A/N: This is my first Star Trek fan fiction so I would appreciate any feedback you have. It is the first part in my Ptolmian Wars series. Hopefully updates will be weekly. Happy reading!
Disclaimer: I don't own the Star Trek franchise, if I did there would have been a new series long ago. I am making no profit, and again, if I was I wouldn't be living in this miserable place called the north-west of England.
Chapter One - Beginnings
"Lieutenant Lauren Monroe reporting for duty, sir," the dark haired woman clad in a mustard yellow Ops uniform stated stiffly, her back poker straight. The captain looked up from the Padd he was reading and smiled. Commander Riker looked Lauren up and down as though assessing her, rubbing a hand through his short bristly beard.
"At ease Lieutenant." She relaxed slightly.
"Thank you sir."
Captain Picard stood, straightening his uniform shirt, and walked round his desk to face her. His tall authoritative figure seemed to tower over her and she felt herself shrink inside. She kept her head held high however, her nerves firmly in check.
"Welcome to the Enterprise Lieutenant Monroe." She smiled and inclined her head politely. He handed her the Padd he'd been holding. "On this will be everything you need to know. Your commanding officer is Commander LaForge, you will report to engineering at 13.00 hours after you've been assigned your quarters, there you will be shown you station. Ensign Stevenson will take you to your quarters now."
"Aye captain and I must say I'm honoured to be working on your ship," she gushed rather embarrassingly. She winced, she sounded like an excited eleven year old. Riker chuckled and shook his head, Picard simply smiled. She sighed wryly and made for the door.
Riker wandered over towards the captain and stood next to him, facing the door that the newest edition of their crew had just walked out of. He stayed silent for a moment then turned to face Picard. "What do you think of her sir?" Picard nodded slowly, considering his answer.
"It's too early to tell yet but I think she'll make a valuable officer, her record is excellent."
"Her skills and experience yes, but I'm a little worried about the comment on her social skills, she may have trouble interacting with the crew." Riker said, watching Picard carefully for a reaction. The captain's face remained impassive. "We'll see how she fares soon enough Number One, we'll see."
Her quarters were larger than her old ones on the Atlantis but sparser; a wave of homesickness rolled over her. She'd spent the last seven years on that ship. It was small, carrying no civilians, just a crew of three hundred. She'd been an ensign, fresh out of the Academy, working on a small off-shoot of engineering, naïve and eager to please. She'd quickly learnt that to become respected and trusted with responsibility she had to be more laid back and mature. She now kept a calm, cool façade even in the direst of situations. However she also discovered her shields tended to repel people and she quickly found herself with very few friends. When she discovered she was being transferred to the Enterprise she promised herself she would try to be more open and friendly.
She took a moment to reflect. She'd been so different back then, a child really. Then she'd discovered what a serious business space travel really is. She smiled and took a blue patterned ribbon off her dresser and threaded it through her long black hair, tying it up in a ponytail. She always wore them, they'd been a gift from a family on Betazed. She'd met them on her second ever assignment, a virus had mutated on the Betazoid home planet which attacked their children's developing telepathic abilities. The Atlantis had transported a cure from Starfleet Medical to Betazed. Lauren had helped a little boy with the illness and his family had given her a dress woven from Betazed silk, jewellery and hair ribbons out of gratitude. If only that brash young woman who'd sneaked off her ship to hep a sick little boy could see her now, working on the flagship of the Federation. She slowly set down her mug of raktugino. Then she got slowly to her feet and began to walk through the automatic doors towards a new era of her life.
The engines hummed, lit up with a throbbing life only an engineer could understand. Lauren walked towards the main control panel in the centre of the room and brushed her fingers along the glossy surface, the keys illuminating her face with their glowing ethereal light. Now she was where she belonged. She resisted the powerful urge to get out her toolkit and examine everything in her path. The Enterprise had outdone her reputation – she really was magnificent.
At last Lauren turned to the heart of the ship. The pulsing blue coils of the warp drive filled engineering with a noise that almost sounded like a heartbeat.
"She's a beauty isn't she?" A soft voice said over her shoulder.
"Yeah …" She replied dreamily turning round. "Commander LaForge!"
Lauren straightened up and took a step back. LaForge was easily recognisable as Chief Engineer by the pips on his collar. He was wearing a VISOR and an easy going smile, the type that makes people seem instantly likeable. LaForge laughed.
"Hey, welcome to the Enterprise." He motioned for her to walk with him. Lauren smiled politely and grasped her hands behind her back.
"Thank you sir, it's a pleasure to be here." They walked round her new department together as she acquainted herself with the layout. Other crew mates, bending over computer terminals with complex drawings or sitting at desks wading their way through piles of Padds, turned round and nodded pleasantly to them.
"So I hear you were on the Atlantis before you were assigned here?" LaForge enquired, striking up conversation.
"Yes, she's a fine ship for her age. Our engineer Tommy Metcalf took good care of her." Lauren smiled proudly as she thought of her old ship.
"Hey I'd heard Tommy was promoted to Chief Engineer, we were good friends at the Academy. How's he doing these days?"
Their small talk continued until they reached the Communications Post, by then Lauren was almost beginning to feel relaxed. LaForge rested his hand on an empty swivel chair.
"This is your seat," he told her with a knowing smile on his face. Lauren tried to quell the disappointment that rose up inside of her as she was reminded for the second time that day she had been given the most boring job in engineering.
She had to stay sat down all day and constantly scan the surrounding twenty million kilometres for subspace communications. Then she would oversee the computer sorting the data into the categories: race, ship, coded/not coded and class A/B/C/D. Class A being important transmissions such as distress signals and Starfleet Priority, going down to D being whatever dumb-ass conversations Pakled traders have with each other. The computer could easily perform this task itself, but a little human intuition was often needed. Then she would approve the information and send it off to the Bridge. The most exciting thing that ever happens at the Communications Post is when a stray bit of ionized gas gets mistaken for a transmission and has to be filtered off to the Science Department.
Normally this kind of thing is left to the greenest of ensigns.
"I'm sorry I had to give you this position lieutenant," LaForge said, dragging her out of her thoughts. "We have a slight shortage of ensigns – a problem I'm gonna sort out as soon as we reach the next Starbase." His mouth curled upwards slightly.
"Feel free to run any tests or make any improvements you can, just make sure you inform the Bridge first." As LaForge seemed to have a knack of doing, his comment brightened her mood like white paint being washed over a black canvas. As she sat down wondering where that strange analogy had come from, LaForge spoke again. He seemed to be talking about the man sitting to the left of her wearing an identical rank insignia.
"This is Lieutenant Barclay; he works in diagnostics and your lines of work may occasionally cross so…get acquainted."
Barclay seemed to be constantly nervous. A strange wispy hairline framed his pale face and he was looking at her as if she was pointing a bat'leth at him.
"Pleased to meet you, I'm Lt. Lauren Monroe," she held out her hand. He leaned forward and grasped it in a weak handshake. His palms were cold and his expression strained.
"W-w-w-w…" he closed his eyes and inhaled; he opened them and started again. "Welcome t-to the Enterprise."
"Thanks."
"Hey Reg, you still coming to Ten Forward for synthale tonight?" LaForge asked. 'Reg' looked positively terrified at the prospect of a large social gathering.
"Y-yes, don't worry…I-I'll be there!" he stammered with a fake smile. Lauren turned round on her swivel chair and had to repress the sudden urge to spin on it like a kid, so she typed in her new command codes into the keypad instead. The computer beeped its cheerful confirmation. She sent a quick message to the bridge requesting permission to take the long range communications offline for five minutes to run a few tests. Seconds later she got a reply. If she was going to be bored stiff she might as well have everything running at maximum efficiency.
As she began to set up the first diagnostic, her name being spoken quietly drew her attention back to LaForge and Barclay. She carried on working so she didn't alert them that she was listening. They were talking together in hushed voices.
"…I can't do this Geordie. You know I can't talk to her."
"Look Reg, you're going to have to get over this. I need you to work with her," LaForge appeared a little frustrated, his knuckles where he was clutching the back of Barclay's chair were slowly turning pink.
"P-please Geordie," the stutter had returned. "Y-you d-d-don't know what it's like, being shy…" LaForge relaxed slightly and became more sympathetic. He placed a hand on Barclay's shoulder.
"I'm sorry Reg, there's nothing I can do. You should try talking to her, she's quite nice." Whatever he said next was lost because the computer chimed signalling the end of the test. As she poured over the disappointingly dull results she thought about what she heard. She felt slightly annoyed at Barclay for making her out to be some kind of monster. But then, she thought, it must be terrible to be so afraid of people and what they think of you. He'd been on the Enterprise much longer than she had; he'd earned the right to be sitting next to her, working with her, talking to her. No, she decided, I'm not going to judge him until I know him.
She felt a weight on the back of her chair as LaForge leant on it.
"Hmmm…I need to check those thermo-couplings…" he muttered, reading the results over her shoulder. "Hey do you want to come to Ten Forward with us tonight? Meet the rest of the team, make some new friends?"
Lauren froze, her old fears of becoming too close to people resurfacing. Really, she wasn't that different from Reg; her fears just weren't of the people themselves, but of the emotional attachments. But then she reminded herself of her earlier promise. She placed her brightest beam on her face.
"Sure, I'd love to!" She said back. She'd be ok after a couple of drinks of Guinan's fabled alcohol collection.
Lauren spent the rest of her shift working with Reg – as LaForge had later encouraged her to call him – on updating her equipment to function at peak performance. She found the work more challenging than she'd originally estimated, as years of bad maintenance by inexperienced, bored ensigns had caused the systems to be sluggish and unresponsive. She hummed happily as she got her teeth into a difficult equation. Next to her, Reg stared at the equation with a frown furrowing his brow. Lauren's face relaxed as she reached an epiphany then she turned to face her partner slowly.
"Not got it yet?" She asked slyly and began to type in another, even more complicated set of numbers. Instead of becoming even more confused, Reg's mouth opened in an 'o' shape.
"Q-quite simple r-really." After working with her for almost four hours straight Reg had started to open up slightly, underneath she found extreme intelligence and a dry sense of humour. He answered her next equation almost as soon as she typed it in and posed one of his own, it almost turning into a game. Lauren laughed in disbelief as her eyes scanned over the screen.
"Damn, I…" She froze. The console had begun to shake, the floor beneath her rattled too. She stood and steadied herself on the back of her chair, looking round. People were holding on to walls and desks and several had fallen over as the ship juddered violently. The red alert siren had started to wail and she was bathed in red light, soon adrenaline began pumping into her system.
She started to make her way over to the main console; all non-essential personnel were gathered round waiting for instructions. She turned towards the woman next to her and shouted over the commotion, "What's going on?"
"We've hit some kind of gravity well and we're falling in, we can't stop!" She replied pointing to the diagram on her screen. It showed a glowing blue net to represent space-time with the Enterprise being dragged into the centre where there was a black oval shaped gap. It was like nothing Lauren had ever seen before.
"What the hell's that?" She yelled. The woman turned back to her, some hair falling out of her tight brown bun as the shaking increased in magnitude.
"It's like a rip, a rip in the fabric of space." A rip in space? Lauren mused. What could cause such a thing?
Before she had time to think any more about it, LaForge called everyone over. They gathered round.
"Ok people, the impulse engines were badly damaged by the gravity well before we had time to put the shields up. Take a full diagnostics team down there and get them fixed now! I need those engines! No Barclay, not you." He lowered his voice. "There was a hull breach in Ten Forward. The emergency shields went up but the power is down and the door's stuck. We need to take the shields down to remodulate them to better protect us against whatever that thing is. I want you and two other people to get down there and get those doors open. Be quick, I can only give you twenty minutes. If we don't remodulate the shields by then the ship will be torn apart."
Reg nodded and pointed at Lauren and a tall male ensign next to her, they had both been listening in to the conversation and needed no explanations.
"Monroe, Williams, lets go." She nodded and grabbed a toolkit, following Reg out of the door.
The turbolifts weren't working so they had to take the Jeffries tubes instead. She followed Reg into the small dimly lit tunnel, Williams following closely behind. The cold grated metal dug into her palms and knees as she crawled and the ship's rocking threw her painfully into the walls. She could feel bruises forming on her shoulders. The muffled sounds of the ship which she usually loved to hear now echoed around her creepily. She had never been claustrophobic but she was extremely relieved to see a slightly wider junction where they would proceed to climb upwards.
Lauren felt herself relax with relief for a few moments when she climbed out of that dreadful darkness and into the bright lights of the corridor. She blinked in confusion at a sudden assault on her senses. Her eyes tried to adjust to the white light and suddenly she was surrounded by people shouting questions at her and pointing at the Ten Forward door. The ship juddered and she was thrown into a civilian woman. Blue silk immediately shrouded her vision. She stumbled away and squinted in Reg's direction. He was kneeling on the floor setting up the toolkit while being bombarded with questions. She could hear his pitiful stuttering attempts to get them to leave him alone and she started to become irritated.
"Right!" She shouted, marching over to him. "Can everyone please be quiet? Can everyone listen up please?" Her efforts to be polite seemed to be failing, her voice was easily drowned out.
"Oh sod it," she muttered. "SHUT UP!"
Everyone immediately fell silent. A few people jumped in alarm. Lauren smirked at their shocked expressions. She waited until she had their complete attention.
"Now I want everyone to very calmly climb inside that Jeffries tube and crawl down to Deck Nine. There is no need to panic, just be very careful and-" Her voice was cut off as she was violently jolted onto the floor. She could hear groaning as people clutched at bruised shoulders and thighs. Tools rolled in disarray. Lauren sprang to her feet.
"Everyone in, now, quickly!" She ushered them inside the Jeffries tube. She waited until the last had climbed inside then turned back to Reg. He had already ripped off the wall panel and was working furiously.
"Pass me the LMD Lauren," He asked. Lauren placed it in his hand and watched him charge up the circuitry. She looked over at the doors expecting them to slide open.
Nothing happened.
"Come on Reg…ten minutes left," Lauren reminded him nervously, rocking backwards and forwards, holding out her arms to keep her balance. Then all hell broke loose.
A huge explosion wracked the ship, sparks fell from severed wires hanging from the walls and Lauren was knocked off her feet again. And there was a sound. A sound that even in a crisis as big and unexpected as this she wasn't expecting to hear. Phaser fire. They were being attacked…and almost as if whatever Gods that reside in the universe were acknowledging her realisation, they were hit again and a bulkhead over her exploded. Huge chunks of debris rained down on her. She tried in vain to cover her head with her arms. The last thing she saw before falling into unconsciousness was the orange shimmer of three people beaming into the corridor.
A/N: Ok, now the introductions are done the action can start!