Thunderchild

Posted on Sun Dec 19th, 2021 @ 12:44am by Lieutenant Timmoz
Edited on on Sun Dec 19th, 2021 @ 1:20am

Mission: Sojourners of Time
Location: Azure Nebula; Neutral Space Between the Romulan Republic, Klingon Empire and the Federation; Nico and Timmoz's Quarters
Timeline: Mission Day 5 at 0400

[Azure Nebula]
[Orion Interceptor Bom Ke'surqin]
[Thirteen Years Ago]

The smoke was thick: it tasted of metal and coolant. A thin-built Helmsman coughed, his eyes tearing with the acrid sting of coolant. Te’imouzh Bilati flinched when a lime green hand slapped his smooth head. "Goggles!" He was ordered by the owner of the sinewed hand. Timmoz flinched again as black goggles were thrust at him, along with a dull gray rebreather. A swell of anxiety crowded bees into his chest at the mere idea of taking his fingers off the controls. They were about to die. Surely. This was it.

"What happened?!" Someone in the smoke called.

"Gravitic mine clipped us at the second!" Te'imouzh shouted back. "Klingon! I've lost warp drive controls!"

"Why didn't you see it, stupid boy!"

The comms crackled behind the relentless metallic trill of the alert siren. "This is the Federation starship Thunderchild, heave to, cut your drives and surrender your vessel or we will fire upon you. You are in violation of Federation Trade Bylaws. Respond on this channel."

"They're closing to 151,000 qelikahms," A Markalian rumbled, his thick, scaly fingers stumbling over his controls. He looked back at the trio of Orions behind him. "Our Gorn transponder is down too. They see us for what we are." His saurian face, cast in orange, snapped back to his data. Beady orange eyes fixated on the scrolling script of Orionese data. "They are trying to get a target lock with their tractor beams."

"So much for following the Federation-Gorn Treaty. Rotate our shield harmonics! Te'imouzh, evasives! And get me more speed! Vaosh, where are the assists?"

Te'imouzh braced while his fingers wrapped a control stick and banked the ship with a sickening lurch. The stars streaked, bent, and warped to the side and down. His cheeks tense from holding his breath, he strapped on his mask first and then settled the goggles around his eyes. God, the mask stunk, of someone else's ancient halitosis. It had a distinctly Markalian tang to it.

Part blooming lotus, part eagle, the hooked beak of the Orion Interceptor banked, spiraled, and leveled out only to whirl and launch itself along an entirely new trajectory. Through the thick turquoise gases, the ship's prow and scythe-like lotus wings cut and parted. The olive green vessel raced into a pocket of obscuring methane and neon as the blue-stained white hull of a Federation vessel swung with elephantine grace in pursuit.

The comms ebbed with static-filled defeatism again, ""This is the Federation starship Thunderchild, heave to, cut your drives and surrender your vessel or we will fire upon you. You are in violation of Federation Trade Bylaws. This is your final warning. Respond on this channel immediately."

How bad could a Federation penal colony be, Te'imouzh wondered. "They're still on us," he reported back over his shoulder to the massively muscle-bound Orion leaning over the shoulder of an immensely obese Farian in Pakled gear. Vaosh, his eyes obscured behind blacked-out goggles, was eerily calm while images of swooping script flickered and shifted in their reflections. "I'm looking up their prefix now... let's hope those codes were worth the latinum, yes?"

A shove against the internal dampeners caused a proximity alarm to challenge the alert siren. The muscular hulk staggered while the boy at the Helm twisted and sent the ship into another steep, spiraling dive into another thermal layer of the nebula. The deck plates and hull creaked and sounded like they were straining.

"I'm trying to bring the assists online now..." Vaosh reported to the breathing hulk over his shoulder. "Buy me time. At least twenty seconds," he said with slick, calculated ease.

The Bull straightened from Vaosh's shoulder and glowered back at Te'imouzh. "New course! 180 mark 026, full impulse! Kaollic," the Markalian turned his head for orders, "Standby hellbores. Target their impulse manifolds on the port side."

"180, are you serious?!" Te'imouzh twisted around to stare agog at his brother. "You want to attack an Akira-class?!"

"Do it!" The Bulk bellowed back so loudly, Te'imouzh swore he could feel his ass clench. "Or I'll throw you out an airlock myself!"

The teenager snarled when he went back to his controls, coughing into his mask. "Evasive pattern suicide. Yes, Naqqash!" He sarcasmed, crescendoing his mutter so Nimruc could hear the honorific. The swirls of blue and gray banked with obscured starlight, dizzying and sick, before the viewscreen honed in on the saucer shape of the Akira-class. His lime fingers twisted at his joystick and then thrummed it forward. The interceptor lurched toward the Thunderchild like it was meant to swoop its eagled face straight through the hull.

"Drop their shields and fire!" Nimruc called out. His massive paw of a hand grabbed an overhead brace rail, his stance wide to brace from Te'imouzh's evasive maneuvers. The tension ate at Timmoz, feeling the prickle of anxiety behind his ears. The hull of the Federation ship was so close, it felt like they were shaving it at speed.

"Their shields are down," Vaosh said again with an eerie, smug calm.

"Firing!" The Markalian said with sadistic, gleeful lust. As the viewscreen peeled away from the white Starfleet hull to the backdrop of the Azure Nebula, the ship shimmied. As the eagle-lotus of the Interceptor fled the point-defense safety of the Akira's undercarriage, a lob of tense green energy sputtered from the ship and slammed hard into the Thunderchild's impulse engines. It crackled. Green-yellow plasma lightning lanced and pitted black scarring over the impulse manifold and shuttle bays while the angry red of its engines sputtered, dimmed, and died to a black crimson.

"Their impulse drives are offline," Vaosh reported. "I'm detecting a ma-" Vaosh flinched at the last minute as the control deck of the Bom Ke'surqin- the Stolen Fortune- slammed. Left. Hard underside. Hard underside. There was an explosion and a new flow of smoke. This one was hot and very different. Another sickening jolt from hard left. Timmoz felt searing pain and hot, sickly wetness in his side. Flinching fingers gripped it, felt the wet and his fingers had a smear of thin green-blue on them.

"I think we've made them angry, Nimruc!" Vaosh called out, somewhat less calm now. "Can I suggest a strategic withdrawal?!"

The steely-eyed Tah'e Bull glowered through the smoke and glow of warbling flame. "They're V'draysh. They're always angry about something. Bloody their nose, and its suddenly a reason to kill," he snarled. "Siqash, get us out of here!" He addressed Te'imouzh. The shaking, stumble-fingered boy moved bloodied fingers over his controls.

"My controls aren't responding. They've taken out our impulse drives. And- bookassa...." He winced and looked back at Nimruc. "Temperature in the warp core is rising to 4,000k. All I have left are positioning thrusters." When Te'imouzh looked back again, Nimruc was helping Kaollic to his feet, the Markalian yelping with a sick, curdling sound in pain. A rod of duranium had completely impaled his shoulder. Nimruc had snapped it off, freeing him from his chair.

"Kaollic!" Te'imouzh staggered up. A wave of pain stole his breath and brought him down.

"Keep your place, Siqash!" Nimruc growled. "I have your Dalat. We abandon ship. Now. Make for the shuttle. Let's go!"

Te'imouzh staggered up with a new sting of hot pain. Through his black vest, he couldn't see the extent he was hurt, but he felt sticky down his side. Vaosh had, in an orderly fashion, begun to hand out disruptors to the crew. He began to hand one to Timmoz and Nimruc seized it. "Not him," Nimruc growled, "Too young." Vaosh acquiesced with only a hesitance, and then a bow.

"Orion Interceptor, this is Captain Nicodemus Orestes of the Federation starship Thunderchild. We're detecting a warp core breach in progress aboard your vessel. Standby for emergency beam out."

Nimruc tensed his jawline at that, squarely defiant in its set. "Transport scramblers on," he countered. Everyone went for bands around their biceps and flicked on the small, bulky wristwatch-like bands below a set of copper rings. "Shuttlebay, now. Shoot anything in a pattern buffer." The meaty sinews of Nimruc's paw grabbed Te'imouzh and pulled him close, "Once we're on the shuttle, set us to launch and then drop us into zero-power. I want us to look like debris. Do you understand?" The pained teenager gritted teeth and nodded once. "Stay behind me, unless you want to get shot. Knowing the V'draysh, they'll beam over."

The shaky, trembling sojourn through the corridor from the control deck to the shuttlebay was dominated by a v-shaped, broad mass of green muscle in metal and leather. Te'imouzh favored his injured side and held the part that kept stinging and sticking. When a harsh metal clank, un-Orion in timber, echoed, Te'imouzh looked to see the angular lines of the Klingon shuttle they'd acquired on Valaqis. Te'imouzh beelined for the controls with the metal echo of open grate flooring. Months on, it still stank of Klingon and dead Targ.

A thin whine resonated behind and he heard the gathering Orion crew respond. Boots shuffled on the grating deck. Phaser fire had a higher sound than the thunk-hiss of disruptor fire. Te'imouzh swiveled into his chair. He could hear himself wanting to shout, to protest to not shoot the ones in blue. Blue V'draysh believed they were helping. But, as easily, he could imagine Nimruc reminding him he wasn't the one that granted Xo-I: Nimruc did.

"The core is going critical!" Te'imouzh called back. He had no idea how many had made it out. He heard the ramp door closing. There were transporter whines. The hum and shimmy of the engines coming to life told Te'imouzh the shuttle was alive. Scarab-like and bulky, it didn't maneuver like the Interceptor. But it pulled out of the shuttlebay well enough. It pulled into darkness, into the void as the proximity warning siren told of the warp core breach reaching its final endstage...

---

Timmoz's eyes opened to the darkness. He'd been holding his breath, lost and disoriented for a moment. Until he realized where he was.

[USS Sojourner]
[Nico and Timmoz's Quarters]
[0400 hours, MD 5]

Timmoz took in a breath. It smelled of Human. Not Klingon. Nor Targ, or the heavy perfume of Orion, the dirty grime of Markalian. The sheets were soft. Mattress, soft. Maybe even too soft for his comfort. He stared at the wall, still bare with a disturbing lack of anything other than V'Draysh blandness. Their... minimalism was almost offensive. Wealth, success... they should be displayed. Rarities, treasured things. Colors, textures, scents of rich perfume, and incense. Why did the V'draysh prefer to live so... sterile? Like strange Vulcan monks?

The long and lean Orion turned over onto his back and licked the dry insides of his mouth. He stared in the dark at the ceiling where windows stared back with pinpricks of light on a void of black. Loyalty, loyalty, loyalty, loyalty unto me.... Behind the flicker-blink of his eyelids he heard childhood lullabies, of Tzim and the price of Xo-I. The darkness will rise from the deep and carry you down into sleep, child... Orions had a dark romance about darkness and night. Nighttime was full of evils and quasi-supernatural things. Sleep was a small death. Dreams were a sneak preview of Bunjeezu's hunt for you. One day he would catch you and you would dance. One last dance in the darkness.

Orions preferred to sleep alone. It was a place of self-introspection, self-care. Sex, intimacy had a place in a bed. But sleep? The bed was the ultimate privacy. Marriage had a political note- the coming together of Kaheedi and Tahedri in complete unity of the Caj. But... it was theatre. Humans though seemed to prefer sleeping together. It was still strange to the Orion, days on from learning their room assignment. After a strange dream or the clutch of cold darkness, Timmoz didn't mind Nico's presence in his bed, even as he sometimes missed the luxury of being his absolute self.

Timmoz pushed back on old memories. He pushed down on that day... that whole week. It felt like another life. Still his life, and yet another. He rose and stretched. He swayed to the replicator. "Uniform, skant variant. Recall previous measurements, Timmoz, Lieutenant." A whirl of white-blue, a sizzle of energy into matter gave him a red-shouldered uniform with black. He dressed in it and pulled on boots. He swiveled butt into his computer station once he gave the bedroom chamber fully to the sleeping engineer. "Review schedule, shuttlebay."

Lists of data began to scroll in the warm-to-Humans, dry air. He breathed softly. Behind his eyes, he saw the strange, tattered jewel-shape of the Klingon station they had hidden in after the losing battle with the V'draysh Thunderchild. He wondered if it was still in service. Fingers moved. LCARS. Retrieve data. Fleet Operations. T-H-U-N-D-E-R-C-H-I-L-D. He typed its name out.

"Found, Thunderchild," the Index voice stated. "United Starship Thunderchild, an Akira-class Starship. Registry number NCC-63549. The third Federation vessel to bear the name. Commissioned, 2371. Refitted, 2396. Status. In-Service. Current location: Starbase 717. Current Commanding Officer: Captain Levita Bozeman-Herrera. Do you wish to review the previous vessel, USS Thunderchild, NCC-29766, Springfield-class?" So, Nicodemus Orestes had moved on... but had Commander Swaynn?

Bunjeezu take Commander Swaynn. Timmoz glowered over the amber edge of the data in front of him. He shivered.

"No," Timmoz said with a shake of his head. "Replicate Bovril. Warm." His brown eyes shifted as the computer materialized a satin aluminum mug with a brothy, frothy brown drink inside. He stared into its darkness for a long time.

A Post By:

Lieutenant Timmoz
Chief Flight Controller