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Post by aoibheni on May 14, 2019 9:55:30 GMT
Prologue
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Post by aoibheni on May 28, 2019 15:16:58 GMT
“Malone has it back for the Jets, seeking out T'chan, T'chan's out in front, she's passing the Horizon's fore-guard, Ing, but his attention is on the ball... Ing's not been with it this season he's- T'chan's now in position on the northwest wallhook, a Malone cross and T'chan has the ball, Walleen with a spectacular tackle from the south for the Jets... and the field is clear, there could be a score from this... T'chan spins, kicks... and...ooooooh, it's saved by the Horizon's new keeper, Varock... cool, calculated, perfect defence there from Varock... I'd say that young man is going places, but he seems glued to that goalmouth... hard luck there for the Jets... and play is reset... the score remains even...”
“Dammit!” Danann peeled her eyes away from the small screen embedded in her table and downed the end of her pint, swallowing with some effort. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve. “I can't bare this, lemme know how it ends, yea?” Grabbing one last morsel of food from the platter set beside the screen she stood up. “I don't even like Zero-G”, Leeson complained, pulling the platter closer to him. “Federation bullshit.” “Yes, well, I do...” Danann reminded him, waving the deep fried something in her hand towards him. “So...” “So I do too,” Leeson replied, a cloud forming over his head. Danann took a bite and spoke as she chewed. “Fine, do what you want, just tell me the score when it's over.” Leeson sat back in his seat. “What are you gonna do?” Danann grinned. “I'mma play with the new recruits.”
Several minutes later the redhead had woven her way across the crowded bar with a tray of tiny glasses and a large bottle of something green. Without invitation she pushed her way towards a bench occupied by a small knot of tense-shouldered people, and plonked her haul down amongst them. “Right...” she called loudly, interrupting several hushed conversations and quieting half the bar into the bargain. “This nervous huddling shite ends now. Time to drink with your Captain. Budge up,” she ordered and they hastily made room for her.
She started to pour. A Bolian at the table stuttered and spoke, “I would like to take this opportunity to say, Captain, that's it's a honour to-” “Yea, no one likes a kiss ass, Blue. Drink up.” She passed the glasses around. Eyeing her new crew members she held up her glass. “On three.” They complied. A small crowd was slowly, casually forming around the table. A few of the spectators struggled to hide their smiles.They knew what was coming. “One, two, three,” everyone at the table knocked back their drinks. Danann slammed her empty glass on the rickety table with an appreciative hiss. The Bolian gasped, the human wheezed, both Bajorans suffered in silence as the alcohol immediately hit their blood streams. Danann stood and refilled each glass in turn. “Again.” The new recruits looked at their new drinks in consternation. “Again?” the young human asked, “I don't drink much...” “You're drinking with your Captain, love, you gotta keep up.” Directly behind Danann, the crowd shuffled to the right and left, leaving a clear gap. “One, Two, Three.” The recruits dutifully downed their second shot. Danann slammed her empty glass on the table once more. “Again!” she called out cheerfully, reaching forward to refill every glass. None of the recruits noticed the small patch of green liquid now soaking into the ancient floorboards behind their new Captain's back. No new recruit ever did.
The recruits were five shots deep when Niamh felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned and recognised the grim expression on her Second-in-Command's face. “What happened? The Jets lose again..?” she asked. Leeson shook his head. “Your friends are here - The Zorya's in orbit.”
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Post by Tom Marsland on Jun 17, 2019 17:01:22 GMT
Mission Briefing, Stardate 11906.17
XO: I will be in the CIC surveying the situation - it is crucial that we de-escalate the situation as much as possible, but if it comes to a shooting match, I want to be directly supervising the efforts of the air wing. Maintain position, and do your best not to take sides in the conflict. If you see an opportunity to return Captain Danann and Ezia to their faction, do so. I have the feeling that diplomacy will have to win the day.
CTO: Be ready for anything - it looks like the Maquis have some surprises up their sleeves.
OPS / CSO: Find out how in the hell the Maquis got their hands on our technology, and give me recommendations on what we're going to do about it.
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Post by aoibheni on Jul 27, 2019 17:53:24 GMT
The specks of light brightened and as they neared the planet surface, Niamh’s mind wrenched her back to the desperate moment she’d caught sight of debris, burning furiously in the upper atmosphere of New Haven.
But these guttering dots in the nightling sky didn’t herald the demise of a great Starfleet Captain as those in her ragged memory had. This time, the omen was unmistakably good.
A crackling sound replaced the gentle hiss over her wrist comm. Her breath caught in the cooling air. “--- quardon on the approach, I repeat, two-oh-two Squa--- “One-two-eight on vector, one...six...niner… Over.” “ETA, sixty sec--- n my mark…” “Acknowledged, Control, two-oh-two -- nding by, holding pattern established…”
Danann barely heard herself scream. The manned drones she’d sent up during the fight had survived. She stepped away from Tom, raising her comm unit to her lips. “Control, Danann. Request beam out to Command Centre, stand by” She turned back to Tom. “I’m glad you’re here,” she told him, hastily. “But keep your people in check, OK? They’re not gonna be welcome here.” She paused, noting suddenly how out of place all those Starfleet uniforms seemed on the surface of her planet. “...I’ll be in touch.” She tapped her comm unit once and spoke into it. “Now”.
Before Tom had time to speak, she was gone.
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“Where the fuck have you been?” “Later.” She cast a warning look at Stephen Leeson, her unofficial Ex-Oh and official pain in the ass. As usual, the look did little to calm his ire. She stepped off the small transporter pad and brushed past him into the artificially lit corridor beyond. “Walk with me,” she ordered. He fell silently into step. After several moments of silence, they passed into her command centre proper, a vast, irregularly shaped, cavernous room. The space was filled with people, some bloodied, some bruised, all engaged in a chaotic ballet as they co-ordinated the rescue effort and the return of the missing drone pilots.
“Talk to me,” she said as Leeson lined up to her right. “82% accounted for.. So far,” he told her. “So far… good, good… and the surface…?” her voice struggled to remain steady. “Significant losses. Leeson’s Rest is a pit, and Eddingtown is little better... “ he swallowed and forced himself to press on “...It was a school day.” The kids... “Get Eyala to give me a full report… They won’t get away with this.”
This seemed to satisfy him. “We’ve started plans to hit back,” Stephen informed her, leading her over to a large, table-top display. “We’ve got volunteers amassing here,” he pointed, “here… and here… No comms, they have their orders… We’ll make those bastards wish they never attempted a ground invasion.”
Starfleet insignias lay scattered across the terrain clustered in groups of three or four. Leeson pressed a fingertip on the screen’s glowing surface, leaving a grubby print behind obscuring the Away Team in most danger.
The Maquis were preparing to retaliate.
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Post by aoibheni on Dec 6, 2019 11:50:32 GMT
Epilogue.
And so, with the Zorya’s nose aimed firmly at the Maquis/Federation border, and the crew’s minds most definitely back on Zeta Nine, Niamh Danann and her meagre Starfeet cohort set off from a secret Maquis base out into the wilderness.
The terrain was rough and both Emeric and Volkova soon came to appreciate the need for their earlier costume change. Their second-hand Maquis boots were ample protection against the rocks and scree they faced as they marched along. They hadn’t counted against the subtle propaganda that Danann chose to offer at key, quiet moments, though, so as they sat and rested after hours of mindless trudging both young officers found themselves feeling for the plight of these long-abandoned Federation citizens and the strays they had welcomed amongst their ranks over the decades.
Despite her distaste for Starfleet, Volkova found Danann charming, open and honest; attractive qualities in a leader. Emeric’s earlier run in with the red-head still left a bad taste in the Orion’s mouth, though, and during a private moment, the two took the opportunity to touch base, compare notes and strategise.
Danann left them to it. Everyone came round eventually, she’d learnt. Distrust dissipated at its own pace, so as they talked in whispered tones, she scouted on ahead. While she knew where she was going, the land was dangerous and she knew how important it was to remain on the correct path. The bones of Maquis members had been found at the bottom of ravines or caught under falling rocks before. You didn’t take chances.
When she located the next landmark, she returned for the two women.
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Meanwhile, the Zorya’s journey back to Federation space progressed. They had been handed a list of demands not least among them that they should remove themselves from Maquis space immediately. With Zeta Nine’s defences aimed firmly in their direction, and the fate of their Captain’s extremities at risk, they found they had little choice but to comply.
As tantalising as the mystery unfolding on Zeta Nine’s primary moon was, they valued their Captain’s life more, so uncharacteristically for this crew, they turned away from their foes and retreated.
This left Douglas on edge, and with good reason. As he scanned the space before them he spotted a faint tachyon surge. Soon after his suspicions were confirmed as a barrage of heavy phaser fire swept across the Zorya’s bow. Their shields held and as their attacker decloaked the crew let out a collective roar. The Bremen had returned, this time with reinforcements.
As klaxons howled and red lights flashed, the Zorya was faced with a choice; stay and fight and risk their Captain’s life and any chance of a treaty with some of the Maquis, or turn tail, make a break for it and run the risk of emboldening the Maquis.
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The sun set, bathing Zeta Nine’s wild and beautiful surface in a peach and burgundy glow, and Danann called a halt to their progress. The land up ahead would be steeply down slope, she told Emeric, it was better to face it with the full light of morning and a good night’s sleep. The prospect of an entire night on this forsaken rock with this awful harridan left Inala quivering. Volkova sensed her friend’s discomfort and chose to take the brunt of Danann’s conversation and attention. After a while she realised that Nia was glancing over their small campfire at her with increasing warmth. Perhaps, she thought, that could be useful later on.
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Tom Marsland came to with his hands and feet bound to a chair and a chill in the air. This, he realised, was right out of the Starfleet Command training programme and suddenly he was grateful that he’d already spent several days tied to a chair and deprived of sleep in preparation for his first command.
He was blind-folded but he could tell he was in a cave; the air smelt musty, cool and unusually still. The sound of dripping water to his right seemed muffled and far away. A voice spoke, but again, he found it difficult to make out what it was saying.
“Wrong side” the voice clarified, moving to Marsland’s left. His blindfold was ripped off, sending a searing pain through the raw bloody wound that had taken the place of his right ear. “I said… what do your people know about our moon…?”
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Predictably, the Zorya chose neither Plan A nor Plan B. Instead they cleverly split the difference. Planting a web of proximity mines swiftly replicated by Gutey in Engineering across the Maquis battle line while Douglas and the bridge crew bobbed and wove their way through a migraine-inducing dogfight, the Zorya inched its way towards the border. Any Maquis fighters who tested the mines found out the hard way that Starfleet tech was no joke. Several blinding explosions later, the Maquis attack petered out, the ships cloaking and seeming to melt into nothingness.
The Zorya was left to lick its wounds and soothe its jangled nerves.
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Dawn saw all three women stiff-necked and chilled to the bone but they soon warmed up as they set off once more for the caves in which Danann claimed Marsland was being held. As they travelled, Danann asked them about their lives, about why they’d chosen to don a starfleet insignia, about their ambitions. She seemed genuinely interested and the few reluctant answers they gave were met with a cheerful enthusiasm and comparisons with her own time at the Academy. She told them about her tenure on the Zero-G football team, how awful she had been at the more academic subjects, and her failed attempts to date her beautiful room-mate Cadet Victoria Lane.
“Tall, blonde hair, athletic…” Danann remembered. “Bit like you, Volkova,” she observed none too subtly, turning on her heel to glance back at the Ensign.
As she turned, the ground shifted beneath her. The young officers watched in stunned horror as Danann lost her footing and tumbled like a rag doll down a scree-slippery slope. There was a sickening thud, the sound of rocks clattering and then silence.
Volkova immediately put her prejudices aside and picked her way with speed down after Danann. Emeric hesitated for a moment, lost in the notion that a world without Danann in it might just be worth the headache of explaining all this to Starfleet Command.
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It was as they prepared to cross over the border that the Zorya was shook with an enormous blast to their starboard side. The explosion sent them careening. Decks 5 through 9 suffered hull breaches, the starboard nacelle groaned as it listed under the strain of so much buckled metal. Moments later, their warp bubble destabilised. “You’d swear they didn’t fucking want us to leave!” someone yelled on the bridge, a frustration shared by all present. Consoles exploded and sparks flew and it wasn’t until Feyna’s call for a Tactical update went unanswered that Douglas’ condition was noticed.
As the unconscious Leftenant Commander was pulled off his smoking console, Feyna roared orders and ran her own set of tactical scans. A Maquis fighter had lodged itself deep within the Zorya’s side. Feyna’s eyes widened as she realised that her ship’s starboard shield array was totally inactive and the fighter’s miniature warp core was overloading.
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Deep within the shaking bowels of the Zorya, Ezia yelled to be let out. No-one was listening.
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Danann gurgled and gasped, a livid gash had opened up on her temple. Blood darkened her hair and oozed onto the grey stones beneath her head. As any field medic knew, a blunt-force trauma like that left little chance of recovery. Her face was patterned with an array of scratches and welts, her pupils were dilated, and she slipped in and out of consciousness as the two officers worked on forming a plan. The Zorya would be out of comm’s range at the stage, and they knew no-one they could call. The word “stretcher” had just been uttered when Danann stopped them with a bloody hand to Emeric’s arm. “Get to the cave,” she mouthed. “Get Tom.” she stretched out her hand and pointed further down the slope before her eyes lost focus and she slipped into permanent unconsciousness.
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Rousseau was torn between concern for her tiny child and her husband. “Once we get out of this, my beloved,” she told her other half as he lay silent and still on her operating table, “we are having a serious discussion…”
She wasn’t even sure what about, but being angry right now felt safer than feeling hopeless. She held back her fears and let her training take over as more injured crew spilled in and overwhelmed Sickbay.
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“Io, Europa, Phobos, Cordelia, Ariel, Enceladus, Elara, Ananke, Mimas, Tethys...” Marsland hummed along as he listed, “...did you know moons can have their own moons?” Tom interrupted himself, flashing his charming smile at his questioner. “They make us learn them all. For a whole semester, all you see in flight school is cadets with their heads in PADDs trying to remember what comes after Iocaste and Erinome… The Jovian moons are a bitch to remember,” he observed. “If only Jupiter hadn’t been such a ladies man, eh?” He leaned back, winked and popped a finger gun in his captor’s direction.
He got a swift swipe to the jaw for his efforts. “Enough!” his gaoler roared, wiping blood off her disruptor’s grip and glaring at him. “Talk, or you lose a finger.”
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As Cordan worked a break-neck speed to reroute power around the Zorya’s gutted decks, Engineering burst into action. Gutey and Cordan worked in tandem, re-inforcing this bulkhead, cutting through that one, feverishly formulating and executing their plan almost simultaneously.
Feyna spared a brief thought for her own fate. “Is this as fitting an end as Rome’s had been?” she wondered.
As the fighter’s warp core heated up and Gutey’s engineers battled at the coalface to both contain its leaking radiation and loosen its grip on their own ship, far away, their Captain was facing a crisis of his own.
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“Get this into a box,” Tom’s tormentor ordered over the sounds of his ragged, pain-filled gasps, handing his detached ring finger to a helper.
“I have all day, Captain, but you will eventually run out of body parts.”
Just then, a commotion drew her attention aside. Emeric and Volkova were being dragged down the cave’s main passageway, hands bound and footsteps heavy. “They say they’re with Danann!”
The sense of relief Tom felt was enormous.
“Let us go!”, “She’s dying out there!”, the young officers shouted as they were manhandled into the chamber. Tom’s stomach dropped.
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Cordan’s warpcore breach countdown was becoming ever more urgent. He noted that there were no signs of Maquis activity anywhere nearby. They were counting on this fighter setting off a secondary breach in their own core, he realised. Despite himself, he was impressed; The Maquis were frugal. He could admire that.
With a triumphant shout over the comms Gutey reported the good news. His people had succeeded in cutting through enough damaged hull to release the fighter. His report was overshadowed by Cordan yelling, “Ten Seconds!!!”
Feyna gave the order to release the fighter and get them as far away as possible.
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Two weeks later the Zorya was all but patched up with new parts, a conspicuously shiny new hull plating down the starboard side. Joking comparisons were made between it and the Franken-Bremen, but no-one seemed ready to laugh just yet.
A signal came in from a scanner relay on the Federation/Maquis border near where the Zorya had finally crossed back to safety. Within the signal was a simple message; “Come and collect your Captain.” A set of co-ordinates showed he had been deposited on a moon orbiting a planet just inside Federation territory.
When the Zorya arrived they found him in an EVA suit, sitting, waiting on a giant boulder in zero atmosphere. In his pack he had a box containing his removed finger and a message addressed to himself from his captor. “Since you love moons so much”.
There was also a PADD, a renewed list of outstanding demands. Underlined were the words “a Maquis consolate on a prominent Federation world and the return of Maquis informant, Ezia."
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