Far From Home: The Complete Second Series (Far From Home 13-15) (25 page)

25.

Captain King stood. There was no viewscreen. Emergency lighting gave just enough illumination to see by. Every console stood dark as they rebooted. "Put her on audio."

The speakers crackled to life around her and were then filled with the boom of Cessqa's cruel voice.

"Captain King. You still live."

"Despite your attempts to the contrary Cessqa, yes, I do."

"You have fought well. But this dance is ended. I am the victor."

How can she know that?
Jessica wondered.
Sophisticated sensing technology?

Her
eyes narrowed. "Where are you headed with all this?"

All the while she thought:
Buy us time. Buy us time.

"Give yourself willingly and I will spare the rest. You must surely desire to save your crew, Captain?"
Cessqa asked.
"Is it not a worthy sacrifice?"

"I do
wish to spare them," Jessica said. "Enough that I would happily give my life to save theirs. But I won't. You would never keep to your word. They would suffer, needlessly."

"A valiant resolve, Captain,"
Cessqa said.
"And yet . . . futile. I have given you opportunity to surrender, and you have refused. I have given you the chance to give your life for theirs, and even then you will not see reason. You will not end this folly."

Jessica thought fast
on her feet, eager to buy them as long as possible.

"
All right. I'll do it. But I need fifteen minutes to inform my crew."

"You may have ten. After which time you will
. . . present yourself . . . to me."

The line went dead.
Olivia Rayne looked up. "Transmission's been cut their end."

Jessica
surveyed the faces in the room. She clapped her hands together. "Right, so we have ten minutes. Let's get a move on, people."

"Our plan?" Chang asked.

Jessica watched Commander Greene unbuckle himself from his seat and head for the exit.

"Hope the Chief manages to get us something we can work with," King said. "And do whatever we can to help her along."

26.

"Seven minutes,"
Rayne's voice thundered through the ship as Greene arrived at the doors of the engineering section.

God, give a man a chance
, he thought as he walked in.

It was a scene of chaos. Lights dying, then
flickering back. Men and women running back and forth in all directions, most carrying various tools and devices. And in the midst of the madness, orchestrating such a haphazard rabble stood the Chief.

"You! Get to the secondary cylinders!" Gunn yelled. She caught sight of a young woman hauling a big grey case. "Hey, Juarez, slow down before you brain someone."

"Use an extra pair of hands?" Greene asked.

Gunn acted as though he'd been due there the whole time, and she'd simply been waiting for him to turn up. Not that he'd
run the length of the ship of his own accord, to be there for her, to help her get them out of this jam. Still, he followed as she led him away.

"If I can redirect energy from the Jump Drive, by shutting it down, I can get us some engine power. It's your call," she said bluntly.

Greene hit a nearby comm. unit and dialled the bridge.

"King."

"Captain, we can give you engine power, but in order to do so we've got to divert energy away from the Jump Drive, meaning you won't have it available. Not that it's in that good a shape right now . . ."

"I see."

"What do you want to do?"

A pause, then,
"Do what you have to."

"Aye," Greene said and closed the channel. He turned to the Chief. "It's a go. Now what?"

"Five minutes,"
Rayne's voice said around them.

"Let's see those hands of yours," Gunn said.

The Commander held them out, palms up. They were relatively clean, and when he saw the state of those around him, including the Chief herself, Greene almost felt ashamed.

But Meryl simply looked up at him, a smile on her face. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you'd been counting money all your life, Del. Ready to get 'em dirty with me?"

It meant she really did appreciate him being there with her. It meant she had noticed. It meant he was doing good down here, helping her get them moving, give them a fighting chance at survival.

"Sure," he said.

*

Systems returned to normal, registering the many busted parts of the
Defiant
.

"Ignore them," Jessica told her crew. "Focus on what we have."

"Helm inoperative," Banks said.

She threw him
an icy look. "I said to focus on what we had, Mister Banks."

"Yes Captain."

"Can I speak freely?" Rayne asked.

Chang looked up the same time King did.

"Of course," Jessica said.

"What happens if we surrender?"

"We won't," Jessica assured her.

The communications officer sighed. "But if we don't have a choice
. . ."

"There's always a choice," King said. Now she addressed them all. "I will never let this ship, or its crew, fall into enemy hands. I'd rather die first. There is always a choice between fighting to survive and simply rolling over."

No one said anything to the contrary.

"Keep your chins up. We'll get through this," Jessica said.

"Two minutes," Rayne said.

A new chord rang out around them as
power returned to the engines. The helm console came to life again, lights blinking around Banks.

"We're back in action!" Banks cried.

Jessica flipped a switch. "Captain King to the engineering section. Well done everyone. We've got legs again. Captain out."

27.

She looked at him with pride at her own handiwork, not expecting what he did next. The pulsing light of the reactor surged around them as Commander Greene pulled the Chief in close and kissed her hard, firm on the lips. For a split second she resisted, surprised by his spontaneity – then she sagged in his arms, completely lost in his embrace.

The Chief reached up as they kissed, let her fingers slip through his hair. It was a long moment, heightened by what they'd just achieved, by their deep love and desire for one another. By the beating heart of the
Defiant
they'd both managed to restore. It throbbed, the air around them vibrating.

And yet they stayed that way for a long time. Eventually she pulled away from him, and he looked at her with big, fierce eyes.

I want you,
they said.
I love you. I need you.

For the briefest of moments, lost in his embrace, the Chief felt like a girl. A simple girl impossibly drunk on love. Then she was back to the real world, to a career as the head of the engineering section aboard a starship.

She glanced left and right, noticed the crowd and parted. "We're, uh, being watched," she whispered.

The Commander grinned, still holding her and refusing to let her get too far. "I don't care."

"Well I do," she said softly, then glared at them all. Her voice rose, became a terrifying bellow. "Back to work you sorry maggots! You're lucky I don't dump you out the nearest airlock!"

Commander Greene couldn't stop laughing, even when she gave him a short jab to the arm. Chief Gunn walked to the nearest comm. panel and contacted the bridge.

28.

"We have limited power to engines," Banks said.

Jessica clucked her tongue. "Okay. Weapons?"

Lieutenant Jackson shook his head as he consulted his own display. "Nothing, Captain. No power to any of our weapons systems."

"Damn it!" Jessica exclaimed, immediately regretting doing such a thing in front of the crew.

"We're sunk," Rayne said.

"Are we going to surrender?" Chang asked.

Jessica snapped about. "Not on your life, Commander. There's another way out of this."

"We need a miracle," Banks remarked.

"Not at all, Lieutenant," King said. A smirk made its way onto her face – and it just got bigger and bigger. "All we need to know is what buttons to push."

"Captain?" Chang asked, bemused.

"Sometimes you have to do the unexpected thing, Commander. Make that rash decision," she told her. "It can be your only way out of a situation at times. It's a fingers-crossed kind of thing."

"A leap of faith," Chang said, understanding. Jessica nodded.

"Yes. Yes that's it exactly, a leap of faith."

The bridge crew watched as their Captain revealed her plan.

"Banks, can you get one-half thruster power out of the engines?"

"Captain, I don't think
–"

She snapped her fingers once. "Stop. Can you do it? Yes or no."

"Yes, at a push," Banks said. "But –"

She dismissed him immediately. "Ensign Rayne, put out a call throughout the ship. Brace for impact. Everyone get to their positions and strap themselves in. Right now."

"Captain, surely you don't mean to . . ." Chang said.

Jessica's jaw set hard, her eyes
burned as mean pits of fire in such a beautiful face. "I do."

Rayne's voice boomed around them. "All hands, brace for impact. Assume positions. Evacuate all outer decks. Seal them off. Repeat, all hands brace for impact. Assume positions."

"Banks, set your course for the
Jandala
. Throw everything into the engines so they don't have time to get away," she said sternly. "Ram them into next week."

"Yes Captain," Banks complied.

The
Defiant
lurched forth, her engines blazing. The viewscreen showed the
Jandala
growing larger and larger in front of them. She could imagine Cessqa's panic as she watched the
Defiant
head straight for her. It was a crazy, imaginative move that a Namarian simply wouldn't have thought of. A human act.

She would not surrender them to her. She'd rather destroy the ship, kill them all, than have them die by Cessqa's hands. Still, there was a chance they'd survive. A slim chance, but Jessica had already decided she'd take what she could get.

The ship shuddered, the
Jandala
in their sights, the
Defiant
's engines blazing behind them. Jessica glanced across at Chang. The Commander was faced forward, ready for whatever came.

True Officer material
, Jessica thought.
She's not questioned my order because she knows it's a viable alternative to giving ourselves up.

"Here we go everyone. Let's see how they deal with a real-life leap of faith!"

29.

"Propulsion!" Cessqa shouted. Back below decks again, Risa was quick to respond to her commander.

"Not yet. I need time."

"We don't have it," Cessqa spat. She looked up. "Yet our enemy does."

Cessqa studied her holodisplay. The
Defiant
made steady progress, moving under power which was more than could be said for the
Jandala
.

"So
. . ." Cessqa said in near disbelief. "They are coming."

Her eyes were hard silver as she watched the human's ship accelerate toward them, with no indication that it was about to shift course. It almost looked as though
. . .

Oh, she is a tricky one. She would risk that. Risk everything, just to stop us. I have underestimated them time and time again. It will not happen in the future. They are not to be trusted, these doughy pink humanoids. Not to be trusted.

Cessqa manned the controls from where she was, piloting the
Jandala
out of the way.

30.

The
Jandala
tried to run. Tried to get out of the way in time. But the Namarian vessel was in far worse shape than her commander at first feared. The
Defiant
accelerated ahead of her, engines roaring with everything she had.

Jessica watched the scene with an almost clinical detachment. She did not feel fear, nor a thrilling stab of endorphins as they rushed to their possible deaths. Only a deep calm, a restive emotion.

The
Defiant
was about to crash into another ship. More often than not, it resulted in their destruction. How many ships had been lost that way?

Too many.
Defiant
was about to be another one of their number.

She closed her eyes. A recent memory surfaced and she went with it.

Back to the Officer's Mess.

Commander Greene looked sideways at the twinkling lights beyond the viewport. He looked almost wistful, longing.

"Da dee da da, da dee dee . . ." he sang softly, barely audible.

Jessica's brows rose in surprise. "Del, I never took you for a singer."

He laughed. "I'm not. It's just something my Mother used to sing to me."

"Really?"

"You don't recognise it?"

She shook her head.

"Da dee da da, da dee dee," he hummed again. "Star of wonder, star of night . . ."

"Oh. What is it? Where's it from?"

"An old hymn or something. I dunno. I've never forgotten it though. All these years and I still find myself humming it in the shower," the Commander said. He looked down at the coffee cup in his hands, bashful. "Mother used to sing it all the time, like a comfort. Silly, really."

"No it's not. At least you have that memory of her," Jessica said. She didn't need to continue. What was unsaid remained in the air, present and accounted for.

I didn't know my own Mother. I wish I had something like that to remember her by,
she thought as she followed his gaze to the cosmic blanket beyond the confines of the Defiant.
I wish I could see her face, hear her voice whenever I looked at the stars. All I see is what's been taken away from me. I see a dark void, filled with lights. Some of those I've known and lost among them . . .

*

The
Defiant
drove straight into the
Jandala
, her forward hull crumpling like a tin can in some places. In others she held up well. The
Jandala
buckled under the impact, her engines dying behind her.

However the
Defiant
had survived the encounter. Around her, the bridge seemed to be intact. There was no hiss of escaping atmosphere. The old girl hadn't let them down yet.

"Are we dead?" Chang asked groggily to the side of her.

"Not yet," Jessica answered.