Where Blood Leads Part 1

Posted on 10 Sep 2026 @ 2:15am by Lieutenant Commander Aev Flammia

2,429 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Beyond the Raptor's Veil
Location: USS Arawyn
Timeline: Current

[USS Arawyn, Security Office]

Aev worked his way through the last of the security reports as gamma shift approached its end. He would be relieved to rotate back to alpha the following week. It was not that he disliked the officers assigned to gamma, or even the quieter pace of the ship during those hours, but alpha shift carried a sense of normalcy that the overnight rotation never quite managed. The ship felt more awake then. More predictable. Across from him, Ignis occupied the guest chair despite having no physical need for one, his humanoid form settled comfortably with one leg crossed over the other. The hologram’s molten-gold eyes were fixed somewhere beyond Aev’s desk, his expression thoughtful enough that Aev briefly considered asking what had captured his attention.

The door chimed before he could. Aev looked toward it, set the report aside, and rose from his chair. “Enter.”

The doors parted to reveal Lieutenant Taren Lysa. The Bajoran security officer’s dark hair framed an expression considerably more serious than Aev was accustomed to seeing from her at the end of a routine patrol. He gave her a small nod. “Lieutenant. I thought you would be finishing your rounds. What can I do for you?”

“Sorry to bother you, sir.” Taren stepped inside and waited for the doors to close behind her. “During my patrol, I overheard two engineers talking about something they found while performing maintenance in one of the auxiliary cargo compartments. They thought it was contraband.” Her expression tightened slightly. “I went to investigate and found this among the items.”

She produced a weapon and held it out.

Aev recognized the design immediately.

Romulan.

He took the disruptor from her and turned it over in his hands, examining the casing and emitter assembly. There was nothing ceremonial or antique about it. The weapon appeared functional, and from the weight of it, charged. His concern deepened. “Where exactly was this hidden?”

“Behind a maintenance access panel in the cargo room. There were several other items stored with it. Whoever put them there did not intend for them to be found.”

Aev looked back down at the disruptor. “That should not be possible. Internal sensors are supposed to flag unauthorized weapons brought aboard, particularly something with an active power cell.” His eyes narrowed as he examined the weapon again, then shifted toward Ignis. “What do you make of this?”

Ignis unfolded himself from the chair and crossed the short distance to the desk, leaning slightly toward the weapon without touching it. His expression had lost its earlier distraction. “Assuming the disruptor is functional, I see two possibilities. Either Arawyn’s internal sensors failed to recognize a Romulan energy weapon entering the ship, which would be concerning…” He paused, molten eyes lifting toward Aev. “Or someone aboard knew precisely how to make sure they did not.”

Aev’s attention returned to the disruptor.

Ignis straightened. “I find the second possibility considerably less comforting.”

“That is exactly what worries me.” Taren looked from the disruptor to Aev. “There were other things in the compartment as well, Commander. I thought you should see them yourself. After that, I imagine we’ll need to inform the Captain.”

“Yes. Let’s go.” Aev handed the disruptor back to her and followed her from the office, the unease he had felt since seeing the weapon settling more firmly into place. Taren shared that concern; he could feel it beneath the surface, enough to reassure him that she understood the seriousness of what they had found. The possibility of an infiltrator aboard Arawyn was not something he had ever dismissed. The Free State devoted considerable resources to intelligence gathering beyond its borders, and the Tal’Shiar had demonstrated more than once that even Starfleet’s most secure institutions were not beyond their reach. Finding a Romulan weapon hidden aboard his ship made that possibility considerably less theoretical.

[USS Arawyn, Auxillary Cargo Hold]

The auxiliary cargo hold was dim when they entered, lit only by the low guide strips running along the deck. “Computer, lights,” Aev ordered, and the overhead panels brightened in sequence, revealing row after row of cargo containers secured beneath heavy restraints and stacked high enough in places to divide the hold into narrow, shadowed passages. Taren entered behind him, followed by Ignis, whose earlier amusement had given way to a more attentive silence. Aev took in the room slowly, his eyes moving over the crates and tethering systems in search of anything that might immediately appear out of place. “Where did you find it?”

“Toward the back,” Taren replied, gesturing between two rows of containers. “Follow me.” She led them deeper into the hold, weaving through the narrow spaces between the stacked cargo while Aev kept several steps behind her, his attention moving from one access panel to the next. He was beginning to wonder how much contraband could have been hidden in a compartment that was supposedly monitored by internal sensors when Ignis stopped abruptly behind him.

“Aev,” the hologram said, and there was something in his voice that made Aev turn at once. The usual dry amusement was gone. Ignis’s head had snapped toward one of the adjoining passages, his molten-gold eyes narrowing as though he had detected something just beyond Aev’s perception. “Something is wr…”

His image broke apart before he could finish. Light rippled violently through his body, his face and clothing smearing into bands of orange and gold as the projection flickered in and out of existence. Aev turned fully toward him, concern tightening across his features. “Ignis?” he called, but the hologram vanished before there was any answer.

Almost at the same instant, Aev felt something else.

A presence.

It had been there all along, close enough that he should have noticed it, yet somehow it had remained buried beneath the ordinary emotional background of the ship. Now, for the briefest instant, intent broke through whatever had concealed it: sharp, focused, and directed entirely at him. Aev moved before conscious thought had time to catch up. He stepped aside as an arm reached around the edge of a cargo container, caught the attacker by the wrist, and saw the hypospray clenched in a black-gloved hand. “Who are you?” he demanded, twisting the arm away from his neck and driving the attacker hard into the side of the nearest container.

The impact rang through the cargo hold. The man struck the metal shoulder-first and stumbled, giving Aev his first clear look at him. Recognition came almost immediately. “Sovek?” Aev stared at the Vulcan engineer, confusion quickly giving way to alarm. “What is the meaning of…”

A cold pressure touched the back of his neck.

There was a quiet hiss.

Aev jerked away and turned. Taren stood behind him with the hypospray still raised between them, her expression no longer carrying the concern she had worn so convincingly in his office. For several seconds Aev simply looked at her, trying to reconcile the woman before him with the officer who had served beneath him. The emotion he had sensed from her earlier had not been false, he realized; only misread. She had been anxious, but not for the reasons he had assumed.

“Sorry, Commander,” Taren said, lowering the hypospray. “You should start feeling it very soon.”

Aev’s hand went instinctively toward the phaser at his side, but Taren made no move to stop him. That disturbed him more than if she had reached for her own weapon. He drew the phaser halfway from its holster before the first wave of weakness struck, subtle at first, a sudden heaviness in his arm and a dull pressure spreading behind his eyes. Taren watched him register it, and the faintest trace of satisfaction touched her expression. “I have to admit, I expected this part to be more difficult,” she said, before glancing toward Sovek, who was pulling himself upright beside the cargo container. “And you were supposed to do this without letting him throw you into a wall.”

Sovek straightened his uniform with deliberate care, as though the indignity of being hurled into a cargo container was merely an inconvenience. “The outcome remains unchanged.”

Taren gave him a sidelong look. “How reassuringly Vulcan of you.”

Aev tried to steady himself, one hand closing around the edge of the nearest container as the cargo hold seemed to shift beneath his feet. The drug was moving quickly now, far more quickly than anything he had expected from a standard sedative. His pulse hammered against his throat, but beneath that physical panic was something stranger and more frightening. The distant emotional impressions that had become an almost constant part of his awareness were beginning to fade. Taren’s presence dulled first, then Sovek’s, until the space around him felt unnaturally empty.

“Wh-” The word died before Aev could finish it. His phaser slipped from his fingers and struck the deck as darkness began to close in around the edges of his vision. He managed one unsteady step before his legs gave way beneath him, sending him down hard against the floor. He tried to push himself up, tried to hold onto a thought long enough to make sense of what was happening, but even that was slipping away. Within seconds, there was nothing left but darkness.

Taren knelt beside Aev and ran the back of her fingers once across his cheek before giving him a sharp slap. His head shifted slightly with the impact, but there was no response. She watched him for another moment, then sighed and looked up at Sovek. “Well, now comes the interesting part. Tell me, Sovek, how exactly do you intend to get him off this ship without Arawyn coming after you? It had better be good. I’ve heard you can be quite clever.”

Sovek straightened his uniform before lowering himself beside the unconscious Commander. From inside his engineering jacket he produced a small device and fastened it against Aev’s uniform near the shoulder. “I have introduced a program into the ship’s systems that will activate once the next stage begins. Several EPS relays will overload simultaneously, causing a temporary failure in weapons, tractor control, and portions of the internal sensor network. The inertial dampening system will also be forced offline. Arawyn’s flight-control safeguards should prevent any attempt to engage warp until the system is restored.” He adjusted the device once, apparently satisfied with its position. “I have also arranged for the security database to suffer extensive corruption during the power surge.”

Taren stared at him for a moment. “Should prevent them?”

“The probability is sufficiently high,” Sovek said. He reached down and carefully removed the onyx ring from Aev’s finger. The holoband flared an angry red the moment it left the Commander’s hand, its light pulsing hard against Sovek’s palm as though Ignis were still attempting to force a projection through whatever interference had been placed around him. Sovek showed no reaction. He opened a small shielded case, placed the ring inside, and sealed it shut before slipping the box into his pocket.

“How comforting.” She exhaled through her nose and rose to her feet. “And if your calculations are wrong, I suppose I get turned into paste against the nearest bulkhead while you escape with the prize.” She held the Romulan disruptor toward him. “Very well. Time for the second act.”

Sovek accepted the weapon without comment. Taren moved several steps away and positioned herself beside one of the cargo containers, bracing in anticipation. He raised the disruptor, made a minute adjustment to its setting, and fired. The bolt struck her high in the shoulder. Taren cried out as the force spun her backward into the container, where she struck hard and collapsed to the deck. The wound was ugly enough to be convincing, burned through uniform and flesh alike, but Sovek’s aim had been exact; nothing immediately vital had been damaged. Within seconds the ship’s internal alarms began to sound in response to unauthorized weapons fire.

That was the signal.

Somewhere within Arawyn’s computer network, Sovek’s program awakened.

He returned the disruptor to his belt, tapped the transporter control attached to Aev’s uniform, and placed one hand against the Commander’s shoulder. A shimmer of blue-white light enveloped them both, and an instant later the cargo hold was empty save for Taren’s motionless form and the phaser Aev had dropped.

[Shuttle Hafgan]

Sovek and Aev rematerialized in the cramped aft compartment of the shuttle Hafgan. The Vulcan wasted no time. He lowered Aev onto the deck, secured restraints around his wrists and ankles, and verified that the sedative continued to suppress both consciousness and motor response. Only when the readings satisfied him did Sovek make his way forward to the cockpit.

Arawyn was already beginning to fail around them.

Warning indicators flickered across the shuttle’s console as power fluctuations rolled through the larger ship. Sovek took his seat and entered the prepared override. In the shuttlebay outside, the containment field collapsed at almost the same instant the exterior doors began to open. Atmosphere rushed violently toward space. Technicians scattered for emergency alcoves and handholds as loose equipment skittered across the deck and vanished through the widening opening. One crewman lost his grip entirely and was dragged from the bay before the emergency systems could compensate, his body tumbling away against the immense turquoise curve of the gas giant below, its pale cloud bands twisting through the atmosphere like white rivers.

Sovek did not look back.

The Hafgan lifted from the deck and accelerated through the open bay doors. Beyond Arawyn’s hull, the gas giant filled much of the view, turquoise atmosphere broken by vast whorls of white cloud and distant storms curling across its surface. The shuttle banked away from the starship and climbed across the brilliant planetary backdrop just as fresh alarms began appearing across Sovek’s tactical display.

If the timing remained within his calculations, the Aylhr would be waiting. And by the time Arawyn was capable of pursuit, Commander Aev Flammia would already be aboard a Tal’Shiar vessel.

Sovek spared one final glance at the wounded starship behind him, her lights flickering unevenly against the immense turquoise-and-white face of the gas giant, before turning back to the controls and engaging the shuttle’s warp drive. In an instant, the Hafgan stretched into a streak of light and vanished.

[To be continued]

Lt. Commander Aev Flammia
Chief of Security
USS Arawyn

 

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