Selu Levne - Mirror Universe

Captain Selu Levne is by no means one of your more settled and hedonistic Orions. Nor is she some favoured slave or concubine to someone in power. She is in fact the commander of her own little ship, her own little crew and does frankly whatever she wants while pursuing a goal of revenge and anarachy.

The daughter of an illicit and thoroughly reprehensible relationship between and Orion and Vulcan, her mother citing ‘love’ for the Vulcan slave she has worked hard to get ahead in his world. She had to hone herself her whole childhood and adolescent before she applied to join the Klingon Assault Force and the age of sixteen.

At least there she wasn’t bullied by her neighbours – she was just bullied for being an alien. While not terribly unique in that regard it did mean she’d never get a chance at being an officer. But it was an escape from one terrible world and into another slightly less terrible world.

Unfortunately, her time within the KAF would be limited. The Alliance was long dead, Terran rebels were popping up everywhere and if someone didn’t do something about it soon a resurgent Terran state might arise to threaten the galaxy once more. Or, at least so the propaganda said.

Serving as the personal steward and frankly plaything to the Klingon captain, a woman named L’tel who had taken an interest in the quiet speaking Orion, an injury from her youth, Selu came under immediate suspicion during the campaign to crush the rebels of Archer IV. Captain L’tel had been killed in her sleep and her first officer, a man of towering ambition and unsurpassed incompetency in command had blamed her. For all Grelnar’s faults he was as silver tongued as an Orion and sly as a human.

So, for a crime she didn’t commit Selu Levne was taken in chains to work the recaptured mines of Archer IV.

She was just twenty-two years old.

Suffice to say that Selu’s at least paycheck bought loyalty to the KAF had evaporated. She learned what the Klingon Empire truly did to those it no longer valued, save for what they could produce before their short lives expired. She learned the Empire was also foolish when it granted Grelnar dominion over the recaptured Terran world after his ‘campaign’ that had cost thousands of soldiers to complete.

Her first week at Mine Seven-Six-Nine had put her side by with a Terran – Tikva Theodoras, aspiring rebel agitator. She learnt fairly quickly that all Terrans weren’t nine feet tall, fire breathing demons from hell. Or violent oppressors of Orions worse than Klingons. No, they were worse, much worse. They smiled and took joy in their violence. Or, at least Tikva did.

It wasn’t the easiest start to a relationship, but three attempts on her life from Tikva and Selu had figured the woman out. And then she broke her – mentally and physically. The fourth attempt was a one-sided affair.  Tikva never stood a chance and in the end was given only two choices from Selu – join her or die.

It was perhaps the oddest start to a friendship but one that grew over six months until both women actually trusted each other. In so far as to at least not plant a knife in the other’s back. The front was still open game.

Over the next year the two slowly co-opted a large number of the mine’s workers, bringing them in on a grand plan. Orions, Vulcans, Terrans, a handful of Betazoids, even a Tellarite joined their merry band. When the day came a total of three hundred miners stormed the mine entrance seeking escape.

Two hundred escaped the mine.

Selu’s plan had been to take what weapons they could, kill whoever got in their way and disappear in to the wilds of Archer IV to start a guerrilla campaign. However, the gods that day had a different plan for her as a single Klingon bird of prey had arrived only hours earlier outside of Mine Seven-Six-Nine.

Selu and Tikva only managed to convince a hundred and fifty of their rebels to join them in storming the ship to get off world, the others thinking if a veritable death trap.

Tired, drunk and inattentive landing pad guards managed to gun down another twenty of the rebels before they stormed the rather lavishly appointed bird of prey. After all none had been expecting a mass slave escpae.

A ship under their control the rebels didn’t waste time before departing from Archer IV. The ship was theirs and they weren’t going to give the Klingons time to realise what had happened and mount an effort to stop them escaping. A single strafing run on two nearby mines and the ship was away to the stars, disappearing under a cloak before any pursuers could give chase. The escaping miners from those mines and subsequent slave revolt tired the Klingons down and escape was a sure thing at that point.

It was an interesting week that followed however with three attempted mutinies against her command. None of them truly had the numbers for it and it took only the death of a few ring leaders each time for the mutiny to collapse. One mutiny never even got the point of raising weapons, for Tikva had cultivated it in order to weed out those that would betray the alien woman she had come to not just respect, but love.

By now the crew only numbered a hundred and eight, but they would follow Selu into hell and back in her stated claim to hurt the Empire. To hurt any who would hurt her crew. To live free lives without the yoke of some careless and idiotic despots upon them. While she was in command of the ship, the crew would be allowed to speak. Rules were written by consensus on how the ship would function, how command would devolve. Agreement amongst the motley band became the cornerstone of their continued cooperation. That and Selu’s own biological effect on so many of them and Tikva’s quiet and often alone threats of physical violence to any who would her Selu.

As a joke suggested to her by one of the humans in her new multiracial crew, Selu had the ship’s transponder reprogrammed to broadcast their ID as “It’s one of ours”, to cause confusion on enemy bridges she was told, but in truth the ship’s name became the Blackbird for the paint scheme they had the ship done in at one of the few freeports in the area. Artistic license, and a desire for a small splash of colour, Tikva added a single orange-red line down the ship’s mid-line and continues to paint red silhouettes on the outer hull for each Klingon ship destroyed in their’ one ship rebellion.

But as revenge plots cost and her crew do need paying work to keep the Blackbird flying and their bellies full, they have had to take on the occasional bit of work.

So, if you’re in trouble with the Klingon Empire, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, then maybe you can hire the Blackbird.