Eurydice in the Pit, Chapter One

"I tell you, Worf, war is much more fun when you're winning. Defeat makes my wounds ache."

-General Martok, "Sons and Daughters"

---

In the Between...

He remembered falling.

He remembered passing through the time vortex as Forever World ripped itself apart around him, the Universe collapsing into entropy even as he himself was saved.

He remembered Selene.

The warm touch of her hand, the sweet smell of her hair, the sight of her smile. To him, they were the only things that mattered. She was the only thing that mattered.

I'll see you soon. I love you.

He remembered her last words to him as she lay dying, and the belief that they were true was the only thing that kept him sane as he fell.

---

What once was there, but is now all that is left...

She ran headlong through the streets of the deserted city, dark hair whipping madly about her face as her breath came in short, explosive pants. They were close now, probably no more than two hundred meters. She could hear the howling of their beasts as they hunted her, could almost feel the pounding of their boots beneath her feet. It took every ounce of willpower she possessed to keep herself from turning to look behind her, searching for the demonic forms that chased her.

Her foot caught on a piece of rubble in the street and she fell, hands spread out to brace herself. The impact, though, still jarred her, the shock racing up her arms and across her chest so painfully she bit her own tongue. Spitting blood into the ash strewn ground beneath her, she pushed herself to her feet and set off again, losing precious seconds as she struggled to regain her momentum.

Her legs felt like they were on fire, muscles straining to keep up the near impossible pace she demanded of them. The air was heavy, thick with falling ash which her overworked lungs desperately tried to breathe to keep her running.

---

The dark side of Earth's moon. Since the earliest days of humanity's space flight in the twentieth century, the dark side of the moon had interfered with communications and sensor networks, the entire concept of line-of-sight leading humanity to build satellites to relay messages and images from the blind spot. The satellites were long gone now, either destroyed or fallen into disrepair from centuries of lack of use. Now, over a thousand years after the human race had first reached out from their homeworld, the Earth was once again blind to everything on the far side of her only moon.

Making it the safest place for a starship to hide.

The small starship hung in the shadow cast by the rocky planetoid, her energy emissions lying near zero to avoid any possibility of detection. Her engines were cold and powerless and the only light her crew had was whatever starlight happened to make it's way through the dirty windows that circled her cramped bridge. Six hours ago life support had crashed, leading to a tense few hours while the crew had poked, prodded and finally beaten the system back to functionality. Now, stale, recycled air filtered through the ship, keeping them alive, even if not pleasantly.

Maynon Tal slouched in his chair, his booted feet resting comfortably on the pilot's console, deftly missing the exposed wires and circuit boards that he was constantly promising to repair. Yeah, Skipper. No problem. I'll get that done. Ever since the ship's last mechanic, a human named Mike, had up and left the ship, Tal had been pulling double duty. Hard enough piloting the ship, now, whenever something broke down, he knew that it was his fault and that he couldn't blame anyone else. Not to mention the fact that the Skipper flipped out whenever something happened to the engines. So let's not mention that little life support fiasco to her, huh? Wearily, he rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling the ridges under his fingers. "Can't we turn on the heat?"

"No."

"Just for a minute, Kordath. Just to warm up."

"No."

Tal swung his feet off the console and crossed his arms across his chest, bundling himself into the oversized parka he wore. "Just for a minute," he muttered, "we can't all be Klingon."

The large, grey haired Klingon leaning against the bulkhead never even looked away from the window as he answered. "Reactivating the environmentals may reveal our position. Do you believe that we can outrun a Khanate vessel and still retrieve the Captain?"

Tal mulled that over for a moment, tapping his fingers against the console. "It would be a challenge, yeah, but it might be fun to try. Besides, I thought that Klingons lived for battle and challenges and all of that stuff."

Kordath grunted, a sound that was almost a laugh. Tal grinned, he loved baiting the Klingon. "Only if the battle is necessary. There is no honour to be won in dying for sheer stupidity."

"So you say... still... Me. Not getting any warmer."

A new voice broke into the conversation from behind Tal. "Then try this." Something soft smacked him in the back of his head and fell over his eyes, blinding him as Kordath started to laugh. Pulling the blanket off his head, he turned and frowned at the chuckling Romulan behind him. "Funny, Nyssa. Very funny."

The lithe medic spat out another handful of chuckles before she answered, brushing dark hair away from where it had fallen in front of her eyes. "Sorry, Tal. You're just too easy a mark." Smiling, she nodded at the hulking Klingon, "Kordath. Any word yet?"

A frown formed on Kordath's face, and Tal watched his fists begin to clench beneath the leather gloves. "No. Nothing."

It always made him a touch scared when he saw Kordath angry, or even irritable. For a Klingon, the man was usually downright serene. Not that Kordath wasn't your typical Klingon (i.e.: Emotional and capable of committing much in the way of violence), he was usually just more relaxed about it. The only thing that Tal knew that seriously got beneath his skin was knowing that the Skipper was in danger and not being able to do a thing to help her out.

Of course, that got beneath the skin of everyone on the ship.

Tal had been the pilot of the Icarus for close to five years now, ever since he had out flown the Skipper with an old, beat-up shuttle that had no business being anywhere but a junkyard, let alone up in the air. Of course, that hadn't stopped her from tracking him all the way home, taking back everything he'd stolen from her cargo bay, and then offering him a job. It had been a choice between being paid to fly the Icarus, with the added bonus of free run of the kitchen, or a stay in prison.

Easy choice.

Tal knew that the Skipper had changed his life for the better, just as she had the lives of everyone on the ship. She had a tendency to pick up strays and find them jobs on her ship, give them a purpose and a chance to do something constructive. Nyssa had been a slave on a Khanate mining asteroid the Skipper had liberated. During the revolt, she had been shot in the side and started bleeding to death. Kordath had carried her back to the ship, and Nyssa had left the group of former slaves and operated on her, saving her life. It turned out that the Romulan had been a doctor for a small colony before she had been taken for slave labour. Rubbing her bandaged side, the Skipper had mentioned that she could use a medic on the Icarus, since she was getting tired of having to bandage herself up after getting hurt. It would be nice to have someone else to do all the messy, bloody work for a change. Nyssa had smiled, looked around at the small sickbay and said "Fine, then next time, don't bleed all over my floor."

Kordath had been the first of the three of them to join the crew, but no one really knew how. All anyone knew was that he had been a passenger, the ship had been attacked, and when the dust had cleared, he had simply stayed aboard. Tal had tried to weasel the story out of him, but had only received silence. When he had asked the Skipper, he had been met with a sad glance and told that it was Kordath's story and when the Klingon was ready to tell it, he would. "Until then, Tal," she had said, "leave it alone."

Their stories were all different, but one thing was the same in all of them: The Skipper had proved herself to them all, and earned their loyalty. They would all follow her into Hell and back if she asked it.

And right now, she was down in Hell, and they were going to have to go in there themselves soon enough.

---

There was a whisper of air moving and she watched in shock as a bladed disc flew past her right cheek, it's serrated edge missing her by inches. Throwing herself to the right, she narrowly avoided the deadly whisper of another blade as it embedded itself in the wall. Crashing into the rubble, she used her own momentum to spin around the corner and continue running. They were getting closer with every second. She couldn't afford to wait any longer.

Still running full tilt, she reached into her coat pocket and yanked out the boxlike communicator. Flicking it on, she screamed at the top of her lungs into it.

---

A burst of static ripped from the subspace radio, filling the silent bridge with the harsh sound, followed by the Skipper's voice.

"Now! Do it now!"

The effect of her voice was instantaneous on the bridge crew. Tal's feet swung down from his console as he started flipping switches above his head, bringing the ship's engines and environmentals back to life, trying to ignore the knot of panic in his chest. Nyssa sat in one of the bridge crash chairs, strapping herself in for what was likely to be a bumpy ride. Kordath set himself behind Icarus' small tactical console, bringing her single phase cannon up to full power. As he reached down for the control yoke, Tal picked up the transmitter for the subspace radio. "Skipper, if we do it now, you'll be stuck down there! We'd have to leave the system without you!"

A crackle of static. "Tal, I don't care! You have the coordinates, just do it!"

The three of them exchanged a look, then Tal bent forward and grasped the flight controls. Kordath picked up the receiver. "We will return for you. You have my word."

"Just do it, Kordath. Let me worry about me for now."

The Klingon nodded, and turned to Tal, eyes blazing beneath silver hair. "Go."

Tal bit down on his tongue as he typed into the console and shouted into the shipwide speaker. "This is Tal to everyone on the ship. Best to brace yourselves, people." The engine readouts evened out at seventy-eight percent. That should be enough. "This should be fun."

The ship physically shuddered as Tal brought the sublight engines up to full thrust from dead stop, pushing everyone back in their seats as Icarus leapt forward and out of the moon's shadow and into full view of the five Khanate fighters in polar orbit of Earth. The blade-winged ships were small, half-a-dozen crew on each, maximum. They also happened to be fast, manoeuvrable, and each out-gunned Icarus at least ten to one.

Of course, none of them had Maynon Tal as a pilot.

The warp jump was sudden, brutal, and lasted only an eighth of a second, enough time to disappear from lunar orbit and reappear just outside of the planet's atmosphere. To the confused fighters, Icarus was in two places at once for several seconds. Tal had read about the manoeuvre in a history text the Skipper had leant him a few months back and been waiting for the chance to try it out.

Thank you, John Piccard, or whatever your name was.

Clutching the control yoke so tightly that his knuckles were vibrating, he spun the ship into a hard dive to starboard, watching the shields start to glow red as they plunged through the atmosphere. Sweat dripped into his eyes as the temperature inside Icarus rose steadily. Wanted heat, huh?

Shut up. He told that annoying little voice inside his head.

"Coming up on target. Arming cannon." Kordath's voice was steady, caught in the preparation for a fight. "Nyssa. Man the sensors."

As Nyssa rose to step to the sensor console, Icarus bucked, knocking everyone about and sending her skidding across the bridge. "That's all right! It's all right! That's supposed to happen." Tal's tongue was beginning to object to the incisors being pressed into it. "Just an air pocket, ladies and gentlemen. Nothing to worry about."

Nyssa cursed in Romulan as she pulled herself to her feet. "When you say it's nothing to worry about, Tal, I start worrying."

Romulan pessimist. With a final jolt, Icarus burst through the cloud cover over North America's pacific coast, the ruined city of San Francisco spread out before them. The once magnificent city had collapsed on itself, enormous skyscrapers reduced to nothing more than skeletal fingers reaching for the sky. Impact craters from Khanate weapons littered the ground, leaving gaping holes the size of several city bocks. A massive chasm had ripped through the Presidio, shredding the Golden Gate Bridge into pieces, and lying in the middle of all the destruction, a Khanate Communications Array.

A grey, utilitarian complex, the pyramid rose a hundred feet above the wreckage, subspace relays running around it in concentric rings. Tal frowned, according to reports, this array was the hub for all Khanate communications in five parsecs. Take it down, and those five parsecs would be in the dark for as long as it took to build a new one. Call it three months or so.

Typical mission. Chip the mountainside with a rock, then watch it go on being a mountain.

Shaking the thoughts out of his mind, he tilted his head towards Nyssa. "Skipper get the shields down?"

There was a quick beat as Nyssa waited for the straining sensors to report back. On her screen, a display of the Array appeared, the power readouts of it's shields flickering. "Not quite, but she got them down to about ten percent."

Better'n nothing. "Kordath? I'm going to have to make a quick pass, 'cause those fighters are gonna be on our tail any second now."

Without a sound, the Klingon took aim at the Array and fired. The first pulse from the cannon overloaded it's shields, and the second struck the structure itself, ripping the unprotected Array apart. Flames erupted all the way around it, the subspace relays collapsing to the ground. There was no war cry, no victorious shouts of "YES!", nothing but a feeling like they had lost. They may have accomplished the mission that they had been sent on, but this time it had cost them.

The Skipper was still down there somewhere.

Icarus jolted as she was hit from behind. Overloads sparked from the ceiling as systems shorted out from the phaser hit. Tal gripped the yoke even harder as he pulled the ship up and back into the clouds, arms straining as Icarus fought the rushing atmosphere around her. The ship was designed for space, and was about as aerodynamic as a flying brick, giving the circling fighters behind him a definite edge until he broke atmosphere.

"We will return for you."

Kordath's voice was low as the sound of the wind rushing around Icarus died and stars appeared outside the bridge windows. As he warmed up the warp drive, Tal didn't need to ask if the Skipper had heard the Klingon's promise. He knew that she had, and now it was up to him to keep them alive long enough to make good on it. First step: Get rid of those fighters.

A grin formed on his face as he reached for the warp inititiator, and Nyssa would have blanched if she'd seen it. It was a grin he only used when he was about to do something particularly insane.

"Next stop: Oort cloud"

And Icarus jumped into warp, the five Khanate fighters right behind her.

---

The last thing she heard as the communicator went dead was the sound of the ship going to warp. They were safe.

Unlike her.

Still she ran, the sounds of her pursuers growing louder in the aftermath of the explosion. Dirty black boots pounded across the grey rubble as she pushed herself to her limits, then slowly began to exceed them. She had to find a way to hide from them until her crew came back for her. That was her mission now. Survive.

Two prayers had been answered in a single day, and now the time had come to pay the price. She skidded to a halt at the edge of the chasm, barely saving herself from falling into it's depths. She looked from side to side. Ruined buildings loomed on both her right and her left, cutting off any hope of escape. She spun around just in time to watch her hunters emerge from the smoke, their black armour segmented like reptilian skin, pale skin and dark eyes fading in with the ash clouds. Nightmares, every single one of them. Lifting her hands above her head, she spat the words out at them, the syllables tasting like bile in her throat.

"Looks like you got me."

The last thing she saw as they beat her into unconsciousness was the building on the other side of the chasm, it's ruined structure collapsing from centuries of abandonment.

The deserted remains of Starfleet Academy, San Francisco, Earth.

---

In the Between...

He remembered losing his grip.

He remembered the ground collapsing beneath him, sending him plummeting through the Guardian of Forever as the time vortex began to collapse.

He remembered feeling the Universe die behind him.

The cold touch of it's hand, the rank smell of it's breath, the sight of all the stars dying. To him, it was a moment he would carry forever. A moment he would carry to the grave.

It's over.

He remembered his own words, spoken only hours before. At the time, he had truly believed them. Yet he was still alive, and only the desperate hope that he had been wrong kept the madness at bay.

Author's Notes:
Well, here we are. "Chickens come home to roost" as Mal Reynolds would say. It's been, what? Two and a half, three months since my last update? (Jeez, I hope you're all still willing to keep reading) I want to say sorry for that. It's been a hectic few months for me, and I'm still working seven days a week. Writing has, shall we say, taken a back seat for a while. What I posted last month was in desperation to post something, anything. Sorry for the sub-par stuff.
But in any case, let me be the first to officially welcome you, my friends, to THE DARK AGE.