by Tony Healey
"I see."
"What do you want to do?"
A pause, then, "Do what you have to."
"Aye," Greene said and closed the channel. He turned to the Chief. "It's a go. Now what?"
"Five minutes," Rayne's voice said around them.
"Let's see those hands of yours," Gunn said.
The Commander held them out, palms up. They were relatively clean, and when he saw the state of those around him, including the Chief herself, Greene almost felt ashamed.
But Meryl simply looked up at him, a smile on her face. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you'd been counting money all your life, Del. Ready to get 'em dirty with me?"
It meant she really did appreciate him being there with her. It meant she had noticed. It meant he was doing good down here, helping her get them moving, give them a fighting chance at survival.
"Sure," he said.
*
Systems returned to normal, registering the many busted parts of the Defiant.
"Ignore them," Jessica told her crew. "Focus on what we have."
"Helm inoperative," Banks said.
She threw him an icy look. "I said to focus on what we had, Mister Banks."
"Yes Captain."
"Can I speak freely?" Rayne asked.
Chang looked up the same time King did.
"Of course," Jessica said.
"What happens if we surrender?"
"We won't," Jessica assured her.
The communications officer sighed. "But if we don't have a choice . . ."
"There's always a choice," King said. Now she addressed them all. "I will never let this ship, or its crew, fall into enemy hands. I'd rather die first. There is always a choice between fighting to survive and simply rolling over."
No one said anything to the contrary.
"Keep your chins up. We'll get through this," Jessica said.
"Two minutes," Rayne said.
A new chord rang out around them as power returned to the engines. The helm console came to life again, lights blinking around Banks.
"We're back in action!" Banks cried.
Jessica flipped a switch. "Captain King to the engineering section. Well done everyone. We've got legs again. Captain out."
27.
She looked at him with pride at her own handiwork, not expecting what he did next. The pulsing light of the reactor surged around them as Commander Greene pulled the Chief in close and kissed her hard, firm on the lips. For a split second she resisted, surprised by his spontaneity – then she sagged in his arms, completely lost in his embrace.
The Chief reached up as they kissed, let her fingers slip through his hair. It was a long moment, heightened by what they'd just achieved, by their deep love and desire for one another. By the beating heart of the Defiant they'd both managed to restore. It throbbed, the air around them vibrating.
And yet they stayed that way for a long time. Eventually she pulled away from him, and he looked at her with big, fierce eyes.
I want you, they said. I love you. I need you.
For the briefest of moments, lost in his embrace, the Chief felt like a girl. A simple girl impossibly drunk on love. Then she was back to the real world, to a career as the head of the engineering section aboard a starship.
She glanced left and right, noticed the crowd and parted. "We're, uh, being watched," she whispered.
The Commander grinned, still holding her and refusing to let her get too far. "I don't care."
"Well I do," she said softly, then glared at them all. Her voice rose, became a terrifying bellow. "Back to work you sorry maggots! You're lucky I don't dump you out the nearest airlock!"
Commander Greene couldn't stop laughing, even when she gave him a short jab to the arm. Chief Gunn walked to the nearest comm. panel and contacted the bridge.
28.
"We have limited power to engines," Banks said.
Jessica clucked her tongue. "Okay. Weapons?"
Lieutenant Jackson shook his head as he consulted his own display. "Nothing, Captain. No power to any of our weapons systems."
"Damn it!" Jessica exclaimed, immediately regretting doing such a thing in front of the crew.
"We're sunk," Rayne said.
"Are we going to surrender?" Chang asked.
Jessica snapped about. "Not on your life, Commander. There's another way out of this."
"We need a miracle," Banks remarked.
"Not at all, Lieutenant," King said. A smirk made its way onto her face – and it just got bigger and bigger. "All we need to know is what buttons to push."
"Captain?" Chang asked, bemused.
"Sometimes you have to do the unexpected thing, Commander. Make that rash decision," she told her. "It can be your only way out of a situation at times. It's a fingers-crossed kind of thing."
"A leap of faith," Chang said, understanding. Jessica nodded.
"Yes. Yes that's it exactly, a leap of faith."
The bridge crew watched as their Captain revealed her plan.
"Banks, can you get one-half thruster power out of the engines?"
"Captain, I don't think –"
She snapped her fingers once. "Stop. Can you do it? Yes or no."
"Yes, at a push," Banks said. "But –"
She dismissed him immediately. "Ensign Rayne, put out a call throughout the ship. Brace for impact. Everyone get to their positions and strap themselves in. Right now."
"Captain, surely you don't mean to . . ." Chang said.
Jessica's jaw set hard, her eyes burned as mean pits of fire in such a beautiful face. "I do."
Rayne's voice boomed around them. "All hands, brace for impact. Assume positions. Evacuate all outer decks. Seal them off. Repeat, all hands brace for impact. Assume positions."
"Banks, set your course for the Jandala. Throw everything into the engines so they don't have time to get away," she said sternly. "Ram them into next week."
"Yes Captain," Banks complied.
The Defiant lurched forth, her engines blazing. The viewscreen showed the Jandala growing larger and larger in front of them. She could imagine Cessqa's panic as she watched the Defiant head straight for her. It was a crazy, imaginative move that a Namarian simply wouldn't have thought of. A human act.
She would not surrender them to her. She'd rather destroy the ship, kill them all, than have them die by Cessqa's hands. Still, there was a chance they'd survive. A slim chance, but Jessica had already decided she'd take what she could get.
The ship shuddered, the Jandala in their sights, the Defiant's engines blazing behind them. Jessica glanced across at Chang. The Commander was faced forward, ready for whatever came.
True Officer material, Jessica thought. She's not questioned my order because she knows it's a viable alternative to giving ourselves up.
"Here we go everyone. Let's see how they deal with a real-life leap of faith!"
29.
"Propulsion!" Cessqa shouted. Back below decks again, Risa was quick to respond to her commander.
"Not yet. I need time."
"We don't have it," Cessqa spat. She looked up. "Yet our enemy does."
Cessqa studied her holodisplay. The Defiant made steady progress, moving under power which was more than could be said for the Jandala.
"So . . ." Cessqa said in near disbelief. "They are coming."
Her eyes were hard silver as she watched the human's ship accelerate toward them, with no indication that it was about to shift course. It almost looked as though . . .
Oh, she is a tricky one. She would risk that. Risk everything, just to stop us. I have underestimated them time and time again. It will not happen in the future. They are not to be trusted, these doughy pink humanoids. Not to be trusted.
Cessqa manned the controls from where she was, piloting the Jandala out of the way.
30.
The Jandala tried to run. Tried to get out of the way in time. But the Namarian vessel was in far worse shape than her commander at first feared.
The Defiant accelerated ahead of her, engines roaring with everything she had.
Jessica watched the scene with an almost clinical detachment. She did not feel fear, nor a thrilling stab of endorphins as they rushed to their possible deaths. Only a deep calm, a restive emotion.
The Defiant was about to crash into another ship. More often than not, it resulted in their destruction. How many ships had been lost that way?
Too many. Defiant was about to be another one of their number.
She closed her eyes. A recent memory surfaced and she went with it.
Back to the Officer's Mess.
Commander Greene looked sideways at the twinkling lights beyond the viewport. He looked almost wistful, longing.
"Da dee da da, da dee dee . . ." he sang softly, barely audible.
Jessica's brows rose in surprise. "Del, I never took you for a singer."
He laughed. "I'm not. It's just something my Mother used to sing to me."
"Really?"
"You don't recognise it?"
She shook her head.
"Da dee da da, da dee dee," he hummed again. "Star of wonder, star of night . . ."
"Oh. What is it? Where's it from?"
"An old hymn or something. I dunno. I've never forgotten it though. All these years and I still find myself humming it in the shower," the Commander said. He looked down at the coffee cup in his hands, bashful. "Mother used to sing it all the time, like a comfort. Silly, really."
"No it's not. At least you have that memory of her," Jessica said. She didn't need to continue. What was unsaid remained in the air, present and accounted for.
I didn't know my own Mother. I wish I had something like that to remember her by, she thought as she followed his gaze to the cosmic blanket beyond the confines of the Defiant. I wish I could see her face, hear her voice whenever I looked at the stars. All I see is what's been taken away from me. I see a dark void, filled with lights. Some of those I've known and lost among them . . .
*
The Defiant drove straight into the Jandala, her forward hull crumpling like a tin can in some places. In others she held up well. The Jandala buckled under the impact, her engines dying behind her.
However the Defiant had survived the encounter. Around her, the bridge seemed to be intact. There was no hiss of escaping atmosphere. The old girl hadn't let them down yet.
"Are we dead?" Chang asked groggily to the side of her.
"Not yet," Jessica answered.
PART IV
Fire And Rain
31.
Metal locked onto metal. The Jandala and the Defiant held together, the two ships caught in the same dance.
The Defiant was a ship of the night. Jessica felt for the buckle of her safety harness, unclipped herself and stood. The air was close, warm. Around her the Defiant remained still.
"How's about everyone else. You all okay?" she asked. Her voice sounded too loud in there, too abrupt in the way it shattered the stillness of the dark.
"Yeah," Commander Greene said with a groan. "I guess."
"Well you're answering, so . . ." King said. The tortured sigh of metal came from several decks away, still audible all the way up on the bridge. It was the Defiant's hull itself, torn open in the impact. Ripped away like skin from flesh.
How many times are we going to break today? she asked herself. Well you will insist on ramming the enemy. And maybe this time will be the last . . .
"Emergency lights," Jessica said as she unclipped herself. The deck shifted beneath her, the ship's artificial gravity struggling to compensate.
"I don't think that's going to happen," Greene said, activating a small light from a compartment next to his chair, handing one to Jessica.
She turned it on. "You still with me Chang?"
"I'm still with it, Captain, yes," Chang said. She flicked her own light on, unclipped herself and checked on Banks and Rayne.
Jessica walked over to Jackson. "How 'bout you?"
She turned him around. Her breath caught in her throat. She shone her light up at the ceiling, where a tangle of broken wires and power cables hung from a blown bulkhead. They had fallen on Jackson, electrocuting him. The scattered debris littered his body, polymer fragments and fine white dust. His face was charred, burned, locked in an expression of complete horror. Eyes bulging from their sockets.
Now she noticed his hands. Locked into tight fists as he fought the massive charge that had killed him – fried him from the inside out.
"Jess?" Greene asked. He drew nearer, saw Jackson, then steered her away from him. "Come on. You don't need to see that any longer."
She shrugged him off, stood over at the rear of the bridge, her hand over her mouth. "I just need a moment," she said, choking back the urge to vomit.
It was eerily silent on the bridge right then, as if a funeral shroud blanketed the room.
Greene nodded, went to the others. She heard him get them into a group, get them coordinated.
She'd seen people die. But it was the unexpected nature of it that shocked her.
Jessica turned back around, used the light to survey the whole bridge. A huge crack ran across the ceiling, and it showed real signs of spreading. The Defiant groaned, the sound of metal straining from a great weight. Or two starships, entangled, spinning out of control in the backwash of a gigantic comet.
"It's too dangerous to stay here," she said. All eyes fell on her. She did what she did best. Sucked it up, buried it deep down inside. Until later. Until she could have privacy to let it loose, get rid of it. Cry and scream and moan. Until then . . .
"We need to regroup elsewhere," she said, her voice full of steely resolve. "Follow me."
32.
A chunk of debris had fallen, destroying the holodisplay and in the process pinning her to the floor. Cessqa breathed. In and out, in and out. She tried to move her arms and to her surprise they worked. Next, her legs. They moved but she could not shift them.
Stuck.
She craned her head around, looked at the section of bulkhead that had her held in place, and the rage boiled over. She screamed, something that sounded awful and stretched coming from her. Her hands found the edge of the chunk of heavy material, and she strained to lift it.
Nothing.
Cessqa drew a deep breath, tried again. It shifted a little, then settled back onto her legs. The pain was excruciating.
Feet padded into the devastated command deck, and Cessqa turned her head in time to see Risa run in. She immediately came to her aid, but Cessqa waved her off.
"No."
"But Cessqa–"
"I SAID NO!"
She took another breath, held it and with every ounce of strength in her body Cessqa hefted the piece of debris up off of her legs. She propelled it off to the right, where it clattered against the deck. She got up, her limbs wobbly but still operable. She felt sore all over. But that was nothing to what she felt inside. Deep down, where the fire burned more than ever. Where it threatened to come streaming out of every crevice in bursts of intense flame.
"Get your weapons. We are going over there to end this."
*
The secondary command deck was in darkness, like the rest of the ship. But at least it was in one piece and did not contain any recently killed crew members.
"Okay. Commander Greene, you will go to the engineering section with Banks and Rayne and assist the Chief in getting us some power back. Chang, you will stay here with me. We'll get a team together, ready to defend this ship," Jessica said.
"You really think they'll attempt to come over?" Chang asked.
"I'd bet on it if I were you," Greene said. "If they're still alive, I'd count on them making an attempt to breach the Defiant and take us by force. It's what I'd do in her situation."
"We'll deal with that," Jessica said. "You three get moving. Tell the Chief to do whatever she can. Best of luck."
"Come on, you two, you heard the lady," Greene said and led them out into the dark corridor.<
br />
Chang turned to her. "So how do we go about this?"
"Find Hawk. That's our best option," Jessica said.
"Hawk?" Chang asked, utterly confused.
She had to backtrack to realise her mistake. "I mean Dollar. We need to find Dollar."
With that they were off, running. "Captain, what about the secondary command deck? There's nobody there," Chang asked next to her.
"Lisa, without power we don't have anything to command."
"Good point."
33.
The vacuum clutched at them, its penetrating freeze, cold enough to boil their bodily fluids in seconds. A human would not have lasted long in the extremities of open space. Yet the Namar were made of tougher stuff. Cessqa merely grimaced at the lack of oxygen, the immense radiation and deep, dark cold. It was an irritation, an inconvenience, little more.
Unlike a human, both she and Risa could last a short while exposed to the void before their bodies succumbed to its harsh nature. More than enough time to breach a starship.
They stood outside the Jandala, on a ledge intended for maintenance when under power. Now it served as their launch. The Defiant had ploughed into them, embedding itself, and at the same, leaving an open gash. It looked like a fallen skyscraper without a sky to point to.
The comet had more or less left them behind, though in its wake, both vessels were still bombarded with ice crystals and micrometeors. The stars spun around them, both vessels locked in a tango of colossal proportions.
Risa looked at her for direction. Cessqa pointed at an opening in the Defiant's hull, like the claw mark of a huge monster that had left the Union vessel vulnerable. Risa nodded her understanding.
Cessqa went first. She pushed herself off, her momentum giving her enough thrust, however small, to bridge the gap between her ship and Captain King's.
