With the discovery of a powerful energy source in the form of crystal samples, the fate of the universe hangs in the balance as every major power lays claim to this remarkable discovery. Captain Ayer finds himself in the middle of this mess when he is captured by Captain Donovan, an agent for Section 31, and is beamed to Donovan's ship with the samples. Donovan upgrades the weapon systems on his ship with the samples and is eager to use them to take out any opposing vessel. A Romulan Warbird which is hunting for the samples, and the USS Sophocles, a Federation starship searching for Captain Ayer, turn out to be such opposing vessels.
As the fight rages on in space, Ayer tries to escape, but fails when Donovan confronts him in the transporter room. Determined to seek vengeance for the death of his friend and security officer, Donovan lunges himself at Ayer, who, despite his weakened condition, fights back. Despite Ayer's courage, his efforts seem to be in vain, for both in space and on his ship, Donovan appears to be on the winning hand.
And now the conclusion:
"We've lost life support on decks five through seven!" shouted the tactical officer on the Bridge of the battered USS Sophocles. Or what was left of it. It seemed to Captain Kellin that his Bridge was in shambles, and he was right. A couple of support beams had given in and had crashed to the ground, almost crushing the Captain himself under them. Fires were raging at the back of the Bridge and with the automatic fire suppression system off line -- one of the many systems on this ship shot to pieces -- the crew had to extinguish the fires manually.
The Bridge was practically filled with smoke. There seemed no end to it either, for hot gas poured out of a couple of breached conduits continuously. Kellin waved some of the gas away with his hand in an almost futile gesture that told the crew he was not giving up. "Evacuate those decks," he ordered. "Helm, continue evasive manoeuvres. Stand by on warp drive -- we'll leave the second we have Ayer on board." His hand flew to his communicator on his chest. "Kellin to Zjavick; Commander, we are running out of time here. We need at least one transporter operational. Now."
In transporter room one, Zjavick was aligning the transporter buffers in a hurry, while Sandra and Zaag struggled to replace one of the burnt-out molecular imaging scanners. "All of the transporters are knocked out, Captain," Zjavick said through the comm system. "A power surge overloaded the entire system. Repairing all of them is out of the question, but," he paused as he activated an engineering tool which emitted a soft glow, "we're trying to isolate a single transporter unit. We *should* be able to get it on line in a couple of minutes."
Those on the Bridge who were close enough to see the Captain's expression witnessed him frown. He looked displeased, to say the least. "We don't have time, Commander." He steadied himself against a fallen support beam as the ship lunged unexpectedly to starboard, courtesy of the ship's helmsman. Engineering had reported that the power feed to the inertial dampers was hampering at times. On a ship filled with damage, a disrupted power flow was way on the bottom of the repair list, right down there with such unimportant systems as holodecks, replicators and transporters.
The transporters, although not usually required in a combat situation, were needed now to beam Ayer and the samples off the Iapetus, so Zjavick had endeavoured to fix them himself, together with Sandra and Zaag. Now, however, he wished he had more personnel at his disposal. "I am aware of that, Captain," he said testily and yanked a cable out of a damaged condensator. He sighed deeply. "Have you blasted a hole in their shields yet?"
"Well... No, not yet," Kellin was forced to admit. He took a deep breath, but ended up coughing as his lungs protested against the intake of this much smoke.
In the transporter room, another charge capacitor overloaded and Zjavick cursed softly to himself. "You just worry about creating that hole, sir. We'll have a transporter ready when you do." He activated another engineering tool and aimed it at the overloaded circuits. "Somehow," he muttered through his clenched teeth.
Kellin decided that it wasn't good enough. He gestured to the Operations officer and ordered, "Get me a channel to the Romulans."
On the badly damaged viewscreen, the even more badly damaged bridge of the Romulan warbird became visible. If possible, its bridge was in an even worse condition than the Sophocles'. Vraal was clinging to his console for dear life as his ship shook violently. The sight of dead Romulans all over the bridge sickened Kellin, and he fought back the first instinct to gag at the sight of a heavily burnt Romulan who laid dead besides the console Vraal was at. Flames continued to eat their way through the dead officer's clothing and skin.
"Whatever you want, Captain, I suggest you make it brief." Vraal was in no mood for lengthy conversations anymore. He had lost all taste for rhetoric, for glory or even for the samples. This was a fight for survival, nothing more.
Kellin spoke with great difficulty, "Are any of your transporters still operational?"
Vraal looked at him as if he had lost his mind. "My ship is wrecked, Captain," he said forcefully. "My shields are gone, my crew is dead. I have done my duty here, Captain Kellin. If this ship still had any engines left, we would not have this conversation, for I would have fled the battle."
Kellin twitched his jaw. The warbird was as good as destroyed and wasn't going to be of any more assistance, and the Sophocles, in her battered state, could not handle the Iapetus on her own. He realised grimly that there never had been much chance of winning the battle in the first place and they had been fools to defy the odds like this. The decision to stay and fight in the hope that Ayer could still be rescued had been the wrong one to make. Kellin's course of action had been clear from the beginning, and it was even more clear now.
"Commander Vraal," he began, "if you have any means of propulsion left, try to get yourself a safe distance away from the Iapetus. We'll give you cover fire, and then we'll try to tractor you out of the area."
"Your abandoning Ayer! You're abandoning the crystals!"
"Yes. I am. Helm, plot an escape trajectory. Tactical, begin laying down cover fire." Kellin eyed Vraal. "This has gone far enough. I won't continue to risk my ship and crew for one man and some samples -- I know an impossible battle when I see one."
"You fool!" Vraal yelled and slammed his fist down on his console. He immediately grimaced in pain; apparently his hand had been severely burned by plasma fires earlier in the battle. "You can't leave now. You know what that Captain will do with the crystals if he is allowed to take them home with him? Do you think he'll share the technology with the rest of the Federation? No! If he shares the crystals, he'll do so with his own, unpredictable secret organisation." Kellin eyed him with disbelief, but Vraal foresaw his question. "There's no time to explain, just take my word for it; the Iapetus is part of an organisation that operates above the law of the Federa-"
A powerful phaser blast impacted the warbird, and Vraal had to practically embrace the console in order to remain upright. Green blood dripped out a wound on his forehead and plasma burns covered the side of his face. It was no pleasant sight. "There goes my life support," Vraal said sullenly.
"All right." Kellin was not prepared to sit here and do nothing while Donovan was tearing the warbird apart piece by piece. "If you have a plan, let's hear it. Otherwise, we'll stand by our tractor beams to pull your ship out of there."
Vraal smiled every so slightly and broke out in a fit of coughing. "You simply stand by and don't get killed. I'll provide the hole in their shielding, you do the rest, understand?" He manipulated a few controls on his barely working console.
"Captain," came the surprised voice of the Operations officer, and Kellin looked at her. "He's activating his emergency thrusters. He's setting a collision course with the Iapetus!"
Kellin's head jerked back to the viewscreen where Vraal was smiling despite his precarious situation. "It's in all our best interests that the crystals do not fall in the hands of people as unpredictable as Donovan," said Vraal through the ever increasing static. "I'd much rather see the samples in the possession of an enemy I know I can trust."
With that, the channel closed and the screen once again showed the darkness of space as a background to the starship Iapetus as it launched another phaser blast at the warbird. The large, green, vessel flew on, heavily damaged but straight on course. It exploded in a bright ball of erupting fire the moment it hit the Iapetus' shields.
****
It all happened so fast. And yet...
Ayer felt the struggle with Donovan would never end. Locked in eternal combat, the two Captains fought in the transporter room for possession of the crystals, and neither of them was going to give up if they could help it. The fight would go on until either one of them would drop dead, either from their wounds or from exhaustion.
Captain Ayer thought he would do both soon. He was on the losing side and had to endure a lot more punches than he could hand out. His opponent was a capable warrior, and was not going to stop until he had paid Ayer back for what he had done to the Iapetus -- whatever it was that he had done. Memories, feelings, they all became a blur for Ayer. Only one thing remained focused in his mind as the struggle continued: the samples must not fall into the hands of Donovan. Sure, the Iapetus had already been equipped with several of these samples, Donovan had told him so. But, so Ayer knew in some portion or other of his subconscious, the majority of the crystals was what counted here. The crystals currently used to power the Iapetus' phaser banks and engines were of little consequence, for the continuous pounding they had to endure at the hands of whatever ships were attacking her had to cause imperfections in the crystals, making them unsuitable objects for study. The rest of the crystals what was Donovan was now after, and Ayer knew he had to make sure that Donovan would fail.
That wasn't easy, however, when your face was so covered with bruises you could barely speak and pain was rushing through your entire body. Before he knew it, Ayer was on the floor again. But one punch in the face of the Iapetus' Captain allowed him a brief moment of reprieve. He used it to quickly get up and take the phaser that was still on the transporter console.
Swiftly, he backed up out of reach of Donovan. He was stepping backward -- staggering was more like it -- onto the transporter pads, where the container with the crystals was still located. All the while, he kept his type one phaser trained at Donovan, who slowly got up and found himself on the losing side for a change. "It's set to kill," Ayer said with difficulty and reached for the container with the samples.
That was when the Romulan warbird impacted the Iapetus' shields.
The ship shook violently and Ayer's already weak legs could no longer hold his weight. He lost his balance and went down. As he did, he saw Donovan steady himself against the transporter control console. Clearly the Captain of the Iapetus managed to regain his balance, despite the severe shaking that plagued his vessel.
"Bridge to Captain!" Enwabi cried through the comm channel. "We've lost ventral shielding! Heavy damage to secondary-" But Donovan cut her off by ending the channel before she was finished. He glared in the direction of his fallen adversary. This was a chance for both of them. A chance for Ayer to shoot Donovan and escape with the samples. A chance for Donovan to knock out Ayer now that he was down. It all came down to who was the quickest.
But Ayer was still holding the phaser tightly in his hand; surely he seemed to have the advantage. He was, however, a broken man. The brutal torture had broken several bones, and the following struggle with Donovan had left him aching with pain all over his body. Now that he was flat on his back, he felt he no longer had the strength to get up anymore. He barely had any strength left to raise his arm and aim the phaser at Donovan, but it was his only defence against the madman, so he willed his arm up.
Donovan, a trained operative of his organisation, was still on his feet. Although he had received some punches from Ayer, he was in a far better shape than his nemesis who was laying in a state of near-unconsciousness on the transporter platform. He, however, had no weapon, and if he tried to get near Ayer and the samples, he would be shot. It was the ultimate stale-mate.
But one look at the transporter console made Donovan smile. His smile widened and turned into a grin, and soon a thundering laugh filled the transporter room. It was the laugh of a madman, Ayer decided, the laugh of someone who had lost his mind in an obsession to get his hands on the crystals. Or, he thought, perhaps Donovan had always been crazy. Yes, he decided. That must be it.
Still, the loud laughing annoyed Ayer, and he pondered shooting Donovan here and now, just to stop the incessant laughter. But he realised that the moment he fired that phaser at an unarmed person for any reason other than self defence, he would become exactly like Donovan. It was a line he was not prepared to cross.
"What's so funny?" Ayer demanded, but his voice barely had any strength left in it. It sounded like a hoarse whisper.
"Don't you see?" Donovan replied, still laughing. "I've won."
"What are you talking about?"
Donovan didn't answer the question. Instead, he opened the channel to the Bridge again. "Donovan to Bridge. How fares the battle, Lieutenant?"
"The warbird just crashed into our shields, sir," reported Enwabi, her voice a lot more calm than before. "Our ventral shield emitters are smashed, and the Sophocles keeps firing at that exposed section of our hull." As if to prove her point, the ship lurched violently around them.
Donovan did not seem concerned. "What is the status of their transporters?"
"Down, sir. They seem to be trying to isolate a single transporter to get that one working again, though."
"Don't let them succeed, Lieutenant," ordered Donovan. "And hang in there for a few more seconds. This will be over soon."
"I'll say. The Sophocles is practically breaking apart. It won't take long before they're..." An unexpected sob forced Enwabi to leave her sentence unfinished. Tears were in her voice as she spoke up next. "Their shields are gone," she said and swallowed. "Their weapons will go soon, too."
"Pull yourself together, Enwabi," Donovan snapped. "If they die, it's their own bloody fault." And with that, he closed the channel. "It's so hard to get competent staff these days," he said to Ayer. His tone was almost a friendly one.
"How terrible for you," Ayer wanted to retort, but he could only mouth them. It seemed as if his ability to speak had left him, too. He blinked to keep his focus on Donovan, who was still standing at the transporter console. The image was getting fuzzier, but Ayer told himself he had to hold on for just a little longer. He actually began hoping that Donovan would make his move soon, so he could shoot him and get it over with.
Donovan grinned. "Look at you. You're just laying there with a phaser pointed at me. Pathetic. But," he said as he leaned on the transporter console, "I do need to get past you to get the samples. You have a phaser with which you will shoot me if I get too close. Oh dear, what to do, what to do." He seemed to make a show out of thinking about his next course of action. Ayer had the strange, eerie feeling that Donovan had already made his decision. "I suppose I could contact security and have them do the dirty work for me," he continued, "but that would be cheating, wouldn't it?"
Ayer looked at him with suspicion, but didn't answer. He wasn't in the mood for games.
"Oh, yes," Donovan said. "We came here to fight one another. Just the two of us. The final battle, that sort of thing. What kind of an example would I set to my crew if I brought security officers to help me out? Having security remove a crippled man with a phaser? Oh please." He looked at the other Captain with a condescending glance, as if Ayer had been the one to suggest calling the security people in the first place. "No, Captain, I will have to fight this battle on my own." He paused as his eyes narrowed and a grin formed on his face once again. "Fortunately, I have already won."
Captain Ayer shook his head slightly, and even that hurt. "You've lost me," he managed to whisper.
Donovan let out another thunderous laugh, and this time Ayer was really close to pressing the trigger of his phaser. "No, Captain," he said out loud as he continued laughing. Suddenly he stopped and looked Ayer straight in the eyes. "But I'm about to."
****
"Damnit, Zjavick, where is that transporter?"
The ship trembled around them as Zjavick and Sandra replaced several burnt out isolinear chips. On the transporter platform, Zaag was busy extinguishing a fire. Smoke was pouring out of a nearby conduit and debris had found its way from the ceiling to the clearing between the platform and the transporter console. Zaag wondered why the bulkheads hadn't come down yet. If this pounding continued for just a little while longer, though, he would be surprised if there was anything left of this entire deck at all.
"We keep receiving damage down here," Zjavick shouted back into the communicator, trying to make his voice heard over the falling rubble and the sound of the fire extinguisher. Just then, the ship shook beneath their feet again and the transporter console short-circuited. Sparks flew in every direction as the console went up in flames. Sandra buried her head in her arms to prevent the sparks from burning her, and Zjavick cursed through his clenched teeth.
To make matters worse, the transporter unit they had been working on made a faint sizzling noise that grew louder by the second, until somewhere on its inside a few circuits burnt through, followed by a dull sound that very much resembled a champagne cork popping. Dark smoke slowly rose from the bottom disk of the transporter unit.
Zjavick recognised it for what it was and banged his fist on the wall. "That's it," he said, twitching the muscles of his jaw in frustration. "Transporters are down. There's no way we'll be able to fix it; all the circuitry has been reduced to ashes by now."
But Sandra didn't want to give up. "There must be something we can do. Re-route power from the phasers?" She gestured wildly with her hands. "Link several transporters together to initiate a cascade beam-out? You know, use every transporter we have to energise simultaneously? Even if they're all at ten percent of their normal capacity, we'll still be able to beam him up!"
Zjavick shook his head and put his hands on Sandra's shoulders. "Listen to me, Ensign. There *are* no transporters anymore. At least none that are even remotely functional. We did our best."
"Are there any transporter systems still on line at all?" asked Zaag. He didn't want to give up either.
Zjavick shrugged. "Nothing that will do us any good." At Zaag's questioning look, he explained, "The pattern buffers are still there, as are the secondary energising coils, but the targeting scanners are fried." He shook his head. "No one will be transported from this ship for a while. The only way this transporter will activate is if someone sends us a pattern, and even then it's highly unli-" He stopped mid-sentence, for something was happening in the transporter room that he hadn't expected.
The transporter energised.
****
Donovan relished the look in Ayer's eyes as he energised the transporter. Only now did Ayer realise that he had lost and Donovan had won. It was so simple, Donovan thought. The Iapetus' shields were down, as were those of the Sophocles. Ayer had already set the transporter to beam him aboard the other ship even before Donovan had entered the room -- all Donovan had to do was activate the transporter, which was easily done. It had been his only option, really. Sooner or later, Ayer would pass out, but before he did so, he would have shot Donovan. The latter, not wanting to die just yet, also couldn't go towards Ayer to take the samples off of the transporter platform, for Ayer would shoot him then as well.
Time had been running out for him, and Donovan had wondered what to do up until the moment he had glanced at the transporter control console. It displayed the exact co-ordinates to which the transporter was set; all Donovan had to do was activate the device and Ayer would be beamed away.
And the best part was, for Donovan, that the samples would remain on the transporter platform. Ayer hadn't been able to grab them before he had fallen down, and he couldn't reach them when he was on the ground either. All the broken man had been able to do was pointing the phaser at Donovan and watch helplessly as the other Captain declared his victory. Victory, indeed, was Donovan's: Ayer had been too late in realising what the Captain of the Iapetus was doing with the transporter controls. Too late did he realise that he was being beamed away. If only he had more time, he would have shot Donovan, but because Donovan merely activated the transporter without changing the co-ordinates, Ayer didn't have enough time to stop him.
As he was dematerialising, Ayer knew that he had lost. The condescending glare that Donovan gave him the moment he activated the transporter would haunt him for the rest of his life, he knew. But that was nothing compared to the agony he was feeling about losing the samples, and, most importantly, his friends. Watters had perished at the hands of Donovan while saving the lives of his crewmates... he could still see the look in Watters' eyes when he died. It was the same look of shock he had seen also on the dead face of his Vulcan First Officer, who had died when the Aquinas was attacked -- also by Donovan. Zjavick, Zaag, Sandra... They had died, too, when Donovan destroyed the shuttle they were on. So much death. So many good people had found their deaths, all to make sure that Ayer would be able to retrieve the crystals.
But he had failed. His thoughts went out to all those who had died... Sandra. He would never see Sandra again, never see her eyes sparkle in wonder after a discovery she had made, never hear her call him 'Uncle Pete' again. Her career in Starfleet would not flourish, nor would he ever see her married, have children, raise a family. Cut down before she could even become all that she could be, Sandra would never be able to reach her full potential. All because of Donovan... All because of Ayer. He felt he had to cry, but he was unable to as his molecules separated from each other and were sent through space as nothing but energy.
****
His molecules reassembled as Ayer rematerialised in the damaged transporter room of the Sophocles. He found himself being stared at by three people he knew very well, and he stared back at them in astonishment. They were gaping at him, as if not expecting to see him, and he was definitely not expecting to see them. Weren't they dead?
"Uncle Pete!" Sandra cried out and ran onto the platform to hug him tightly. The pain he felt was surpassed by the happiness he was feeling at the sight of Sandra still alive.
"I thought you were dead," he managed to say with difficulty. "I saw the shuttle explode."
Zjavick gave his Captain half a smile. "We escaped." There was a sombre look in his eyes, and Ayer instantly knew why. "The samples?" he asked softly.
Ayer closed his eyes and Zjavick understood what had happened. The crystals hadn't been recovered. He tapped his communicator as he kept his eyes locked on his Captain. "Medical personnel to transporter room one," he called, and then opened a channel to the Bridge. "Zjavick to Kellin. Sir, we have Ayer."
"Well done, Commander," came the voice of Kellin. "Now we can get out of here. Helm, enga-"
"We've lost the samples."
The silence on the other end of the channel made it clear how Kellin felt about that. The news sank in for a few awkward moments, as the loss became clear to Kellin and his crew. While they had managed to rescue Ayer, the samples were gone.
****
Captain Donovan arrived triumphantly on his Bridge and sat down in his chair as he asked for a report on the battle. Enwabi told him that the Sophocles still had warp power and one phaser bank left, plus a single torpedo launcher. Everything else on the ship was practically destroyed. The Iapetus, however, was in quite a bad way, too, although her damage was not quite so severe. Their ventral shields had collapsed, and enemy fire had caused massive damage to the ventral section of the hull. The improved systems were holding, Enwabi informed Donovan, but the crystals had taken quite a beating. Some of them had even displayed cracks in their structures. The high-intensity radiation that was emitted by the crystals and was converted into energy had diminished in power. Still, the crystals were a formidable power source, and, if more were found, they could eventually be the key to Federation domination of the galaxy.
"Did you get anything out of the prisoner, sir?" asked Enwabi.
Donovan shook his head. "No. We got all the information we could get out of him." He paused and added softly, "I let him go."
Enwabi looked at her Captain in surprise. Ever so often, he could still surprise her. She had always thought of him as a strong, fearless leader who would never show mercy to anyone. Someone who was willing to destroy a fellow Federation ship in the name of secrecy didn't strike her as a man capable of mercy. "You let him go, sir?"
"What's it to you?"
She hesitated. "You did tell me to leave no witnesses, sir."
"We have what we came for," Donovan said to her. "We've stayed in one place for too long already." He turned to tactical. "Hold your fire. Let them limp home." He sighed and shifted in his chair. "I'm tired of battle. We shouldn't waste any more time on it." He nodded his head, as if he had just decided something. "Helm, mask our warp signature and head for home." He looked carefully at the container of samples he was holding. The crystals were simply too important a cargo for them to stay here and risk detection by any other ship. "Engage."
Enwabi cast one last glance at the Sophocles again -- the ship she nearly destroyed. Why Captain Donovan had just ordered them to leave the Sophocles alone was a mystery to her, but whatever the reason, she was sure he hadn't given that order out of compassion or guilt. Perhaps he had wanted to give the crew of the Sophocles a message. Perhaps he had allowed them to live to remind them of... what? Of Donovan's greatness? She wouldn't put it past him. Of the fact that the crystals were now where they belonged? Maybe. Or had Donovan possibly left the Sophocles' crew alone because Ayer was now on that ship?
It was a very real possibility. Donovan had seemed obsessed with torturing Ayer, with getting back at him for what his crew had done to Hall. And now Ayer was on the other ship, wounded, broken, battered. His own ship was gone, half of his crew dead. The ship he was on now had almost undergone the same fate as that which befell the Aquinas. Utterly defeated, Ayer had escaped -- had been *allowed* to escape -- with only his life. His ship, the crystals, all was taken from him. *That* was why Donovan had let him live, Enwabi realised. What greater pain could there be than the knowledge that you were alive only because your enemy allowed you to live, while everything you cared about had come crumbling down? She couldn't help but feel sorry for Ayer: even though he and Donovan were no longer in the same room, or soon even in the same sector, the torture continued. It would always continue.
