Eurydice in the Pit, Chapter Two

"The true test of a warrior is not without – it is within."

-Lieut. Worf, "Heart of Glory"

---

The song floated through her mind, existing in and of itself. Attached to nothing, leading to nothing. It simply was.

The night-time fills the sky
Stars alive, go floating by.
So still the evening air,
So warm and soft, is everywhere.

It was a song that she had not heard in twenty-seven years, since she had been a little girl lying in bed, listening to her mother sing her gently to sleep. The Universe had not yet destroyed the bubble of safety that she had formed around herself.

I see a world in harmony,
A world of peace and humanity.
Where people walk free,
Like water in a stream,Flowing on, forever more.

She was safe and warm with her family, not being beaten on some dead world in the middle of nowhere. Pirates had not yet taken her father from her, he still sat by her bedside and told her stories of the great Captains, Kirk and Picard, heroes of a Federation long dead.

The breezes softly blow,
Caressing warm, so sweet and low.
Upon my cheek I can feel,
Tenderly, a kiss so real.

The warmth that she felt was that of the blanket covering her bed, not that of the burning Communications Array in the distance. Monsters only existed in her nightmares. They weren't real.

Like the touch of a hand that I cannot see,
The sound of a voice deep inside of my heart.
So I dream of a new day coming, for all the world to see

Life is good, her five-year-old self said. The good guys always win, and knights in shining armour arrive just in time to save the princess from the evil dragon.

Lift your eyes and see a new day dawning,
A dream that will soon come true,
The day we've waited for.
Lift your heart and see the future for us all.

That's wrong, her thirty-two-year-old self said. Monsters are real, the good guys die just like everyone else, and there is no such thing as a knight in shining armour.

As she felt another rib break, she knew that she was on her own.

---

Viewed from a distance, the Oort cloud can be seen as an enormous sphere, enclosing the solar system in a globe of ice and snow three light years in diameter. Trapped in the sun's gravitational pull, the cloud occasionally releases cometary debris into the system, creating events like Haley's Comet.

Inside the cloud, two icy asteroids slowly moved towards a collision, trapped in a dance decades old, incapable of escaping their respective fates. With a grace capable only in zero-gravity, they struck, shattering into a million icy fragments thrown in a million different directions. Many died seconds after birth, striking their brothers and sisters and creating entirely new patterns in the collision. Others sailed deeper into the cloud, never to be seen again. Still others were thrown free of the cloud, spiralling into the solar system on courses that might, some day, send them hurtling into the sun. Assuming that nothing got in their way, of course.

Things like starships, for example.

Or the fleeing cargo ship Icarus and the five Khanate Kindjal-class fighters in pursuit, in particular.

"Whoa!" Icarus jerked as Tal threw her to starboard, narrowly missing a shard of ice easily twice the ship's size. Together, Tal, Nyssa and Kordath watched with a form of morbid fascination as two of the blade-winged fighters behind them emerged from warp directly in front of the same icy fragment, drilling through each other as an unstoppable object met unstoppable objects. Mutual annihilation was the only possible outcome. "Hmm. Think we'll get that lucky again?"

Nyssa frowned. "Somehow, I doubt it."

The ship barrel-rolled around another fragment, dodging and weaving to evade not only the ice, but weapons fire from the surviving three Kindjals behind them. Watching them enter the cloud on the sensors, Nyssa turned to the pilot. "Oh, look, Tal. They're as crazy as you are."

Without looking away from the window, Tal dipped Icarus to one side, coming dangerously close to skimming the surface of one of the asteroids just for fun. "Don't underestimate crazy. Crazy works." As they watched, one of the Kindjals overcompensated for the icy debris Tal's manoeuvre had kicked up and flew straight into another asteroid. "See? Three down, two to go."

"Tal." Kordath's voice cut through the room. "Enough joking. Fly."

The Bajoran nodded, dishevelled blonde hair falling around his face. "Right."

As bad as the pilots of the previous three fighters had been, the pilots of the two that remained were much better. Even Tal, who claimed he was "The-Greatest-Pilot-Who-Had-Ever-Lived", had to admit that they were good. Through the ever denser field, they kept directly on Icarus' flank, peppering the space around the cargo ship with weapons fire.

An asteroid the size of a city appeared in the windows as Tal spun around another phaser beam, blocking the view of the field behind it and quickly growing larger. Insanely, Tal brought the engines to full power, speeding directly toward it, rather than veering away.

Nyssa gulped. "Tal?"

"Yes?"

"Umm... You do see that, right?"

"Yes."

"Now, I may be a good medic, but I can't raise the dead, you know that, right?"

Tal laughed. "Won't need to test that theory. Kordath? How's the phaser cannon doing?"

Kordath glanced at the readout in front of him. "Fully charged and ready to fire." The grey head bobbed as he realized what Tal was going to do. "Give me a target."

"One second." At full speed, Icarus found herself trapped in the asteroid's gravity well, increasing in velocity as Tal spun her around the city-sized block of ice. The three crew found themselves pushed back in their chairs as the inertial dampeners struggled to keep up with the assault. Suddenly, the two Kindjals which had, seconds before, been behind them, were in front of them. As Icarus escaped the gravity well, moving recklessly fast, Kordath aimed the phaser cannon between their wing-mounted engines, where a ship's shields needed to be weakened to allow radiation to stream out behind the ship. Two shots, and both fighters were free-floating atoms.

Pulling back on the throttle, Tal brought Icarus to a dead stop, floating in the middle of the ice and debris field. Together, the three crew members stared out the bridge windows at the slowly spinning ice, a view that looked for all the world like a snowstorm. For long moments, the only sounds were the slow thrum of the cooling engines and the soft hiss of life support pumping air.

"That was far too easy."

Tal and Nyssa looked at Kordath with jaws open. "Easy? You call that easy?" Tal was almost shaking in shock at the Klingon's pronouncement. "Easy. He thinks that was easy."

The Klingon's dark eyes shifted from the windows to look at Tal. "Khanate have superior reflexes and intelligence. We should not have been able to escape them this quickly, if at all."

Nyssa leaned forward. "So what do you think? They weren't manned at all? Drone fighters?"

Kordath shrugged. "Perhaps. All I am sure of is that they did not devote everything to stopping us."

"Why?" Tal locked the helm down and turned in his seat to look at them both. "Why wouldn't they? We blew up the Sol system comm network. Unimportant as that is, they must still be annoyed." He stopped for a moment and considered. "Think they wanted to follow us back home?"

Kordath stared at the display screen in front of him, leather glove rubbing the grizzled beard. "Shut down the transceiver array. Remove it and throw it out the airlock. They may have recorded our signal for a trace. Activate the secondary transceiver. Once that is done, set a course for Vulcan. I need to speak with Captain Aldair." He stood and headed for the hatch at the back of the bridge leading down into the ship. "If I am needed, I will be in the cargo bay. If not, I do not wish to be disturbed."

And he was gone.

---

The edge of the bat'leth swung through the air and decapitated one enemy, slicing through muscle, sinew and bone before turning upwards and striking a second assailant in the chest. Still in the same fluid movement, Kordath, son of Kamor, spun and crushed the nose of a third with the open palm of his hand, driving the fragile cartilage back into his brain and killing him instantly.

The fourth swung his blade at Kordath's knees, forcing the huge Klingon to roll forward and over the blow, bringing the bat'leth up at the apex of the roll to block the downward stroke of a fifth blade. Twisting his upper body around, Kordath yanked the blade out of this latest enemy's hands, spun to his feet and drove his left elbow into their throat, crushing the windpipe.

As Five lay on the ground, clutching their throat and gasping for their last breaths, Four and Six came at him from opposite directions, blades swinging. Dodging the thrust Six aimed for his chest, Kordath grabbed Four by the hand and guided his strike into Six's chest before bringing the bat'leth down left handed and removing Four's head from his shoulders.

Alone in the middle of the carnage, Kordath clutched his curved blade and panted, staring around him through sweat-soaked hair. Deep in his chest, his hearts pounded mercilessly against his ribs, flooding his veins with adrenaline and heightening his senses. He could smell and taste the coppery tang of the blood soaking the floor around him, see every detail of the wounds he had inflicted on his enemies...

...and hear the soft footfall on the metal scaffold above and behind him.

Dropping the bat'leth from his left hand, his right grabbed the handle of his d'ktahg. In a single motion, he drew it from his belt and spun around, adjusted the aim infinitesimally as it left his hand...

...and missed Tal's nose by a quarter inch.

With a scream, the pilot fell backward onto the catwalk, hands clutching at the railing like a lifeline. Face white, Tal looked from the quivering hilt stuck in the bulkhead, to the sweating Klingon, and back to the knife. Standing on shaky legs, he reached out and touched the hilt, steadying it. Eyes wide as twin moons, he looked down at Kordath. "And people say that Klingons don't know how to aim."

Staring at him through lidded eyes, Kordath ran his hand through the mane of grey hair hanging in front of his face. As he turned and bent over to retrieve his bat'leth, his imaginary victims faded from his mind's eye, leaving the two of them alone among the crates filling Icarus' cargo bay. "I didn't."

"That's the problem with you, Kordath," Tal said as he tried to pull the d'ktahg out of the bulkhead. "I can never tell if you're joking or not."

"I assume that you have come here for more than to discuss my aim."

He heard Tal sigh, then turn, the metal walk ringing as the pilot stared down at him. "Yeah. I've set a course for Vulcan, like you asked. Wasn't easy, by the way, but I don't think we'll be followed. All five of those fighters were destroyed in the Oort cloud and by the time more get dispatched, we'll be long since gone."

Lifting a cloth and whetstone, he began cleaning the blade. It was an old weapon, full of tiny pits and scars that he found he could not ignore no matter how hard he tried, but it was a well-loved weapon, an old companion that had fought beside him for as long as he could remember.

"Anyway. The course I've set should keep us undetected all the way to Vulcan. I've shifted our warp trail, and I'll be stopping a couple of times a day to double-back and around. Should confuse anyone foll..."

"I asked you to set a course, Tal. I do not care how." There. A new scar on the blade. He must have clipped the deck during his exercising. Inexcusable.

Tal's boots clanged on the stairs as he walked down to the floor of the Cargo bay. Kordath looked up and saw the pilot leaning against the wall, fiddling with a stylus he had picked up off the deck. "Hey. You've been down here for six hours now. That's pretty extreme, even for you." Flipping the stylus through the air into a pile of crates, Tal turned back and frowned, an unusually serious expression on his face. "This isn't your fault. It's not a 'stain on your honour', or whatever it is you want to call it."

"I left my commanding officer, and my friend, behind, and I ran. What else could it be?"

Tal shrugged. "You said that there's no honour in dying for sheer stupidity, right? Much as I hate to say it, the Skipper was right to tell us to run, and you're right in wanting to talk to Captain Aldair. If we're gonna go back for her, we're gonna need the Harsesis' help. With backup, we can go back, get the Skipper, and kick the Khanate's collective asses."

Kordath stared down at the curved blade of his bat'leth, watching his fists clench around the leather wrapped handguards. It went against his very nature to run and he had hated doing it, but Tal was correct. Kahless taught that a warrior could have only one death for his people, but a warrior who lives can kill many enemies before Death comes for him.

And Kordath, son of Kamor, had many enemies.

Standing, Kordath drew himself to his full height, towering over the small Bajoran, and leaned his Bat'leth over his shoulder. "How long?"

Tal grinned, "We can reach Vulcan in three days. Harsesis is a bit faster than us, so we should be able to make the return trip in one and a half, maybe two. Think the Skipper can survive on Earth for five days?" Kordath looked at the shorter man, his gaze alone answering the question. "Right, of course she can. She might actually be running the place by the time we get back."

Kordath laughed at the thought, a sound that filled the bay and echoed through the ship. Climbing the metal stairs to the catwalk, he pulled his d'ktahg out of the bulkhead as he passed, imagining the look of shock on Tal's face as he did so. Walking out of the Cargo Bay, he never even looked back at the cloaked tracking device the Khanate had predictably transported into the room during the battle.

The tracking device he had crushed with his bare hands six hours ago.

---

The five hunters walked through the wreckage of San Francisco, watching the fire consume what had once been a communications array. Flickering light danced over their pale features and dark armour, giving them a dangerous, wraith-like beauty as they glided effortlessly through the rubble. Long white hair hung to the middle of their backs, cast red in the firelight. They surveyed the world around them from pale eyes set deep in chiselled faces, searching for any possibility of an attack.

Three of the hunters wore bandoliers across their chests, each holding a dozen bladed silver discs, deadly and efficient when thrown by skilled hands. The other two carried long staffs with smooth, curving blades on either end. All five wore a variety of knives and other weapons strapped across their bodies, as well as twin energy weapons on both wrists. Beautiful and deadly.

Hanging limp between the arms of the two rear hunters, the human captive began to moan. Hearing the sound, the lead hunter turned and appraised her with an elegantly arched eyebrow. Bruises covered every inch of exposed skin, and undoubtedly covered the concealed skin as well. Her black clothing was ripped and torn, dark coat hanging in tatters over her stirring form. One leg, her left, was bent at an unnatural angle, obviously broken in several places. Nodding to himself, he turned and continued walking. The human should consider herself fortunate his orders had changed from Kill to Capture, or she would have been dead by now.

As he and his fellows had beaten the human for the destruction of the array, fully intending to enjoy her death, they had received new orders: Take the human alive. His Lordship would want to interrogate her personally. And so, they had lifted her broken body and begun the march back to the ruined communications network, there to wait for the arrival of their Lord's cruiser. There had been no argument, no disapproval of the order, no hesitation in following it. Their Lord spoke, and they obeyed. It was their duty, a duty ingrained in them as deeply as their very genes.

They were Jem'Hadar.

Suddenly, the hounds a dozen meters before the First stopped in their tracks, muzzles sniffing the cinder-filled air as one, muscle and sinew coiling under their leathery hides. Lifting a long-fingered hand, he brought his companions to a stop as the hounds seemed to search for something. With no warning, all four hounds lifted their faces to the burning sky and released an ululating howl, the sound reaching from their throats and tearing at the clouds. With the sound, the First felt the hot wind around him begin to stir, quickly rising to gale force, whipping at his hair. The human's moans seemed to carry on the winds as her eyes opened, looking out on the world through a pain-filled haze.

Crackling energy seemed to dance between the First's fingers, clawing it's way up his arms until it felt as though his entire body was coated in lightning. Glancing over his shoulder at the four others, they shrouded, becoming invisible to the naked eye as they searched for the source of the storm, the barely conscious human left on the ground behind them, incapable of movement, able only to watch as her captors vanished into the maddened air.

---

Alex struck the uneven ground hard, his uniform jacket ripping on a sharp piece of rubble and his head striking a wall as he rolled. For a moment, he simply laid there, still and silent, as the wind picked at his dark hair, the only survivor of a dead Universe.

With a sudden gasp, his lungs lurched back into use, expelling his breath in a hacking cough and inhaling mouthfuls of ash. His eyes opened as the hot air stung his throat and filled his nostrils with the stench of burning metal. Rolling onto his side, he vomited, his body racked with agonizing heaves, the journey through the Guardian having taken it's toll.

James Kirk had written centuries before that travelling through the vortex of the Guardian was harmless, that it felt like stepping through a light mist. Agents of Temporal Investigations claimed that time travel felt the same as using a transporter. There was a light tingling, and then it was over.

Alex remembered nothing but pain, James Kirk's light mist transformed into a driving downpour, each pellet of rain striking his skin like a knife. The light tingling had become acid seething through his veins.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it had ended and he had found himself being thrown inelegantly to the ground of this place.

Rising to unsteady feet, he braced a hand against a ruined wall, his eyes still burning from the fumes. Through tear-filled eyes, he took in his surroundings. He was in an alleyway, devastated towers of glass and steel rose around him, their skeletal remains in various states of decay. In the distance, he saw the red haze of a fire burning out of control against a leaden cloud-filled sky. Grey ash fell, snow-like, over everything. To his eyes, it wasn't quite what had once been called a nuclear winter, but it was close. A raspy voice scratched across parched lips, "Where the Hell am I?"

As if in answer, the air seemed to shimmer in front of him, the hot wind blasting his face and forcing him to look away. Lightning seemed to surge around the disturbance as a figure appeared in mid-air and flew across the alley, flailing body driving straight into the far wall. As the body slumped to the ground, the disturbance vanished completely, the wind dying as quickly as it had risen. Alex stumbled across the alley towards the other man, weakened legs pushing him forward.

Jason?

Hey. Nice to see ya. Mind telling me what's going on?

The memories came rushing back to him, driving him to his knees with their ferocity. The collapse of the Guardian, Forever World ripping itself apart as the two energy beings fought in sky above him, Jason holding his wrist, keeping him from falling into the chasm.

Selene.

What are you doing!

What I have to.

Falling.

"Jason?"

Author's Notes:
I know, I know. The beginning of the chapter is the same as the one I posted a few weeks ago. I just loved it so much, and it works better as the beginning of a chapter rather than a chapter on it's own. (FYI: The song's called "Water Evidence" from Gundam Seed)
JadziaKathryn and Grayangle, I just want to say thanks so much for the reviews. The knowledge that someone's enjoying the story is making all the hard work worthwhile. Tips hat