ACT 4
“All dead,” O’Hara reported back to the others in the pilot’s booth, “but no sign of any females.” Both men seemed to visibly relax at this information.
“Did anyone see the General?” the other man asked them all – each had searched a separate part of the ship. They all shook their heads.
“Then they must be in Negotiation,” Chell said hopefully. “There’s only one place my Family conduct business outside of the ship.”
“’Your’ family?” Souveson asked quickly.
“Yes,” Chell replied. “This used to be my home.”
*
OLD TRADING TEMPLE
Jackson was shifting from foot to foot. Twice now the Generals had tramped up to each other and returned to their respective group. Their latest debate was taking some time. Suddenly both Generals raised their hands and shouted:
“Arbitrator! We need the Arbitrator!!”
Keylar gasped and audibly swallowed. Jackson turned to see the girl flushed from embarrassment. Indeed, all around other groups turned toward the Generals and then slowly around to find the two Matriarchs who needed such drastic measures.
Peliolas was furious. Deviga, however, was chuckling to herself.
Without warning, Keylar then shrieked – so loud that both older women were startled. Before either woman could react further, she darted off at tremendous speed toward the shadows between the ruined buttresses where a group of young looking people were ambling toward their general direction.
The Commodore exchanged a glance with Deviga, trying to ascertain what would cause such a reaction in Keylar, but the indigenous Matriarch fixed her jaw, almost resigned to what was to follow. Jackson glanced back over her shoulder at the Generals. They had been joined by a third, much older General, possibly in her late 80s or 90s, physically supported by a contingent of four young Temple Disciples. Turning back she followed the Matriarch’s tearful gaze toward her daughter and the advancing group.
“What-?” Jackson uttered briefly.
“It’s one of my sons,” Deviga sounded confused and suspicious.
Jackson followed her trembling gaze to the sullen looking group of young B’Det. Their attire wasn’t out of keeping with B’Det fashion, but it didn’t exactly fit in with the business-like clothing of the users of the Temple. Indeed, there was an attitude about the youngsters, Jackson thought; a determined aggression.
*
ELSEWHERE
Lirik was losing the battle with the inhibitor field. Drifting in and out of consciousness all he could now focus on was staying alive, trying to remain aware. He daren’t use his Medusan energy again as the last time he had, he had felt a tremendous surge of electromagnetic energy feed back through the device encompassing his wrists and it pushed him deeper into mental disarray. With his Human senses so dulled, and his awareness limited to realising only if he was conscious or not, he knew that his fate would truly be determined by others, rather than any action of his own.
A memory surged into the forefront of his mind preventing any further logical thought. He was instantly in the colour, light and sound of the detail, and somewhere in his head he worried that he was delirious, no longer able to focus. Despite his best effort, the cacophony of recall consumed him. So he tried to relax instead, to go with the memory – perhaps that way he could come out the other side with some semblance of control.
The experiences being relived in his mind were too up-close, images cascaded and the sensations were all mixed up. But slowly, he tried to ‘fall’ back from the memory, look on from afar. At first, all he could focus on were the thousands of delegates from far and wide, in all their assorting garb and behaviour, mingling in the beautiful seaside town of Getrassa on Betazed. He remembered his reason for being there: for a conference on the powers of the mind – although the conference was running concurrently with the local celebration of the Flaying Season, and causing much pandemonium.
Betazoids, usually dignified if emotive, threw themselves into the celebration with full exuberance, causing a conflicting set of reactions from the delegates. The Flaying Season was a time when locals celebrated their liberation from bondage during a dark period many centuries earlier.
Lirik, a younger man, had been assigned as aide to two experts from the Federation Science Academy, and was also under secondary orders to meet secretly with the Betazoid Ambassador to the Federation and convey an important message from the High Council to her.
It was here, eight years ago that he had met a powerful telepath, called Qella-vas, an overweight amphibious life form from Krassingchor. It was a meeting that had transformed his life; until then, his only telepathic experiences had been isolated to communing with other Medusans or similar energy beings. No Vulcan could bear to touch him, and the few non-contactual psychics who had tried to form a link had found the mental manifestation of Medusan energy to be just as abhorrent as the physical.
Qella-vas was singularly unaffected, though, and in the wink of an eye showed Lirik there were unlimited aspects to telepathy, unfettered by distance or physical barriers. Indeed, the blob of a teacher had become something of an instant soul-mate, imprinting his psyche permanently onto the part of Lirik’s brain that could be utilised in times of mental strife and difficulty.
The memory was interrupted by a head-rush feeling – he was gaining some sense of his physicality, although his body felt numb and aching at the same time. He realised his arms were flailing – he was released from the restraint…or possibly becoming more delirious.
“Lirik!” a voice, close to him – it was Vikris. “You’ll be fine momentarily – but I have to find Hauruk. Stay here with the others.”
He sensed movement – she was departing. He tried to reach out a hand and call out for her to come back, but his lack of coordination resulted merely in a lurch of the shoulder and a low groan.
*
NOT FAR AWAY
Before Jackson could react, from within the group in the shadows she saw a young attractive man grasp Keylar around the neck with one hand. She tried to pull his hand away but he was immovable.
Then, two young men tried to leap forward to her defence, but were firmly held back by their compatriots when commanded by the man whose hand threatened to end Keylar’s life. That said, the group were looking cautiously among one another, Jackson noticed.
Keylar was then roughly pushed forward, at arms length, staggering backwards directly toward the Commodore and Deviga, the man leading her dark in expression, threatening and yet unemotional.
Jackson heard Mulcro’s movement and turned her head just in time to see him reach for his hand weapon. But before he had even grasped the holster there was a double popping sound and two small impacts ripped through his upper body around shoulder and chest height, front and back. He fell immediately with a sharp cry.
The Arbitrator was immediately pulled to the floor, the disciples using their bodies as protection from the unseen attacker(s), crouching all over and around her, though Jackson saw that they themselves were not targeted.
The other General, seeing his counterpart felled in cold blood, turned and ran at full pelt back toward his Mistress, drawing his weapon as he did, but was felled by several more silenced shots from the shadows to the sides.
Seeing the mostly silent carnage, screams broke out from Peliolas’ group and all the other B’Det nearby, and at once everyone bar the attacker’s group fled in all directions.
The pandemonium was instant. Jackson stepped closer to Deviga partly as a gesture of defiance, though the native B’Det was staring helplessly at the young man pushing her daughter towards her, his fingers wrapped around her windpipe.
The group of young resisters seemed confused by the gunfire – the shots hadn’t come from them. The two young men being restrained managed to break free, but as they did more shots popped in their direction, hitting several immediately, though not fatally. They cowered together, trying to alleviate their friends’ pain.
Then, six short, lithe individuals dressed from head to toe in black emerged from various locations in the shadows surrounding them, each brandishing a weapon in each hand. The group of young people realised they were surrounded and outnumbered and though terrified they immediately dropped their weapons in the hope they would be spared. As the imposing faceless soldiers approached into the dim light there was no doubt who they were.
“K’Tani…” Deviga muttered to herself in repressed awe and disbelief. “Here… on Apniania...”
“That’s right, Matriarch,” the young man said matter of fact.
“That’s…outrageous,” she half whispered.
“Isn’t it,” the young man snapped, and roughly turned Keylar to face her mother, his hand still gripped around her throat.
Keylar’s face was blotchy red, tears streamed down her face as she stared into her mother’s eyes, begging to know what was going on, even though she was unable to speak. First her brothers had appeared, then she’d been grabbed by this stranger – and now her beloved General was dead and they were surrounded by K’Tani.
“What do you want?” Jackson asked as defiantly as she could.
“Don’t speak, Human,” he sneered. “At least not now. For you’ll soon be talking more than you ever have before.” A corner of his mouth kinked upward at the thought.
“Let her go,” Deviga demanded. “She has nothing to do with any of-“
“Irrelevant!” the young man barked. “She will bring the rest of them to us.”
“Leflin!!”
A voice boomed, from off to the side, in the shadows, echoing off the partial remains of the former Old Temple. It was female, young and in controlled, with a hint of French Canadian.
The man whipped his head round to see her as she stepped slowly toward him. As if knowing what was about to happen he held his spare hand up to the K’Tani, preventing them from firing at the short blonde woman calmly walking into the line of fire.
Souveson slowed her pace, glancing at the gathered individuals. The Commodore was grateful to see her, and for a split second realised that everything the Lieutenant had said on their ship earlier that day had come from her Starfleet training – she was a rookie no longer. But by the same token she wondered what her plan was.
“Little Cresthna,” he smiled that cute smile again, turning to the Fantasy’s novice Tactical officer. “Not on your own, I hope?”
*
“This had better work,” O’Hara muttered to the two men beside her, hiding prone behind some ancient rocks, both their weapons trained on Souveson’s back.
Neither responded, focusing on the moment to come. O’Hara steeled herself – she already had five or six wounded to reach, so for their sake she hoped it would be over very soon.
*
“Don’t worry,” Souveson smiled sweetly back at him, “everyone’s here for you.”
“Hmm,” he mused, unperturbed by the discomfort he was causing Keylar, glancing off left and right. “Not quite everyone. There is still that elusive ship of yours and your foolish crew.”
“Yes,” Jackson interjected. “Why is it your people want our ship so badly?”
Leflin/Hauruk chuckled and wagged a finger at the big black woman. “Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it? Although strictly speaking they’re not ‘my people’.” His expression turned darker. “I’m just a product of their expertise.”
“You won’t get away with this obscenity,” Deviga spat. “Armed forces are no doubt already on their way, and there are very few routes out of here. Finally all of B’Det will see you K’Tani for what you truly are.”
*
From their hiding place, Chell silently glanced at his wife and suppressed a proud smile.
*
Again Leflin chuckled. “What makes you think that? We have a group of terrorists here,” he nodded back to the group of defiant/sobbing/frightened youngsters behind him, “who I’m sure the authorities will want to question about certain recent explosions in the city, not to mention all those poor murdered souls on your ship – killed with their own weapons, I might add.” He nodded toward the young resistors.
“Murders…?” Jackson asked, aghast.
“You bastard,” the Matriarch whispered in uncontained grief.
“You had a good crew,” Leflin sneered at Deviga. “They remained loyal to the last.”
Deviga visibly shuddered, tightened her lips, and then spoke in a clipped tone. “You can kill us all, gene freak, but there will always be others to take our place.”
“Blah blah whatever,” Leflin sneered at her. “Not long from now your precious B’Det Empire will begin to meltdown. The border regions will rise up against the might of the traditionalist home world. And of course they will gladly accept the assistance of the K’Tani to win the war, by which time… well, I don’t need to explain the rest.”
Just then, Keylar wriggled slightly, and Leflin’s grip was strained. At this optimum moment, Souveson saw their chance and dropped to her knees. Simultaneously Chell and his associate fired their trained weapons in unison and in succession with only a fractional moment of hesitation. The multiple projectiles ripped through Leflin’s forearm at the same point, just behind the elbow, instantly ripping it apart.
Keylar whelped and fell forward onto her face, pulling the dismembered, nerve-trailing twitching limb off her. Jackson threw herself at Deviga to knock her to the ground as Leflin howled and the K’Tani opened fire on the two men’s firing position.
A split second earlier, however, the two men had sprinted after O’Hara, already running off to one side, behind and around a thicker pillar remnant.
While the K’Tani concentrated their fire there, the youngsters, wounded and otherwise, as one picked up their own discarded weapons and formed a tight circle, firing at the alien soldiers all around them.
Leflin charged forward onto Souveson, but she absorbed his attack, rolling onto her back and using her practiced limbs to lever him above and over her head and send him sprawling into the dirt behind her. He was enraged. The French Canadian considered that his weight had been greater for his build than she expected. She crouch turned to face him and saw him looming close, bearing down on her. As he lurched toward her another figure came charging out of the shadows, piling into his mid-section and knocking him roughly to the floor to Souveson’s right.
Souveson was instantly beside the other female, a native B’Det it seemed, and both grappled with the too-strong gene clone.
Sirens wailed closer in the outside distance. The K’Tani, fleetingly caught off guard, had now regrouped, and while they had sustained multiple hits in the process, they seemed mostly unaffected and now had the young resistance pinned down.
Chell and his cohort then emerged in the far distance, shouting at full-lung capacity and charging toward the K’Tani from the rear.
Realising they were about to be overwhelmed, the K’Tani took an immediate group decision and casually activated their self destruct, disintegrating themselves in a matter of seconds.
As soon as Leflin realised this, he suddenly stopped struggling. The two females equally hesitated and he then took his chance to shake them both off, easily casting them to the floor.
He rose steadily and walked calmly over to where Jackson lay with Deviga.
All the combined resistors raised their weapons toward him.
“Hold your fire!” Deviga shouted, sensing that this may not be the optimum moment for him to die.
They locked eyes as he stopped less than a metre in front of her. Surprisingly, he dropped to a cross-legged seating position, cradling his foreshortened arm, now a coagulating stump as inbred nanotechnology had stopped it from bleeding and attempted to repair the wound.
“You are lucky. This day, the K’Tani allowed you to live,” he said plainly and sincerely. “You have three minutes to get out of the bomb’s blast radius.” His eyes dropped to his belly.
Jackson held Deviga back from attacking him. “What had you possibly hoped to gain from all this?”
Leflin smiled and glanced over to Souveson. “My orders were to infiltrate the Resistance. Which I did… and rather successfully,” he leered over at Vikris, standing beside the French Canadian. She felt ashamed, appalled and angry all at the same time for allowing herself to be so easily taken in by an alien Gene Clone.
“I tried to get that damned communication device to work, hoping to locate other Cells,” Leflin continued. “But all I could manage to do was lure you here. When you arrived, I had hoped to take you and your associates into custody for interrogation, possibly discover the whereabouts of your vessel. I singled your youngest team member out as the weakest link, but with the rest of you at large I needed to pick you off one by one. I hadn’t counted on that … creature Lirik finding me first, but it was soon apparent he would be of no use to me. So I focused on you – but I see the old codgers reached you first. Perhaps I was too ambitious. Hah!” he chuckled, glancing at Vikris. “Perhaps I underestimated this group of children as well. But it’s all irrelevant now.” He looked sternly at the Commodore. “And of little matter. At least we know your vessel’s approximate location, so perhaps our forces will be lucky and find it. By the way, you now have ninety seconds. I suggest you leave immediately.”
“He’s fitted with a bomb device!” Vikris called over to her group. She saw walking wounded and said a quick prayer of thanks that their injuries weren’t more severe. She looked down at Leflin one last time, tempted to spit in his face or kick him, but she just turned her back and walked away.
Souveson helped Keylar to her feet; Jackson did the same for Deviga who turned to Mulcro. At once, O’Hara emerged and rushed to his side, followed swiftly by Chell and his comrade.
“My Husband!” Deviga fell into Chell’s arms.
“Really, we should get going right away,” Souveson urged them all to postpone the reunion.
“He’s alive,” O’Hara spoke quickly. “I need help here!”
Vikris hurried men over to effortlessly lift the General. The other General hadn’t fared so well as O’Hara confirmed with a shake of her head.
“Arbitrator!” Deviga turned to the ancient being helped to her feet.
“No time,” the old lady muttered. “Hurry this way, there is a secret tunnel leading out of here; you should be able to avoid the authorities.”
Suddenly Lirik came staggering out of the shadows, delirious, but helped by the other captors who had remained with him. “Oh God, what happened here?” he slurred looking at the blood and wounded.
Chell embraced his sons and his daughter with his wife, and the group quickly moved off together.
“Commodore,” Leflin addressed her by her proper title as she was about to depart.
“How did you-?” she was shocked.
“We know a lot about you all, Pim made sure of that,” Leflin grinned. All the colour drained from Jackson’s face – the rogue android survived, then. “I just wanted to let you know, your son is in very good hands.”
“My… son… is alive?” she felt weak at the knees.
“Well, I believe so,” Leflin said casually, “for the moment at least. But who knows what may happen.”
She stared down at him. He grinned, a smug look, and then closed his eyes as if meditating. He opened his eyes and glanced up at her.
“Hurry, Commodore Jackson, I will explode in less than a minute.”
Jackson felt frozen to the spot. It was Souveson who returned to grab her arm and haul her after the rapidly departing group.
The tunnel was less than ten metres away, and steep steps curled their way down several flights and then into a long tunnel that turned away and sharply up.
After a minute or so, Souveson said to Jackson: “I haven’t heard an explosion.”
“I noticed that too,” she said, worried.
*
Minutes later, in the deep catacombs of the Temple, the Arbitrator pulled Deviga and Chell to one side. Presently they walked over to the Starfleet group.
“We are truly lucky. The Arbitrator is a sympathiser, and the Temple Disciples are sworn to silence,” Deviga explained. “An old escape tunnel will take us to the sewer system where we should split up. Ferlin, Chell’s comrade, has a ship and has agreed to loan it to our family. We will use it to ferry you back to your vessel.”
“That’s all very well, but unfortunately one of our people is missing, possibly dead,” Jackson sighed. “We can’t leave until we know for sure.”
“Oh don’t worry about him,” Lirik slurred, grinning and drooling at the same time. “Trust me that man is alive, and I know the perfect way to get in touch with the old coot.”
***
EPILOGUE
The Marak Day sliced through B’Det space at high warp.
Deviga and Chell opened the door to the small science lab come sick bay. Mulcro was sitting upright, well on the way to recovery. The Matriarch thought she wore a mask of someone at ease, but her old General read her like a book.
“You look troubled, Mother,” he said with only a hint of a wheeze in his voice. His chest had been slightly rearranged, and although more or less repaired the psychosomatic symptoms felt very real.
The Matriarch walked directly to his bedside, glancing at the red-headed Human slumped in an armchair, snoring heavily. Chell hung back, by the doorway, as if on guard – or waiting in the wings to provide support and assistance, like a good concubine.
“Mulcro, you have served my family for the last two generations,” she fought back a tear; the confused look on Mulcro’s face increased her unease. The sudden release of a crease from his brow conveyed his realisation – though there was a hint of expectation, like he didn’t know fully what this, clearly bad news, was.
He forced a chuckle, but stopped as his ribs reminded him of their trauma at the gun shot wound. “I was wondering how you would explain things to the authorities.”
Deviga shook her head, once more not surprised at her brave and clever General. Chell smiled, pleased that he remained as sharp as ever.
“It’s not about my business, or indeed my family any more, Mulcro,” Deviga perched on the side of his bed, hands cupped maternally in her lap, her face open and honest. “There is a great deal more at stake. Now, more than ever, the resistance needs a presence on B’Det – if not to resist the K’Tani then certainly to save ourselves from a protracted and bloody civil war.”
“Of course,” Mulcro fully understood the situation they faced, but didn’t altogether know how he would be of service to his Mistress.
“The Gene Clone called Leflin and Hauruk is still at large,” Deviga continued. “He needs to be caught and terminated. The Cell is already reforming, gathering intel on his whereabouts. But as you say, I will need to return to the fold, and explain what happened on my ship, and what my involvement was in the incident at the old Temple.”
Mulcro swallowed; there was something in his Matriarch’s eyes that scared him. Glancing across to Chell, he saw the usually iron hard persona of a veteran insurgent and spy whither at the thought of condemning a man who he owed a great deal to.
“My husband and I have worked out a plan,” she cast her eyes downward, licked her lips. “It will transpire that you were plotting against my family for a very long time. You engineered an accident that killed my husband, then you proceeded to ply me with drugs and use your influence over me in order to one day become my concubine. But then when I refused you in a moment of clarity, you went crazy. My most loyal servant Mulcro became a homicidal maniac, slaughtering my crew, and then hiring mercenaries to have me and my daughter shot. But I’d hired private security and they engaged the mercenaries. You appeared to be caught in the crossfire, but then recovered and managed to slip away, kidnapping myself and Keylar in the process, and escaping on this vessel…” she trailed off, looked away, ashamed.
When she turned to face him, she was surprised to see the familiar faint crooked smile that heralded the cheeky quip to follow.
“And what is it that I’m going to do with you?” he asked, apparently eager to know everything.
“We manage to convince you that you cannot gain anything from our capture. You feel some remorse, but also feel committed. You are confused. But as reality sinks in, so does the realisation that you face no future, and we persuade you to let us go with our lives, allowing you to flee the territory with yours,” she confirmed. He didn’t seem convinced.
“How will you prove all this?” he asked them both. “The authorities will need more than your word, and they’ll have a variety of sensor data and witness accounts to verify all of our movements – you appeared to come freely to the Temple with me. And what of our ship’s assortment of ‘strange’ visitors?”
Chell stepped forward. “The authorities will, of course, identify a group of masked men entering the ship to kill everyone – these are men hired by you, the same men who go on to the Temple; which is true in fact. As for Jackson, she was hired by Keylar to help Deviga recover from the drug intoxication you had been administering.”
“And as for our going to the Temple,” Deviga continued, “remember that we left for that before the K’Tani showed up at our ship – we had no reason not to go about our business.”
“And Jackson’s presence?” he pressed. “An apothecary is hardly expected at negotiations.”
“To keep an eye on you,” she smirked. He half smiled – but it faded as he imagined a host of flaws in the plan. “And to continue to look out for my welfare.”
“But the people in the Temple, they would have seen what happened, with the Gene Clone and the K’Tani,” he wagged his finger. “And how did I escape?”
“What people saw was a short fire fight – they didn’t hang around for the rest,” Deviga explained further. “However, the Arbitrator and her disciples did remain, and after everyone had fled she saw you had been faking injury, and proceeded to take myself and Keylar at gunpoint out through the catacombs. Thank the mercies she is a sympathiser and willing to back us on our story. As you know, there are no sensor devices permitted in the Temple, and so there are no sources to dispute the testimony of a well respected senior figure of authority.”
“Indeed…” Mulcro was impressed with the detail. He looked up at Chell then at his mistress. “And what about him?”
Chell walked over and took his wife’s hand beside Mulcro’s bed. “That, my old friend, is a plan I’ve been working on for considerably longer. I already have a new identity – a General, if you please. All I need is some top notch cosmetic surgery – which I’m now getting free of charge courtesy of the USS Fantasy’s resident Doctor-“
“Er… officially I’m not yet quite a Doctor,” O’Hara had roused from her slumber, though had been listening for longer than she let on. “But I do good work, I promise.”
Deviga interpreted Mulcro’s next question with ease as she saw that gentle expression he only afforded for her daughter. “Keylar understands what needs to be done. She is another witness to the events that I say took place. It’s hard for her, to know the truth, but it will be best in the long term. Nevertheless, she has requested at least one full day in your company before we return to B’Det. Chell’s surgery and after treatments will last three days, plus a day’s journey to a remote contact who will take us all back in.”
“With you as the new General?” Mulcro quizzed wryly.
Chell shook his head. “I could never replace you, dear friend. But I will not be content until this whole mess is over and you can return as our General.”
Mulcro dropped his head. “That could be a very long time.” He paused, as if remembering the most important thing. “And what’s to become of me? I fear even the Border Regions wouldn’t be safe.”
Deviga shook her head. “No, you’ll not stay within B’Det space. If anything, we could not afford your capture and interrogation.” That seemed to shock the General. “No. As your Matriarch I should be entitled to instruct you into other employment at a whim. But truly, I owe it to you, at least to have a choice in your own future.”
Mulcro considered the first obvious choices of where to go and what to do. O’Hara’s presence beside him somehow drew him to her. She seemed warm looking, radiant and colourful – so alien.
“We’ve spoken with Commodore Jackson,” Deviga spoke softly, as if tempering the enormity of her words. “Their ship needs people with experience – they are mostly civilian. And they are charged with a mission that concerns all our futures. I believe they need you, Mulcro. And I for one would feel happier knowing that you were continuing to help me and my family in your own way. And among friends.”
The Lieutenant smiled at this. “It is of course your own choice,” she reiterated.
“You don’t have to say now,” Chell concluded. “Give it some thought. We’ll be rendezvousing with their ship in sixteen hours. Plenty of time to talk later.”
Without further comment, the two exited, leaving O’Hara and the General alone. As she took routine scans and recordings he sank back into the pillow, gazing up at the metal ceiling. “What’s this ship of yours called again?”
O’Hara smiled to herself. “The Fantasy,” she said proudly. He closed his eyes.
As he sank towards a period of slumber he murmured: “This isn’t exactly my idea of a fantasy.”
* * *
** COMING SOON: EPISODE 12: THE GILDED CAGE