I thought I'd throw this out here, seeing as it's right up SDN's alley. I usually write in short "chapterettes", and have about twenty in reserve with more in the works; I'll post at whatever rate people show the desire to consume them in.
This story is based (roughly) on the Star Trek universe as seen in Star Trek Online; set in the universe that Spock Prime and the Romulans leave from in the JJ Abrams movies, Romulus has been destroyed and the Romulan Star Empire is in tatters - leaving the Klingons to expand aggressively and pitting them in a bloody, protracted war with the Federation.
I sincerely hope you all enjoy; this is my first serious stab at writing something in a long time. Without further adieu,
- I -
U.S.S. Royal Hunt, Vega System, 2408Amra Du’Shen knew that she wouldn’t make it.
Maybe if I’d run with the others…
No, idiot. They were cut off – surrounded.
Maybe if they’d stood their ground…
Too late to worry about ‘ifs’.
They were cowards.
I fought well.
The woman’s internal conversation was cut off by an involuntary gasp of agony as her left leg – already ruined by the disruptor bolt – finally refused to carry her further. She sagged into the wall, her view turning to her pursuers as her back slipped on the smooth composite surface. Blue blood coursed down her leg, pooling in the burnt and tattered lip of her boots.
Lifeless eyes stared back at her, empty of any anger, sympathy, hate, or remorse. Empty of anything but the mechanical, calculated instinct of a trillion minds in one. Amra chanced a shot at the closest, the brilliant orange streak of light hitting her target squarely in its pallid face and… dissipating, uselessly, in a flicker of shield-contact.
The rifle sagged in her arms, the antennae on her head drooping sympathetically. She fired again, this time at a computer console across the hallway, but the shrapnel from its detonation did not reach the trio advancing unhurriedly towards her, only a few sparks striking their cybernetic implants.
They moved to the far side of the corridor. Learned from last time…
Desperately, Amra turned her attention to the light further down the hallway, coming welcoming and warm from the turbolift doorway.
So close. So damn close…
She forced her good leg to move, pressing her weight into the wall, trusting her tattered left to support her for the last few steps. It didn’t. She crashed to the floor choking back a scream and began crawling towards the source of light. She clawed for grip on the carpet, pushed off against the vertical brace of a wall section, and levered herself on her elbows and working knee. But she wasn’t fast enough.
‘Your current rate of movement is insufficient to permit escape,’ said an icy, unnatural voice behind her. ‘Your attempts are futile. You will cease moving to prevent unnecessary damage to your body.’
Amra tried to ignore the insane order, but her foot slipped off its purchase and she sprawled.
The bastards are right.
I won’t go like Shril. Or Donna. Or Commander Bodun. I won’t!
She grabbed for the phaser rifle and keyed settings into its panel, hearing the internal power supply heat up with a malicious hum.
I fought well, she repeated to herself. I will die well. I will make them pay.
I will make them burn.
She waited for them to get close enough, to feel the touch of ghoulish, cybernetic manipulators. She knew it was only seconds away, and could feel the pounding of her heart reverberating through her and back through the floor. It took her a moment to realize there were too many beats, even in her state; that there was another tempo, that of pounding footfalls not belonging to the hulking, ungainly Borg.
‘Halt and surrender. You will be assim-larrgh-’. Amra’s head snapped up and turned to look at the source of the sound; the eerie tone of a half-synthesized voice attempting to continue speaking without realizing that the organic airway it worked through was no longer connected to a set of lungs.
What she saw stayed with her for the rest of her life. It was a member of the crew – one she had seen on a number of occasions, but never interacted with. An alien, of a species unknown to her. He was tall and muscular; blue-purple skinned with deep furrows like old claw-marks emanating around his face and reaching around his head, partially covered by unkempt – and in places burnt – hair as white as the snows of her frigid home.
But at that the time, it wasn’t his appearance that shocked Amra; it was how he moved. Not bullishly like a charging Klingon or lithely and graceful like an Orion dancer, but with brutal, predatory efficiency. In his hand was a long piece of partially-molten durasteel and at his feet was the falling ruin of the third drone that a moment ago had been fixed on the crippled Andorian. Its throat had been severed almost to the spine by a vicious blow from the makeshift sword, and it still was still attempting to vocalize some awful parody of speech.
The aggressor trampled it with his boots, closing on the second drone and swatting away the arm it raised, crushing circuitry in the process. The drone, reacting too slowly, attempted to fire the disruptor anyway and was rewarded with its lower arm being replaced by cauterized flesh and charred wiring. The alien rejoined with a brutal stabbing blow that embedded the shard of metal into the drones’ torso, sending it staggering, but it refused to fall. It swung its other arm in a clumsy counterblow which struck home in the ribs. The alien rolled with the impact, but released his grip on the metal blade, leaving it hanging at an awkward angle from the drones’ machinery-infested chest. Borg servos whirred as the drone advanced, but the alien was faster and – Amra realized belatedly – he was not truly unarmed. Rather than fingernails or stubs or bony caps, the alien’s fingers ended in vicious curved talons. Before the drone could angle its remaining arm effectively the claws were at the drones’ neck, one hand slicing through flesh and sending a spatter of arterial blood over the wall and the other tearing out wires from the rig that connected to the back of the creatures’ skull. It collapsed, folding under the weight of combined system failures like a rag doll.
The victory, however, also gave the final drone a clear field of fire. Green bolts flashed out, blasting chunks out of the walls and ceiling near the newcomer. One struck him squarely as he dove for cover, and Amra saw a halo of fire surrounding him which flickered, flared and then died as his personal shield burnt out absorbing the impact. He pressed himself into the shelter of a doorway as the drone advanced, firing for suppression as it attempted to regain its target. It ignored as irrelevant the sound of a boot kicking something metallic behind him, and only dully registered something softly bumping against the wall to its left. The drone did, however register an ominous beeping sound and a spiking thermal trace coming from one of his implanted sensors.
When the phaser rifle exploded, the drone did not register anything at all – at least not in time to react, before half its body disintegrated in a thunderclap of plasma and flame. Sparks snapped and fizzled as a computer panel was consumed by a secondary explosion, and a cloud of gas filled the corridor as a coolant line in what remained of a wall burst. Then emergency seals snapped into place, and but for the ambient sounds of battle-damaged electronics and the omnipresent hum of the warp core, everything became oddly silent. Amra pulled herself up, squinting through the artificial mist for any sign of life, and was rewarded by the shape of the alien approaching her, coughing and covering his mouth against the fumes.
‘Are you alright?’ he asked in a sharp, lilting baritone.
‘My leg…’ Amra began, before the stress of terror and loss of blood finally took its toll. Her vision grew hazy and dark.
I'll throw up another couple of chapters now.
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