InsaneJournal

Current location:	too wired and sunburnt to sleep
Current mood:	tired
Entry tags:	process, star trek

Scrapped Fic (Escape Velocity)
Because the other person's post is WAY MOAR AWESOME, but I don't want this to just end up nowhere in the tides of unexistence, because there's not enough Nero stuff out there by any stretch.

Basic idea was, Nero either accepts their offer of mercy for some reason, or is rescued anyway, so his crew can stand trial for war crimes blahblahblah.

Only, first, they're alone on the Enterprise in the brig. And they don't stay alone for long.



Nero bites through his lower lip. Panic seethes and coils in him, and he can't let them see. He can't reach Ayel, either; the fields prevent it.

Federation cages use air and ions where Klingons used bars. Starfleets use light where Klingons used darkness. Everything has a high sterile sheen so bright it's painful--cleanliness that kills. Searing perfection marred by darkening, drying ropes of green on the floor.

Chaudan's breathing stutters wetly in his chest. The room reeks of scorched flesh. Someone set that field to 'kill'.

Behind him, Akeli is murmuring the old blessings, her voice breaking low in her throat as she closes Chaudan's eyes.

They have no coins. He will go into the underworld blind and broken, beaten by his enemies.

Even now the world closes up under Nero's feet, going dark in the blue glow of a viewscreen that isn't there, the screen that filled for aching seconds with home.

He will never forget. He blinks it away and twists his face into a snarl. He knows he is the one they want. He is the one they blame for Spock's treachery. He is the one who woke battered and bloodied, savaged in places the Starfleets probably have laws about, laws they broke just for him.

If he can make them angry enough, if he can make them remember how much they hate him, Nero, their terrible enemy, they might leave the girls alone. They might let Ayel heal.

"Who did this?" He does not expect an answer, not from the ones in red--mostly all they do is brandish their weapons, sometimes at Akeli and Isauwe, but his men will die before they let the red ones touch the girls.

There were women on his crew--his hell-shift chief was female, and so were all her team. He'd never met anyone more accomplished with a neodynium disruptor saw. Of all of them, Akeli and Isauwe survived; they were young enough to be mistaken for boys, and the Klingons had some kind of honor rule about not touching an enemy's catamites. That they even had a rule for such a thing made Nero glad to cut them down.

"Who denies me honor?" The smirks on their faces make him itch to throw himself against the barrier, though he knows what will happen if he does. "Cowards! I'll twist your heads off and piss down your throats."

There. That works. The heavyset one with the bull neck and big rifle takes two steps forward, face flashing almost as red as his shirt.

"Shut up."

Nero smiles and steps so close to that invisible, lethal wall that he can hear the humming whine of it powering up. He flickers his hands in a come-hither. The field sizzles with the motion of his fingers.

"Come in here and make me."

The man's smile is hideous. "Great idea."

His hand stretches for the panel on the wall. It's a twelve-digit code, numerals only. Akeli puzzled out the first five from watching the humans' wrist movements at feeding time. More will not be possible, from this angle, and someone on the Enterprise bridge crew--comm or intel, most likely--worked out what they were saying within the first few days, even though they used the oldest, most obscure Outmarch mining slang they could.

There will be no more planning. This is all the hope they have. Bull-neck is punching in the last three digits when the outer doors hiss open.

"Benning!" The bark is so ferocious even Nero takes a step back. "My god, man! What the hell do you think you're doing?"

He saw this one on a viewscreen before, for a few seconds, a vague blue-shirted blur who stood behind the hated vile Spock as they discussed the surrender of Captain Pike. He has a scowl like a thunderhead and nearly Romulan eyebrows.

Benning pales and lowers the rifle. "Sir, I--"

"Stow it. Get this--" he pushes a stack of datascreens into the man's free arm, "to Chapel, and flag Dalton's record." His eyes flicker to the corpse on the deck, to Akeli standing over it, then to the shorter red-shirt with the smaller weapon. "And Carter? Reset that goddamn field on stun before I push you in it."

Carter gulps audibly and obeys at blinding speed. "Yessir."

"Sir." Benning salutes awkwardly and fairly runs through the doors. They squeak closed behind him.

This ship is so clean that it probably sings like crystal when they hose it down.