In the past…
It served to protect the Federation from it’s enemies.
In the present…
It will serve once more, under the command of a new captain.
In the future…
The ship and crew of the USS-Akira
will face the great unknown that is yet to come.
STAR TREK : TIMELINES
Pilot Episode – “AKIRA”
Based on “Star Trek” created by Gene Roddenberry.
“Timelines” Concept created by Paul D. White
Story by Allison Perimann
I
Time : 2375.
Six months before the end of the Dominion War.
“How much time do we have?”
“Four, maybe five minutes.” A female trill, was spying something
through her microbinoculars, which could scan and zoom on objects and
lifeforms that were thousands of meters away. She was responding to a voice
that came from her commbadge, but she knew it was Lieutenant Hawthorn who
had assembled the few that were left of there remaining crew when they were
forced to abandon the USS-Khitomer and use escape pods to reach the surface
of this forest filled planet. When they had finally set up a small defense post
near where they had landed, which was only made up of walls of logs and three
escape pods, they needed to send someone out to locate the Jem’Hadar ships that
had passed over them earlier, and so Alaris was chosen for this assignment. She
felt lucky that they had stayed hidden for this long. However, she knew that they
wouldn’t be hidden for much longer, special thanks to their own bio-signatures,
the tracking devices the Jem’Hadar used in the fields of battle were more than
adequate of locating lifeforms that were distances away.
She spied at the horned figures once more to get an accurate count of
their forces. “So far I can see about thirty-five or so troops.”
The lieutenant called back to her, “In that case, get back here quick so
we can get setup to hold them off.”
“Aye sir.” she responded. She got up from the ground where she had
been observing the Jem’Hadar, and hurried back to the forest filled camp they
had built. Thoughts began running through her head at about the same
speed that she was running. She was thinking about how she had only made the
rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade in this short time, and thought for sure, that this
would be the end of her Starfleet career. Unfortunately, Starfleet was short on
officers and crewman, so as it was, she and her classmates all graduated from
the Academy an entire year early and then given immediate postings. She
thought about her friends, and how much she missed them, but she had to hold
strong here and now, which then led her to think about her family.
Her sister, Kell, was serving aboard the Enterprise. The last that she
had heard from her, she had been engaged with a race called the Son’a. She
smiled at the fact that they both competed against each other throughout the
entire time they were at Starfleet Academy. The next time she would hear from
Alaris would most likely be on a casualty report on a wall someplace. Then she
thought of her mother, and grandparents, and then she almost started to cry
thinking about them. Was this going to be the end?
She gathered herself again as she approached the bushel covered fort,
where they were about to try and stand their ground against their greatest enemy.
Around her she could see the fifteen officers and crew that still remained from
the ship. They had all worked hard to build this outpost, and even she knew as
well as they did, that it would not hold up against the powerful blasts of an
energy weapon.
She was handed a phaser compression rifle as she walked up to the
Lieutenant. “Sir. The Jem’Hadar should becoming over the ridge from the north
in a few minutes.”
“Very well. Thank you Lieutenant Perim.” She could sense the
nervousness in his voice, and see the inexperience that he had in commanding
others, but he had been holding up quite well since their landing. “Take a
position.”
“Yes sir.” She kneeled down next to the wall of wood and one of the
escape pods, which gave her an opening to fire out. She started to check her rifle
for problems that might arise during battle, when an ensign that she saw on the
bridge of the Khitomer walked over to her. She appeared to be frightened by
their current situation, as the tear marks covered her face.
She stood down next to her. “Do you think the distress call got through
to anyone?”
Alaris started to remember that moment which was still fresh in her
mind. She was standing at the Ops station, taking over for the dead crewman
that had fallen. The captain soon ordered all personnel to evacuate the ship, and
then he told her to send out a distress call on all subspace bands. It was shortly
thereafter, that the captain was overwhelmed by a plasma explosion from the
ceiling of the bridge. She continued to send the signal out on three different
occasions after that. The ensign, who was probably no older than she was, kept
pushing her to leave, but Alaris was hoping for some confirmation that someone
would rescue them. Finally, the explosions on the bridge became so intense that
even she was forced to leave, and evacuate the ship with several others. The
question to her answer was simple, but what she wanted to say would damage
her morale even more. “We started to receive a faint transmission from
someone, so I’m hoping that it was Starfleet.”
“At least that’s some good news, right?” the woman said with a smile
of hope.
“Yeah. It is.” Problem was, she couldn’t identify the transmission that
really was coming in, and that was why she stayed at the station as long as she
did. She knew one thing was for certain. Someone was trying to contact them,
but with the Jem Hadar’s subspace interference, it seemed unlikely that they
would even be found if any of them survived this. Even so, it was more likely
that there transmission would be picked up by more Dominion ships instead of
Starfleet.
As she finished checking her rifle and getting her recharges ready for
reload, She glanced up at the ridge once more just in time to see a blue spark of
energy flying in her direction. “Take cover!”
Suddenly the air filled with energy as the small group saw what she
did, and hid themselves behind the wall. The ensign woman quickly dropped to
the ground in a panic, releasing her grip on her hand phaser. Alaris held herself
next to the wall as she felt the impact of each energy blast into the wooden
structure. If a tricorder had been scanning her at the moment it would show that
her adrenaline was pumping at an extreme rate, and the addition of breathing
fast did not help her much. She was nearly as scared as the ensign. In all the
excitement, she glanced over at the others to see that they were hiding just like
she was. It was when she saw Lieutenant Hawthorn’s fallen body no more than
two meters away that she realized that the wall was actually holding the
Jem’Hadar’s fire blasts. Finally she yelled out, “Open fire!”
A fury of blind phaser fire erupted from the walls that protected them.
Alaris started picking off targets one by one, when suddenly her rifle jammed
after about the fifth shot. She quickly tried to determine the problem of the
jamming. She thought to herself, “The pulse modulator. That’s got to be it.” She
quickly checked it once again, after having previously checked it before. It
wasn’t that. Then she saw a fried initiator which was the one thing that
permitted the energy beam to be focused into one stream of light. She threw the
rifle down to ground. Then she saw the cringing ensign on the ground and the
hand phaser that was next to her. She reached over immediately to pick up the
phaser and then saw one of the others fall in front her. She looked up to see three
more bodies along the side of the wall.
In another split second, the middle of the wall erupted in splinters,
taking down several others. It appeared that they had been focusing their fire on
the center sections of the outpost. She made a fast glance at the Jem’Hadar to
see that they were moving up, and it appeared that they were still holding strong
with about twenty or so. “This was going to be it.” she said to herself. She stood
up behind a wide tree and started to fire in a kneeling position. She took down
three more in a matter of seconds, then she started to hear a high pitched
humming from behind her. She looked back for a moment to see several
humanoid figures re-materializing from a transporter beam. Finally she realized
that help had arrived, when she saw the Starfleet uniforms. In a single instant,
Alaris began to feel a string of hope that they would make it through this.
After the beaming sequence had been complete, several members of the
rescue team were already firing on the Jem’Hadar. Alaris continued to stay
hidden behind the tree she was at, as two of the men knelt down next to her. One
of them kept Alaris and the other protected by a portable force shield that
absorbed plasma energy and returned fire. The other man quickly identified
himself. “Commander Mason, Rapid Response Team, USS-Akira!” he yells.
“Lieutenant Alaris Perim!” she said.
“What do you say we get out of here Lieutenant!”
She quickly nodded to him, and then all three of them started taking
down the Jem’Hadar, as did the rest of the team and survivors that were still
standing. In a matter of seconds the conflict was over.
“Akira to Mason. Report.” it was the sound of a voice coming from
Mason’s commbadge.
“The situation is secured Captain.” answered Mason.
“Good, and not a moment too soon. We’ve got a patrol of Dominion
fighters heading this way. Prepare to transport.”
“Aye sir.”
* * *
On the bridge of the Akira, which seemed to already be in a battered
state from a previous encounter with the Dominion, the captain prepared to
make one more fight with the fighters that were now inbound on there position
as they beamed up the survivors from the planet surface below.
The first report of their situation came from the lieutenant at the tactical
station, “Sir, the Dominion fighters will close to within firing range in three
minutes.”
“Bridge to Transporter Room One. I don’t mean to rush you
Commander, but…”
“That’s all of us sir. We’re ready to go.” Commander Mason obviously
knew what he was going to ask.
The captain then looked to the ensign at the flight control station.
“Helm, lay in a course back to the Federation. Maximum Warp.” The young
officer quickly followed his orders as the viewscreen showed the planet below,
disappearing from sight, and then the movement of forward propulsion matched
that of the entry into warp speed.
A few moments later, Commander Mason and Lieutenant Perim
stepped on to the bridge from the turbolift at the back of the room. However, by
this time they were already under attack by the fighters, taking heavy damage as
several bulkheads from the ceiling had already fallen. On the floor, laid the
bodies of several officers, most of them killed by massive plasma burns, and
among them was also the captain whose lifeless body was pinned beneath a
fallen support beam. The only officers left alive on the bridge were the
lieutenant at tactical and the ensign on the Conn.
“Perim. Take the Ops control.” commanded Mason.
“Aye sir.”
Mason quickly strode to the tactical station to get a report from the
lieutenant, “Report.”
“So far we’ve taken down two of the seven fighters. We’ve taken
damage to the weapons module, and shields are down to 20%. I have reports of
hull breaches on decks three, four, seven, and nine. Engineering is reporting
heavy damage.” A few more jolts from the Jem’Hadar ships created an eruption
of sparks all over the bridge, but no one was hurt. The lieutenant finished his
brief report with, “On board communications are down.”
“How long before we reach the Federation border ensign?”
“If we can keep warp 8, I’d say another minute or two, but the nacelles
are starting to buckle.
Alaris knew that two minutes was too long for them to be able to
survive this attack, as she heard Mason give out his orders. “Ensign, on my
command, I want you to take us out of warp, and then immediately push the
starboard thrusters to maximum…” He turned to look over at the lieutenant on
tactical, “…then I want you to open fire with whatever we have left in the
torpedo module.”
The ensign noted a concern to this course of action. “Sir, if we come
out of warp too fast we could tear the nacelles from the ship, and then pushing
the thrusters that far might fry them completely, and even then we would still be
turning around to face the fighters.
“That’s exactly what I’m hoping for.” By this time Alaris was thinking
that Mason was insane, but he was about to prove the reasoning behind his plan.
“Right now, I see this as our best alternative of escape. If they disable the ship,
they will take us as prisoners of war. Frankly ensign, I’d rather go down with the
ship.”
With that in mind the ensign acknowledged his plan, and then Mason
looked to Alaris and the lieutenant to see that they were ready.
Mason sat down in the captain’s chair and held on to the arm rests as he
gave the order. “Now ensign!”
The Akira was pulled back into normal space, and then a couple of
seconds later, the ship completed a full one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn, as
the ship’s hull strained itself to hold together making it look and sound as if it
were making a screeching turnabout in a 1960’s car chase. The port nacelle
started to vent plasma from the high stresses of the turn. Another split second
had passed as the Jem’Hadar fighters followed suit, with two of them exploding
into flames as the weapons module fired quantum torpedoes into their path,
which also struck a third one that impacted the Akira’s shields.
The bridge was quickly filled by a flurry of sparks and explosions and
in all the chaos, Alaris ducked behind her station to prevent from being hurt. She
could feel the ship come to a complete stop. Instead of being completely
destroyed in the oncoming attack, the fighter that had collided with them, had
disabled the ship.
She stood up once more as she heard the sound of an incoming hail on
the Ops console. “Commander, the Jem’Hadar are ordering us to surrender.” In
that same moment she looked up to see that there was no one to respond to her,
as she saw the ensign laying over the flight control station, the lieutenant fallen
to the floor next to the tactical station, and in the center of it all, Commander
Mason, having been thrown from the captain’s chair was covered in plasma
burns. She was the only one left on the bridge. She looked again to the hailing
console, and then started thinking about if this was anything compared to the
infamous Kobayashi Maru scenario that was talked about so often during her
days at the Academy.
She knew the Jem’Hadar would begin boarding the ship soon, so she
quickly found a pulse phaser rifle scattered among the debris of the bridge. She
checked the rifle for charges and held it ready in her hands so that she was
assured to be ready for whatever was to come.
With the exception of the occasional sparking of consoles and broken
conduits, the bridge seemed quiet, as even the red alert klaxon was not
functioning.
This quiet time, gave her a moment to clear her mind of something that she had
been thinking about since the evacuation of the Khitomer.
She was monitoring the long range scanners the during the whole of the
mission. The most recent reports of this region in Dominion space indicated that
there was very little activity to speak of, that is until Starfleet Intelligence
figured out why. The mission, was for them to go in, behind enemy lines, with a
small team and try to confirm the location of a secret Dominion cloning facility,
and if this confirmation was accurate, that it be destroyed. Alaris voiced her
opinions about the mission to the captain, but that changed very little of
anything at all. She felt that going behind the lines was unwarranted, and
presented more of a danger to the ship and crew. She stood down from her
arguments to the captain, but unfortunately her suspicions were quite accurate.
They never found the cloning facility on that planetoid rock, in fact she even
wondered if any of the team that they sent down there were still alive. She
doubted herself of it, but had she thought about it, she would have asked Mason
to try and locate them as well, but she was not even aware of the situation on the
Akira when she and the survivors were beamed aboard. One thing still lingered
in her mind though. How did the Dominion know that they were out here in the
first place, if this area of space was so inactive?
Soon thereafter, her train of thought was interrupted by the sound of a
transporter beam, and as she looked across the bridge she could see at least five
humanoid figures rematerializing on the deck. Several heavy heartbeats passed
as she finally realized that the Ops console was making sounds again. She held
the rifle steady in her right hand, pointed at one of the targets in front of her, and
quickly responded to the console with her left. The short range sensors that were
barely working picked up four more ships. Another moment later, the
viewscreen, which was as close to non-functional, showed a Jem’Hadar fighter
enveloped into flames, after being attacked by the three Klingon Birds-of Prey,
and the Saber-class starship that she reconfirmed on the scanners. When the
fighter was destroyed, the energy signatures of those that were beaming aboard
the bridge quickly faded away into thin air. After that, she heard the other fighter
quickly being dispatched into space dust.
After her heart began to slow down for a moment, the Ops panel, once
more, started calling her name for a response. Though she was startled for a
moment by it’s request to be responded to, she felt that this bearer of bad news
needed to be shot, but since it was the only thing left on the bridge that still
seemed to be working she indulged the panel once more. It was the incoming
hail from Sabre-class vessel.
“This is Captain Jeremy Ellis of the USS-Shepard. Akira please
respond.”
She quickly responded, “This is Lieutenant Alaris Perim. We read
you… barely.”
“Looks like you guys took quite a beating. Stand by lieutenant, were
going to tractor you back to Starbase 315.”
“Thank you Captain. Perim out.”
“At last” she thought, as she sat herself down with her back against the
wall. She dropped the rifle to her side, and put her hands over her face, only to
feeling the stinging sensation of her own wounds. It appeared that even she and
been a little singed, but in the heat of all that had happened, she had never even
realized it, until this moment. She also noticed that the right shoulder of her
uniform was torn and burned. Apparently, one of the Jem’Hadar’s plasma bursts
came that close to ending her life for certain. But she had survived, she felt
lucky, yet she felt more remorse for those who didn’t. Survivors guilt.
That’s what the counselors at the Academy called it. She knew there
were many who sacrificed their lives to rescue her and the remaining survivors
of the Khitomer, but this mistake meant two things. One was that Starfleet
would not be nearly as likely to make the same mistake again in the future, and
two, there was a lot more happening behind this war than anyone would
probably realize.
One thing was for certain. With the latest report of the Founder’s
disease, this war was going to come to an end very soon, and if not then, within
the next few months at the very least.
* * *
Meanwhile, in a secluded forest home, on a planet that is not ravaged or
seized by the conflicts of the Dominion War, a woman of green skin and long
black hair enjoys the quietness and serenity of her surroundings. A clock on the
wall displays the current time where she is, and it is read in Orion numbers,
which by converting the time to human standards, it would read as five minutes
to the hour of eight when the sun has fallen below the horizon.
The Orion woman looked up to the clock in a most impatient manner
as though she had been waiting for something, or someone, and finally, after
another few heartbeats had passed, the sound of a transporter beam disrupted the
silence in the room. Her party had arrived.
She could see that there were three figures rematerializing in front of
her, and as the process was completed, they could be distinctly identified as a
single Vorta, one of the many cloned ambassadors that were used to serve the
Dominion presence in the Alpha Quadrant, which was escorted by two
Jem’Hadar soldiers. She also saw a small PADD in the hands of the Vorta.
“Your late!” She insisted.
The Vorta started by speaking his apologies in a voice of sympathy,
“The Founders send their deepest regrets to keep you here waiting, but I’m
afraid it couldn’t be help. You see, traveling through the Quadrant these days is
precarious at best, but we managed to arrive here safely.” The Vorta could see
she was growing more impatient by the minute. Clearly, she was only in this
deal for the business.
“Get to the point Tyril.” she urged.
“Ah yes. Of course.” He paused for a brief moment as he looked over
the PADD he held in his hands. “On behalf of the Founders of the Dominion, we
would like to thank you for the service that the Orion Syndicate has given to us.
It has been most gratifying to say the least, and it is our hope that we can
continue this relationship further with…”
She interrupted him by swiping the PADD from his hands, “Let me
have that.” She quickly glanced over what appeared to be a list of names.
“That is the payment you requested. I’m sure you will find the
information useful and accurate.” said Tyril.
“Is this a complete list.” she asked.
“It is complete list of all Starfleet Intelligence’s highest agents, but…”
“But?” she forced.
“But, it is not a complete list of all their agents.”
“Fine. This will have to do for now. Thank you Tyril.” She started to
walk out of the room and upstairs to her loft.
“Thank you for your time.”
Removing herself from the conversation she said, “Don’t trip in the
doorway on your way out.” At which point she turned around to face them with
an Orion hand disruptor, catching all three of them by surprise, she fired on the
two Jem’Hadar first, killing them instantly, which left Tyril by himself.
The Vorta was filled with horror and surprise at the same time, but he
backed his words with conviction. “You have betrayed the Dominion!”
“No Tyril. You misunderstand the relationship at hand. I am not a
member of the Dominion, and I am not a servant of the Founders. I have no fear
of them or you.” she explained. During this time she had made her way back
down to him with the disruptor on him at all times, but she knew he wouldn’t be
carrying any weapons on him, just as he hadn’t on his previous trips here. The
Vorta were not engineered to carry weapons, that was a responsibility for the
Jem’Hadar. She then remembered a report that she had seen from one of her
special agents. “According to my analysts, this conflict that you have been
waging against the Federation, the Klingons and the Romulans, will come to it’s
end in a short order of time.” She could see that the Vorta was already putting
the pieces together. “And if this war continues for too much longer, I’d say the
Founders will die from their infectious disease in about six months or so.” She
smiled at him, but in a devilish manner.
“You have been passing information to the Federation.”
“Oh yes. I have. I even told them about your secret cloning facility on
that small little planetoid in the Curo system just outside Cardassian space. I’m
sure that once they find it, you will no longer be available for cloning will you?”
“The Founders will hunt you down for this…”
In that moment, the Orion woman shot the Vorta at point blank range
straight in the head, where he toppled to the floor below her, never speaking
another word.
She started speaking to the dead Vorta. “The Alpha Quadrant does not
belong to Federation, the Klingons, the Romulans, or the Founders of the
Dominion. This space belongs to the Orions. No one else.” she paused for a
brief moment. “Sorry Tyril, I forgot to mention this is where our relationship
ends.”
Removing a small device from her pocket, she spoke into it. “Kintara.
One to beam out.” Her body then disappeared into thin air as she left this once
peaceful setting.
II
Time: 2386
Eleven years later…
STAR TREK : TIMELINES
“AKIRA”