Capítulo 57: Future's End, Part 5
A/N: So, I never meant for the Future's End episodes to become so many chapters, but here we are lol things will be wrapping up completely in the next chapter, I promise.
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I stood in Janeway's Ready Room as I watched security camera recordings of me fighting Dunbar in the street, and news reports with live feeds which showed the damage that I had caused. Worse for me was that Echo had managed to capture her target, a man by the name of Russel Barnes, without any extra damage and had absolutely no media coverage, unlike myself. I could feel her glare trying to bore a hole in the side of my head, and I could only sigh since I had no real defense.
"My twentieth century history is a little rusty, but I don't remember a battle between a Monster and a Robot in downtown Los Angeles!" Janeway snapped, shutting off the display.
"I went overboard, I know, and I'm sorry. From my initial strike that launched Russel through the window, keeping a low profile was out of the realm of possibility, yet instead of trying to minimize further damage, I went all out because I saw a challenge and wanted the fight. I could have fought, or at least stalled, Dunbar without using my Dusa form. I'm not going to make any excuses for myself because I am in the wrong for not even trying," I sighed.
Rubbing her forehead with a hand, she said, "I need you, Rebecca. I need you and your crew if I'm going to get Voyager home, but our home may not even exist after this mistake. You're a good person, Rebecca, but you can't act so recklessly. There are consequences for your actions, and, with the amount of power that you wield, you can affect the entire galaxy!"
"I know, Captain. This power of mine is far more dangerous than you, or even I, fully know, and ignoring it would only increase the chances that I lose control. I've been trying to get better, but I still get swept up in my emotions," I replied.
"Chakotay to Captain Janeway. B'Elanna and Raven believe that they have found Starling's launch site," he chimed through the comm system.
"Thank you, Commander," Janeway said dismissively.
She stared at me silently for a few minutes, and I could feel the disappointment in her gaze. Silly as it may seem, I held her opinion of me second only to my group. She had been a childhood hero of mine, and over the past two years we had become real friends. I had let her down which bothered me far more than I would have liked.
"Take Raven and return to your ship. I need you to stop Starling, but I can't have a repeat of last night. If you can't restrain yourself now, Rebecca, I won't have faith that you can do it in the future," Janeway warned.
"I understand, Captain. Thank you," I replied.
"Dismissed."
I left her Ready Room and headed for the turbo lift. Thankfully, no one on the Bridge had the same look of disappointment as Janeway, despite all of them likely seeing the news feeds. I leaned against the back wall of the turbo lift for a moment before telling the computer to take me to Transporter Room Two.
"Rebecca to Raven. Meet me in Transporter Room Two," I said, tapping my comm badge.
"On my way," she replied.
A moment later, the doors to the turbo lift opened and I walked out. My destination was just down the corridor, and by the time that I reached the door, Raven turned the corner at the other end. I waited for her, and we walked in together.
{How was it?} Raven asked, telepathically.
"Crewman, hail the Fae Dragon and tell them that we are ready to return," I instructed as we climbed onto the transporter pad.
"Yes, Captain Cox," the man behind the console replied.
{Well, she isn't kicking us off the ship or throwing me in the Brig, but I've certainly disappointed her.} I replied silently.
"Energizing," he announced.
A few uncomfortable seconds later, we were back on our ship. Raven put a hand on my shoulder and gave me a small smile.
"I know you like to impress normally, but everyone makes mistakes. That's part of life," she said gently.
"I can handle mistakes, but I thought about the consequences, and disregarded them, because I wanted to have some fun," I replied as we walked onto the Bridge.
"Tori did want you to enjoy yourself here, Becca. He put us through enough hell during our time in 'The 100', and he still has plenty of ways to push us with Voyager's journey. If your idea doesn't work to fix the timeline, then one of his pantheon is bound to step in," Katye, who was sitting at the conn station, reminded.
"I don't like relying on them," I huffed. "Tori can't always hold our hand and fix our problems."
"True," she replied. "Echo called a few minutes ago. She has tracked down Captain Braxton, but there's a catch; he is in a holding cell at the police station with at least fifteen other people."
"Of course," I sighed. "Is it safe to call her?"
"Yes, after confirming where he was, she retreated to the top of a building near the station."
"Good; Fae, can you connect me to Echo?"
A moment later, Echo's voice came through the intercom, asking, "Do you have a plan?"
"More of an idea than a plan," I replied. "Do you think your tracking ability can help you locate their main fuse box? It would have the most amount of electricity running through it inside the building."
"I believe so," she replied.
"Then, if you can find that, you can overload it with your Lightning mana, knocking out the main power supply for the building. There is a chance that they could have generators for some things, but that should take out the security system. If that doesn't start a fire, which it should, start one yourself, and they should start evacuating the prisoners. With your shimmer spell, you should be able to slip in during the confusion and free him, especially if you can change into a spare uniform."
Her shimmer spell, as I called it, was an illusion spell that would make her hard to notice. It was not true invisibility by any means, but unless they were looking directly at her, in good lighting, most people would not notice a thing. The only reason that it did not work on the three of us, was because we were too familiar with her mana signature, so we could sense the slight traces of her energy despite the spell also suppressing her natural aura.
"How was Janeway's bitch-out for messing up the city so bad?" Echo retorted since she hated it when I called it her shimmer spell.
"Better than the beating I'll give you tonight when we spar," I shot back.
"The two of you can flirt after we have the time ship and Braxton on Voyager. We all have a job to focus on right now," Katye chided.
I chuckled, "Anyways, do you think you can do it?"
"Yes, I should be able to pull it off without drawing too much attention," Echo replied.
"I'll leave it to you then, but don't hesitate to call Katye if you need a hand."
"Understood."
"So, you are sidelining me, huh?" Katye asked with a smirk.
"I prefer to think of it as keeping you as a reserve for either of our groups, and as a coordinator between us and Voyager," I retorted.
"Uh huh," she replied, rolling her eyes.
"So, where is Starling hiding?" I asked.
"Mojave Desert. From what little we could get from the Voyager's sensors, there is some kind of a small complex out in the middle of nowhere, but it's shielded, well enough that the sensors couldn't penetrate the shields," Raven replied.
"Great, and after dealing with his office, it's likely protected with a mana disruption field," I sighed with annoyance.
"With everything that I decoded from your tricorder, he doesn't have any more exo-suits at his disposal," Raven said encouragingly. "The base does have some automated defenses, but they use conventional twentieth century weaponry, so it poses little danger to us, as long as I go in with my exo-suit."
I nodded my head and said, "Alright. Give me a minute to get some things ready, then we can beam down."
I left the pair behind and walked back into the Engineering room. I used the replicator to create a few handguns for us along with holsters and several ammo clips. Mana may not work down there, but a bullet would kill anyone as easy as a phaser. Raven walked in a moment later, in her exo-suit, so I held out one of the holster belts and she grabbed it, then buckled it around her waist.
"Okay, Fae," I said, buckling on my own belt, "beam us as close as you can to the compound."
The ship's sensors locked onto us and transported us down to the ground a moment later. The sun had only just started to rise, so there was still a chill in the air despite being in the desert. Although I could not see it, I could sense the shield that was just a few inches from us, while the compound itself was a hundred meters away.
Shifting into my Dusa form, I placed a hand against the shield and started draining the energy from it. For a moment, it seemed like my first idea would work, but suddenly, the shield rippled with green energy and fired a bolt of emerald lightning at me. I was blasted off my feet with my whole body tingling, but I did not take too much damage from the attack.
"Are you okay?" Raven asked.
"Just another blow to my pride," I grumbled as I stood back up. "I guess it would be too easy if I could just break the shield and let Voyager beam up the ship."
"Well, that's why I brought this," Raven said, pulling a silver cone-shaped device out of her storage ring.
She slammed the device into the shield wall. The silver point pierced the energy barrier and the back section expanded, creating a circular hole that was only two feet wide. Green energy was crackling around the silver circle while Raven jumped through the hole. I had to return to my humanoid form before I could jump through, and, just as I guessed, we entered straight into a mana disruption field, but that was not all that was waiting for us.
Half a dozen machine gun turrets sprung out of the sand and started firing at us. Raven jumped into the air, using her suit's thrusters, and raced towards the compound. I shifted back into my Dusa form and ignored the bullets as they bounced off my scales as I charged towards the nearest turret. I ripped it right out of the ground and threw it at another, destroying the second one. I disposed of all of the turrets while Raven landed on top of the building, and then I joined her a few minutes later.
There had been a few turrets up there as well, but she had taken them all out with her pistols. When I landed near her, she had torn off the keypad to open the door, and was fiddling with the wires. I shifted back to my normal appearance just in time for her to open the door and I drew my pistols. Alarms were ringing throughout the hallways, so obviously, there was no chance of sneaking up on Starling, but neither of us had really been expecting to.
We did not bother taking the stairs, and we both jumped over the railing, landing on the bottom floor. There was another locked door blocking our way, but instead of Raven opening it, I simply kicked down the door using my full strength. It sounded like an explosion went off and the metal door flew backwards, taking out one of the mounted turrets in the corridor before hitting the ground. The remaining turrets started spinning their barrels as they unleashed a volley of bullets in our direction, but I just shifted into my Dusa form and blocked them while Raven took out the turrets over my shoulders. With the hallway cleared, I hurried down and kicked open every door that I passed while Raven checked inside the rooms.
"I've got a large computer system in here that I'm going to check out. Switching to comm system," Raven announced.
"Understood," I shouted back since I was at the end of the hallway.
I kicked open the last door and found a small vestibule that led to another heavier metal door. I tried to kick it open, but to my surprise, I only managed to dent it. Slashing at it with my claws, I quickly understood why I had not broken through as the metal door was over two feet thick. It seemed like a waste, but it did its job and slowed me down significantly as I tore through it slash by slash.
"Starling has already started the launch program! You have less than thirty seconds," Raven chimed from my comm badge.
I roared with anger and infused even more Soul Power into each of my strikes. Finally, my talons tore through to the other side, but Raven started counting down.
"Ten, nine, eight, seven, six..."
I pulled apart the thin tears in the metal and made a small hole. I had to switch back to my humanoid form to slip through, but I kicked off the door as soon as I was through and shot myself at the small time ship.
"Five, four, three, two, one..."
I scrambled towards the ship, infusing my body with Lightning mana to boost my speed. The two nacelles were glowing bright red as I closed the distance. I shifted into my Dusa form as I jumped into the air and landed on the back of the shuttle... just as Raven said 'one'. I had no choice but to dig my talons into the side of the hull as the time ship blasted off, and hope that I would not be thrown off. The wind and momentum were pulling me backwards, so I did my best to flatten myself against the hull and keep my wings as close to my body as possible.
"Rebecca, what the hell are you doing?!?" Raven yelled through the comm system.
"Just going for a ride," I replied.
"You're insane!"
"Are you just... noticing that now?" I teased despite the difficulty of holding on.
"Raven, get that shield down and we'll go after the fool!" Katye ordered over the intercom.
At first, the air had been cold as I clung onto the ship, but as we picked up speed and gained altitude, the temperature was quickly rising. Despite my resistance to heat due to my Draconic nature, I could feel my body start to burn, yet I stubbornly held on. The depletion of my Soul Power and mana was increasing by the second, but as we broke through the atmosphere, I could draw in more mana from Space itself to sustain myself.
Looking around, I found Voyager orbiting the planet. Starling stirred the time ship away, and Voyager was quick to chase, but then suddenly it stopped and all of its lights dimmed. Thankfully, Katye and Raven were chasing behind us, and they had full sensor readings.
"A satellite sent a signal that shut down Voyager's warp core. Main systems are down, so they are out of the fight! I'm transporting Raven to the ship to help them," Katye said through the comm system.
"Is the ship far enough away from Earth that I can blow the engine?" I asked.
"Another ten seconds!"
With exo-suits at Starling's disposal, I should have known that he would be able to detect our comm signals, but he was happy to tell them about their mistake.
"You stayed on through the entire flight? A determined bastard, aren't you?" Starling mocked in a snarky voice. "Enjoy space, alien scum."
Before the needed time could pass, the time ship released a pulse of emerald mana across its hull which electrocuted me and threw me off the ship. While I did have an affinity with Lightning, this Lightning mana was far more aligned with the side of Order, even more than what Katye could create, so it did far more damage than a normal attack would have caused. I let out a roar of pain and transformed into my Dragon form, since it was the only way that I could keep up with the time ship, as its speed approached Warp One.
"Holy shit!" Starling cursed, forgetting that he was tapped into our comm system.
I released a stream of crimson lightning and chased after the small ship that was nearly a fourth of my current size. He twisted the ship out of the way of my attack while firing a green phaser across my chest and my wing. It was able to rip through my scales and tore the membrane of my wing, but I was not alone.
Katye, flying the Fae Dragon, decloaked and fired directly at the time ship's nacelle. It exploded and the second one dimmed. I had to restrain my anger and not attack the damaged ship, but I did move to the front of it and peered through the front window with a giant crimson eye.
"So, Starling, do you surrender, or will I eat you with ketchup?" I asked with a rumble to my voice.
"I... I surrender," he replied.
Status de energia semanal
-- Ranking de
Poder 
-- Pedra de
Poder