<USS Avalon> "My Heart Leads Me Astray" Pt. 10


“My Heart Leads Me Astray” - Part Ten
by Ensign Evan Benevente



The ship trembled as if it was in pain.

Garen’s eyes snapped open as his bed shuddered. He briefly wondered if it was space turbulence, but then thought better of it. Months of running and hiding had taught him how to awaken fully in an instant, and he was out of bed and on his feet when the second blast came. It knocked him to the floor. This was no turbulence. This was something different, something more dangerous. Then came phase fire.

Garen always slept in his clothes, another habit born of necessity, and now he seized his weapons and communicator. The minute he tapped the device he realized that the enemy had already set up a dampening field. Typical Starfleet, create disarray by shutting down communication.

“Bastards,” Garen said under his breath. Apparently it wasn’t enough to launch what was, by the sound of it, a full-scale attack on a ship that was host to a hundred people. They had to make sure no one could coordinate escape efforts as well. Still cursing, Garen raced outside into a nightmare of flame and terror.

The dim corridor was lit up with fire. Even as he ran out of his quarters, the wall near him was stuck by screaming phaser blasts and burst into flame. Shrieks of terror assaulted his ears, and by the glow of the orange, crackling flames he saw figures racing to and fro. Some were running with purpose, as he was; others were just fleeing in panic.

“All this training and they’re running!” Garen thought in anguish. But the hundred people who called the ship home wanted to believe it would never be discovered - they were too good for that. Wanted to believe they could leave the danger, the risk, the death to others out there. Garen desperately wished they had listened to their training, but by their very nature the Maquis were idealists. And this time, their idealism was going to cost them everything.

There were several escape pods and shuttles on the ship, all designed for speed and maneuverability as well as attack. On an ordinary ship, they would be clustered together in the shuttlebay. Everyone would know where to go. But here, they were scattered in modified cargo bays; they made more difficult targets that way, but they also made it harder for anyone to escape.

More phaser fire. More screaming. The air grew thick with smoke, and Garen choked on the stomach-turning stench of burning flesh. There were people he loved on this Maquis ship. But because of the Starfleet dampening field - it had to be the Federation and a mole from the inside; he was surprised, however, at the degree of violence that Starfleet was using in their offensive. The Federation would arrest them and confiscate their ship, but it was new for them to authorize this kind of ensuing massacre - Garen could not contact any of those he cared for. He could only hope they knew where to find the armories for defense.

They continued their attack. Garen watched, sickened, as a long sheet of deadly phaser fire sliced across the deck plating. There were sounds of explosions; the blasts had struck to the very core of his vessel. But the dreadful sounds came from the starboard side of the ship, and the armories were port.

Tears stung his eyes - a physical reaction to the smoke, an emotional reaction to the horror that greeted him everywhere he looked. He blinked hard, refusing to acknowledge the pathetic cries for help, refusing to stop to offer assistance, feeling a dreadful ache as he did so. Anyone who wasn’t on an escape pod or shuttle within the next few minutes would be either dead or, if lucky, captured. His only hope to save himself and however many souls he could cram onto his small vessel would be to reach Tevlik’s moon as soon as possible.

Before it was destroyed. Before everything was destroyed.

How had this happened? How had the Federation discovered his ship? It had been operating since the very beginning of the resistence movement, safe and undiscovered. It was the one sanctuary, the one refuge, that no Maquis would reveal. Not even under torture. It was that revered. It was one thing to gasp out military plans and strategies and locations of weapons while being ‘interrogated’ by the Cardassians, but to breathe a word of this ship, with the experts in tactical warfare at risk, to expose it to attack - no Maquis would have done that.

How, then, had this horrific night come to be?



**********



Evan hadn’t suffered during any of the attack. Before the first volley of torpedoes or the initial blasts from the phaser banks, Evan had been beamed onto the safety of the USS Santa Cruz. There, from the bridge, he watched the horrible events unfold. The explosions of depressurized decks, the lack of shielding and weakened hull plating, all of it took its share of beatings.

Somewhere deep inside him, Evan cried out for the assault to cease. People were being beamed off as the shield grid on the Maquis ship faltered. There would be minimal casualties, but even one was more than enough for Evan. Several times Evan had to avert his eyes from the treachery onscreen.

Admiral Connors sat in his command chair with a grin on his face. To him it was another thing to add to his Starfleet Profile and earn him another award for strategic distinction. The whole idea nearly crippled Evan in utter disgust. Thus was the nature of the universe and Evan had witnessed it first hand from the organization that he’d left a year ago in the pursuit of justice. Justice would be served, Evan told himself, it was just a matter of time.

“We’ve got all but seventeen of them, sir. All of our people have beamed back aboard as well, two Starfleet losses, sir.” A young woman from tactical said as her hands danced almost magically across the panel’s surface. “There is still a section of shielding up in the aft section that we cannot penetrate.”

Connor’s swivelled, too lazy to stand, “disable the shield emitters.”

“I have, sir, they appear to be generating this field from within the ship on portable devices. We’ll have to do more damage to get anywhere close to getting them out of there.” She looked to the Admiral for advice and orders, “shall I continue firing?”

“Yes,” there was a long pause as the Admiral contemplated his next move. “Target their warp core.”

“What?!” Evan took a disrespectful step forward. “Those are innocent people over there!”

Admiral Connors held up a hand, “Innocent? They’ve killed hundreds of people, Federation and Cardassian citizens alike. They will pay for their crimes at a tribunal and, if they are so inclined to resist arrest, we’ll dispose of them.”

This wasn’t how it was suppose to be. Evan hadn’t meant for it to be this way. It was suppose to be swift without warning. The shields were to fail early with a mass beaming of the crew to the brig and cargo bays. The slow and painful destruction of a talented and dedicated crew was not what Evan had planned. Too many people. Too many deaths. Needless deaths.

“What part of the ship did you say?”

“Aft section,” the young women replied, “section Gamma.”

“The shuttlebay,” Evan said moving up behind her. The security staff went to grab Evan, but Admiral Connors waved them away. “They’re waiting for the ship to breach so they can fly out in the wreckage unnoticed. Target the center of the ship, it’ll be enough to trigger a warp core breach and they’ll fly out in the nick of time.”

Connors nodded and Evan felt slighted. His tactical knowledge was better than any commander or lieutenant in Starfleet. They were second guessing him? He may have been a Maquis, but he was only a Maquis for his wife. For Michelle. They should be bowing down at his feet and praising his safe return from the ‘dark side’ as the higher-ups called it. No, authorization had to be yielded for his brains to be noticed. How ignorant they all were.

With moments a warp core breach sounded. It was almost over.



**********



The shuttle was crammed with seventeen people, Garen included. He was at the controls, monitoring the ship’s systems closely for the first chance to escape. They wouldn’t get him without a fit, Garen said internally, but he knew that it was coming to and end for many of them. The resistence had been losing ground for a couple of months. Ships here and there, a base that was once thought to be completely hidden, and key figures turning out to be traitorous informants; it was all a wound that couldn’t be healed.

Something vibrated in his pocket and he retrieved a data module. A message scrawled across the screen. The betrayer was Evan Benevente. Garen cursed himself for trusting the ex-Starfleet man. Garen had seen through the recruitment and not given it much thought, it was Garen’s turn to be the puppet.

“Jackson, take the controls. You know when to go.” And, like that, Garen was out of the shuttle and back onto the ship being blown apart at the seams. Fallen bulkheads and upturned deck plating stood in his way. He leapt a couple of gaps that were missing sections of ship held together by flickering remnants of emergency forcefields.

“Garen!” Laura jumped from the cockpit of the shuttle and chased down her lover. They embraced amid a clash of sparks and flame. The heat was almost unbearable, but their passion in that one solitary kiss made it all seem like a glorified space heater. “I’m going with you.”

“No, you’re not. They need your expertise to escape,” her lover said signaling the shuttle from whence they both had come. “They won’t make it past that Starfleet ship without some Maquis ingenuity. You’re the best tactician we have besides myself and I have another thing to do.”

Laura shook her head, but refused to cry, “No, come with us.”

“I can’t.” The tears began to fall in a surreal moment. In the firelight they looked like rubies sliding from the cave of her eyes. She was truly beautiful even in that massacre-ridden shuttlebay. Garen’s hand reached out and wiped the tears of burden from her cheek and flicked them away to disperse in the rising temperatures. “I’ll find you on Tevlik. I promise.”

She placed a hand on his as the ship shuddered again, “You promise?”

“You know I do, now go.”

Laura looked at him one last time as she kissed his hand and disappeared back into the shuttle. Garen’s eyes watched fleeting form and said a silent prayer before turning on his heel and heading back into the bleeding heart of his once-magnificent vessel. His brain told him he would see her again, but his heart was telling another story.

It was right where Evan said it would be. Alone in a corner of an unused cargo bay, was his train to freedom. It was his gateway to sanctuary, and it was all because of the man that had turned against his family, his blood. The ignition sequence was already started and Garen sat down and began monitoring the controls. Laura’s shuttle hadn’t left yet, but had engaged full engines.

He realized in that fraction of a moment just what it meant to monitor only one other shuttle for departure. Two shuttles on a ship that held almost a dozen. Seventeen people left in a crew of hundred. Somehow it didn’t seem fair.



*********



“A shuttle is departing, sir, just where Mr. Benevente told us it would.” The young blonde smiled a congratulatory smile in his direction, but stifled it as she began transporting the people - his people - over from their ragtag attempted getaway. “We have them all onboard, sir, sixteen of them.”

Evan blinked, “sixteen?” He looked at the viewscreen again. He knew who that last person was. It was the Captain of the vessel. Evan knew he wasn’t going down with the ship, he was no Starfleet officer, but he would wait for the last possible moment before stealing away unnoticed. It was the Maquis way. “There’s one more.”

Admiral Connors nodded to the young tactical officer again. Another authorization to follow the Maquis’ words of wisdom.

The hull buckled and the ship exploded in an array of oranges and whites. Fragments of bulkheads and hull plating went in all directions in a chaotic manner. The detriment had ceased, but it paled in the aftermath of the massacre. One lone figure emerged from the wreckage and began moving away. Evan pointed at the screen as the helm officer spoke up.

“A shuttle is departing the wreckage, sir, it’s preparing to go to warp. I can set a pursuit course, but if it goes to warp it is already masking its energy signatures. We’ll lose it.” The man was in his thirties and obviously knew what he was doing.

“Tractor beam.”

“No affect,” the ensign at tactical echoed almost immediately, “he’s inverted his shield harmonics using a triaxilating frequency. It’ll take me a moment to remodulate our beam emitters.”

Evan looked at her, “you don’t have a moment.” It wouldn’t matter anyway, Evan knew, because there was an additional secret that Evan had planted on the shuttle. A going away gift, if you will. The last thing that Garen Muln would see would be a single phrase before the shuttle exploded into oblivion.

The small vessel on the screen shined blue through where the hull plating had been mended together. It flickered briefly before the entire ship burst into shrapnel. The bridge crew went silent as the pursuit ended abruptly. Evan was satisfied that justice had been served. He was more satisfied that he would be held accountable for his crimes on a lesser degree. Evan was happy in general. It was all worth it and he would’ve done it again in a heartbeat. Anything for her.

For Michelle.



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