To
Fly on Waxen Wings, Chapter Six:
-Capt. Montgomery Scott, "Relics"
This chapter is dedicated to the memory of James Doohan, Star Trek's fist miracle worker. Thanks, Jimmy, for all of the close saves.
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The command deck was a study in organized chaos, Khanate crew members scurrying from station to station like Lilliputians trying to reawaken the slumbering Gulliver. They had made progress, reactivating main power, but the computer virus Alexander Carver had implanted in the ship's mainframe was centuries beyond their current level of computer science. It would take time to isolate the virus and repair all of the damage that Carver had done.
Rakiin sat in his command throne at the top of the bridge, glaring out the three level window while a medical officer probed the cauterized stump of his right arm. From this vantage point, he could see the tiny cargo ship holding position before his cruiser's prow, hating the feeling of vulnerability that filled him. At this moment, that small, insignificant Starfleet vessel had enough power in it's ancient phase cannon to destroy his ship, and it had a straight shot down the Gilgamesh's gullet.
His teeth clenched as one of the surgeon's probes made contact with an extremely sensitive patch of skin, the pain like a burning needle shooting up and down his arm. Without conscious thought, his arm straightened, striking the surgeon across the face. As the Khanate doctor reclaimed his feet, Rakiin stepped from his throne, throwing his cloak over his arm, hiding the garish wound from sight. Kordath, the architect of his pain, was on that ship. That small, insignificant, annoying gnat of a cargo ship, it's hull as fragile as an eggshell. Turning his infuriated glare from the window to a technician, he growled, "Time to weapons."
The technician shrunk from Rakiin in near-terror. That had not been a question. It had been a threat. Glancing down at his palm computer, he replied in a terrified voice. "Thirty-two minutes, My Lord."
The fire in his eyes intensifying, Rakiin's left hand snaked out and grasped the technician by the collar. "I want that ship destroyed."
"We are doing our best, My Lord."
"Then your best is not good enough!" Rakiin howled as he pushed the technician off the third tier and down into the crew pit of the second. The crunch the smaller man made as he struck resounded through the bridge, drawing eyes from every corner.
"I want that ship destroyed! Use handheld rifles if you must! I want them DEAD!"
Every Jem'Hadar on the bridge bowed and ran from the room, leaving the technicians to find a way to bring the engines and weapons back on line sooner, rather than later.
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Tal frowned as he watched the sensor readings. He had chosen the moment of approach very carefully, waiting until the two Kindjals that hadn't been trapped on the inside of the Gilgamesh had been on the far side of the city, far enough away so that he would have a couple of minutes before they could intersect him.
'A couple of minutes' was beginning to run out.
Flicking on Icarus' loudspeakers, he spoke into the radio. "Skipper, we're about to have company." Outside, Selene nodded and waved, telling him to turn the ship around so that they could reach the starboard airlock. Tugging at the control yoke, he slowly turned Icarus to port, sliding the starboard side of the saucer against the Kindjal bay. Beside him, Nyssa sat at Kordath's panel, keeping the room full of Jem'Hadar behind the Skipper in the crosshairs of the phase cannon's targeting array.
Together, they watched as the Skipper, Kordath and the red and black dressed Human stepped off the edge of the platform into the airlock. On his screen, the Skipper looked up at the camera as Kordath shut the hatch behind them. "Tal, get us out of here!"
A huge smile on his face, Tal nodded, even though he knew she couldn't see him. All of a sudden, the air of doom that had hung over Icarus for the past week since they had left the Skipper behind evaporated. The ship felt alive again. She felt happy again. "Yes, ma'am."
Nyssa stood from the tactical console, heading for the hatch leading down into the ship. "I'm going to go check on them. They're probably hurt."
"You do that." Tal grinned as he shot the Jem'Hadar outside a jaunty salute, watching them run for the edge of the Kindjal bay, already raising their weapons. Plasma bursts bounced off of Icarus' hull as Tal guided the ship away from the Gilgamesh and back out over the ocean, and not even the sight of two Kindjals approaching could wipe the smile from his face.
Of course, the sight of the Gilgamesh beginning to turn and pursue was enough to make him forget that the grin had been there in the first place. Flipping on the shipwide comm, he gulped. "Uh... Skipper? Nice to have you back and all, but... uh... we've got a problem."
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Alex watched as the giant Klingon closed the airlock hatch, shutting away the view of the Jem'Hadar they had left standing on the other side. As the room sealed, Alex felt something change inside. It was as though he had left more than the Jem'Hadar and the Gilgamesh behind that door. Everything he had ever been, his entire life, had been left behind on that hangar deck, sealed away on the other side of that hatch. Jason. His own Selene. The Federation he knew. Starfleet. Lieutenant Alexander Carver, Engineer on the Federation bioship Albion, was dead and gone, killed with the same shot that had killed Jason Madden. Now, Alex Carver, refugee, stepped through into the cargo ship, holding in his hand a small piece of metal, the buckle off of his belt.
The Starfleet arrowhead, symbol of Starfleet service since the days of James Kirk and the Enterprise.
He had no idea who he was anymore. Without realizing it himself, he had built his entire life around Selene, Jason and Starfleet. Without them, he was cast adrift, rudderless, unable to do anything to guide his life, capable only of reacting to the events around him.
Staring at the arrowhead, he realized that all he had left of his old life was what this piece of metal represented and the golden locket around his neck. Not even the uniform he wore, torn and dirty though it was, was his own. Again, the question rose in his mind:
Who is Alex Carver?
A Romulan woman came running down the corridor, her black pants and green shirt streaked with dirt as she rushed Selene, giving her a quick look before scooping her up into a hug. Selene laughed as she hugged the woman back. "Nyssa! Careful of the ribs! Careful of the ribs!"
The Romulan... Nyssa... backed away sheepishly, but with a sudden look of worry. "What's wrong with your ribs? Where's the pain?"
Selene chuckled as she clapped Nyssa on the shoulder, giving the woman another, much more careful, embrace. "Nothing. You just keep forgetting Humans aren't as strong as Romulans." Looking back over her shoulder, she nodded towards Alex. "Nyssa, this is Alex Carver. He saved me down there."
Nyssa gave Alex a quick once over, her eyebrow quirking as she looked at him. "You must be one of the other prisoners Kordath told us about. The Starfleet guys from the other reality."
Selene jumped at Nyssa's comment. Looking at Kordath, she arched an eyebrow. "How did you know about that?"
The Klingon returned her frown silently, looking away down the corridor. Selene's lips pursed, and she looked as though she had bit into something sour. "Oh." Sighing, she hung her head. "I should've known that."
Nyssa cleared her throat. "I thought that there were two other prisoners."
Silence filled the corridor as Alex drew a shaky breath. Selene glared at Nyssa, who looked around with a look that said "What?" on her face. Just as Selene was about to answer Nyssa's question, Alex spoke. "He didn't make it."
Nyssa's face fell in an ashamed look at the total lack of inflection in Alex's voice, and everything that it meant. "Oh. Sorry." Looking at Kordath, the Romulan's eyes grew wide as they traced the wound that cut across his broad chest. "What in the... What happened to you?"
The Klingon's answer was short. "War."
Grabbing the Klingon's hand, Nyssa started to pull him away from the bulkhead. "Come on. We've got to take care of that." Kordath pulled back. "I will live."
The Romulan placed her fists on her hips and glared. "Not with a wound like that, you won't."
"I have survived worse."
"Yeah, I'm sure. Probably head trauma."
A short, sharp whistle broke up the argument. Alex, Nyssa and Kordath all turned to look at Selene, who stood with two fingers between her lips. Lowering her hand, she looked at the Romulan and the Klingon. "Will you two stop arguing? We're not home yet, if you haven't forgotten." Shaking her head, she looked at Kordath. "Go to sickbay. You won't be much use if you bleed to death."
The Klingon drew himself to his full height, dwarfing Selene by at least a foot and a half. "I do not require medical attention."
Glaring up at Kordath, Selene refused to back down. They stared at each other for a long moment before Kordath grunted and stepped back, placing a giant hand on her shoulder. "It is good to have you back, Selene."
Patting the Klingon's hand, she smiled. "It's good to be home, Kordath. Thank you. Now get going." As the Klingon and the Romulan disappeared down the corridor, Selene started to chuckle then turned to look at Alex. "Welcome aboard the Icarus."
Alex was trying to think of an answer to that when the comm crackled, filling the corridor with a young man's voice. "Uh... Skipper? Nice to have you back and all, but... uh... we've got a problem."
Alex watched as Selene stepped over to the bulkhead and pressed a button. "What is it, Tal?"
"The Gilgamesh is following us."
Alex and Selene shared a look, fear in their eyes. If the Gilgamesh's crew had already repaired their engine and navigation software, then that meant that their weapons would be on-line soon enough. Selene turned and bolted for the bridge, Alex close behind her.
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The glistening black hull of the Gilgamesh melded nearly perfectly with the black of space, the dim glow of the windows glowing like tiny stars, the blue of her warp nacelles burning like twin supernovas in the darkness. Slowly, majestically, she rose from Earth's atmosphere, shaking off the bonds of gravity as she took flight after the small form of the Icarus.
On the bridge of the cargo ship, Alex, Selene and Tal watched with mounting horror as the Khanate cruiser began to gain on them, the two small Kindjals flying escort for the mothership invisible to the naked eye. The only way to track the fighters was on the sensors, or by seeing where the weapons fire was coming from.
Tal jumped as he dodged another phaser beam. "Okay, so the Gilgamesh herself still can't fire at us. That's something, right?"
Selene shook her head. "Something that big doesn't need to shoot us down. All they really have to do is get close enough and ram us. We'd barely scratch their paint."
"Bug on the windshield, huh?"
Looking down at her pilot, Selene smiled and ruffled his hair affectionately. "That's right." Turning to look at Alex, she shrugged. "Any ideas, Miracle-Boy?"
Stepping up to the sensor readouts, Alex sighed. They'd rerouted their main power faster than he had expected. The damage he had done to their systems should have taken longer to repair than it had. He'd underestimated them. He'd figured that he was so far ahead of their computer technology that they wouldn't be able to keep up with him. He'd gotten cocky. Augments... Khanate... were advanced intellectually as well. Anything he could think up, they could, too. He'd been too elitist. "I don't know, Selene. I just don't know."
"Alright, then. Tal. Get us out of the system."
The Bajoran shook his head. "We'll never make it. They're faster than we are. We can't run."
The pilot's words struck a thought in Alex's mind. Speed... "What class of ship is this?"
Selene did a double-take at the apparent non-sequitor, looking at Alex as if he had snapped. "Uh... Her design's based on one of the early twenty-second century warp ships, the Intrepid. There's a couple of small differences. Larger secondary hull, our nacelles are set further back from the saucer, things like that."
"What about warp capacity?"
"Standard warp drive. Good up to 9.2. We have a transwarp coil, but we don't have enough power to get it started."
Alex frowned slightly as he pulled up everything his nanites could retrieve on the Intrepid class. Early design warp sled test vehicle. Hull composition was good and sturdy. And if they had a transwarp coil assembly... "It could work."
Tal looked up from his console. "What could work?"
Leaning over Tal's shoulder, Alex pointed to his course display. "Stay with me here. What's the first rule about warp travel?"
"When faster than light, no left or right. Everyone knows that."
"What about when you drop out of warp?"
Tal paused and thought. "Inertia. It keeps you moving even at sublight. When you drop out of warp, you have to be careful not to overshoot... your... goal..." The Bajoran started to smile. "I think I see where you're going with this. Oh, Skipper, I like this guy. Can we keep him? I mean, he followed you home and all."
Looking between Alex and Tal, Selene shrugged, lost. "Assuming we live. What are you two talking about?"
Turning to look at her, Alex held up his hands. "Okay, follow me. The Gilgamesh can fly faster than us, right?" Selene nodded. "Alright. We make a small warp jump, no more than two or three minutes. They follow, trying to gain. When they're at, say, three hundred thousand kilometers away, we drop out of warp. We're small, so inertia won't keep us going far."
Tal spoke up from the helm. "It'll take them a handful of seconds to realize we've dropped out of warp, then another couple of seconds to go down to impulse themselves. They're huge, inertia will keep them moving for a few hundred thousand kilometers, maybe more, before they stop and turn around to come back for us. So including the seven or eight seconds they were in warp, they'll have overshot us by, what? A few million kilometers?"
Alex nodded. "At that point, when they're completely turned around, we hit the warp drive again. We'll have about ten or twelve million kilometers head start on them by the time they turn around again."
Selene shook her head. "Good plan, but even with that head start, the Gilgamesh will be able to outpace us before we get out of the system."
"That's why we don't head out of the system. We head in, towards the sun."
Selene and Tal gaped. "Are you crazy? There's nowhere to go that way!"
Alex shook his head. "You told me that the war with the Khanate happened during the mid-to-late twenty-fifth century. That means that there should be a Transwarp hub in orbit of the star."
Selene stared out the bridge windows, crossing her arms across her chest. "Yeah, there's a hub, but no one's used it since the war. It's been shut down and locked out, just like the mainframe back on Earth."
"I can get it running again. If this ship was designed with a transwarp coil, she's built to hold up to transwarp speeds."
Selene looked back at the sensors, and the quickly growing image of the Gilgamesh. "You're certain you can get it running again?"
"I can do it."
Selene stood still for a long moment, considering her options. "Tal."
"Yeah, Skipper?"
"Set course for the star."
Tal cracked his knuckles like a concert pianist and grinned wildly. "Yes, ma'am." Reaching for the warp initiator, he slid it back, turning the stars to warplines.
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Aishwarya stood on the bridge of the Gilgamesh next to her brother, watching the pursuit of the tiny cargo ship. At the moment, the Icarus was over seventy thousand kilometers away, invisible to the naked eye, but even at this distance she could see the tiny starburst that signified that they had made the jump to warp.
Beside her, Rakiin fumed, his maimed arm hidden beneath the folds of his cloak. As he watched his quarry run, he screamed at one of the ship's helmsmen. "Follow them!"
"Yes, My lord!"
Gilgamesh leapt into warp space, a lion chasing a gazelle. Turning away from the bridge crew, her hands held demurely behind her back, Aishwarya pitched her voice low enough that only Rakiin could hear. "Are you going to kill them, Brother?"
A snarl on his lips, Rakiin faced her. "Blood calls for blood, Aishwarya." Lifting the stump of his arm for her to see, he shook it before her eyes. "They did this to me and I will see them burn for it."
Running a single index finger across her lips, Aishwarya considered. "What of Carver's knowledge? I thought you wanted that."
"I have enough."
"How do you know that, Rakiin? The Changeling has yet to regain consciousness. Perhaps it gained nothing in Carver's interrogation."
Rakiin glared. "The issue has been dealt with, Aishwarya. Let it lie. I no longer need Carver. Let him burn with the rest. "
Aishwarya bowed slightly and returned her own attention to the pursuit. "As you wish."
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"What's our speed?"
Selene's voice was tight as she stared out the windows at the streaking lines of warpspace, her heart pounding in her chest. She could almost feel the Gilgamesh gaining on them. Tal glanced at his readouts. "Holding at 8.9"
"Distance?"
"Three hundred and fifty thousand kilometers."
Selene glanced over her shoulder at Alex, watching him as he worked at the sensor station. His face was deep in concentration, his eyes glazed over in what she had come to know as his "Nanite-mode". He was interfacing with Icarus.
Tal spoke up. "Three hundred thousand kilometers! Dropping out of warp!"
Icarus shuddered as she slowed from warp 8.9 to sublight speeds, inertia dragging her forward another thirty four thousand kilometers before she came to a full stop. Behind her, the giant Khanate cruiser overshot them completely.
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"Starfleet vessel has dropped out of warp! Adjusting course to compensate!"
Without missing a beat, the Gilgamesh dropped out of warp and spun around at full impulse before returning to warp speeds, a hunter turning back on it's prey.
It cost them a full eight seconds.
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Alex's head snapped up from the sensor console, breaking his link to the Icarus' computers. "They've gone back to warp! Go!"
Tal reached forward and grasped the warp initiator, bringing the ship up to warp 9.1 as the Gilgamesh came closer. As the two ships passed each other, Icarus shook as the larger ship's warp bubble stressed her own, bending it out of shape.
Icarus dropped to warp 8.7.
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A shout of confusion rose up from the depths of Gilgamesh's bridge, navigators desperately trying to maintain a course for the Starfleet vessel as it leapt back into warp. At the top of the third tier, Rakiin glared at his crew, cursing as his ship was forced to stop and turn around again.
Beside him, Aishwarya's face remained impassive.
The Khanate Lord's face twisted with fury as he fixed a navigator with a furious gaze. "Where are they going?"
The navigator glanced back at his console before responding. "They appear to have set a course for the star, My Lord."
"How long before they reach the star, then?"
"Nine minutes, but their warp field appears to be unstable, My Lord. At their reduced speed, we should intercept in eight minutes, twelve seconds."
Turning away from the navigator in disgust, Rakiin faced Aishwarya. "Why would they be going towards the star, Sister? What could possibly be of use to them there?"
Aishwarya pondered the situation for a moment, even though she already knew the answer. "The Transwarp hub, Brother. Carver must believe that he can activate it."
"Then he will fail. That relic has been inactive for six centuries."
"Perhaps you should not discount the Humans so easily, Brother. Overconfidence is a failing." With that warning, she turned and left the bridge in a swirl of golden fabrics, leaving Rakiin alone to consider her words.
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"We're not going to make it, are we?"
Tal flinched at the fatalistic sound of the Skipper's voice, then shook his head. No amount of piloting genius could change the laws of physics. "No. At this speed, they'll be on us almost a full minute before we reach the star." It wasn't fair. Not after everything that Icarus had done for them. It wasn't fair.
"No."
Tal and the Skipper turned to look at Alex, who was glaring at them both and shaking his head. "No. We're not going to be caught. I am not going to give up. I am not going to die here."
"What do you want me to do, Carver?" Tal's voice was full of irritation. "With our warp bubble distorted, we can't do anything to speed up. They'll catch us because they're faster than us, no matter what we do. We can't change physics. It's impossible."
Alex shook his head again, "Impossible is a word people use too often." Turning away from Tal, he looked at the Skipper. "You trust me?"
Selene paused, then nodded. "Yes."
"Which way to the engine room?"
Selene smiled. "Come with me. Tal? Keep flying."
"Not much else for me to do, Skipper."
As Alex stepped through the hatch and left the bridge, his voice floated up to Tal. "And get ready."
"Ready for what?"
"... a miracle."
-----
Alex stood in the middle of the cramped engine room, staring in dismay at the tangled nest of wires and cables running to and from the miniature warp core at the centre of the room. The air was warm and thick, smelling lightly of coolant. Containment must be thin, running threadbare. In fact, that was the impression that the entire engine gave. It looked like something that someone had slapped together using parts from a dozen different eras. The warp core looked like it belonged on a twenty-third century ship, but it was attached to a transwarp coil that hadn't even been designed until a hundred years later.
And then there was the control panel, which looked like it had been built a thousand years ago for one of the early warp 5 ships.
Beside him, Selene shrugged. "Sorry about the mess. Haven't had a mechanic for a while."
"Right," Alex sighed and walked up to the control panel, placing his hand over the computer. "Big miracle." Closing his eyes, he reached out and entered the computer.
There was no need to run any diagnostics to check on the shape of the Icarus, all of her aches and pains were glaringly obvious to him, each system malfunction flashing in front of his eyes without him even needing to try looking. Even the ship's software was corrupted and patched, jerry-rigged to bare efficiency. It would take weeks, if not months, to repair all of the ship's computer problems, not to mention the actual hardware.
But that wasn't important right now. Right now, all he had to do was stabilize the warp field. And that wasn't hard at all. Of course, while he was at it anyway, why not add a few new algorithms…
As he rose back into himself, he heard the comm flick on, Tal's surprised voice shouting through the ship. "Skipper! I don't know how he did it, but we just hit 9.6!"
Selene gaped at him in astonishment, the question of how he had done it written across her face. Alex shrugged and walked over to another terminal. "I need an open comm line."
"Why?"
"I need to talk to the Hub."
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The Transwarp Hub. An enormous ring built in orbit of Sol during the early twenty-fifth century which permitted any starship to access the millions of transwarp conduits that lay just within subspace, allowing them to reach speeds thousands of times faster than the best warp drive.
For centuries, it has lain unused, nothing more than a vestige of an era long past, the codes required to activate it long lost to the annals of time. But now, it rumbles as a communication reaches it.
A communication telling it to wake.
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"My Lord."
Rakiin glanced at the young Khanate that knelt before him, the ever growing glare of the Sun filling the Gilgamesh's bridge. "Report."
"My Lord, the Starfleet vessel has increased speed to warp 9.6. At that speed, we will be unable to intercept before they reach their destination."
"Increase speed to Warp 9.9."
The officer shook his head. "My Lord, they have already gained too much ground. It is impossible to intercept. Also... The Transwarp Hub is activating."
Astonishment filled Rakiin, momentarily eclipsing his hatred of the crew of that tiny vessel. What Carver was doing was impossible.
What else could this man do?
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"That's it. My bag of tricks is empty."
Selene smiled as she patted Alex on the shoulder. "It's good enough for now." Flipping on the intercom, she spoke into the receiver. "Tal? How's it look?"
"We're actually gonna make it, Skipper! I don't know what you did, buddy, but the Hub's on-line! We're gonna make it out!"
Alex sighed and turned back to the engine, staring beyond the bulkheads and imagining Earth in the distance. "Yeah. Guess we will."
Selene glanced up at the funereal tone in his voice, disturbed as she watched him stand there, looking more lost than ever. As she left the engine room and headed for the bridge, she frowned.
Everyone on this ship was lost, damaged, in some way or another. The question was, would Alex be able to move past it?
Looking back towards the engine room, she realized that she wasn't sure.
-----
Rakiin watched, transfixed, as the cargo ship vanished into the swirling miasma of the Transwarp Hub, blinking out of existence in less than a second. His voice very quiet, but filled with malice as he asked, "Can you track them?"
"No, My Lord. At the moment... we're unable to project which transwarp conduit they entered."
Breathing deeply, Rakiin turned and left the bridge, leaving behind a scrambling group of officers desperate to find a way to track the Starfleet vessel before he returned.
They failed.
-----
Alex felt the Icarus jump into transwarp, the vibration of the deckplates skipping for a split-second before returning to normal. Looking around at the mess surrounding him, he sighed. He would deal with this later.
He left the engine room, wandering aimlessly around the ship for at least ten minutes before he found a window. Looking out at the swirling blue miasma of transwarp, he placed his hand against the glass, feeling the coldness of the smooth surface beneath his fingers.
He should be happy. They had survived for another day. He was free of Rakiin. He was free of the Jem'Hadar. He was free from the Gilgamesh.
So why did he feel like he had failed?
He stood there for a long time, not saying a word.
-----
Overconfidence is a failing, she had said, reminding him not to dismiss the Humans out of hand.
She had been right, damn her. She had been right.
Rakiin watched the chained Jem'Hadar sitting in the middle of the cell, the wounds that the Humans had inflicted on him left untreated. The wicked gash that Rakiin himself had carved in the Jem'Hadar's face still bled white.
He had lost control, had allowed it to slip away from him completely during the battle. His hatred of Kordath and his desire for revenge had caused him to make mistakes, mistakes that had allowed Carver to escape, most likely taking the technological advances he carried straight to the Federation. Advanced weapons, engines, the Federation Remnant would have it all, all because of his lack of control.
Damn Aishwarya to hell for being right.
The Jem'Hadar had not moved since being placed in this cell, remaining completely motionless as his sentence for failing his Lord had been read to him. The Gilgamesh would return home to Fatalis and there, in the Holy City, before the entire Khanate race, the Jem'Hadar would be stripped of his rank and exiled. To the Commander of a Khanate's Personal Guard, it would be a fate worse than death. It would be eternal, everlasting shame.
Absently rubbing the scarred remains of his right wrist as he turned and left the Jem'Hadar behind, Rakiin smiled. Good.
But that brought him to another problem. With the Jem'Hadar exiled, he required a new Commander for his Personal Guard. A man who would succeed where the Jem'Hadar had failed. Someone who would be capable of capturing Carver.
Stepping into another cell, he waved the doctors away from their patient, casting a cursory glance over the medical readouts surrounding him. He would not have long.
A slight smile on his lips, Rakiin knelt down and addressed the man on the cell bunk, taking careful note of his laboured breathing, the gradually slowing sound of his heart as it struggled to pump blood through a damaged body.
"I had hoped that our next meeting would be under more pleasant circumstances, Commander."
Jason Madden turned his head towards Rakiin, horrified eyes expressing everything that he could not say. His gasping breaths hitched for a second, his collapsed lungs fighting for air. Resting his only remaining hand on Jason's mangled chest, Rakiin's voice was soft as he spoke. "You stepped in front of the weapon for your friends, Commander. I saw the recording. I saw your eyes. You wanted to die.
"But death comes for you now, Commander. Can you feel her? The cold brush of her hand? Is she everything you wanted? Can you hear her call? The cries of the damned in her voice?"
Madden was close to death, at his weakest. At the moment of death, every living creature desires life, will fight for it, biting and clawing. For Madden, Rakiin saw, that moment was now.
"Allow me to make... a proposition, Commander. Do you wish to live?"
Every living creature will fight for life.
And with Madden's response, Rakiin had his new Commander.
-
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
A quick nod, once again, to Greg Cox's novel To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh, for the reference to the city of Fatalis. Anyone who's read that book should be able to tell where Rakiin and his gang are headed now.
By the way, the Intrepid class I based the Icarus on isn't Voyager, it's the Intrepid from Enterprise. So she's a real old design.
JadziaKathryn and Grayangle, I just want to thank you both for your continued support on this. Without your reviews, I wouldn't have gotten this far.