Red Rain
By Thalia Drogna
Trip and Rush had been in a jeffries tube when the terminal hit happened. They were shaken around badly, trying to grab hold of what they could to prevent serious injury. Trip saw Rush take a knock to his head and go limp, before he suffered the same fate. When he awoke he could smell smoke and was aware that his immediate environment was warmer than it should have been. He sprang to full consciousness as he realised that the room immediately below them was on fire. He moved quickly to shut the hatches that led in the direction of the fire and then crawled over to Rush, to assess the MACO's injuries. Trip was already feeling the bruises that he'd just gained from being shaken like a baby's rattle.
He looked back to see that the way behind them was now closed off with fallen metal. They wouldn't be getting out that way. They were running out of options, if the bulkheads across the main access to the generator room had been closed then their escape routes were being narrowed quickly. They had both known the dangers inherent in what they were doing and the rest of the Unit were depending upon them. For the moment going on with their mission was their only option.
"Mike, wake up, we need to get out of here," said Trip, prodding the MACO.
"Trip, what happened?" said Rush groggily.
"Must have been hit," replied Trip. He pulled out his communicator and tried to raise the other MACOs but no one was answering.
Rush pushed himself into a sitting position in the cramped jeffries tube. "It's hot in here."
"Yeah, the room below's on fire. You up to moving? We need to get out of here before we get fried alive."
Rush nodded carefully, grabbed his pack and the two men began to crawl towards their destination, the generator. Trip's plan was to rig the generator to overload in a chain reaction that would take out the whole station, blowing every relay and causing one hell of a fireball. If they did it right then it would be like a nuclear bomb going off and would take out any ships within a wide radius around the station. Trip checked the rewiring that he'd done in the access panel in the jeffries tube to make sure that the impact hadn't undone his work, before he followed Rush.
They dropped on to the floor of the generator room. They moved over to the generator to create the feedback loop which would be needed to produce the explosion. It was tricky work and took the two of them working together to set the circuits exactly right. If they made a mistake then they could blow themselves up while they were still working or leave themselves without enough time to escape. Although Trip was beginning to think that was a moot point. Unless he and Rush could figure out a way to get to the docking bay, they were going to die with Water's Edge.
NX-Theta undocked from Water's Edge and immediately became the target of several fighters. Darwin hadn't wanted to leave without Trip and Rush, but the station was falling apart around them. He had four officers in his charge that he knew he could save, if he waited for Trip and Rush he could end up condemning them all to death. Trip and Rush knew the score and Darwin still had an idea.
"Hail Enterprise," said Darwin, while Fenner did his best to keep them out of the Hunters' line of fire. The majority of attackers were still targeting the station.
Carter moved to make the connection. "Enterprise, this is the NX-Theta, come in, please."
"This is Enterprise, go ahead NX-Theta."
"We activated the jammer and we're evacuating. We couldn't leave it any longer. Trip and Rush are trapped on the station," said Darwin.
"We'll get them out on Enterprise," said Archer, immediately grasping the situation.
"We'll keep the fighters off your backs until you can get into transporter range," said Darwin. "Fenner, let's give our friends a moving target."
"Yes, sir," replied the pilot. "No damn robot is beating me."
"Carter, make sure that we take down as many as we can," said Darwin to his Weapons Officer.
Carter nodded his acknowledgement and returned to targeting the enemy, while Hathaway manned the scanner, calling range and position to help Carter make his shots count. Hathaway couldn't help but be reminded of the past, it was like they were back on the Thak Tikh being chased by the Klingons again. Except the Klingons had never outnumbered them thirty to one.
"Captain, the power levels are becoming critical on Water's Edge," said the calm voice of T'Pol. Even having known T'Pol for several years, Archer still didn't understand how she could remain perfectly unemotional in the middle of a crisis. He knew that the Vulcan cared for Trip just as much as he did.
This had not been the plan at all, Trip and Rush should have been able to make it to the docking bay before the other MACOs had to evacuate. Part of Archer screamed at him that Darwin shouldn't have abandoned two of his men but the rational part of him reminded him of the duties of any commanding officer, to safeguard those in their charge. If that meant sacrificing two men to save four then that was what had to be done. But Darwin had always known that Enterprise had the capability to get the men out whereas the NX-Theta did not, having never been equipped with a transporter. It would have been impossible even for Special Projects to hide the parts for a transporter amongst the museum requisition forms for the NX-Theta. That was before they even got to the specialist expertise required to install it.
"How long?" asked Archer.
"Fifteen minutes," replied T'Pol.
Archer turned to his Acting Chief Engineer, Lieutenant Hess. "Lieutenant, have you got a lock on their biosigns?"
"All this weapons fire, the jamming device, and the overloading generator, it's creating too much interference. Maybe if we could get closer…" Hess was intently staring at her readouts.
"We're already too close," interjected Reed. "If we get within range of the station's automatic weaponry then we'll become a target too. There's no one on the station to tell the automatics not to fire on us anymore."
"Can we dodge them?" asked Archer.
"I can try," replied Mayweather.
"They lost a few cannons in the last attack. There are holes in the defence grid," added Reed. He forwarded the details to the helm controls so that Mayweather could see where he needed to fly.
"Got it," said Mayweather.
"Take us closer, but not too close," said Archer. Enterprise shook as a couple of shots found their mark.
"I've got reports of minor injuries in Engineering," said Hoshi.
The ship jolted hard just as Hoshi completed her sentence and Archer was knocked to the floor. He grabbed the edge of the Captain's chair and pulled himself to his feet again. Hess was doing her best to dowse flames that were licking at the Engineering console. She had the flames out within a few seconds, gave the console a quick check over and dealt it a frustrated kick. "I need to get to the transporter," she said already moving towards the turbo lift.
"T'Pol, you've got the bridge." said Archer, and followed Hess to the turbo lift.
The journey to the transporter felt longer than it was. Every second counted, the sooner they could pull Trip and Rush out, the sooner Enterprise could get away from the coming explosion. Hess manned the main controls but indicated to Archer to monitor the power at the diagnostic station. This was going to be a difficult transport and it could take both of them to pull it off.
Trip was convinced that this was his moment. This was his time to die. He and Rush had finished their job, the station would be destroyed by an overload in the generator core in approximately ten minutes. The station had suffered more damage even while they worked. Rush and Trip had escaped down a jeffries tube towards the docking bay but it had soon become obvious that there was no safe route for them to take. While they had been crawling along one section of tube, a pressure door had closed behind them and another in front. They had been trapped by decompressed sections. Trip tried to bypass the safety systems and find them a way through but it had been a futile attempt. Even if he'd been able to persuade the pressure doors to open then they would probably have been entering a compartment that was open to space or at least losing atmosphere. Not an outcome that Trip wanted to contemplate.
Trip was hot and dirty, from crawling around the jeffries tubes. Somewhere near them a fire was burning and turning the jeffries tube into a sauna. Trip went through various options in his head, each more impossible than the last, and discarded them all. He was convinced that there must be a solution but the heat was making it hard to think. As the senior officer, Rush was his responsibility and he didn't want to let the MACO down. He didn't want to believe it but maybe there was nothing to do but sit and wait for the station to destroy itself.
Just as he'd given up hope he felt the tingling sensation that accompanied the transporter disassembling his molecules and pulling them through space. He just had time to glance sideways and see that Rush was disappearing too, before he himself disappeared. A dreamlike state followed. He could hear voices but not see anything.
"I'm losing their patterns," said a female voice. "Lock in auxiliary power."
"Locked in," replied a man.
"Okay, I think I have them. Materialising."
Trip collapsed backwards as he appeared on the transporter platform. He didn't feel so good, it had been a rough transport.
"Hess to bridge, we've got them."
"Understood," said a cool female voice.
"Phlox to the transporter, medical emergency," Trip vaguely heard, which was followed by, "Security to the transporter." Trip wondered why they needed Security. Phlox he could understand, if there was a medical emergency, but there didn't seem to be any threats which would require Security's attention. He gave up trying to work out what was going on and concentrated on breathing which seemed to be quite enough given the way his head was spinning at the moment.
He felt himself being helped to sit up and then a cold hypospray being pressed to his neck. A few moments passed as whatever had been in the hypospray worked its way through his system and suddenly he began to feel much better. The room stopped spinning, his head cleared and he cautiously opened his eyes to see Phlox looking at a medical scanner that was pointed in his direction. He opened his mouth to frame a question but before he could get a word out Captain Archer spoke.
"Doctor?"
"He's fine. The transport created an enzyme imbalance, which I've corrected. Corporal Rush is in the same condition although he has some burns that require treatment also," said Phlox.
"Ensigns, escort the Commander to the brig," said Archer.
Trip had nothing to say. He'd known exactly what would happen if he ever returned to Enterprise. He'd made his choice when he and Fenner had decided to rendezvous with Major Hathaway. Now he had to face the consequences of that choice. He didn't protest as two of Reed's Security personnel helped him up and with polite but firm tones asked him to accompany them to the brig. He missed the look of relief that briefly crossed Archer's features.
T'Pol sat in the Captain's chair and examined the situation carefully. They had less than five minutes to get out of blast radius. The majority of the Hunters were still focussed on the station, machines that were unable to change their programming to account for the fact that no life signs were now aboard the station. Unable to penetrate the jamming field they were assuming that their targets were where they had always been. A few were attacking the NX-Theta and more were still targeting Enterprise. The force was considerably depleted but no where near beaten.
"Ensign Sato, hail the NX-Theta, tell them to go to warp immediately but keep track of their warp signature."
"Yes, Commander," replied the com officer.
"Is Water's Edge emitting the jamming frequency?" T'Pol asked.
Reed pressed a couple of buttons on his console. "Yes, Commander. The jamming frequency is stopping all communication between the fighters and masking all our biosigns. They don't know whether there's anyone on the station or not."
"Mr Mayweather, warp four. Follow the NX-Theta's warp trail," said T'Pol.
"Yes, Ma'am," said Mayweather.
The Hunters hadn't yet realised that the entities which they had been sent to destroy had left the station. They continued their attack oblivious to the NX-Theta and Enterprise's departure. Their programming had told them to ignore any other targets if they were not a threat. The entities who held the information were on the station and nothing had contradicted that knowledge so far.
Alarms only began to be issued when it was detected that the station could explode. By that point it was too late to disengage their attack and escape.
The generator reached critical, overloaded and detonated. A sphere of explosive force, fire and debris flew out from the destroyed station. Pieces of metal were thrown into the attacking Hunters closest to the station. The fighters were flipped out by the force into the second wave of attackers, where flying fragments did further damage. Machines died in a chain reaction of flame and twisted metal.
A few of the black Hunters escaped the destruction but the majority of the ships in the fleet were now hundreds of floating pieces of metal. Those that weren't destroyed were faced with a problem. Their cold, metal minds weren't equipped to deal with failure, it hadn't been one of their expected outcomes for this mission and now they needed to take time to re-examine their options.
One in six of the Hunters' ships carried a sophisticated primary mind, capable of reason and intelligence. Out of the survivors, only two primary minds survived, the others were secondary slave minds, less sophisticated and capable of much more limited thinking. The primaries were finding it hard to control the large number of secondary slaves that they had inherited from their fallen comrades, but they knew that in order to complete their task they would have to find some way to cope.
It was clear that they should continue their mission and terminate the remaining targets. However, now that the station had been destroyed, they were able to see that their targets had escaped on the two ships that had taken part in the battle. What was less clear was where those ships now were. Many of the survivors had sustained damage and their tracking abilities had been severely limited. It would take a little time to find the trail again.
In the end the primaries chose the obvious option, they told all but ten of the secondaries to self-destruct. They now had the ten least damaged ships at their disposal to hunt down their prey, plus the two primary minds to control them. Each primary controlled five slave minds just as it should. Now they could begin their hunt again. Patiently they sifted the data and with perfect, cold efficiency they identified the location of the humans that they were programmed to exterminate.
When Archer arrived at the brig he could see Trip pacing. The Engineer never had been very good at being patient. Trip saw Archer, took a deep breath and prepared himself for a very unpleasant conversation.
"How's Mike doing?" asked Trip, trying to avoid the inevitable for a little longer.
"Phlox says he has some minor burns, but apart from that he's fine." Archer paused and Trip waited for the bomb to go off. "Just what the hell did you think you were doing?"
"What I thought was right," replied Trip. "You saw what happened to Water's Edge. That could have been Enterprise."
"That isn't the point. You disobeyed a direct order not to leave this ship. You stole a shuttlepod, shot a fellow officer and damaged Starfleet property. It took us hours to undo everything that you did to the ships systems."
"That was sort of the point," said Trip.
"Trip, a few months ago we had a conversation about trust. You assured me that you were the same person that you've always been and that I could trust you. Why do I now find myself standing in the brig wondering if I made a big mistake?"
"You didn't make a mistake," sighed Trip. "It isn't like you think."
"As far as I can tell, it's exactly like I think. At the first sign of trouble you abandoned this crew and went off on your own," said Archer.
"You didn't give me a choice," said Trip, exasperated.
"You had a choice," said Archer. "We would have protected you."
"You don't know who you're dealing with. They'd have thought nothing of destroying Enterprise."
"You're missing the point, Trip. You disobeyed an order and you abused your position. Starfleet isn't about individuals, it's about working together," said Archer. "You disabled vital systems that left Enterprise in danger."
"Enterprise was never in any danger," said Trip.
"How do you know that?" Archer fired back. "If we'd been attacked we wouldn't have had working phase cannons or sensors."
"They were easily fixable. If Hess didn't have them up and running within an hour of realising they were disabled I need to have a word with her," said Trip.
"But if we had been attacked we would have had no defence," said Archer. "Then there's the matter of T'Pol."
"I didn't want to shoot her," said Trip, sheepishly.
"You owe her an apology at the very least. She would be well within her rights to press assault charges," said Archer.
"I know," said Trip. "If there's anything that I regret, then it's that, but I didn't see any other way."
"You've just proved that we can't trust you. You're more concerned about Special Projects than your own crew," said Archer.
"That isn't true."
"I don't see any evidence supporting that," snapped Archer.
There was silence for a moment as the two men looked at each other.
Finally Trip spoke. "What are you going to do with me?"
"You've tied my hands. I have to take you back for a court-martial," said Archer.
Trip nodded, resigned to his fate. "What about Rush?"
"He hasn't broken any regulations," said Archer. "I can't link him to the theft of the NX-Theta. We'll drop him off at the nearest starbase or take him back to Earth whichever he wants."
"We're still being hunted," said Trip.
"He can stay on board if he wants," said Archer. "If he asks us to protect him."
"It won't be long before they catch up with us," said Trip. "You have to listen to me Captain. The Hunters are deadly and they won't stop until every MACO who visited Karavia is dead. If they have to destroy Enterprise to get to us then they will and don't doubt for a minute that they have the power to do it."
"I'm not going to let anything happen to any of you," said Archer.
"You still don't understand how much danger Enterprise is in," said Trip.
"I saw what the Hunters did to Water's Edge," said Archer.
"You have to get Rush and I off Enterprise, it's the only way to protect the ship," said Trip.
"I'm not dumping you on some planet, Trip," said Archer.
"Why are you being so damn stubborn about this? A Captain should put the safety of his crew first, that's what you always told me."
"You're not helping yourself," said Archer.
"I don't need to help myself. I've been dead for a long time. Enterprise can still escape this, don't kill this crew for nothing, Captain," said Trip.
"I don't intend to let any of my people die if I can help it, or had you forgotten that you're a member of this crew too," said Archer. Despite his bravado, Trip's words had disturbed him, he'd never known him to be so fatalistic.
"I bet you're tracking the NX-Theta as well," said Trip.
"Of course, now that we've worked out how they were disguising their warp trail we're not having a problem following them," said Archer. "We should catch up with them in an hour or so. Hopefully you'll have some company in here, once we persuade them to give up."
"You haven't listened to a word that I've said." Trip turned and dropped down on the bunk behind him.
"I've listened, but I'm the Captain of this ship and I'll do what I think is right." Archer paused and sighed. Trip was stubborn and when he got protective there was nothing anyone could do to persuade him that he was wrong. "I've got to get to the bridge. Do you need anything?" he asked in a softer tone.
Trip was slightly surprised by the change of subject but he reminded himself that Archer didn't like this any better than he did. Even if Trip did end up leaving Starfleet he suspected that Jonathan Archer might still come and visit him. "Another blanket would be nice," said Trip.
"I'll get one of the Ensigns to bring one down," said Archer and stepped out into the corridor, leaving Trip alone with his thoughts.
He lay back on the bunk and stared up at the ceiling. If Enterprise caught up with the MACOs in the NX-Theta, then they might get more than they bargained for.
Trip wondered sometimes why Archer was his friend. Admittedly he hadprobably burned that friendship when he burned his bridges. From Trip's point of view it had all made sense, find someone to hang out with who would be a good influence, someone who still saw Starfleet with innocent eyes and maybe he could forget the three years he'd spent in the MACOs. However, he knew that the person he had become wasn't easy to get along with, it came from all the lying that he was having to do to protect his past. He didn't know who he was anymore and occasionally it showed.
When Archer had thanked him for standing up for his father he hadn't known quite how to react, so he'd fallen back on his previous persona of the shy young officer. It didn't really gel with the way he'd let his mouth run off when he'd heard the Vulcans threatening to make them go back to the drawing board, but he hoped Archer hadn't noticed the sudden shift in temperament. As part of Special Projects he never would have questioned an order or wondered at the reason behind it, now he felt compelled to do just that, whilst at the same time chastising himself for not being a good officer. He constantly found himself torn in two by the decisions that he made.
As the years went by and the past was put further and further behind him, things got easier and he eventually found an equilibrium. Archer seemed willing to just let him be himself and, if that was brash at times and shy at others, he never asked why Trip behaved that way, he just accepted him for who he was. Which had only made things worse when the truth had come out, and now Trip had betrayed his best friend once again. The friend who had stood by him and been there for him. In fact he was contemplating doing it for a third time even as he lay in his cell. He wondered if the Captain could forgive him this time.
Jonathan Archer, golden boy of Starfleet, Captain of the first warp five capable ship and now saviour of mankind. His achievements also included preventing at least three wars and averting several diplomatic incidents. But he seemed to have forgotten who had designed Enterprise's brig.