Disclaimer: All rights to Star Trek Enterprise, the characters and situations except as noted below are reserved by Paramount Studios.
Tia Anlor (Tee-ah Ahn'-lor) is my own creation.
This is the 14th story in this series, the others being 'Golden Girl'; 'A Few Words'; 'Glistni'; 'Small Time'; 'Acquisition'; 'What Do I Do Now?'; 'For Want of Kilyiis'; 'Daasii'; 'Noblesse Oblige'; 'Roses and Thorny'; 'Time and Again', 'House of Cards' and 'Starlight Maiden'. This story takes place almost three weeks later. Tia has been on the Enterprise for about six months. This continues the arc begun in 'Time and Again' and concludes in 'Luuru'.
Rating: PG
Armageddon
by: JMK758
Chapter One
Disaster
Captain Jonathan Archer entered the Mess Hall, looking forward to a relaxing dinner with his crew. Beside him, Commander Charles (Trip) Tucker was just finishing up a brief overview of the status of the Engineering section. "So, everything is ship shape and Bristol fashion." Archer stopped, looking askance at his friend.
"Bristol fashion?"
"Uh huh." Trip replied with a good-ol-boy grin.
"Someone's been into the history books again."
"Can't know where we're going without knowing where we've been."
Archer decided he could answer; and have the man, who was clearly in a good mood, go on, or turn and continue into the room. He opted for the latter, just knowing it would throw off his friend, hiding a smile as he did so.
Trip, having nothing left to do, followed.
They made their casual way around the dinnertime crowd, opting this evening not to use the inner Captain's mess. It was something Archer would avoid, and if he had his way he would have dismantled the smaller room months ago, expanding the usable space for the crew by at least another table. But every time he thought about doing so, something would come up to make the smaller room necessary.
Trip had long ago noticed that, over the past few months, people had chosen favorite spots. He could identify exactly where someone he wanted to find would be before he even entered the room. Such were people creatures of habit that he could find anyone unerringly. He knew, without looking, that off to his right, just under one of the observation ports, he would find Tia, along with Hoshi and Liz Cutler. Tia would be seated facing the port; she never tired of the view of the stars; Hoshi and Liz would be seated opposite and next to her respectively, Hoshi with her back to the port.
In fact, so certain was he of it that he closed his eyes briefly, turned right about 70 degrees, took seven steps, turned right another 50 degrees and opened his eyes.
The room was gone.
x
He was standing in a zone of featureless blue, but that blue, which circled him all about, was spotted with moving images of various sizes which floated carelessly about him. The images were moving, displaying live action scenes of events on planets, in space, on ships, everywhere, seemingly without rhyme or reason. "Hello, Commander," a pleasant voice greeted him from behind. He turned, astonished, staring in disbelief at the Starfleet Officer he'd last laid eyes on just before the man had 'died'. "Welcome."
"I'll be damned." Tucker admitted when he could find his voice. "Daniels."
The man was wearing a blue Starfleet uniform that looked so crisp and new it seemed to have just been woven, compared to Tucker's not-quite-as-new-blue one. He looked exactly as he did when he used to serve meals in the Captain's mess when he was posing as the ship's steward, before Silik had blown him to atoms. "What am I doing here?"
"Do you know where 'here' is?"
"I've a pretty good idea, from the Cap'n." He looked around at the various floating images that passed by at different levels and paces in the blueness. "This is where you watch the cosmos."
"Essentially accurate." Daniels admitted. "We've brought you here because we need you."
"You usually only deal with the Cap'n."
"This time that's not practical. This time, we feel you are the best one to assist us."
"Interesting." Tucker admitted, trying to put on his best poker face. He'd trusted, and pretty much didn't think overmuch about, Daniels as a steward. When he was revealed to be much more than that Tucker had been dubious, and then concerned. He was not particularly confident about the people Daniels represented and reported to. The entire Temporal Cold War business had left Tucker feeling pretty much like a powerless pawn in a game played by two Grand Masters who did not care what pieces got sacrificed as long as the game was won; or at least not lost.
But he had proven himself helpful to them, and the Captain did trust him. That alone went a long way.
A very long way.
"All right. What did you have in mind?"
x
Daniels gestured at one of the passing images. It quickly expanded and expanded until it took up the entirety of the area before them, life-like and full size, in living color and sound. It was night on a planet somewhere, they were looking at a low wall of rocks about a meter high, beyond which was a short space of perhaps a meter and a half to a sloping hill of rocks and stones. There were irregular flashes of light and devastating roars of nearby explosions. The sharp staccato bursts of gunfire could be heard all about, punctuated by explosions near and far, and flashes of light that turned night for an instant into day, but the light was harsh and garish, nothing like the steady glow of the stars above and the reflected light of three irregularly shaped moons.
Just as Trip had taken in this much, he was astonished to see Tia Anlor pop up from behind the rocks, wearing a Starfleet uniform. He took in that instant the look of absolute fury on her normally joyous face, that her hair, which normally fell in a golden cascade down her back well past her waist now barely reached her shoulders, and that her face and uniform were covered in a spray of red blood!
She raised a phase pistol at a point high to his right, and an intense beam of energy leapt from it to strike a point high up the hill. He did not see what she had aimed at, but there was a titanic explosion punctuated by a short shriek. The phase pistol was set on maximum, and had annihilated its target.
With a shriek of rage Tia leveled the weapon and fired past Trip, the image of the intense blue beam cutting off before it passed to Trip's right. She turned and fired another blast past his left side even before the light of the first explosion reached back for her, and an instant later there was a sharp but smaller explosive report and a hole suddenly appeared in Tia's chest, followed by a spray of golden blood.
Tia was rocked back by the impact, but raised the phase pistol again, getting off a burst before a second shot exploded behind Trip and another hole appeared in the middle of the girl's chest, opening a second horrible spray of blood.
"TIA!" Trip screamed uselessly, horrified as he watched, unable to take a step forward to help his beloved. She did not fall, firing the weapon again. The two shots, each fatal to a human, had missed her heart by nearly ten centimeters too high. The blood spread to cover her chest in a golden smear as she screamed something in Auran, firing again.
There was a long staccato burst from somewhere behind Trip that drowned out his scream as Tia's body was riddled by scores of bullets that drove her back step by step, golden blood seeming to explode from her body as she staggered, driven backward by the merciless force until she fell on the slope of the low hill.
Trip stared in horrified disbelief at her still body suffused in golden blood as she lay on the small slope of rocky hillside. Her eyes were open, staring unseeingly at the stars. Her face, framed by her now short golden locks, seemed amazingly peaceful. She no longer saw the flashes of harsh light nor heard the explosions that continued about them.
"TIA!" It was a woman's piercing scream far to his right, and when he looked he was astonished to see Hoshi and Travis crouching behind the wall about fifteen meters away, as if they had been making for the site when her death halted them. She raised her phase pistol over the wall. "You fucking bastards!" She screamed, firing wildly.
"Get Down!" Trip heard a furious yell from further to his right, turning along the panoramic scene to see Malcolm further back. Less than an instant later the smoke trail of a rocket terminated where Malcolm was covered, and that entire section of the wall disappeared in a titanic explosion.
When the dust cleared enough to see, there was absolutely nothing left where Malcolm had crouched but a deep crater, and when Trip looked back to his other friends he was horrified to see them lying dazed nearly three meters up the side of the rocky incline. They were both trying to get up, shaking themselves.
"Hoshi! Travis!" Trip yelled, unable to stop himself. "For God's sake – get to cover."
As if they could actually hear him, they both realized they were high above the level of protecting wall, completely exposed, and tried to get down the hill when long bursts of staccato fire caught them. Hoshi and Travis' bodies were riddled with hails of bullets, some raising clouds of pulverized rock about them. They convulsed to the merciless impacts of metal that pounded them, and when it ended a long moment later they lay still upon the hillside. The harsh glare of explosions near and far flashed their bodies into horrendous images of light and shadow, of blue and spreading red.
From further still along the right line of covering wall a phase beam launched bright against the night, and then again, and Trip's perspective changed to bring him closer to the surviving combatant, his viewpoint elevating until he could see over the wall from a terrible close vantage of barely feet, as if he stood upon the wall itself, looking down at the hopeless scene.
Jonathan Archer lay face down in the dirt, his uniform soaked in blood from a line of wounds that had stitched across his back, covering his Science Officer in gore. Archer was not moving, then or ever again.
T'Pol fired again over the low wall; then loosed another burst into the darkness, followed by another. But then she stopped, looking at something to her right, beyond Archer's body along the length of the space created by the wall and hillside. She looked for several moments at whatever it was that had attracted her attention, and then her body relaxed of all the tension that had compressed it. She looked at the weapon in her hand, checking the remaining charge in the glare of flashing light. Then she sighed silently, opened her hand and let the phase pistol fall to the stones, and slowly rose from her crouched position.
She stood straight and tall, seemingly calm, so that only one who knew her could see the tension in her eyes. Those eyes moved from the thing that had held her attention to scan the field before her. Her eyes paused once, and again, and again, over and over as she looked about her. Trip did not count how many times she focused on something. There was no point. He had seen the charge level on the pistol before it fell.
She stood in the flashing glare of explosions, the roar of heavy weaponry and small arms fire, and gave those surrounding her her best look of Vulcan placidity and defiance. A moment later the massive roar began.
T'Pol was riddled with a hail of metal that perversely kept her upright in the opposing streams as her body seemed to erupt in green blood. A long moment was all it took, and when it was over she fell upon the still body of her Captain.
xx
Trip turned to Daniels, but found himself facing the Enterprise instead. There was another full size panoramic image blown up behind him, and in it the Enterprise NX-01, the pride and heart of Starfleet, hung in a firefight of its own, one it was badly losing. The starboard nacelle was gone, totally obliterated, and from dozens of ruptures in the hull atmosphere leaked and froze in white streams of ice and debris. The three phase cannons were still firing at the four ships that darted about it, but they were clearly firing on limited power and accomplishing absolutely nothing.
As he stared in shock one of the ships, badly damaged and leaking atmosphere and plasma, came up from below and struck the saucer section from underneath. There was a tremendous fiery explosion and when it burned out in the vacuum of space a huge chunk of the ship, from deflector back past the bridge was gone. It was as if some giant thing had taken a huge bite out of the saucer, and the mighty starship reared back, spun up and over, wildly turning out of control, presenting its stomach, tail and then upside down head to his perspective before there was a blinding flash of light.
Commander Charles Tucker III, Chief Engineer par excellence of the Enterprise, knew in his mind exactly what had happened as a miniature sun appeared in the cosmos, the mind shattering annihilation of tons of matter and anti-matter taking everything into an inferno hotter than the core of a star.
It was silent. It was brief. And when it was over there was nothing solid in the heavens to mark the grave of the Enterprise.
