now means that we get another cliffhanger to wait on to see what the Zerg are going to do next.

I'd also like to thank you for being such a good author Ire. You, IO, Elhuru, and Kuja are my favourite non-Stravo authors (because I don't know how you could not be compelled by that man's writing) on SDN and I always eagerly await an update from one of you guys. Even inspired me to start posting some of my own stuff. So keep up the good work man.

[Noble Ire]

Nice work on this one, Ire. I like the juxtaposition you've established between the Enterprise-E and the Republica, switching back and forth as the storyline requires. And Ryceed is as interesting a character as ever. I never thought a Mon Calamari could be so... expressive.

Thank you. Along with Truul, she's the original character I've put the most effort into.

By the way, I should note something for everyone. Originally, I had intended Ryceed to be human, but I changed the character to a Mon Calamari fairly soon after her introduction (I hadn't made her species that clear, anyways) because it made more sense in regards to the established Star Wars canon. Nevertheless, I have found myself occasionally describing her as one would a human; I've corrected all of the errors I've found in my own draft, but some may have slipped through in "publication". Sorry if this has caused any confusion, and if anyone notes anything like that in this version I might have missed, please let me know.

My only lingering question is how they managed to get that far without being detected, given the relative sophistication of SW sensors and whatnot.

If you will recall, the cargo containers the boarders emerge from are the same that the Republica picks up during the recapture of the planet Coridan. Ryceed was in a hurry to finish the battle and return to Bajor; why bother with scanning a few boxes of spare parts?

By the way, what's Cortana doing in all of this? Is she still in the Republica's computer network, or has she returned to the Chief?

Cortana has been moving about the fleet as needed, especially DS9 and the Enterprise, and hasn't had much time aboard the Republica, as the Chief noted in the last chapter.

I'd also like to thank you for being such a good author Ire. You, IO, Elhuru, and Kuja are my favourite non-Stravo authors (because I don't know how you could not be compelled by that man's writing) on SDN and I always eagerly await an update from one of you guys. Even inspired me to start posting some of my own stuff. So keep up the good work man.

Thank you. Its an honor to be included alongside authors of such skill.

[fusion]

Swell, chapter. Something told me that something bad was going to happen to the boxes.

[The Vortex Empire]

Excellent chapter, Ire. When they didn't scan those crates, it was pretty obvious something was going to happen with them. Hmm. If the Zerg manage to steal the Republica, they'll be unstoppable.

[Dominus]

If you will recall, the cargo containers the boarders emerge from are the same that the Republica picks up during the recapture of the planet Coridan. Ryceed was in a hurry to finish the battle and return to Bajor; why bother with scanning a few boxes of spare parts?

Curse you, Noble Ire, and your accursed foreshadowing! I knew that something bad would come from those crates, but since it wasn't immediately addressed in the following chapters I subsequently forgot all about it. That will teach me to dismiss 'dropped plot points' from the story so easily...

[Noble Ire]

Sorry for the delay; this chapter took longer than expected, and ended up being the longest of the story so far. In fact, due to board limitations on post length, I've had to split it into two sections.

Chapter Sixty

Leaving the handful of marines and techs that had answered Truul’s call for backup to handle the damage and the wounded, the Major, Jacen, and the Master Chief were packed once again into a turbolift together, this time heading for deck one, and the bridge. When Truul had attempted to ascertain why less than half the number of reinforcements he had expected had actually arrived to secure the ruined junction room, his comlink had given out without reason, as had those of every other crewer in the vicinity. He had tried to raise the bridge on a remote, emergency channel, but that too had been overwhelmed by static and disrupted after only a few moments of contact. Truul could only assume that the damage Kira had done in her madness was more extensive than he had originally anticipated, and had somehow overloaded the ship’s comm repeaters.

“I knew I shoulda assigned independent comlinks to the crew when we came onboard,” he grumbled, more to himself than the others. “These spacers always depend too much on their ships. One blasted problem, and they can’t even talk to each other.”

The motile compartment began to slow, and Truul breathed out a sigh. “Ah well, taking this straight to the source should speed it up, in any event. I’m not to keen on being debriefed by remote, and we’ve got places to be.”

“This isn’t the command deck,” the Master Chief said. He couldn’t read the symbols displayed on the lift’s internal interface, but he had ridden in the compartment enough to develop a feel for it, with armor or without. They were stopping too quickly, too abruptly.

Truul glanced down at the control panel. “You’re right, we’re two decks short. I know I put this thing on an express track to the bridge. What’s…”

An instant before the lift came to a full stop, a flash of intuition hit Jacen, and he swept the lightsaber from his belt, igniting it in the same fluid motion.

“Back!” he yelled, just as the bowed door slid open.

A blast of rancid, wet air billowed into the small chamber, followed immediately by an equally gut-wrenching snarl. Filling the lift’s exit from deck to ceiling, a creature that was both animal and weapon leered at them with tiny, lidless red eyes. Reared up on its snake-like lower half, the beast “stood” nearly three meters in height, a ridged mass of thick, reddish-brown chitin and bony plate upon which were fixed a pair of long, scythe-tipped arms and a colossal, fanned skull. This head, more nightmare mask than living visage, was adorned by a protruding, detached jaw, dozens of uniform fangs less than a meter from Jacen’s bloodless face.

For an instant, the Jedi’s world froze. Each of his senses focused on the threat before him, and he could suddenly discern everything about the creature. He felt its damp breath, heard the grinding of its slung jaw as it flexed in anticipation, saw the muted hue of blood stained across one scimitar-like claw. He could see, too, beyond its predatory eyes, into the harsh, confusing chamber that was its mind. Jacen had encountered many strange animals on more worlds than he could recall, but he had never touched one that resonated in the Force so disconcertingly. Instinct, primal emotion, and basic desire all coalesced to drive the warrior beast, but they were but a shell, emissaries to the body, but ungoverned by it. Another power drove them, sheltered deep within the creature’s limited consciousness.

Hunger. Malice. All for one, and one alone.

The flash of clairvoyance dissipated before Jacen could even begin to process it, but it did leave him with a single, pivotal thought.

“Against the walls!”

Even as he uttered these words, Jacen began to brace himself, hunching closer to the lift’s floor and bring both his lightsaber and his free hand in front of him. As he did, the Zerg creature swelled up to an even greater height, puffing out its chest cavity with a whine of transient air and chitinous plate. Its massive head lifted to towards the ceiling, revealing a pair of hard, ribbed plates that covered most of its long torso. Above this armor, a fleshy sac bulged forth, inflated by the intake of atmosphere.

A dozen minute tears appeared in the reddish mass, and abruptly the air was filled with a barrage of bony spines. Polished white, covered in a membrane of mucus, and tipped with points finer than needles, the hail of organic missiles crossed the space between the Zerg and Jacen in a split second. Rather than tearing through the unarmored human like so much uncooked meat, however, most of the spines diverted course fractionally, as if caught by a powerful wind. The bolts whistled past the Jedi’s head and chest, narrowly missed Truul and the Chief, who were still reacting to Jacen’s sudden command, and impacted the car’s curved rear wall. Each hit with the report of a gunshot, and a few nearly perforated the metallic surface before coming to a halt, a testament to their lethal capacity.

Ignoring the pair of cuts on his left arm left by spines he hadn’t quite been able to deflect, Jacen lunged forward, bringing his saber hilt to his chest and then slashing horizontally at the attacking creature’s center mass. It reared back with incredible speed for its size, but was unable to completely evade the glowing pylon of green energy. A long scar of charred exoskeleton just below the creature’s spine sac provoked a piercing, clattering screech, but for all its rage, the animal’s thick covering seemed to have protected it from injury.

Jacen closed distance with the beast again, but was unable to raise his lightsaber for another slash before Zerg brought its own blades to bear, bring them across at the Jedi from both sides. Still confined by the turbolift aperture, Jacen could not dodge under the blows, so instead he went up; a Force-enhanced leap brought him level with the beast’s hard, left shoulder. Unable to recover from its failed death embrace quickly enough, the Zerg could do nothing but jerk back violently as Jacen slid over its armored torso, spun around as he fell towards the ground, and planted his lightsaber a patch of flesh exposed between its shoulder and neck plates.

The creature’s spiny tail leapt up to meet the falling Jedi, and its chinked underside slammed him into a nearby bulkhead before he could regain his footing. It swung about to face its incapacitated prey, but, as though it only then felt the narrow shaft of cauterization that slit it from flank to flank, reeled back onto its own tail with a muted scream. Then, with a few lazy swings at the empty air and a single grind of its powerful teeth, it collapsed and was still.

Blocked from view previously by the creature’s bulk, a pair of smaller beasts peered at their slain comrade apprehensively. Vaguely canine in form and size, they were burly masses of jagged plates and livid skin, each with a pair of odd, clawed appendages sprouting from their backs like overgrown spider legs. The two seemed to peer at each other for confirmation, their tiny eyes barely visible over faces filled with jaws even more terrible than those of the larger minion, and then they turned their focus in unison towards Jacen, who still lay against the fall wall, struggling for breath after the powerful blow.

The Zerg took a few tentative steps towards the human, and when he did not immediately leap up to rebuff them, they grew bolder and began to lope down the narrow hallway, their clawed antenna undulating in concert with their steps. Jacen watched them come, desperately forcing himself up against the wall and reaching out for his lightsaber, which had been knocked from his grip by the towering beast’s final blow. He found it, lying on the deck several meters away, beyond the lifeless Zerg corpse. Jacen reached out for it, felt it nudge towards his hand. The two quadrupeds were almost upon him. His weapon was too far.

As the leading creature tensed its haunches in preparation for the final leap, two lambent bolts alighted upon its midsection. The scaly surface lit with combustion, and the beast tumbled onto its side, momentum carrying the twitching form nearly another meter before it finally came to a stop. Its companion bayed in outrage, but it too was stricken by crimson energy, and fell to the deck with equal swiftness.

Looking ins the direction from which the blaster fire had come, Jacen stared at his own muted reflection, captured in the Master Chief’s rounded faceplate. The soldier held out a gauntleted hand, and the Jedi took it gratefully, pulling himself fully to his feet.

“Nice work,” the Chief commented, gently nudging one of the larger beast’s forelimbs with his boot.

“You too,” Jacen said, and then retrieved his lightsaber hilt from the scuffed floor.

“Hydralisk.” Truul joined them, his blaster still at the ready. “That’s what Tassadar called ‘em. Nasty creatures. A few of them nearly tore up a few of my boys on Deep Space Nine. This one’s bigger than those, though, and I never saw any of them move that fast.”

“The smaller Zerg are different as well,” the Chief noted. “They’re tougher and bulkier than any I’ve encountered before.”

“Well, I guess this would explain why I haven’t been able to raise anyone above decks for the last few minutes,” Truul said. “I’m willing to bet that this lot wasn’t all of ‘em.”

“How could they have gotten onboard?” Even as he voiced the question, Jacen reached out into to the surrounding ship, searching for minds and threads of activity that might answer it. He found only a clutter of rampant emotions, fear, confusion, and bitter determination intermixed with the unsettling, hollow presence that emanated from the Zerg.

“Haven’t a clue, but if they’re this far into the ship’s habitation section, the security detail probably isn’t having much luck sealing off the source. The damage that Bajoran inflicted to the internal system probably didn’t help. Whatever’s going on, the captain is going to need our help getting a handle on the situation. Looks like your Fed students will have to wait a little while longer, Chief.”

The Spartan checked the ammo indicator on his sidearm.

Truul nodded. “Alright, let’s see if we can’t hook up with some of the crew and get a picture of the tactical.”

It didn’t take very long for the eerie silence of the corridor, which Truul identified as being only several below the bridge, to be broken by the sound of combat. Coming around a turn, the trio found a few crew members hunched behind a large supply crate, directing the fire from a handful of pistols and rifles down the long hallway. At least ten of the smaller beasts, Zerglings, were tearing up the narrow space towards them, pining loudly as they leapt over abandoned barricades and shattered corpses, humanoid and quadruped alike. Behind them, a pair of Hydralisks seemed to be preoccupied with a forcefully exposed wall conduit, and were peppering it with a hail of razor spines.

A single Alliance marine stood out of cover in front of the oncoming pack, punching commands into a wall interface as the others covered her, picking off as many Zerglings as they could manage. She tapped a final key, and a thick blast door began to close across the hall. Squeezing off a few parting blast from her own sidearm, the marine retreated from the panel for the crate. Before she made it to cover, however, an explosion sounded from the hall, and the overhead lights began to flicker. Something heavy sounded from within one of the walls, and the blast door stalled. Cursing, the marine turned back for the control, but found her path blocked by a glowering monstrosity that had pulled itself through the barrier’s gap.

A blaster bolt from one of the crewers burned off several of its raised back scales, but the creature did not retreat from its intended victim. The marine aimed her weapon at the thing’s head, but a lightening strike from one of the Zerg’s bizarre dorsal appendages knocked the weapon from her hand. The second clawed limb swung at her chest, but before it could find its mark, the whole beast found itself skittering back across the deck for the stalled blast door. Snarling, the Zergling attempted to shake off the unseen attacker, but a volley of blaster bolts put an end to resistance before it crossed under the threshold.

As Truul raced forward and reactivated the lockdown protocol, Jacen dragged the wounded marine back to the waiting arms of the other crewers, one of whom had already produced an emergency medkit.

“Much appreciated,” she said as someone bound her injured hand and applied a local anesthetic. “I’m guessing that that thing didn’t just decide it wasn’t hungry anymore and turn back. You must be that Jedi I’ve been hearing about. We could have used more like Commander Skywalker back on Hoth, but I’m damn glad you’re here now, sir.”

Jacen smiled and nodded at the complement, but did not reply. The mention of the rout at Hoth made the Jedi remember that the woman he was speaking to was probably a grandmother in the world he knew, if she had survived the Galactic Civil War at all.

“Private.” Major Truul kneeled down next to them and scanned the soldier’s simple dressing. “You alright?”

“Yes, sir. They always told me I was a bad shot, anyways. This can only improve my aim.”

“Glad to hear it, because we might still need ya. Now, I want to know what’s going on here. Everything.”

The marine recounted everything that had happened in the last few minutes: the internal security failures, the sudden communications blackout, the Zerg outbreak, rumors of a battle raging outside the ship’s hull. Truul listened to it all in silence, his expression stony. The others kept close watch on the empty hallway behind them, and the sealed bulkhead, against which the sound of fevered scrabbling could still be heard.

When the soldier’s account was through, one of the crewers spoke up. “Major, before I got separated from my repair detail, we were working on one of the primary monitoring nodes on this deck. As far as I could tell, the intruders are doing their best to neutralize the Republica’s offensive capabilities. After they severed internal comms, we started seeing major fluctuations in the main deflector and laser power feeds. At the rate they were working, we might be dead in space by now.”

Truul nodded. “They’re planning something.”

“We should make for the main bridge,” the Master Chief said. “Command and control has to be preserved if an attempt to retake the ship is to be made, and they may still have some intact comm systems.”

“Right. The bridge is only a few decks up, anyways, although we’ll have to take the maintenance crawlways. I don’t want to get pinned in one of those cars with a Hydralisk breathing down my neck again. There should be an access conduit a few sections down this corridor.”

The group gathered itself up and began to make its way back down the left length of the isolated stretch. The Chief and Truul took point, with the crewers and the injured marine behind, and Jacen bringing up the rear.

“This is yours, I think,” Jacen said to the soldier, handing her the blaster that the Zergling had knocked from her grip. She grasped it in her left hand and sighted it experimentally.

“This’ll have to do. Thank you, sir.”

“You don’t have to call me ‘sir’. I don’t really deserve it. My name is…”

Jacen stopped abruptly, his eyes widening. He turned back and peered down the hallway, searching it for something.

“Sir?” the soldier asked.

“You said that the outbreak originated somewhere inside the ship. Where?”

“Well, as far as I know, no one is exactly sure, but I did hear the sergeant mention something about the main cargo bay during the last comm dispatch before the lines went dead.”

“The cargo bay…” Jacen whispered to himself, still staring off down the hall.

“Why, sir? What’s wrong?”

“Tell the Major that I’ll regroup with you as soon as I can. I need to check something.”

With that, the Jedi began to run back the way they had come, ignoring the soldier’s confused shouts and warnings. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Why had he been so distracted? As Jacen tore around a corner, he desperately hoped he could remember the way to the ship’s main hold. There was no time for wandering, if there was any time left at all.

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The creature had no name. It had no identity, and no sense of self. It had those things once, but they were utterly forgotten, less than faded memories. It was an appendage now, a slave to another in every way that an organism could be enslaved. It was barely even a distinct entity, defined only by the sagging, unkempt boundary that was its skin.

To one foreign to the trials that it had endured, the thing, or any of the half dozen other beings that were attached to the bridge of a warship that had once too had a name, a history, a crew and captain, the creature might have appeared to be any number of things. It was undeniably alive, pulsating, twitching, breathing in the shallow, vestigial manner of something that really does not need to breathe, but beyond that, it bore little resemblance to any lifeform encountered in the collective experience of the peoples who had constructed the warship upon which it sat. It could have been a plant, for it never moved from the broken and dirty seat on which it was rooted by knotted strands of scaly flesh. Perhaps an insect; the sharp, russet protrusions that burst from its withered skin certainly had the appropriate quality. More than either, though, it bore the appearance of an animate corpse, a marionette that existed only by the bizarre providence of some greater power.

In truth, it was all these things, but in true function it was something else entirely, and that was all that mattered. It was a hand.

Without knowing why, or needing to know why, the thing raised its naked arms, heavily blistered but still separate from the bloated mass that its body had become, and placed them upon an adjacent interface. Neural impulses stimulated by a mind a thousand miles away moved fingers in a precise, almost mechanical fashion, a series of strokes and taps that meant nothing to the body that performed them. Other creatures nearby, bonded to the ship by grotesque chains of sinew and lack of will, carried out different motions on different interfaces, equally oblivious of their own hands. This soundless symphony fired conduits and triggered electrical signals throughout the warship’s artificial brain, uncorrupted but a slave all the same, and it in turn compelled devices interspersed throughout the hull to project an invisible bubble of energy around the mass of metal and flesh.

The creatures did not know that an instant after that shield was raised, a storm of phaser fire nearly brought it down again. The tremors that shook the vessel to its very core did not phase them. Another explosion overloaded an interface violently, lashing one organic instrument with a shower of burning sparks and jagged particulate; it simply bypassed the damaged circuits and continued on with its noiseless work, oblivious the lacerations that bloodied its already scarred features.

Another entity, seated before a tactical display, saw without seeing the large, vaguely tubular vessel that a previous course correction had aligned them with. The visual signal went unprocessed by the creature’s brain, but another mind did read it, and soon after the thing and its companions were set to their controls once more.

The warship, and dozens of others like it, moved closer to their target, some firing blindly at the host of more lively constructs that pursued them, others utterly focused on their prize. The larger starship remained still, as though waiting for the single-minded swarm to arrive. Its weapons blisters, capable of swatting any of the vessels arrayed against it in an instant, were silent. Its deflector shield generators, capable of withstanding any onslaught the foe ships could muster, were inactive. By all outward appearances, the vessel was dead, heartless and cold as its suitors truly were.

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The beating of Laura’s heart filled her head. When she tried to think, the constant pounding shattered her concentration. When she tried to move, the booming only increased, and terror stayed her. She could not feel the cool metal around her, or taste the saltiness of her dry lips; all she could perceive was the deafening beat. That, and the scene that filled her vision.

A thin fog of acrid smoke filled the air, unmitigated by the meager efforts of atmospheric purifiers that flickered on and off with the cargo bay lights and the distant explosions that sent faint tremors across the gray deck. Small fires still burned unchecked where data terminals and maintenance accesses once stood, their exposed wiring sparking occasionally with undirected energy. The cloud stung Laura’s eyes and obscured her vision, but she did not care. What she saw could not be diminished by such an inconvenience.

The deck was littered with bodies. Between stacks of cargo containers and claw-gouged machinery, more than a dozen inert forms lay in various states of contortion and desecration. Some were draped over smashed droids or the bodies of their comrades, dispatched by deep slashes or lethal barbs. Others were virtually unrecognizable, heaps of bones and flesh mired in pools of smeared fluid. All, however, bore mementos of their final moments. Hands half-clasped upon weapons, bodies cut down mid-flight, faces drawn into masks of fear.

Laura had seen the scene before, and now all the deep, terrible feelings that the prior experience had inflicted upon her had returned, amplified all the more by the closeness of the carnage. Sheltered under the overturned wreck of a repulsor crane, which she had stumbled under more by instinct than conscious thought as the world around her dissolved into blood, she was a prisoner, alone with ice-cold dread that had become her mind. She had not seen one of the monstrosities for some time, how long she could not tell, but fear still confined her. Fear of both claws and teeth, and of the lifeless creatures that lay along the path to escape.

She would not leave the safety of the chance alcove, could not. Even if Laura was armed, and the demons that now crept through the Republica’s halls were somehow crippled, she could not summon the will to enter into the terrible place again alone. She would stay there, hidden, until the world around her turned to ash. It was all she could do.

A gasp of labored breath sounded close by, and Laura recoiled deeper into her ruined space. She clenched her teeth and wedged herself into a fetal position, waiting for the searing pain and ensuing darkness. She could almost feel the blood-sullied spears of bone slicing her skin and piercing her to the core.

The wheeze came again, faint and fading, almost imperceptible against the pounding within her chest. The sound still terrified Laura, but after the scythes of the hunting demons failed to rip her from her protective shell, she managed to open an eye and scan the space before her for its source. There was no Zerg beast there; the chamber still seemed devoid of life. Then she saw it, a body not three meters from the low, cluttered opening beyond which she was crouched. It was the Wookiee deck chief Dapaduuk, and his thickly-furred and blood-matted chest was rising and falling, if only slightly.

A ray of awe worked itself into Laura’s mind. She had seen the towering Alliance soldier beset by five of the invading creatures. Fearsome even without a weapon, the Wookiee’s huge paws had rent one of the smaller attackers nearly in two and stressed the bladed arm of a larger creature almost to breaking. Nevertheless, weight of numbers and the ferocity of the Zerg onslaught had overwhelmed him, and he had been brought to the floor by more than a dozen vicious slashes and rending bites. The sentient’s hide was virtual patchwork of open wounds, each of which was still hemorrhaging dark liquid. And yet, he was still alive.

A hiss and clatter of nailed feet echoed from one of the adjoining halls. Fear gripped Laura once again, and she began to retreat further into her hiding space, but just as she did, breath once more racked the Wookiee’s body, and his left arm twitched. The alien’s lips, gashed by a deep cut, drew back haltingly, and a low groan emanated from beneath broken rows of teeth.

Laura stared at the Wookiee for a long moment. She remembered the Cornwall, seeing friends and colleagues torn apart and left on the bloodied ground, dying and without hope. She remembered the fear, the confusion, the helplessness she had felt as each one died. She remembered her own flight, her feet and blind fortune snatching her from a fate that no other had escaped.

She remembered the distorted reflection of her own face in the face plate of one of her saviors, twisted so by fear and self pity that she thought a moment that it was one of the monsters that hounded her.

Slowly, cautiously, Laura crawled from the cover of the wrecked vehicle. On her hands and knees, ignoring the sticky wetness that soaked her palms and uniform, she moved the Dapaduuk’s side. Gingerly, she touched a massive, hairy shoulder.

“It’ll be alright,” she whispered. “I’ve got you.”

The Wookiee made an indecipherable noise and turned his battered head fractionally towards her.

“Quiet now. I’m going to have to move you. Hold on.”

Quickly assessing the considerable damage to the massive creature’s upper body, Laura positioned herself behind the Wookiee’s neck, propped its lolling head on her chest, and grasped him beneath each arm. Inhaling deeply, she tugged on the limp mass, found herself unable budge it a centimeter, repositioned, and tried again. This time, the Wookiee slid back with her fractionally, but as soon as she stopped to gasp for another breath, he loosed a guttural howl of pain. It was a weak cry, but loud enough to reverberate into every corner of the chamber and beyond. The footfalls in the hallway ceased.

Pushing down the wave of fear that tempted her to drop the wounded soldier and flee back into her dark cave, Laura strained once more against Dapaduuk’s impressive weight. He moved with her again briefly, and again a fevered cry escaped his lips.

Laura was about to whisper something, more to bolster her own resolve than silence the pained Wookiee, when a shadow leapt up suddenly on the deck before them. Looking up, she saw the forms of two slithering Hydralisks, backlit by a fallen floodlight, as they made their way into the hold. The beasts did not rear up and scan the chamber for prey or fall into covert, stalking movements; they saw their intended victims, and cared not if they were seen in turn. Mindless minions or no, instinct told them both that their next meal was to be an easy one.

Laura did not attempt to flee as they approached. The Zerg saw her now, and a bent pile of machinery would not keep them from their prize, even if she could reach the overturned repulsor pad before their jaws found her. She simply watched, and let the feeling drain from her limbs, resigned to the inevitable. Certainly, fear was still with her, but she found that next to the fear that had nearly kept her from reaching out to the Wookiee, the pain that this new terror inflicted was bearable. She had conquered one fear, only to find another that was unconquerable; perhaps, she thought ruefully as the twin predators moved closer, there was some small solace in that irony.

The Hydralisks closed past the range of their spine sacs, instead allowing their exposed jaws to fall open and raising their scimitar claws in anticipation. One gurgled joyfully and locked eyes with Laura, as though claiming her as its particular share of the find. She returned the cold gaze unflinchingly.

Fanning out on either side of the Wookiee and the human, the two Zerg coiled their hind sections and leaned close, until Laura could have reached out and touched her hunter had she had the energy or inclination. The Hydralisk was so enraptured by its target that it failed to notice the blur of motion that appeared at the entry hatch through which it had emerged, nor the flash of green light that accompanied it. This ignorance would likely have continued for some time, but a loud rush of warped air current managed to elicit the creature’s attention, and it turned its massive head towards the doorway in time to catch a glimpse of a flattened, lambent disk of green, just before it sailed smoothly into the beast’s sloped forehead.

It took the other Hydralisk only a second to sense that something was amiss, but in that time the blur had crossed the distance between them, and had already retrieved its glowing blade from the smoldering chasm that it had left in the first Zerg warrior. Before the slain creature could even fall onto the deck, the blur resolved into the form of a man dressed in black and leapt over Laura and her charge, directly on top of their remaining foe.

The Hydralisk unleashed a volley of spines before its attacker could reach the ground, but the man changed his trajectory in midair, deftly dodging the onslaught and landing behind it. The creature’s muscular tail whipped up to meet the human, but he vaulted over the strike and lunged at the Zerg’s undefended back. The lightsaber bit into dense chitin, but the Hydralisk managed to jerk to the side away from the blow, leaving behind a large chunk of its exoskeleton plate. Screeching, the beast slashed at the man with an enormous claw, almost toppling onto its back in order to do so.

A flash of illumination separated the talon blade from its arm. Another flash separated the Hydralisk from half of its skull.

As the second creature joined its companion on the plated floor, Jacen Solo straightened from his combat stance, keyed the pommel of his blade off, and then collapsed to one knee, breathing heavily. The engagement had lasted less than ten seconds.

Numbly, Laura stared at her savior, oblivious to the Wookiee’s weight upon her legs or the cool sweat that drenched her brow. She opened her mouth to speak, but a chorus of surprise, blind relief, lingering fear, and something else entirely echoing in her mind left her mute.

His breathing finally slowed, Jacen looked up at the woman, and then began to rise. The young Jedi winced visible, and a hand clapped onto his thigh, where a long sliver of red welled from under his black garb.

“Are… are you alright?” Laura tried to move towards him, but found herself still pinned by Dapaduuk’s bulk.

Jacen nodded quickly, and then raised his hand. The cut was still emblazoned wetly upon his skin, but the flow of blood was swiftly diminishing, thickening under the gentle caress of the Force.

“Don’t worry about me. Are you alright? I came as soon as I realized what was going on.”

“I’m not hurt.”

Jacen attempted to look around the room, but his eyes never quite left Laura’s gaze. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry I couldn’t get here any sooner. Are any of the others…?”

The feeling returning to her extremities, Laura was suddenly aware again of the Alliance crewer’s thick, warm blood upon her hands and uniform. “Yes. Yes, he’s still alive. He was wounded pretty badly, though. I’m not even sure how he’s still breathing.”

Tearing his gaze from the woman, Jacen moved quickly to the Wookiee’s outstretched form, which was still moving with occasional, haggard inhalations. He laid each hand gently upon the alien’s chest and peered at his scared face, reaching out for the pain-racked consciousness within. After a moment, he looked back at Laura, worry obvious on his face.

“We need to get him to a bacta tank. I might be able to keep him breathing for a little while longer, but he’s lost a lot of blood, and I’m not skilled enough to maintain him like this.”

“There’s a turbolift just outside the bay,” Laura said. “Could we get him to the medbay?”

Jacen shook his head. “The Zerg have gotten into the lift network, it’s not safe. And the medbay may have already been overrun, anyways. I’m sensing fighting all over the ship now.”

Nowhere safe. Nowhere to run.

Laura forcefully expelled the seditious thoughts from her mind. She had already come face to face with mortality on this ship and survived; the threat of more wouldn’t be enough to stop her now, or ever again. She would not be defeated by the savage specter without a fight, especially not in view of the man crouched before her.

“Well, we’ve got to get him out of this bay. I doubt that you managed to get here unnoticed.” Gritting her teeth, Laura attempted to lever the Wookiee up off of her, and then off of the bloodied deck. Jacen was at her side in an instant, and Dapaduuk’s weight was suddenly manageable. When they had managed to move and prop him up against the ruined vehicle under which Laura had sheltered, Jacen paused to give Laura time to breath, and the two caught each other’s eyes once more.

In a rush, all the feelings of regret and anxiety Jacen had felt following their last meeting came back to him. He remembered the frustration, the doubt; all the feelings that coming to know Laura Martin had sparked within him. He remembered affections from his life before they had crossed paths, some old, some achingly fresh. He felt the inevitable pain of parting, and knew he would have to brace himself for it again. Then, all in an instant, Jacen decided he would not need to.

Laura accepted the kiss without resistance or apprehension, as though she had expected for a long time. An eternal moment held them both, and no hesitation sullied the act, no doubt. The closeness of combat and death, the devastation all around, even the softly wheezing creature at their side, all were forgotten, taboo and inhibition cast away. Both had walked through the darkest corners of loss and the unforgiving jaws of war, and both had emerged alive, their strength found in the other. For the briefest and longest of moments, they were one.

Parting found them in the same macabre chamber, and neither hesitated to return to their dire work, but where weariness and worry still hung heavily in their features, despair was gone.

Together, the two lifted the taller, unconscious sapient to his feet, and Jacen gingerly grasped him around the broad chest. His muscles buckled under the weight, but an invisible hand joined them, and the Jedi found himself able to tote his living burden across the deck. Nevertheless, when a jarring tone resonated from the ceiling over the ambient drone of distant fighting and lesser warning sirens, the knight had to quickly refocus to keep from toppling onto the ground.

“What was that?” Laura asked, close at the Jedi’s side.

Jacen frowned, and then caught sight of a cracked wall display that hung lopsided from a gutted maintenance computer, exposed wiring simultaneously keeping it lit and suspending it above the hard deck plate.

“It’s an evacuation alert. Captain Ryceed just ordered all crewmembers to the escape pods. We’re abandoning the Republica.”

--------------------------------

A hub of brisk and earnest activity only minutes before, the command bridge of the Alliance cruiser now looked very much like the main cargo bay. The hatch that led to the adjacent turbolift bank lay in roughly-shorn pieces on the burned and scratched floor. Interfaces and displays all across the chamber’s lower deck bore debilitating damage from wild slashes, blunt force, and gouts of corroding acid. Smashed emitters and rapidly depleting power cells left the bridge lit only by dim emergency illuminators. A haze of smoke from stray weapons discharges and electrical fires, some of which still smoldered unchecked, choked eyes and lungs, as did the stench of burned flesh and fresh blood.

William Riker stood just above the scene of destruction, his right arm wrapped with a hasty tourniquet. His once pristine uniform was torn and soiled in places, and his forehead was covered in a sooty cement of sweat and airborne detritus. Wiping the filth from his eyes, the commander watched as a trio of Alliance marines mounted a portable E-Web blaster cannon on its bulky tripod, aiming it towards the exposed access way from the bridge’s interior balcony. Below, other soldiers and crewers were arrayed about the deck, the bodies of fallen comrades and heaps of lifeless Zerg at their feet. Moments before, they had been set upon the grisly work of searching the dead for ammunition and pushing the remains away from the center of the room. Now, however, all were motionless, eyes fixed up the Starfleet officer.

“I’ve relayed the order, sir, on all channels,” a lieutenant reported from a communications station. “With the internal systems as they are, I can’t be sure it’ll reach everyone aboard, but I’ve done my best.”

“The intercom is still offline?”

“You could use it, Commander, but there’s no guarantee that anyone outside of this room would hear you.”

Riker nodded in recognition, and then turned back to what remained of the Republica’s bridge crew. After taking a quick head-count, he could barely keep himself from cringing; barely two dozen beings stood before him, even with their numbers bolstered by the timely arrival of a squad of reinforcing marines and the handful of refugees that Major Truul and the Master Chief and somehow managed to spirit onto the command deck.

The onslaught had been sudden and brutal. With communications all but lost with the rest of the ship, Captain Ryceed had decided that there was no choice but to seal off the command level completely while the marines scattered throughout the ship desperately struggled to contain the encroaching intruders. However, even as she sent personnel to personally ensure that the level’s key corridors and entry points were locked down, reports began to flow in that Zerg had been spotted only one deck below, and confused readings from what remained of the cruiser’s senor net indicated that hostile warships were within transporter range of the floundering, defenseless vessel. Two minutes later, as the last of the Republica’s weaponry and monitoring gear went offline in a cascade of internal failures, the security detail posted by the bridge turbolift bank failed to report in.

Ryceed and her officers had managed to get heavy blast doors closed over the two main doors to the bridge, and were sealing the ingress from the lifts when they had appeared, sinuous claws and armored bulks turning back the durasteel barrier like it was made of foil. The marines tasked with defending the ship’s nervous system had opened up on the threat without hesitation, but there had simply been too many of them to stop. Riker, consumed a moment before with finding a way to reestablish contact with the Allied fleet, found himself in the middle of a ferocious melee. Only the timely arrival of a contingent of soldiers lead by Truul and his Spartan companion from a maintenance crawlway adjacent to the turbolifts had saved him the jaws of animalistic intruders.

Ryceed had not been so lucky. Even as the Zerg invaders were being mowed down by a sudden crisscross of blaster fire, a single Zergling had managed to bowl its way past the defenders and onto the second level, where it had set its single-minded malice on the Mon Calamari captain before being extinguished by a pair of expert shots from the Chief. She now lay a few paces behind Riker under the care of a frazzled medic as she drifted in and out of consciousness. Confirming the severity of the deep lacerations that rent her expressionless face and uniformed torso, the caretaker insisted that he needed to get her to a medical facility with all possible speed.

She had only managed one intelligible statement since the attack, uttered to Riker as he knelt next to her mangled form. Ryceed had fixed the human with both huge, glassy eyes, and said, “Don’t let them have it.” Riker had given his word, and the captain had slipped from waking.

Now the commander cleared his throat, and all eyes fell upon him. “I have given the order to abandon the Republica.”

A few murmured in dismay or disbelief. The rest were silent, watching.

“I realize that I am not your captain, or your executive officer, or part of this ship’s chain of command at all. I am not even an officer of the Alliance, and I have never claimed to be. By all rights, I shouldn’t have the authority to give the command I am giving now, and I understand fully if you are apprehensive about following it. The abandonment of one’s vessel is a hard burden to bear, and to do it without the leadership of a commander you know and trust is almost impossible. Nevertheless, I must ask you all; trust me in this, and believe that I know enough of your captain to do what she would do in my place. I too despise the thought of retreating in the face of the Zerg, giving up this fine ship, but I also know that there is no way we can win this fight. There is no point in sacrificing this crew in a hopeless last stand when the war can still be won, and you all returned to fronts nearer to your hearts.”

For a moment, no one spoke, until a human marine with a bandaged hand stepped forward from the small crowded, glancing meaningfully at her comrades as he did. “Commander Riker, I used to be an Imperial trooper, and I killed my share of good, honest sentients before I finally saw what the Empire was doing to our galaxy. This crew still accepted me, despite all of my crimes, because the Captain decided that there was something decent enough in me to let me on her ship. Most of us have only known Major Truul and the Chief for a few weeks, and we’d still fight for them and die alongside them if need be. At least, I would. I would because they’ve proven themselves able soldiers and competent commanders, and in a universe as twisted as this one, you’ve got to take all the men like that you can get.”

“Solid skill or the Captain’s confidence. If you’ve got one of those things on the Republica, your part of the family. From what I’ve heard, Commander, you’ve got both, and if that’s the truth, then I’d follow you straight to the gates of the Imperial Palace. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Rebel or a Fed or a blasted Hutt, for that matter. Of course, if you end up being a dud, my opinion might change a bit, but from the looks of things right now, I won’t be in much of a position to complain if you’re wrong about this.”

Truul walked up next to the woman and slapped her on the back. “Alright, Private, enough speeches. We haven’t got the time. You heard the Commander, we’ve got places to be.”

With that, the crew began preparing for evacuation as readily as though the order had been handed down by Mon Mothma herself. Clearing away a fallen Hydralisk corpse, a few ensigns began to manually decant one of the blast doors, while others armed themselves for the short trip to the bank of escape pods designed to serve the ship’s command crew. The rest readied the wounded for transportation or stood at watch by the other bridge apertures, fully conscious of the muffled sounds of sabotage and battle that resonated through the floor plates from below.

Disguising a relieved sigh with a cough, Riker turned to the operations officers still at their posts. “I assume that there are some self-destruct protocols still available to us.”

“Yes, sir. We still have an uplink with sublight control; it looks like the Zerg were trying to leave it intact. Locking the ion drives into an uncontrolled charge cycle should build up enough energy to flow back into the core and destabilize the hypermatter containment systems. If containment is lost like that, the ship will literally crack in half.”

“How long will that take?”

“No more than fifteen minutes.”

“Then get on it. I have a feeling that the Zerg aren’t going to hold off for that long.”

“Major!”

Truul hastened up the stairs to Riker. “Orders, Commander?”

“As soon as they get that door open, I want you and your soldiers to escort the wounded and the rest of the crew to the escape pods, and then launch yourselves out of here.”

“What about you?”

Riker tugged on his tunic. “I’ll stay here with a few officers to make sure that the self-destruct sequence is irreversible. After that, we’ll follow out of the ship. Try to remember and leave us a pod, if you can.”

Truul frowned, but nodded shortly. “Got it, Commander.”

As Truul directed two of his largest marines to conduct Captain Ryceed to safety, Riker turned back to Operations and watched as a pair of lieutenants overrode several of the security protocols of the cruiser’s navigational droid brain, and then directed it to appropriate all available power from the reactor for the massive tubular sublights at the rear of the vessel. Rather than divide the energy into individual apportionments for each drive, which could then produce the jets of energetic particles that propelled the warship through the void, however, they instructed the computer to pool what it diverted in the subsystem’s power distribution grid. Within a minute, a status display indicated that the distributing vanes were heating well beyond their design specifications, and the energy that continued to pour in found the system less and less conductive. It was only a matter of time before the wave of energetic potential had no place to go but back, into the reactor’s power feeds and inside the control systems that kept the tiny hypermatter star at the ship’s heart from spilling forth.

Just as the current within the distant chamber surpassed the local flow meter’s capacity to measure, several crewers shouted and pointed out the main viewport. Despite the battle that was obviously still raging outside of the ship, with the Republica’s sensors dead and imaging systems largely inoperative, the scene beyond the transparisteel plate had been fairly peaceful, a starfield trimmed by a silver of blue-green Bajor, occasionally etched with a distant flash of colored light or surge of motion. Now, however, several starships hung in space near enough that Riker could easily identify them as being Starfleet in origin. One of them, an Intrepid-class patrol ship, was so close that the commander could almost read the name and serial number stamped upon its silvery, oblong primary hull.

“Reinforcements?” an Alliance officer asked Riker.

Riker did not respond immediately. Instead, he moved closer to the panoramic viewport, straining his eyes at the distant form. The vessel, designed for speed and endurance, was of a new class, commissioned after the Enterprise-D had passed through the fateful rift, and as such the commander was relatively unfamiliar with its structure. Nevertheless, something about its streamlined surface rang false, some feature out-of-place on a Starfleet hull. The ship moved almost imperceptibly more proximate, and Riker’s seasoned eyes could suddenly see the flaw clearly.

Spaced along the ship’s surface, sprouting from almost every hatch and pore, irregular lumps sullied the Intrepid’s sleek veneer. It was still far too distant to know for sure, but Riker would have sworn upon his commission that the protrusions were organic in nature.

“Those are no reinforcements.” The Starfleet officer tore himself from the front of the bridge and swiftly returned to the upper level railing, beyond which the crew was already mostly assembled around the exit, which was already mostly unsealed. “Major!”

Truul looked up. “Yes, sir?”

“We need to get these people out of here now! The Zerg are within transporter range of the Republica, and this bridge.”

The marine nodded solemnly, and then amplified his gruff voice commandingly. “Alright, let’s get moving! Grab the wounded and line up at the hatch. I want us through the instant that barrier drops. Ulrand, Olesa, get on that gun and cover our backs!” The blast door creaked, and then disappeared into the ship’s bulkhead, revealing a darkened, empty passageway. “I’m taking point. Chief, you take the rear. Let’s move!”

The assembled group of officers and crew cued obediently before the hatchway and passed from view in groups of one or two, interspersed every so often by a wary marine or stretcher-bound casualty. After Captain Ryceed was carefully borne away, the Master Chief ushered the last few stragglers through the doorway, and then turned to Riker, who remained close by the operations station with the pair of soldiers and a steadfast Mon Calamari technician.

“Commander.” The Spartan withdrew an object from a slot on his girdle and tossed it lightly to the Starfleet officer. “Just in case.”

Riker looked at the thing carefully. It was a smooth, metallic ball roughly the size of his fist, adorned by a dark equatorial band, a few inactive lights, and a single, flat switch. The device was obviously of the Alliance’s galaxy, and its purpose was somewhat outside of Riker’s experience, but he had little difficulty identifying its nature.

The thought of the Chief’s implication chilled Riker’s blood, but he accepted its worth nonetheless. He offered a nod of thanks to the armored soldier; the Chief returned it, and then vanished himself beyond the bulkhead.

“Status?”

“The drive buildup still hasn’t initiated a significant feedback reaction,” the technician said without looking up from his controls. “There are too many redundancies and automatic regulators built into the system, and the computer network is too chaotic for me to shut many of them down. It’ll be another few minutes before were sure that an irreversible cascade has been initiated.”

“Anything you can do to speed it up,” Riker urged.

Seeing that the two remaining troopers were rechecking their mounted blaster, the commander picked up a pistol that had been left on an inactive holograph plate and checked its tiny ammunition display. As he attempted to interpret the foreign symbols, an out-of-place and yet completely familiar sound met his ears. Normally a harbinger of hope and aid, the artificial crackle nearly froze his heart. A transporter beam.

Spinning towards the source of the noise, Riker found himself face to face with a charging mass of claws, teeth, and armored flesh. Diving instinctively to his right, he felt more than heard the creature strike the bank of computers next to which he had been standing. Rolling onto his back and sliding desperately away, Riker watched as the Hydralisk struggled to prize its scythe-like claws from the sheets of ruined metal, sending showers of scrap machinery and sparks cascading to the deck as it howled. Once it had wrenched itself free, it turned once again towards the commander, locking him in its single-minded gaze.

Barely thinking, the man raised his weapon and fired twice. The first shot went wide, blowing a relay box mounted on the ceiling into blackened fragments. The second hit, impacting the base of the creature’s paddle-like skull fin, just above its eyes. The energy of the bolt shattered the bone, sundering organic armor that could have resisted any lesser blow. A look of deep malice still fixed on its angular visage, the creature shuddered, flailed its vicious limbs uselessly, and tumbled to the floor less than a meter from Riker.

Crawling away from the corpse in an adrenaline stupor, Riker made to call a warning out to his companions, but immediately saw that it was too late. Half a dozen other Hydralisks and a host of their smaller kin had appeared on the bridge, all around them. A few lay dead, victims of the quick response of Truul’s marines and their E-Web, but the rest were converging upon the trio of humanoids, flashing over ruined terminals and cluttered deck plates with almost supernatural speed. As Riker looked on, one of the snake-like warriors, blood-red frame bulkier than that of its russet cousins, effortlessly grappled over the upper-level railing and threw itself at the technician, who had remained at his post resolutely.

The Mon Calamari leveled a blaster at the attacker, but before he could fire, a sideswipe knocked him to the deck, lifeless. A corona of crimson splashed against the hunter’s arched back, but it seemed to barely feel the blow, and turned to face its new prey without pause. The marine who had shot the thing faltered momentarily, aghast that the monstrosity had survived the searing bolt, and then opened up on it again, his rifle coughing with added earnestness. The spray of charged gas set the Hydralisk aflame with small explosions, and small fragments of the creature rain from its skeletal form, but its advance did not cease. At last, blinded by a hit on its skull, the beast reared back, opened its chest cavity, and belched a hail of spines at the soldier, emptying its sac of projectiles before a blaster bolt found its way into the gap and ignited the Zerg a final time.

Stricken by several of the barbs, the trooper screamed and tumbled back over the railing, straight into the waiting jaws of a brace of Zerglings. The second Alliance marine barely had time to recognize that his comrade had fallen before he too was surrounded and overwhelmed by the claws and teeth of three more of the greater Hydralisks. Dragging himself to his feet, Riker attempted to stave off the feral creatures with volley after volley from his weapon, but they seemed to ignore him, even after two Zerglings joined the grim heap piled around them. Only when the other had been fully and unrecognizably dispatched did the marauders turn their attention again to the commander, who was now backed up against the bridge viewport, the very front of the compartment.

It took Riker a moment to notice that he had finally exhausted his blaster’s supply of ammunition; he depressed the pistol’s trigger again and again without thinking, barely aiming, intent on holding back the merciless host and nothing else. At last acceding to his disarmament, Riker let the blaster fall to the deck and placed both hands on the small orb which was still clasped tightly in his left fist. He contemplated its simple form, the single button trimmed by tiny lights. Mustering the last of his resolve, the Starfleet moved a thumb over the stud, and then looked up again at the ravenous sets of eyes now fixed firmly upon him, as if challenging them to come closer.

Then, to his bewilderment, Riker realized that they were not moving at him. The pack of beasts had stopped; the three towering Hydralisks and their lesser cohorts were less than six meters away, and still they did not show any sign of attacking. Instead, they sat in furtive silence, ever watching Riker, but seemingly restless, as if something had managed to distract them from their predatory impulses.

Footsteps sounded from the short stair on the bridge’s left side. Rather than the rapid, clanking clamor that the Zerg boarders produced as they propelled themselves on claws and spiked coils, these were slow, of a gait that had control and clear purpose.

The entity that stepped into view was physically smaller than the pair of towering Hydralisks that flanked her from a distance, but see completely captured the commander’s attention. In basic form, she was a woman; two meters in height, two arms, two legs, and a physique that could have made her a stunning beauty under different circumstances. Her torso and outer extremities were draped in a dark, burnished armor, which might have been artificial or grown of her own hide, and wherever the covering was absent, olive skin and sleek musculature flexed smoothly. Full, purple lips contrasted with lines and splotches of reddish discoloration that embellished her fine features, some of them traced down her chin like ribbons of long-dried blood.

Rather than hair, she bore a mane of segmented, brown spines that flowered out around her shoulders, their pointed ends swaying slightly with each step she took. Behind these growths, sprouting one from each shoulder blade, a pair of exposed bones jutted up above her head. Like the wings of some macabre angel, the appendages each sported a set of outstretched, enameled extensions, tipped with rending points that made the blades of her guardians appear worn and dull by comparison.

Riker watched her keen, yellow eyes fall upon him, and immediately had to steel himself to keep from losing his balance. Somehow, simply returning her gaze had sent a spasm of pain through his brain, and he was still attempting to clear his head when the being let her eyes fall away from him, focusing instead upon the head Mon Calamari technician who lay at her feet.

“A pity. This one could have been useful,” she said after prodding the body with a boot. Her voice was surprisingly soft and ordinary, but with it Riker could perceive a chorus of other sounds accompanying the words within his mind, guttural noises and echoing incantations. The strange voices were similar to those he felt when Tassadar communicated, but rather than the controlled and steadfast sensations that manifested themselves with the Protoss’ words, this creature’s telepathic emissions were almost indecipherable, a clatter of fractured feeling, tinged by an aura of dread that Riker suspected was his own.

“Ah well, this breed of warrior has always been a bit overeager in its lust for the hunt. That’s what really makes them superior to their lesser brethren I suppose, their drive, not their simple bulk. I must admit, the Protoss name for them, hunter-killer, I think it was, is quite appropriate. Still, they are quite sweet if you get to know them.”

The woman held her hand out to one of her formidable escorts, and it moved within range of her fingers, tinting its massive skull upwards obediently. She stroked its detached jaw affectionately, and then turned again to face Riker. The half-grin on her lips frightened him far more than any of the tensed, waiting monstrosities arrayed around her.

Two more creatures shambled onto the bridge’s upper level behind her. They were also obvious once humanoid, and still bore the rudimentary structure of their species, but otherwise were completely unrecognizable, amalgams of disjointed limbs, insectoid facial organs, and scabs of leathery, plated skin cast in all shades of purple and brown.

“There,” the woman said, inclining her head fractionally towards the control panel the deceased Alliance officer had been manning, but keeping her gaze locked onto the trapped human.

“These two will perform just as well as the other would have. And this saves me the time of having to break and reform the alien, even if I would have had to do so only temporarily. Still, I am getting quite good at it. Fully compromising and reshaping a human mind used to take me several hours, and even then, they tended to fall apart quite quickly. Now I can do it in only a few minutes, and I don’t even have to be present, as long as a suitable conduit is available. That’s how I broke the poor little soul that got me onto this fine vessel, in fact.”

She donned a look of mock consternation. “Still, I did feel her break free at the very end. Perhaps I should practice my technique a bit more.”

“What are you?” Riker said at last, finally managing to choke back the fear that the creature’s arrival had seeded within him.

She smiled again, and began to walk towards the man. Riker stood his ground as she approached, fixed less by courage than by the simple fact that he had nowhere left to run.

“That’s no way to introduce yourself, Commander,” she said irascibly. “Why don’t you tell me a bit about William Thomas Riker first? Wait, allow me; speak up if I’ve missed anything. You were born in 2335, on Earth, Alaska, I believe. You graduated eighth in your class from Starfleet Academy, with several commendations for tactical ingenuity on your record. You served on the Pegasus, Potemkin, and Hood exemplarily, and turned down your own command for a chance to serve on the flagship USS Enterprise-D as Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s first officer. Up until your disappearance in 2368, you were noted numerous times for distinction of service and competency under fire.”

“You also enjoy smooth jazz and card games, and have a taste for exotic women.”

“How…?” Riker began, and then clenched back his question. She was barely more than an arms length from him now, and he had barely even noticed her close the gap.

“How do I know all this?” she ventured. “You’re a clever boy, Will, you should have figured it as soon as I spoke. After all, I assume that that Protoss templar you’ve been ferrying about hasn’t kept mute for this whole time. Like him, and those lovely Betazed you seem to enjoy so much, I’m a telepath. Here, close enough that I can smell your sweat, I can read your mind as easily as I could order one of my warriors to bite that explosive you’re cradling out of your hands.”

Riker’s thoughts raced. He and Captain Picard had often used Deanna Troi’s empathic talents to get ahead in tense negotiations, but the commander had rarely been on the other side of a potentially hostile telepath. He only knew of one strategy that had any chance of circumventing their considerable advantage.

“You still haven’t answered my question,” he said. “Who are you?”

Kerrigan cocked her head at him, still grinning. “Alright, I’ll play along, Commander. As you’ve guessed, I was once a human, a telepathically-gifted human from an empire that impressed people like me into military service from birth, but a human nonetheless. When the Zerg showed up and started devouring our colonies, I fought against them, and, just like everyone else, I was eventually overwhelmed. But they didn’t kill me; no, the old master of the Swarm had different plans for this little Terran telepath.”

“The Overmind stuck me in an organic chrysalis and changed me. He killed the woman I was, spunky Sarah Kerrigan, and used what was left to make his newest pet. That mound of rotted flesh enhanced my psionic abilities and altered my DNA, giving me this body, extending its life indefinitely, and injecting me with a sliver of all the hate that had been building up inside him for however many thousands of years he had festered. When I popped out, I was the perfect killing machine, a loyal and efficient executor of the great eyeball’s divine will. Of course, that all changed when you friend Tassadar managed to land a battle carrier on him.”

“Free, and without direction, I found that the Overmind had been kind enough to leave me with only one real passion; to conquer. I’ve tried to change that, get back more of what I once was, but it’s never worked, and eventually I just gave up trying. I enjoy what I do, and I’m damn good at it. Queen of Blades, they call me, queen bitch of the universe. With the Overmind’s old swarms for my own, I subjugated every world from Tarsonis to Shakuras, and all the way to Terra. And now I’m here for an encore performance. The first of many, I expect.”

“But that’s enough about me. My minions should be almost done stabilizing this ship’s drives, and I don’t want you to go on too long thinking that you have any chance of delaying me beyond the point of no return, or killing me with that little ball you’re still holding. That would just be cruel.”

Beneath Riker’s hard, angered face, despair bubbled anew. He had known that this Zerg queen, this Kerrigan could not be distracted from her machinations so easily, but he had had to try. That was just the way the commander was. And now his efforts were truly for not.

Might as well try one more stupid maneuver…

Gritting his teeth, Riker raised the thermal detonator the Chief had given him and thumb the activator switch. A low, mounting whine emerged from beneath its alloy shell, and the lights around its perimeter shown bright.

[Noble Ire]

“I think you might be underestimating the power of this little device, your highness. Then again, I’m not really sure. I haven’t ever seen one go off in person. I guess we’ll both find out in a few seconds.”

Kerrigan, Queen of Blades rolled her eyes. Riker barely saw the blur of motion out of the corner of his eye before one of the Zerglings was upon him. The force of the creature’s nearly knocked the man unconscious, and sent him tumbling to the deck, arms flopping out at his sides like a rag doll. Even as his brain began to process the pain inflicted by the blunt trauma, a gout of flame engulfed his right hand, and Riker wrenched himself into a fetal position violently, crying out. Gasping and retching from the pain, the man looked through tear-stained eyes to see that the hand was gone, nothing more than a fast-bleeding stump and a few crushed fragments of bone.

Moving with unparalleled focus, the Zergling bolted the fist and the blinking orb clutched within it in a single gulp. Then its tore past its master and the other boarders, leapt down the stairs and crossed the ruined deck in a blur. It hurtled through the ruined hatchway, and coming to one of the open lift shafts that the Zerg had compromised, threw itself into the pit without hesitation. An instant later, the dark chasm was filled with searing light and heat, which overwhelmed the shaft walls without resistance and shattered the surrounding decks with an expanding bubble of nuclear force. The shell of energy dissipated almost immediately, but everything that had with its path vanished with it, leaving a perfectly spherical void for a few moments before the undermined levels above and to either side collapsed, filling the space with debris.

“Look at the trouble you’ve caused,” Kerrigan chided, kneeling down beside Riker as he nursed the bloody stump. “Now I’ll have to have that repaired before I can do anything useful with this fine vessel. And to think, I was almost about to let you live.”

She sighed. “Don’t feel too bad. Men always like to indulge in pointless shows of resistance before the end. Perhaps it’s genetic. I wonder if the Overmind exploited the trait when he started turning Terrans into those living bombs…”

One of the infested humanoids shambled away from its controls, and Kerrigan broke off her musings. “Finished already?”

The infested creature made no audible noise, but the sardonic grin on the Zerg queen’s face disappeared as though the thing had spat in it. Hunched up against the viewport wall, Riker barely saw Kerrigan the bony limbs on her back move, but finely-cut pieces of the creature that slumped onto the deck were evidence enough of their speed and lethality.

When she turned back from the fresh kill, the Zerg monarch was stony-faced, every trace of dark humor and twisted humanity gone. Fury burned in her eyes, and Riker’s flesh was abruptly bathed in a new anguish. Beyond screaming, the man simply stared back at his attacker, his mind ravished and clouded, but unbroken. He could still perceive and think, and that seemed to make Kerrigan’s rage all the greater.

Rather than escalate her psionic assault, however, Kerrigan stepped back from the man and turned away, pacing back into the fold of her guardian horde.

“Have your ship, Commander. I do not need it to extinguish what remains of this galaxy and its pitiful inhabitants. Their suffering will be all the greater and my power will grow beyond reckoning. Know that you died for nothing, William Riker. Remember your failure while you can.”

A dozen columns of blue-white light illuminated the darkened chamber for a few brief seconds, and then Riker was alone.

Grunting against the pain that still consumed him and fighting through the numbness of his limbs that grew with the unabated ebbing of his blood from the terrible wound, the Starfleet officer pushed himself to his feet, stumbled a few meters, and then collapsed again. Now, however, he was close enough the ship’s operations display to see the lettering emblazoned prominently across its surface. He could not read the message, but its urgent warning was obvious.

Far below him, a new clamor rose to complement the sounds of battle that echoed through the hull from combats within and without. Lying upon his back, Riker grasped for images, memories, people he had known and loved, but the life was draining from him too quickly, and all that was past faded from his thoughts.

He reached out with remaining hand and his aimless fingers found purchase on the shoulder of the Mon Calamari technician, fallen by the post he had refused to give up as the Republica’s fate was sealed. Riker stared into the blank, alien eyes, and a small smile worked its way onto his draining face. He barely knew the sentient, and even those few memories were falling into darkness, but he knew that lying alongside the being made him feel oddly at piece.

“I will remember my failure,” he whispered at last, “if you remember his victory.”

---------------------------------------

“The Cruiser’s forward shields have failed, Captain,” Commander Worf reported from the Enterprise’s tactical station, training the sensors at his disposal on the infested Galor-class Cardassian warship that was the flagship’s current target. “I’m reading an energy spike in her warp core. They may be attempting another ramming attack.”

Picard stared sternly at the floundering, angular vessel through his ship’s main viewer as it spat a plasma torpedo from one of its few remaining projectors. The projectile, unguided by a targeting system that had been damaged earlier in the skirmish, sailed cleanly past the starboard hull, missing by nearly a dozen kilometers. Undaunted, the ship ignited its aft drives and began to close with the Sovereign-class, its hull buckling noticeably in places from unsealed and growing breaches.

“Target her bridge,” the captain ordered at last. “Just a phaser burst. That’s all that’s needed.”

A beam of crimson energy lanced out from the ship’s ventral surface. It struck the cruiser’s raised, forward compartment, liquefied unshielded armor in an instant, and bit deeply into the charging ship’s interior. Immediately, its sublight drives failed, and the Enterprise was able to easily glide past the ship as its internal reactors overloaded and ignited their fuel stores. The victor’s command crew watched the vanquished vessel dissolve into a supernova of plasma and minute debris for a few seconds before turning their attention back to the battle that still raged below them.

The Zerg raid had morphed into an Allied siege. The defensive fleet had managed to quickly recover from the abrupt and unexpected course-correction by the invading force, but they had been unable to stop them before the Republica had been completely encircled. Simultaneously, all communications with the Alliance cruiser had been lost, and her weapons and defensive systems had inexplicably deactivated soon after the Zerg encirclement had been completed. The fleet commanders had quickly reached the conclusion that something had occurred to compromise the ship’s crew, a supposition confirmed but not expanded upon by Tassadar, but every attempt to get close enough to the vessel to beam reinforcements through its thick, disruptive armor plating was rebuffed by a furious, suicidal onslaught from the Zerg marauders. They seemed completely focused on keeping the Allied fleet from their centerpiece, and aside from a few scattered squadrons of slower, trailing attackers like the Cardassian vessel the Enterprise had just diverted to keep off of a damaged Klingon bird of prey, only fired upon Allied ships that approached their cordon.

That cordon had managed to hold staunchly, despite the overwhelming numbers of the Bajoran force and the furious maneuvering of the Republica’s own fighter squadrons. Now, however, as Picard looked at the primary plane of battle from his ‘aerial’ vantage point, he began to see chinks in the orbiting vortex of ships.

“Cortana reports that the main Romulan task force has destroyed the last of the lagging warships,” Data said, looking up from his tactical display.

“Tell Commander Suran to move his ships to reinforce Admiral Nechayev’s right flank,” Picard said. “The Zerg formation there is beginning to weaken. We may be able to breach their line there soon.”

“Shall I notify General K’Nera to bring up his insertion wing?” Data asked.

Picard shook his head. “Not yet. His troop ships aren’t built for line combat, and Zerg could still consolidate their flank. The breach needs to be larger before we can risk sending in the boarding carriers. I don’t want to lose more ships today.

Moving in closer to the battle line, the Enterprise regrouped with its squadron of heavy-hitters, Galaxy and Cheyenne-classes with an accompanying Sovereign. After the ships’ captains had conferred to ensure that none had sustained any serious damage, the group wedged itself into the midst of the Allied force opposite Nechayev’s. Noting that a string of the more intact nearby Zerg ships were beginning to bunch a little too closely together, Picard had Worf prepare a spread of quantum torpedoes.

Before he could give the order to fire, however, one of the sensor officers caught his attention.

“Captain, I’m picking up at least thirty new ships detaching from the Republica’s hull.”

Picard turned to him. “Escape pods?”

“Affirmative, sir. Some of them are broadcasting broad-frequency distress signals. I’m also picking up several of the vessels already exiting the Zerg defensive perimeter. They must have been departing for some time already.”

“Are they being attacked?”

The officer checked his readings quickly. “I’m reading the debris from a few of them, sir, but most of the Zerg ships seem to be ignoring the pods.”

The captain frowned. Why would the perimeter ships simply be allowing the pods to escape? It would take little time or energy for the feral ships to destroy the tiny, vulnerable vessels, and mercy was not something that Picard had ever encountered in the invaders before, or ever expected to encounter. It was almost as though the mind or minds coordinating them were distracted.

“See if you can raise any of the escape ships,” he ordered.

A few moments later, a familiar voice crackled over the bridge’s speakers.

“This is Jacen Solo. I am carrying wounded and am in need of immediate assistance.”

Picard stood. “This is Captain Picard, Mr. Solo. The Zerg fleet is keeping us away from the Republica and your vessel, but they do not seem interested in the departing ships. Are you under fire?”

“No, Captain.”

“Then see if you can find a way outside of the Zerg perimeter, and I’ll dispatch a ship to recover you. Try to maneuver as far as possible away from the enemy warships.”

“I’ll try. They don’t seem that interested in this shuttle right now.”

“What’s the situation onboard?” Picard asked after having the position of Jacen’s vessel confirmed and ordering several ships to intercept it along with the other escape ships. “We lost contact with Captain Ryceed several minutes ago.”

“I’m not really sure, Captain,” Jacen replied. “A large number of Zerg somehow appeared onboard, and started disabling the ship’s systems. I was assisting Ensign Martin and a few crew members when the evacuation alert was sounded. I moved as many of the crew as I could find onto this shuttle and took off.”

“No word on the status of the command crew?”

“Major Truul was making for the bridge to reach Captain Ryceed, but we were… separated. I haven’t heard from him since.”

Picard glanced at the chair where Commander Data was seated. The android noted the concern evident on his captain’s face, and nodded. “I understand, sir. Should we attempt to breach the line here and move for the Republica’s command deck?”

Picard stared at the distant image of the oblong vessel, and then shook his head resignedly. “No, I won’t risk this or any other ship in the fleet for just one man. Commander Riker will hold the bridge with the captain, if they haven’t evacuated already. He knows what’s riding on that ship, but he also knows enough not to throw away his life if the vessel cannot be saved.”

Even as the Captain spoke the words, he knew that they were hollow. As good a leader and sensible a man as he was, Riker was also prone to heroics. He would throw down everything he had if there was even the slightest chance that his sacrifice would save a life or bring victory to those he cared about. Blind luck was the only thing that had saved him on several occasions while under Picard’s command, and the Captain knew all too well that luck never held out forever in war.

An unnerving echo reverberated through the bridge chamber, distracting Picard from his anxious thoughts. He turned to see Tassadar pace towards the viewport, his undulating pupils alive with energy.

“High Templar?”

“Anger,” he rumbled. “I sense fury from that ship that is beyond any human. There is another mind here, one I could not detect before.”

“The Cerebrate?” Worf ventured. Despite the Protoss’ best efforts, he had been unable to locate the mind coordinating the invasion force. He had only touched lesser adjuncts amidst the encroaching swarm; until now, the powerful, veiled presence that had first alerted the commanders to the Republica’s compromising had remained elusive.

Tassadar did not respond immediately, instead advancing to the large, flat viewscreen and placing a four-fingered hand upon it. As he did so, the rotating shell of starships surrounding the Alliance cruiser collapsed into a loose hemispheric ring. Then, before any of the vanguard of Allied ships could respond, the Zerg force splintered, surging for open space in every direction in groups of three and four.

“Will!” someone cried breathlessly from the rear of the bridge. Tearing himself from the bizarre maneuver, Picard looked back to see Counselor Deanna Troi standing in a turbolift aperture, frozen, with a look of pain and horror on her face.

Before anyone could move to aid her, an alarm attracted attention back to the viewport, but not to the scattering Zerg warships. Floating all but dead in space only a few moments before, the Republica seemed now to be sheathed in light. Illumination poured from its tubular drives and patches of brilliance began to break its smooth surface.

“I’m picking up a massive energy spike from the Republica!” an officer reported urgently.

Unblinking and transfixed, Picard stared at the ship as the rippling areas of light grew wider and more intense. Areas of plating and whole weapons blisters seemed to melt away into the blinding sheen of light. Instinctively, Picard raised a hand to shield his eyes from the glare, but before his hand reached his face, a star erupted before the command crew, tinted red, then orange, yellow, then white. Gradually, reluctantly, the globe of illumination fade into the muted starfield, and finally, space was dark once more.

The Republica was gone.

Behind Picard and Data, Deanna released an anguished exhalation, swayed, and fell roughly into the arms of a nearby crewman.

Tassadar was the first break the silence that descended upon the deck. “Rally, Picard. This fight is not yet done. Kerrigan is here.”

Slowly, Picard looked from the now-empty viewport to the Templar. “Kerrigan?”

Tassadar’s eyes blazed. “The Queen of Blades is the one I sensed. She came here to personally seize that vessel. Now she has been robbed of her prize, and flees with her vanguard. Come, Captain! Your commander has done his part. Now you must do yours. End this war now! Do not let her escape!”

Picard bristled at the sharp command, but after a moment he nodded shortly. “Helm, bring us about. Where is she?”

As the rest of the fleet attempted to intercept the far-flung remnants of the attack force, the Enterprise and its escorts bypassed easier targets and fell in behind a cluster of half a dozen fast Starfleet and Klingon ships, which were carefully positioned to cover the lone Intrepid at the center of their formation from any reprisal. A volley torpedoes and phaser bursts flashed after the fleeing vessels, shattering one of them and overloading the shields of another. The others surged onward without pause, intent upon the freedom beyond Bajor’s shadow.

Alerted by the flagship, the Millennium Falcon and a host of Alliance fighters streaked past the Enterprise and its cohorts, their lasers and missiles disrupting shield bubbles, pitting hulls, and rupturing warp nacelles. Clearing the escorts, the tenacious freighter at the head of the avenging squadron drove straight at the heart of the formation, its twin quad laser cannons belching flame. However, before a single one could strike the nimble vessel, it surged with sudden movement, and vanished from space in a streak of motion. Propelled between the stars by a different mechanism, the fighters could not follow.

The Enterprise, however, could not be so easily shaken. Flanked by a pair of older warships, it passed into warp as well, and quickly closed the gap with the Zerg-infested ship. The Intrepid fired a spray of torpedoes at its pursuers, but they absorbed the blasts, shaken, but able enough to return their own spread of fire.

A phaser beam glanced off the streamlined hull’s protective shield, and then another impacted it firmly, sending waves of destructive frequency pulsing across its immaterial surface. Surging ahead, the Enterprise pushed its drives to their limit, and gradually positioned the Intrepid-class within the range of its full firepower.

But the ship and the mind it bore were not defenseless. Resolving from the blurred darkness between the hunter and the hunted, a quartet of worn green hulls swarmed to their master’s aid. The cloaked Klingon and Romulan ships absorbed the full force of the Enterprise’s withering assault, and those that remained returned with their own weapons. Overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught, the flagship’s shields failed, and a disruptor pulse struck one drive, sending bands of lightning up and down the dimming nacelle and its pylon. The ship slowed, its crew scrambling to meet the unexpected threat. The secreted warships sensed weakness, but in their eagerness to destroy their master’s nemesis, failed to acknowledge the two silver combatants that lagged only slightly behind.

Tassadar barely noted the swift destruction of the last of Kerrigan’s escorts. The Queen herself was too distant now to catch, already approaching the limits of the Enterprise’s sensors. The Protoss, however, could still feel her chilling presence clearly, and she could feel him.

Do not fear, Tassadar. We yet shall meet. I have been looking forward to it for a long time.

Tassadar felt an old chill run through him. In Kerrigan’s distant voice, he could hear the malice of the Overmind, the ancient will of the swarm and the demon that had brought his own brand of extinction to the very homeworld of the Protoss.

I cannot forgive what you have become, Sarah Kerrigan, by your own will or not. You, like your old master, must be destroyed.

Then come for me, old one. You know where I await you. And do not think that your pet fleets and soldiers will be enough to defeat me. I am of the Swarm like no other your kind has ever faced, and by the Swarm, I will see your bloody quest ended.

The High Templar felt the sickening presence fade until he was once again alone, staring into the stars.

By Aiur, dark one, my quest will end.

[Dominus]

Wow. That was, for lack of more eloquent words, a bloody damn good set of chapters, Noble Ire, probably the best yet. I don't think I've read something this emotionally evocative for a long time -- as always, your artistry with words never fails to tug on the old heartstrings. May Asuryan strike me down if that wasn't a powerful set of chapter.

The Republica and Riker... well, I never quite expected you to kill off one of the main characters from Star Trek, seeing as how most of them have made it through more or less intact thus far. And if I wasn't expecting Riker's death, the Republica's own demise came as a complete surprise. But this continues a trend that I really like -- a willingness to sacrifice one's main characters and settings. Doesn't make it any less sad in the end, though.

While the inner Halo fan in me is relieved that Cortana and John made it out all right, I can't help but wonder exactly how many of the Republica's crew survived. If nothing else, I hope Ryceed makes it. She's become one of my favorite secondary characters, and without her there would be a tragic paucity of Mon Calamari in this story.

Given that much of my sheer loathing of the Tyranids has now been transferred to the Zerg by extension, I sincerely hope Kerrigan gets it in the end.

[Stuart Mackey]

Damn that was good. Good to see you prepard to make sacrafices where nessary.

[The Vortex Empire]

That was incredible. I can't think of anything else to say, that was just incredible. Definitely better than any other fanfic I've ever read. Yes, that includes StarCrossed.

[fusion]

Great chapter
Now I will try to predict the future, the empire gets involve, pawns the zerg with a star destroyer. Then Jacen with the help of Luke and other people will defeat Darth Vader. Some thing to that extent
Otherwise extream chapter. Beyond the words of mine...

[The Grim Squeaker]

Most excellent . I do like your Kerrigan

[TithonusSyndrome]

I read this recent installation while listening to Penderecki, and it was genuinely riveting. I suggest you try the same.

[rhoenix]

Very well done, Noble Ire. This is exceptional work, and I look forward to seeing the subsequent chapters made manifest. Hopefully sooner, rather than later.