You took the fall for us pt III; JDL Capt Neyes Cmdr Ivanova - PLOT

Posted on Sun Jul 20th, 2014 @ 6:20am by Admiral Rochelle Ivanova
Edited on on Wed Jan 4th, 2017 @ 6:42am

2,178 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: In the Dark

Rochelle’s eyes, still filled with so much fire and defiance, glistened as he tugged her up into a sitting position. The warmth of his coat, the feel of his hands rubbing along her nearly numb skin flooded her with an emotion she never thought would return, one she’d tamped down, ignored, denied. She looked at him, trying to block out the crude laughter that seemed to echo from the trees as her captors, their captors, closed in around them. “Landon,” she breathed, reaching to still his hands with her own, her lips contorting in the saddest of smiles.

A warning arrow landed a scant foot away, they were teasing them now. Rochelle barely flinched. “It’s ok…” She whispered, releasing his hands and flattening her palms on his chest, feeling the steadiness of his heartbeat beneath them. She was going to die. He was going to die. “I need…” She faltered for a second, turning to look over her shoulder at the faces less than a football field’s distance away before turning back to him, licking her parched and wind burnt lips, “I need you to go. I need you to save yourself. They have nothing against you.” She explained, her lower lip trembling as she fought to compose herself. “I can distract them.”

His eyes watering up, Landon could see her slipping away. Her eyes wavered as she struggled to look up at him. She was so brave.

One of the essurient charged forward into the open field toward them. Its teeth bared in a beastly, bloodthirsty snarl, unwilling to wait to tear his prey apart. Both hands wielding sharp jagged blades, and blackened paint covering most of his features. Neyes pressed his face against Rochelle's, seeing the creature closing the distance between them. Shushing her and embracing her tightly, he kissed her cheek.

"I won't leave you." He said softly.

Neyes set her down, keeping his eyes on her for a final few moments. She mumbled something in protest, lacking the energy to really put up a serious struggle. His heart caught fire as he looked at her once again not just as a Captain, but as a man who cared about her, felt something for her. One corner of his mouth went up in a half-smile as he could still see the fight inside her. She would give herself up for him, even scared and frozen. A woman he would never hope to control, not that he'd ever wanted to. There was no doubting she meant something, more than just anyone on his crew. Rochelle was so much more than just anyone.

Neyes stood, his eyes moving from Ivanova to the approaching essurient. Its movements were sharp, monstrous and aggressive. Like a hungry wolf it charged the two officers. Landon's hands drifted toward his blades, and pulled them from their sheaths at the small of his back. The grip was familiar, and each time he held them a little surge of excitement pulsed through him. Landon enjoyed the thrill of a good fight, and as he stood between the monsters and his First Officer, his fire burned inside until he could barely contain the rage at what they'd done to her.

It didn't last long, the first encounter. The essurient leapt at Neyes, and the flicker of the tritanium blade was all it saw before Landon cut him down. Leather and bone fell to the ground in a heap, still and quiet, all it had taken was a second.

More essurient quickly followed suit, enraged both by their fallen fellow, but also at the prospect of a real battle. Even with an injury, Landon had managed to fell one of their own with no real effort. A thin smile crossed Neyes' lips. He could feel their own rage begin to mount, rising and crashing. Two or three broke their crowded ranks and charged the field, stomping and screaming, two trying to flank on either side of the Trill Captain. Neyes unzipped a pocket at his forearm digging inside, then quickly shot his arm out. A whistle pierced the air and a second later the two closest to him hit backward, head first into the snow with nothing more than a red pool of blood beginning to form beneath them, and the blade of a small throwing knife protruding through their hair. Neyes shifted putting himself between the third and Rochelle. It also leapt at him, but swung its horrific blade at the same time. He couldn't side-step the blow, or he'd risk a hit to Ivanova and that simply wasn't an option. Meeting the weapon with both daggers, he swept the attack to the side and deflected the blow. The creature recovered and swung again, and this time Neyes ducked down, swiping his right leg out and kicking the essurient's legs out from under it at the knees.

It screamed a blood-chilling screech of agony, baring its decayed and sharpened teeth, dropping its weapon. Neyes quickly cut it down with a slice of his dagger, and shoved its body away with another kick. Landon's breath was already quickening, meeting each intake of air with a wheeze as the chill began to affect his ability to move. Even the stress and activity wasn't enough to stop the icy breath of Notura from chilling him to the core. He shook it off, however, as another wave began to advance.

This time Landon took both his daggers by the hilt, flicked a depression along the base of each and immediately pressed their butts against one another. Both hilts snapped at each other, clasping together to form one long banded hold. Landon pressed a button with his thumb and the blades flicked out another extension of themselves twice-over, forming a double-bladed staff of sorts. The whole process took mere seconds, and Neyes was already moving to counter the next attack.

It seemed as if they would never stop coming. The light of the dim and snowy backdrop flashed across Landon's weapon as he spun it to cut down the attackers. Each new essurient came at him, and each time he mustered the strength and agility to dispatch it in only moments. His feet slipped along the icy, snow covered dirt like a dance performed on a stage of battle. The ice only enhanced his ability to move between each foe with frightening speed. The bladed weapon in his hand an extension of his own form, moving fluidly with deadly and precise strikes. One creature would charge at him and he'd meet it with a spin kick to the head, bringing it down in a battered hulk to the ground. In the same motion he would spin the staff to cut across his flank, striking at two others that entered his sphere of attack. Nothing got within three meters of him and Rochelle without meeting its end moments later.

More came, he cut them down.

Then more, and Landon didn't hesitate to end their assault.

The first cut caught him by surprise. Pain cut across his midsection as one of the creatures managed to get past his defense. A thin slice of his uniform cut away, revealing the red wound beneath his left side rib cage.

Neyes could feel his arms getting heavier, his weapon beginning to lose its effectiveness as his fingers' response times wavered. The tendons and muscles in his hands were beginning to grow too tired and cold. He gritted his teeth and charged at the closest essurient, blade tight in both hands. The bodily form of the man dissected into two as Landon brought the blade down with a terrifying cry, and all his strength, across its chest. Another charged at Landon, who did a front hand-spring toward it, though his shoulder screamed in savage protest. His legs landed on either shoulder of the creature and Neyes bellowed a desperate cry as he snapped its neck with a powerful twist.

Another slice cut across Landon's back, and he cried out again. Sweat beading at his brow, and blood speckling his features.

Both of them fell to the ground, and it was all Landon had to reach Rochelle.

"There's too many of them," he said to himself out loud, panting and hoarse. He quickly pulled a small orb out from his tunic, a compact photonic stun grenade the marines had given him. He depressed the armament and chucked it at the mob. Covering both their ears and eyes, he pressed Rochelle and himself into the ground. A radiant burst of white-hot light charged the atmosphere for 20 meters in every direction, and before it had subsided, Landon was already pulling Rochelle to her feet.

"We can make it!" He said, defiantly rejecting the imminent swarm about to overwhelm them. "... we have to." They footed through the stormy winds crossing the 30 meter or so distance to the cliff's edge as the mob recovered behind them.

Letting him go had been the hardest thing she’d had to do.

She whimpered when his body left hers, but knew better than to defy the man who had risked it all to come for her. In that moment, their eyes locked and she knew.

She knew.

Her breath caught, part because her heart was simply faltering and partly because her heart swelled under the wordless statement each had made. Rochelle lay there in the snow, curled in a defensive posture beneath his massive winter coat. She wanted to scream when he finally turned to fight - when she watched his body contort in pain with each blow he took. The sound just wouldn't come, stolen by the north wind as it plucked it from her, and she had nothing left to offer it in return.

She knew.

Dragging herself closer, she was there when he fell, met him as he covered her feeble form with his. The reverberation from the explosion forced her faltering heart to skip a beat, fluttering like a caged bird as it tried to find another rhythm, struggling to resume offering her life. She gasped, forcing the bitter air down into her lungs, urging her body to continue on as he let her up and began to lift her to her feet. It was all she could do to lean on him, pressing her quivering hand to the wound across his abdomen. His blood seeped through her frigid fingers, warming them for the moment in the most macabre of ways.

She knew.

They were coming behind them, like a tidal wave surging forward with every ounce of strength they had. They were scared of the power emanating from the pair they hunted, tracked and drove relentless towards the brink of no return – but they were crazy enough to push onward. They knew the woman was in death’s stranglehold, that the man who’d come for her wasn’t too far behind her, and they also knew that there was no escape.

None.

Time was on their side. Time would capture the Vindicator command team for them, all they had to do was continue to press forward, driving and herding them.

She knew.

Rochelle tripped, stumbled, swore under her breath as her knees hit a rock covered by the snow pack, and struggled back to her feet. She wouldn't give them the sick satisfaction of watching her stay down. It was enough that she was leaving them a scarlet treasure map with every agonizing step. The sheer drop was at their foothold, offering a craggy path only the strong and the healthy – perhaps even the suicidal – would have ever dreamed to attempt. Ropes. They’d need ropes, or wings, to make such as escape even feasible and that wasn’t taking into consideration the fact that they were being hunted by people with sharp, flesh rending instruments. They stood there, the woman panting as her body burned and her mind screamed the siren’s wailing of warning, of pain, of the start of oxygen deprivation. Landon could make it. Even injured, he could make it. Her resolve stood firm. “You have to climb down.” She said, the wind threatening to throw her backwards as it blasted up from the sheer wall. She blinked as it burnt her eyes and diverted them to his face, tugging to turn him to face her, “You’re the Captain. They need you and it’s my job to see to it that you get back there. My job to fix this mess I’ve gotten us into.” She coughed and sputtered, swallowing the lump in her throat and searching his face with those stormy crystal eyes. The sea raged within them, threatening the winter land storm with Hellfire and brimstone, threatening to consume the world at large if given half a second.

“We’re going to die.” She said, not having it in her to lie to him, to them, any longer. “But… I want you to try. Please, Landon, please…”


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to be continued...

Captain Landon Neyes
Commanding Officer
USS VINDICATOR

Commander Rochelle Ivanova
Executive Officer
USS VINDICATOR

 

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