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Last update: 07.01.02 Buck Wilmington sat together with Nathan Jackson and Josiah Sanchez in the mess of the Nightingale and played cards while Vin Tanner and JD Dunne hovered over the engine of the Texas, which stood in the pressurized flight deck of the hospital vessel, trying to knock out a bug in the slip stream drive. The Mary of Medici was docked to the left side of the Nightingale, allowing the seven men to walk freely from one ship to the other. Buck leaned back and grinned. "Read them and weep, friends." Jackson grimaced, laying down his hand. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you took lessons from Ezra." "You never know," the High Guard commander smiled boyishly, raking in the pot. "Where is he, by the way?" "Probably attempting to steal the Mary," Josiah smirked. He had a haunch that the extreme friendliness and co-operative attitude of the slick gambler served a purpose other than soothing bruised egos. Buck shot the Nietzschean an uneasy glance. He had seen the greedy gleam in Ezra's green eyes ever since the younger man had taken a glimpse at the small scout vessel. There was no say how far the cheat would go to get the ship under his control. And he had already proven that sacrificing all of their lives wasn't too high a price not to be considered. Wilmington's voice was grave when he broke the uneasy silence that had settled over the table. "Chris would kill him bare handed if he tried." As if on a secret signal, Buck's communicator sprang to life and Mary's voice sounded through the room. "Commander Wilmington, you better come to my engine room fast..." Ezra removed the panel with nimble fingers and began to connect the interrupt to the ship's circuitry. He knew that he had to be fast, or the AI would find out what was going on and alarm Larabee. And facing Larabee's wrath wasn't something Ezra was looking forward to. But if he managed to install the interrupt, the "Mary of Medici" would be his; a prize that would pay for a luxury life. If that meant that the High Guards were stranded on some backwater base for a while, it wasn't really any of his concern. A small part of him protested, but he silenced it quickly. He couldn't afford to maintain a conscience because it came with a price that he wasn't willing to pay. "Looking for something?" Chris's voice was slightly slurred, indicator of the alcohol he had consumed. Ezra muttered a curse. "I was just trying to repair..." Chris had heard enough. He landed a fist in Ezra's face that sent the smaller man stumbling backwards." You lying son-of-a-Nietzschean-bitch!" Before Ezra even had the chance to regain his balance, a heavy blow into the stomach made him topple over. He reached for his weapon, realizing the very moment that it had been the last straw Larabee needed to unleash whatever demons he harbored. With an angry outcry, Chris kicked Ezra's hand and send the gun scattering over the floor. Another hard punch against the head followed and the gambler's knees buckled. The blood was rushing in his ears as he frantically tried to escape from the raving mad agent. "You think you can take Mary? Take her like you took my family?" Chris merciless delivered a savage uppercut to his opponent's chin and gleefully watched him sagging to the floor. Blood trickled from Ezra's mouth, but he didn't even seem to notice it. Larabee sneered: "You bastards killed my wife and my son." Ezra desperately tried to get his body under control. He caught a glimpse on the Captain's face, a face distorted by pain and hate. The face of a man who had gone through hell and maybe still lived there. The gambler raised his arms defensively. "Mr. Larabee..." "Shut up." Something told him that this was wrong. That he shouldn't do what he was about to do. But right now, Chris didn't care about right or wrong. All he cared about was that this Nietzschean would pay for the death of Sarah and Adam Larabee. He continued to beat up the half unconscious man who barely brought up resistance. "Please..." Ezra mumbled through swollen lips. The world was spinning and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find his feet. The agonizing pain that coursed through his body made it impossible to grasp a clear thought. "Enough... mercy..." "You think begging will help you?" Chris saw the bloodied face through an alcohol and hate induced haze. But it wasn't Ezra's face that he saw. It was the face of the Nietzschean who had taken away the two people who had meant the world to Chris. He showered his victim with another series of blows and kicks. "You think begging helped Sarah? Did they show mercy to Adam? He was just a boy!" Rolled up in a tight ball, Ezra wouldn't have bet on his survival right now. He covered his head with his arms, trying to shelter himself from the fury of a man who had lost his family. "He was only a boy... and you burned him alive!" Chris kicked at the bone-spikes at Ezra's underarms, knowing that it would cause considerable pain to the Nietzschean. The sound of crunching bones tore through the wall of hate and it slowly dissipated, leaving behind only an empty ache. He noticed the blood and the whimpers from the downed man. Slowly, it dawned to Chris what he had done, that one of his crew was suffering because of him. Larabee slid down the wall next to Ezra, sobs ragging through his body. "He was a little boy... only a little boy..." "Chris!" Buck stormed into the room, accompanied by Josiah and Nathan. One look at the blood caked features of the gambler confirmed Wilmington's worst fears. The long pent up feelings that Larabee had carried around all these years, buried deep inside him, had finally vented. The stench of alcohol was unmistakable and Buck realized that no matter what Ezra had planned, he had paid for a crime that had been committed 300 years ago. "Damn it, Larabee, I told you to stay out of the bottle when we are in space!" Chris only stared at the scene like it was something from a horror movie. What had been bone spikes before covered the floor in small fragments and he knew what this meant to a Nietzschean. This sobered Chris up rapidly, and he got to his feet. "Why did the stupid bastard try to steal my ship?" "Because he's a freakin' cheat and thief. He probably planned to steal Mary all along," Buck grumbled. "She must be worth a small fortune." "I should have known," Larabee chastised himself. Now that the anger had left him, he felt sorry for what he had done. "You, my friend, harbor great sorrow," Josiah observed. "And brother Ezra is in a world of pain right now." "He's Nietzschean... Chris shouldn't have been able to beat him up like that," Wilmington wondered, turning his attention from Larabee to the gambler. "Maybe the reason lies in the fact that Ezra isn't what he pretends to be," the preacher pointed at the torn leather arm cuff that had been ripped away by one of the kicks, then at the man's arm. Both Buck and Chris had expected to see massive injuries but apart from a load of bruises the arm was perfectly fine. Quickly, Josiah unfastened the other leather cuff to confirm what he had suspected all along. "What the..." With a groan, Ezra rolled away from the men. Still feeling dizzy, he managed to get up, searching hold at the wall. They had found out the truth. His cover was blown, not that it had done him any good to start with. The entire con had been a fiasco and now he was stuck on this ship with a High Guard madman and his team of jolly do-gooders. Mother would be proud. "Gentlemen..." He coughed and wiped the blood from his mouth, trying to look threatening. Instincts took over and told him to run while he still was able to move. He reached for his gun but it wasn't at its place. Maybe there was a chance to come out of this alive if he played his cards right. If just the room would stop tilting. "Don't come closer." "Ezra... You need help." Josiah tried to reason with the injured man, but it was no good. "Captain Larabee already 'helped' me, thank you kindly," the gambler hissed, trying to stay on his feet. But the dizziness increased with every second that passed, his field of vision narrowed and became grizzly like a bad tuned vid screen. "You tried to steal our ship." Wilmington's voice cut through the roaring in Ezra's ears, then his knees buckled and the world went black. The soft throbbing in his head turned into a roaring, cindering ache as he fought his way back through the dark layers that seperated his mind from the world outside. With every layer that he crawled into consciousness he became more aware of his surroundings and unwanted memories drippled back into his ailing brain. The settlement. Betraying Larabee and the others to the pirates. Almost killing the High Guard Captain in the asinine attempt to rescue the others from Anderson's wrath. The gambler groaned when the last piece of the fragmented puzzle fell into place. Trying to steal Larabee's ship had been followed by immideate punishment by the upset man. If it hadn't been for Wilmington... Ezra suppressed a shudder. "Ezra?" Larabee's voice. Great. Ezra tentatively tried to move his abused limbs and noted with horror that he was shackled to the bed. No chance for escape. He was doomed, left at the mercy of a madman who hated his guts and wanted his death. What else could go wrong? Maybe feigning sleep would help. "Open your eyes. I know that you're awake," Larabee ordered. Ezra carefully pried his eyes open, assessing his chances for escape. Much to his dismay, lady luck had turned her back on the gambler once more. Mary's medbay was no place he could leave unscathed. With a sigh, Ezra gave in to the inevitable, wondering if he'd be tossed out of the airlock or if the High Guards would get more satisfaction if they handed him over to the Nietzscheans. One way or the other, he realized with a trace of rapidly growing panic, he was doomed. "Captain Larabee... It's a pleasure to see you again," Ezra croaked with difficulty. "I bet," Chris stated coldly and put a glass of water to the healing man's lips. "Drink this." Ezra hesitated only slightly, then the lure of fresh water became to great and he took a few sips before he leaned back on the pillow. "Thank you." The Captain just nodded, then shot him a look that made Ezra cringe inwardly. Third kind, the look seemed to say, but Larabee voiced only one word. "Why?" A myriad of possible answers and explanations sprang to Ezra's mind, but he discarded the lies when he saw the expression on Chris's face. "Because I want to survive and become rich. I know no other way to achieve my dream... and I'm not cut out for menial labor." The Captain frowned and seized the bonded gambler with a query glance, then shrugged and walked out of the medbay, leaving Ezra to his own gloomy thoughts about his future. Captain Dylan Hunt smiled at the two men in High Guard uniforms who stood in front of him. "Captain Larabee, Commander Wilmington... Welcome aboard the Andromeda Ascendant. This is my first Officer Beka Valetine." "Nice to meet you," Chris accepted the outstretched hand. "You have a fine ship there." "And you have a very charming ladies on board, if I may say so," Buck added and shot a seductive glance to Beka. "Thank you, Commander," the blond woman replied with a contemplating look. "Buck!" Larabee muttered under his breath and elbowed his friend. Trust Wilmington and his 'animal magnetism' to get them into trouble with a possible ally in this universe of enemies. "Charming, and very capable as an officer of this ship, I can assure you." Dylan smirked, wondering once more whether or not these two were the officer material or mere scum that had stolen a good ship. But Rommie had contacted her fellow AI aboard the Mary and confirmed the information along with delivering a rather colorful story about escaping a Nietzschean hunting party and a computer virus that had influenced the ship's system and kept the crew in stasis for three centuries. Hunt found the story a bit hard to believe, but then, if someone would have told him a couple of years ago that he'd waste 300 years frozen in time on the fringe of the event horizon of a black hole, he would have declared the person insane as well. Besides, the medical scan Trance had performed on the two strangers upon their arrival on the Andromeda had confirmed their identity beyond the mere skin-deep level. "Now, there are some things we need to discuss..."Josiah Sanchez sat next to the medbay bed to which Ezra was shackled and put down the plate of food he had brought with him for the unlucky gambler. The Nietzschean unlocked one of the cuffs, handed Ezra a fork and watched how the hungry young man ate so quickly that one could think he almost breathed in the food. "Slow down. Captain Larabee won't let you starve, Ezra." "I wouldn't be too sure of that, Mr. Sanchez," Ezra managed between two bites, but forced himself to eat at a lower speed. "You're angry at him for beating you up, son?" Green eyes looked up in surprise. "I don't exactly feel gratitude towards our dear Captain for administer this type of punishment on me, but angry? No. I was caught in flagranti trying steal his ship... By all means, he had every right to perform justice on me." "He was drunk. You paid for a crime that happened a long time before you were born." "I know," Ezra lowered his head. "Captain Larabee's family suffered a horrible fate by the hand of the Nietzscheans. He probably saw in me the incarnation of all the evil in the world. I... I still wonder why he dragged me along on this mission of mercy instead of following his instincts." The former priest contemplated this for a moment, for the first time noticing the loneliness that Ezra had managed to cover so perfectly up to this point but that now leaked through the shattered facade of cocky self-confidence the gambler presented to everyone. "Brother Ezra, the Universe has brought you here. Take the hint." "The Universe really has a strange kind of humor," the gambler smiled. "Couldn't it just bring me to where I want to be?" "What we want and what we need are often not the same," Josiah returned the smile, took the empty plate and shackled Ezra back to the bed. Ezra bit back a reply and settled for an angry glare. He knew very well what he needed. Money to burn, a huge villa, maybe his own private planet. Something that he would get one day, no matter the costs. This little escapade had been a mere distraction from the real goal. He wouldn't make the same mistake twice and let his conscience overrule the carefully laid out plans that he had formed. No, Ezra would start to look out again for number one only. "We'll see, Mr. Sanchez." "Good night, Ezra." The preacher couldn't suppress a satisfied grin when he left the medbay. The gambler would find his place amongst the seven, because it was his destiny. The universe knew what it was doing. "I'm going to ask Ezra if he wants to join our crew," Chris Larabee announced quietly when he and Buck were back on board the Mary. "You're going to do what?!?" Buck wasn't sure if he was hallucinating or not. "He tried to steal our ship and you want him to join the crew?" "Yes," Larabee nodded. "We can always space him if he tries anything." Buck chuckled. "You'll also ask the others if they want to team up with us?" "Re-establishing Commonwealth Law in this quadrant will be a tricky job," Chris rubbed his chin. "And we work well together. They aren't exactly High Guard material, but it seems that Captain Hunt isn't off any better than we are." "But he got all the girls," Wilmington mockly complained. Larabee rolled his eyes in feigned despair. "I'm sure you'll find female company in Four Corners, pard." "You can bet on that..." Buck grinned wolfishly. "I saw that ravaging beauty in the 'Lion's Den'..." At the second day of his incarceration, Ezra was bored out of his mind. He had been shackled to the medbay bed most of the time and all he could do was thinking about escape... and replaying the events of the past few days. He hated to admit it, but the brief time he had spend with the six others had left an impression. Maybe for the first time in his life, he had experienced the fledging feeling of belonging, for once had done something right. Josiah�s word had sunken in and run their course through his subconsciousness, nagging on the walls he had built around himself to protect his fragile self from a world that didn�t care. Could it really be that his destiny was here, with these six weirdoes who hadn�t enough common sense to keep themselves out of trouble. With a sigh, Ezra shifted from one side to the other, staring at the arrangement of medical devices and control screens on the wall. One of the bigger screens showed a holographic image of the Four Corners sector. JD showed responsible for that little source of repast. Ezra smiled � the kid was too good for his own good, enthusiastic and full of a naivete that the gambler had lost at a very early age. He was stirred out of his breviary when Chris entered the small room. �Your time�s up, cheat,� the dark-clad Captain announced with a mean look in his eyes. �We have a job to do and you�re consuming precious oxygen reserves.� �A job?� Ezra tried to ignore the obvious message and clutched for the rapidly slipping away chance of survival. �Has Dylan Hunt�s arrival anything to do with it?� �Indeed,� Larabee handcuffed the younger man, the sparkle of uncovered glee about the gambler�s predicament clearly written on his face. �We�re the new law in this sector.� �And you�ll just throw me out of the airlock?� Desperation homed in and vented through his words with a heavy sarcasm before Ezra could prevent it. �Actually....� Chris seemed to ponder the suggestion for a moment. �That sounds like a plan.� �You can�t just space me,� the gambler objected, barely covering the fear that had lurked in him ever since he had been confined to the medbay. �Can�t I?� �Smooth, very smooth�, Ezra chastised himself. �You couldn�t just shut up or gravel for your life, no... you had to give him ideas.� What options did he have? What would Larabee persuade not to execute him? �I could introduce you to the right people... I know some of the important members of the underground and the Nietzschean clans.� �So does Josiah,� Chris gently pushed Ezra towards the door. It was obvious that he had already made his choice and was enjoying this game of high stakes bargaining. �I...� The gambler swallowed, hesitating for a moment, knowing very well that he was admitting defeat, going against everything that his mother had ever taught him. He continued with a mixture of desperation and determination, looking Larabee straight into the eyes, trying to get through the seemingly impenetrable shell of an uncaring attitude the Captain had displayed towards him so far. �I could join your crew for a while... You�ll need every help you can get out here if you want to survive.� �You joining my crew?� Chris smirked, his voice laced with doubt. �I�ll help you building up a base, making connections for you, take care of the financial background...� Larabee frowned. He had almost forgotten about the monetary aspect of their dilemma. �Half a year,� Ezra tried again. �After that, I�m free to go and will never cross your path again.� �You ran out on me and tried to steal my ship once before. You wouldn't be thinking about doing that again, would you?� �Rest assured, Captain, I won�t make the same mistake twice,� Ezra would have sworn off gambling if it would have gotten him out of this no-win scenario. �I swear on the grave of my sainted mother...� �You told JD that your mother was still alive,� the Captain growled. �Figure of speech.� He could feel the nose around his neck tightening as he was caught up in his own tangled web of lies. �Figure you�re dead if you�re lying.� Larabee fixed Ezra�s gaze, forced him to acknowledge that he would be held responsible for his actions from now on. Larabee didn�t deal out idle threats, but he also would keep his end of the bargain. Ezra slowly nodded his agreement. �Welcome aboard, crewman.� With a smile, Chris opened the handcuffs, and Ezra couldn�t shake off the feeling that he had just been conned neatly into something that Captain Larabee had wanted all along. The End |