Far From Home: The Complete Series (34 page)

* * *

The ship bucked beneath his feet. Greene sprang through the airlock and set the lady Krinuan on the deck. He turned back. Boi still struggled along the corridor with Salnow’s arm draped over his shoulder, his feet dragging on the decking.

“Come on!” the Commander yelled at them. “Quickly!”

“Wait here,” Banks said and pushed past him. He ran down the corridor toward the two struggling crewmen. He took up the other side of Salnow.

The hell mouth opened. Boi glanced behind him at the sound of a massive explosion. The Krinuan ship shook. A wall of flame surged up the corridor, sucking the air out. Salnow cried out in pain. They were still so far away. Banks looked up. He had time to fix his eyes on Commander Greene, then the flames consumed them.

“NO!”

The hot blast threw Commander Greene against the other side of the shuttle. He struck the bulkhead then landed in a heap on the floor. Fire licked inside the shuttle like dragon’s breath. A Krinuan male rushed to the side of the open airlock and slammed a paw against the control panel. It closed, sealed against the inferno on the other side.

At the same instant, Hawk disengaged and propelled them away. The Krinuan ship blew apart next to them, pelting the hull of the tiny shuttle with shattered pieces of ship.

“
Woah!
That was close!” Hawk yelled, throwing the shuttle into the kind of manoeuvres its designers had never been fortunate enough to imagine. He glanced back into the hold. “Hey, Commander -“

Greene stirred on the deck, but he didn’t respond. Blood spilled from the side of his head, and his skin looked charred and bobbled as if he’d been roasted. Several Krinuans tended to him, held a bundle of torn cloth against the gash along his temple. He tried to spot the other members of the
Defiant
’s crew but couldn’t.

Then he realized they were no more.

Hawk turned back to his helm controls, his jaw set as he sped them back to the
Defiant
.

5.

“Captain Nowlan coming in hot,” Rayne reported, holding her earpiece. “And he’s got casualties.”

“Did they all make it off alive?” King asked. They’d seen the ship blow apart, and had feared the worst until they saw the Union shuttle inexplicably emerge from the explosion intact.

Ensign Rayne listened, then looked up at Jessica with big, sad eyes.

“Boi, Salnow and Lieutenant Banks were killed. Commander Greene has been badly injured,” she said quietly.

Jessica couldn’t afford the news even a moment to sink in, as much as her heart sank instantly at the news her crew were gone.

“I want a crash team in that hangar. Medics, fire team. The lot,” she ordered. “Lieutenant Rogers, please move us out of the immediate vicinity. Use the surrounding debris as cover.”

“The shuttle is aboard,” Chang said.

“Do it,” King told the helmsman.

“Aye,” Rogers replied. The
Defiant
turned under his fingertips.

“Olivia, contact Praror and inform him of what we’re doing. I don’t want him to think that we’re leaving.”

“Yes Ma’am,” Rayne said.

“Enemy fire to our stern,” Chang said. “Naxor ship in pursuit.”

Jessica grimaced. “Jackson, I want every turret pointed at that ship. Target their shields.”

“With pleasure,” Jackson said and accessed his controls. The
Defiant
vibrated beneath the fury of her guns. The viewscreen changed to show an aft view. The Naxor suffered under the artillery barrage and tried to turn.

“Launch all tubes. Taker her out!” Jessica ordered.

Jackson fired at once. A spread of Duotonic missiles shot from the front of the
Defiant
, turned either side and rushed to the back. They tore the Naxor ship apart.

The viewscreen changed to show the bow. Rogers dropped them below a spindly mass of rock, then took the
Defiant
up behind it.

“Any word on Commander Greene?” King asked Chang.

The Lieutenant shook her head. “It’s not good, Captain. He’s out cold and he’s got bad burns to his face and arms. Dr. Clayton’s attending.”

Jessica swallowed.

She fought back memories of Captain Singh’s broken form in the munitions section months ago.

“Captain!” Rayne pivoted about. “Praror reports enemy birds headed our way.”

Jessica looked to Chang.

“I don’t see them on my -” Chang started to say, then her eyes lit with realization. “Yep. Four of them. Ten seconds to impact.”

“Everybody, grab hold of something!” King shouted. She gripped the sides of her chair as the enemy torpedoes hit. The
Defiant
seemed to break around her.

She closed her eyes momentarily against the roar of explosions happening over the ship.

Emergency klaxons wailed.

“Energy shield is disabled!” Chang shouted over the din. “Multiple hull breaches.”

Jessica unclipped herself. She squinted. The bridge was full of smoke. It burned her eyes.

“Activate the extractors -” King stopped when she saw the smoke rushing off the bridge. What started as a high pitched whistle soon became a scream of air escaping from the ship. It took a second for everything to register, then it hit her. She shot up from her chair. “Evacuate the bridge!
Evacuate!”

A small hole in the wall next to the viewscreen widened, sending a piece of thick hull material out into space. The smoke hurried in its bid to escape into the vacuum. Jessica dove forward, yanked Rogers from his seat. She shoved him toward the entrance. “Get out!”

She turned to Jackson. The Lieutenant was already moving.

Rayne ripped her earpiece out and was getting down from her station. Jessica hurried past Chang.

“Move it!”

The Captain reached the entrance behind Rogers and Jackson. She turned back. Chang had stopped to see that Rayne was on her way. The last tendrils of smoke tore through the hole, then it split wide open before taking the entire portion of wall holding the viewscreen with it. Bare, naked space pulled every last particle of atmosphere from the bridge. Jessica clutched her last breath, her mouth pinched shut. She clung to the sides of the door frame. Chang slid, fell to the deck and was pulled toward the open end of the bridge. Olivia bounded across and grabbed her. With her last effort she swung Chang toward Jessica.

Chang caught the Captain’s free hand, and for a moment they formed a chain like that. Then Olivia’s hand slipped.

Chang made eye contact with her one last time before the pull of open space took her away, her arms flailing helplessly before she was lost to the darkness.

With her last ounce of strength, as the blackout closed in around her, Jessica just managed to pull them both through the door before it slid shut behind them, forming an airtight seal against the compromised bridge.

Chang collapsed on top of her Captain, gasping for breath. But Jessica didn’t move. Her face had turned a deathly shade of blue. Chang looked around. She took several breaths then called for a medic. She felt Jessica’s neck and found a pulse.

Weak, but it was there.

“Hang in there Captain,” she said. “Help’s on the way.”

6.

Dr. Clayton supervised the Captain as two orderlies loaded her onto a stretcher. She had a breathing apparatus strapped over her face.

“Careful. Now get her to medical, quickly” Clayton said.

Chang took hold of his elbow. “Doctor. Will she be all right?”

“What happened?”

“Hull breach at the front of the bridge. Ensign Rayne got sucked straight out into space…” her voice faded away for a moment as the memory struck her. The grief she’d felt during the wait for Dr. Clayton rose again, surfacing from a self-imposed fog. Her heart ached. Chang pushed the loss back down inside. She wiped at a single errant tear as it spilled down her cheek. “The Captain pulled me through to the corridor, but I think she got too exposed to the vacuum.”

“It can take seconds for it kill a person. I’ve heard of people doing space jumps without suits, but it’s fifty-fifty whether or not you survive,” Clayton explained.

“Do you think it’s air deprivation, then?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. She didn’t hit her head or anything?” Clayton asked.

Chang shook her head slowly. “Not that I’m aware. But I did land on top of her. She might have smacked the deck a second beforehand. It’s a possibility.”

“Yeah. Right, I better get down to medical. And you’ve got a ship to run,” Clayton said. He started walking away.

“Huh?”

The realisation hit her. With both the Captain and Commander Greene temporarily out of action, she was the next in line. Neither Jackson nor Rogers had the experience, and they weren’t primary bridge crew.

And talking of bridge…

A dozen or so crew had arrived to assist. There were repair crew and assorted crew members assisting in any way they could. Chang drew herself to full height, cleared her throat. “Okay everyone listen up! Rogers and Jackson, you come with me to the Emergency Command Centre. The rest of you continue to assist with repairs.”

They looked at her for a moment. A blast somewhere shook the ship.

“Now!” Chang yelled, motivating them to do as they were told.

* * *

Several fires had broken out through engineering, and the Chief ran from one to the other co-ordinating their frantic efforts to put them out. Klaxons wailed all around her, but she paid them no mind. Thick dark clouds of smoke clung to the tall ceiling of engineering, but it grew steadily thicker by the minute. The atmospheric extractors struggled to clear it.

“Belcher!” Gunn called. “Gary, come here quick.”

The Lieutenant busily worked a console in an attempt to ensure the coolant lines didn’t fail. If they did…

“Chief?”

Gunn waved him over. He got up and ran to her from the other side of the room. The Chief stood over a fallen crewman. “I need you to get her out of here, Lieutenant. Drag him out to the corridor. Give him some air.”

Belcher nodded. “And what about you Chief?”

Gunn had already started walking away. “Hop to it fella.”

The Lieutenant didn’t argue. He scooped Ensign Benedict up under the armpits and pulled him backwards toward the exit. The doors parted as he drew near, and he found himself breathing relatively smoke-free, cool air again. Belcher propped the crewman against a bulkhead, checked his pulse.

“Let’s hope nobody thinks you’re a passed-out drunk,” Belcher said as he stepped away. “Sorry to leave you there, Greg, but I gotta get back in there. She needs me.”

It didn’t matter that Ensign Greg Benedict was completely out for the count. Lieutenant Belcher had already gone back into the carnage of engineering.

7.

“Stats and vitals,” Clayton demanded. He listened as Nurse Munoz reeled off the Captain’s vital signs from an overhead monitor. Once finished, Clayton gave a curt nod of his head. He looked around. The sickbay had filled with people for no apparent reason.

The Doctor became furious. He slammed his data tablet down on the bed next to Jessica. “Don’t you people have better things to do? Get out! Go on!”

He indicated for Nurse Shook to get them out, then turned back to Captain King’s limp form.

He regarded her for a moment. She was in no immediate distress, but she
was
unconscious and very weak. And of course he had to take into consideration her…
condition
…

“Frank, get me a neuro scanner. Let’s see what activity we have,” Dr. Clayton said. As Munoz went to fetch it, Clayton walked over to Commander Greene. The two Nurses had done a good job of covering his burns with analgesic gel. It would take an hour or so for it to work fully, but the Commander would heal completely from his dance with fiery death. However, Greene too was out cold; though smoke inhalation and a blow to the head were his reasons. Not a close encounter with the cold, hard, nothingness of space.

“Well, now they’re all gone…” Nurse Shook said, dusting her hands symbolically down her front.

The
Defiant
rocked. Several glass utensils clattered along a desk in the corner and smashed on the floor. Shook went to clear it up straight away but Clayton laid a hand on her arm to still her.

“Leave it for a minute. There’ll be more of that,” he said.

Nurse Shook gave Commander Greene the once over. “D’you think he’ll wake up, Doctor?”

Clayton sighed. “Yep. He’ll have one helluva headache though. I don’t know what it is with that man hitting his goddamn head every other day. I’ve treated him more times for head injuries than -“

Nurse Munoz arrived with the neuro scanner.

“Here we are Doctor,” Munoz said.

Clayton took the device, in reality little more than just a thick band of metal. The moment it was fixed in the correct position around Jessica’s head, its readings of her brain’s electrical activity appeared on the overhead.

“Is it a coma?” Munoz asked him.

Clayton watched the data for a moment. Then he shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. She’s just shocked I think. It might take her a while to come around. I saw something like this during my service. A guy had shock from exposure. Took him a couple of weeks to wake up.”

There were treatments for those who braved the void for only a handful of seconds, but of course the Captain had had more than that …

On the bed, Jessica breathed slowly. But other than the steady rise and fall of her chest, she lay perfectly still.

“Okay. The oxygen levels in her blood are low. Nurse Shook, I think you can do something about that. Frank, put that thing on the Commander over there and monitor his readings for a couple of minutes. The amount of knocks he’s had to the noggin, I’d like to just double check there’s no permanent damage.”

His two Nurses busied themselves with his instructions, and Clayton stood watching the Captain’s vitals on the screen.

Come on Jessica
, he thought.
Fight.

* * *

The Emergency Command Centre was smaller than they were used to on the bridge, but they wasted no time in getting to their respective stations. Lieutenant Rogers took to the helm, with Jackson standing at a station to his right. Lisa Chang stood. There was only one seat in the Emergency Command Centre, and that was reserved for the pilot. For everyone else, there were handholds laid into the ceiling, amongst the jutting pipes and wires.