Fallen Heroes Part III Chapter V
Posted: Fri Jun 07, 2019 9:00 pm
As promised, and right on schedule, here's the latest chapter of the Fallen Heroes story. You know the drill: it will be released in four chapter segments each Friday (or Saturday at the latest).
New to this story? Start with Fallen Heroes Part II Prologue somewhere in this forum and work you way up from there. Good luck
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Fallen Heroes Part III Chapter Va
USS Achilles, en route to Aragos – December 9, 2387 – Stardate 64935.1
This is an illusion. Captain Stephan Rinckes knows he is aboard the Achilles, travelling toward the first S’Prenn portal Starfleet gets to study, the result of his crew’s persistent search for clues in former Federation territory, yet he finds himself haunting the corridors of Station A-12. Distorted red alert panels with frightening tendrils light the endless hallway he runs through. His phaser rifle’s flashlight casts a feeble hue onto the path ahead.
The Achilles’ destination is too important to dismiss. However, as wisps of smoke transform into monstrous parodies of Altonoid soldiers, his recurring nightmare robs him of his tenuous grasp on reality and devours him whole. Submerged in delusion, he fires at rows of deformed enemies. Each phaser burst infuriates them, causing them to growl like the animals they are and lash out with elongated arms to scratch at him with claws that have sprung from their digits.
He wipes the maniacal grin from their faces with his rifle stock. “To hell with you! All of you!” Although he lets loose with phaser fire and melee attacks, it is hatred that kills his spectral foes, reduces them to mist as he fights past them. No matter how misshapen and imposing these spirits are, they succumb to his raw fury, and bit by bit, their numbers decline until he is the last man standing.
Having slain the apparitions, Rinckes passes through a doorway and enters an observation lounge he recognizes instantly. Upturned furniture, five Altonoid corpses, starless view in the windows, phaser marks on the bulkheads, and there, surrounded by broken starship models and shards of glass, lies the woman he loved, a gaping phaser wound in her chest.
Rinckes has been here so often: once in real life and over and over in his dreams. Each time he is grateful to be with her and heartbroken because she can never be saved. She looks at him, eyes glazed over. As always, he plays his part, never deviating from his personal tragedy’s screenplay.
He crouches and holds her in his arms. “Melanie, I’m here. I’ll get you to sickbay. You’re going to be all right.” There was no sickbay to return to; their ship had already perished at this point.
“No, Captain,” she whispers. She always whispers. In a foolish act of self-protection, to prevent himself from spending hours wrapped up in biting nostalgia, he had deleted every audio and video file of her from the Achilles’ databanks. A mistake. He resisted, fought to retain the memory, but he has forgotten the sound of her voice.
“Don’t give up,” he says, “I’ll get you back to the ship.”
“Take good care of the Sundance for me, will you?”
“Melanie, I…” The actual exchange took place seven and a half years ago, and his recollection of these events has gradually morphed into the content of his nightmares. He is supposed to say, “I will,” even though every fiber of his being compels him to profess his feelings for her. In each iteration of this dream, he has adhered to the lie, has stuck to his role. No more! He breaks character and begs her, “Please don’t go.” He cradles her and presses his forehead against hers. “Just this once. It’s all I have left of you. You don’t have to go. Please.”
Despite his pleading, the life drains from Melanie’s eyes until they’re reduced to an empty stare. Defeated, he caresses her blonde hair and gazes at her peaceful visage. As opposed to the numb killing spree he undertook to escape Station A-12, he is perfectly content to stay with her and cry beside her lifeless body.
To his astonishment, Melanie’s lips begin to tremble, and she struggles and succeeds to whisper a one-word warning: “Run!”
She vanishes in his arms, swept to the ghostly realm where she will be waiting for his next slumber. His nerve ends tingle as he becomes aware of two figures looming over him: Emily Blue and Ted Barton, wearing the environmental suits they died in, their faces ashen and somber behind transparent masks.
“How many have died because of you?” Emily asks, her voice distorted by her suit’s crackling comm system.
With a glove as cold as death, Ted grabs Rinckes by the throat and lifts him off the floor. “Your time is up, Captain. You will cause no further harm.”
“I- I’m sorry,” Rinckes croaks, but there is neither life nor mercy in Ted and Emily’s eyes.
Emily adds a bony glove to the chokehold. “You will be with us soon.”
Rinckes frees himself from their grasp, swings around, and starts running, out of the chamber and into the corridors of the USS Saratoga.
“Warp core breach imminent,” the ship’s computer announces as Rinckes flees through hallways crowded with civilians and officers, the latter of which in 2360s-style uniforms. He pushes these panicking men, women, and children aside and dashes forward as fast as the circumstances allow. Emily and Ted follow him wherever he goes, their magnetic boots clanging against the deck. Worse yet, gray-faced officers in tattered attire have joined them, officers he recognizes as Achilles’ fallen crewmembers. One by one, those lost under his current command emerge from rooms and corridors to form an army of the damned. They’re beginning to outnumber the period-correct characters in his dream, the ones who are evacuating the Saratoga as a solitary Borg cube rips into the old vessel at the Battle of Wolf 359.
The corridor he has fled into features windows lining its port side, which should display Admiral Hanson’s ill-fated fleet and the cube they’re engaging. Instead, it shows an absolute void—no stars whatsoever. Its alluring finality nearly smothers his desire to get away, but approaching footsteps and the dead calling his name prompt him to continue toward the escape pod lying ahead, his sole means of salvation. Already, icy fingertips are touching the nape of his neck.
A bone-rattling detonation shudders the corridor and floods it with orange light. Outside, the saucer section of the Sundance braves the starless void and careens by, larger than life, deck sections blowing apart as it loses entire chunks of hull. Cascading explosions produce a catastrophic rippling effect, resulting in one final explosion that shreds the saucer to pieces. Simultaneously, charred Sundance crewmembers start piling in from every side entrance.
“Where were you, Captain?” they ask.
Scared witless, Rinckes shoves them aside. The escape pod is so close.
“You abandoned us!” a woman shouts after him. She receives clamorous support from the droves of people who have amassed, hundreds of them.
“What kind of man are you?”
“Come back and face us!”
“You’ll be one of us soon.”
He hurries into the escape pod and taps its LCARS panel to shut the door. It does nothing.
The horde has traded their grim death masks for furious expressions as they continue their unstoppable advance led by Emily. Rinckes keeps pressing the door button to no avail, then starts prying at the escape pod hatch, but it does not budge in the slightest.
A few feet away, Tony Blue materializes between the captain and the macabre lynch mob. Tony is also wearing an EV suit, albeit without helmet, and gives Rinckes a plaintive look while reaching for his handphaser. His cheeks are tearstained and his forehead is sweaty. Biting his bottom lip, he detaches the phaser from his suit and aims it at Rinckes.
“So my first officer is going to shoot me?” Rinckes asks. The horde has neared Tony’s position. They’re ignoring him completely; they’re only interested in the captain’s blood. They will get to Rinckes and tear him limb from limb. “Then shoot me.” It would be merciful. “Shoot, dammit!”
Tony lowers his head and allows the phaser to slip from his grasp.
“Damn you! Damn you, coward!”
As soon as the phaser lands on the carpet, the crowd rushes over Tony like a river spilling over its embankments.
Straining and swearing, Rinckes attempts to pull the hatch closed. His efforts are in vain; hundreds of angry faces descend on him. Countless outstretched arms grab at him, snatch his clothing, his hair, his flesh. He is utterly helpless against this all-consuming rage. Unable to breathe or move because every inch of his body has become pure agony, he cannot even scream for help; he can only hold still and suffer…
…until he wakes to find his executioners have evaporated. He swivels his head slightly to stare through his quarters’ windows at the reassuring presence of stardust flashing by. The small replicator on his nightstand gurgles a small puddle of water into existence, omitting the glass and producing a tiny indoor waterfall. Doesn’t anything on the Achilles function as it should anymore?
At least the nightmare is over and his adrenaline subsiding. That is, until he hears a loud knock at the door, which startles him and rids him of his sleepiness altogether. “Captain,” a woman’s voice says. It’s his current first officer, Commander Erin Crow.
Rinckes pushes away his sweat-soaked covers and jumps out of bed. He is not too thrilled to have her see him in his pajamas, but he isn’t planning on raising the lighting levels in his quarters anyway. “Come.”
The doors to his quarters refuse to open all the way, and Crow has to forcibly push both door slabs aside, grunting with effort and annoyance. “Sorry to disturb you, Captain.” She squeezes herself into the room. “You didn’t respond to my calls.”
His combadge lies within earshot. He must’ve slept straight through the messages it relayed.
Despite the darkness, Crow apparently picks up on his troubled expression. “Don’t worry, sir. We’re all tired.”
It’s not his deep sleep that worries him, it’s the sad fact he can’t recall the last time his dreams were pleasant. This particular nightmare has him so vexed he’d love to yell and flip a chair or table, but he stays composed for his first officer’s sake.
“Are you okay, sir?”
“What brings you here?”
Crow reveals the PADD she is carrying. “We’ve picked up an encoded subspace message on Starfleet’s emergency channel.”
“Oh?”
“We’ve verified its authenticity.”
“What’s it say?”
“Not sure. I have lifted Terrell from his bed to decipher the message. This could be huge, sir. New orders, new intel, new technology, who knows?”
“Speculation will get us nowhere.” Rinckes needs a moment to let this development sink in. They haven’t heard from Starfleet in over a year; the brass would risk communicating only to share vital information. “They were wise to encrypt it. And we would be wise to decrypt it before the Altonoids do.”
“We will.”
“Good.” Still reeling from his tussle with his subconscious, Rinckes steadies himself by placing a hand on his bed.
Crow steps toward him. “You sure you’re okay?” Even in scarce lighting, her beauty is undeniable, and her concern somehow enhances her attractiveness. She reaches out to touch his upper arm.
Rinckes brushes off her kind gesture. “I’ll be fine. I need you to oversee our decryption efforts. Go help Terrell. Ask Surtak and Kels to assist; we’ll need the brightest minds on this.”
A brief hint of pain in her eyes. “Consider it done, Captain.”
“Dismissed.”
Pursing her lips, she exits his quarters without bothering to wrestle the doors closed again.
Rinckes seats himself on the mattress and considers working up the courage to return to sleep. Truth is, the difference between being caught in his nightmares or soldiering on awake is becoming harder to discern, but his personnel deserves a well-rested captain.
And so, he permits himself to surrender to starless dreams.
New to this story? Start with Fallen Heroes Part II Prologue somewhere in this forum and work you way up from there. Good luck
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Fallen Heroes Part III Chapter Va
USS Achilles, en route to Aragos – December 9, 2387 – Stardate 64935.1
This is an illusion. Captain Stephan Rinckes knows he is aboard the Achilles, travelling toward the first S’Prenn portal Starfleet gets to study, the result of his crew’s persistent search for clues in former Federation territory, yet he finds himself haunting the corridors of Station A-12. Distorted red alert panels with frightening tendrils light the endless hallway he runs through. His phaser rifle’s flashlight casts a feeble hue onto the path ahead.
The Achilles’ destination is too important to dismiss. However, as wisps of smoke transform into monstrous parodies of Altonoid soldiers, his recurring nightmare robs him of his tenuous grasp on reality and devours him whole. Submerged in delusion, he fires at rows of deformed enemies. Each phaser burst infuriates them, causing them to growl like the animals they are and lash out with elongated arms to scratch at him with claws that have sprung from their digits.
He wipes the maniacal grin from their faces with his rifle stock. “To hell with you! All of you!” Although he lets loose with phaser fire and melee attacks, it is hatred that kills his spectral foes, reduces them to mist as he fights past them. No matter how misshapen and imposing these spirits are, they succumb to his raw fury, and bit by bit, their numbers decline until he is the last man standing.
Having slain the apparitions, Rinckes passes through a doorway and enters an observation lounge he recognizes instantly. Upturned furniture, five Altonoid corpses, starless view in the windows, phaser marks on the bulkheads, and there, surrounded by broken starship models and shards of glass, lies the woman he loved, a gaping phaser wound in her chest.
Rinckes has been here so often: once in real life and over and over in his dreams. Each time he is grateful to be with her and heartbroken because she can never be saved. She looks at him, eyes glazed over. As always, he plays his part, never deviating from his personal tragedy’s screenplay.
He crouches and holds her in his arms. “Melanie, I’m here. I’ll get you to sickbay. You’re going to be all right.” There was no sickbay to return to; their ship had already perished at this point.
“No, Captain,” she whispers. She always whispers. In a foolish act of self-protection, to prevent himself from spending hours wrapped up in biting nostalgia, he had deleted every audio and video file of her from the Achilles’ databanks. A mistake. He resisted, fought to retain the memory, but he has forgotten the sound of her voice.
“Don’t give up,” he says, “I’ll get you back to the ship.”
“Take good care of the Sundance for me, will you?”
“Melanie, I…” The actual exchange took place seven and a half years ago, and his recollection of these events has gradually morphed into the content of his nightmares. He is supposed to say, “I will,” even though every fiber of his being compels him to profess his feelings for her. In each iteration of this dream, he has adhered to the lie, has stuck to his role. No more! He breaks character and begs her, “Please don’t go.” He cradles her and presses his forehead against hers. “Just this once. It’s all I have left of you. You don’t have to go. Please.”
Despite his pleading, the life drains from Melanie’s eyes until they’re reduced to an empty stare. Defeated, he caresses her blonde hair and gazes at her peaceful visage. As opposed to the numb killing spree he undertook to escape Station A-12, he is perfectly content to stay with her and cry beside her lifeless body.
To his astonishment, Melanie’s lips begin to tremble, and she struggles and succeeds to whisper a one-word warning: “Run!”
She vanishes in his arms, swept to the ghostly realm where she will be waiting for his next slumber. His nerve ends tingle as he becomes aware of two figures looming over him: Emily Blue and Ted Barton, wearing the environmental suits they died in, their faces ashen and somber behind transparent masks.
“How many have died because of you?” Emily asks, her voice distorted by her suit’s crackling comm system.
With a glove as cold as death, Ted grabs Rinckes by the throat and lifts him off the floor. “Your time is up, Captain. You will cause no further harm.”
“I- I’m sorry,” Rinckes croaks, but there is neither life nor mercy in Ted and Emily’s eyes.
Emily adds a bony glove to the chokehold. “You will be with us soon.”
Rinckes frees himself from their grasp, swings around, and starts running, out of the chamber and into the corridors of the USS Saratoga.
“Warp core breach imminent,” the ship’s computer announces as Rinckes flees through hallways crowded with civilians and officers, the latter of which in 2360s-style uniforms. He pushes these panicking men, women, and children aside and dashes forward as fast as the circumstances allow. Emily and Ted follow him wherever he goes, their magnetic boots clanging against the deck. Worse yet, gray-faced officers in tattered attire have joined them, officers he recognizes as Achilles’ fallen crewmembers. One by one, those lost under his current command emerge from rooms and corridors to form an army of the damned. They’re beginning to outnumber the period-correct characters in his dream, the ones who are evacuating the Saratoga as a solitary Borg cube rips into the old vessel at the Battle of Wolf 359.
The corridor he has fled into features windows lining its port side, which should display Admiral Hanson’s ill-fated fleet and the cube they’re engaging. Instead, it shows an absolute void—no stars whatsoever. Its alluring finality nearly smothers his desire to get away, but approaching footsteps and the dead calling his name prompt him to continue toward the escape pod lying ahead, his sole means of salvation. Already, icy fingertips are touching the nape of his neck.
A bone-rattling detonation shudders the corridor and floods it with orange light. Outside, the saucer section of the Sundance braves the starless void and careens by, larger than life, deck sections blowing apart as it loses entire chunks of hull. Cascading explosions produce a catastrophic rippling effect, resulting in one final explosion that shreds the saucer to pieces. Simultaneously, charred Sundance crewmembers start piling in from every side entrance.
“Where were you, Captain?” they ask.
Scared witless, Rinckes shoves them aside. The escape pod is so close.
“You abandoned us!” a woman shouts after him. She receives clamorous support from the droves of people who have amassed, hundreds of them.
“What kind of man are you?”
“Come back and face us!”
“You’ll be one of us soon.”
He hurries into the escape pod and taps its LCARS panel to shut the door. It does nothing.
The horde has traded their grim death masks for furious expressions as they continue their unstoppable advance led by Emily. Rinckes keeps pressing the door button to no avail, then starts prying at the escape pod hatch, but it does not budge in the slightest.
A few feet away, Tony Blue materializes between the captain and the macabre lynch mob. Tony is also wearing an EV suit, albeit without helmet, and gives Rinckes a plaintive look while reaching for his handphaser. His cheeks are tearstained and his forehead is sweaty. Biting his bottom lip, he detaches the phaser from his suit and aims it at Rinckes.
“So my first officer is going to shoot me?” Rinckes asks. The horde has neared Tony’s position. They’re ignoring him completely; they’re only interested in the captain’s blood. They will get to Rinckes and tear him limb from limb. “Then shoot me.” It would be merciful. “Shoot, dammit!”
Tony lowers his head and allows the phaser to slip from his grasp.
“Damn you! Damn you, coward!”
As soon as the phaser lands on the carpet, the crowd rushes over Tony like a river spilling over its embankments.
Straining and swearing, Rinckes attempts to pull the hatch closed. His efforts are in vain; hundreds of angry faces descend on him. Countless outstretched arms grab at him, snatch his clothing, his hair, his flesh. He is utterly helpless against this all-consuming rage. Unable to breathe or move because every inch of his body has become pure agony, he cannot even scream for help; he can only hold still and suffer…
…until he wakes to find his executioners have evaporated. He swivels his head slightly to stare through his quarters’ windows at the reassuring presence of stardust flashing by. The small replicator on his nightstand gurgles a small puddle of water into existence, omitting the glass and producing a tiny indoor waterfall. Doesn’t anything on the Achilles function as it should anymore?
At least the nightmare is over and his adrenaline subsiding. That is, until he hears a loud knock at the door, which startles him and rids him of his sleepiness altogether. “Captain,” a woman’s voice says. It’s his current first officer, Commander Erin Crow.
Rinckes pushes away his sweat-soaked covers and jumps out of bed. He is not too thrilled to have her see him in his pajamas, but he isn’t planning on raising the lighting levels in his quarters anyway. “Come.”
The doors to his quarters refuse to open all the way, and Crow has to forcibly push both door slabs aside, grunting with effort and annoyance. “Sorry to disturb you, Captain.” She squeezes herself into the room. “You didn’t respond to my calls.”
His combadge lies within earshot. He must’ve slept straight through the messages it relayed.
Despite the darkness, Crow apparently picks up on his troubled expression. “Don’t worry, sir. We’re all tired.”
It’s not his deep sleep that worries him, it’s the sad fact he can’t recall the last time his dreams were pleasant. This particular nightmare has him so vexed he’d love to yell and flip a chair or table, but he stays composed for his first officer’s sake.
“Are you okay, sir?”
“What brings you here?”
Crow reveals the PADD she is carrying. “We’ve picked up an encoded subspace message on Starfleet’s emergency channel.”
“Oh?”
“We’ve verified its authenticity.”
“What’s it say?”
“Not sure. I have lifted Terrell from his bed to decipher the message. This could be huge, sir. New orders, new intel, new technology, who knows?”
“Speculation will get us nowhere.” Rinckes needs a moment to let this development sink in. They haven’t heard from Starfleet in over a year; the brass would risk communicating only to share vital information. “They were wise to encrypt it. And we would be wise to decrypt it before the Altonoids do.”
“We will.”
“Good.” Still reeling from his tussle with his subconscious, Rinckes steadies himself by placing a hand on his bed.
Crow steps toward him. “You sure you’re okay?” Even in scarce lighting, her beauty is undeniable, and her concern somehow enhances her attractiveness. She reaches out to touch his upper arm.
Rinckes brushes off her kind gesture. “I’ll be fine. I need you to oversee our decryption efforts. Go help Terrell. Ask Surtak and Kels to assist; we’ll need the brightest minds on this.”
A brief hint of pain in her eyes. “Consider it done, Captain.”
“Dismissed.”
Pursing her lips, she exits his quarters without bothering to wrestle the doors closed again.
Rinckes seats himself on the mattress and considers working up the courage to return to sleep. Truth is, the difference between being caught in his nightmares or soldiering on awake is becoming harder to discern, but his personnel deserves a well-rested captain.
And so, he permits himself to surrender to starless dreams.