Issue #19: The Aldebaran Beartrap

The following is the first new issue of Commander’s Table, as told by FSF Blackjack featuring Captain Jenna “Blackjack” Wolfe, USS Odyssey (Star Trek: Andromeda).

by FSF Blackjack

The air stung and smelled of smoke. Jenna ignored it. She’d been in places worse than this, in years past when she was a pilot and no one gave a hell what she did or didn’t frequent. These days it wasn’t so often that she got the chance.

It was a dream, of course; she knew that in the back of her mind, abstractly. This place was the Commander’s Table, and to the extent that she knew of it at all, she knew it was not in Andromeda. She’d been here once before, with Will, before he’d died, before they’d all left home. But that had been back in the Milky Way, not out here in the wilderness. So it was a dream, but if it was…she would take the old smells of smoke and liquor until she woke up again.

The bartender’s eyes were bright blue, not a color she’d remembered in them, and when he smiled, it was not Cap’s smile either, but someone else’s. But the knowing expression was the same.

“Blackjack Wolfe…haven’t seen you in some time.”

 Jenna let herself drop down at the bar, resting her elbows on the edge of it. “I need a drink, Cap. A stiff one.”

He didn’t have to ask, just began pouring her a brimming shot of whiskey. “That fourth pip’s getting you down, huh?”

She didn’t bother to ask him how he’d know from the battered civvie jacket she wore that she had moved up the ranks again. The idea was too fresh to dwell on with anything but dismissal. “I didn’t want it,” she muttered. “Will died and left me with it. Up and disappeared. Just like Matt, just like Scooter. And here I am shoving my shoulder by myself against everything again.”

Cap’s eyes brightened, hearing a twist in her voice he didn’t recognize. “Scooter?”

Jenna smiled humorlessly. “I know your game, Cap, but I’d rather pay latinum. You don’t want to hear that story.”

“Of course I do.”

Jenna stared down at the shot glass for a moment in silence, then picked it up and downed it in a gulp, letting the fire of the whiskey flare down her throat, heating the air in her lungs until it burst out her nose in a snort like a startled dragon. God damn you, Cap…her mind was already drifting back. Back from one dream into another, where she was younger, lighter-hearted. Back when she’d laughed and had a smile in it.

“Tiger One-Alpha, Blackjack here, Skipper. My boys are all formed up and accounted for. Let’s do this thing, huh?”

“Leopard One-Alpha, Scooter here – all clear on this end as well, Skip.”

“CAG here; acknowledged.”

Jenna’s fighter hung in space in formation with the rest of Tiger squadron, her green eyes staring out of her helmet at the Firebrand at all-stop nearby and the stars slowly spinning around them. She could feel her heart starting to pound, the adrenaline starting to flow, as it always did right before they entered battle. She keyed her mike on the command channel again.

“CAG-Blackjack…” she said, addressing Jakob Preston, the CAG who had taken over the contingent’s leadership after Brian Wentworth’s death in action. “Skipper” Preston was one of the most accomplished tactical officers Jenna had ever met, a dark-eyed fellow with a slight German accent and a matter-of-fact manner that could analyze a situation at a glance. Jenna was glad to be flying with him.

“Go ahead, Blackjack,” Preston said.

“Intel’s absolutely sure on this, right, Skip?” she asked him. “Not like the breakaways to leave a hole like that.” The border skirmishes they’d been fighting for months on months now had never officially been declared a war, and instead relied on the quiet end of Federation intel. Jenna didn’t trust it, never had, and today less than ever. This all seemed too good to be true.

“Our last few runs took out a lot of their supply depots,” Preston said patiently. Jenna doubted that this was the first time he had answered this question. “They’ve had to stretch themselves thin in order to keep cover on the whole border. Aleph Beta is somewhat to the rear of their controlled space; they probably didn’t figure we’d spot their weak side.”

“Quit worrying, Jenna,” Scooter tossed in cheerfully, his Cockney drawl muffled by a burst of static. “We’ll be in, out, and safe home in bed before you know it.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Jenna retorted, grinning.

“Well, it’s been kinda nice there lately,” Scooter said, and she could hear his smile in his voice.

“That’s enough, you two,” Preston said sharply, cutting off the banter. “Battle now, phone sex on the way home.”

Jenna snorted and thumbed her mike off.

“What? What’d he say?” Rascal Akorem peered at her from his backseat position at the gunner controls.

“Ah, nothing,” Jenna said, rolling her eyes at the ceiling. “Scooter’s just being Scooter again.”

Rascal laughed and nodded as if that explained everything, which it did.

Jenna shifted and stretched in her seat, trying to work a crick out of her neck. “Ready to go blow up some breakaways, Rascal?”

“I suppose so,” Rascal drawled. “Ain’t got nothing better to do.”

“Glad to hear it,” Jenna said.

Both their headsets crackled with static as Preston went on the contingent’s open channel. “Alright, boys, this is it. Form up and get ready. All pilots should have their coordinates for the warp jump – we’ll be dropping in behind their lines. Gunners – your orders are simple. Blow up anything Aldebaran that moves.”

“I think I can handle that,” Rascal said, and Jenna twisted her head back to look at him. The young man was visibly twitching with excitement, and he had reason. They had the opportunity to do irrevocable damage to the Aldebaran lines. The war could be over tonight. Just gotta hold onto the Blackjack luck a little longer…

“This is the real deal,” Preston continued, unconsciously echoing Jenna’s thoughts. “You know the plan – we’re going to hit them fast and hit them hard and return to the Firebrand to dock. Fly true and fly safe.”

A private channel clicked on in her ear, and Scooter muttered softly, “Fly safe, Jenna. I love you. See you on the other side of this.”

Jenna smiled. “I love you too, you maudlin sonuvabitch,” she said affectionately, her tone softening the words.  “Blow up a few bad guys for me.”

“Will do.” The channel clicked off.

Preston’s voice rang again. “We are cleared to fly, boys. Engage!”

Jenna kicked her warp engines into gear with a whoop and the entire squadron zipped into warp speed, disappearing into the distance as if they’d never been there.

They emerged into realspace near the Aleph Beta moon in Aldebaran territory and Jenna immediately, following the flight plan, leaned back on the joystick, arching her fighter upwards along with her two wingmen to swoop in from above and behind the small Aldebaran force posted at Aleph Beta. Three other sets of fighters broke off to circle around in other directions, while the main body of their contingent pulsed forward, phasers blazing, directly into the fray.

Or at least, that was the plan.

What actually happened was that everything went to hell, fast.

The small Aldebaran outpost force was nowhere to be seen. In its place was a dark, hulking monstrosity of a fleet, a good twenty Aldebaran cruisers and almost two hundred smaller fighters. As soon as the contingent had finished warping in, the battle fleet surged on them, and Jenna narrowly avoided being run into as she tried to swoop upwards.

 “Jesus!” she shouted, bringing the bird around with a jerk and staring down at the boat that had almost hit her.

 “What the fuck…?” One of the Tiger boys keyed their mike too early and caught the emotions of the whole group. “Ah, CAG-Gopher…sir, breakoff team delta has no exit vector!” continued the voice, only slightly more controlled.

 “Of course you’ve got no therak exit vector!” a more mature voice snapped from Leopard, the Tellarite oath harsh in Jenna’s ears. “Skip, Scooter, the flight plan’s shot to hell – orders?”

 “Prophets, Jenna…” Rascal said from behind her through gritted teeth. “I have a clear shot, but not for long. We’re outnumbered here three to one in firepower. We need to get clear.”

Jenna shook her head at him wordlessly. She knew that as well as he did, but the fleet had them surrounded tighter than a rusted nut. Phaser fire began splatting out of the enemy ships past them and Jenna jinked her small craft sideways to evade the first volley. “Hit them, Rascal,” she barked at her gunner. “Hit them with everything you can!” 

Preston had not responded to the terrified chatter on the comms but instead keyed himself to the command line again. “Blackjack, Scooter, report – now.” 

 “There’s a big-ass fleet in front of me,” Scooter snapped, and Jenna could hear a very uncharacteristic tension in his voice. “This wasn’t supposed to be here.”

 “None of the breakoff teams cleared their vector,” Jenna said urgently, bringing her fighter around with her wingmen to try to defend their rear. “We’re closed in, clean.”

 “They knew we were coming, Jake,” Scooter voiced what all three of them were thinking. “Jenna was right.”

 “Never been happier,” Jenna said sardonically. “I’ll say ‘I told you so’ back home.”

The silence lasted only a split second, but she could tell that none of them felt extremely confident about seeing home again.

She waited, hoping against hope that Preston would work his magic and see some way they could find a tactical advantage against these ships, the largest Aldebaran equipment she had yet seen. It wouldn’t be the first time he had worked a tactical miracle, and they had never needed one more.

He didn’t deliver. There was no way he could, so he took the only option available. Switching over to the main channel, he addressed the pilots with a confident tone that clashed oddly with their surroundings.

 “Alright, we’re going to do as much damage as we can. That’s all we’ve got. Blackjack, take breakoff delta and drop down, see if you can take out one of their contingents. Scooter, take alpha and beta and defend the rear. Gamma, stick with me; I need our main force against those heavy cruisers in the middle.”

 “Skip—”

 “You have your orders.” The comm signal clicked off and Jenna swore and banked to the side again, evading another volley from the incoming ships. A knot was forming in the pit of her stomach that she hadn’t felt since her Kobayashi Maru test back at the academy.

 “Rascal, watch those three on our starboard side. I’m taking us down,” she said matter-of-factly, glancing out her viewport to be sure that her assigned wingmen were with her.

 “Jenna, we can’t punch a hole big enough for the whole group!”

 “We’ll have to,” Jenna said tightly.

There wasn’t really any good way to answer that, so Rascal said nothing.

Jenna’s fighter dived downwards, blasting several of the Aldebaran birds out of the way as she dove for the weakest spot in their defenses. “Concentrate fire on the fighters at 324 mark 47!” she called to the two pilots accompanying her.

 “Aye, Lieutenant,” one of her pilots returned, and fire spat from his phasers. “Disable or destroy?”

 “No time to disable,” Jenna said tightly around clenched teeth. “Blow them out of the sky.” No time…that was the problem. They had not had time to prepare for this onslaught; they were going to be slaughtered like sheep. Jenna didn’t waste time whining to herself about wanting a fair fight – now was not the time for that. There was only time left to fight until one of these blasts burned her to a crisp.

She dived downwards, feeling her ship shudder as several near misses singed her rear shields. Dammit, dammit, come on…I can do this, I have to.

Her eyes scanned the mass of ships, looking for one hole, one weak spot, one way that she could possibly save—

 “There!” she yelled into her mike, keying to the entire squadron in her haste and excitement. “Three-two-eight mark…ah…two-one! Breakoff team delta, drop, drop, get down there, there’s a hole! Only a couple of fighters – if we can blast them out of the way we’ll be home free. Room for all of us!”

 “CAG-Blackjack; Jenna, make sure you’re thinking. This is no time for getting cocky.”

 “Scooter-CAG; my boys see no openings. She’d better go for it. Be careful, Jenna.”

 “No time to debate, Skipper; I’m going in, have the rest of the boys follow me down.”

The entire fighter contingent swooped in behind Jenna’s fighter and her two wingmen as the three of them dove for the small pile of Aldebaran fighters that was the weak spot in the closing sphere of enemy ships. If they could clear even a few of those fighters out of the way, they would have just barely enough time to slip through the cracks and warp out of here.

A scream echoed in her headset and two Tiger fighters behind her winked out of her tactical display. She swore and gunned her thrusters, diving faster, her world dimming down to herself, her throttle, and the ships swooping past her cockpit. Rascal was yelling into his comm behind her, howling terrified orders to her wingmen gunners, but she barely heard him. They were almost there; a few hundred more meters and she would have them out of this mess and back home. 

The thought of failure did not occur to her, and for once it was not her cockiness speaking. She simply refused to think about the possibility; they would survive. Another explosion squealed over the comm and Jenna homed in on the enemy targets in front of her, pitching to the side to open her phaser banks towards them.

 “Come on, you little bastards, come ‘ere,” she muttered. “I’ll have your ass on a platter…”

 “Jenna! On your port!”

Scooter’s voice, high-pitched with blind panic, jolted her and she looked around wildly. Two of the huge Aldebaran cruisers had come out of nowhere and were moving to fill in the hole in their defenses, swooping in with terrifying rapidity on her port aft, cutting her and her two wingmen off from the rest of the group.

 “Oh, amojan y’tek,” Jenna swore in Bajoran, banking sideways to avoid the sudden barrage of phaser fire coming from their rear.

Rascal repeated the oath and intensified it behind her. “Jenna, we need to go back! They’ll be eaten alive back there!”

 “I know,” Jenna snapped, throwing her fighter into a banking roll and spinning them around with stomach-wrenching force. “CAG-Blackjack, abort! Exit vector is closed off! Pull up and look for another way out! Breakoff delta, reverse course – we’re going back to help them.”

 “Negative, Blackjack – are you clear of the trap?”

 “Affirmative, three of us are clear, but the rest—”

 “Jenna, don’t be blind, there are no other holes! This is over! Do not turn around – run like hell while you still can!” Preston’s sharp voice sounded inexpressibly tired. Like most fighter pilots, he had long since come to terms with the idea of his own destruction, but watching his squadron decimated under him was another matter altogether.

Before Jenna could respond, her fighter jerked to the right and the cockpit glowed red as a stray bit of Aldebaran phaser fire struck her aft shield. Rascal screamed as his console exploded under his hands and Jenna looked down at her own to discover that her warp engines no longer seemed to exist. Her ship ricocheted sideways and down out of the closing sphere of ships, clear of the trap, but with the two cruisers heavy on her aft.

 “No dice, Skipper, my drive is fried!” she called, keeping her sudden feeling of impotence from shaking her voice only with difficulty.

 “BJ-Scooter, can you get your boys behind the moon? You can get out of their sensor window and fix your drive there.”

 “I don’t have time, Scooter! Those two big ones are right on our tail down here!”

 “Guess we’ll have to distract them, then!” Scooter said tightly. “You’re clear and there is no way in hell I’m letting you die here with the rest of us.”

 “What are you doing, Scooter?” Jenna banked sharply, her fighter maneuvering sluggishly as she turned towards the rest of the contingent. There they were, trapped in the center of the huge Aldebaran net, her two huge pursuers now fully blocking the hole she had escaped through. Scooter and Preston were at their head, swooping downwards towards her, and too late she realized what they were planning—

 “Fly safe, Jenna,” his voice whispered in her ear. “I love you. See you on the other side of all this.”

One of the Aldebaran cruisers flared suddenly all along its length as Scooter’s fighter barreled into their dorsal shields. Already weakened by fire from the birds following him, the shields flickered and died, sending the bulk of his burning fighter down into the body of the cruiser, his momentum propelling him through the outer hull and into the warp reactor.

In less time than it takes to describe, before Jenna could cry out or even react to Scooter’s suicide run, Preston had barreled into the other cruiser in the same manner, clearly hoping against hope to save the rest of the squadron, to knock that hole back into existence so that the others might reach Jenna’s position on the outer edge of the trap.

It didn’t work. 

The first cruiser exploded in a violent flash of light as the impact of Scooter’s fighter ignited the warp reactor and destroyed the ship. Its flaming hulk spun rapidly, slamming into the other cruiser, whose shield generator had been incinerated by Preston’s impact. The two of them turned together in the silence of space for a split second and then there was a second huge explosion as the other cruiser’s drive detonated. The entire Aldebaran trap backfired; the tightly packed sphere of ships went down like dominoes as the explosion spread from one to the next, creating a huge ball of flame that enveloped the trapped contingent and incinerated them. The explosion seemed to fall in on itself before bursting outwards, sending a shock wave that caught Jenna’s crippled fighter and her two wingmen and sent them hurtling away from the fracas.

Jenna leaned all her weight on her joystick, trying to pull out of the spin, and finally came to rest several hundred kilometers away from where the trap had been sprung.

By the time she pulled around, the flames had died. All that remained of her contingent was a few burned out hulks in the midst of a slowly expanding sphere of Aldebaran debris. There was dead silence except for the low sound of Rascal’s ragged breathing behind her, almost a sob; the boy’s face and hands were covered in third degree burns. Jenna noticed almost distractedly that a bit of his console was buried in her shoulder.

 “Gopher-Blackjack…” came a low voice over the comm from one of the two fighters still hanging intact with her. “Sir…”

More silence, and then a rattling groan. A moment’s pause, then a slightly stronger but different voice, so tightly controlled that it was obvious the young gunner at the other end was on the edge of tears. 

 “Gopher’s dead, Lieutenant. This is Pistol Davis. Orders, sir?”

 “Go home…” Jenna rasped at him. “Go home, both of you…my drive is shot. My gunner needs a medic. Send someone back for me.”

 “Lieutenant—“

 “Go!” Jenna snapped, the harshness of her voice only just serving to cover her own shattered stability. “I’ll get behind the moon, I’ll be safe.”

 “Aye, sir…” The two fighters lurched into warp drive, disappearing.

Jenna collapsed back against her seat, her fingers still tightly clenched around her joystick, her gaze flat with stunned grief as she stared at the place that should have been the scene of their greatest victory.

And instead…she had survived this slaughter at the expense of men who deserved to live as much as she if not more so. Had she led them into that destruction? If she had been paying attention, she would have seen those cruisers coming, she could have found another way out, she could have…

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they were dead and Scooter had killed himself for her and she was alive and it should have been the other way round. She wanted it to be the other way round. If she had had a phaser in her hand it would have found a mark in her skull.

As it was, she simply sat there, unmoving, empty, staring at the slowly pinwheeling stars until the Firebrand appeared between them and took her back into its arms.

The bar was silent. Eyes she didn’t recognize, and a few she did, stared at her from every side. She hadn’t realized her voice had grown louder as she spoke, or that another two shots of whiskey had been quietly laid out in front of her. Dreams within dreams…

Grasping almost frantically at one of the small glasses, she tipped it back into her mouth and set it down, followed immediately by the other one. The sting made her wheeze, made the corners of her vision blur, and she tipped her head backwards, her eyes going to the dark ceiling.

She could still feel Cap’s gaze on her, cool and silent and understanding. His fingers lightly touched her shoulder in a steadying gesture.

 “It will be alright, Blackjack.”

And then the black ceiling was not wood but metal and the chair under her was a bed, the sheets soaked with sweat and tangled taut like the shroud of some restless ghost. And she was still in Andromeda, and still alone, with memories sharp like a knife at the back of her mind.