Beware of Klingon Breadcrumbs (1.5)

Posted on Fri Oct 27th, 2017 @ 6:51am by Fleet Admiral Donatella Figueroa

Mission: S01E01 - At the Brink of Night
Location: Unknown
Timeline: A Few Months Ago

It had been at least two dozen nights though probably many more of being chained up, shackled, tortured, beaten, and abused to the most extreme senses of the word both physically and psychologically. She knew not where she was, just that where she was smelt terribly and was most certainly under Klingon control. She had watched them mercilessly beat some of her crew while she watched helplessly. They killed them. Executed them right before her very eyes. Sometimes, the blood splattered on her. Ke'gak was the most brutal Klingon she had ever met in her entire life, not that she had met very many of his species. None of them were ever pleasant, but Ke'gak was just so damn savage...and forceful. The things he did to her had broken her. The violation was so vile. She felt like filth like no matter how hard she scrubbed when she got the chance, she could scrub until she bled and his filth would still be all over her. Her heart was broken and her spirits crushed. Her faith in Starfleet rescuing her was dwindling away each and every day that she was held prisoner.

The sound of scurrying in the dark was unsettling. The place was a torture chamber. There were no better words to describe her setting. It was where her crew had been killed and where her body had been forcefully violated. The bodies of her crew? Still were there to 'keep you company' as Ke'gak explained to her. It made the place smell like an old butcher shop's freezer after a terrible storm struck and cut the power for days or even weeks. It was bad. It was that bad. She and her starship, the USS Musashi had been through a lot. Together, they had killed many of Klingons and re-established peace in areas of space ravished by those daemons. She had kept telling herself that Starfleet would never abandon their own. It was not their way. Surely, they were doing absolutely everything to get her free and the others...only they did not know the others were all dead. It was just Fig left from what she gathered. Her faith in Starfleet was being questioned, challenged to the extreme. They are coming. They have to be coming. They cannot just leave me here to die, can they?

The war with the Klingons official or otherwise had ended. Ke'gak attacked her starship during a cease fire. What the hell was a Klingon ship doing out so far from Klingon space and flirting the line with Federation space? That was what she and the Musashi went to investigate. She did not know the Klingon commander of the ship would turn out to be this savage brute that she had met in battle a handful of times during the war. Apparently he had not gotten the damn memo about a cease fire, because he wasted no time hammering down and bombarding the Musashi with everything he had to throw their way. He had the element of knowing the area better than her. That was her first mistake. Unfortunately, it was the only mistake that Ke'gak really needed that day.

As the Musashi returned fire, they managed to get several good blasts at the Klingon ship. They damaged it well like usual. Though Fig could not finish it off. Returning fire to defend one's self and crew was one thing, but the Klingon ship was tucking tail and running away. It was a strategy that Fig would eventually learn was very unlikely and taboo for a Klingon. If she had better knowledge of Klingon war tactics, she would have known better. So much better. She should not have fallen for his trickery. The Klingons scurried towards an unknown nebula. The Musashi's sensors were out cold and they could not get a proper reading on the nebula to know that it would severely drain their shields. That was all the Klingons needed to capitalize on the element of surprise and take the Musashi by surprise.

As soon as they entered the nebula themselves, the crew were spatting off reports of power drains and shield strength rapidly decreasing. “HELM, GET US OUT OF HERE NOW!” she remembered shouting at the helmsmen. To little to late. Klingons targeted her starships engines and fired a volley of something. Disabled her engines and nearly tore her starship apart. Shields buckled and they were left adrift coming out of the nebula. But they had been boarded by Klingons. They killed several of her crew throughout her ship, took a handful as hostages and beamed back to their ship before Musahsi could get their shields back up. The Klingon battlecruiser made off with her crew and Captain Figueroa was beyond pissed. Her second mistake. She made a report to Starfleet, but did not wait for a response or reinforcements. She got those engines back up as soon as humanly possible and charged on after the Klingons who had a decent head start, but Fig and her crew followed a trail of breadcrumbs. Mistake three. Never follow convenient breadcrumbs.