Homefires,
Chapter Three:
-Capt. Benjamin Sisko, "The Siege of AR-558"
-----
He sat in the middle of the darkened bridge, framed by the high back of the command chair, listening to the silence that pervaded the ancient starship. Alone but not alone, he remained unmoving, surrounded by the ghosts of the past, the disembodied souls that had haunted him for so long.
Shields are down!
Intruder alert on deck sixteen!
For a time, he had tried to repair the ship, a near-impossible task even for him. But after nearly a century faced with the darkness of the void and the depth of his own guilt, he had set down the hydrospanner in his hand and made his way to the bridge, seating himself in the centre chair and closing his eyes, his perfect memory replaying every second of that final battle.
They're powering weapons!
Bring us about one-eight-zero-seven-five, target their disruptor banks.
Phasers and torpedoes are off-line!
Captain! They're firing!
Still the dead whispered to him, their phantasmagoric forms still manning the posts where they had died, trapped in those last fateful moments. His own lips moved silently in time with their words, each nuance of their speech, each breath, each pause burned into his mind.
What have they done... God...
How many...?
Millions... My God... How could they... Why...?
A torpedo had crashed through the hull then, tearing apart systems, bulkheads and people with equal impunity. An unstoppable juggernaut, it had ripped diagonally through the saucer section, beginning just in front of the bridge and emerging above the deflector dish, overloading every power conduit on the ship. The OPS board had exploded in a shower of fat sparks, killing the young Acamarian manning it and flinging his corpse across the bridge to crash against the XO's seat. As the bridge lights had flickered and died, a low hum had begun to reverberate through the ship.
What's going on? What's happening?
The transwarp drive is coming on-line.
What the...? Our inertial dampeners just failed!
Bring them back up!
I can't! I'm locked out!
He had jumped to his feet then, tearing across the bridge and pushing the lieutenant at the engineering station out of the way. His fingers flew across the panel, desperate to reactivate the ID Field before the ship made the jump to transwarp. There was barely any power available, most of it being diverted to the engines. It was impossible to save the entire ship, but there was enough to save those on the bridge. As the transwarp drive flared, sending the ship rocketing millions of times faster than the speed of light, he raised the field around the bridge.
The crew trapped below didn't even have time to scream.
Hours later, life support had failed, killing everyone on the bridge save him, their accusing eyes locked on him.
And so he had lived, had seen the fleet become trapped in the Sinkhole, had watched the Enterprise continue on unabated, missing the edge of the subspace bubble by less than a hundred kilometres, had become trapped himself, the only one left alive in this ghost fleet.
And so he sat, surrounded by his ghosts, surrounded by his guilt, surrounded by the completely and utterly unchanging nature of his world.
Until it changed.
-----
"So..."
Selene strained to look over her shoulder at Alex, who sat behind her in the cramped confines of the Icarus' tiny shuttlepod. The small craft lacked even a viewport, relying instead on sensors to enable the pilot to steer. "So."
An awkward silence hung between them for a long moment, punctuated by the occasional beep from the consoles. Selene bit her lip as she turned her attention back to her screen, annoyed with herself for being unable to carry on a one on one conversation with the engineer if their lives weren't in immediate danger. It was stupid, really. Stupid and foolish. What exactly was she afraid of? It wasn't like either of them could say anything that would beat the awkwardness of "Hey, you used to be my wife in another reality." Yeah, that was awkward. What could beat that? I mean, come on. It wasn't like she was about to tell him she thought he was cute... Oh, god, did she actually just think that? That was so incredibly teenage angst. She was an adult, now. She should be more mature than that. Cute? I mean, yeah, he had the brown eyes and the whole "knight in shining armour" thing going for him, not to mention the fact that he was kind of damaged was sort of interesting and….
Oh, I am just gonna shut up now, and how long until we reach Grissom?
"About five or six minutes."
Selene started at Alex's answer. "Did I say that out loud?"
"Uh-huh."
"Huh." Damn it damn it damn it. What else did she say? Thinking back, she heaved a quick sigh of relief when she realized that she hadn't said anything else in that train of thought out loud. "So what?"
"What?"
"You said 'so', Alex. 'So' what? What did you want to ask?"
"Oh, that." She heard Alex shift in his seat behind her, fiddling with the console beside him. "It was nothing, really. Not really."
"Oh." Okay, she had been wrong. It was possible for things to get more awkward. For a second, she half wished for something to go horribly wrong just so that this moment would be over. Then her senses returned and she made quick and fervent apologies to whatever deity may be listening for that last wish. She didn't want any of that 'careful what you wish for' crap. "No, you know what? What? What were you going to ask?"
"It was nothing, really. I was just... curious about something."
Selene's awkwardness was beginning to transform into irritation. "What? Will you just ask already?" God, the man could be so annoying.
"Fine! I just wanted to know... how many people died would've died on the Grissom?"
Selene bit off a laugh at the ridiculous question, feeling the tense air in the shuttle evaporate. "That's it?"
Alex shrugged, "Told you it was a stupid question."
Sighing, Selene frowned as she realized that she was slightly disappointed that he hadn't asked her something more personal. Now, what's that about? "No one really knows how many died. There was never an accurate body count after the battle of Romulus. Some say it was in the hundreds of thousands, and others says it was somewhere closer to the millions. As far as how many died on each ship, the answer of 'everyone' has always kind of put the point across."
"Huh." Alex returned his own attention to the console beside him, letting the quiet descend once more. Frowning as Selene turned around again to face the pilot's station, he cursed at himself. This was getting ridiculous. It wasn't as though he'd needed some disaster to spring up every time he'd wanted to talk to his own Selene. No, he'd gotten along just fine with her. Okay, sure it had taken him four months to ask her out initially, but after that...
Huffing out an annoyed sigh, he blew his bangs away from his eyes, absent-mindedly checking the readout for the distance to the Grissom. Another four minutes. Great.
Selene was a mystery to him. One minute he had no problem distinguishing between her and his own Selene, to be her friend and nothing more, and then the next he half expected to see a ring on her finger. Those were the more dangerous moments. They were the times when he forgot himself, was tempted to imagine that none of this had happened, that he would wake up in his own bed to see that familiar mass of brown curls. He couldn't allow that to happen. No matter how much he seemed to adapt, to gradually begin to fit in on the Icarus, he always knew it wasn't home. Insanity was a mere hair's breadth behind him, and no matter how hard he tried, he was never more than a stray thought away from it.
In front of him, Selene spoke. "Coming up on the Grissom's shuttlebay."
Pushing his thoughts aside, Alex focused on the approaching starship.
-----
"So... What do you think they're doing over there?"
Nyssa glanced over at Tal as they stood in front of the windows, watching the tiny shuttle disappear around the damaged hull of the Grissom. "What do you mean?"
"Oh, come on! You're trying to tell me you haven't seen it?"
Nyssa chuckled as she shrugged, imagining the Skipper and Carver stuck in an enclosed space together. "There's probably a lot of tension."
A grunt sounded from behind them, grabbing both of their attention. Kordath stood from his station and walked down the steps to join them. "Do we not have a mission to complete?"
Muttering under his breath, Tal went back to his station and plopped down in his seat, guiding the Icarus away from the Federation cruiser. Sidling up next to Kordath, Nyssa pitched her voice low enough so that Tal couldn't hear. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't you the one who suggested they go on this mission together?"
Kordath grunted again, but Nyssa was certain she saw a smirk on the old Klingon's face. Patting him on the shoulder, she turned and walked away. "That's what I thought."
-----
They had come back. They'd made it aboard once again. Six hundred years or six hundred minutes, it made no difference to him. They had boarded his ship, had infiltrated the shuttlebay and were no doubt on their way here.
For the first time in centuries, he moved, his right hand grasping the armrest so hard it creaked, his fingertips digging into the leather.
Their persistence was to be commended, but that would not stop him from doing what he had to do. The crew complement of his ship had been one thousand and thirty two at the beginning of the battle, six hundred and nine by the time the transwarp drive had come on line. He was the only survivor. The only one left.
Rising slowly to his feet, he lifted the phaser rifle that was leaning against his chair and clutched it in his arms. Flipping it over, he checked the power gauge.
Full charge.
Turning on his heel, he stepped onto the raised third tier of the bridge and headed for the starboard turbolift, moving stiffly. Behind him, the ghosts urged him forward, screaming for revenge. The Khanate had tried to take this ship once before and failed, and they would not succeed this time either.
Prying open the lift doors, he entered the empty shaft and began his descent.
His war was not over yet.
-----
Half hidden in the darkness of the corridor, his face washed in the red glow of the dim emergency lights, Alex tried not to think about what had happened on this ship. As he and Selene crept through the abandoned Grissom, the air stale and barely breathable, he did everything he could to detach himself from the past all around him and to focus solely on the mission. Get the torpedo casing, maybe a few other parts, and leave. Simple.
Unfortunately, it was kind of like telling a little kid, 'Don't think about pink elephants.' No matter how hard the kid tried, they would immediately picture a big, fluffy pink elephant.
With a groan, the deck tilted beneath his feet, the artificial gravity shifting slightly. Alex stumbled, reaching out with his right hand to steady himself against the bulkhead. Glancing down the length of his arm at his hand, he jumped back, almost as though the wall had bit him.
A few steps ahead, Selene jumped at the movement, the tricorder she held dropping from her hands and landing with a clatter on the deck. Scowling, she turned on him, "What's your problem? You almost gave me a heart attack!"
Alex looked up at her as he wiped his hands on his jacket. "Do you have any idea what's on these walls?"
Selene shrugged and lifted her hands in a 'what's the big deal?' fashion. "Dust?"
"The crew."
Her face wrinkled in a look of disgust as the idea caught up with her. "Oh, gross. Thank you so much for that image. I really needed that today."
"Sorry."
Shaking her head, Selene turned back around and kept moving. "Can we just get off this ship as soon as possible, please?"
"No argument from me." Checking the schematics, he pointed down an adjacent hall. "Torpedo maintenance is this way."
"Right." Together they made their way down the corridor, taking extra care now not to touch the walls if it could be helped. After a moment, Alex opened his mouth to speak.
"If you say 'so', I'll shoot you in the foot."
Alex shut his mouth.
A couple of minutes passed in silence, each of them sneaking glances when they thought that the other wasn't looking. The awkwardness from the shuttle ride had returned in full force, making every second that went by seem like an hour. As they stopped to pull open a sealed door, Selene frowned. "It's weird."
"What's weird?"
She stopped and crossed her arms, tilting her head as she considered whatever problem she had noticed. "The damage on the outside was fairly extensive, right? That wasn't just me imagining things?"
"That's right. A lot of hull breaches."
"Then why isn't there any debris in the corridors? Any damage to the walls? And why are all the secondary systems still running?"
Alex frowned, "That is a good question."
Arching an eyebrow, Selene glanced back down the corridor. "Yeah, I'm starting to get a little creeped out here. This is getting to be a little too haunted house for my tastes."
Alex shrugged, trying to dispel the foreboding feeling in his gut. "Probably just automated repair systems. Six hundred years, and even they should have the ship fairly well repaired."
"Right."
"Right."
"Nothing to worry about."
"Absolutely nothing."
They both froze, listening for any sound that would indicate that they weren't alone. When neither of them heard anything, they both heaved a sigh of relief and began laughing. Selene dismissively waved her hand. "We're being ridiculous."
"Yeah, ridiculous."
"It's not like this is some sort of horror holo."
"No. I mean, if it were, something would be stalking us by now."
"Exactly. It's just a... creepy old ship."
"Right. Creepy old ghost ship."
A creak sounded from down the corridor, making both of them jump. Glancing back they way they had come, they stopped laughing. "Uh... let's get that torpedo casing."
"Yeah. Let's."
With a final tug, the door hissed open, and they nearly fell over each other trying to rush through.
-----
With a creak, the turboshaft doors opened onto deck sixteen, scarlet light spilling into the narrow space. They were close. The tricorder in his hand showed them standing at an access port not two hundred meters away, the symbols representing their life signs moving toward torpedo maintenance. He could hear them, every sound they made resonating down the corridor.
Creepy old ship.
Right. Creepy old ghost ship.
Dropping onto the deck, he sidled up against the wall, his right hand activating the computer interface behind him. Quietly, his fingers danced across the panel, activating subsystems that had lain dormant almost as long as he had. His face grim, he brought the transporter systems on-line...
And trained them on the intruders.
-----
Alex stepped quietly into the darkened maintenance bay, a scowl crossing his face as he took in the sight of the half-dozen partially disassembled torpedoes lying in metallic racks against the walls. "Oh crap."
"What?" Selene pulled herself through the door, cursing as her coat caught on the doorframe.
"The only torpedoes left have been taken apart. Damn it."
"I thought you said that you only needed the casing."
Sighing, Alex reached into the depths of one of the torpedoes, pulling out the pieces of the guidance assembly. Random isolinear rods fell to the floor, coated in fluid leaking from a bio-neural gel pack. "For the most part, but without the guidance assembly, the torpedo's useless."
"Can you build one?"
"Maybe. It'll take some time."
"How much?"
"Handful of hours, maybe. But I'll have to do it here. Icarus doesn't have the parts."
Selene frowned, glancing around at the shadow filled room. "Great, more time on this ship."
"Looks like."
That was when the lights went out.
Alex and Selene were plunged into total darkness as the emergency lights shut down. Instinctively, Selene ripped her phaser out of it's holster, spinning around and searching for a target. Crouched next to the torpedo, Alex pulled his own weapon, listening intently for any movement beyond Selene. "What the hell is going on here?"
Selene's voice floated back to him from across the room, eerily disembodied. "I have no idea, but I'm really not liking this ship."
Agreement drifted across Alex's mind as he stood, pressing his back against the wall, his phaser clutched in both hands. "You know what you were saying about horror holos earlier?"
"Yeah."
"I think I've seen this one."
And with a quicksilver flash, they both vanished into a transporter beam.
-----
Icarus cruised low over the Warbird, the emerald hull of the much larger ship passing by a mere ten meters below. From his viewpoint on the bridge, Tal watched the hooked nose of the raptor shaped cruiser grow closer.
With practiced ease, he leaned over and cut the thrusters, letting Icarus float forward under the power of inertia. As they passed over the ship's neck, he brought them to a full stop, hanging motionless over one of the secondary airlocks. Tapping the shipwide comm., he spoke, his tone bored and just a little bitter. "We're here, if anyone's interested."
Kordath's voice crackled through the speaker, "Are you alright, Tal?"
"Oh yeah, fine. Don't worry about me. I didn't want to go anyway."
A sigh, followed by Nyssa's exasperated voice. "Tal, we've been over this. Someone has to stay with the ship in case the Skipper and Alex call. Which means that person has to be able to fly her. That means you." Tal puffed out a noncommittal noise, half sigh and half grunt. Another sigh from the speaker. "On top of that, Kordath is coming because I'm going to need someone strong to carry the core."
"Is that a crack about my size? I'll have you know that I'm not weak, I'm... streamlined. Wiry."
"Whatever. Also, I have to go because, unless you've taken a course I don't know about, you can't read Rihanssu."
A grunt from Kordath. "Can we proceed?"
Tal rolled his eyes, the fact that Nyssa's argument was logical, well thought out and absolutely right just served to annoy him more. He didn't want her to be right, dammit. Was it too much to ask for the woman to be wrong just once? "Fine. Go. Have a good time. Bring back a miniature black hole. Have fun."
Over the open channel, he could hear the airlock door hiss open, exposing Nyssa and Kordath to open space. Static crackled for a second before Nyssa spoke. "Anything you want us to bring back from the store?"
He opened his mouth to make a smart reply, but then a thought occurred to him. A grin flitting across his face, he leaned forward towards the microphone. "Actually, if you see any Romulan Ale, bring me back a bottle."
Outside the Icarus, drifting slowly downwards towards the ancient Warship, Nyssa smiled in her bulky EVA suit. "I'll see what I can do, fly-boy. You got that, Kordath? One black hole and one Romulan Ale."
Beside her, the Klingon landed gently on the hull, his size stretching his own environmental suit to uncomfortable limits. His voice filtered through Nyssa's comm., heavily distorted. "Romulan Ale is for the weak. Blood wine is a true drink."
Nyssa touched down, pressing a sequence of buttons on her suit's control panel to activate the magnetic locks in her boots. With a few hesitant steps, she found herself crouching next to the airlock. Opening the access panel, she stared at the darkened screen for a quick moment before hooking the small emergency generator in her hand into it. With a flicker of static, resolving into an image of the Romulan Bird of Prey clutching the planets of Romulus and Remus in it's talons, followed by the sharp writing of their language.
ENTER ACCESS CODE.
Pulling a tricorder off the sleeve of her suit, she ran a wire from it into the panel, accessing the airlock's controls. Quickly, she ran a program Alex had written to override the doors.
With a solid clunk, the outer airlock doors cycled open, bathing Nyssa and Kordath in a dark green light. Looking up at the belly of the Icarus, Nyssa waved. "We're in."
Icarus began to back away lazily, coming about as she gained distance. From the bridge windows, Nyssa could see Tal waving back. "Copy that. You guys take it easy, I'll be back in an hour. I'm gonna go see if I can find Enterprise."
"Have fun." Sliding off the hull, she and Kordath dropped into the Warbird.
-----
Alone on the Icarus, Tal leaned into his chair, pressing his spine into the back of the seat. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, he stared out at the quickly receding shape of the Valdore-class. Nyssa and Kordath were over there, Alex and the Skipper were over on the Grissom, and he was alone here.
Tal…
The voice was whispered over his shoulder, making him spin around. Behind him, the bridge was empty, no one else in the room. "Okay. Creepy."
Grabbing the controls, he spun the ship on her axis, accelerating back towards the fleet. Unable to resist, he carefully looked back over his shoulder. Still nothing.
"Okay. No problem. No problems at all."
But for the first time, Icarus actually felt dangerous.
-----
Selene felt the transporter beam grab her, taking her apart molecule by molecule in the maintenance bay and reassembling her... somewhere else. Where that 'somewhere else' was, she had no idea.
But she was fairly certain that it was at least several feet in the air.
With a quick shriek, she fell, landing face first in the mud. The wet ground splashed around her, staining her clothes even as the pouring rain soaked them through. Groaning, she pushed herself to her knees, doing what she could to wipe the muck off of her. "God... I hate transporters. Alex? You okay?"
There was no answer.
Brushing a hand across her face, she glanced around for the engineer. She was stuck in the middle of a forest, the rain pouring down so hard that she could barely see ten feet around her. If the rainfall was this dense underneath the treetops, it must be a hundred times worse in the clear. The ground was sopping wet, deep puddles all around, but Alex was nowhere in sight. "Alex?" She stood, whipping her head around even as she lifted her phaser. "Alex!"
When no answer came except for the falling rain, she cursed and shoved her phaser back into it's holster. "I'm really not liking this." Brushing a hand through her sopping wet hair, she leaned up against one of the trees, trying to minimize her exposure to the pouring rain.
This made no sense. None at all. Twenty seconds ago, she had been on a starship, which had been trapped in a subspace bubble, with no planets anywhere in the vicinity. Now, she was planetside, getting soaked, with no indication of where she was. Not to mention, Alex was now missing.
Cursing a second time, she pushed off the tree and started heading towards what she hoped was the forest's perimeter. She wasn't going to get anywhere just standing around. In the distance, she could hear the muffled sound of a crowd. Whatever was going on, it was big.
"You know, just once, I would like a mission to go according to plan. Is that too much to ask? Because you wouldn't think that it would be." Brushing a last branch out of the way, she emerged from the forest to find herself in the middle of a city, people running in all directions around her as shrill sirens filled the air. Looking up, she saw distant flashes in the sky, lighting the clouds in shades of red, blue and green.
"You! Stop where you are!"
Selene froze midstep, sensing the weapon pointed at her back. A hand reached around her side, pulling her phaser out of it's holster. "Turn around." She turned, coming face to face with a member of the Romulan military. "Who are you? Where are you from?"
"Look, I have no idea where I am. A minute ago, I was on the Grissom and..."
"You're from the Grissom?" The guard lowered the phaser. "What's going on up there? Are you here to help with the evacuation?"
"Evacuation? I don't know what's going on. Where am I?"
"You're on Romulus." He looked upwards at the sky, frowning. "Assuming that's there's going to be a Romulus left for long."
Selene looked at the sky, taking in the strangely coloured lightning and cursed. She suddenly knew where she was, even if she had no idea how she had gotten there. "Oh, damn it."
Welcome to the battle of Romulus.
-----
The first thing that Alex heard as he rematerialized was the sound of a high-pitched alarm rhythmically shrieking in his ears, quickly followed by a calm female voice that he had heard so many times before.
"Red alert. All hands to battle stations. This is a class one emergency. Red alert."
Alex's eyes snapped open, the instincts that had been drilled into him during his academy years taking over and driving him to his feet. It took him a half-second to remember that he wasn't on the Albion, that he had been on the Grissom a moment ago and that he seemed to still be on the old Sovereign class. But the changes that had taken place in the last split second were astounding.
He was standing in a side access corridor, hidden in the shadows and watching people dressed in old style Starfleet uniforms run past. The corridors were well-lit, alert bars flashing red at waist height on bulkheads that were clear of any damage. The ship looked like it had been well-maintained, a far cry from the damaged and derelict vessel he had boarded with Selene.
Selene...
He glanced around, finding no trace of her. Wherever he had been deposited by the transporter, he had been deposited alone. "Damn it." Tapping his fingers against his leg, he considered his options. Stand here and wait, or step into the hallway and find out what the hell was going on.
He stepped into the hallway.
A passing ensign in command reds nearly ploughed right into him, sidestepping at the last possible second and missing Alex by less than a couple of inches. "What...?" The ensign couldn't have been older than twenty five, sandy hair covering a freckled face. Kid looks like a stereotype. "Who are you? What are doing…?" His eyes grew to the size of saucers. "Commander Horton! I'm sorry, Sir! I didn't…"
Commander Horton? Alex looked down to see that his black suit had been replaced with the same style of uniform that the kid was wearing. A black jumpsuit with a grey shoulderbar, the hint of a red turtleneck just barely visible beneath it. Reaching up, Alex felt three circular pips on his collar. What the hell is going on here?
"I was just heading to the bridge, Sir. If you'll follow me." The kid began to head off down the corridor towards a nearby turbolift, a confused Alex following behind. "Excuse me, Ensign. What's going on?" Best to play along.
The ensign scowled as he waited for the turbolift. "The Khanate finally made it into the system, Sir. The second fleet's holding them off on the other side of Remus, but logistics believes that they should be here within the hour."
"Right. Of course." The battle of Romulus. Oh great. How the hell did I go back in time? There's no way that could have been a temporal transporter. And why do they think I'm this Commander Horton? The lift door opened and they both stepped in, the doors hissing shut behind them. "Bridge." Answering the ensign's command, the turbolift began it's ascent towards deck one. Doing his best to act inconspicuous, Alex reached out with his nanites, searching for an interface with the ship.
And found nothing.
Alex frowned and tried again. There was still nothing. This wasn't right. Alex's frown deepened. No matter where or when he was, his nanites should be able to connect with any computer system. But for some reason, this time he couldn't. It was as if he were blind.
And it was beginning to scare the hell out of him.
The floor swayed a bit as the lift came to as top and the doors opened onto the bridge. If Alex had had any doubt before about what ship he was on before, they vanished now. The bridge was a standard Sovereign class bridge, the captain's chair sitting on a raised platform and surrounded by the various stations. From his position at the back of the bridge, Alex could see officers and enlisted crewmen milling about, preparing the ship for battle. The ensign stood next to him for a second, before nodding and stepping down to take his place directly in front of the viewscreen at the helm.
Looking towards his right, Alex found the captain standing by the science station at the back of the bridge, his figure hunched over as he examined what he saw there. Deciding again that it might be best to play along, Alex stepped towards the captain, taking a deep breath. "Sir?"
"Commander Horton. I apologize that your transfer had to come at such an inopportune time." The Captain rose and turned, taking Alex's hand in a firm grip. "Welcome aboard the Grissom."
Alex felt his jaw drop. He was staring at a legend, in both this universe and his own. From his dark hair, pale skin and formal speech, he was exactly as the records in the Starfleet archives portrayed him, except for one thing:
Commander Data had died a hundred and sixty six years before the battle of Romulus.