Runner Up 1 20501.26

The Betrayal - Lt[JG] Phoenix Auroris

© 2005 by Federation Space and the author pen named Phoenix Auroris

He was alive. He shouldn’t be, he couldn’t be but he was. He had survived.

Martin began to feel his senses return to him but was beginning to wish they weren’t as pain began searing through his body working its way into every nerve ending he had. He began to feel the harsh, cold terrain beneath him. He was sprawled out across the ground his limbs flailing in various directions away from his body. He was lying down, one arm lying over a group of rocks and more of them pressing into his back and spine feeling like a thousand little needles piercing his skin. Tentatively he began to open one eye almost not wanting to see the devastation that he was sure would be lying around him. As it opened his first sight was the debris from the shuttle craft strewn over what must have been a 100 metre radius, he had come down and come down hard. What he guessed must have been the port nacelle was lying no more than 5 metres from him. Martin wasn’t sure how he had come to be outside the craft, surely he should still be inside entwined with the wreckage, the last breathes leaving his body like the dying nacelle lying by his feet. Shifting his gaze skyward he was greeted with a sky darker than the recesses of hell. There was no sun to be seen and no moon to offer some light in the darkness, splashes of lightning rippled across the sky and rumbles of thunder could be heard both near and far and to Martin’s awakening ears they sounded right beside him.

He tried to bring himself onto his feet, placing his hands behind him onto the cold desolate ground he slowly pushed himself onto his legs and just as quickly and surely fell straight to the ground. Looking down Martin could see that he was in just as bad shape as he felt, pieces of shrapnel from the crash piercing his legs and one he was sure was at least fractured if not completely broken. Martin began to look around and start to make some assessment of just how big a pile of shit he was in. The landscape was barren, it looked like this world was never meant to be inhabited and appeared to look like the most inhospitable planet Martin had ever had the displeasure of crashing on. The land was empty all around him as far as the eye could see, he was alone and that was a feeling Martin didn’t relish. In the far distance he could see mountain ranges with razor sharp peaks pointing towards the unwelcoming sky. His eye followed the line of the mountains until something caught his attention, a small light in the distance. At first he thought he must be seeing things, he had after all just hurtled through the atmosphere and smashed his craft into the ground but he cleared his eyes and looked again, there was definitely a light in the distance.

“Well that looks like as good a place as any to head to” said Martin to himself as he began to formulate a way off of this hell hole, of course seeing a light and reaching the light were two completely separate issues, especially in Martin’s condition. He began to drag himself towards the bulk of the wreckage, remembering that he always carried medical supplies with him for just such an event. Every centimetre he moved sapped his energy like 1000 mosquito’s feeding on his blood, looking back Martin could see a trail of blood on the desert’s floor from where he had first come back to life. Slowly but surely he got closer and closer to his beaten craft and eventually managed to grab hold of the doorway and pull himself inside, thanking some higher power for the small blessing that his arms were not so badly damaged. Reaching up into one of the storage lockers Martin pulled out his medical kit complete with hypospray and a trusty medical tricorder. Running the tricorder over his legs he confirmed his suspicions, the slow, steady innocuous beeps indicating that the left was fractured just below the knee and the right although still in one piece was severely torn and bleeding. Reaching for the hypospray Martin felt a twinge of pain shoot down his spine, it would appear his leg wasn’t the only part of his body sustaining injury. Martin placed the mechanism at the top of his thigh and injected an almost dangerous quantity of pain relief into his leg, although the effect was immediate. As the pain of his legs flowed seamlessly out of his body he could feel his mood (although still slightly grumpy) improve and his mind begin to clear. Martin bandaged his legs as best he could and produced a make-shift splint from a piece of the wreckage for his left leg. It wasn’t pretty and Martin was no surgeon but it was going to have to do if he wanted to get off this rock. His shuttle was completely destroyed and there was no way he was getting off this planet in it so he would have to ‘procure’ another shuttle. He pulled himself out of the shuttle and attempted to balance himself on his own to feet. He could stand, just. Picking up another piece of wreckage to use as a walking stick he gathered some supplies and headed off towards the light. As he began the long walk Martin found himself looking back at the wreckage of his craft, he still wasn’t sure what had happened. His ship was easily one of the best and most reliable in the fleet. It was equipped with its own phaser banks, inertial dampeners, high intensity shielding and even a sneaky photon torpedo tube. Many of his enemies had come a cropper by underestimating the strength of his little ship. Martin had always nick-named her “The Bee”, small but she’ll certainly sting you. His memories turned to what he could remember just before the ship got into trouble. He remembered he had only just entered the system and had dropped out of warp when the master alarm sounded. Shortly afterwards the engines lost all power and primary and auxiliary systems started failing all over the ship. He had been at a complete lost as to what was going on and more importantly what was its cause. He had desperately tried to salvage the ship and his mind had turned to the “cargo” he had been carrying. He could remember the struggle he had had as to whether to leave it behind, but it ended up being an irrelevance anyway as when he went for the escape pod it launched itself, leaving Martin to go down with his ship.

“Mmmh that was odd, the escape pod launching just as I got to it…” and with that thought Martin continued his walk…

Martin Jackson was a Special Operations officer for Star Fleet Command; he was normally the kind of character that took the missions that other officers wouldn’t touch with a 50ft docking clamp. Technically he answered to the tactical department of Star Fleet but really he and his colleagues worked for a sub-division of tactical known only as the P.T.I.D standing for the Pro-Active Tactical Insertion Department. Martin had transferred to P.T.I.D from a security post on the USS Sheridan. He’d been with the department for nearly 7 years and had taken mission after mission and carried out each one with ruthless efficiency and certainly had a decorated career history. The one phrase that always made Martin smirk was when he was continually told that his missions were of the “utmost importance”. He’d never really taken the importance of his missions seriously in their entirety which was something that normally kept him going when things went awry, which they usually did and this mission was turning out to be no different. However this particular mission had started somewhat differently to the standard Star Fleet Briefing.

Martin had been walking along a street in New York, he’d just been to visit his sister in hospital and was walking past a side street when two men branding star fleet uniforms had ushered him over. They showed him their identity cards which showed them as members of P.T.I.D and took him to a dingy little café where they sat and had a nice hot cup of replicated black, sugarless coffee. The first man was what used to clinically be called a “geek”, short black, slightly receding hair and a pair of glasses which were so think they could have been used as windows on a warp class star ship. The other man however was simply slick, tidy hair, immaculate uniform and an air about him that reeked of money and a lack of morals.

“Now Mr. Jackson,” said the geek, “we are familiar with your background and needless to say it’s exemplary. But we have a mission for you that requires your immediate attention and your full co-operation and skill”. That was enough to get Martin interested; anything that would be a challenge immediately got his attention. “Now,” continued the man, “it’s important you understand Mr. Jackson, this mission is of the utmost importance”. There it was, the phrase that was almost synonymous with the P.T.I.D and almost certified that these men were from the department their I.D’s had stated. At this point the second man placed his hands on the table, leant forward and interlocked his fingers. In a voice no louder than a whisper he spoke, “We require you to take a very precious cargo to one of our contacts on a distant planet that sits on the very edge of the Alpha Quadrant”.

“What’s the cargo?” asked Martin,

“I’m afraid I can’t divulge that information to you, it’s precious that’s all you need to know Mr Jackson”. Not being one to argue with authority Martin agreed to the mission and was given details of co-ordinates and time schedules and to further assure him he was given authorisation codes for the mission that he later ran on the Star Fleet database, all seemed to be legit. The three man stood and shook hands,

“The cargo will be loaded into your ship before you launch, just fly on the designated path at the right time and all will be fine Mr Jackson”. That was the last time that Martin had seen either of them.

6 HOURS LATER

There was a snap and Martin paused. He had reached the light.

It had taken him 6 hours of solid marching to reach the source of the light which had turned out to be a small encampment comprising of a few tents and a single solitary building located in the middle of the camp. Martin was approaching from the West of the camp and he had already spotted a small shuttle that would become his getaway vehicle on the Eastern side, all he needed was to get to it. Rummaging through the supplies he had bought with him Martin found a pair of binoculars equipped with night vision and distance measure. He bought them up to his eyes which had continually felt half open since the crash. Looking through them he could see that there were numerous men around all carrying weapons of varying descriptions: disruptor’s, phase weapons and even some extremely old and archaic projectile based weapons. There was also a mounted phase gun that over looked the makeshift landing strip. These guys looked seriously armed but they were from a race of people that Martin had never seen. Their arms appeared to be out of proportion with the rest of their body’s and they had skin that reminded him of an apple left too long in the sun. As Martin continued to watch, an enormous figure of a man stepped out of the main building clutching an old style radio in his hand. He must have stood at least 6ft 2” high and Martin estimated he weighed at least 300lbs.

“I don’t know who these people are, but what the hell are they doing on the edge of the Alpha Quadrant”.

The figure was shouting into the radio, obviously someone had gotten on the wrong side of him. The figure threw the radio against the side of the building instantly smashing it to pieces, he then turned around and barked some orders to the rest of the band of men. At his word the camp seemed to come alive, search lights came on, force fields were erected and roughly 75% of the group mobilised and began to move off in varying vehicles in the direction of Martin’s crash site.

“Shit, well they obviously know someone’s here know, I’d better make a move”

The hunting party moved off south of the camp and Martin could only hope that the moves he had made to cover his tracks would not lead them straight back to their own camp and if they did hopefully he would be long gone by the time they returned. He made his way down the side of a small precipice to drop down roughly 25 meters from one of the force-fields. He looked the defence system up and down desperately trying to find a flaw that would allow him access to the camp. Just as he was about give up one of the panels of the force-field began to flicker as if the power was waning and it eventually dissipated all together.

“Well there’s a spot of luck, if not slightly suspicious luck” said Martin to himself as he slipped inside the mysterious races camp. Moving his way around the back of the tents Martin was desperately trying to avoid making a scene. His heart was throbbing in his head and the pain was slowly beginning to return to his legs. His mind was becoming clouded by a mixture of pain, fear and confusion. Shaking himself back to reality he made his way around to flank the man on the mounted gun, however if he was going to make it off the rock he was going to have to take him down. Martin approached from behind and performed two simultaneous moves, firstly he threw a rock roughly 50 metres in front and to the left of the gunners position drawing his attention and causing him to focus on that spot leaving him oblivious to the fact that Martin was coming up behind him with knife drawn. The knife cut his throat cleanly like silk over a Samurai sword and Martin began to pick-up the lifeless bloody body and pull it off of the gunnery position, however as he did so he underestimated this race. The man’s ankle was linked to the gun position and as Martin pulled him away it pulled out a pin on the gun which immediately sounded an alarm.

The alarm burst into his head like a thousand thunder claps and he felt his whole body tighten as every search light in the camp zeroed in on his position. A figure to the south entrance of the camp turned and raised his weapon. Martin quickly jumped into the gun position and fired three shots at the man, disintegrated him immediately with two penetrating his chest and the other his head. Martin fired the gun continuously into the tents and buildings around causing devastation and confusion. Jumping out of the seat Martin was on the ground and running for the shuttle craft constantly followed by spot lights and phaser fire. In the distance he could hear returning vehicles, the alarm had alerted the patrol and they were heeding the call.

As Martin dove for cover behind some grey, non-descript crates that were lying on the floor a shot of plasma flew over his head, it was so close he was sure he could feel his hair move from the blast. Looking towards the landing strip he realised he was about to get some luck. It would appear that the craft was already prepped for flight and they were inviting him aboard. The nacelles were humming gently and the back ramp was open, which meant if he could only get close enough he could run aboard and be in the atmosphere before they would have a chance to do anything about it. Turning round onto his back Martin pulled a plasma grenade from his chest and primed the weapon. He leant his head over the crates to see the patrol bursting in through the front gates and dismount from their vehicles, Martin launched the grenade from his hands, the twinge in his back reminding him he was in no condition for a long battle. The grenade landed at the feet of what at that precise moment in time was the unluckiest man in the universe as the grenade exploded tearing him to shreds and causing severe damage to those around him. With Martin’s ‘diversion’ successfully underway he rose to his feet and ran for the craft.

Shots flew over his head and all around him; it would appear that whoever these people were they were not particularly good shots. The plasma was hitting into the ground and buildings around sending red hot sparks and dirt into the air around Martin. With his arms in front of his face Martin ran as hard as his legs would let him towards the shuttle craft. As he was roughly 5 metres away one blast caught his shoulder tearing the skin and sending a searing shot of pain through Martin’s body. Though knocking him off balance it wasn’t enough to stop the battle hardened Star Fleet officer who made it to the craft and ran inside, although the scene inside wasn’t exactly what he expected.

“Quickly Mr. Jackson get in the pilot’s seat, we have to get of this planet now!” the words came from the mouth of a man Martin could barely believe was here. It was the ‘Geek’ from the café those months ago, although this time he looked distinctly different. The glasses were gone and there was no air of weakness about him, he had a pulse rifle across his back and a phaser in his hand levelled squarely at Martin’s chest.

“Please Mr. Jackson I don’t have time to ask again”, shots of plasma began to fly at the craft sending sparks shooting up inside. “How do I know I can trust you?”, shouted Martin over the din of the battle and weather outside, “Your choice Mr. Jackson, right now you either trust me and live or you stay here on this planet and die with them!”. With that the geek lowered his phaser and turned to the controls. With shots of plasma now beginning to come up the ramp inside the craft Martin reluctantly hit the door lock button and made his way to the pilot’s seat. He fired up the nacelles to full strength and shot off of the planet’s surface into the atmosphere, the odd shot of plasma hitting the side’s of the craft. He made it out of the atmosphere and away from the planet. He had done it; he was off that rock and with a new friend to boot.

Martin waited until he was some distance from the planet before he brought the craft to a halt and left it in a simple holding pattern just going round and round in space. Looking to his new ‘friend’ who was for some reason pre-occupied with the view from the window Martin slowed raised his phaser and stuck it in his back, “Now you listen, you’d better start talking real quick and real fast, or your insides are going to become this craft’s new interior design and knowing my history like you do you know damn well I’ll pull the trigger without hesitation”.

The man turned around and sat himself down on the co-pilot’s seat just opposite Martin.

“Don’t worry,” he said “I’ll tell you everything because I need you to know everything if we stand a chance.” With a puzzled look on his face Martin asked the man to continue,

“Firstly let me introduce myself. My name is Brian Hanrahan and I do indeed work for the P.T.I.D, the man that was with me in that café those months ago was Duncan Pritchard a man who I thought I knew but a lot has changed since then. When we approached you I thought that you were taking a new weapon to another star fleet officer on that planet who was involved in covert operations in an effort to stop a civil war breaking out between the nations on that planet, little did I know the opposite is….” He raised his arm to look at a timer on his watch, “precisely 5 minutes and 43 seconds away. What you have actually just ‘delivered’ to that planet is a Class 5 Neutron Bomb that is going to rip about 5km’s of that planet to pieces in a matter of minutes. The race of men you saw at that camp are one side of the civil war and that bomb has been specifically designed to appear as if it was made by the other race of people on that planet, it’s a bomb designed to spark a full scale war. The men at that camp believed I was working for them when in fact I was working for Duncan. Duncan Pritchard has a deal with a weapon’s manufacturer on the far side of the planet and this war is going to provide both of them with some handsome profits.”

Martin could feel his anger building inside throughout Brian’s story, he grabbed the man by the shoulder and slammed him into the side of the craft the phaser pressing against his neck, “Your telling me that your about to start a full scale war costing people their lives in pursuit of money!” the words come out of his mouth as if they were leaving a nasty taste behind.

“No please you have to understand I didn’t know any of this was happening Duncan only told me what was happening shortly before, before,” the man seemed reluctant, “before what” asked Martin pushing the phaser into his neck, “before he beamed me aboard your craft”

Martin’s grip on the man loosened slightly as he realised what had happened. “You, you were the reason my craft crashed, you had meant me to crash all along.”

“Please let me explain, Duncan had told me to sabotage your craft so that it crashed on the planet to mean that when that bomb went off all of the evidence would be eradicated including the men that will be approaching the crash site right now, he told me I either sabotaged your craft or he would kill me, I had no choice! So I beamed aboard, destroyed your systems and then used the escape pod but the pod was damaged and I had to land on the planet. Luckily the men thought I was working for them so they took me back to their camp. Then I saw your shuttle burn in from the sky and smash into the desert’s floor.”

“That explains everything,” said an extremely bemused Martin, “you’re the reason one of those force field panels dispersed and the reason the shuttle was prepped for take-off”.

“Yes, I knew if I wanted to stand a chance to right my wrongs I would need you alive”.

Martin leant back in his chair struggling to take it all in. Within the last 24 hrs he had crashed and destroyed his shuttlecraft, walked for 6 hours with a broken leg, engaged in a battle with an unknown race of people and now he was getting involved in a conspiracy theory. As he sat back Brian stood and returned his gaze out of the window and back to the planet, he turned his head to his watch, back to the planet and bowed his head as the class 5 weapon exploded on the planet’s surface ripping a scar on her skin. Martin watched Brain and could see that he felt as cheated and used in this whole affair as he felt himself. Shame swept over the pair of them as they realised what they may potentially just have started. They both seemed to take a moment’s silence to have their own thought’s and justify to themselves that this was not their fault and that they both had been used by a man bent on the accumulation of wealth. Martin had thought the man reeked of a lack of morals when he first met him, it would appear that his instinct’s had been correct.

“Well, what do we do now?” asked Martin.

“The way I see it we have two options. We take this shuttle craft and get as far away from the Alpha-Quadrant as we can and leave this all behind…..or,” he said with a wry smile appearing at the corners of his mouth, “we go and find that bastard and make him pay. He thinks we’re both dead and that his plan has gone off without a hitch. We find him, kill him and then try to undo what we did on this planet”.

“Well I’ve never been a fan of the idea of retreating,” said Martin with a clear hint of satisfaction in his eye, “let’s go get him”.

“Good that’s settled then, but first let me sort your legs out they look like they could do with some attention.”

With that the two new friends headed off towards Earth in search of justice and an end to the whole sorry affair.