Doctor Who: The New Legends
HOPE BORN ANEW
Disclaimer: Doctor Who, the TARDIS, the Galactic Federation and all other related material is the sole property of the BBC. No infringement of copyright was intended in the creation of this fan fiction and the story conventions are used here without permission. This work of fiction may, at times, depict scenes of mature sexual content and or violence or both. All other story components are the sole property of the author.
Prologue: In the year 4073 AD, in the forty-first century, a Galactic Federation made up of the former member worlds of the defunct Earth Empire ruled with equity and justice. Like all conglomerations before it, it maintained a fragile balance of power; and crime, though it did manage to pop up, was swiftly dealt with. As the Federation grew, the marauding races of other galaxies began to sit up and take notice of this upstart hegemony and sought to show its citizens their rightful place in the order of creation. Through long and drawn out wars, the Federation soon showed these would-be usurpers the limitations of their powers and abilities. Our story begins some seventy-five years after the last major battle with the Daleks, the single most unrelenting foe the Federation ever came toe-to-toe with. Just when it seems that peace, at last hard won, has become the rule, another, darker evil threatens to descend upon one of humankind's last bastions...
A lone computer console warbled and chirped as indicator lights of every color danced on its surface. This brought the operator of the apparatus to with a start from where he'd been dozing and with a muttered curse, he blinked his left eye to activate the communications channel of his neural interface. There was the crackle of static as the line cleared and information began to pour through.
"McKeckney, are you asleep at your post again!? If I find out that you have been, so help me, I'll have you sanitizing dreadnought warp field generators till you're so old, you won't be able to take a breath without medical assistance!!" Communications officer Ryan McKeckney pulled the interface off from his left eye as the implied emotional barrage caused a painful buildup in the region of his neural implant. Swearing under his breath, he ran a hand over his face and van dyke before responding.
"...McKeckney? Are you listening to me? McKeckney! Where the HELL are you!"
"I'm sorry chief," came his reply, "I was working on some of the equipment for the annual evaluations that are coming up. Lord knows, we can't afford to have any screw-ups with the top brass around."
"Well, if you can't respond any quicker to me than you just did, mister, you won't have to worry about any possible equipment failures!" The chief was Ryan's boss, a tough-as-nails woman by the name of DeVage, and it was her job to make sure outpost Gamma Ypsilanti 3 was ever at peak performance. She and the Adjudicators under her command were the Federation's first line of defense against any kind of alien attack. There were several such outposts along the borders of the Federation and they sat silent; sentinels against evil in the endless night of the universe. Ryan could see DeVage's full form in the interface as he adjusted the connecting arm for more comfort. She may have been giving him a dressing down, but he was only half listening. He was focusing more on the fact that his manhood also saluted his boss, but for an entirely different reason. He amused himself with the thought of what would happen if she ever were to discover the holo-grid program he had established in his chambers in which a holographic image of her did a strip tease in order for him to get his rocks off. Her voice's sharp crack suddenly brought him back to full attention.
"...stop daydreaming when I'm talking to you, damn it! Don't you realize that the Federation could be under attack and you wouldn't even know because you're off in la-la land! I don't really feel like coming down there and personally hopping all over your ass!" DeVage's usually beautiful face was red from where she has been spouting off at her underling. She had blonde hair that was in a modified bowl cut and bobbed towards the inside. She had teased her bangs out and blue eyes flashed with anger. Her full lips were made all the more red due to dressing down her junior officer. When she had mentioned coming down and hopping on his case, his mind wandered into a little fantasy he had relived endless times about her going down on his masculinity, orally teasing him and sweeping him away on a tidal wave of passion. He suddenly felt the need to visit the staff toilet in the kiosk down the hall. DeVage went on ranting and he just kept agreeing and making half-hearted attempts at apologies. He was starting to daydream again when the red alert klaxon started blaring out a warning. That's odd, he thought, damned odd. He studied the instruments for a moment before interrupting the commander he said hurriedly, "Ma'am, I think you'd better get up here after all! The defense systems have all just come on automatically and the shields have all activated! I've never seen anything like it!"
"I'm on my way," DeVage stated. Was it just Ryan's imagination, or did the Commander sound terrified?
A few minutes later, Vanessa DeVage pounded full kilter into the comm office control room. The klaxons were still blaring and she could barely hear herself think. She had stopped at the tactical defense room on her way up to comm and had realized that not only had the shields activated, but the ferranide armor plating had deployed. Not even the presence of a Dalek planet killer caused the armor to deploy. DeVage's heart jumped up into her throat and promptly lodged itself there. Ryan broke in on her thoughts,
"Ma'am, there is a lot of garbled comm traffic coming in from the Ninth Fleet. I can't make out all of it, but they are retreating in this direction! There's something about a new alien craft headed this way and the Fleet reports that the ship is unstoppable. The plasma torpedoes and cannons are having no effect and the particle warheads simply bounce off their hull!"
"Quick! Punch up what you can on the scanner!" Ryan's fingers flew over the touch sensitive pad, his mind reacting with G.Y. 3's main computer. In a shower of blue static, the image of the battle quickly resolved itself on the screen and when they saw what they were up against, they could only stand agape. The tattered remains of the Ninth Fleet kept hammering away at the massive black object. At first they thought they were suffering from some kind of hallucination because they couldn't see what it was the fleet was firing against. The star field rippled and suddenly a section of stars ceased to shine as the blacker-than-midnight ship came into being. Vanessa ran to look at the sensor backups in the rear of the office, but all results came back negative. She hazarded a guess that the combined firepower of the Ninth Fleet had triggered the station's defenses. At that moment a channel opened from the fleet's lead ship, the battle cruiser Pegasus.
"Captain Coltrane, how are you? What's.." The haggard face of the terrified captain stopped her in her greeting as his ship's bridge began to disintegrate around him.
"Save the damned pleasantries Vanessa! Get your people the hell out of there now! We were patrolling the Wakhan Expanse seeking any signs of alien activity, thinking that it had been so long since any of our old foes came a-callin'. We were out on maneuvers to prepare for any eventuality when out of nowhere this monstrosity just materializes out of thin air! You've got to inform High Command, our weapons are useless, we're falling back to a safe position..." The captain was cut off as an explosion rocked the bridge of his ship and several communications, both inter-ship and intra-ship jammed his comm line, "Only the Pegasus and a few other ships remain. We've just received reports from the rest of the Fleet that they are too heavily damaged to escape at warp velocities and I'm not leaving my men behind!" He tapped a control near him establishing a multi ship-to-ship channel and said, "This is Fleet Commander Coltrane. Our remaining ships are too damaged to attack any further and we'll never escape on warp drive. Disengage your warp safety protocols and prepare for ramming speed! We must defend the Federation!!" He turned back to Vanessa, "Make sure they know what happened here today!" The screen went back to the scene of the battle as five ragtag ships all began to converge on a single point on the alien beast. Vanessa and Ryan watched in disbelief as the five ships blossomed into plumes of highly radioactive flames as their warp generators went critical. The screen went dark for a moment as the intensity of the light was too much for the luminosity regulators to control. The alien vessel plowed on as though the Ninth Fleet had never existed. Vanessa wasted no time, and she activated the distress and general alert frequencies and brought all of Gamma Ypsilanti 3's weapons to bear. Just try us on for size, you bastards, she thought. Not hesitating for a moment, she ordered the ordnance control techs to open fire. The station shuddered as the weapons loosed a hail of electronic and plasma charged death. The station's weaponry was proving to have little effect, or was it? The strange vessel suddenly stopped and waited for several seconds.
"What are they waiting for," Ryan asked. As if awaiting his verbal cue, the ship proceeded forward and released a single warhead. Preparing themselves for a deadly bang, they were surprised that the station didn't rock more than it did. Maybe their armor was a match for the new menace after all.
"McKeckney, are we still transmitting that distress signal?"
"Yes ma'am and I've included a live feed from everything we've witnessed here."
Suddenly and without warning the entire station started to buckle and creak as control after control shorted out.
"Commander," Ryan shrieked, "That warhead they hit us with, it's some kind of molecular compression device. This station is literally collapsing in on itself!!" DeVage wasted no time as machinery exploded around her and plumes of flame licked the pristine white walls. With klaxons blaring and equipment failing, she opened a station wide channel and issued an order, "Everyone to the escape pods. All hands, abandon Gamma Ypsilanti Three! I repeat all hands, abandon Gamma Ypsilanti Three!" She set to work to have all the station's defenses to keep delivering a volley of weapons fire, if even now, it was a moot point.
"Go, Ryan! Save yourself! NOW!!" She turned back to the smouldering console when she felt a grip on her arm.
"What the hell are you doing, mister? I gave you a direct order. Leave!"
"I'm not going without you, ma'am!"
"Don't be an imbecile! You'll..." She was cut off as he leant down and pressed his lips to hers and allowed himself to taste their honey sweetness and take in the scent of her perfume.
"I'm NOT leaving without you," he stated, more firmly this time. His lips were pursed but his vivid green eyes held a sparkle in their depths. She sighed heavily and relented.
"Oh what the hell, this place is done for. Just remind me to court-martial your ass for wasting time!"
"What for!? I wasn't going to leave you here to die.."
"I wasn't referring to leaving me here," she said with a slight hint of amusement in her voice.
Moments later, as their escape pod plummeted through space away from the station, they held on to each other watching for the moment when the station would give a final shudder and die. They didn't have to wait too long as a blinding flash signaled the end of Gamma Ypsilanti 3. Even for their awkward moment in comm control, Vanessa felt oddly cold inside.
"All this technology at our disposal, all our advances and this new race, whoever they may be, brushed us aside with little regard." Vanessa paused to notice the hundred other little pinpoints of light that indicated the other escape pods leaving the station and continued, "How in God's name can we fight an enemy like that. They smashed right through our defenses as though they weren't even there and now this."
"How indeed," Ryan replied, "And may God have mercy." Ryan hugged Vanessa closer and planted a kiss on her forehead. He traced the line of her cheek and hugged her body closer to his own. Sleep gradually overtook them and the pod raced through the inky night.
THREE AND A HALF YEARS LATER-
Chapter 1: War Is Hell
Federation Commonwealth-Puerto Oro
A lean and shapely redhead burst forth from the azure springs of the holiday camp on the Federation Commonwealth of Puerto Oro. She was enjoying the relaxation that the resort afforded her and heaven knew she needed it. She'd only been a month from completing her contract teaching and evaluating the Galactic Xenobiology clinicals after a successful four year stint. Accompanying her was another young woman with hair like spun gold that flowed elegantly down her back. The redhead ducked under the surface of the azure liquid and sprung up suddenly, causing her companion some degree of consternation and they both went down in a tumble of arms and legs. They emerged just moments later, spluttering like half-spent fish, and settling down into a few good natured chuckles. The redhead pulled herself onto the walkway and settled into one of the lounge chairs, casually draping a towel over her lithe form. She donned a neuro-novel interface and gingerly slid it down over her head. She ran through the gamut of selections before deciding on Lady Chatterley's Lover. She was just beginning to get into the feel of the heart-stopper when the blonde's voice interrupted her.
"You know, the word around here and half the fleet is that you'll end up serving on your father's ship." That caused the redhead to frown.
"The Hesperus; I know. I don't have a problem with being the chief medical officer of a Federation dreadnought, but you also know who one of the lieutenant commanders on that ship is now, don't you?" The blonde stared off into the distance as she turned the idea over in her head. Giving the redhead a look of resignation after a moment's concentration, she said, "Nope. Sorry, I'm drawing a blank."
"Then let me tell you. It's Richard Carmichael." The blonde felt her light mood sink into the miry depths and she felt the need to kick something...hard.
"Aww, jeez, Bev," came the reply, "That chauvinistic son-of-a-bitch? Like we didn't get enough of him as it was in the Academy. Granted he wasn't medical, but hell, we still crossed paths with him. What a bummer. How will you handle him if he starts some shit?"
"Simple," came the reply, "I'll tactfully place my foot up his ass and then kick it out the nearest airlock I can find. You should consider yourself lucky, though. You still have your clinicals to look forward to and you won't have to worry about that bastard. But enough about 'No-balls Carmichael'. My stomach's telling me it's dinner time and I'm dying for a banana split. Talk of Richard, however, did have one positive aspect."
"And that is?"
"It's put me in the mood for peanuts on my ice cream." Laughing to the point of tears, the two women headed for the delicatessen.
Five Months Later-
Beverly was lost. The Hesperus was a huge ship, and everyone had been given a virtual map to aid them in getting around and also had computer aided assistance, but finding the main sick bay, her sick bay, was like looking for a needle in a hay stack. She was really beginning to wish she had not chosen a change of venue, but she was more or less forced into it. The Hesperus was the newest in the dreadnought line and naturally, her dad threw his weight around until he got command of her. With all the chaos of the war, Beverly had been able to take advantage of the loopholes and let Ingrid do her internship with her. The six week course had really given the two women time to gel as friends and she really needed that right now. Things had gone south with Eduardo and she was more than ready to swear off the male sex forever. It wasn't that she feared a committed relationship, but she wasn't going to spend her life figuring out men. She would however spend her life practicing medicine. She recalled the last night when she and Eduardo had gotten into a particularly nasty fight. It bordered on rape, but Beverly took care of her former lover before he could even begin to make intentions known. He had stumbled in from a long evening playing poker. His eyes were red-rimmed and the stink of alcohol wore heavily on his breath. Beverly was tired of his late night excursions and the poor excuses he offered to her as a reason for his many infidelities. This particular night was no exception. Beverly thought she could catch the hint of women's perfume cloying about his neck, but she wasn't certain. When he started raising a fuss as to why there wasn't a hot dinner on the table, a mere four hours after he claimed he'd be home, Beverly merely told him to grow up and forget about making "snuggle bunnies" tonight as she had a headache and really wasn't in the mood. Eduardo wasn't one to take rejection kindly and chasing after her in the small apartment, he grabbed her arm and slung her roughly around. She flinched slightly, feeling her temper start to rise at his treatment.
"Eduardo, you're drunk. Leave me the hell alone." Bev's tone was level and even.
"Shut the hell up, bitch," he slurred, "I work my ass off all day and when I come home I expect a hot meal to be waiting on me."
"Then you should have brought your shaggy ass home four hours ago like you said! For the last two months I have slaved for you and waited hand and foot on you and tried to make this relationship work, while you're all over the place getting your damned jollies! Now, leave me the fuck alone. I'm going to bed." Eduardo's angered peaked and he slammed her against the wall and began to fondle her roughly. Beverly's temper was mounting and the alcohol on his breath made her gag as he tried to force her roughly to kiss him. She struggled and he pinned her down harder. Her grabbed her left breast in his right hand, only causing her to struggle harder. He had managed to undo his trousers with his opposite hand, and reveling in the feeling of soon to be gliding in and out of his lover, he stopped as he was brought up short by a massive wave of pain.
Beverly had managed to work her hand to Eduardo's groin and had grabbed hold of his scrotum and was forcing her polished red nails into the delicate skin. He let up and she shoved him away. Before she could get completely clear, however, he swung out, cuffing her across her cheek. She went down on the floor and held in the tears of pain that threatened to spill from her eyes. He grabbed her head and forced it back, causing her to clench her jaw to keep from crying out. He squatted down intent on forcing his swollen cock into her mouth and to victory. She eyed him with pure venom when a thought struck her. Eduardo thought he felt her relent and started to enjoy his victory. He felt her take him and had about two seconds of otherworldly pleasure before mind numbing pain caused him to nearly black out. Reeling from horror and shock, he gazed down at his groin. Blood streamed from the area where the head of his cock had been not five minutes before. Bev spat the offending member into her hand and growled, "Here, Eddie, you can have this back!" With the finish of that statement, she cold cocked him right where he was. Stumbling backward, he toppled as Beverly hit him again, catching him full across the face. He continued to stumble and she gave him a round house kick that sent him into the furniture. He didn't get up. She called the authorities and had him hauled away and later toasted herself for kicking his ass by building a fire out of his clothes and sipping a glass of Dom Perignon . It was there and then that she had sworn off men for good. Later, after arriving on the Hesperus, she had, at Ingrid's urging, opted to room with her. She had just finished a particularly nasty shift reaming the mess out of some poor stuck up intern who really needed it and the thought of a hot meal was like the Balm of Gilead to her nerves. She could her raised voices coming from further up the corridor beyond her, but couldn't distinguish what the fracas was about due to the curvature of the hallway. It immediately set her temples to throbbing. Oh hell, she thought, just what I don't need; another three-alarm fire. She came upon a small group of people, Beverly counted seven, who all greeted her in turn before ignoring her again. Voices were raised and tempers seemed to be fraying at the edges.
"I don't give a shit what High Command says..."
"It only makes sense, we need to see some action. Hell, all the other fleets have..."
"I think we should just wait and see if they'll go away. Maybe we can make peace with them..." Beverly noticed that suggestion, made a by a woman who appeared to be of Asian extraction, got booed to tears and starting more vociferous arguing. Feeling like someone was pounding around her brain with hobnail boots, Beverly tried to get through,
"Um, guys, can I get through...." She was now in the middle of the group with people shouting at her and around her. She tried raising her voice to be heard, "Really, folks, this can wait. And besides, my head is killing me. I just want to get to my quarters." The arguing went on and Beverly's head felt like the San Andreas fault line. Not saying a word, she tried to edge her way out before she was grabbed back in and addressed, "Come on Beverly, what do you think?"
At the seething point, she said as evenly as possible through clenched teeth, "What I think is that it's a stupid ass argument. All I want to do is get to my quarters where I can set some hexa-dopamine on to this headache before my brains turn to mush in my skull."
She was patently ignored.
The argument reached a new crescendo, sending the pain in her head soaring. She was sorely wishing she had her prized wooden baseball bat from her antiquities collection with her at that moment so she could practice her swings on the heads of the members of the group. Grinding her teeth, she tried to squeeze through the group one more time, before being rudely shoved away. That did it; her temper flared and the Red Fury lashed out. With the group yelling obscenities right and left now, Beverly bellowed,
"WOULD YOU ALL JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET THE ALMIGHTY HELL OUT OF MY DAMN WAY!!!"
Her outburst immediately hushed the crowd into stunned silence and they parted like the waters of the Red Sea. As she passed, they could hear her mutter, "And the half-time score; Alpha-Bitch, one-hundred million; Shit-for-Brains group, zilch."
Eight Weeks Later-
"Listen! I don't give a monkey's left testicle what barricades you have to storm or how much bureaucratic red tape you have to cut through with a plasma cannon, just get me those damned supplies!!" Beverly flicked the communicator off disgustedly leaving the already flustered government official on the other end talking to a dead comm channel. Inside she was fuming, but she channeled her anger into strategic mode. The Hesperus had been on a routine patrol and wandered into the Aristolis system and when it did, it and the small squadron with it managed to stir up a hornet's nest. Beverly's mind began ticking over, thinking and planning. She could hear every sound around her and it got her adrenaline flowing. From far off, she could hear the dim thud of the ship's shields taking a pounding from enemy weapons fire. She could feel the shrill bleating of the red-alert klaxon and the shouting of the med-techs and nurses and the other doctors as they scrambled around in the main operating theater just outside her office. She moved to her office door and as it slid open, observed the chaos in the operating room. Crew and soldiers were being ushered in and out at an alarming rate, some with the most hideous wounds. A migraine started to come on with a vengeance and she sat in the plush crushed-velvet armchair behind her desk and began to massage her temples. The ship rocked with each bombardment of enemy weapons and she felt her mood slowly began to sink even further. The greeting chime to the office sounded and she barely heard the soft hiss of the door sliding open above the pounding in her head. Feeling a biting retort on the tip of her tongue, she checked herself as Ingrid strode into the office in a blood spattered smock. Beverly could just see her through the spots in her vision. Ingrid's face registered a modicum of alarm at her companion's state.
"You OK? Because you look like hell."
"Thanks for the compliment. And what about you, you look like you've just spent a day in a butcher's shop."
"Touche. So what's wrong?"
"Migraine; again."
"Ah, I see. Physician, heal thyself," Ingrid said with mock grandiosity, "You know, you might want to see a doctor about that."
"I thought you WERE a doctor."
"And I thought YOU were a doctor." The two stopped their verbal sparring contest for just moment and regarded one another before they allowed a few chuckles to pass between them. Beverly continued, "The headaches are to the point now that only hexa-dopamine will even make a dent in them and I'm having to up the dosages a little every few weeks."
"Holy shit, Beverly! It only takes the tiniest amount of that stuff to work. You're going to end up in a coma or dead if you don't watch out. And if you die on me, so help me I'll resurrect your ass and then kill you myself." As Ingrid finished her reprimand, a hint of a smile tugged at her lips. "Besides," the blond woman continued, "I know of a way to help ease the tension." She came and knelt down beside the doctor and began to caress the redhead and tenderly massage the temples of the woman. Beverly moaned; partly in pain and partly in pleasure. She reached out and took Ingrid's hand in her own and held it to her fevered cheek. She thought back to the night she and Ingrid had first spent the night together as lovers. Could it be that she had at last found her soul mate? It seemed to her that Ingrid was having a profound impact on her and she seemed more alert and more able to practice her skills that before. She was continuing her line of thinking when the Hesperus lurched desperately and sent both women crashing to the floor, knocking the breath out of Ingrid. Outside they could hear, from the door that led out into the corridor, the sounds of electrical equipment shorting out just as the lighting went.
"Well hell," Beverly snarled, "I hate being left in the damn dark."
"There, that's more like it," Ingrid quipped, "That sounds more like my girl!"
Beverly used the desk as a support and hauled herself to her feet. Feeling down for Ingrid's hand, she helped her friend and lover up and felt for the door to the operating room. Just as they were about to cross the motion sensor space, the lighting was restored. They immediately began to hear muffled cries and shouting from outside. The door hissed open and hell itself dumped itself into their laps. The two doctors were immediately barraged with a thousand concerns.
"Doctor Michaels, there aren't enough di-beds...."
"Doctor Michaels, the cardiac stimulators aren't having any effect of the trauma patients...."
"Doctor Strondheim, how many cc's of gamma globulin should be used..."
"Beverly, Ingrid, this is bad, really bad. You both need to come down to..."
The two women couldn't hear over all of the fussing and carrying on and they no sooner had one question and try to answer it than someone butted in with a new one. People started waving things in their faces and Beverly's head started pounding again with the buzz of voices. She put up her hands to motion for silence but went ignored. Trying to distance herself, she motioned for Ingrid to follow her and had a sea of people converge on them still clamoring for their combined attention. Head pounding and temper flaring, she spun around and bellowed, "SHUT UP! ALL OF YOU! NOW!!!" The room became deathly quiet. She paused, allowing herself a deep breath and moment to let the nausea that threatened to consume her, pass. She continued in a quieter, more stern tone of voice, "People, you all are supposed to be medical practitioners! Let's grow up and get some fucking organization about us for a change or do Doctor Strondheim and myself have to do everything for you? Richards, if there aren't enough di-beds, make do with a medical transcomp and a makeshift triage center; that's stuff any first year med student would know. Pauley, of course the cardiac stimulators aren't going to work. You stabilize the patient first. Remember we're here to save lives, not speed them on their way to Valhalla." She paused for a moment as Ingrid quietly advised the nurse who had asked about the globulin.
She shouldn't have been surprised at the stupefied looks on a lot of faces. It wasn't that these people didn't know what to do, but few if any had been exposed to and seen as much intensive medical practice as she had. They kept just staring after her and Ingrid. She felt on the verge of another explosion as she barked, "Come on people, move! For Heaven's sakes, let's at least try to look like professionals!" At her order, people started moving and the sick-bay began to function like a well-oiled machine. She told Ingrid to take charge while she made rounds about the ship and to consult with her father, the admiral.
She wandered through the halls of the Hesperus, putting out the small fires wherever she saw them. One detour took her to the secondary sick bay where a soldier had his insides laid open as his life ebbed away. All attempts to staunch his bleeding and patch his wounds were failing and as Beverly passed she stopped and checked in on the other physicians trying their best to keep the man alive. She moved in and took over the examination without so much as a second thought. She could tell from the distinctive burn marks that some kind of shrapnel grenade had lain the man open. His major organs seemed to be all right with the exception of his liver and spleen, both of which would have to be replaced. Lowering the readout of the di-bed, she set her face in a grim mask as she worked delicately to save the life of the fallen man before her. No one had ever died under her direct care and she began to wonder if in this instance this would be her first. Fuck that, she said to herself, Nobody dies on my watch. The tissue regenerator was working too slowly as she passed it over the soldier's torso. The drugs she had pumped into his system kept him oblivious to any pain he might have felt and she had stopped his blood loss, but somehow, in a way that she couldn't explain, the shrapnel bits were hampering her progress. With time being of the essence, she made a radical decision. Some of the top doctors at Fed-Med, as it was called, had some highly experimental drugs that they were field testing, but only under the supervision of a senior medical officer like herself. She went to a locker inlaid into the wall and gave her access code for the release of the new instantaneous tissue regeneration drug. If her theory was proved, she might not even have to synthesize a new liver and spleen for her patient. Crossing her fingers and working against time, she loaded the vial in the hypodermic applicator and administered the drug. As if possessed with an uncanny healing ability, the soldier's wound's healed themselves and the flesh grew together. Beverly watched him closely and then frowned as something went wrong. The di-bed scanners began shrieking as one of the attending nurses hollered out, "Doctor Michaels! He's going into cardiac arrest!" Wasting no time, she climbed up on the man, straddling him, and began to administer CPR. At first he was unresponsive, but she continued, alternating between the CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
"Come on, dammit," she muttered under her breath, "Don't you fucking die on me. Come on!" She tried the mouth-to-mouth once more and then positioned her head to listen to his heart. Nothing. She began to pound his chest again.
"Come on, damn you! I'll see myself in Hell first before I let you die on me!" With that, she delivered a hefty blow to his chest that caused the man to sputter with a fit of coughing. There was a sharp intake of air as the man revived, his eyes flying open. She got down and let the nurses take over tending to him. Evading all questions about the new drug she said simply to them, "Breathe a word of the new drug to anyone and I'll personally shove your asses out the nearest airlock. It's still classified, understand?" No-one dared to argue with her.
Later that evening she and Ingrid were relaxing in their quarters after the strains of the day when the door's greeting chime interrupted their conversation. Getting up to answer it, Ingrid was pleasantly surprised to see that the leader of the Star Demons Special Elite Forces Group, Lieutenant Brandon Braddock had come to call. He and the girls had first met just after they had transferred to the Hesperus and had become fast friends. In fact, Beverly looked up to Brandon like an older brother when she was, in fact, about five years his senior. Brandon was the commanding officer of the Star Demons, and was a typical, adonis-like hunk. But his heart was pure as gold and Beverly relished the fact that she could confide in him. It struck Ingrid as odd that Beverly and Brandon never hit it off romantically as they would have made a cute couple. But as Beverly reminded her friend repeatedly, she just couldn't see Brandon as a love interest. Ingrid often amused herself with the thought that Brandon could very possibly turn even a gay woman straight and might have even taken a shot at him herself, but like Beverly, she relished the brother/sister relationship they shared too much to risk jeopardizing that. And besides, whenever she searched her heart for her one true love, it was Beverly's face that she saw.
As the evening passed, the friends shared a light dinner and the wine flowed freely...a little too freely. Before it was over, everyone was in high spirits and Brandon had earned himself the nickname Beef Swellington.
Two Weeks Later-
"I thought the admiral was gonna bust a gut when you got on the transport. I see now where you get your balls from. Your dad's must be made out of fourteen carat gold." Beverly wasn't much in a mood for talking. She'd spent over the last two months couped up on the ship and she wanted to be in the thick of the action or she thought she'd go stir crazy. She thought about Brandon and the Star Demons. Gone. All seven of them were gone. They had just a few nights before been having dinner with Brandon and now his lifeless body had been committed to the stars. Part of her finally going on a field mission was to leave the memory behind. After all, she told herself, as she had so many times before, the future lie ahead and part of it was just to piss off her dad, the admiral.
Ingrid for the most part was quiet and spent the trip in silence checking her supplies list and making sure to cross-check ratios on her supplies for the atmosphere of Aristolis 3. She felt herself tingling inside from the nervousness and excitement of battlefield triage. She quickly took a minute to tie back her hair and stopped to examine her own emotions. She loved Beverly and was glad to have her in her life. However, she wished she could be more assertive than she was. She hated being stuck with the label of 'Miss Sunshine' all the time and quietly chuckled the last time she remembered the incident that occurred when a well-meaning officer had called her that. Little did she know then that synthesized mashed potatoes and gravy do NOT wash out of a uniform easily. She felt the medical transcomp in her hand and focused on that to keep her mind from wandering. She appreciated the fact though, that thanks to a little urging from Beverly, she could now hold her own with just about any man who crossed her. Whereas Beverly would, when pissed, bawl out someone royally, which had earned her the nickname "The Red Fury", Ingrid tended to go more with the insult-disguised-as-a-compliment approach. Trying to still her slight case of nerves, she fingered the antique brooch that she called the 'Eye of Heaven'. Just then, the retro rockets of the transport ship began to fire.
Beverly Siobhan Michaels was a physician serving in her official capacity as the chief medical officer of the dreadnought, the Hesperus. She was also one of the best damned field surgeons there was to have in the heat of battle. This was in fact because she was a woman. In her short time, she had seen more than her fair share of grisly battlefield and operating room scenes of bodies hacked and blown to bits and it was her guts of vanadium steel that earned her the respect of the people she served with. The latest joke around the fleet was that she had more balls than an African bull elephant and she had stared down more than one cocky male officer with her penetrating emerald green eyes. She was a physician in the same order as all the women in the Michaels family had been to one degree or another and she shared another aspect with all of her female ancestors. She had flame red hair that spilled luxuriously down her back. However, it was at times, such as this one, when on the field of battle, that she would have given anything for a brush cut or at the very least a hair net. In her irritation at trying to focus on the task at hand, she swatted at a stray wisp of hair that was blocking her view.
Aristolis 3 was not the most hospitable of planets at the best of times and now was no exception given the current political climate with the war and all. She gritted brilliant white teeth that shown from between luscious full lips of deep red and tried to concentrate on the patient before her which was almost asking the impossible with the shelling and the sounds of war all around her. Gripping her transcomp harder in her hand, she hoped vainly that it might just serve to help her concentrate more on the fallen soldier before her.
Aristolis 3 was a planet which was in the middle of disputed space between the Galactic Federation and a new race which seemingly just emerged mysteriously from nowhere. The Aristolis system had seen battles and wars before..the Daleks and Cybermen and of course the Sontarans. But the new race seemed like nothing ever before encountered by the Federation. Aristolis was a young colony world and in fact had only been inhabited for about fifty earth years. The first colonists and terraformers had worked diligently to get the colony going and even now things were still very much in the early primitive stages of planning when the war erupted without warning. The enemy always attacked without warning and this did nothing to help the morale of the Federation troops fighting. This was also compounded by the fact the no sooner had the enemy raided Aristolis than they vanished as if they had never been. This little war had now been going on for about three and a half years and it didn't show any signs whatsoever of letting up any time soon. The ships of this new and alien race were the kind that struck abject terror into the hearts of all who saw them. It was as if the ships themselves radiated fear. They were huge and solid black, almost the color of midnight. They were so black that you could see them against the shadow of a night sky and they blotted out the stars for a good wide radius. The ships seemed to be made of a mineral that was as black as an onyx stone and from what all intelligence reports gathered about them said, they seemed to have a central body several miles long and built like a cathedral with the high vaulted ceiling which curved downward at each end like a hemisphere shape. To this was added a V-shaped platform with the point forming in the front and seeming to house the massive engines needed to power the monstrous vessel. Massive laser cannons powerful enough to blast half a continent into oblivion were mounted on the sides, belly and rear. To those who had seen the technical layouts of the massive ships, they resembled the helmets of the ancient Spanish conquistadors. No scanning equipment or device of any kind could detect them and by the time any victim realized they were there, it was too late to mount a defense.
It was as he pored over this information that Admiral Carrington Michaels glanced up grimly at the space battle being waged hundreds of miles above the planet's surface and how his little girl, Beverly was in the thick of it on the planet's surface below. She could be a strong-willed girl when it came to duty and this was no exception. She blatantly defied her father's wishes and threats to be thrown in the brig and went down with the emergency relief ship to aid as needed. She reminded her father that unlike him, she wasn't a military soldier and he couldn't treat her like one. Just one of the few faults they had in an otherwise flawless father/daughter relationship. The army had been searching for a name..any name for this new race of hell-bent destroyers and so they settled on one, albeit a bit of a ridiculous one at that, Shadow-Ghosts or SG's. The reason being that the ships were blacker than night and they came and went like ghosts often do making one wonder if they had really seen them or if it had been a trick of the light. Admiral Michaels sat in grim silence on the bridge of his dreadnought, the Hesperus, as the scene unfolded before him on the Hesperus's theater-sized view screen. God, he thought, There MUST be a way to defeat them.
Back on the planet's surface, Beverly fought to keep the young soldier's life from ebbing away. She herself was young, only thirty-four, and that must have put this youth at about twenty-three years of age. In vain she tried pumping neuro-stimulants into his body in an attempt to keep him going, but she knew what her transcomp confirmed was true. It was sad, because despite the trauma that had been done to him, he was very attractive. He had close-cut sandy blond hair and blue eyes and his face had a chiseled look to it as though he had exercised regularly. However, the boy was beyond hope, she had been too late. The SG's had gotten to him with their damned psycho-trauma device. The transcomp showed his brain chemistry had elevated to the point that his circulatory system had collapsed under the strain as well as turn his brain to mush in his skull. Beverly cried out in frustration as much as the thin atmosphere would allow before she collapsed choking in the reddish dust of the war-torn planet. Forcing herself to get a grip and choke back a sob, Beverly put her hands over the soldier's face and closed his eyes. "Beverly! Beverly!" Beverly looked up to see Ingrid Strondheim running towards her in a mad rush, almost stumbling over the roughly uneven terrain to reach her. "Beverly, come quickly! The globulin supply has been spilled from the last attack! We've lost over a hundred liters! I've got three techs working on back up but the anti-grav sleds are barely functioning in this atmosphere! The transcomps seem to only want to work for a few minutes before some sort of EM radiation fries them." The sounds of warfare were rife around the two women as weapons fire and men screaming filled the air. "Oh, Damn it!" Beverly cried, "As if that weren't just what we needed, more bad news. Ingrid, I want you to go back and salvage what you....." Beverly was cut off by a shout of "Incoming!!!" and a loud whistling which accompanied it. Oh shit, she thought, This is it! "Ingrid! RUN!!" Beverly broke and ran for cover. She hadn't gotten very far when the shell burst upon the field and flung her into the nearest trench, sending showers of mud, flesh and debris raining down on top of her. After a minute or two, she drug herself up and managed to glimpse over the edge of the trench. The smoke hadn't yet cleared and so she called out to her aide, "Ingrid! Ingrid! Talk to me, Ingrid!" Oh for Heaven's sake, please be alright, she thought. Beverly looked around and then her eyes caught sight of something devastating. She wandered over to it only to have a ghastly sight meet her eyes. Ingrid had been thrown towards the trench by the force of the blast, that being her obvious target when the shell exploded. The blast had propelled Ingrid face down but she didn't escape harm's way. Beverly couldn't see for all the mud and various detritus that was covering her friend. The shelling was still heavy and it had begun to rain softly causing Beverly to slip as she tried to navigate. She had to get Ingrid in the trench before the next blast or they both might be done for. She at last managed to gain purchase in the soggy mire and promptly began clearing the grime off of Ingrid's back. She was making some headway in clearing the mud away and stopped to brush a wet strand of hair out of the way. Her hand passed before her eyes when she stopped. It's blood, she thought. Oh God, I've been hit! She panicked as she searched herself for any sign of having been injured. She didn't find any signs of trauma and stopped when a sickening though occurred to her. She frantically began working harder to extricate Ingrid when her hand came across a hard piece of shrapnel. She continued to work until her fingers met flesh. She tried to use the rain that was falling to help clear the mess away until at last she could see what had happened to Ingrid. Beverly forced herself not to be sick as she slumped down in weariness. She pulled Ingrid back down into the trench and carefully turned her over to see her face. The shrapnel that had impaled Ingrid was huge and had managed to rip out the opposite side of her chest cavity with bits of gored tissue attached to it. Blood oozed lightly around the wound and Beverly felt Ingrid shudder in her arms. What was she to do? She didn't have the resources available to repair this kind of damage with her on the battlefield. Hands fumbling numbly, she found herself automatically pumping drugs into Ingrid's shattered body to sustain the woman for a few more minutes. But Ingrid couldn't be saved, not without the medical facilities aboard the Hesperus. She started rocking her back and forth and with unsteady hands she caressed the blond woman's cheek tenderly and with a trembling voice said, "Ingrid? Come on Ingrid. Wake up for Beverly. Come on honey, please, wake up." She was rocking herself and Ingrid and fighting to keep the tears away. She heard a small moan and looked down to see Ingrid smiling weakly at her.
"By the gods, you are so beautiful," came a weak statement from the blond. Beverly almost started sobbing with Ingrid's response. Ingrid quietly shushed her and tried to raise a hand weakly to Beverly's lips. "Hey," she managed quietly, so much so that Beverly had to strain to hear her, "Don't worry about me. I can't feel the pain anymore. Just hold me close, hon. It's getting colder. Please, Beverly, hold me." Beverly cuddled her closer without putting any more pressure on the shrapnel. Somehow, Ingrid found her voice again and tried keep from coughing up blood as she said, "I'm not gonna make it, you know," she paused as a spasm caused her to shudder again, "I-I want you to have something." Ingrid weakly tried to fondle at the 'Eye of Heaven' brooch around her neck. Beverly just stared at her dumbly not comprehending what was happening. Her brain suddenly slammed back into gear.
"No, I'm not taking this. And I'm not leaving you here! Dammit, Ingrid we'll make it through this, just hang on! HANG ON!" With strength that belied her condition, Ingrid put the brooch in Beverly's hand and closed her fingers around it. Barely holding on to lucidity for a moment, Ingrid managed weakly, but sternly, "I'm dying Beverly. We both know that and we both know that I'll never survive the trip back to the Hesperus. This way, you'll always have something to remember me by." A cough racked the suddenly deathly pale woman as she continued, "Please Beverly, you have to let me go. You have to go on." Tears were streaming down Beverly's face now as she choked back a sob and said, "I don't want to go it alone. Not without you!"
"Beverly, you have to..."
"No! Don't leave me! Please! Dear God, Ingrid! Don't you leave me!"
"I will always love you. And even in death, I will never leave you." A final shudder wracked Ingrid's body as her blue eyes closed and Beverly felt the body go limp in her arms. Still rocking back and forth, she let the tears come. The distress over the death of her closest aide and fellow doctor-turned-lover as well as the lack of decent rest recently combined to shatter the last remaining vestiges of her emotional strength. She collapsed into sobs that she no longer had the will or the desire to hold back. How much longer was this hell supposed to go on? She noticed everyone around her running and screaming and fleeing and it didn't make sense to her. She thought she could feel someone grabbing her arms and she could just make out two Federation soldiers hauling her away. But why wasn't Ingrid coming too? Wherever they were taking her, she didn't want to go without Ingrid. Why was Ingrid just lying there? They had to leave, but Ingrid wasn't moving. She never would again. Beverly reached out toward her friend, crying out in a hoarse voice that was raw with emotion, "Ingrid! Ingrid!" before she collapsed into great, heart-rending sobs. Beverly's senses seemed to be dull and muddled and the world began to swim in her vision. There, on the war-torn battle plain of Aristolis 3, in the arms of the Federation soldiers acting as her escort, Beverly Siobhan Michaels gave in to the release of unconscious oblivion as she passed out from her exertions.