Cerulean Stars - Chapter 135

Chapter 135 - The Birthday Party - Part 2

Stardate 48535.4 - July 15, 2371 - 10:09:12

The Starfleet Tricorder had been a marvel of modern engineering since its first iteration over two hundred years ago. Its sensors were detailed enough to record on the quantum level, its processing power high enough that it could handle warp field calculations on the fly, and it was capable of surviving a surprising amount of physical abuse.

But most useful for Benjamin's current situation, if you reconfigured one properly it could emit false sensor signals capable of allowing a pair of people to sneak through a less than optimally calibrated security perimeter.

“I don't like this.” Bashir muttered quietly, crouching next to Benjamin as they waited for the signal. “Breaking in together was bad enough, but having Brooks go in alone as a distraction.” He shot a worried look in the direction of the road. “If she's even slightly wrong about how the Orions will respond and they pull out disruptors instead, it will be a massacre.” 

“I know.” Benjamin confirmed grimly, the same thought having crossed his mind when the Asari first suggested the new plan. “But I suspect Brooks knows more about how the Tendi family does things than she's willing to admit.”

It was the only thing that made sense, because as reckless as Brooks could seem at times, he knew she wasn't the type to pick a fight she didn't think she could at least run away from.

The faint sound of something heavy crashing into metal reached Benjamin's ears, and he pushed himself to his feat. “That's the signal.”

Pulling the pressurized grapple launcher out of this bag, he took careful aim before pulling the trigger, causing the hook to shoot up and over the wall. Giving the line a hard tug to make sure it was secure, he motioned to Bashir. “After you, Doctor.”

It took them less than a minute to make it over the wall, at which point Benjamin checked their tricorder and let out a sigh of relief at the life signs now showing up on its screen. “Looks like Brooks was right, the jamming field only covered the outer perimeter.”

“Then you found Jake?” Bashir asked hopefully.

“Maybe.” Benjamin said, taking a moment to double check the way was clear before breaking into a jog. “The tricorder is picking up one human lifesign in the main residence alongside a pair of Orions.”

The grounds were entirely absent of any people, and a tiny tinge of worry hit as they wove their way into the castle for just what that might mean for Brooks. Letting the tricorder’s mapping software guide them, it took only a few minutes to make their way to the room where the human lifesign was showing up.

“Phasers?” Bashir whispered.

“Only if we absolutely need to.” Benjamin whispered back, carefully testing the door to see if it was locked and then holding up three fingers. “On the count of the three.”

“One.”

“Two.”

“Three!” With that he shoved open the door, and they rushed into the room.

A knot of tension uncoiled in his gut at the sight of Jake sitting unharmed in one of the three chairs around the table at the center of the room. 

“Who are you!?” The young Orion girl sitting at one of the others demanded with a frown as the large man in the third seat rose to his feet in an aggressive manner.

Jake squinted at him. “Dad!?” His gaze switched to Bashir. “Doctor… Bashir?”

The young Orion girl blinked, glancing from Jake, to Benjamin, and then back again before her eyes went wide and her hand darted down to unsheathe the dagger on her belt. “V'inne! They're Starfleet!”

Cracking his knuckles, the large Orion took a few steps towards them. “Don’t worry Miss D’Erika, I got this.”

Exchanging a brief glance with Bashir, he motioned to D’Erika who, contrary to V’inne’s words, seemed to be slowly edging around them with weapon in hand. “I’ll take the big one, try not to hurt the kid.”

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Saya parried the quick slash D'Vana made towards her shoulder and sent a kick at the other girl's stomach in return, only for her to deftly jump away from the Asari's retaliation with the same absurdly annoying agility that the Orion teen had with all of Saya's previous 

attempts to land a hit.

“Stop dodging!” She yelled as she once more gave chase.

“I would!” D’Vana yelled back, slowly circling around Saya before once more darting in. “But you’re surprisingly strong!”

This time her blade barely made it up in time to knock away D'Vana's low thrust, and the other girl frowned slightly as she once more danced away from Saya's follow up.

“That's not northern Orion style, is it?”

“Don't know.” Saya admitted honestly, fighting back her urge to try and press the attack since that would just play into D'Vana's greater agility. “I learned mostly from mom, and she learned from some old Orion lady on Risa.”

“Stop playing with her!” A female voice yelled out from the stands.

D'Vana visibly winced. “I'm really not!”

“It's not a fight to the death you fucking idiot!” A deeper voiced woman scolded angrily. “The blue girl has some skill, so D'Vana has to test out her reactions so she can take her down without killing her!”

“Not helping Aunt D'Rana!” D'Vana exclaimed in exasperation.

“It's all right.” Saya put forward, cringing internally at having to openly acknowledge the truth of their fight like this. “I kind of figured it out after the high kick.”

She'd wanted to try and beat the other teen without just tanking everything with her biotic barrier. But the few minutes they'd fought so far had made it clear the only way she'd even have a chance would be with attacks that, if successful, might kill D'Vana. And that wasn't a wormhole Saya wanted to pass through.

Not bothering with a response, D’Vana darted in low and Saya repositioned her sword to try and block the coming strike only to be left off balance as the Orion teen instead threw her weapon into the air and did a handspring that launched her body after the lazily spinning blade just in time to catch the weapon and bring it down towards the Asari’s out of position arm.

The sudden fear of losing a limb was enough for Saya’s tenuous suppression of her barrier to slip, and D’Vana’s saber skittered off the barrier of blue light at an angle that the Asari could now tell would have otherwise left a shallow if extraordinarily painful slash across her limb.

For a moment the only sound was various people’s breathing, and then the rage filled voice of Shona echoed out across the arena. “A forcefield! Cheating!”

Saya’s eyes darted from where a cautiously positioned D’Vana was giving her an odd look, across the rapidly angering crowd, before settling on the smug looking form of her father.

“Might wanna brush up on your rules, Shona!” Jella finally yelled back. “Natural abilities have been codified for use in duels since L’ayla the Seductress took out old Greenbeard!”

“Natural Orion abilities!” Shona snarled, glaring proverbial daggers at the other woman.

The look of smugness on Jellaa’s face somehow intensified as she unrolled a gold embossed scroll and dangled it tauntingly. “Memory going out in your old age? Or did you already forget I got the Queen’s ruling saying Saya’s my daughter by blood?”

“That’s–”

“Which means by definition her abilities are considered natural Orion abilities.” Jellaa taunted. “Unless of course you want to stop the fight and lodge a protest to the Queen. But you know what it'll mean if you do that and she rules against you. A full forfeit of the stakes of the fight, and a giant ass fine for wasting her time.”

“Er! Aunt Jellaa! Question!?” D'Vana suddenly interjected.

“Ask away, little mistress” Jellaa grinned down at the young teen, and Saya could see Shona silently seething at being seemingly disregarded.

“Okay, so.” D'Vana began. “Is she bioelectric, psychic, or one of those weird partial energy beings?”

Jellaa narrowed her eyes. “The second, why?”

D'Vana turned to Shona. “I can probably take her, mother!”

Resting her non-sword hand on her hip, Saya glared at the other teen. “No you can't!”

“Yes I can!” D'Vana argued, focusing fully back on Saya. “Psychic powers are quantifiable! And since you weren’t throwing me around or shooting lightning out of your eyes, yours can’t be that strong! Which means I just need to wear you down!”

“My powers are to strong!” Saya shot back defensively. “I just can’t use them like that because I might kill you by accident!”

“Girls!” D’Rana’s yelled, causing both of them to turn their eyes to where the older Orion woman was sitting in the stands. “Enough teenage banter!” She focused her glare on D’Vana. “If she can take a hit that means you don’t need to hold back any, so from this point out I better not see you doing it or else.”

D’Vana almost visibly sweated before turning an apologetic look to Saya. “Sorry, this might hurt. Just remember, if you feel like you’re going to die you can always give up.”

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Skidding to a stop in front of one of the gold gated entrances to the moderate sized arena, Raine’s eyeridge twitched at the flashes of recognizable blue crest that she could make out fighting someone in the grounds below.

The gate was part of the arena stands, and she could hear people in said stands, which meant blasting it open with biotics risked the unintentional death of Orions who might someday be important to the fate of the quadrant. 

Thankfully she had other options.

Charge was a fickle beast of a power that she’d been working on getting right for years. On its surface it was simple, envelope yourself in a mass effect field and then dash in the direction you wanted to go. In practice however it ran into the same problem as several other powers in that it didn't have a game engine saying 'this ability will always take you exactly this far’.

Which was a problem because in an encounter between a biotically charging Asari and a sturdy enough wall, the Asari would lose. As Raine had rather painfully found out while training to get the ability into a workable state.

On the positive side of that however, charging was not limited to horizontal movement. So use your legs to jump instead of dash, and you could do a moderately effective replication of a hulk leap. At least, so long as you remembered to recast the charge field for the descent phase of your ballistic trajectory so you didn’t break your legs on landing.

Quickly running the basic ballistic calculations, Raine backed up a couple meters, surrounded herself with a charge field, and jumped.

Easily clearing the outer wall of the arena, she quickly reached the apogee of her jump and for a brief moment dropped the charge field, before gravity sent her descending into the area as a glowing blue meteor.

She crashed into the ground with a suitably impressive boom, and as the dust cleared slowly rose up from her superhero landing pose all but radiating righteous indignation.

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Author’s Notes: Yes, Raine did in fact practice her superhero landing. Because given the choice of a suboptimal but cool entrance, she will take the cool entrance every time.