[Ancient ch`Rihan...]
In the late night of ch`Rihan's past, the crew of the Morrhae`Vnu are - for the most part - settled in for the night in the make shift camp outside their fallen craft. Most lay blissfully in unaware slumber. A few guards walk lazily around the camp with their glow-rods in hand, watching over the safety of their crew. Some crew members, finding it too hot to sleep, or just pre-occupied with their own thoughts to sleep much, stay up talking quietly to themselves, or silently reading from their isds. At this late at night, the natives are all asleep, putting their trust in their newfound legends to watch over them this night. In a quiet corner of the camp, two forms sit cross-legged on the ground facing each other, the dim light of a glow-rod illuminating their faces with a soft pale-green glow.
"That's five creds au owe me, Tahn." Rylan lays his cards down and shakes his head as he looks to the other boy, "Are au sure au played this game before?" he asks with an almost sarcastic raise of his brow.
Looking at the cards in his hand, Tahn lays his own down and protests indignantly, "Hey! I have a ful`shh! Au owe *me* five credits!"
"Na way!" Rylan shakes his head again and points to his own cards laid out before him, "I have s`House! That beats ninte ful`shh any day!"
Seeing an ace suddenly appear as it fell between the boys, Gehan angrily points at it and declares, "Hey! Au cheater!"
"Au wart!"< bastard > Rylan shouts back, "That was ninte *own* sleeve!!" he jabs an angry finger to where the fallen card lay.
"Au calling me a cheater?!" tr`Tahn almost stands out of fury, "It fell out of ninte-a!"
Before Rylan had a chance to argue this, tr`Ahan comes running up, screeching to a halt before he could collide into the boys, raising a small cloud of dirt. Bending down to rest his hands on his knees, the winded boy tries to speak through desperate gasps of air. His pale, shocked face, turns to Rylan's own curious expression and gasps out, "Rek...khai... rekkhai.... tr`Ehger...I found...."
Completely forgetting the argument over the game with Tahn, Rylan asks the distraught Erien, "Calm down...where's the fire?"
"I found..." the boy gasps, "...him. Well....what's left...of him. In the ... back of....engineering..." Hyper ventilating now, poor tr`Ahan falls to his knees, unable to catch his breath.
Rylan stands, and tries to gently pull the boy to his feet again, "What do au mean...'what's left of him'?" he asks curiously, sure that tr`Ahan was too hysterical to know what he was talking about. "Ahan? Should I take au to DT?"
"Back room...of engineering!" the poor boy's face grows ashy-white at saying this. Pointing in a distraught gesture to the ship, he gasps out, "Just go!...rek..." The Erien's eyes roll up a moment, then the boy completely passes out.
"Okay!" tr`Tahn nods, gathering the playing cards to shuffle them again, "Back to cards!"
"Na, I think the game is over for now..." Rylan shakes his head and taps open a line to DT though his ip, "DT? Au have a patient here..."
As if on queue, DT walks up from behind Rylan, startling the taller boy and making him turn around. "Somebody say my name?" DT asks curiously, then spies the unconscious Erien on the ground, "Am I needed?"
"Well, here's a guy lying passed out at our feet." tr`Tahn motions towards tr`Ahan, and adds sarcastically, "What do au think?"
Ignoring the Farien, Rylan nods and motions towards tr`Ahan as well, "Ie. He was hysterical, then passed out." Thinking a moment on tr`Ahan's earlier words, he turns and heads back towards the ship. Without waiting for an invite or order, Farien tr`Tahn rises and follows the Arrain.
DT kneels down and injects tr`Ahan with something then rolls him over resting the boy on his side. "Okay..." D`Tarik says to himself, "Something important must be going on..." pointing to a random officer he orders, "Watch over this man. He should come to in a few moments." At the other officer's agreeable nod, DT straightens and runs after Rylan.
As the Arrain and the Farien walked quietly among the sleepers of the camp, Rylan warns the boy with a raise of his brow, "Au know Tahn...that was a superior officer au just talked to." he paused a moment to look at the boy, "I'd be more careful about throwing ninte attitude around."
"Oh, yeah." Tahn replies, a little chastened, "Whoops, hehe...I forgot."
Ry smirks and adds, "It's all fine and well when we're off duty and everything. But something tells me, we're now on call...." he trails off to see DT running to catch up.
"Okay..." the doctor asked the taller boy, "What caused that man to be in shock? We're au beating him at cards that badly?"
"Yup!" Gehan laughs at his own joke, then smiles to himself as he realizes that he won't have to pay the five credits with this sudden interruption.
"Na." Ry smirks at the smaller boy, "I sent him to find tr`Ehger. He said he found him..." he pauses to frown thoughtfully, "Or what's left of him, whatever that means." he shrugs.
Being a medical man, DT has apparently heard this term more then Rylan, as the taller boy didn't seem overly concerned by that statement. "That can't be good...." DT replies quietly, "Where is this man?"
Reaching the hull breach, Ry pauses to peer into the darkness before turning to face DT again. "In there, somewhere." he shrugs. "I sent him in to do repairs and list the extensive damage." he looks back at the darkness inside the ship again.
"Where did that man say he found him?" DT asks curiously.
Ry only shrugs again, "In the back room of engineering." he answered quietly. After a moment, he turned and motioned for Tahn to run back, "Go back there and fetch some light rods. Katara will show au where they are." he raises a brow in DT's direction, "Unless au have some in that lab coat of ninte-a?" he asks with a smirk.
Gehan nods at the taller Arrain, and announces, "I know where they are." and runs back to get them as Ry had asked.
DT, who had been reaching into one of his lab coat's pockets, pulls out two light rods. "Of course I do." he answers, holding them out to Rylan.
Ry snickers and takes one of the pro-offered glow-sticks. "Poor kid..." he says of Tahn, "He should've waited to hear ninte answer."
Hearing this anyway, Gehan stops with a sigh and turns around. "I wish au had said something sooner." he gives DT a look.
"Maybe au should na be so quick to act." DT smirks and snaps his light rod to activate it. "Well, who's going to go in first?" he looks up at the taller boy.
Snapping the light rod to make it glow, Ry smirks at Tahn as the boy mumbles indignantly to himself, then turns and heads into the hull breach. A second later, a hand snakes out from the darkness suddenly, and pulls Gehan into the breach. "On second thought," Ry's voice calls out jokingly, "au go first. Good learning experience for au!"
"Nahhh...." Tahn shakes his head as he looks up at the Arrain, "That's okay. Superiors first, au know!" he motions with a hand in an 'after you' gesture.
Rolling his eyes slightly at the pair, DT steps in, "Oh move, the both of au!" he says impatiently, pushing his way past them both.
Ignoring DT as he walked between them, Ry questions the Farien, "At what school did au learn that? The lower ranked always gets sent into the danger first!"
"Umm..." Tahn thinks about this a moment, then offers with a slight grin, "Gehan's school...?"
Ry smirks and follows after DT with a shake of his head. "Guess we know what au`rh made of now, Tahn!" he laughs. Gehan mumbles to himself again, and follows after the pair.
[A little bit later....]
After a few moments of walking through the dark, empty ship, the three arrive in engineering. "Okay..." DT looks around, "Now, where did au say?" he looks up at Rylan as he steps into the room, "The back room?"
Ry nods, trying to peer through the darkness beyond where the light of his glow rod would reach. "Ie...the back room..." he answers quietly, pausing a moment to get his bearings before heading off in that direction.
"Okay..." DT walks quietly beside him.
After a silent minute, Ry turns to DT and asks quietly, "Why is it that light rods give me the creeps lately?" When the other boy didn't answer, Ry shrugs and mumbles to himself, "They make me think of ch`Vania...."
"Hey..." tr`Tahn suddenly interjects, "I`ll guard the opening. Yeah..." he nods to himself. Ry, who had just been about to walk into the back room, proper, stops to look over his shoulder to the Farien and shakes his head. Gehan gives a nervous little laugh and runs to catch up, "I was only joking..." he explains, stopping closely behind the other boys. "I say, we go this way..." he hopefully points behind him, back towards where they had first entered Engineering. Neither Arrain answers the boy, but moves forward into the room.
As the light from the combined glow-rods illuminate the room before them, Rylan's jaw drops open in surprise, as he whispers, "What in the Areinnye?!"
DT, unsure how to react to what he sees, just stands quietly, not reacting at all. Farien tr`Tahn just stares silently. The boys had come to a rather gory scene. Before them, Erien tr`Ehger is a few inches off the ground, impaled on a pole; his tongue stuck to the end of it. He has burn marks all over his body, his face half un-recognizable by all the burns. Green blood is all over the place, dripping from the boy's head, his mouth, and the end of the pole. In his hands are a disruptor and a Ferengi energy whip, which are both fused to his hands.
"Poor guy..." Tahn whispers, "Okay...now I'm actually scared." he looks up at Rylan, "Let's get out of here!"
"I really don't know how to react to this...." DT says out loud, his eyes still glued to the scene before him.
Trying to get his brain to tell him what to do, Rylan finally settles on calling for a security team over the ip. Drawing his disruptor, he looks at the darkness around him. "Umm...DT?" he asks hesitantly, "Are au supposed to examine the...um...body...before or after security comes in?"
"How about after?" Tahn asks hopefully.
"Umm...umm..." DT stammers, "What's there to examine?!" he motions towards the body as he walks up. Running a scan on poor tr`Ehger he announces, "He's dead Jim, err...I mean, Rylan." he shakes his head to clear it, then looks back, "He's been dead for about two and a half hours."
"Good, then the culprits long gone....I hope..." Gehan nods in the doctor's direction.
"Okay...au have now examined the body!" Ry tries to sound like his cheerful self, and fails miserably. "I say...let's get the Areinnye out of here, and let security handle it." He pushes Tahn out the door and motions for DT to go next, while still scanning through the darkness around them with his eyes. Gehan wastes no time, and runs out the door like hell itself was after him. DT backs slowly out of the room, while Ry whispers to himself, "Okay... a little too much like ch`Vania... I think I'm having flashbacks...."
[Little later, on their way out of the ship...]
Holding the pistol in a shaky hand, Rylan asks quietly, "DT? Are au picking up any other life signs on the ship but ours?"
Looking to his scanner, D`Tarik answers, "Well, there's a group of them coming this way...fast. But, that's probably security."
"Probably?!" Gehan asks, panicked, "How about ie?!"
"Well I *hope* so..." Ry whispers back, then pauses to ask the security detail through the ip their location.
Tr`Anrex answers back, "We're headed for the engineering sector now, rekkhai..."
"Okay.." Ry says back through the ip, "We're on our way out. There's three of us...*don't* shoot!"
"Pleeeease, don't shoot!" Gehan nods at that.
After a few more moments, Ry spots the faint light of glow rods ahead, then waves his own glow rod. "We're over here..." he says through the ip."
tr`Anrex, waving a glow rod in response to Ry's signal, answers back, "Okay, rekkhai! We count three lights ahead. Who's with au beside ninte self?"
Erien tr`Beck comes running in behind the security detail with a glow rod clenched between his teeth, pulling up and fastening his pants. He looks like he *just* jumped out of bed. tr`Anrex pauses in his conversation through the ip to look over at him, "Little late...where've au been?"
"Sleeping, rekkhai..." tr`Beck shrugs apologetically, readying his rifle now that his pants were up.
tr`Anrex nods then listens in on Rylan's reply to his previous question. "D`Tarik and Farien tr`Tahn are with me. The dead guy's back there!" Ry points over his own shoulder back the way they had come from, though from this distance, the security detail probably couldn't see it.
The trio wait for the security detail to approach closer and as they did, DT warns quietly, "It's rather....messy."
"Messy, how?" tr`Anrex questions.
"Au have to see for ninte-self." DT answers cryptically.
"Agreed." Tahn nods, wide-eyed.
tr`Anrex gives a look to tr`Beck and rolls his eyes a bit. "Okay..." he sounds like a cop in bad need of a donut break, "Au all go on outside and let us handle it from here."
Not finding anything to argue about with that particular plan, Ry nods in his direction and gently pushes the other two boys to move ahead, past the security detail that heads towards the back room of engineering.
[at the scene of the crime...]
After seeing the body for himself, tr`Anrex turns slowly to tr`Beck who stands next to him, dumfounded. "Um...maybe we should tell the Daise about this?"
"Ie..." tr`Beck nods, trying not to get sick, "I think that would be best...."
tr`Anrex turns away from the scene and reports into Vyynd through his ip, "Sorry to disturb ninte sleep, rekkhai, but....we have a situation here...."
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