On the Federation's Secret Service

[Brian Graham 0]

Security Officer's Classified Duty Log

Lt. Commander Brian Graham recording

USS Morningstar (Special Assignment, Starfleet Intelligence, Internal Affiars, and Starfleet Security)

Stardate 200511.21 to Stardate 200511.26

 

Garan looked at his shipboard chronometer, 0402, two minutes behind schedule. No matter, he could make up the time. That blasted other Andorian had almost messed his plans up permanently. The audacity, coming after him, Garan, the Garan who had easily dispatched enemies before. He would have taken the time to get rid of one more, but he had a strict timetable to keep, Promellian rice fetched top latinum, if you could get it there before it spoiled. This load might help him buy a faster ship, meaning he could make trips like these and not have to worry about spoilage. Even those to minutes may cost him some of the rice. He’d have to try to coax more out of the engines than they normally could perform. First he had to get out of the atmosphere. Everything was looking fine, he was here, his cargo, was here, and that moron was down there. Garan reached over to retract the landing gear for flight—

 

And the ship lurched, smoke and sparks filled the cockpit, the cockpit seemed to flip, and almost every conceivable alarm started blaring. “What!?” Garan bellowed, thoroughly furious. His console registered heavy damage to the port side side of his vessel. Garan was going to engage the emergency stabilizing thrusters when he saw the top of the landing pad go by the cockpit view port, upwards, way faster than it should have been. And the ship jarred again, a second time, sending out more sparks from more consoles. The smoke made it hard enough to see, but his one eye was giving him trouble. Garan started reciting every profane word he knew.

 

Brian came out from behind the wall and looked at the scene. Garan ship was laying, broken, on the landing pad. It’s landing gear had snapped under the force of the ship landing on it without any landing thrusters to soften the force. They had been strained too much and had collapsed, probably two-dimensional by now. The port side was a mess, to say the least. The hull was still intact, for the most part, but not much else. Blackened, smoking, sparking, the phaser had definitely done its job. It had taken out two of the thrusters, and the ship didn’t have enough lift to go anywhere, except down. That’s what happened when you don’t keep your ship up to date.

 

Bugger, Brian thought as he saw the entry hatch. It would work great except there was a ship on top of it. There was no way to open it. Good news, it looked like Garan was trapped in there, but who knows what he had aboard. Brian got up on a crate and climbed up onto the crumpled hulk. A plasma torch may let him cut through this hull, Brian was thinking when a small explosion registered behind him. He turned and saw a square piece of metal flying away from the ship. Garan must have blown an escape hatch. Brian wished he had remembered to bring more phasers, but he was fresh out. Brian moved over to the opening as smoke rolled out of the portal. A blue hand emerged and rested itself on the hull, then the other hand, with a distruptor in it. Garan was trying to climb out of there, and he must be having a difficult time of it. Brian quickly moved over as Garan collapsed out of the hatch on his stomach.

 

Brian kicked the disruptor away and he heard it hit metal once, twice, then nothing, then heard it hit somewhere on the ground. If Garan wanted it, we would need to jump fifteen feet to get it.

 

Garan lurched forward, using his whole body to hit Brian’s feet and lower legs, sending him off balance. Brian crashed to the hull and Garan moved to get up. This had happened before and Brian didn’t want to repeat it. He rolled over and swiped Garan’s legs with his foot as hard as he could, bringing the perp down again.

 

They both rolled to their feet and faced each other. Brian saw the hatred in Garan’s eyes. If murder had a face, Garan had it. Garan yelled and charged him, hitting Brian in the stomach and wrapped his arms around them. They both flew backwards, Brian landing on his back and Garan on top of him. Brian brought his fist around, landing one on the right side of Garan’s head. He used his right hand, grabbed Garan’s shoulder, pushed off with his right foot and threw Garan off of him. Brian looked over and saw Garan rub his one eye. He had a bad wound on his forehead that was sending blood into his eye, the one time Brian was glad for exploding consoles. Hopefully Garan would be impaired enough. Garan rolled back over and got his hands around Brian’s neck. Breathing constricted, bad. Brian tried pulling Garan’s hands off him but they were fastened onto his neck pretty good. He reared both arms back and sent them forward as hard as he could, bringing his fists up and curving them to go over his shoulders. He broke Garan’s hold off his neck and tasted sweet air, well, air with some smoke in it, but good enough. He had overdone it though and his knuckles slammed into the unyielding hull, sending sharp waves of pain through his hand.

 

Garan had fallen forward and Brian threw him off him once again, this time rolling away as quick as he could and got back to his feet. Garan was already up and moving toward him. Both were out of breath, out of energy, out of weapons, out of everything except this fight. Garan threw a punch and Brian pulled back, the fist flying in front of his face. Brian sent one of his own flying, but Garan blocked his arm, used his free right hand to hit Brian in the forehead. Brian reeled back again and hit the stabilizer fin that was on the top of the ship.

 

Brian shook away spots and went around the side of the fin. Garan followed, blood in eye again, wiping it away, and came into view in time to connect with Brian’s moving right fist, sending him back a step. Brian’s left followed and Brian stepped forward, grabbed hold of Garan’s right shoulder and bent him down and launched him forehead first into the stabilizer fin.

 

Garan connected solidly and consciousness fled him, his thoughts, anger, hope of profit, stolen away by the darkness. Brian saw Garan stop suddenly when his head had hit the solid metal, and come to a rest on the hull of the ship, not moving. Brian collapsed, letting his legs give out and just layed there for a moment, panting from exhaustion, head pounding after meeting up with Garan’s fists a few times. Two minutes went by and Brian finally sat up, still feeling like the ship had landed on top of him. He took out his generic looking communicator from his pocket, signaled his ship, placed his hand on Garan’s arm, and beamed them both back to his ship.