To
Fly on Waxen Wings, Chapter Five:
-Capt. James T. Kirk, "The City on the Edge of Forever"
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Tal had never read Greek mythology, so he didn't know the story of Icarus' namesake. The Skipper had told him the name and that was that. How she got the name, he didn't particularly care. Icarus was his baby, she was his girl, and that was all he cared about. So he had no clue just how appropriate it was that right now, Icarus was plummeting towards the Earth's surface, wisps of flame trailing off her overheated hull.
Gravity was like an iron fist, grinding Tal back into his chair, the restraints digging into his chest as he struggled to reach forward and hit the restart key on his console. Nyssa's voice was a shrill screeching in his ear, curses and epithets flying from her lips in several languages. The key was just inches away now, mere inches...
A final burst of strength and he hit it, blacking out for a quick second as gravity hit him again, yanking him backwards as if he were on strings. Around the bridge, computer screens suddenly blinked back to life, lines of code streaming across them sluggishly as Icarus's main computer rebooted. Watching the text flashing by in front of him, and seeing the Pacific ocean rushing up towards them, he started to panic. "Come on come on come on..."
They were maybe ten or twelve thousand feet above the greenish-blue waters when the computers blacked out for a second, then came back on, along with all the lights, the sensors, the artificial gravity...
And the engines.
As soon as Earth's gravity was replaced by Icarus' own, Tal reached forward and grabbed the control yoke, listening to Nyssa's continuous stream of muttered curses behind him. They were still falling, and a quick glance at the sensor panel showed that the Kindjals were flying straight down in pursuit. Tal had maybe five seconds to make a decision about what to do. Keep falling and take his chances with the ocean, or start flying and take his chances with the Kindjals overhead.
Decision made, Tal pitched the ship forward and began firing thrusters, slowing their descent, but not stopping it. Of course, a slight reduction in speed when you were traveling at terminal velocity wasn't much.
"What the Hell are you doing!" Nyssa shrieked as she watched him aim the ship directly for the waters below. Confident that the ship had slowed down enough, Tal started firing the thrusters randomly, sending Icarus into a tailspin. Adjusting her minimal energy shields to focus everything on her belly, Tal bit his lip. Not much left to do now but sit and watch.
Icarus hit the ocean, creating an enormous wave as she sank beneath the surface, water boiling around her as it came into contact with her still red-hot hull plates. Tal was ripped from his chair and sent flying into the bridge windows, Nyssa crashing into Tal's chair and bouncing up the wall before gravity stabilized. Tal hit the deck hard, and he swore that he could hear every bone in his body go crack as he came to rest. Looking out the windows, he watched the water become steadily darker as they fell deeper into the Pacific. Moving up to Kordath's tactical panel, he punched the fire button.
A torpedo streaked out of Icarus's hidden torpedo bay, cutting through the water before detonating a little less than a kilometer away. Icarus caught the tail end of the shock wave and bucked, knocking Tal and Nyssa back off their feet and into the back wall of the bridge. Side by side, they sat there in the flickering light given off by overloaded panels and watched the sensor readings in complete silence.
On the surface, an enormous geyser burst towards the sky, forcing the Kindjals to desperately evade. Circling the spot for a long minute, they satisfied themselves that the cargo ship had been destroyed in the crash and turned away, headed back towards the Gilgamesh.
Another few minutes passed before either Tal or Nyssa moved, minutes that passed in tense silence. Tal swallowed with a suddenly very dry throat and turned to look at Nyssa, "I really don't think that what you called my mother was fair."
Nyssa glared at him through disheveled black hair, then started slapping him with both hands, forcing Tal to raise both of his arms to defend himself as Icarus continued to sink.
-----
Kordath leaned against a bulkhead, wincing as he examined the wound that bisected his chest. It was deep, a clean cut. Only his Klingon physiology with it's redundant organs was keeping him moving. If he been Human, he would have been dead already.
His failure, though, pained him more than the wound. Rakiin had been correct. He had gotten old, and he had become decrepit. Five years ago, he would have won that battle. Five years ago, Rakiin would have been the one clutching the chest wound. The fact that he had maimed his former student, and that Rakiin had not escaped the battle unscathed, pleased him not in the least. The Khanate was not dead. Injured, yes. Dead? No.
In his mind, he could see his Father and Mother, their voices silent as they served on the Barge of the Dead, steadily approaching the tall bone gates of gre'thor, the Underworld. The burning seas of blood teemed with life, demons hissing and waiting to devour the souls of the dishonoured dead. They had died in their sleep, murdered by the poison burning in their veins. Kordath had failed to protect them, failed to kill them honourably when they had become too ill to die in battle. He had not been there, and that failure haunted him to this day.
Until their murderers were dead, his parents could not enter the Great Halls of Sto'vo'kor, there to join the rest of his ancestors in glorious eternal battle. Until their murderers died, they would be condemned to eternal dishonour, forced to serve, weaponless, on the Barge.
A Jem'Hadar charged him, it's pale face twisted with hatred, a pike aimed for his heart. With a savage blow, Kordath broke the pike in half, snapping off it's blade and driving it into the Jem'Hadar's chest. Picking up the dead creature, Kordath flung it into the next, breaking the stride of the attack. Drawing the blade on the Jem'Hadar's side, he killed it with it's own weapon, smiling savagely as he gifted it with a wound similar to his own. White blood mixed with the garnet of his own, collecting in puddles on the floor. Kordath was a trained warrior, and he paid the treacherous deck no mind. He had fought on battlefields where he had waded through the blood of his enemies, their bodies catching on his armour and trying to drag him down in retribution for their deaths. He had not fallen on that day, and he would not fall on this one. Today may be a good day to die, but it was a glorious day to live.
His hearts began to beat faster, pumping more blood through his veins, feeding adrenaline to every corner of his being. His breath quickened and his eyes grew wild, a smile on his features as he roared to the heavens and charged the dozens of Jem'Hadar that were trying to kill him. He may have become old, but this was who he was. This was what he was meant to be. A Warrior, alive in battle, sending his enemies to meet their ancestors, his blade determining who lived and who died. Nothing, not even age, would change that. Nothing could stop him.
Honour would be satisfied one day. One day, his parents' murderers would be brought to heel, his mother's and father's souls set free with a single stroke of his bat'leth. He had failed to kill Rakiin today, but he would not fail again. Rakiin had lost his hand, and if Kordath had to, he would kill him one piece at a time.
But right now, he would find Selene and the other prisoners. No sense weeping over spilled blood wine. Kill the cur who had spilled it and get another.
Kordath laughed with pure joy as he met the next charge, his bat'leth falling like the hammer of the very Gods as he fought his way to the forward Kindjal bay, his own blood dripping on the floor, but masked by the blood of the Jem'Hadar...
Which flowed.
-----
Rakiin knelt on the floor of the Observation chamber, his right arm pressed to his chest as blood spilled from the stumped wrist with every beat of his heart. Nerve endings burned, sending pain signals to his brain, and he swore that he could still feel the hand, even though it lay beside him. He could still bend the fingers, could still feel the glove that covered it. The agony was unimaginable.
As his Personal Guard gathered around him, he desperately tried to disconnect the pain, to turn away from it, leave the arm numb, but he couldn't. His training fled from his mind like rats from a sinking ship, deserting him and leaving him alone to face the pain. Blood soaked the front of his tunic, darkening the fabrics. He was having trouble thinking, but he heard one of the Jem'Hadar speaking to someone, explaining what had happened. Distantly, he thought that he could hear a weapon fire, thought that he could smell something burning.
"Rakiin."
Pain fled before an indignant fury that quickly turned to fear. Who dared to call him by name? Was this a coup? Had his own personal guard turned against him? Was he about to be assassinated?
The blow came as a complete shock, an open hand striking him across the face and jarring his mind. His eyes started to focus on the golden glow before him, the glow that began to fade into a familiar form. "Aishwarya."
His sister knelt before him, her dark eyes level with his own. Strangely, he felt the fear gnawing away at him grow stronger at his sister's face, rather than lessening. Glancing down at his severed hand, she spoke casually, her voice filled with a mild interest. "What have you done, my Brother?"
Had she turned his guards against him? Had she planned this? Was she going to kill him? Kill him in vengeance for Father? "If you are going to kill me, Aishwarya, be done with it."
Her eyes returned to his, amusement sparkling in their depths. "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly." Rising to her feet, she looked down on his maimed form. He was sure that she was enjoying this. Soon, she would be rid of him. Let her try, he thought. Even in death, he would be a greater leader than she could ever aspire to be. Someday, her secrets would be revealed and who would follow her then? No one. She would be put to death, and his spirit would laugh as she burned.
His eyes were fierce as he watched her lift the Jem'Hadar blade and hold it before him. If she were hoping that he would scream, she would be disappointed. "Do it, Sister. If you have the courage."
Examining the blade, Aishwarya smiled thinly. "This is going to hurt." And she brought the knife down, it's blade pointed at his chest. Rakiin braced himself.
And the flat of the blade came to rest on his bleeding wrist.
Rakiin howled as the heated blade burned the lacerated tissue, melting and cauterizing the veins in his severed wrist. Pain didn't describe the sensation of every nerve overloading and flooding his brain with confused signals. Agony came close. This was a taste of death itself.
As suddenly as it had started, it was gone, his mind washing away the pain. The stump still burned, but it no longer bled. Aishwarya threw the Jem'Hadar knife away as she turned and left the room. "For giving me my life, my Brother. For giving me my life."
Rakiin heard her, but found that he couldn't tear his eyes away from his hand, lying beside him, still clutching his sword.
-----
Alex hit the cold deck plates of the Kindjal bay hard, instinctively reaching out to grab Selene's hand when he saw how treacherously close the thousand foot drop loomed. Catching her hand with his own, he rolled towards the inside of the ship, nearer to safety. Safety, of course, being a relative term. In front of him lay a thousand foot fall towards the burning ruins below. Behind him stood a maddened Jem'Hadar with a plasma rifle.
The Devil you Know.
The wind was rushing by his ears as he pulled her towards him, making it next to impossible to hear anything softer than a shout. But still, as he turned his attention to Herma'Taklan, he heard it.
The soft catching of Jason's breath.
Reality seemed to slow down as he turned away from the Jem'Hadar, his mind coldly knowing what his heart refused to believe. Pulling himself to his knees, he saw Jason standing there, framed by the wide open mouth of the Kindjal bay, towering above him. For an instant, Alex saw Jason as he had been on the day they had met, seven years old, nothing more than a silhouette standing in front of the sun, defending Alex from a bully. Now, twenty-nine years later, their eyes met, and Alex saw the man who was closer to him than any friend, than any brother, smile serenely as he fell backwards off the platform with a gaping hole in his chest.
Shock and disbelief filled Alex as Jason tumbled backwards and out of sight, falling into the ether. In one, horrific second, Jason Madden was gone, vanished from Alex's world as though he had never even existed in the first place. They had been the last. The only survivors of an entire Universe. Whether they had been spared by fate, by providence, or by luck, somewhere deep down, Alex had known that nothing could defeat them if they were together. He and Jason had been friends for so long that the prospect of Jason not being there was unfathomable.
Jason couldn't possibly be gone. Jason wouldn't leave him alone.
Would he?
-----
Selene would never forget the look on Alex's face as Madden pushed them aside and stepped in front of the shot meant for her. It wasn't despair or pain as she might have believed. It was confusion, the look that a child had on it's face when it was told about death for the first time. It was the complete and utter inability to understand what 'gone' meant. And it broke her heart to see it.
She had long ago lost any illusions that she had about death, had them ripped from her when her father had died. As she had grown older, she had lost friends to the war. She had watched, grief-stricken, as their eyes had dimmed for the last times, had held them as they breathed their last gasping breaths. It always hurt, God, did it hurt, and it never got easier.
It always got harder.
Alex seemed to crumble before her eyes, his eyes fixed in shock on the spot where Madden had stood not a second earlier. She knelt beside him, unsure of what to do or what to say. It was a moment that seemed to stretch on for an eternity, a terrible, frozen tableau of pain and loss.
It was a moment that came to a crashing end.
Spinning around, Selene ran towards Herma'Taklan, her rifle spewing deadly bolts of plasma as she forced the scarred warrior to duck behind one of the Kindjals. Enraged, she continued to discharge the weapon into the small fighter's hull, intent on burning through it and killing the Jem'Hadar that had just killed Madden.
Still, Alex sat, his eyes fixed in shock on the city below.
Herma'Taklan leapt out from his hiding place, dodging Selene's fire, and knocked the rifle from her hands. The stolen weapon skittered across the floor, out of her reach as Herma'Taklan lifted her by her jacket and started to drag her back towards the bay doors.
To join Madden.
Selene kicked and screamed, clawing at the Jem'Hadar's iron grip as he carted her towards her death. Nothing could break the hold on her collar. Desperate, she screamed at the top of her lungs, praying that someone could hear her.
"Help me!"
Two things happened then.
The doors leading into the ship exploded, tiny fragments of superheated shrapnel spinning away from the detonation, momentarily drowning out the wind.
Herma'Taklan didn't stop.
A blue flash filled the room, followed by the smell of burning metal as the deck at the Jem'Hadar's feet turned into a boiling liquid.
Herma'Taklan stopped.
Selene struggled, turning her head just far enough to see what was happening.
Alex stood in front of the bay doors, her missing rifle in his hands and death in his eyes.
-----
Tal watched with a sense of fascination as a school of fish swam past the bridge windows, noting with a careful analytical eye the sleek forms that evolution had granted them, the multitude of reflective scales that danced across their tiny orange bodies. It was incredible, a thing of true beauty hidden by the depths of Earth's Pacific Ocean.
In reality, Tal was incredibly bored and barely even noticed the fish.
"Are you talking to me, yet?"
Determined silence filled the bridge, a silence punctuated only by Nyssa's pointed tapping at her console behind him. Sighing, Tal tried a different tack. "Look, you can give me the silent treatment all you like. I still say that we're at least alive, if you hadn't noticed. Would you rather be docked in the Gilgamesh's loading bay right now? If that was how you wanted to go about saving the Skipper and Kordath, I humbly apologize, Oh-Great-Lady-of-the-Pointy-Ears, for saving our necks." When he was met with nothing more than silence, Tal decided to give up and focused on his console.
"You don't have to be so sarcastic."
"Oh, we're talking now. How nice."
Nyssa stepped up beside his chair as he continued running his pre-flight check. "I'm still not happy with you. You should have told me what you were doing."
Tal frowned and blew a loose string of blond hair out from in front of his eyes. "Yeah, I suppose. Sorry. Ow!" Tal shrieked as Nyssa batted him in the arm. "What was that for?"
"You really have to ask?" Nyssa smiled and sat back in her chair. "Now let's go pick everybody up."
As Icarus burst from the surface of the water, Tal frowned as he saw the dark shape of the Gilgamesh in front of him, hovering over the bay city, coming ever closer as Icarus picked up speed.
Ready or not, here we come.
-----
It was dark where Alex Carver was now.
Not outside, even though the Kindjal bay was lit only by the dim emergency lights. No, where Alex Carver was right now was much darker than that.
He was dark inside.
His wife was dead. Jason was dead. Everyone, everything, that he had ever known was dead. He didn't know why. He didn't know how. All he knew was that he had just watched the only other survivor of an entire Universe die in front of his eyes, and this Jem'Hadar, this thing, had committed the murder.
He could feel the cool weight of the rifle in his hands, the comforting hum of it's power cells building up. He had only killed once before in his entire life, the Jem'Hadar on the streets of San Francisco a few days ago. But that, that had been defence. Jason's defence.
This would be murder.
This would make him no different from the Jem'Hadar.
He pulled the trigger.
Herma'Taklan flew backwards, trapped in the eye of a sapphire hurricane, releasing Selene's collar as the plasma bolt overloaded every single nerve in his body. The Jem'Hadar's body hit the hard deckplates with a crunch, inertia sliding him along the metal for a few meters before coming to rest at the base of one of the Kindjals.
Selene gaped, rising to her feet in shock at what he had just done. As she moved to his side, he felt her take the rifle out of his hands.
It was set on stun.
As their eyes met, he nodded, his voice filled with a kind of wonder as he spoke.
"I'm... I'm not a murderer."
Her lips turned upward in a small smile as she nodded. Smiling back, he turned towards the Jem'Hadar pilling into the bay from the jagged hole where the door had once been. Without tearing his eyes away from the dozens of Jem'Hadar, Alex picked up his own stolen rifle as Selene took aim with hers. Back to back, they prepared to face down the horde.
"But I will defend myself."
Jason had given his life for theirs, and Alex would make sure that his best friend had not died in vain.
-----
Another Jem'Hadar charged Kordath.
Another Jem'Hadar died.
The Klingon had long since lost count how many enemies he had sent to their ancestors this day, but their ivory blood coated his bat'leth, making the blade's hilt slippery. He spun and stabbed, each stroke adding to the army of corpses at his feet. He could see the doors to the Kindjal bay, not thirty feet away. He could hear the energy discharges within, the screaming, the yelling.
He could hear Selene's voice, and he could hear another voice. A Human voice. One of the other prisoners?
But he could also feel his chest wound beginning to take it's toll. The adrenaline was beginning to run thin, his muscles were beginning to ache. The bat'leth was growing heavier in his hands. This was inexcusable. He was better than this.
He was better than this! He would not die here!
As his bat'leth locked against a Jem'Hadar pike, his communicator crackled to life.
"Kordath! We're coming in!"
Tal... Nyssa...
Smiling savagely, Kordath broke the lock, snapping his enemy's pike in the process and charged, breaking through the thirty feet to the Kindjal bay, his enormous form trampling enemies left and right.
-----
Icarus tore through the crumbling buildings of San Francisco, her explosive wake shattering what little glass remained in the ancient skyscrapers. She hugged the ground, staying as low as possible to avoid detection until she reached the black underbelly of the Gilgamesh.
Then she climbed, responding to the gentle touch of her pilot as she flipped over so that she was flying upside-down, embracing the hull of the Khanate cruiser as she had the ground a second earlier. She was cloaked in the larger ship's shadow, racing for a point at the very tip of the ship's prow, her engines howling in the atmosphere as she heard Tal's whispered wish for speed and did everything that she could to comply.
For at her destination, Selene waited, and Icarus wanted her Skipper back as badly as any of her crew.
-----
They had begun by coming one or two at a time, pikes flashing in the emergency lights of the Kindjal bay, each Jem'Hadar Warrior focused on the death of Selene Weller and the capture of Alexander Carver.
Then, they had begun to charge in small groups, climbing over the corpses of their fellows.
Now...
The Jem'Hadar charged them, wielding their pikes, but not their energy weapons. Why? Selene quickly glanced over her shoulder and found the answer to that question. Alex. They wanted Alex alive. What was it the scarred Jem'Hadar had said?
I'm not going to kill you, Carver. I'm going to kill them.
Them. Her and Madden. Not Alex. They needed him alive for some reason. Technology? The secrets of his Universe? Something to do with the fight between him and the Changeling? It didn't matter right now, but it was an edge.
She jumped slightly as Alex clamped a hand down on her shoulder and yanked her around, his rifle disgorging blue flame where her head had been a second earlier. Not to be outdone, she fell to one knee and fired past his hip, covering him even as he tried to cover her. Neither of them led, neither of them spoke to the other, but they both knew instinctively how to respond to the other's movements. She saw the flaws in his steps, his rushed aim, his utter lack of experience at holding a weapon, and she adjusted for it. But when faced with a wall of enemies, aim and quality were less important than speed and quantity.
But even speed and quantity wouldn't hold out forever.
One of the Jem'Hadar got through the field of plasma fire, it's pike knocking Alex's rifle from his hands and sending it falling off the edge of the deck to the ground below. Selene spun around to cover but saw that she would be too late, the Jem'Hadar already had one hand around Alex's throat and the other was aiming the pike straight for her chest.
A whistling sound sounded in her ears and she frowned, confused, as the Jem'Hadar stopped mid-strike. It stood still for a second, then fell over, a bat'leth embedded deep in it's back.
Kordath broke free from the mob, his long grey hair matted in blood, both Jem'Hadar and his own. With a savage backhand, he sent two of the warriors flying away into their companions, stalling their advance long enough to join Selene and Alex. Towering over them, the Klingon pulled his blade out of the dead Jem'Hadar's back.
"Kordath?"
The Klingon nodded and smiled slightly, reaching down to help Selene to her feet. "I promised that we would return. And so we have."
Suddenly, Selene noticed that the Jem'Hadar had come to a stop, something holding them back at the other side of the bay. As she and Alex turned around, she smiled, already knowing what she would see behind her.
Icarus hovered at the front of the Kindjal bay, her sole phase cannon aimed straight at the Jem'Hadar. Her smile quickly turned into a laugh as she saw Tal and Nyssa at the bridge windows, waving like maniacs.
-----
Deep inside the Gilgamesh's main computer, secondary systems began to stir, the codes and software that Alex had destroyed slowly healing themselves. Main power was the first system to return to the enormous ship, but it would not be the last.
Weapons and engines would soon follow.