Two flashbacks from the hubby's point of view...

Posted on Sat Jul 9th, 2011 @ 11:26pm by Lieutenant Elena Valdez

Mission: The Fate of the Swiftsure
Location: Starbase 911
Timeline: MD0, Just before the arrival of the Iapetus

***Flashback, Star Base 911, just before the arrival of the USS Iapetus***

Ethan Djemrai passed through the airlock onto his ship, the Emerald Luck, like an angry storm cloud barreling its way down a mountain. His business deal had just gone south. His stomach hurt like a bitch. And that damn, damn woman he was somehow still married to finally had the guts to leave Earth...but as a Starfleet officer, of all things. His mood was such that he was likely to pummel the next person he saw, so it was fortunate that the unlucky victim actually deserved it.

Robert Djemrai, Ethan's youngest brother, wasn't fast enough to avoid the hard right hook that suddenly came his way. It took him full across the mouth, sending the young half-klingon crashing into the corridor wall and then to the hard metal floor.

"Hell," muttered Bob. He rolled to one side and spit out a gob of blood. "What was that for?"

"You damn well know what it was for!" Ethan wasn't normally one to shout, but the occasion seemed to call for it. "I took a knife to the gut for you, and you disappeared on me!"

His brother lurched to his feet, rubbing a very sore jaw. "Oh yeah, thanks for that," Bob responded in his typical mellow fashion. "I knew you'd be fine, so I was securing the merchandise." By which he meant picking the pockets of their client while he was busy trying to kill Ethan.

Ethan was actually somewhat pleased with the fact that Bob had lifted the goods, but he wasn't about to let his brother know it. "I barely made it to the infirmary alive, and if it hadn't been a certain Dr. Valdez who was there to patch me up I'd be in the station brig right now!"

The younger half-klingon's face lit up at the mention of Dr. Valdez. "No shit, Elena's on the station? Why hasn't she come on board?"

"Because she's Starfleet now, you idiot." The thought made the elder Djemrai's face darken again. It was bad enough that his sister Aeryn was a Fleetie, but Elena too? "Why else would she be working in a Starfleet sickbay?"

Bob's face fell, but only for an instant. "Well, is she going to stop by and say hi, at least? April would be ecstatic." April was Bob's wife.

"I wouldn't count on it," responded Ethan moodily, rubbing knuckles that were still smarting from the punch he had thrown. He suddenly didn't want to talk about Elena any more. "Are we ready to get underway?"

"Nope. Joon is still trying to get a hold of some gizmo for the engines. She said it's not a good idea to fly much more without it."

"What'll happen if we do?" Ethan was anxious to leave, as his wife may have been serious about calling the station authorities. Elena had been know to bluff...but not all the time.

"As Joon put it, 'we'll go all kablooey.'" Bob mimicked the mechanic's unusual cadence perfectly.

"Let me know as soon as she gets the part, then. I'll be in the galley."

"You got it, Cap'n," Bob responded. His grin was more lopsided than usual because his lip had swollen to twice its normal size.

*******

Ethan Djemrai, captain of the merchant ship Emerald Luck, sat cross legged on the counter in the galley, picking through a bowl of rice, vegetables, and unidentifiable meat his aging aunt Cindy had reheated for him. His newly healed stomach would be happier with food in it, but the man's attention kept drifting back to the encounter with Elena. He wasn't surprised by much anymore, but to find her on Starbase 911 was the biggest shock he'd had in years.

The sight of Elena in that sickbay- with her laughing brown eyes, and thick black hair caught up in a loose knot- brought all sorts of unwelcome memories bubbling up to the surface of his mind. While Ethan now acknowledged, to himself at least, that he shouldn't have assumed Elena would want to go traipsing about the galaxy on the Emerald Luck after they got married, it still stung his pride to think that the woman chose her career over him. If Ethan had been able to stay on the Earth, he would have, but what options did he have? With no formal schooling and no skills other than how to get out of trouble once he got in it, there was no place for Ethan on a planet. How would he have made a living? And he was too proud to lay back and let his wife take care of him.

Elena, on the other hand, was capable of anything she put her mind to. If she wanted to practice medicine, fine. The Emerald Luck would have benefited greatly by having a doctor on board. Ethan rubbed the long, angry scar along his jaw line, testament to the fact that he and his people often didn't have access to quality medical care. He noted wryly that Elena didn't fix the scar when she fixed the rest of him, and wondered briefly if it was just another of her ways to snub him.

The thing that really galled Ethan, that made him want to find another person to punch, was that now Elena was in space. But where she could have called him up and joined her husband and his extended family on the Luck, she slapped them all in the face by joining Starfleet instead. Just like his sister Aeryn.

Thinking of Aeryn made Ethan forgo eating his dinner altogether. With a sour look on his face, the cargo ship captain scraped what was left of his food back into the pot, which he then returned to the galley's refrigeration unit. It was waste not, want not here...they didn't have replicators on this aging ship, and if he didn't eat his dinner there was surely someone else who would.

Aeryn had always been the brightest star in the Djemrai family. Not only was she unusually beautiful, but she was clever and brave, and a better fighter than all five of her brothers, although none of them would ever admit to it. As the eldest kid in the family, she should have inherited the Emerald Luck when their father retired. She was a natural leader and would have done them all proud. Instead she enlisted in Starfleet Marine Corps, and was stationed on the USS Excalibur.

Feeling betrayed, Ethan hadn't talked to his sister for a couple years, but they eventually reconciled. Two years ago Ethan had even talked Aeryn into taking leave from the marines to help loot an abandoned pirate lair. If he had known beforehand the results of that ill-fated journey, he would never had let her come.

Against his will memories surfaced, and once again Ethan saw...

...the dank walls of the labyrinth that was the pirates' treasure hold, a gray moon riddled with tunnels and the nastiest of traps. Beside Ethan was his sister Aeryn, standing strong and whole again. Before them was a monstrosity. The sausage grinder from hell. A ten-foot conglomeration of spinning blades and wicked steel appendages bent on the destruction of anything organic-- such as the two half-klingons that faced it now.

Ethan glanced at Aeryn, then back at the metal monster before them. "I'm beginning to regret coming here," he began, and then the thing rushed them with an angry hiss of steel.

The siblings dove to the side, weapons in hand. Ethan shot his phaser at the killing machine's legs, hoping to topple it. Aeryn swung her bat'leth in a fury against the head-like appendage, aiming to damage its main processor. The thing was wickedly fast; it dodged smoothly and lashed back with a whip-like appendage that caught Aeryn in the chest and sent her flying.

She hit the rock wall of the cavern and collapsed to the floor like a stunned bird after flying into a window. The machine had knocked the wind out of her; Aeryn forced her lungs to work, to draw in vital breath. A few feet away she could hear the insidious hiss of metal grating against metal, the feral roar of pain from Ethan. Aeryn was up in the next moment, hacking at the evil machine as if will power alone could rip it to shreds. She chopped hard, and a blade-covered arm fell away from the machine. She parried, thrust, dodged, thrust again, punching through...

The knife-machine squealed as it flailed in mechanical death throws. Aeryn was caught by surprise as the whole thing lurched forward awkwardly. She jumped away, but too slow- one jagged metal arm glanced across her chest and neck, slicing deep. Aeryn was too full of battle-rage to feel any pain, but dropped to the ground, panicked, as her lungs could no longer suck in air, as she choked on blood and torn muscles, gurgling futilely as life seeped from the wound on her neck.

Then her brother was at her side, saying, "Aeryn...bloody hell! You gotta hang on! You gotta...oh girl, this is gonna hurt..."

She was too busy trying to convince her mutilated esophagus to work to really pay attention to what Ethan was doing. Aeryn's head was surprisingly clear for a dying woman, and she noted with fascination the wet hiss as air struggled in and out of the hole in her neck rather than her nose. And then Ethan punched a make-shift traech tube into the hollow of her throat.

This time Aeryn felt the pain, and if she had had the breath to do so she would have screamed. And now it was getting harder to move, to think, she had lost too much blood. She dimly heard Ethan talking to her, felt little pinpoints of agonizing pain as he did something to her neck.

"Hang on, Sis...keep fighting...I'm stitching you up, just like Elena showed me at home. You have a tube in, Aeryn...try to breath. It'll hurt like sin, but you gotta do it, darlin'. Hell, I can't believe you're still conscious. Being half-klink has its perks, right? Keep awake, Aeryn. Ok, I'm done with the stitches, roll over on your side now, cough up the blood...breath..."

Ethan shook himself out of the painful memories and back to reality. He was pissed off at Elena, and pissed off at himself, but he suddenly saw a bright side to her presence on the station. He could get a message to his sister.

On the pirate's moon Ethan had managed to get Aeryn on their shuttle and off the planet, although he wasn't able to escape himself until days later. By then he was fairly certain she was back on the USS Excalibur, but due to the fact that Ethan was on a few shit lists he was unable to contact her through legitimate channels without exposing himself to Starfleet law enforcement.

But Elena was in Starfleet now, and surely she could contact someone on another ship...

"Hey Ethan," said Bob, who had just popped his head in through the galley doors and interrupted the cargo captain's train of thought. "Joon just let me know she has the part and is installing it now. We can leave in fifteen minutes."

"We're not leaving yet," responded Ethan, a determined look suddenly gracing his craggy features. "I have an errand to run."

His mind made up, Ethan left Bob in the galley and went to his quarters to record a hasty message. That done, he ventured once more into the corridors of Starbase 911. It didn't take long to find the station quartermaster and bribe him for the location of Elena's temporary rooms and for access to them. He slipped inside the darkened room, grateful that his estranged wife was still elsewhere, and easily found where Elena had chucked her bags.

Her things smelled faintly of lavender, which made Ethan suddenly recall that, despite everything, Elena was still married to him. She could have easily divorced him long ago, so perhaps there was still an ounce of hope for them somewhere down the line, although he couldn't imagine how fate would every manage to bring them together again. Ethan shook his head, pushing wishful thinking aside, and slipped a data PADD in Elena's duffel, down near the base where it wouldn't easily fall out.

Mission accomplished, the half-klingon man made his way back to the Emerald Luck. It was high time he got the hell off this station.

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Ethan Djemrai
Captain of the cargo ship Emerald Luck