Character Bio for Captain Eric Taithian

[TaithZero]

I've written backstory for my Tactical Officer (and sneakily for my as yet unFleeted Engineering Officer), located here: The Long Way There.

A teaser:

Now

The entire corridor of Borg drones snapped awake in their wall alcoves. Lieutenant Eric Taithian switched his phaser rifle from target to target. A mind that stretched across a galaxy looked down at him through the eyes of things that had once been people.

"Sir?" Ensign Thryiss was at his back.

"Fall back to the last junction," he said.

They ran. They turned their shoulders sideways as the Borg drones stepped down from their alcoves like the closing walls of a trap. Red sighting lasers hunted the corridor for the two Starfleet officers and whirring scanners probed their weapons.

Taithian and Thryiss reached the last junction, an intersection of the dark halls and passages they'd followed down from their beam-in point. They turned their weapons on the drones behind them.

"I give us six shots each before they adapt," Thryiss said. Her blue antennae were swivelled towards the enemy. Her voice was a hard knot, taut with controlled fear.

They saw the bulky shapes of drones in the corridor's shadows. They heard the heavy tread of their footsteps as the drones approached, steady and remorseless.

Taithian raised his rifle. "Let me fire first. Take over when they adapt."

"Yes sir." She didn't point out there were more than the dozen drones they could reliably kill. She didn't have to.

The first drone lumbered into the light. Its targeting laser locked onto Taithian. He brought his rifle up and placed his finger against the firing button.

And then he gasped.

"Sir?" Thryiss brought her own weapon to bear.

"No!" He grabbed the barrel of her rifle and pulled it down. "Don't shoot. It's him."

He looked back at the first of the approaching drones. It's skin was grey and striated with nanite infection and it's body was wormed through with black cybernetics. The drone raised its right arm and aimed a sparking emitter at Taithian.

"It's my brother."

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