Long Tube's Journey Into Fight

Posted on Tue Aug 11th, 2026 @ 3:36am by Ensign Henry Taylor & Tessa di'Orion
Edited on on Tue Aug 11th, 2026 @ 10:40pm

2,018 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Die Hard: Chimera Edition (main)
Location: Jeffries Tube

"Hold up!" Henry stage whispered in frustration as Tessa rushed around a curve. He ran after her and finally caught up, pulling her back to the wall before they peeked around. The coast was clear and their goal was in sight. Kael had given them instructions on the best jeffries tube to use to get to the main shaft leading to the bridge, and Tessa had run off with no fear. Henry had kept up, but he wasn't thrilled with her going head-first into danger.

He walked up to the hatch and entered his code, detaching it and doing a double take as Tessa crawled in without hesitation. He grumbled and slipped in behind her, pulling the hatch closed behind him.

"Tessa, wait for me!" Henry said, his frustration growing. "If there's a hostile at the other end, you'll be a sitting duck!"

"If there's someone on the other side, they won't know I'm coming." Tessa shot back, not stopping her movement, "It gives me the first move and gives him an arrow wherever I want it."

"A bow isn't much good in a jeffries tube," Henry countered. "A phaser is."

"A phaser is only as good as the person holding it." Tessa countered back, then yelped as one hand caught her foot and she kicked out randomly, missing him as he dragged her in reverse by a few inches, "Henry, you've been getting in my way this entire time, let me have this one!"

Henry felt his cheeks burn at the insult and pulled her to him and moved forward, coming up beside her. "There is no 'one' to have, Tessa," he said. "And I haven't been getting in your way, I've been trying to keep you from rushing headlong into something without knowing what to expect! This is going to require a plan, not just hot-headed brazenness! You aren't considering the consequences."

"I'm not? Who says?" Tessa snapped at him, "And you have been getting in my way ever since we met up at my quarters. Every time we approached a bend in the corridor, I took the outside to give myself the best angle to shoot first and you're hugging the inside wall, fouling my shots!" She shoved his shoulder once, "There are risks, yes, but all fighting has risks." She started to crawl off again.

He let out a growl of frustration and grabbed her again, pulling her back to him. "I didn't say risks, I said consequences. You don't have training for this. I do."

"Oh, that's great," She snapped as he dragged her to a stop again, "When have you been in combat? Have you been almost kidnapped starting from when you could not walk? Have you been attacked when young and had to fight off..." Her mind tried to find the word she was looking for, "Soltaschie, when someone tries to kill you. Stop trying to protect me!"

"Never," he said, his voice harder and stronger than he'd ever spoken to her, his eyes blazing with more fire than he usually had. "I will never not want to protect you. I will never want to keep you from being harmed. You might as well ask me not to breathe, I'd have better luck. I know there's risk, but that doesn't mean we don't mitigate it."

"Then you are of no more use to me," Tessa snapped out, working her mouth as she tried to put her feelings into Standard, knowing he wouldn't have the Tialan for them. "I am leaving you." She turned away from him and started to move off again.

Henry's blood pressure immediately spiked. His heart rate stopped cold for approximately an eternity, then elevated to that of a hummingbird in order to catch up and balance out the beats he missed. His vision swam and blood pounded in his ears as he processed what she'd just said. There's no way she would....over this? One fight? he thought to himself. He watched her crawl away and as his mind slowly returned, he realized there was no way in hell he was letting her get away from him.

He quickly crawled after her and reached for her foot, but she was ready for him and flipped around, giving him a kick to the shoulder. He grunted in pain and grabbed her knee, squeezing it in a place he knew would cause her leg to straighten and render it useless. As she let out a squeal and flopped onto her back, he scrambled forward, pinning her down.

"Listen to me Henry said, looking down at her. "What exactly is your plan? Let's say you break away and go off on your own. And? You don't have a way to access the bridge without my authorization code. You don't know how many of them there are, and if you make a mistake, you won't have backup. Yes, you've been through far more shit in your life. And I have been taught how to fight on a starship. You need me to think of the things you just plain don't know, and I need you to be the warrior you are. I can't do this without you, and you can't do it without me."

He put a hand over her mouth to stop her from taking advantage of the fact that he finally had to inhale a fresh lungful of air. "Tessa," he said, finally, "I'm not trying to get in your way, I'm doing what I've been taught so that we both come out of this alive. You can keep speaking condescendingly and insult me all you want, and if you really mean you're breaking up with me, so be it, but I'm not going to let you go off half-cocked, and I'm not going to risk either of us getting killed. We are doing this together or not at all. So, tell me, are we partners or aren't we? He was breathing hard like he'd run a marathon, and doing his best not to let tears of frustration leak out. He was angry, scared and on his last nerve, but he'd be damned if he was going to let her run into the fires without him.

Tessa responded by trying to bring a knee up to his inner thigh to dislodge him, but he was too quick and pinned her leg between his to stop her from pulling it off, wrapping them into a knot. She screamed into his hand before he finally uncovered her mouth, "You call me a warrior," She hissed at him, "But you don't treat me like one! You treat me like you would a child before they turn of age! YOU tell me how many there are, YOU tell me where they are and you tell me now, or you shut UP!" The last word came out louder than she intended, even while she struggled and freed a hand to give him a grazing strike of a slap across his cheek.

"And where do you get that I'm breaking up with you?" She demanded, more fire in her eyes than even during her diatribe, "I only said I was leaving you, not breaking up with you! I can't take this war to those who would invade our home with you stopping me at every point! I don't care that you have the password to get onto the bridge, I'll go find others that aren't up there." She struggled with almost no effect again and disgust crossed her face that he could successfully pin her like this, "I love you, Henry, but trust goes both ways. If we're going to be partners here, we have to be PARTNERS."

Henry froze in his struggles and looked down at her. "Wait, you're not breaking up with me?" he said, stunned. "You said you were leaving....oh leaving me." He felt his adrenaline start to crash and tried to rally himself. "All right...hold on...." he said, trying to think clearly. "Let me put it to you this way: how many hostiles do you think you could track and take down without oxygen?"

"Without oxygen?" Tessa had to think for a few seconds, during which she stopped her struggles to escape him, "I can't do anything without oxygen, why?"

"Well so long as they have control of the bridge, they can start depleting our supply on any deck they choose," Henry said. "All I did was contain them. They still have control. They haven't killed us for some reason, but if we give them one, we're dead. So okay, we're partners. What's your plan to take the bridge?" He moved off of her and sat back, breathing hard and wiping his eyes.

"I hadn't gotten that far yet, but I was going to make a plan on the way." Tessa admitted, pulling herself up to a sitting position, rubbing her knee where he'd grabbed it. "Go through the tubes to get there, then try to recon it through the grates. If it's just one or two, I could kick in the grate, get the first one with the first shot, then the second after I'm through."

"And if there's ten of them?" Henry said.

"I hadn't gotten that far," she admitted. "What would you do if there were ten?"

Henry shook his head. "I'm not sure, honestly," he said. "One thing working against us is that there won't be any grates to look through. The bridge has two turbolifts and two emergency exits. All are sealed by the quarantine order. By now they have to know they're trapped, and they're focused on getting out. If I unseal the bridge, they may not know it right away, but odds are there will be people right by the emergency doors when we try to emerge. However many there are, we need a way to cause a distraction so that we have time to pick them off one by one."

"That's going to be tricky." Tessa said quietly, "Is there anything we can use to make smoke? Or cause something from across the bridge? If I can get in among them, I'm fast enough to keep them off-balance, I think."

Henry wanted to object, but held his tongue. "All right...smoke or some other distraction," Henry said, thinking. He suddenly got a smile on his face. "I have an idea, but it'll take us a minute to get to deck nine. Follow me." He turned and started crawling quickly along the tunnel.

This time Tessa didn’t hesitate before following him. He had a clear and concise plan and maybe he wouldn’t try to cut her out of it to make it ‘safer’ for her.

When they got to the end, he paused, and turned to her. "I'm sorry we fought, Angel," he said. "And I promise, everything I'm doing, I'm doing with us in mind."

“As am I, Henry,” Tessa smiled back, “We can’t be together if we can’t talk and while I’m no true warrior, if it means we are taking risks, it means both of us, equally. You think it would be hard, losing me? Imagine if you were dead, how I would feel.” Her eyes bored into his, “I would be on my own out here in the dark, hoping to find my way home to Tial, alone. That’s why I am going to protect, you. If you expect me to get used to it, you have to as well. Deal?”

Henry looked into those cornflower blue eyes and smiled. "Deal," he said. "But don't sell yourself short; you are most definitely a warrior." He kissed her hard and then kicked open the hatch, crawling carefully out onto the service ladder and beginning their six deck descent.

Tessa watched him vanish down the deck and sighed, 'Now, if only he'll remember that when it matters.' She thought to herself, then began to follow him. They had friends to save.

 

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