Balder's Angels

And now, the first of a two-part special episode of Balder's Angels. Warning: contains mild peril. Reader discretion is advised.

Mission: Do Not Go Gentle Day 7 Stardate: 2407.07.09

(USS Champlain – Deck 36 – Lifeboat Access – Ensign (JG) William 'Balder' Roebuck, Petty Officers Faith, Hope and Love – 1940)

“GET A MOVE ON LADIES,” he screamed, voice thick with exertion, back bent under the malfunctioning lifepod door that threatened to seal them on the wrong side of doom. “I THINK I JUST SPROUTED A GREY HERE!”

The ship had become a groaning, rumbling mausoleum around them in a matter of mere minutes and if they didn’t hustle some butt it still might bear them to Valhalla whether they liked it or not. But they were lucky to have come so far, Balder knew. The course from engineering had been a tortuous and roundabout one, as they found their route blocked by depressurising sections, plumes of flame and even venting white-hot plasma. Most of the lifeboats would surely be away already, and Balder had wagered their lives that the lower decks would be their best bet of finding one unoccupied. They’d found one, sure enough, but opening the recalcitrant door had proved to be a challenge all of its own.

He gritted his teeth and braced his legs harder against the insistent door as it impolitely redoubled its efforts to crush him. One by one the three women sprinted ahead and ducked under the gap. He tumbled into the lifepod himself, the door smugly slamming down behind him with bone-snapping velocity. He lay a moment, attempting to get his breath back, trusting to one of his team to slap the release.

Love pushed her way forward to the control seat as Faith slammed her fist on the release. Hope looked at Balder as he lay on the floor.

"I'd get up if I were you, sir," she advised, strapping herself into one of the seats as the escape pod jerked away from the hull of the dying ship. "It’s likely to be a bumpy ride."

Faith grunted her agreement, then plonked herself down next to Love.

"B***dy b*****ds," she muttered as she tapped on the scanner with a pudgy finger. Balder found himself inclined to agree with the sentiment as he wearily dragged himself upright.

“What’s the problem?” he said as he moved towards a crash couch. But before she could reply, the pod was lit with a blinding, silent flash as the tortured ship finally exploded behind them, far too close for comfort. He threw an arm over his face, knowing he’d be wearing a sunburn for a while, clinging desperately to the couch as the shockwave buffeted them.

“SON OF A B-” His imprecation was cut short as an enormous ringing boom drove a section of the wall inwards. A piece of wreckage, a frozen body, something, he didn’t know what, had struck them, and suddenly the pod was a vortex, his sense of orientation completely lost as it spun through space. The floor became the ceiling and then the wall was under him, and then nothing at all. Finally he came to a savage, bumpy rest upon his behind as Love brought the pod’s crazy spin under control.

“S-sitrep,” he managed to croak, wishing he’d followed Hope’s lead and strapped himself down.

"We got hit by something," Hope volunteered.

"No sh*t, sherlock," muttered Love. "Controls answering sluggishly," she added slightly louder.

Faith let out a string of imprecations that would have impressed a Klingon. "We're losing atmosphere," she stated at the end. "Must have a minor breach somewhere, it's escaping slowly but surely. Look in the back storage, there should be a goop gun or something."

Balder scrambled to his feet, and dashed to the storage compartment, marvelling with a tenth of his brain that Love had managed to bring the craft back under control so adroitly.

~Not a bad piece of flying,~ he thought, as he rifled the compartment. He frowned the thought away, redoubling his concentration. Then he spotted the gun, snatching it up, scattering other miscellaneous equipment. He powered it on and squeezed the trigger. A spluttering jet of air farted out of the nozzle.

“God damn it,” he grimaced. “No good. Some motherless SOB forgot to reload it.” It was a cinch it was one of those engineering dorks, he reasoned as he rifled the cabinet for a spare sealant cannister. There was already a noticeable temperature drop in the cabin, it seemed, and he thought he could hear the sibilant hiss of escaping atmosphere over the thrum of the engine. “No spare charges either,” he growled over his shoulder, slinging the sensitive piece of equipment back into the cabinet with a clatter, slamming the door behind it. He spun back to the front.

“We’re just gonna have to try and make it to one of these ships,” he said, peering over Love’s shoulder at the scanner screen. “Make sure the beacon’s activated. Who’s in range?”

"You want the good news or the bad news?" Faith asked. Without waiting for a reply she continued, "Good news is there are three ships in range. Bad news is they're all hositles. Good news is so far none of them are firing at escape pods. So far," she added. "Bad news is we can't last more than ten minutes with enough atmosphere to survive."

"Recommend we head for the nearest one, signalling distress," Love interjected.

He wasn’t even surprised at the crappy odds. It seemed like he’d been clinging to his life by dint of sheer dogged determination ever since Oskoala VII. After a decade of that, the prospect of mortal peril had long since lost its impact.

Hope undid her seatbelt and scrambled to the storage. Rooting around she pulled out some blankets. Handing one to Balder, she moved forward and draped two around the shoulders of Faith and Love before returning to her seat to wrap herself in the last one.

“Good thinking crewman,” he muttered without considering his words as he took the blanket, absorbing what Faith and Love had said and thinking it through. It was a difficult call. On the one hand they were facing certain death out here, and it looked like there was frag all in the way of alternative options. But what reception would they find on an enemy ship? Would they be shot on sight, blasted out of space, or would they be taken hostage by an enemy captain keen on securing himself some clemency if the battle turned against him? It made no difference, he reasoned. He didn’t like the idea of throwing himself on some rat-b*****d’s mercy, but doing nothing would kill them for certain.

He patted his pockets, coming up with a fresh cigar. Carefully he unwrapped the foil and bit the end, spitting it to the deck.

“Make it so,” he said, clamping his jaws down on it.

The past ten minutes had been a knife-edge of trembling, shivering trepidation as they crawled across open vacuum, making it a gift of their atmosphere and warmth. Balder finally conceded defeat as he stood, feet planted wide behind the two seats of the control board, and tugged the blanket around his shoulders. The ship loomed large through the tiny viewport, the blank face of Starfleet-grey hull filling its entirety.

“Any reply to the distress call yet?” he asked.

"Not so far," Faith replied. "The rest is ******* silence. Skinhead Hamlet, 20th Century classic," she added.

There was an unexpected jolt that nearly sent him back onto his already bruised behind, and the wall ahead of them seemed to suddenly accelerate towards them.

“What the…” said Balder, regaining his balance with the help of Faith’s and Love’s seat-backs.

"Tractor beam," Love ground out. "I'm cutting the power, that should make the ride a little smoother."

She glanced back at Balder, a half smile on her face. "I'd like to say it's been a pleasure serving with you," she said enigmatically. He frowned down at her, the face smudged, the hair a blonde tumble, long past rescue, and yet there was an undeniable beauty that radiated from the full bow lips, twisted coquettishly, to the wide, sparkling eyes that twinkled at him. He stared back at her a moment too long before coughing. He shifted the cigar to the other corner of his mouth, and brought his gaze back to the viewport.

“Eyes on the road, crewman,” he said, gruffly.

"I suppose we have to surrender?" Hope said from behind him. "Or do we take the ship once we're aboard?"

Balder turned to look at the slender wisp, staring disconsolately at her ruined manicure.

~Take the ship?~ he thought incredulously, uncertain of what was the most staggering: the sheer audacity of the idea, or the fact that it had come from her. ~There’s no way in hell we could… unless…~

“Maybe not the ship,” he said thoughtfully, eying the shuttlebay doors their course was inexorably swinging towards. “But we might just get away with a ship.”

To be continued on the next all-action episode of Balder’s Angels…

===

Previously on Balder's Angels: After barely escaping the destruction of the USS Champlain with their lives, our intrepid hero and heroines were caught in a crippled lifepod, clutched in the nefarious grasp of an enemy tractor beam, and with their oxygen rapidly running out. Now, the thrilling conclusion to this all-new, all-action, two-part adventure!

Theme: http://midi.ilbello.com/Charlies%20Angels.mid

Mission: Do not go gentle Day: 7 Stardate: 2407.07.09

(USS Caroli Angelica - Shuttlebay - Ensign (JG) William 'Balder' Roebuck, Petty Officers Faith, Hope and Love - 2007)

As the pod landed bumpily, the three women stood up, Faith and Love discarding their blankets and Piety Hope wrapping hers round her. "I'm still cold," she said. One hand held a phaser rifle outside the blanket, dangling by its strap. She looked at them, all staring at her. "Well duh, they're going to ask us to surrender and they're *so* not going to believe we have no weapons," she said witheringly.

Faith sighed. "You're right, Pie," she said, and grabbed a phaser-rifle herself. She fiddled with the power-cell, and it drained of energy immediately. "No sense in making them a present of a working weapon," she grinned.

Fidelity picked up a type II hand-phaser and after a quick look around, nodded to the others.

A metallic, amplified voice came from outside.

"Your craft is now secured in the shuttlebay of the USS Caroli Angelica," it said. "You are instructed to surrender immediately."

Fid looked at Balder.

"OK boss, your call. Just say the word and we'll make it so." He turned back from the shadowed command console, a frown of disbelief on his face beneath the hood of his blanket.

"Well?" he growled, staring at them each in turn. "The hell are you waiting for, an invitation?! This crate's bingo atmosphere and that pretty plan of yours won't be worth spit if we all asphyxiate. Just get it done." And with that, he dropped to the deck, the blanket shrouding him, puddling around his balled-up form. Hope rolled her eyes at him, and Faith just shrugged as Fidelity pressed the button to open the hatch.

The hatch hissed upwards, a warm breeze of equalizing pressure gusting inwards.

"*Owie!* My ears just *popped*," whined Hope, shivering under the blanket.

"Just get your hands up," hissed Faith in reply as she assumed the position. Then her eyes grew wide at the brace of phaser rifles levelled at them, BDU-clad security officers behind the impassive muzzles. Silently, Fidelity breathed a prayer of thanks. If they'd been facing marines, the plan would go nowhere.

"Attention seditionists," came the same stern, amplified tones. "You are now prisoners of war under the protection of Captain John Bosley. Step out of the craft with your hands up. Any attempt at resistance will be met with deadly force. Make no sudden movements or gestures."

Fidelity stepped out first, closely followed by Trinity and Piety. The first two had their hands up as ordered but Piety shuffled forwards, swathed in the blanket with one dainty hand holding the strap of the phaser rifle away from her as if in disgust.

"I thought I said -" began one of the men, then Piety turned her gaze on him, making her eyes wide and piteous as she shuffled towards him. Cute, small, furry animals all over the galaxy would have killed for that expression.

"Oh *please* don't be cross with me!" she begged. "It was so cold and so *horrid* and so utterly, utterly not *nice*!" She thrust the hand holding the phaser rifle towards him. "Take the nasty thing," she said. "It's not like I know how to *use* it, I'm just a lowly ops crewman and if I *never* see another phaser again it'll be *too soon*."

That had been Fidelity's idea. Since Security, Ops and Engineering all wore gold, they would pretend to be Ops.

The Lt Commander facing them stared at her non-plussed and gingerly took the weapon from her. He looked slightly relieved when he checked it and found that not only was the safety on but it wasn't powered up either.

Trinity threw her weapon on the deck with a certain degree of force. It bounced once then skidded across the deck, clattering to a halt several feet away. "Yeah, what she said." Her somewhat masculine voice seemed to echo in the shuttle bay.

"Names, ranks, and serial number," barked one of the security men.

Fidelity turned the full force of her gaze on him. "Faith, Hope and... Love," she breathed huskily, handing him the type II phaser.

He stared at her in disbelief. "You're kidding, right?"

She shook her head. "Love, Fidelity, Petty Officer, serial number 357914L."

"Faith, Trinity, Petty Officer, serial number 478653X."

"Hope, Piety, Petty Officer, serial number "

There was a silence.

"Serial number..... oh I can *never* remember the stupid thing!" Piety sighed. "But you *aren't* going to be *cross* with me, are you?"

"Uh, well, it's regulations, see," the Lt Commander shuffled his feet uncomfortably. "We have to register you and we need your serial number for that."

"OH! They didn't tell me that. How silly! Shall I make one up for you?"

"It should be on the back of your commbadge," the Lt Commander said. He frowned suddenly. "Wait a minute, you're Ops and you didn't know th-"

He broke off with a moan that was almost a hiss of air as Piety's knee connected with a sensitive part of his anatomy. His eyes didn't quite cross but they came close to it. Before he could straighten up she had his phaser and was holding it at his head from behind him, on of his arms twisted behind his back in a position he would have sworn it would never go into.

"Sheesh, wherever you go there's always one know-it-all," she muttered. "Now sweetie, pay attention. As it happens I wasn't quite truthful with you. I *do* know one end of a phaser from another and I happen to know *exactly* what a phaser discharge at heavy stun does to a brain when said phaser is held to the skull containing said brain at the time of said discharge. It quite put me off scrambled eggs for a week when they showed us. So be a good boy and tell your friends to give their big boys toys to *my* friends. And I mean the ones in their hands not the ones in their pants."

From the corner of her eye she spotted the blanketed mound of Balder peering around the edge of the lifepod's hatch, one eye bulging between the folds of the blanket he was crouched beneath, so far un-noticed. She grinned and offered him a wink while the deck crew was distracted. So she'd... modified the plan a little. She was sure he wouldn't mind. She neutralised her expression again as the deck crew finished sheepishly exchanging their weapons with the other women, Faith and Love kicking the leftover rifles and hand phasers well out of their reach. Dialling up the settings, they covered the small crowd.

"You can come out now, chief," trilled Love. The officers looked around in alarm, their eyes growing wide as Balder suddenly emerged from the crumpled grey blanket to stand in the pod entrance, cigar jutting insistently, a phaser rifle resting on his shoulder. Piety had to admit, he made an imposing sight.

"'Fraid your Captain Bosely's gonna have to find himself a new date for tonight," he said, hopping down to the deck with a boom and sticking his phaser rifle under the nose of Piety's poor hostage. "These ladies are with me, pipsqueak." The man stammered and looked like he might try a retort, until Balder unleashed a smile on him, the first one Piety had seen cross his face all day. She hoped it would be the last.

"Alright," he barked, suddenly whirling away, covering their right flank. "We're getting out of here. Crewman Love, if you would be so kind as to find us a conveyance."

Fidelity looked around, and selected the nearest shuttle. It was a Type 9, almost brand new by the look of it. It would take the four of them comfortably and with enough of a turn of speed to get they away. Now if the Lt Commander kept the craft prepped and ready like he was supposed to...

"That one," she said, nodding at it.

The Lt Commander's eyes bulged. "B-but that's Captain Bosely's personal shuttle! He's only had it a week! Please - take another one," he begged.

"This isn't Take Your Pick," Fidelity snapped, all traces of her husky drawl gone. "I don't care if it's Doenitz's personal bonk-bus, that's the one we're taking."

She eyed the deck crew as she finished speaking and Trinity and Piety, with Piety's hostage, began moving towards the designated shutte. Trinity hit the button and the door swung open, and Balder and Fidelity began backing over to them. As she backed away, Fidelity was counting the deckhands and security officers. She'd given them mental nicknames so she could keep track of them better.

"Snow White's with Piety and there's Doc, Sneezy, Dopey, Happy, Bashful, Sleepy..." she muttered under her breath. "Uh-oh," she frowned. "Where's Grumpy?"

"Can the cracks, wiseass," Balder snarled back at her. He glanced at her, double-taking when he saw the frosty glare she was giving him. "Uh... you didn't mean me?"

"Someone wants to be a hero," she hissed. "There were 8 of them altogether, one's Piety's hostage and there are 6 over there. That means one motherlover is going to try and stop us."

"Ah crap," he muttered, sighting down the rifle and panning his gaze across the deck once again as they closed the distance to the shuttle. "You're positive?"

She nodded insistently.

"Spread out," he spat. "I'll try and draw his fire, holler if you see anyone."

The cavernous shuttlebay was eerily quiet as they edged across the deck.

"I know you're hiding back there, you gutless freak," Balder shouted hoarsely, his voice bouncing back off the vaulted ceiling. Step by step, the shuttlecraft drew closer. "Don't try anything smart, tough guy, just come on out and let's do this mano-a-mano." A sudden noise, a metallic clattering scrape, drew the nose of his rifle round in a blurred arc to find... a quantum spanner, lying innocuously in the middle of the deck.

"Now who is the tough guy, eh?" came the self satisfied drawl from a shady corner. Balder bristled and turned on his heel, facing down the man who'd somehow got the drop on him.

"Hands up, amigo," he smirked. Balder realigned his cigar and spat, raising his arms.

And then the smile was frozen in place, a flash of confusion crossing the eyes as a wisp of smoke suddenly drifted up from the chest of his uniform. He toppled forward bonelessly, dead before he hit the deck, and Balder caught a glimpse of Trinity Faith darting back behind the cover of the craft, cradling the phaser rifle.

He turned and saw the other deck hands had capitalised on the distraction by re-arming themselves. Any minute this deck was going to be a dangerous place to be.

"GET THAT BIRD IN THE AIR!" he cried as he spun, sprinting for the open hatch, firing indiscriminately behind him.

Fidelity laid down covering fire as Balder hurtled towards them. The figure of the luckless Lt Commander lay still on the ground, laid out by a scientific blow to the head by Piety. Trinity, having saved Balder's sorry butt was busy doing the equivalent of hotwiring the shuttle, hacking into its systems since their hostage in a last act of defiance (which to do him credit he probably sincerely believed at the time to be his last ever) had refused to give them the codes.

"How're you doing there Trin?" Fidelity yelled back as Balder joined her at the hatch. "Glad you could join us in one piece, chief," she added with a smile. "Wouldn't be the same," she paused, sighted a security officer moving cautiously around the escape pod and sent him scuttling for cover with a well-aimed blast that burned the pod's hull and left it glowing where she'd hit it, "if we were missing your ugly mug."

"You missed," Balder took aim himself and cursed as the beam hit the deck ten centimetres from the body he'd been aiming at.

Fidelity grinned. "No, I wanted to leave him alive. For now. That part of the hull's going to be too hot to be near for a while." She took aim again, this time at another part of the pod. "They'll have to stay behind it or get their heads shot off, and if its too hot round the sides they can't creep around it."

"Got it!" Trinity's shout of triumph was almost synonymous with the hatch closing and the sound of the engines powering up. "Strap yourselves in ladies. And you, chief. Going to be a bumpy ride."

"Just punch it would ya?" he bellowed, stumbling past Piety toward a vacant seat as the shuttle rose unsteadily. She stared wide-eyed out the viewport as streaks of phaser fire burned across the air, screeching off the hull plates, and then off the shields as Trinity got them online. The shuttle drifted round in a lazy, bobbing circle, as Fidelity settled herself into the pilot's chair.

"Contact!" she called, and tapped impulse power to 100 per cent. An invisible boot settled on Piety's chest and commenced pushing her into the soft cushions of the seat as they suddenly lanced across the open air of the shuttlebay.

"Uh..." said Balder. She tried to glance at him but the force of their acceleration prevented her from turning her head. "Crewman," he called towards the command console. The engines roared at their back drowning the sound of his voice, but even so, she nearly jumped out of her skin when he suddenly bellowed: "CREWMAN LOVE HAVE YOU NEGLECTED TO NOTICE THE SHUTTLEBAY DOORS WE ARE ABOUT TO STRIKE AT SOME NOT INCONSIDERABLE VELOCITY?!"

Fidelity's grin was slightly fixed as she replied, "Oh I see them alright, Sir. That's where we're going. Right through them, Sir."

"WHAT??!! ARE YO-" CCCRRRAAASSSHHH!!! "-ING CRAZY?!"

Piety patted Balder's hand as he appeared to be stunned to find himself still alive, in one piece, inside the shuttle which was also in one piece and yet, outside the Caroli Angelica.

"It's OK," Piety reassured him as they sped away towards a group of friendly ships, jinking evasively through the Caroli Angelica’s half-hearted barrage of phaser fire, Trinity signalling the transponder to be recognised as a friend. "She's done this lots of times before – on the holodeck, that is. Of course," she added thoughtfully, "On the holodeck you don't *actually* die, but no matter how many times it failed, Fidelity always said that there was that one chance in a million it'd work." She beamed at Balder, the cigar drooping off his lip as he stared back at her, agog. "And she was right! It worked this time!"

(Posted by Liz Geuken and Hanspeter Bosshard)

(Associate Producer Cornelius J Polyester III)