Star Trek: Fortitude
Season Two - Episode One: “The End, Part Two”
By Jack D. Elmlinger
PROLOGUE
Last time on Star Trek: Fortitude…
While returning to Starbase 499 in the Santrag system for repairs and a maintenance overhaul, the Federation Starship USS Fortitude, NCC-76420, answered a distress signal from the Pekeni people, a race that they had previously encountered on relatively good terms. The Pekeni were under the constant fear of attack from the End, a vicious space-faring race grown by an unknown power for one reason only: galactic conquest.
Upon beaming down to the Pekeni capital city with an away team, Captain Ewan Llewellyn was greeted with the horrific annihilation of the entire species at the hands of the ruthless End fleet. Out of nowhere, an End battle cruiser appeared in orbit and attacked the Fortitude. When End soldiers began appearing aboard the Starfleet vessel, the firefights were desperate and yet short-lived. After the dust settled, Captain Llewellyn and his crew were left with twenty-four End corpses and an empty End battle cruiser to do with as they pleased. While all of this was going on, Captain Llewellyn felt himself be consumed by a level of rage that he had never experienced before and it was all directed towards the End for being such cold-hearted murderers.
When Commander Valerie Archer discovered that the End fleet was heading directly for Starbase 499, Captain Llewellyn left her in command of Fortitude and gave her specific orders to join the fight in the Santrag system and save the Federation from a nasty invasion force. Meanwhile, he and Ensign Jason Armstrong used the captured End battle cruiser to plot a course deep into End space so they could try and find some way of diffusing the conflict before any more innocent lives could be lost…
… and now the conclusion.
ACT ONE
It was the last attack group. Six End fighters were moving fast.
Debris from the epic battle that had raged for almost two hours was smashed aside as the graceful lines of the USS Fortitude pursued after them. Their shields had given up trying to function some time ago, and now every impact, every shot, left a dirty gaping wound in the silver skin of the Intrepid-class starship. Some of the wounds had even bled, and not just energy sparks or decompressed atmosphere, but crew members as well. It was all part of the clean-up that they were dreading. Transporting the corpses of colleagues and friends back aboard to be identified and honored properly.
On the Bridge, an embittered Commander Valerie Archer ignored the smears across her usually beautiful face and the misplaced hair brushing before her eyes. She looked like she was at home in the mess surrounding her.
Lieutenant Arden Vuro was sitting at the helm, bleeding after one of his LCARS interfaces had exploded in his face. He stayed at his post, knowing full well that Sickbay was overrun with the injured and that Doctor Lynn Boswell would be busy with more serious, life-threatening problems right now.
He banked Fortitude part the burning hulk of an End dreadnought. That had been a sweet victory, but they had paid a rather steep price. No, there would be no time for those kinds of thoughts. Grieving would have to come later, the Bolian resolved, focusing on his flying skills.
“Ensign Morgan,” Valerie growled with her hands balled up into fists,” target the closest fighter in that wing and fire.”
“Ventral phasers are down, Commander,” came the reply from Jim Morgan, his position at tactical steadfast as his dark brown skin sweated profusely. “I need a clear shot from the dorsal array. If you wouldn’t mind, Arden?”
“With pleasure, Jim,” nodded the lieutenant, obliging by dipping the nose of the battle-damaged Fortitude. A moment later, they watched the flickering viewscreen together when orange phased energy beams lashed out and obliterated three of the six escaping End vessels.
Turning with an expression of satisfaction, Vuro nodded towards Jim at tactical with a smile. “Good shooting, Ensign.”
“Thanks. What about the remaining three, Commander?”
There was an uneasy silence.
Archer wanted to destroy them right there. She wanted to wipe out the End attack fleet that had begun to slaughter those aboard Starbase 499 and mount an invasion of the United Federation of Planets so mercilessly and so coldly. Yet, throughout this entire war, her mind had been divided, split in two by the nagging pain that she was experiencing at the loss of her commanding officer. Captain Ewan Llewellyn was indeed a brave man and the thing that she respected most about him was his compassion, his pacifism, and his mercy. The End certainly didn’t have any, but she was Human, and she was Llewellyn’s First Officer. That stood for something.
“They’re running,” she finally ordered,” so let them go.”
“Understood, ma’am,” Morgan replied, wiping the sweat from his brow. “I’m pleased to report that it seems to be over. There are no more End vessels in the vicinity.”
That information would have been cheerful if it weren’t for the shock of the image dominating the viewscreen. Twisted chunks of macabre hull plating mingling with the floating dead. Many of them were the decaying faces of the enemy but a good number of them were Human, dressed in red, yellow, and blue shouldered Starfleet uniforms as their fates had been sealed by those that now drifted alongside them between the stars.
Through the graveyard beyond, Valerie could make out the USS Steamrunner, disabled thirty minutes ago and barely holding life-support together. Then, of course, there was Starbase 499, the gargantuan structure that was still holding its position above Santrag II. It had seen better days, but it was relatively intact.
That part of the mission had been a success.
“499 to Fortitude. Commander Archer, can you hear me?”
“Yes, Rear Admiral Blackmore,” she said aloud. “This is Fortitude.”
“Congratulations, and thank you. Letting those final three escape was a nice touch. I have to admit that from what we’ve learned about them, I had no idea that the End were even capable of escape. We must have shown them!”
“Sir, the Steamrunner is in a bad way. Are your tractor-beams functional? Or do you want us to tow her home?”
“Our beams are offline and the relays are shot to pieces.”
“Understood. We’ll get to it.”
* * * *
Lieutenant Commander Sollik wished he could take back every complaint that he had ever made about being the Chief Engineer aboard Fortitude. From the modifications that he had to oversee after the ship was pushed out of Spacedock early, to the retrofitting of the Steamrunner at Captain Llewellyn’s request… nothing compared to this. Almost every system aboard was damaged in some way. Warp drive had been offline for hours now. Everything else was on the verge of catastrophic failure and it was he and his team holding it all together, despite several members of his team being among the casualties of war.
Of course, the Bridge was calling the shots. Ensign Jim Morgan burst into Engineering and surveyed the chaos for a brief moment before he saw the Suliban lieutenant commander and headed right towards him.
“Not now, Ensign,” Sollik immediately hissed with venom,” I’m busy.”
“Commander Archer ordered me to help you get the tractor-beam back online. We’ve got to rescue the Steamrunner.”
“The tractor-beam? Oh, yeah, because that’s more important than structural integrity or, oh, maybe life-support?”
“Listen, I know you don’t like me very much and that you’ve got your hands full, but the Steamrunner is losing structural integrity and half the decks don’t have life-support either. So with all due respect, sir, quit the attitude and help me get the tractor-beam back online like the Commander ordered!”
Sollik was taken aback by Jim’s outburst. The young tactical officer was right about everything too.. He didn’t like him, and Steamrunner was facing a critical failure. It was the logical choice to save them before saving their own ship. Despite that, he was the senior officer and he was about to spit back a retort when he noticed a tear running down Jim Morgan’s cheek. Stopping himself, the Suliban cocked his head and frowned, contorting his green forehead.
“What is it?,” he asked, oblivious to the circumstances.
“We’ve all got it bad,” Jim whispered,” and yet all I can think about is Jason, out there somewhere in an alien vessel with the captain. He could be dead and I wouldn’t even know. I’ll never know what happens to him, will I?”
Sollik grimaced. He, and indeed, his people, had a major problem with homosexuality and therefore, the homosexual relationship between this officer and Ensign Jason Armstrong. His personal history with Jim definitely didn;t support his attitude towards same-sex mating. Half of the only gay couple that he had ever known had caused him serious injury in the past. Yet here, he was faced with the emotional breakdown of a fellow officer, and like it or not, the ship needed a tactical officer right now.
“Will crying about it bring him back?,” he asked, perhaps too forcefully but he was trying nonetheless. “Look, Ensign Armstrong did what he thought was right and what he thought would save lives. Right now, we need to save the lives of those in distress. So you can either stand here and continue crying or you can help me get the tractor-beam back online. Jason is a hero and you can be too.”
Jim knew that had taken some effort. Being in a same-sex relationship, he knew which races had issues with his choice of partner. Nodding as he wiped the tear away, he picked up a nearby toolbox and gave Sollik a weak smile.
“Thanks.”
“Tell anybody that I ever said that and you’ll be scrubbing deuterium filters,” Sollik growled at him, fetching his own tools. “Come on, let’s go.”
ACT TWO
Captain’s Log, Stardate 41221.5;
Ensign Armstrong and I have been travelling aboard the captured End battle cruiser for several days now. We are definitely deep within the heart of their territory with our sensors showing that we are closing in on their central command base. We have also seen a massive buildup of ships and soldiers, all disturbingly pointed towards Starbase 499.
Clearly, the battle there didn’t go well for them. Well done, Valerie. My mission carries much more weight now that I had originally expected.
Tentatively, Ewan Llewellyn sipped at his temporary coffee substitute. The replicators aboard the End ship were severely limited to some kind of hideous battle rations. So from memory, he and Jason had attempted to program some facsimile of coffee into the databanks with limited success. Still, it was better than the disgusting green ooze that passed for some kind of drink among the enemy. Deciding that one sip every five minutes was more than enough, the captain lowered his cup and tapped at the sensor console in front of him.
“It looks like we’re nearly there.”
“I’ve been trawling through their records,” Armstrong replied. “They don’t actually have a homeworld but what we’ll be looking at is the fragmented remains of an ancient Class-M planet. Here, take a look.”
He tossed the PADD that he had been reading over to Ewan, who caught it and raised his eyebrows when he saw the displayed image. It looked like an apple core. The flesh of the fruit had been eaten away, leaving the inedible behind. Sticking out from the center of the dead world and reaching out into space were several vast mechanical arms. It was a starbase of sorts, clinging to the last desperate existence of the world’s still-warm heart.
“Wow… I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“From what I can tell, all of the End ships, regardless of size, receive permanent data uplinks to that structure via a sophisticated subspace network. If we can find some way of shutting it down, all End vessels will automatically switch off.”
“No safeguards?”
“They don’t feel that they need any. Their enemies usually get wiped out so ruthlessly that nobody’s ever managed to get this deep into their space before.”
“This almost sounds too easy,” Ewan sighed.
“It does and it isn’t,” the younger man told him. “The subspace network is regulated by a computer deep within the structure. Now the structure also serves as the End’s primary soldier growth facility, meaning that there could be thousands of those bastards between us and the off-switch. I’m sorry, sir, but we’re going to have some fighting to do.”
“You know,” the captain admitted,” that’s become less of a problem with me these days.”
* * * *
The sensor grid surrounding the system was rendered pathetic.
The End battle cruiser carrying Llewellyn and Armstrong was the perfect camouflage. It drew no attention from the computers regulating the various obligatory shows of force. It was a token gesture and nothing more
As the Fortitude operations officer had predicted, the End were arrogant in their own ability to crush any opposition. It was an uneventful flight to the Central Core, but spectacular to undertake. Two polar ice caps were connected by a tapering sliver of rock. The middle of it had been fused and mutilated to fit a mechanical structure and starport. The planet must have been roughly the size of Earth, the captain estimated. The picture that he had seen earlier failed to do it any justice.
“Oh my God,” he whispered.
“I’m setting a course for the nearest docking port,” Jason reported, taking on the initiative without any orders. “Let’s hope there’s no welcoming committee waiting for us.”
“What about sensors?”
Ensign Armstrong hammered at the alien controls with consternation. Their systems were going offline, locking them and him out. Ewan noticed his reaction and repeated his question.
“Everything’s going offline,” he answered. “That massive structure is taking over the ship's functions. We’re just the interstellar equivalent of a fish on a line.”
“I hope we’re a good enough catch.”
“Speak for yourself, sir. I wouldn’t mind being thrown back.”
When a gigantic mechanical arm reached out from the Central Core and seized the thick orange hull plating of the battle cruiser, Ewan and Jason felt the lurch and immediately grabbed their phasers and tricorders.
Like it or not, they were here.
It was now their mission, their self-imposed mission, to find out what drove the End.
Whether they would end up negotiating a peace with them or destroying them remained to be seen. Despite the captain’s newfound realization that violence was often required, he was praying inwardly to whatever deity would listen and hoping that words would solve this dilemma instead of weapons.
“Are you ready?,” Ewan asked his subordinate.
“Ready to stop the slaughter of innocent civilizations? Always, Captain.”
“Then let’s head out.”
ACT THREE
The interior inside the Central Core was just as sinister as the exterior.
“No welcoming committee,” Armstrong observed.
“Yes,” Ewan added with pessimism.
Dark corridors branched off in multiple directions, leading them into shadows that seemed to stare back at the two Starfleet officers with a seething menace. Maybe it was their own fears playing tricks on them while their trepidation was making the hairs on the back of their necks stand at attention, but whatever it was, they moved fast.
Jason held up his tricorder, scanning for the route that they needed to follow. A few steps behind him, Ewan swept every corner with his phaser stretched outward.
“Down there are the soldier growth facilities,” the ensign indicated at one point. “We want to avoid them at all costs, sir. I have no idea if they’re conscious or not. They’re probably out in that fleet that we monitored, but we don’t have any chance of facing off against hundreds of End all by ourselves.”
“Agreed,” Llewellyn nodded. “How far is it until we reach our destination?”
“It’s just a little further, Captain.”
Five minutes passed by them. Corridor after corridor after corridor… they all looked the same. As they walked by, Ewan started to notice things. Some of the bulkheads were dirty, cracked, and eroded. The floor was littered with dust and debris. Rust was forming on the metallic components surrounding them and as they walked around a corner, wires were hanging down from a gaping hole in the ceiling, having gone unfixed.
“It doesn’t look like anybody’s been here in a while,” he noted with a frown. “We passed by the soldier growth facility, didn’t we?”
“Yes, Captain,” Jason replied quickly, his eyes still locked on the tricorder.
“And they go directly to their ships in the docking bays?”
“I believe so.”
Events started to coalesce in Llewellyn’s head. Pieces of the puzzle, the diabolical puzzle that came together to create a picture of the End, was sliding into place. The Welshman wanted to avoid jumping to conclusions but the evidence was all around him, the evidence of disrepair and abandonment.
Just as he was about to activate his own tricorder and run his own scans, the captain was interrupted by his operations officer who had stopped walking and turned to face him. “This is it,” was his report.
A large door blocked their path. Some frantic hacking by Jason ensued, tapping into the locking mechanism and ordering it to relinquish control for just a few seconds. Finally, it worked and the Central Core was revealed.
It was just as Ewan expected it to be.
His suspicions were confirmed.
The chamber was a vast circle like the sunken Roman gladiatorial arenas, only without the crowds baying for blood. Imposing computer consoles and regulatory systems replaced them, humming and chirping their own song.
At least, some of them were.
Other components were shattered, broken, and dead. The place was a complete mess. Cables snaked across the floor, leading from relays to terminals and keypads that were throbbing with the last remaining energy from the warm heart of the dead planet around them.
As he took in the sight, Llewellyn let his gaze rest upon the finishing touch to the whole picture. There was a body. A decaying, long dead body was slumped over a console.
“Ensign,” he said slowly,” I want this place quantum-dated.”
“Aye, sir,” Jason said, running his tricorder scans. “Got it. Along with the rest of the structure, this room is over six hundred years old. And our friend over there? He’s been dead for just as long. We’re the first people to set foot in here for generations.”
* * * *
Back in the Santrag system, repairs were well underway.
“Commander,” Jim Morgan called out from tactical, drawing the attention of Valerie Archer immediately,” incoming transmission from 499.”
“Put it up.”
“Commander Archer, this is Rear Admiral Blackmore with bad news,” growled the comms system. Energy from the main viewscreen was being diverted at this stage, robbing the Bridge crew of the USS Fortitude of seeing his bearded visage. “Our sensor array just came back online and we’ve got more End ships on an intercept course. We estimate that they’ll be on our doorstep in less than two hours!”
“Sir, we need more time!,” exclaimed the first officer.
“I don’t have any to give you.”
“How many ships are we talking about?”
“More than last time,” came his grave reply. “A lot more.”
* * * *
Captain Llewellyn closed his tricorder with a sign. “Agreed,” he acknowledged.
Between them, both Starfleet officers had managed to complete their puzzle. The alien corpse slumped over the controls of the Central Core was a vague DNA match to the recorded readings gathered from the End pilot that Fortitude had recovered during the opening stages of this sorry tale. Whatever species that he came from, it was long gone and probably decimated along with the world that had once surrounded them. They have been growing clones, growing an army of vicious soldiers to fight a war, six hundred years in the past.
A war that was now obviously long since finished.
“That means,” Armstrong was saying,” that this guy stayed behind to set the soldier growth facility on automatic. He stayed behind to ensure that his race survived in the shape of those bastards, and to ensure that they won their conflict.”
“The End are nothing more than the echo of a long-dead race,” Ewan concluded, running a tired hand through his dark hair. “They’re grown, sent straight to their ships, and upon the only orders that they were ever given: to conquer and prevail. No wonder they’re so strong. They’ve had hundreds of years to perfect their goal!”
Armstrong returned to his tricorder, waving it around the chamber. “Captain,” he said,” I have our solution.”
“What?”
“This Central Core… it regulates all of the ships in the End fleet. There’s a low-level subspace network connecting every vessel’s computer to this room. To that terminal, right here. The closest thing that I can think of is the way that the Borg connect their drones to the hive mind. If we can tap into the network, we could send them an order to power down… or self-destruct.”
Llewellyn felt like he had been punched in the stomach. “What about our escape route?,” he asked him. “What about the battle cruiser that we used to get here? We’d be stranded!”
“I isolated her systems after we were dragged in. I didn’t like being at the mercy of this starport so I took a precaution.”
Clever Kid. There was no question of that.
It was an incredible power that no man or woman should ever have in their grasp. With the push of a button, he would slaughter an entire race of insane clones. Was that the way to look at it? He could end the suffering of millions of people and remove a dangerous threat to the Federation. Even more importantly, he would save the Santrag system. He would save everyone that he cared about.
Save Rear Admiral Blackmore.
Save his ship.
His crew.
Save Valerie…
“All it would take,” Jason continued,” is a phaser blast at that core.”
The blonde operations officer was pointing at the humming shaft in the center of the chamber. All of the computers were linked to it through all of the cables and relays. Was that all? Was that really it?
“I… I can’t…,” the captain stammered, wrestling with his conscience. “Clones or not, they’re sentient beings!”
“They’re murderers, sir!,” Ensign Armstrong protested with a vast amount of vigor. “They’re automations grown by a computer that should have stopped working long ago! That’s why nobody has come down here, sir! That’s why we encountered no resistance, getting here! They’re arrogant, violent, psychotic, and they shouldn’t be here!”
Llewellyn felt his hand shake. It still had a hold of his phaser. Slowly, devoid of an actual thought process, his arm began to rise. He considered that the End were devoid of any kind of thought process, and devoid of any reprieve.
They had declared war on the Federation by attacking Starbase 499, dragging him and Fortitude out here before they were ready. Ready for exploration, ready for combat… ready for this? Was he ready for this?
He started to sweat. All it would take was a single push of the trigger.
“We’ll never get this chance again, Captain,” Jason pointed out from beside him, his tone sympathetic to the moral ambiguity of the action while firmly urging him on. “It will never be this simple again. Take out the core and their fleet dies. Their ships stop, break apart, and the End meets their end! We’ll have won this war with only a single shot!”
The phaser wavered in his grip.
He swallowed hard. This was it. Now or never. Do or die.
“No.”
Feeling his arm relax, the captain stumbled backwards. For everything that he had learned during his time in this corner of space, for the entire realization that being a pacifist was not enough and that violence was sometimes required of him, he simply couldn’t do it.
“Fine,” Jason said coldly. “Then you can court martial me later.” The operations officer raised his phaser.
“Wait, stop!”
It was too late.
EPILOGUE
Valerie Archer was having a difficult time, comprehending it.
She sat in the Ready Room of Fortitude, hoping that her position in this seat wouldn’t become permanent and that Ewan would return from his mission. It had apparently been a success.
They had been minutes away from the most catastrophic space battle ever imagined. Hundreds of End ships blasted through warp towards the Santrag system and to Santrag II with their weapons armed. They would have systematically slaughtered the population of the planet, annihilated the starbase and wiped out every last ship, shuttlecraft, escape pod, and every last person… but they stopped.
They had stopped, dropping out of warp within a considerable distance from their target.
They had stopped and they had blown up.
Each battle cruiser, each carrier, and each fighter had all suffered from an immediate warp core breach. Their antimatter containment units went offline in the blink of an eye. The resulting shockwave had smashed into Starbase 499 and the waiting Fortitude, causing a few crewmembers to get knocked on their butts. Not a single End vessel remained.
Whatever the captain had done, it had worked.
But at what cost?”
Perhaps, his own life or perhaps even worse. Perhaps he was stranded.
“Bridge to Commander Archer. We have one End battle cruiser on an intercept course,” Lieutenant Vuro reported, his voice filling the Ready Room. “Sensors show that it’s the same battle cruiser that the captain took into their territory. There are two lifeforms aboard. They’re Human, ma’am.”
Valerie could have cried.
They had made it… and yet the question still remained.
At what cost?
The End.