Been quiet here a few days...
Long chapter! History! Innuendo! Bonding! Farewells! Or something...
- XXVIII -
U.S.S. Royal Hunt, Vega System, 2408
After the routine bustle and commotion of a fully-crewed starship, the haunted desolation of battle, and the frenetic rush of repairs, and the dedicated but futile struggle to return her to full readiness, there was something singularly depressing about seeing the hallways of the U.S.S.
Royal Hunt utterly deserted. Despite the carpeting and soft-composite walls, every footfall seemed to echo in the emptiness.
Only a skeleton crew remained, composed mostly of engineers and technicians that had arrived on the repair vessels and were nursing their stricken charge back to their posts at Utopia Planitia. Fergusson and Fox had already drilled them extensively, talking them through the myriad makeshift solutions and work-arounds they had employed. Althaeon had permitted himself a bit of humour at their expense, as he watched the relief crews’ mounting horror at just what nightmarish contrivances were keeping the ship going. Afterwards, as they had left, both had sentimentally patted the warp core like an old warhorse put out to pasture.
In the end, the Captain and his First Officer were the last of the original crew to depart. A young officer had formally relieved Althaeon in an emotional but somehow anodyne ceremony, and both of the blue-hued aliens departed the bridge with a measure of reluctance – Althaeon once more drew a claw across what still remained of the ruined science station, murmuring something under his breath, before leaving with a nod. They stood together in the turbolift silently, before Amra took the chance that had eluded her in the mad rush of the previous days.
‘Sir, I just wanted to thank you for all your consideration,’ she said, mustering all her professionalism. ‘I hope I didn’t inconvenience you..?’
‘Not at all, Miss Du’Shen,’ he replied easily. ‘Have you rested better subsequently?’
‘Like a rock, sir.’
‘I am glad to hear.’
She waited for a response, but none came other than a polite nod. The gentle hum of the turbolift and flicker of lights as they moved through the ship somehow only highlighted the silence of the chamber, rather than doing anything to fill it.
He’s still as stoic as a rock. Hardly surprising, but…
‘Sir,’ she asked on a longshot, ‘when I first came to you, you said you were having trouble yourself. How did you cope with it? If you don’t mind…’ A moment of more silence, with nothing but the pulsing rhythm of the turbolift.
I hope they get this thing moving at proper speed soon or they’ll spend months just getting around the poor ship…
‘I… directed my energy towards solving a problem which troubled me,’ Althaeon replied, clearly unsettled by the interrogation of such a personal nature.
‘The Borg?’
‘Yes… the appearance of drones resistant to physical attack is troublesome to me.’ He paused, as if weighing the merits of expanding on the statement, before pushing on. ‘I have studied all the records I could find; the defense of Earth by the Enterprise-E was perhaps the most comprehensive. I have never encountered an instance of Borg drones using kinetic energy deflectors. This… exceeds the capabilities of Borg adaptation. It indicates the development of new tactics not previously associated with the Collective.’ Amra shuddered at the thought.
‘You’re worried about another invasion of the Federation,’ Amra said slowly, after another period of looming silence. The humming of the turbolift finally ceased and the door whispered open onto the semi-darkness of the deserted middle deck. Althaeon was caught mid-step and turned, eyes glinting in the overhead light of the lift.
‘I am worried about my home,’ he confessed.
‘Kaeribad?’ Amra replied dubiously. Her Captain turned, fixing her with the glinting blue orbs of his eyes.
‘What do you know of its history?’ he asked.
‘Not much,’ she admitted in turn. ‘I read a bit about you after the battle; I’d heard a bit before that, but there just wasn’t time to learn much in the middle of the reassignments.’ Althaeon nodded, and beckoned her to follow him towards the transporter room.
‘My people had a difficult history. The Borg came across our homeworld when we were barely star-faring. We fought them – it was grueling and bloody. Our colonies were wiped out, but our homeworld confounded them; their transporters were all but worthless, the terrain treacherous. Eventually, they left; historians think now to confront a threat elsewhere. But not before tens of thousands had perished holding their numbers back.’
‘And you’re worried the Borg would come back?’ Amra asked. The image of cyborg monsters falling upon a species that still used chemical rockets for space travel made her shudder visibly.
‘I’m certain of it,’ he replied gravely. ‘The Borg have taken a special interest in Earth more than once before, and Kaeribad lies almost directly in their path… and now, they appear to have developed capabilities optimal to combat a foe like my people.’
‘What do you mean?’
Althaeon permitted himself a smile.
‘When the Borg arrived, we had not adopted energy weapons or shields common among the more advanced races of the galaxy. We still relied on chemical slug-throwers – and the Borg had no defense against them. When we ran out of ammunition, we resorted to bows, to blades… to claws. They crippled my ancestors with orbital bombardment, force fields, tractor beams… weapons we had no countermeasures to. But they stood no chance in an isolated ground conflict – now, with these heavy drones… things would be very different.’
Amra let out a low, long whistle.
‘Who’d have thought… keeping the dreaded Borg away with museum arms.’
‘Indeed. From what I understand, it is an ongoing stumbling block in negotiations for Kaerbadii membership; we still maintain large arsenals of modern projectile weapons in case of just such a return, but the Federation balks at their capacity for inhumane harm. Yet how many inhumane deaths would they have saved aboard this ship?’ he asked, gesturing to the scarred and pitted walls around him. Amra nodded somberly.
‘It seems like you had a better reason to lose sleep than me,’ Amra shrugged, thumping along beside her unusually talkative, though still dark and calculating, commanding officer. Realizing how belaboured her progress was, he checked his pace slightly and inclined his head to respond.
‘My dedication to counteracting the Borg has only been a distraction from my underlying doubts,’ he said rather uncertainly. ‘It has proven an effective, though perhaps unhealthy, means of doing so.’
‘What doubts, sir..?’ she ventured, cautiously.
‘In my own abilities; to protect my crew, to defeat my enemies. I confronted death, too, Amra’ he said, once again giving her the tiniest of uncertain flutters as he used her given name. ‘Though I saved your life, you were the one to save me – and the remaining crew.’
‘Couldn’t have done it without you… Kaeris,’ she added, flashing a grin as he faltered mid-step at the use of his own familiar title. Emphatically, she added, ‘I mean it, and not just because I’d be a drone if it not for you.’
As she finished speaking, the pair rounded the final corner and a door hissed open ahead of them. The yellow-orange light of the transporter room loomed ahead, simple black duffel bags bearing the Starfleet crest already stashed on the pad in waiting. In Amra’s case there was a small white box tucked into one of the outer pockets of the sack; in Althaeon’s, there was also a long case of a similar material, even taller than he was and evidently hand-embroidered with a swirling crest like a whirlpool in a sea of knives.
They both stood silent a moment longer, and Amra imagined that just as she was, Althaeon was digesting the reminder of how all the belongings, everything which made their quarters ‘home’, could be reduced to a bag identical but in name-tag to tens of thousands of others and displaced elsewhere on a whim. He confirmed her suspicion a moment later.
‘I have always held that physical geography bears little impact on where you make a ‘home’. It is why I carry my house’s sigil,’ he said, indicating with an extended claw to the whirling pattern on the long case. ‘Nonetheless, In Starfleet I have seldom felt truly at home – until the Battle of Vega IX.’ Realizing how profound it was for him to be finally speaking about something not cold and rational, Amra wordlessly let him continue, and he did so. ‘If this crew is to be a family, we must be able to rely on each other as family – and not keep secrets as though we are strangers. I will endeavor to do so in future,’ he said, offering a hand with in-bent fingers as he had long ago learned to do.
‘Deal,’ Amra replied as she accepted the handshake.
‘Althaeon to
Astral Fire,’ he said, voice raised as he released his grip, ‘permission to come aboard?’
‘Permission granted, sir!’ called back the enthusiastic and disembodied voice of now-Lieutenant Fox.
‘Very well. Two to beam up.’
As they waited for the beam to energize – a slower-than-convenient process thanks to the Royal Hunt’s faltering power grid – Amra turned her head to the Captain.
‘If the crew’s a family, you must be the father. Does that make me overworked maid or the jaded wife?’
Althaeon shot her an incredulous look and then snorted with laughter, before forcing himself back into a more dignified stance as the familiar tingle of transportation enveloped him.