Taldrenites > Starfleet Command Fan Fiction

Endeavour #2

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d4v1ks:
Lucky me, cause i can understand it.  ;D

Captain Sharp:
Yar-har! From Babelfish:

"I'm really intrigued, who is supposedly God?, how is it that they cannot detect your ship?
 What it will do Sharp to emerge victorious from this situation?.
 Waiting patiently for the continuation "

Wait no longer.


Chapter Six


Captain Sharp threw his robe down on the same spot of railing he’d discarded his field jacket the day before. As he stomped down to his command chair to sit, Yeoman Leison swept past to retrieve it and take up those from Lieutenant Jackson and Commander Andreavich. Sharp glowered at the main viewer in silent, mind awhirl in thought. His face was a blank slate, brimming with anger.

Commander Jeremy relieved the officer at helm and silently took over. He glanced back to his CO without comment, patiently waiting.

The captain continued to glare straight ahead, unmoving. The silence on the bridge was thick and tense. Everyone knew they had just lost a man. They were no closer to locating the alien vessel. Sharp’s right hand clenched his armrest, pressing in on the thick padding.

Suddenly his eyes dropped to the tactical display mounted on the deck between the helm and navigation station.

“Break orbit, Number One. We’re leaving.”

Jeremy’s face went slack.

“Leaving?”

“Course 126 mark 27. Ahead full impulse.”

Jeremy turned back to his station with some lethargy. He couldn’t believe his CO was throwing in the towel. Sharp wasn’t the type to give in. He had no idea yet what had happened on the planet, but it had obviously triggered something in the captain Jeremy had never seen before. He laid in the commands.

“126 mark 27, ahead full, aye.”

The course was an oblique one for breaking orbit. It would take them very close to the planet’s moon. Jeremy had to wonder why Sharp had chosen such a route.

The green and brown world fell away from them on the fore viewer as Endeavour turned for the gray little moon. Jeremy throttled ahead to full impulse and the planetoid shot past them on the left hand side.

“Come left two degrees.” Sharp said then. “And steady as she goes.”

The captain was obscuring their exit vector. What was he planning?

“Gunnery officer, load a MK IV decoy into the forward torpedo bay.”

“Aye, sir.” Replied Mister Sehr.

It was suddenly making sense to the exec. Jeremy’s hands poised themselves over his controls. “Helm ready, sir.”

A look of dark satisfaction came over the captain. He still hadn’t taken his eyes of the main viewer.

“Decoy drone ready, sir!” Reported the gunner.

“Launch!”

Endeavour rattled side to side with the expulsion of the small body from her missile tubes. The little drone rocketed ahead on thrusters, striving to keep ahead of the starship. Soon, it would begin broadcasting its base ship’s electronic and subspace signatures. It would even file a false report to Starfleet in a half-hour.

“Begin hand-off.” Ordered Sharp.

“All stop, aye!” Said the helmsman.

“Shutting down main engines!” Came from the tech at engineering.

“Active sensors to standby!” Andreavich.

“All primary systems switching to standby!”

“Communications now set to receive only. Disengaging transponder beacon.”

“Stealth Protocols initiated,” the XO confirmed once everything had been checked.

“Decoy drone accelerating to warp one.” Added Mister Sehr. There was a little blue flash ahead of the ship as the unmanned module broke the subspace barrier and dashed away.

“Set combat watch rotation,” the captain told them as he turned the conn to face each of his officers about him. “Maintain Yellow Alert. Science officer, keep you eyes on those passive detectors. The planet’s moon will be out of our way in two hours. Hopefully, our god will think were on our way to Starbase at warp two. With us gone, he’ll be wanting to make his pickup on the surface.”

The aft hatch hissed apart to allow Chief Engineer Bornet onto the deck. He looked about the slightly darkened bridge and took note of the self-satisfied auras of the officers. The captain had a plan, and he hadn’t informed his engineer again. Jave thumped down to stand beside his friend’s chair.

“What are we doing?”

“Gambling on narcissism, engineer.”
***




At the sixth hour of their long wait, Captain Sharp was roused from reverie by the form of Lieutenant Imura Kami as she stepped up to the command chair. The captain could tell she was sorrowful over the death of their comrade, MacFarlane.

“Captain…I’m sorry.”

“There was nothing you could do, Imura.” He consoled her. “Our enemy has a few tricks up his sleeve…and he’s craven enough to use them.”

“Still, Captain… I just wish I could have got him before…”

“Man your station, Lieutenant. We’ll get the person responsible.”

“Aye, sir.”

Sharp watched the assistant engineer take her place at the main systems panel. Her word had made him antsy again, ready to smash that God’s face in with his bare hands. He hopped out of the conn and made for science.

“Andreavich,” he said quietly to his science officer. “You recognized their god’s name down there. How?”

Ursula only half-turned to face her commanding officer. She was hesitant to take her eyes from her monitors.

“The name Ba’al appears in ancient Earth mythohistorical records. Judea, Egypt, later  Israel. He’s even mentioned in the Christian Bible, sir.”

“Some sort of parallelism?”

“Maybe, sir…Or just a simple name that two separate species happened to use for their pantheon. A xenotheologan might---“

Ursula broke off and focused totally on her energy-recording monitors. Sharp could feel his sails suddenly billowing about him.

“Contact, science officer?”

“Affirmative, Captain. Bearing 176 mark 359. Approaching the planet surface from low orbit. Low velocity. Making contact with the upper ionosphere.”

“On screen!”

The main viewer switched to show a small, golden vessel slipping down toward the clouds below it. The ship was covered in painted-on hieroglyphics and obviously chosen for its aesthetics. It was a converted luxury liner.

Sharp charged back to his command chair.

“Maintain Stealth Protocol! Helm, bring us about! Thrusters ahead!”

Endeavour turned about on her axis, slowly at first, then with growing momentum as her great mass was overcome. When her bow was aimed at the planet before her, her secondary boosters urged her ahead. She made her way back slowly, quietly, slipping in on unawares prey.




The God Ba’al tapped a final string of codes into the computer before him as the liner rattled about him and the rest of the crew. Just one more appearance before his adoring masses, and then they would take their act to another continent. The southern veins were showing signs of running dry. The flotsam he’d complained about to that fool B’tall had been more a sign of the mine playing out than any ineptitude of his miners.

The thought made the charlatan chuckle benignly. This had been the perfect act. He wondered how many other worlds such a ploy could be used on. Despite the bumbling interruption of the Starfleet ship and her captain, everything was on schedule.

Even the mighty Captain Sharp hadn’t been able to foil the operation. One might have expected better of a vaunted captain of Starfleet. Perhaps they weren’t what they were reputed to be.
 
“Three minutes to touchdown.” The pilot called out over the intercom. The ship shuddered more steadily. Ba’al hated landings. But the ship’s transporter, tuned as it was for silent, low level activity, couldn’t handle ore transport. They had to rely on the slave workers below to load the holds.

The con artist made a few more adjustments to the controls before donning the manipulator headband. When he slipped the device down onto his temples, his holographic doppelganger shimmered into being beside him.

A complex collection of photonic emissions, forcefields and tractor fields, the hologram was the perfect actor. The computer edited out any reaction or habit of the controller’s that didn’t fit the role. The projection couldn’t be intimidated. It wouldn’t show stress or fright. It hadn’t shown Captain Sharp just how hard its owner had been working to come up with every response it had uttered in their argument. It had made the battle or wills look flawless.

The noises of atmospheric entry were getting much higher pitched, Ba’al thought absently as he watched his double move about majestically in his gaudy clothing. On a whim, he turned up the glow of the projection’s flesh. Today, in his last appearance, he would absolutely glow in broad daylight!

Something pressed into the side of Ba’al’s head, and his projection glanced to the side at something within its view. The con artist gaped as he recognized the cold steel feeling of a phaser being poked into his skin.

He realized only too late, that some of the noises of ‘atmospheric entry’ he’d been hearing might have in fact been a Starfleet transporter.

Captain Sharp’s smile was a black thing looking back at the God.

“Still feeling All-Powerful?”

The God gave a crooked grin, which the projection had a hard time recreating. Both of them shrugged.

“Not so much.”

Captain Sharp glanced about the small compartment. Exposed wiring and glowing conduits snaked about in all directions from ad hoc gear. The thing he’d faced down on the planet stood, seemingly without direction, atop piles of cable.

“I wondered how all this worked.”

“Advanced holographic projection. We bought it from the Klingons. Seems like they couldn’t get it up and running—“

“And how about your stealth device?”

“Your guess is as good as mine…” The criminal said. “The captain didn’t even mention he had it till he turned it on.”

“You’re not in charge here?”

The God-man shrugged.

“No…I’m just the face.”

Sharp saw the projection tense just a bit. He doubted the thing needed to do such a thing in order to pounce. Likely it was just an impulse from the brain controlling it. The captain squeezed the trigger, dropping the hologram’s owner to the deck with a burst of stun energy. The projection fell as well, then faded into a mere shadow.

Stepping over the slumbering thief at his feet, the captain regarded the security men behind him, then turned to fire a final shot into the control mechanisms. The remainder of the hologram blinked out as sparks rained forth from the destroyed machinery.

Lieutenant Alfred Jackson was waiting for the captain as he emerged from the projection compartment. His grunts were manhandling several unconscious crew down the hall toward a selected security zone. The fight had been anticlimactic and short. These were petty criminals, not soldiers. And they’d been caught unawares.

Still, this wasn’t the satisfying ending he’d hoped for.




Phaerus B’tall watched the descent of Ba’al’s Sky Chariot with growing sorrow. The stranger, Captain Sharp, had not been able to present his people with a way out of the shackles clamped on them by their God.
The stranger had put forth a good argument, one that would have convinced the ruler. But he had come ill-prepared for Ba’al’s terrible power. To make a man vanish and then fall from high above the city… Terrifying!

And now Ba’al’s majestic vessel was lowering itself from the heavens, just as it had a year ago. Dust was already beginning to swirl beneath the giant metal craft as it slowed its descent. Today, the God had chosen a landing place far from the road. Perhaps he wanted to add just that much more labor to the hardship of the ore handler, to make them push the voxen carts across the uneven land off the road.

Given that B’tall had entertained blasphemy, such a punishment was a light one. The old man stepped outside the city gates, followed by his retinue of guards and attendants.

Dust whipped about in the winds created by the great machine, blasting grass and robe alike. B’tall covered his eyes and squinted. He wondered why the great horns had not yet called, as Ba’al was fond of doing before the huge feet of his Chariot touched the packed dirt.

The vessel landed without fanfare. The long ramp appeared and extended to the ground. The white plumes of vapor B’tall was accustomed to seeing did not come today. Something was different…

Figures emerged from within the tall, golden craft. There was far more light in the inner corridor than ever before, and the Phaerus could see much more of the interior. Three figures were coming forth. One of them was being held aloft by the two largest. The nearly had to drag him, as though he suffered from stupor.

Phaerus B’tall’s heart caught in his chest, threatening to seize on him when he began to recognize faces among the figures.

At the lead, holding the stumbling man before him, was Captain Sharp. He wore no robe, having replaced it with a golden shirt with an arrowhead emblazoned upon the breast. The giant that had accompanied him before stood beside him, his tunic a fine crimson.

B’tall wanted to weep when he recognized the third face. For between the two strangers stooped their God. He did not look so powerful now, being held upright by two larger men. His skin no longer glowed. His eyes were bloodshot. Drool dripped from swollen lips.

Sharp and his man escorted the God to the bottom of the ramp. There, he let the Being drop to his knees, head lolling aside. He was barely conscious. The captain looked supremely triumphant over the God of Tomen.

“Phaerus…here’s your God.”

The captain gave the semi-conscious man a nudge with one boot. He fell over, groaning miserably. B’tall gaped in wonder, feeling an onrush of joy. Were they saved?

The ruler knelt before his people’s savior.

“You have defeated the great god, Captain Sharp! We are your servants!”

Sharp wasted no time in grabbing the kneeling man by the arm and yanking him to his feet.

“No more of that! You bow to no greater being! Look at him! He was just a man. No better than you or anyone else.”

B’tall remained standing, though his knees threatened to buckle anyway. The Captain smiled kindly then, waving into the mighty vessel he had conquered.

“This is nothing more than a machine, designed by people just like you. They know more than you, but one day, you will have similar knowledge. This will not be beyond you.”

The Phaerus still gaped, knowing he looked like an idiot. But the truth of the captain’s words were beginning to sink in. At the very least, he understood he and his people had been played for fools. He looked down at the alien man lying behind Sharp. B’tall’s simple expression turned to one of rage.

“He’ll get what’s coming to him, Phaerus,” Sharp said, understanding. “And we’ll deal with his vessel. You’ll never have to see it, or his like, again.”

The old man looked up into the stranger’s eyes.

“We thank you, Captain Sharp.”





Epilogue


Captain’s Log, Supplemental

The criminals behind the activities on Planet Three, System L-372A have been apprehended. My suspects remain under guard in the brig till transport to Starbase can be arranged for trial. Doctor Ken was forced to treat them for minor injuries sustained during their temporary holding on the planet surface. The populace was less than sympathetic to them once the details of their Gods had been fully revealed to them and things, unfortunately, got out of hand.

Endeavour remains in orbit for a short duration as my engineers and geologists instruct the miners of Tomen how to close up their purgium mines safely. We have left them a stockpile of anti-rad inoculations and instructions on ensuring the safety of their drinking water. We will also leave a Class Four probe in orbit to monitor radiation levels in the area in case we should be needed in the future.

The damage to the planet’s sociology and culture should be confined mostly to the city of Tomen, but trade and migration may see the contamination spread further along the continent. Luckily, my science officer has been able to conclude that nearly every city possesses a very different theological belief system, and tales from Tomen are likely to be taken with a grain of salt.

The only regret I am left with about this mission is the loss of Crewman MacFarlane. I am formally noting him for commendation.




“So, no sign of Mister Sehr’s invisibility device?”

Alfred Jackson took the time to send to hard jabs into his captain’s defense before answering over his mouth guard.

“Nope. We stripped that ship before we set her adrift. If it had an invisible shield, then the whole thing must’ve been invisible.”

Sharp answered the jabs with a roundhouse right, aimed for his security chief’s ear. Jackson bent and tucked his head into the curve of his arms, blocking the shot. He threw a series of fast punches into the captain’s torso, wearing him out a bit. Both men were sweating freely now. They were evenly matched for strength and speed. Alfred had some years on the captain, though. The older officer didn’t have the stamina of his younger security chief.

“I got MacFarlane killed.” Sharp said suddenly, aiming straight in with a left that he followed with an uppercut. Jackson took that last on the jaw and stumbled back. The captain let him recover.

“Mac got himself killed. No one ordered him to open fire.” The lieutenant responded.

“He was defending his captain. I shouldn’t have put him in that position.”

Alfred lowered his guard, secure in his distance from the captain. Sharp remained where he was, eyeing the larger man over his red gloves. They were absolutely alone in the gym’s boxing corner. Otherwise, Sharp wouldn’t be so candid.

“You know who’s fault it really is, Captain? It’s those bastards down in our brig! They killed Mac. They beamed him a thousand feet into the air and let him fall. That smug son of a bitch in the robes killed our man. Not his captain.”

Sharp tried to smile his thanks around the bit in his mouth. He conveyed his appreciation with a series of fast, weltering shots to the big man’s abdomen and chest and head as Alfred tried to cover everything. Alfred gave him a two fisted shove to gain space and circled.

“For the rest of us, life goes on. And you know what, because of what we did down there, life will still be going on for those people too.”

Jon halted and leaned against the ropes behind him. He was tired from all the stressful waiting and aggravation of the last couple of days. He was upset at the unnecessary loss of a man. He’d come here to unwind, unload.

“You know what I really need, Mister Jackson?” He said suddenly.

“What’s that, Captain”

“A drink.”

Jackson spit his bit into his boxing glove and grinned hugely.

“I know just the place, Captain!”


END

KBF-Frank:
 :notworthy: :notworthy: a very good story, believable from beginning to end, but it remains an unsolved mystery, why could not detect his ship?

Captain Sharp:
It did indeed have a cloaking device. In a way, I was making fun of the inconsistency between TOS Trek and ENT-era, having to do with cloaking devices. Sharp's crew, for all their tech savvy...just missed it. Aw well, what they don't know, won't hurt 'em. Perhaps the ship's captain zapped it with a phaser before they could capture it, lol.

--guv

Captain Sharp:
Anyone want more?

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