A Mission Post by Lieutenant Commander Jin Rha-Yaleii & Captain Khiy Kanryth & Colonel Aria Vesh
Mission: Coil of Darkness
Location: Earth, London
Timeline: Current
Everyone had waited for this moment. The satellite biometric sweeps. The plain-clothed spooks embedded with the protesters. The military presence, both visible and invisible. It had all come down to this moment. Aria watched with bated breath as the shuttle made its final approach. Dempsey rattled off approach data, but she wasn't listening. Her full attention locked on the center screen, the two sides showing the viewpoint from Tower-points 1 and 2. And then it happened. The view cut to static - all three in synchronous failure, then nothing. No, that couldn't be right. The odds of three independent view feeds failing together were-
"What the hell happened?" Aria looked behind her to Dempsey.
"Tower-point 1, this is Trojan. Did you lose visual on the-"
Dempsey cut himself off when he felt it. They all felt it. The shock wave reverberated through the building, even here, two blocks away, and then the view feeds came back.
"Telemetry, uh, telemetry readings coming in. It's gone. The Convention Center...nothing but a flat mass of debris."
He was stating the obvious. Everyone in the room, the Colonel chief among them, could see. The feeds came back, and presented a polar opposite view. Centerpoint was gone. Where the grand building had stood, the convention center now sat in a collapsed heap.
"Bio?" She asked.
"Way too much interference. We'll have to put eyes on the target to be sure. There's just too much crap floating around there."
===
It hadn't taken long for Aria to leave the relative safety of the Trojan command base, but she couldn't stand the idea of handling the situation from flat screens and consoles. Dempsey had been left to run the show. That was fine.
The IFF controlling the transporter dampening field had already switched over to Medical-Emergency protocol, allowing first-responders to appear along with the rapid reaction force of marines stationed in Tower. By the time she arrived on site, marines had already secured a ring around the hole left in the London city block. Picket lines kept non-essentials out, and combat medics worked alongside teal-clad Starfleet doctors to triage and wounded.
She took careful steps through the mess, boots crunching glass and splattered rockcrete with each step. The crimson-emerald mix did something to her stomach she didn't like, a bittersweet unity of their two peoples. As different as they were, they both died just as easily.
Aria dropped to a knee, fatigues smudged against the acrid dust that caked the ground. A man, he'd obviously dragged himself a short ways, lay in front of her. He wasn't moving, but two fingers against his neck, just under the chin, confirmed her suspicions.
"Medic!"
The words hit Khiy and his eyes opened like pits among white desert sand. As he sat up the dirt, grime, and debris cascaded off his uniform and head. He coughed into his shoulder sending a puff of dust into the air around them. "I'm sorry." He muttered tiredly as he ran his hands through dirty hair causing more dust to smoke away "who are you?" Khiy looked at the figure but it was a silhouette masked against the haze. He tried to focus his gaze but only found pain as grains of dirt and debris scratched at his eyes.
"Shut up and do whatever the medic says," she replied, her voice heavy with concern. He might not have gotten his wits back, yet, but Aria knew who he was.
She took a step back, lifting up onto her feet to give the medic room. Once the peeps and blips of the medical tricorder had done their job, and the medic had done his, Aria knelt again, her hand outstretched to help the man up.
"It's a wonder you survived the blast, Captain."
His mind was a daze but the voice seemed familiar. The medic poured over him and Khiy was tempted to shove him away but fought the urge. He knew he was hurt and could at least feel broken rib grinding- maybe two. "Status repor-" The medic poked a tool into a tinder area causing the Captain to wince "careful!" he snapped and before looking at the silhouette. "Status report? Who are you? What's the situation?"
Aria, eyes shut, furrowed her brows as she punched the space between her eyes. She had specifically told him to do whatever the medic said, not give them shit for checking his vitals.
"I've never been told I was the forgettable type, so I'll blame that second question on the blast. It's Aria," she offered a hand to help him up. "Status is still being assessed, but basically, everything's fucked. We're relatively certain the important Romulans are alive, for now, but our people?" She trailed off on purpose.
"Our people?" Khiy echoed as he futilely tried to dust himself off but only managed to add to the smoky haze. With a sigh he stopped and allowed his eyes to survey the immediate area while his ears picked up muted moans and cries echoing in from all directions. Overhead he could hear the drone of shuttles and other crafts. It quickly became obvious that there was little he could do to help here. "I need to get to my ship." He said and pressed his commbadge only to find static. "Where is the…" He paused "Aria? Aria Falcon?"
"Vesh, but you're half right. Family affair, long story, I'm sure it'd bore you."
She frowned. At least he hadn't lost his entire mind. Aria pressed her palm over her ear, listening to the chatter over her closed comlink. She nodded to the unheard voice and focused her attention back on Khiy.
"Look, there's a lot going on. The IFF is only allowing medical and marine-tagged transporters for security reasons, but I can get you a shuttle. It's safer right now, in any case. The blast left a lot of residual. Come on."
"Vesh?" He blinked but just accepted what was said "yes, get me to a shuttle I need to get back to my ship." Khiy frowned and pressed his hands into his temples as they throbbed. He could now hear the sounds of boots grinding over debris all around him. "Quickly, please."
She grabbed him by the arm, perhaps too roughly, and lead him away. A line of shuttles had begun to land, a backup to the transporter system just in case. The Colonel needn't make too elaborate a demand to make use of one.
"I suppose it'll take a couple of days to perform analysis on the blast, figure out what it was. I don't get it. Any of the usual explosive chemicals would have been caught. A bio-bomb, maybe?" She was talking more to herself than Khiy, but it felt good to get a few suspicions off her chest.
===
"You! Hey! You a pilot?"
Jin bit back an acerbic remark and simply favored the marine navigating through the debris with a wry look. The shuttle parked haphazardly behind her might have seen better days, just as her uniform was missing a jacket and was covered with grime and alien blood, but the question seemed redundant all the same.
"That thing good to fly?" the young human skidded to a halt in front of her and Jin did her best not to sneeze at the foul smelling dust his boots had kicked up.
"Affirmative on both, marine." Glacier blue eyes scanned the vicinity, but the flock of doctors and nurses she had delivered had dispersed and didn't seem likely to come back with injured any time soon. She'd been about to find the person in charge of coordinating the line of shuttles still descending carefully over the debris-strewn area behind them, but it looked like she'd been found instead. "What do you need?"
The marine rapidly relayed their position to someone on the comm and Jin almost managed a small smirk at the non-answer and the rigid tension rolling off the young officer in near palpable waves. She could hardly blame him, what with barely keeping the lid on ice-cold fury and heart-wrenching sorrow herself.
"I'll just fire her back up then, shall –"
She'd been about to turn and climb back into the shuttle, when the tall, striking form of another marine and an oddly familiar, small man in Fleet uniform rounded a chunk of what might well have been a part of the Convention Center. Finely tapered ears. Dark, dark eyes.
"Duck?"
Swearing profusely in her musical native language, Jin strode over to the undersized Captain and gently maneuvered his arm over her shoulder after offering the tall Colonel a brief nod of greeting.
"No fidgeting. You look like shit."
Khiy would have protested- unfortunately he felt as bad as he looked. "I need to get back to my ship in orbit." He turned his eyes towards the Marine "I have a suspicion about the source but I need to get to the Crazy Horse to confirm what I fear. I may also need your assistance Colonel..."
"And you haven't changed a bit." Jin noted wryly, though there was almost a tinge of exasperated affection in her voice. She steered the Captain towards the shuttle, noticing the uneven gait and raspy voice for bad signs. "Orbit it is. Just give me a second to find out where your darling is parked and I'll have you there in a trice."
Aria, for her part, was too focused on the captains broken ramblings to do anything more than greet the other woman with a mirrored gesture. She was just satisfied to have someone looking after the frail man.
"Right, Khiy, you've said that a few times already. Just do what you're told and let me handle the travel. We'll get you to your-" She stopped herself.
"You may need my assistance? Khiy...you don't know what's going on, do you?" She took a step back. The shuttle shuddered, but she didn't seem to notice. She looked down at him with piercing eyes. "What do you know?"
"I..." Khiy paused and looked around "need to get to my ship and then I can explain more." Sitting down in one of the back bench seats be rubbed his palms into his eyes grinding away the frames of dust "it should be in drydock."
Drydock. Jin didn't bother telling Khiy she'd pieced as much together by now. After he'd mentioned the Crazy Horse earlier – difficult *not* to see the pretty girl being patched up and pampered in the massive cradle above Earth every time her squadron had returned to the nest at Tranquility Base – the question had rather been how to get there from here, and quick.
But she gave an affirmative little sound anyways as the shuttle lifted off the ground, its nose turning skyward.
The gorgeous marine had made no motion to disembark, so Jin had simply left her to watch over the Captain's slumped figure. Well, looked like someone had already authorized their little excursion, as confirmation for her flight plan and docking permission flashed readily on her screen.
"Charlie time in four, Colonel. You need a ride somewhere else after, let me know."
It wasn't as if she'd anything else to do right now. Like as not the squadron had already been scrambled and she trusted Tell to keep the kids in line.
Dazed. The term was probably an understatement. Khiy was certain he knew what occurred but a cloud lingered over his head. A concussion? Possibly. The thought of seeing the ship's holodoctor through made him cringe inwardly. "Turn on the local comm traffic." He pointed at the shuttle's circuit panel thinking it was the communication controls.
"Sorry Duck, no joy. This little shoebox has more burnt out circuits than my parent's replicator after she tried to make me a nameday cake." Jin deftly avoided another shuttle streaming past at high speed by nudging their craft into a light upward bounce and was rewarded with another honk of protest from the inertia dampeners "but I've your pretty girl on screen and they're waiting for us."
Aria stood and took a step back, cupping an ear over with her palm and speaking into an unseen mic. She'd run things as best she could, but people with higher pay grades had already taken over. A knot turned in her stomach. She'd been in charge of much of the security measures. The bomb would probably be blamed on her. A moment or two later and looked over to Jin.
"No special destinations," she replied, thumbing over to Khiy. "I'm going where he's going."
"Roger that, Colonel." The little Efrosian coaxed a bit more speed from the straining shuttle, and soon the Crazy Horse's gleaming silver-grey silhouette floated before them. A quick look over her shoulder confirmed that Ducky still seemed to be nursing a headache the size of Jupiter and the gorgeous dark-haired woman wore a scowl that rivaled a firebull's after the melon patch has been struck by lightning.
Not that she was in better shape.
Jin absentmindedly rubbed some dried blood off her wrist as one last gentle turn took them into reach of the Crazy Horse's tractor beams and she was more than content to be brought in for once.
The shuttle settled on the deck with barely a shudder and for a moment Jin felt nearly as disoriented as Khiy looked. The spacious, gleaming shuttlebay with its crew in immaculate uniforms bustling about in eager proficiency seemed such a stark contrast to the battered craft and her own appearance, it would have been comical had it not been so jarring.
Suddenly bone-weary, the small Efrosian leaned her forehead against the console and barely noticed the ramp lowering and deck crew securing the heap of scrap metal that had once been a nice little shuttle.
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