Star Trek: Starfleet Cadets 1x06

Episode 1x06 – Red Alert Part I

‘I’m really starting to hate that guy,’ Matthew said as he and the others sat in the mess hall a week into their journey.

‘You’ve been saying that all week,’ Steve pointed out.

‘I know, but he’s REALLY starting to annoy me,’ Matt persisted.

‘We don’t like him either, but he’s really just hurting himself by constantly trying to compete with you,’ Alex said encouragingly.

The door to the mess hall opened and Cyanne came in. She walked to the replicator and ordered something, glancing in Matt’s direction for a split-second, but then sat in a seat on the opposite end of the room.

‘I’m starting to think she’s scared of me or something,’ Matt said, looking up from his meal.

‘Cyanne?’ Alex asked, looking around and waving at the dark-haired girl, who returned the wave. ‘No, she’s really nice.’

‘So why is she always looking at me?’ Matt thought. ‘And whenever I try to talk to her she finds some reason to rush off…’ He didn’t know why it bothered him so much that she didn’t seem to even want to talk to him.

‘She is,’ Ryan said surprisingly. ‘I was at the infirmary with one of the first years and she was really friendly.’

‘Speaking of friendly,’ Matt pounced at the opportunity to change the subject. ‘What about T’Vral?’

‘What about her?’ Ryan said a bit too quickly.

‘Nothin’,’ Matt said with a satisfied smirk.

‘And the chief engineer?’ Steven said over his ractagino. ‘Making you wish we’d reach Starbase 024 a week early?’ They’d all heard about the old man’s reluctance to let anyone below the age of thirty anywhere near ‘his’ engine.

‘He actually has pretty good reasons to keep people away,’ Ryan said, much more confident now that they had reached a topic he was comfortable in. ‘He’s made a couple of his own modifications to the warp engine. Even the engineers in Starfleet Command could probably learn something from him.’

‘Not bad for a civilian,’ Steve joined in. ‘I wonder why he didn’t join Starfleet.’

‘Not everyone wants to be a soldier Steve,’ Alex pointed out. ‘Besides, these freighters need good crews just as much as Starfleet vessels do.’

Matt opened his mouth to add a comment of his own but noticed Cyanne was looking at him again.

‘Ok, that’s it, I’m going in,’ he said, getting up.

‘Good luck,’ Alex said encouragingly, making Steven give her a meaningful, and thoroughly surprised, look.

‘Hi there, I’m Matthew,’ he said lightheartedly when he had reached her, placing his right foot on the bench opposite the dark haired nurse and leaning on it with his elbow. ‘If you aren’t all that busy I’d really like to get to kno…’ but his sentence was cut short by a loud explosion and everybody was thrown portside.

The red lights indicating ‘battle stations’, came on almost immediately.

‘Red Alert!’ they heard the captain’s voice over the intercom.



***************************************************************

Starfleet academy, the largest non-commercial complex on Earth and only the second man-made object that can be seen from orbit, is considered by many to be the greatest achievement of mankind. It produces countless talents each year to join the best of the best in the United Federation of Planets: Starfleet.

With the recent threats of the Borg and Dominion, and the weakened state of the Federation, that need for excellence has become ever more dire. It will be up to the next generation to protect Earth, to protect the paradise that humanity has had over five millennia to perfect.

***************************************************************

‘All hands to battle stations. I repeat. All hands to battle stations. Senior officers to the bridge,’ the urgency and desperation in the captain’s voice, and the fact that it seemed to have lost all trace of its child-like optimism was an indication of the graveness of the situation.

Like the others, Matt had been launched towards the right end of the ship, but due to his unstable position, had toppled right over Cyanne during the blast. He now lay on top of her, something shiny and suspiciously similar to the knife Cyanne was using to cut her steak about a centimeter deep into his side. Ignoring the pain that was shooting up his side into his right shoulder, he tried to push himself up, but the moment he applied pressure onto his hand he collapsed again.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled into her shoulder.

The girl didn’t seem to be hurt, but for some reason lay completely rigid. Was she pretending not to be there? Matt took a deep breath, unable to completely ignore the strawberry scent of the girl’s shampoo, and this time used his other arm to hoist himself up.

He glanced towards where his friends had only moments earlier sat and watched him approach Cyanne and a dozen arrows seemed to pierce his body.

Steve was holding a limp Alex in his arms and Ryan was sprawled across the floor, face-down.

‘You have to go to the bridge,’ Cyanne spoke to him for the first time. Matt would have much rather heard the beautiful voice that sounded like some musical instrument under different circumstances. He would have hung on her every word, but as it was, he could merely nod and use his good arm to help her get up.

When she was on her feet she noticed the red stain on his uniform and opened her mouth to apologize, but Matthew grabbed her hand and they were already half way to Steve and Alex by the time she had even formed the words in her mind.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ Matthew said urgently, his voice breaking.

‘Out cold,’ Steven said in a forced voice.

‘Ryan?’ Matt asked, looking at the small engineer.

‘I’m alright,’ he said, getting to his feet slowly. The ship shook again and they all almost fell again.

‘Steve, we have to get to the bridge,’ Matt said with a new sense of urgency.

But Steven didn’t move.

Matt was just as worried about Alex as Steven was, but no amount of worrying would help Alex.

‘If we don’t go now, many more people will get hurt,’ Matt tried, but only when Cyanne offered to take her to sickbay, did he respond.

Steven set Alex down hesitantly, but when the ship rocked for a third time and Matthew darted towards the door, he followed.

They ran as fast as they could, only stopped to point a few shocked and worried first years to the medical bay, and after less than a minute, arrived at the hatch to the bridge.

***************************************************************

‘We’re under attack,’ a junior officer told them as they climbed up through the porthole. There were sparks shooting all across the bridge and several bodies lay on the floor.

‘Send out a distress signal on all Starfleet frequencies: we are under attack from an unknown alien vessel.’ The captain, in obvious distress but still giving commands in a determined voice, turned to the new arrivals. ‘Mr. Meyers, Mr. Jacobs, my Conn and Tactical officers have been taken down to sickbay.’

The two cadets didn’t need telling twice. ‘I’ll take the Conn,’ Matt replied immediately and sat in the vacated seat. Although Matt had the reputation of being the best pilot in Starfleet, being a Conn officer meant much more than just flying, and Matt hoped Alex would recover soon. After all, there was a reason why Command was his major, and fighter piloting only a hobby, he never expected to actually sit in his friend’s seat.

Steven reacted even faster than Matt, probably due to the endless hours of combat training meant to improve reaction times he had been through, and by the time Matt had finished the thought, he was already sitting on the right hand edge of the triangular command console labeled ‘Tactical’.

‘Now’s the time to put all your training to good u..’ the Captain tried his usual optimistic tone, but broke mid-sentence as screen before him filled with the vessel that had attacked them.

A monstrous battleship that looked unlike anything they had ever seen before was turning in a large arc towards them, preparing for another pass. It was huge. Far larger than any Starfleet vessel, even the new Sovereign Class, and it didn’t take two years of Starfleet training to tell Matt and Steven that this was a battle that they couldn’t win.

Steven looked down at the tactical readouts before him and did a double-take. The giant vessel was surging with power, refitting itself before his very eyes and directing almost all power into the weapon that had already thrice fired at them. It was a massive Ion cannon that was visible even on the rectangular hull of the ship. Considering how much damage the Ion Cannon had done while being underpowered, (that thought ran shivers down his spine) a single hit would probably completely vaporize the old freighter.

As he relayed this information to the Captain, the man’s face turned grave.

‘Evasive maneuvers,’ he commanded and Matt immediately started punching in the most complicated head-on evasive pattern he could think of, but even then he knew that, unless a miracle happened, no matter how creative he was, the bulky freighter stood no chance.

***************************************************************

‘I’m going to need all you can give me from the engines,’ the captain’s voice echoed through engineering.

‘Already on it Cap’n,’ the eccentric Chief Engineer responded, rushing from console to console as fast as his elderly legs would allow him.

The hatch above opened and T’Vral and Ryan entered, followed by a group of about five first year cadets.

‘No kids in engineering!’ the old man shouted, but a grin had filled his face. ‘Little guy, I need a thorough purge of the intake manifolds so I can run a controlled overload, can you do it?’ he asked but Ryan, who had a giant bruise on his forehead from his fall in the mess hall, had already sprang into action.

‘Ears…’ the engineer continued as T’Vral approached him. ‘You’ll be closely monitoring the Dilithium matrix. If anything out of the ordinary happens, holler.’

‘Vulcans don’t ho…’ but he was already giving commands to the first years, so T’Vral let the thought go and focused on her task. If she were human, she might have felt disappointed that she had been delegated a task far below her level, but as it was, logic demanded she follow instructions exactly in order to minimize chaos.

***************************************************************

‘Nice flying!’ the captain exclaimed as Matt dodged another Ion blast even with the poor maneuverability of the freighter. The first few shots were easy to dodge, but every successive one harder, it was almost as if the crew, or whoever was piloting the ship was recording Matt’s evasive patterns, analyzing them, and adapting. With every pass, Matt wondered if it would be the last. They were getting better and better at predicting what he was going to do, yet continued to fly past them from front and back. Why didn’t they just sit on their tail and fire that Ion cannon until they hit? Considering how inexperienced they seemed during the first passes, perhaps they were using them as target practice, training. Or were they just having a little fun?

‘I’m going to recommend you for Nova Squadron when we get back!’ the captain beamed as Matt dodged another blinding white blast. He didn’t think it was the right time to mention that he was already a member of the elite fighter-pilot group.

‘For someone in Command, you have a great aptitude for Flight Control,’ he continued to praise Matt and the cadet marveled at the charismatic man’s command ability. He was a model leader, keeping his crew together with words even when the situation itself was dire.

‘Flying and Flight Control isn’t the same thing,’ Matt decided to continue the conversation in the hope that it would ease the growing tension and fear on the bridge. They had managed to evade every shot since the first three that had injured and killed several of the crew, and there was something in the air that told him they were just waiting until it would happen again.

The ship missed again and passed overhead as Matt managed to dodge yet another blast, but this time it was quite a close call, and even through the vacuum of space, they could feel the energy of the blast so close to their hull. Whoever was on that ship, they were definitely quick learners and Matt was running out of evasive patterns to use.

***************************************************************

Ryan finished his work on the intake manifolds and, without asking the chief engineer for permission, proceeded to run the procedure. He could feel the warp engine rev up and for a moment it seemed the engine would in fact overload, but just as Ryan was about to start the emergency shutdown, the engine began to settle down. He had done it! He managed to create a controlled overload on his first attempt. The engine was shaking slightly, due to the accelerated fusion of the Dilithium crystals and quicker decay of antimatter, but was holding together quite well. This gave them what, twenty, thirty percent higher output from the engines?

‘What are you doing?!’ the chief engineer pushed him aside, looking at his shaking engine, like a father looking at his sick child.

For a moment, Ryan thought the old man was going to hit him, and when he spun around, he actually felt himself jump back a bit, but the chief just slapped his shoulder with a big grin on his face.

‘You’ve got talent kid,’ and without any other comment, walked back to a group of first years.

Despite the fact that they were in combat, with who knows what chances of ever getting out of this alive, Ryan couldn’t help but smile. He looked over at T’Vral. Was she also grinning back at him? No, he must have imagined it. Vulcans didn’t grin. But T’Vral was moving, she wasn’t looking at the Dilithium matrix as she was supposed to, but rushing to the old engineer. What was…

Ryan goofy grin turned to a grimace of despair as he watched the old man clutch his chest and stumble. His legs buckled and he began to fall to the ground, only to be scooped up in T’Vral’s hands, who had rushed the twenty meters across engineering with the speed of one of those large cats which only existed in Zoos these days.

The first year, who had already been on the verge of panic, stared at the dying man and a girl probably only a year or so younger than Ryan screamed. Her voice pierced even the dense atmosphere of engineering. It completely overpowered the deep hum of the Warp engine, until Ryan could hear nothing else. It was strangely poetic, like something out of a movie, Ryan wondered. While T’Vral desperately tried to revive the old man, Ryan seemed to lose touch with the world around him. The colours were staring to get more and more pronounced, and the girl’s screaming filled his ears. He sat down against the Warp core and looked ahead, his eyes unfocused.

***************************************************************

Up on the bridge, Matthew was struggling to react to another attacking run. He was half way through a complex maneuver he had just punched in when something in his mind started screaming. He checked the readouts before him and the image of the giant ship ahead and knew that his inner voice was right. They got him. This time they anticipated his move. His hands shot back to the controls at lightning speed, but froze above them. For the first time in his life, Matt didn’t know what to do in a combat situation.

The ship was angling towards them, compensating for every erratic course adjustment, even the short bout of reverse thrusters and spin around the z-axis. His eyes widened as he heard beep of warning from Steve’s console. The giant Ion cannon locked onto them.

‘Pull to bearing three point four, mark two one five, then release the backmost port cargo module,’ Alex was climbing through the port hole, looking slightly dazed, but recovered from her fall in the mess hall.

Matt didn’t need telling twice, he followed her instructions just in time for the cannon to fire, and hit the detached cargo module. The ship shook from the shockwave, but there was no major damage.

‘You’ve been at it for too long Matt,’ she smiled at him as the alien ship passed over them, its cannon recharging. ‘I’ve been watching from sickbay and you’ve lasted about ten passes longer than I would have done.’ Very much like Ryan downstairs, there was a smirk plastered over her face despite the fact that they just barely avoided death.

She moved to stand beside him and they started working on the next maneuver they would try together…

***************************************************************

Ryan watched the scene unfold before him with a sense of calm detachment. T’Vral ordered two first years to take the man to sickbay, but Ryan knew he was already dead. And what did it matter? They were all going to die here. Just like his mother, just like everybody else he ever cared about. Why did he ever decide to start a career in Starfleet? After losing both his arms and legs and a parent in a space battle, what in the world made him do it? There was no point in thinking about it. Maybe he should go down to the mess hall and have something to eat. He felt hungry. He was interrupted and hadn’t finish his food at lunch. He slowly got up and walked to the hatch leading out of engineering and onto the main deck.

‘Where are you going?’ T’Vral grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around.

‘To the mess hall,’ he said evenly.

The tall Vulcan opened her mouth to ask the inclining question that logic demanded: ‘what was in the mess hall?’ but stopped herself.

‘I cannot do this alone,’ she said in an equally even voice. ‘You are needed here.’

Something tugged at Ryan’s mind, almost snapped him back to reality, but then he just waved a dizzy hand and started climbing up. He was almost at the hatch when he felt something sharp just above his collar bone. Then everything went black.

***************************************************************

When he came to, Ryan was looking into the face of T’Vral. Her face was so close if he moved only a few millimeters, their lips would touch. Was there a frown on her face? And again, Ryan whished away the idea: Vulcans didn’t frown. A voice in his mind started shouting things like ‘what are you doing?’ or ‘snap out of it’, but as before, he didn’t respond.

He would just get up and climb up the ladder again. He started pushing himself up when he felt something cold touch his face. For a moment he thought that T’Vral had kissed him on the cheek, but then he felt his eyes closed, and as if from a great distance, far above the rumbling of engineering, he heard a soft voice.

‘My mind to your mind…’

***************************************************************

Matthew and Alex worked in a perfect tandem, complementing their skills and working together in the epitome of ‘the whole was more than the sum of their parts’. But even that wasn’t going to be enough forever. They now knew that both of Matt’s guesses were true. The crew on that alien ship was probably a trainee crew, or a crew that had never seen battle before, but they were also playing around with them. It wasn’t one or the other, but both. But how long were they going to play around before they got tired of it and blew them to pieces?

On this run, they had fired even before they had completed their arc, trying to surprise the crew of the freighter, but Steven had been just as attentive and noticed the power surge before the blast and they had time to make a final course adjustment.

To their great astonishment, Jaroslav, who had until then been observing more than anything else, rushed to their side.

‘I have an idea…’ he said gravely.

***************************************************************

It was the most peculiar feeling Ryan had ever experienced. Even more so than when he had first woken up with his prosthetic limbs. The myriad of thoughts that were pouring in and out of him and in every other direction were thoroughly confusing, and a little frightening, but also beautiful. Even though his eyes were closed, colours, images and strange waves were spinning all around him, and his mouth would have been wide open in wonder, had he been able to control it. He soon realized that not all of the images and thoughts were his own and, with some measure of focus, discovered they were T’Vral’s. Focusing even harder, he could hear the sounds of engineering what seemed like miles away. People were talking, but he couldn’t understand what they were saying. The words were garbled and sounded like something coming through a faulty universal translator.

‘What you hear are their voices in slow motion,’ a beautiful and soft, but emotionless voice echoed around him.

‘T’Vral? Is that you?’ Ryan wanted to speak out loud, but his body wasn’t responding.

‘You have to overcome your past Ryan,’ she continued without heeding his question.

‘I don’t,’ he tried to protest again, but the voice continued to echo around him.

‘I know what happened to your mother, to you…’

‘NO!’ Ryan was screaming in his mind. ‘How could you, how dare you!’ she was invading his mind, unlocking things that were supposed to be forever locked away in the folds of memory. He hated her. Despite whatever he may have felt when he first saw her look at him with those deep brown eyes, he hated her with the very essence of his being.

‘Get out!’ he shouted, forcing his mind to focus. He felt the world around him move slightly out of focus and the real world flash back for a fraction of a second, but then he was back in the illusionary world he now hated just as much as T’Vral.

‘Let me go!’ he screamed again, and pushed against her mind. All of his willpower he manipulated into a giant hammer that he would strike T’Vral with and… BANG.

The real world flashed back and Ryan could see the first year crouched over him and T’Vral. For a moment he thought that he had succeeded, that he got that evil witch out of his head, but then the world faded away again.

The anger in him flared and he tried to push her out again. He tried and tried, but the anger wasn’t letting him focus. Had he been in the real world, he’d be flailing his prosthetic arms around and kicking with his equally inhuman legs, but as it was, he couldn’t do anything. And all of a sudden, all that anger transformed into a great well of despair. Whatever emotions he had used to cloud his fear, whatever premise he had used to pretend everything was alright, whatever other lie he had made up to be able to live with his past, they were all washed away. Flailing arms and legs turned into a limp body and the world around him faded.

Ryan felt hot tears streaming down his face, but… he wasn’t… they weren’t... He didn’t understand.

‘TVral?’ he muttered confusedly, still recovering from the great mental exhaustion.

The girl lay across him, her hand still on his face, and she was crying. Ryan’s eyes widened, any trace of anger and hatred towards the girl left in that illusionary world.

‘T’Vral?’ he asked again, trying to sound comforting.

The Vulcan that looked about his age, but in Vulcan years must have been almost twice as old as he was, looked into his eyes. In the brief second that he looked into those deep eyes, he felt the ghosts of his past relinquish their grip on him.

T’Vral then stood up. Ryan thought that even the way she stood up had a sort of elegance that only Vulcans seemed to have. Ryan followed, looking down for only a slight moment as he pushed himself off the ground, and when he looked up, her face was back to its usual emotionless state. Had it not been for the traces of tears running down her cheeks, Ryan might have wondered if everything that had happened was not some kind of twisted dream.

‘Will you still be going to the mess hall?’ she asked in a calm voice that bore no resemblance to a voice of a person that had recently been crying.

Ryan looked at her for a moment, then his face filled with a broad smile. And it wasn’t a fake smile, a smile wrought of hidden sorrows and merely masking his true pain, it was a real smile.

‘Let’s get to work,’ he said and started delegating the first years.

***************************************************************

Everybody on the bridge seemed to be forming a group around the ‘Flight Control’ station. Matt sat in the chair and punched in commands, while Alex, Jaroslav and anybody else that may have had an idea pitched in. For the first time since he had met the Czech Command officer, Matt was grateful that he was there. Despite the constant questioning of his decisions and steadily increasing rivalry, Jaroslav Svoboda was definitely an asset. He was definitely a great tactician and, although often risky and indicative of his cockiness, his ideas were unlike any of the other bridge officers.

But even the combined efforts of everyone on the bridge were minute by minute, pass after pass, becoming increasingly desperate. With every blinding flare of the Ion cannon, they wondered if it would be the last.

Ryan and T’Vral, down in engineering, had given them all that the old freighter warp 6 engine could give them, and more. Even managed to pull off a couple of full stops, and reverses, courtesy of Jaroslav, to evade the alien ship’s constant attack, but despite not being actually hit by a Ion blast, the old ship was steadily breaking apart. It was meant for calm voyages at a single speed in a single direction with only minor course corrections. This siege had already lasted over two hours and the engines were already starting to protest.

As the ship passed overhead after another unsuccessful, though very frightening, pass, the lights on the bridge went off.

‘Status report!’ the Captain shouted, but neither the main computer, nor the engineering responded.

‘Engineering, report!’ One of the officers had rushed to the manual communicator, his trembled and the entire bridge stood frozen as they awaited an answer.

‘We had to shut the Warp core down,’ Ryan shouted back from engineering.

‘It was overloading and would have destroyed us had it exploded,’ T’Vral added from beside him.

As the emergency lighting came on, everybody looked to the Captain.

‘Send our coordinates to Starfleet Command…’ he paused for a moment and Matt noticed there was a tear running down his face. ‘Prepare to abandon ship,’ he said quietly. The others stared at him in frozen despair. This ship had been their home for an entire generation and now it was all over.

‘We have two minutes before their Ion Cannon recharges,’ Steven said, bringing everyone back to reality. They opened the hatch and started sliding down the bars of the ladder. Two more, then it would be Matt’s turn. He watched the first man slide down, fall half way and collapse on the deck below. The next man fell on top of him. So this was it. This was chaos and panic. Matt stepped forward, was about to slide down when he heard an unmistakable sound.

They were being hailed.

‘Open hailing frequencies,’ the captain said as the men that had climbed or fallen to the deck below hurried back up.



‘Freighter Abbadon, this is Captain Thar of the Starfleet vessel USS Discovery. Prepare to lower your shields for transport.’

The Captain rushed to his seat from which he answered the hail.

‘We have no shields to speak of Captain. Energize now before the alien ship’s weapon recharges and tears us to pieces.’

There was no reply. Matthew counted three seconds before he heard a click as the hailing channel closed. A thought began to form in his mind, but before it could materialize, he felt the familiar sensation of his body being pulled apart in a million directions and then pushed back together. When he opened his eyes, he and all the other crewmembers of the freighter were looking at the familiar sight of a Starfleet design cargo bay.

***************************************************************

The USS Discovery passed by the freighter, just as the blinding beam of the Ion cannon connected with it. It seemed to be engulfed in a momentary greenish glow, then exploded, the hull ripped apart as easily as a child desperately trying to get to one of its presents.



***************************************************************

Matthew looked around the cargo bay and his stomach unclenched as he caught sight of all his friends. Alex, Steven and Jaroslav had all been on the bridge, and he’d heard from Ryan and T’Vral from engineering, but he had no idea about the others. Niklas and Kajsa, who were probably in their quarters when the attack happened, lay across makeshift beds before a very scared and distraught Cyanne. His first urge was to go over immediately and find out what was wrong, but the instincts he had picked up in command school stopped him. First he had to find out what was going on, what needed to be done for them to get out of this mess.

‘This is Captain Thar,’ they heard over the intercom. ‘Crew of the Abbadon, report to the situation room immediately. I’m going to need a full report…’ the ship shook from an Ion cannon blast, but the shields seemed to hold. They heard several muffled commands as the Captain tended to his duties, then addressed them again. ‘I am aware that you are carrying Starfleet Cadets and Initiates aboard. Please remain in the cargo bay. We will are going to lock you in, in case we get boarded. Nevertheless, arm yourselves from the containers situated there.’

The adults, including the captain and doctor, quickly rushed out, the latter giving Cyanne a last set of rushed instructions. The ship rocked again, as the ship evaded another Ion cannon blast.

The crew of the alien ship must have indeed learned a lot from their previous encounter, if they were giving an experienced Starfleet crew a run fro their money. Matt wondered if they were going to stay and fight, or try to outrun the ship, just as he felt them go into warp. The stars outside were streaking by and the realization that the crew of the Discovery considered this to be a hopeless battle somehow made him proud that they had contended with them for so long.

‘What kind of ship are we on?’ Steven asked curiously, he seemed much more relaxed now that they were on a military vessel.

‘Wait a sec,’ Matt said and walked towards Cyanne. She was looking increasingly frightened and he couldn’t resist the urge to go and comfort her. He was only a few meters away, when he froze. His legs didn’t want to move and unwanted questions were springing into his mind. What was he going to say? He had no right to assume he could comfort her. He stood there for a while, watching the dark-haired girl struggle on the verge of tears.

Surprisingly, it was Alex that noticed his lack of resolve and brushed past him.

‘You ok, sweetie?’ she asked the other girl kindly, thinking that ‘after all that resolve on the bridge, after taking the lives of the entire crew into his own hands without as single moment of hesitation, he now can’t even make up his mind. He’s so clueless…’

‘I… I…’ Cyanne mumbled. She was looking down at her hands, which were covered in blood.

Seeing her stand there, so fragile and afraid, was like being clubbed over the head. Yet Matt still didn’t move.

A hand pulled on Matthew’s and he turned around. ‘She’s been doing great,’ Niklas said quietly from his bed. ‘Been asking the new arrivals in sickbay about you, she needs you man…’

‘We’ve never even spoken,’ Matthew replied in a whisper of his own.

‘And that matters, how?’ In the strangest way, that made sense to Matthew. He suddenly walked over, passed Alex, and hugged Cyanne. He didn’t say a single word and neither did she. She gripped him hard and wept into his shoulder and a meter away… Alex was smiling.

***************************************************************

‘So, what kind of ship are we on?’ Steven asked with a smirk when they had finally stopped hugging.

‘What?’ Matt turned around only to see his friends smirking at him. Even Ryan couldn’t resist the temptation. He could sense Cyanne hide behind him from the staring crowd.

‘Do you mind guys?’ he asked, a smile returning to his face after hours of stress.

‘Yup,’ Steven was sitting by Kajsa and holding her hand.

‘Hi Matt,’ she said happily. Matt wondered what Kajsa had done during the attack. She probably took the distress of their previous situation the hardest, having been afraid of the dangers of space travel even before they had set out. The radiance that was coming from her now reassured him that, despite her fears, she belonged in Starfleet.

‘You feeling better?’ he asked Niklas, who stood by the others, and Kajsa’s brother nodded.

‘Alrighty,’ he linked a hand in Cyanne’s and led her to the bed Niklas had been in previously. There he laid her down and whispered into her ear. ‘Get some rest, you deserve it.’

‘Is anyone going to answer my question?’ Steven asked, but there was no impatience in his voice.

‘The Discovery is a Nova Class light cruiser,’ Matt said, remembering the name from his list of offered positions.

‘A Nova Class ship?’ Kajsa said, her voice suddenly reverting back to a scared state. ‘Aren’t those short-term planetary research vessels?’ Steven and Niklas now each held her hands and turned to Matt with questioning looks.

‘Don’t worry,’ Matt’s look was sincere. ‘Nova class ships used to be short term planetary research vessels. Used to,’ he repeated it, just in case. ‘Remember the Defiant Pathfinder project?’ Kajsa nodded, some of the others remembering the ship design. ‘Nova class ships were a precursor to the Defiant class. They were more compact, functional, with fewer recreational and civilian areas, meant to do what the Defiant class does now: act as a combat vessel against the Borg.’

‘But when the Borg threat was over,’ Matt continued. ‘And the Defiant project was put into mothballs,’ Matt remembered how it had been gloriously taken out of mothballs by its great designer Captain Sisko, then continued his explanation to not only his friends, but the crowd of cadets that had gathered around to find out what was going on. ‘The Defiant Pathfinder Class was renamed Nova Class and refitted for scientific use to replace the old Oberth class.’

‘So it is a science vessel,’ Jaroslav said. It wasn’t a question and some of the enmity Matthew had towards the other command cadet that had left him during their cooperation on the bridge came back.

‘It was a science vessel,’ Matt asserted. ‘As you know, during the Dominion wars, all ships were refitted for combat, and thus the Nova Class returned back to very much what its initial designs had been. And as you know, after the decimation of the fleet during the Dominion Wars, all ships remained in their combat refits in order to protect the struggling Federation.’

This last sentence seemed to relieve some of the tension that was building up around Matt as he talked. However, they were all still very much aware that they were on a light cruiser. No matter how combat-ready, it was still about half the size of an Intrepid Class such as the great Voyager that returned from the Delta Quadrant last year. They probably couldn’t match the alien ship n firepower, but they all hoped that they could outrun them. Which, judging by the streaking stars they could see through the windows, they were successfully doing.

***************************************************************

‘Are they still behind us?’ Captain Thar asked his Conn Officer as the ship accelerated to warp 9.

‘Gaining,’ the woman replied in a calm, Starfleet, voice.

‘Can we reach Gamma Sirti in time?’ the Captain asked again.

‘Negative.’

‘Any Starfleet ships in the area?’ he asked again.

‘Negative, we’re the only Starfleet vessel in the sector, sir. The USS Chicago, a Norway Class vessel is about eleven light years away, but not close enough to intercept. In fact, from these readouts, it is stationed at a small base awaiting some of the Cadets we have transported over and...’

‘And what?’ the Andorian Captain asked, frustrated at the human need to be dramatic.

‘Its abandoned sir,’ she said simply.

‘What do you mean, abandoned?’

‘Report says it was attacked by an unknown vessel, crew is missing.’

‘What!?’ the Captain shouted angrily. ‘Ships have been attacked and nobody bothered to investigate? Where are the large explorers?’

‘A nearest Galaxy class ship is more than two weeks away, sir. Starfleet has been dealing with minor skirmishes on all fronts. Our adversaries can sense that we are weakened.’

‘Never mind,’ the Captain snapped. ‘But remind me to have a little talk with the Admiral that told us this would be an uneventful supply run.’

***************************************************************

‘We were told to arm ourselves,’ Matthew reminded everyone.

‘We’re safe, probably out of harm’s way,’ Jaroslav waved him off.

Matt didn’t speak out loud, but took Jaroslav and his friends aside. He let Cyanne and Kajsa sleep, they could be told later.

‘If that were true,’ he whispered so the first year cadets wouldn’t hear them, ‘somebody would have come to tell us by now. They’re probably trailing us. We have to be careful about panic though,’ he paused again just long enough to see a first year turn around and look over at them suspiciously. ‘If we make it sound like we simply have to follow the orders, no matter how irrelevant they might be now… now that we are ‘safe’, we can probably manage it without having a riot on our hands.’

Everybody nodded and turned back to the first years.

‘Steve, Alex,’ Matt stopped his best friends. ‘Let’s go check out those containers. The Captain said they contain weapons.’

***************************************************************

It turned out that the containers contained much more than just side-arms. Torpedo launchers with racks of photon and quantum torpedoes, phaser emitters, replicators, a secondary deflector dish, portable power and shield generators, transporter pads, bridge consoles, endless spare parts and even the components for a Warp One support engine. The largest containers were almost as tall as the cargo bay, which itself three of the seven decks of the Nova Class starship. These were probably full of bulk material used for replication. The Discovery was definitely well supplied, but they supposed it made more sense that they were delivering this to someone else.

Once everybody was armed with phaser pistols or rifles, Matt and the others sat together and wondered what would happen next. The look on Kajsa’s face, so much different from the look of joy she had when they all thought it was over, constantly reminded them of the sad fact that those celebrations were probably premature.

Cyanne was still sleeping, her black hair covering her face. Matt had woken her up for just long enough to tell her that there still might be danger, but reassured her that everything would be ok now that they were on a Starfleet vessel. She had smiled and offered to help with the first years, but Matt could see the fatigue in those dark eyes and let her sleep. He found that watching the nurse sleep was strangely soothing and his look of content must have had an effect on Alex as well, who seemed happier than she had been since… since they received their third year assignments. Matthew thought about this for a moment. Yes, she had been her usual self before that, and then everything had suddenly changed. Her emotional reaction to her grandmother’s death, the pained look on her face when he had missed her on the landing platform, the anger towards the Betazoid, it all made sense now. How could he not have noticed?

He slowly got up from Cyanne’s bed, careful not to wake her and walked over to Alex, who was talking to a couple of first years.

‘You know, don’t you?’ he asked her. It was a feeble sentence, but none other came to mind.

‘What?’ Alex asked confusedly.

‘You know…’ and he looked deep into her eyes and saw the realization there.

***************************************************************

Alex laughed at the first year’s joke only to hear a very familiar voice say: ‘You know, don’t you?’ It was Matt. What was he talking about? What did she know?

‘You know…’ he repeated and Alex looked back into his eyes calmly, still confused. But then she panicked inside. ‘Does he mean me? He knows? Did Steven tell him? I’m gonna kill him if he did!’ But suddenly, she realized that Matt had said ‘you know’, not ‘I know’. Then horror struck her and she realized what he meant. Yes, she knew…

***************************************************************

Matt watched Alex hesitate, then open her mouth to speak, then close it again. Considering how long they had known each other, this was answer enough for him.

‘You could have come to me,’ he said in a hurt voice.

‘And you could have told us,’ she said in one equally as hurt.

They looked into each other’s eyes for a moment,

‘How did you find out?’ she asked curiously.

‘It just came to me.’

‘What gave it away?’

‘I don’t know why I didn’t notice earlier, but sitting over there,’ he pointed towards Cyanne, ‘I suddenly realized that ever since the assignments, you had been behaving a bit…’

‘You can say it,’ Alex laughed.

‘Different?’ They both laughed at his diplomacy, but then he added quickly. ‘Different in a new and equally adorable way.’ At this Alex smiled and even blushed slightly.

‘And here I though I was a perceptive guy,’ Matthew laughed again.

‘You are,’ she laughed back. ‘Only not when it comes to me.’

Matthew frowned again, she was talking about more than just this secret of his… but what was it?

Suddenly, the cargo bay shook and Matthew instinctively threw out an arm and managed to stop Alex from a second dangerous fall that day.

‘Thanks,’ she muttered. ‘What’s going on?’

***************************************************************

‘Drop out of warp,’ the Captain commanded. The engines hummed and the stars became tiny specks again. ‘Red Alert.’

'Fire phasers!'



'No damage sir...'

***************************************************************

Back in the cargo bay, the third years were desperately trying to calm everyone down. The prospect of another hopeless battle was daunting even for them, but they couldn’t afford to have the first years running around like headless chicken if the aliens boarded.

They decided to work in groups. Everybody was assigned a group of first years on the fly, usually those they had worked with before or were more familiar with, then proceeded with calming them down. To Matthew’s surprise, the first person to calm his group down after him and T’Vral, was Jaroslav. Matt didn’t know whether he had shouted at them that he’d toss them out of an airlock or completely maim some of them, but whatever it was, it seemed to work. Unlikable fellow as he was, he certainly belonged in Command.

Although they hadn’t been hit since the first blast, the helmsman was maneuvering so vehemently that they were constantly being thrown around and since they didn’t have the luxury of dampening fields on their seats like the bridge officers, which meant bracing themselves between the equipment containers. Matt had a detached thought of what it would have looked like if somebody opened the door to the cargo bay and saw them there, almost forty cadets, with their arms and legs against the containers, as if trying to push them away.

***************************************************************

The cargo bay shook violently again and Cyanne was thrown against the container in front of her. Even her outstretched hands and legs, braced against it, couldn’t stop her from painfully colliding with it. She let out a soft moan, but when she saw the first year next to her, the pain washed away. He probably didn’t recover after the last blast and wasn’t in position when the next one hit them. His face collided with the container and there was blood trickling down his right eyebrow. She quickly removed the medical tricorder which was safely tucked into her back pocket and mended the cut in a heartbeat. Whatever other damage the blow may have caused would have to wait for the doctor, but then she realized that it may be hours before any doctor came.

She looked at the readings as she scanned the cadet’s head. It seemed that it was only a surface wound and she let out a sigh of relief. With the equipment she had at hand, there would be little she could have done if the wound was any worse. But just as she was considering this grave situation she heard a moan of pain. It was Matt.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked in a worried voice.

‘Remember the mess hall?’ The lunch they had about four hours ago seemed so far away, but she could distinctly remember Matthew pin her to the floor and then do it a second time as he tried to put pressure on his right hand.

‘I think it might be broken,’ Matthew said, looking over his arm.

‘And you’ve been using it all along?’ Cyanne was frowning at the offending arm. ‘Give it here.’

‘I just need something for the pain,’ Matthew smiled.

‘You should have gone to sickbay immediately.’

‘I thought you were the one saying I was needed on the bridge.’

‘But, I… I didn’t…’ she stumbled.

‘It’s ok,’ he smiled at her and extended his arm.

‘It’s a straight crack,’ she released the breath she was holding and started setting up the tricorder.

‘And that’s good?’ Matt never cared much for medicine and always learned just enough to pass his exams at the academy.

‘Means I can give you a quick fix,’ she smiled and ran the tricorder over the fracture for a few moments. ‘There…’ she said and kissed the place where the fracture would have been.

‘I hope you don’t do that with all your patients,’ Matthew joked, but the affectionate gesture made him smile.

‘Nope,’ Cyanne returned the smile, but then they were both thrown to the side as the largest explosion yet hit the ship. They looked around. People were getting up and it seemed that nobody was hurt badly, but then a realization hit them. This last blast was actually a hit to the hull. Their shields were down.

‘Ready your weapons,’ Matthew shouted over the talking, but there would be no need for phasers. On the other side of the cargo bay, a gas was starting to leak from some plasma conduit.

‘Ryan,’ Matthew shouted and started looking for the engineer.

‘What’s going on?’ Kajsa asked him and noticed the gas. ‘Matt, we have to get out of here, if that’s burning plasma, it’ll make the air here toxic in a matter of minutes.’

‘I know,’ Matt said gravely. ‘Have you seen Ryan?’

‘He’s over there,’ she pointed and Matt sprinted over to him.

***************************************************************

While Matt, Ryan and Steven desperately tried to uncouple the surrounding wall plates that led to the plasma conduit, the others were herding on the other end of the cargo bay. The ship wasn’t shaking anymore and it seemed that the fighting was either over, or the Starfleet crew had surrendered.

‘This won’t work,’ Jaroslav shouted at them from the other side, and Matthew had to admit that the other cadet was probably right. There was no way they could detach the plating quick enough to stop the plasma flow before the poisonous gas filled the entire cargo bay. Matthew looked around, desperately looking for another solution.

‘Jeffries tubes!’ he shouted back in Jaroslav’s direction. The hissing of the plasma and the dense air somewhat dulling the exclamation.

But Jaroslav seemed to have understood. The Jeffries tubes leading from the cargo bay would have sufficient air to last a couple of hours. If they could just stop the plasma flow, then they wouldn’t have to wait in the gas until life support eliminated it. He immediately opened the main hatch and started forming a line.

***************************************************************

Almost all of the other cadets had already climbed into the Jeffries tube, but Matt and the others still had one last security lock to break before they could remove the panel beneath which was the plasma conduit. The air was getting increasingly difficult to breathe and Matt felt like a thin filament of a sticky substance was starting to form on the insides of his mouth and nose.

Steven finally removed the panel and they looked down to see an emergency seal. When Matthew noticed the code input, he was glad that he had taken Ryan along. The young engineer immediately started rewiring the lock and Matthew felt his head spin slightly. He was getting increasingly dizzy, and was struggling to stay on his feet.

He counted the seconds as Ryan worked. They could still make it, they could still run to the hatch the others had closed, knock and hide with them, but what use would it do, if they all suffocated a couple of hours later. No, they had to stay.

Ryan staggered, but continued to work, the layer of residue in Matt’s mouth was starting to block his air pipe and he retched, spewing a dark green jelly-like slag. Ryan shouted in triumph and Matt could hear the plasma leak slow down, then stop. They turned around and ran to the hatch. Half way across, Ryan collapsed and they had to carry him, but in the end, they made the hatch in time, banged on it desperately, and let themselves be pulled in.

Cyanne screamed when she saw them and immediately gave them each a pair of hypos. They didn’t know what was inside them, but whatever it was, it helped them breathe immediately.

Moments later, they had all simultaneously vomited that dark green stuff out.

‘A few more seconds and you wouldn’t have made it,’ Cyanne muttered quietly, as if not really wanting them to hear it.

‘Thank God we have you,’ Matthew tried a smile, but proceeded to vomit more of the green slag.

***************************************************************

They stayed there for almost two hours, by which almost everyone was starting to feel the amount of oxygen decreasing. They repeatedly checked the state of the cargo bay, but it was still unbreathable. There was no sound of battle, but also no call for them to come out.

‘Maybe comm. is down,’ Matt thought. ‘We have to get out of here though, soon.’

Maybe they could climb out of the Jeffries tube at another porthole. Matt sent a message down the tube to the other end. It was like a giant version of the ever popular game ‘Chinese whispers’ and he could see the message being passed along. When the reply came, he sighed in relief.

***************************************************************

When Matt, Steven, Alex, Niklas, Kajsa, T’Vral and Jaroslav (Cyanne wanted to stay with some of the injured first years) climbed out of the porthole they could only stare in shock. The cargo bay must have been a low priority target, because the Discovery was completely devastated. Bulkheads were lying across the floor, doors were jammed, consoles sparked and the emergency lighting was flickering threateningly.

They made their way to the bridge and passed the large door of the cargo bay. Here they saw the first signs of battle. Phaser burns were on the walls and door itself. It seemed that the Starfleet officers had protected the cargo bay desperately, but there were none there now, and neither were there any bodies. Maybe they really did win and merely couldn’t reach the cargo bay to tell them of the victory. But as they walked through the ship towards the bridge, that thought was starting to become more and more futile. Although they didn’t come across any bodies and the only other place where they saw phaser burns was above engineering, the Discovery was starting to look more and more like a ghost ship.

Ryan almost got hit with a falling bulkhead and Kajsa was on the verge of tears when they reached the access tube to the bridge. They couldn’t risk the turbolifts considering the state the ship was in, so they’d have to climb up the ladder.

When they emerged on the bridge, it didn’t seem to be as damaged as the rest of the ship, but compared to even the worst simulations they had been through at the academy, it was still the most damaged bridge they had ever seen.

‘At least some of the consoles still seem to be working,’ he thought to himself in a forced attempt at optimism.

They were adrift on a deserted and damaged ship, nothing but nine third year cadets and a group of thirty initiates that had only just joined the academy and were on their first field trip before school started.

They had to get home somehow, or call for help. Each one of the eight of them probably reached this thought, but then the viewscreen flickered and an image filled it.

The alien ship was right before them, undamaged and completely intact, towing them behind itself in a giant tractor beam.



To be continued…




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