Chapter Text
The darkness engulfing Dayne slowly withdrew. As he returned to consciousness, the Krenim agent was overwhelmed with pain. He was aware of nothing more and nothing less than the searing heat that emanated from his neck where the shock collar had been attached. He slowly blinked his eyes open. The effort proved to be a gargantuan task.
“Dayne. Dayne. Damnit, Dayne, we’ve not got much time. You’ve got to wake up!”
He felt a shockwave of further pain roll through him as someone pressed their hands against his shoulder and shook him in an attempt to rouse him.
Dayne coughed and groaned, alerting the man kneeling at his side of his return to consciousness. Blessedly the shaking ceased.
“Torm?” Dayne rasped, surprised he could even speak.
“Yes. Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Torm slid his hands under Dayne’s body, pulled him into an upright position, and dragged him to his feet. Dayne’s eyes squeezed shut as a wave of dizziness and nausea crashed into him. He sought to keep the contents of his stomach in place while his friend steadied him.
When he was able to open his eyes, Dayne glanced about the darkened room. His brother, Obrist, lay on the floor beside his favourite interrogator – the bastard who’d brought his world crashing inward in a wave of excruciating pain. If Dayne had the energy, he would have shuddered. As it was, he hoped that Obrist was dead and that the smell of burnt flesh filling the air didn’t belong to him alone but could also be attributed to his fallen brother.
“Obrist?” Dayne croaked as Torm half guided, half pulled him out of the holding cell and toward the console embedded in the wall.
“He’s still alive.”
Dayne felt no relief.
Balancing Dayne against the Arcana’s wall, Torm quickly keyed in a few commands, stopping every few seconds to throw a worried look over his shoulder at the door to the brig.
“Why?” Dayne rasped.
“Hmm?” Torm’s eyes flicked to his friend’s as he keyed in the last sequence.
“Why rescue me?” Dayne managed to say despite the overwhelming agony that each word brought. He struggled to stay conscious long enough to hear Torm’s answer.
“You’re my friend. We’re family more than you and Obrist ever were. I couldn’t let you die, not like that.” Torm took a deep breath and grasped Dayne’s shaking hand. “We’re going to get out of here.” With his free hand, the young agent of the Krenim Temporal Defence Agency pressed the final button, transporting them out of the vile odour of the brig and into the small ship Torm had waiting for them.
Hastily, Torm lay Dayne down and flew to the control panel. Engaging the cloak, he laid in the necessary course away from the Arcana and activated the engines. When he was sure they hadn’t been detected, he returned to the older man’s side.
Gingerly, Torm released the shock collar from Dayne’s throat. Bile rose into his mouth at the combined sight and smell of the charred and flaking flesh.
Breathing heavily through his mouth, Torm lay the torture device aside and pulled the medkit closer. There wasn’t much he could do, but at least he could remove some of the pain and hopefully prevent infection from setting in.
By the time Torm’s ministrations were complete, he’d emptied his stomach for the third time, and he was sitting back on his heels wondering how he was going to move Dayne, the older man was regaining consciousness. With Dayne’s help, Torm managed to get his friend onto the thin bunk that passed for a bed on the small ship.
Sitting on the cold grated floor and resting his back against the wall, Torm asked the question that had been tormenting him ever since he’d heard Obrist had Dayne in custody. “Is she safe? Did you find her?”
Torm felt Dayne’s calloused hand settle on his head before sliding down onto his shoulder, where Dayne patted him comfortingly. “I did. Kathryn’s safe. She’s where no one will ever hurt her again.”
Torm rose and returned to the helm, missing the small smile that had settled on the injured man’s face.
|||||
Captain Regina Farkas listened with apprehension as Commander Fife, acting captain of the USS Demeter, broke through the sharp cries and loud reverberating booms of the battle swirling around them to alert her to what Commander Roach had already revealed: the Galen was lost.
“She disappeared, Captain.”
“I’m aware, Commander. We will be following her if we don’t find some way of stopping the Krenim.”
Farkas ran a hand down her face. Why in god’s name had she agreed to this? She had fought it over and over again. She knew better, damnit, and yet, here they were, fighting a losing battle against the Krenim with one ship destroyed and two barely holding on.
“No, you don’t understand,” Fife said, his voice strained. Farkas couldn’t understand why he was still on the line when he had his own ship and crew to worry about. “The Galan disappeared – no shrapnel, no debris, nothing. She was hit by a weapon with an unusual signature. We think it might be a new type of chroniton weapon. At the very least, it has caused some sort of temporal dist–” Fife’s voice cut off as his ship was hit.
“The Demeter is no longer on sensors,” the ensign at ops cried out.
Crap.
“Are our temporal shields holding?”
“They are at twenty percent, Captain. One more hit, and we will be susceptible to whatever they throw at us.”
Down in engineering, the fleet’s chief engineer, B’Elanna Torres, stumbled as the ship shook with another barrage of shots.
“What are the shields at?” She asked, hoping her voice didn’t betray the fear rolling in her stomach with the same violence the ship’s decks moved under each volley of shots.
“Twenty percent.”
“Damn.”
Torres’s fingers flew across her console. There were no more tricks up her sleeve, no more miracles, nothing. The feeling of dread that had been growing since they had made the course change to enter the Krenim’s territory exploded, swamping her with the knowledge that they weren’t going to make it out of this one.
Numb, B’Elanna opened a channel to the bridge, knowing that what she was about to say would probably be her last words.
“Engineering to bridge.”
“Bridge here. Torres, tell me there is something you can do.”
“Sorry, Captain. I’ve never seen weapons like this before. They’re destroying our shield integrity at an incredible rate. Even with the modifications Icheb and Bryce made before they left, we don’t have much time.” Torres took a steadying breath and spoke to her husband, whom she knew was on the bridge, called up when Vesta’s pilot was knocked unconscious early on in the battle. “Tom?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you – for everything.”
On the bridge, Paris’ eyes welled with tears. He blinked them away as he keyed in another evasive manoeuvre. Bolts of energy went streaking past the ship’s hull. He cleared his throat and was about to tell his wife he loved her when a thought struck him.
“B’Elanna,” he said urgently, “Can you send out a message?”
There was silence over the comm, and Tom wondered if his wife had been injured in the latest strike from the Krenim fighters. They were only seconds away from destruction.
“B’Elanna?”
“Why?”
“Try and get a message out! This will all be for nothing if Starfleet doesn’t know about the new weapon.”
Torres rushed into action. They weren’t near a message buoy, and it was unlikely anyone would hear their cries, but they had to try on the off chance it could get through. Her fingers flew across her console, and she slammed her hand down on the button sending the soundless cry out into the dark void of space as the Krenim’s weapon pounded the Vesta.
Decks above her, her husband watched as a torpedo hit the viewscreen. A yellow band pulsed out of the contact point, cutting through the ship’s temporal shielding and engulfing her whole. Tom screwed his face up tight, waiting for the heat of fire or the cold burn of space to touch him. Holding the image of his wife and children in his mind, he mourned the loss of years he would never have with them, sorry that they weren’t together in the final moments.