Sunlight fell across Hur’agha’s face, streaming through the wooden wall slats above her. Dust motes danced on unseen air currents. She grunted back to consciousness and blinked against the brightness, her vision swimming as she lay staring straight up, piecing together the last of her memories.

The ship. It was damaged. It crashed in the field. Black.

Her skull throbbed with every heartbeat. Her shoulder screamed with pain, and her ribs fired shocks through her chest with every breath. She stayed motionless for a long moment, staring at a wooden roof grey with age and heavy with cobwebs.

At last, she pushed herself up, and the clatter of metal on metal broke the stillness as chains fell around her. Iron fetters dug into her wrists, cold and sharp. She stared down at the chains; everything else fell away. Her warrior’s heart raced, adrenaline flooding her veins.

She was a captive.

The fetters were rough, hand-forged iron, thick and heavy, blue-black from the scale, with orange rust growing along the surface.  The edges gleamed in silver as they had been ground down to a knife edge. Crude as the fetters were, the lock that clamped them around her wrists was equally primitive, but the iron was thick enough to hold any human, and perhaps even a Klingon.

She growled and twisted the connecting bar. It flexed, but only a little, refusing to deform or break. The knife edges bit into her wrists, carving shallow gouges as fresh blood welled up. She snarled at the dishonorable tactic, baring her right fang.

Her attention shifted to the anchoring chain. One meter long, secured to a thick spike driven into the barn’s support beam, a rough hewn log half the width of her torso. She knew the effort was futile, yet she fought it, pulling and jerking until sweat ran down her back and matted her hair to her forehead and neck.

Lost in her rage, she did not notice Kora’q until he spoke.

“Mistress,” he rumbled.

Hur’agha turned toward the new threat, shoulders tight, then eased when her gaze settled on her executive officer. His left eye was swollen shut, his nose bent to one side, his lip swollen twice its size. She might outrank the old warrior, but she had come to rely on his quiet strength and the hard worn wisdom age had carved into him. He wasted no time on chest thumping, and he had shed all fear of death. He met the thought of an honorable end like an old friend, and he did not need to rattle the bulkheads to prove it.

“Save your strength,” he said. “You will not escape this way.”

Hur’agha scowled and, with a growl and a clatter of chain, gave one last tug against her bindings. The cuffs cut deep into her flesh. With a low rumble in her throat, she sank into the straw and drew on the strength the monks of Boreth had taught her. If General Martok could survive captivity until he escaped, so could she.

“How are you?” she asked, taking slow, steady breaths. “Did they do that to you?”

Kora’q let out a low chuckle. “They, whoever they are, did not. In the crash, my face caught my fall.” He gave a tired growl. “Youth is wasted on the young. These old bones do not bounce like they once did. Pray to Kahless, you are taken in honor long before your hair turns gray.”

“The rest of the crew?”

Kora’q shook his head, his hair swaying with the movement, the one good eye locking onto hers. “I have not seen them. With luck, they are dead or have escaped with their honor.”

“Yeah, honor,” Hur’agha repeated in a soft growl.  She took another centering breath, letting the smoke, stale mineral-rich moisture from those caves on Boreth seep into her memory. It didn’t fix her present situation, but it did make it more bearable. There would be a way to escape. There was always a way to escape, and she would not let some primitive farmer be her foil.

“We appear to be in some sort of animal shelter,” she rumbled.

Kora’q shrugged. “Now it’s ours.”

Hur’agah shot her XO a scowl. He didn’t react; he closed his eyes and started muttering a Klingon meditation under his breath, but Hur’agha was too wired to meditate. Too restless to relax in that infernal straw.  She limped to the barn’s wall and leaned forward to peer through one of the slats, outside a small village of one-story huts with thatched roofs huddled around a stone building. The tower was topped with an iron cross. A family sigil? A symbol of something else? She didn’t know, but it had to be important to these people…

Her breath caught in her throat.

She did not know what she was expecting, but this was not it. Did Starfleet lie about its presence in the Shackleton Expanse before this recent expansion? Surely not. These were not Federation types. The Federation was soft. Too used to warm beds and hot meals at the command of their voice. They didn’t trudge around in mud and push archaic wooden carts.

Yet, these people were human.

She blinked in confusion and disgust as a human girl ran past the barn, giggling. A white-and-black dog bounded after her through the mud, barking with each leap. The child’s wool dress flared around her as she splashed through the street, each peal of laughter punctuated by the ringing strike of hammer on anvil, sharp as the bells of Q’onos.

The barn doors opened, and light flooded in. At the entrance were two figures. The first was a massive man clad in steel plate armor, and a long sword hanging from his belt.  He had an impressive brown beard and loose hair, and a metal hood of linked rings covered his head. Tucked under his arm was a steel helmet, full visored.

Hur’agha snarled and let out a low growl at his companion, her jaw clenched.  Next to the human was a Cardassian clad in black robes, a simple white rope served as a belt. The robes had an upturned collar with a silly white square in the center.  Hanging from his neck, the same cross rested on his chest.

“Gōd þæt þu eart awacen,” the human said, but the universal translator failed to correct immediately.