“No. Tell me the last thing you remember. Anything that can explain your connection to these beings…”
“I didn’t know they were ‘beings’ of any kind. I was approached by a group of Hermat scientists. At least that’s what they said they were. They claimed that they wanted to try to expand the Hermat lifespan, and that I was an ideal candidate for their experiments.”
“Did they give any indication as to why you, specifically, would be suited to their experiments, or for that matter what the experiments were exactly?”
“No, to both. But the treatments were injections of some kind. They didn’t tell me what it was.”
“You let individuals whom you have never met inject unknown chemicals into your body?”
“Looking back on it, I suppose it was ill-advised.”
“It should have seemed ill-advised to you without the benefit of hindsight.” She had spent so much time thinking of Rulan as a potential asset for her son. She had given no thought to Rulan as a person. It was becoming evident that Rulan was not one of the deep thinkers in the galaxy. “Did they limit their activities to the injection of chemicals?”
“No. They also placed me in some sort of large device. I have no idea what it was doing.”
“If I had to hazard a guess,” she said, “it was subjecting you to radiation poisoning.”
For the first time, Rulan actually appeared disconcerted. “That’s…not good.”
“On the surface of it, no. However, as near as I can determine, your cellular structure is completely healed.”
“Oh!” s/he said and looked relieved. “Well, excellent, then. Obviously you’re a qualified doctor who knows what she’s doing.”
“I did not do it. Your body did it. Or, more precisely, they did it. Their treatments of you enabled you to recuperate. I cannot determine precisely how they accomplished it. I had you in my sickbay for days and still was unable to discern just how your cells were regenerating. I was hoping that you would be able to provide me answers or that, ultimately, these beings would be able to do so. But you know nothing of the specifics, obviously, and they have been—uncooperative. What is the last thing you recall?”
“Being inside one of those machines of theirs? It was”—s/he paused—“it was the fifth visit to their facility. The fifth time I was there, they rolled me into this larger machine that I hadn’t seen on any of my previous visits. I was lying flat on my back on a sort of rolling table, and they slid me into it, and the next thing I knew, I was here.”
“Any dreams?”
“Not that I can recall. I wasn’t even aware of the passage of time. When I opened my eyes, I was fully expecting to be in the facility. I thought I had simply dozed off during the procedure. I was stunned to wake up here, wherever ‘here’ is. Do you have any idea?”
“I believe we are on a world called AF1963.”
“Why do you think that?”
She hesitated, and then realized that there was nothing to be gained from withholding information. “Because that is the world I was in the process of transporting you to, along with an infant.”
Rulan didn’t understand. For once, she couldn’t blame hir. “Was it an assignment that Starfleet gave you?”
“No,” she said flatly. “It was something I did in violation of Starfleet regulations, and in violation of my trust as chief medical officer of the Excalibur. I did it at the behest of unknown alien beings who promised me that they would provide me a cure for a cellular degeneration disease that is in the process of killing my son.”
“I see.” To her silent astonishment, s/he looked amused. “So you basically trusted people you never met in exchange for something that you thought might be a good idea because, really, you didn’t have anything better to do.”
“Yes.”
“I guess we’re well matched to be prisoners here together.”
“Perhaps we are at that. That does not mean, however, that I am inclined to accept matters as they are.”
With that she headed for the door again.
“What are you doing?” Rulan called after her.
“Leaving.”
“You can’t! I mean, it’s obvious why there aren’t any guards there. Walking out into that wasteland without proper protective gear is suicide!”
“So it would seem.”
And with that she pulled the door wide, brought her arm across the lower half of her face to provide minimal shielding, and threw herself out into the darkness and cold.
Starship Trident
The armored intruders went through the corridors and various rooms, seeking out and destroying any crew members they could locate. With every passing minute, however, it was becoming more problematic. The crew could quickly be divided into two groups: those who were dead, and those who simply couldn’t be found. The majority of the crew fell into the latter group.
The one advantage the ship’s crew had over the invaders was their knowledge of the ship’s layout. The crew members had hid in the inner recesses of the ship: circuit junctions, Jeffries tubes, and the like. From their places of concealment, they attempted acts of guerilla warfare on the invaders. The armored figures never knew when they would suddenly be subjected to phaser fire coming at them from random directions.
They even had two fatalities, as sidelong phaser blasts nailed with pinpoint accuracy the vents in the right sides of their helmets. In both cases it was remarkably satisfying for the crew to see their attackers staggering, clutching at their necks as blood would ooze out of its confinement and trickle down their armored bodies before they’d pitch forward and land with a resounding crash.
But those triumphs were rare. The armored beings were far more accurate, pinpointing the angle of attack, and returning fire with lethal results. The bodies of Trident crew members tumbled out of concealment or simply lie there, forcing their frustrated crewmates to abandon their smoldering corpses.
On the bridge, Kat Mueller was living and dying with the deaths or imagined deaths of every one of her crew. Outwardly, however, she displayed no emotion. She stared at Gold’s body, thinking of all the times when he had annoyed her with his arrogance and his insufferable pride in his family’s Starfleet record. Gold had never married, never sired an offspring. His older sister, Leanne, had gone missing and was presumed dead during a Borg altercation. His death had ended a service to Starfleet that had spanned ten generations.
Not that these bastards cared about any of that, of course.
M’Ress had nearly slipped into unconsciousness from pain, but she had fought it off and instead was tending to Arex. Arex was a study in stoicism. Insanely, he had picked up the dismembered arm and was holding it close to him, fixing a glare upon the armored figures. Mueller suspected that, were he able to do so, Arex would come at them with the stray limb and try to beat them to death with it.
“How long do you intend for this to go on?” asked the fake Calhoun. “Order your people to surrender.”
“Sorry,” she said tightly. “It’s drilled into us in the Academy: Never give up. Never surrender.”
“Well, that certainly seems pointless.”
“Surrendering would be pointless. We have no guarantee that, as soon as we did so, your friends here wouldn’t just kill my crew.”
“That is true. Indeed, they might well do so. They are sometimes a little difficult to control in combat situations.”
“I find it difficult to believe you can control them at all. I look at them, and I look at you, and I frankly think the odds favor them if they should decide that you’re of no use to them.”
“That will never happen. I am quite confident.”
“Overconfidence tends to lead to a precipitous fall.”
“Were you schooled in that at the Academy as well?”
Despite the gravity of the situation, she smiled slightly as her finger touched the scar that adorned her cheek. “No. Earlier.”
“Why don’t you use the captain as a bargaining chip?” said Takahas
hi.
Mueller fired him a look. “Be quiet, Lieutenant.”
“Come on, Captain,” said Hash, all trace of his laid-back attitude gone. “I’m not suggesting anything that wouldn’t have occurred to them already. Why don’t they just inform the crew that if they don’t stand down, they’ll kill you?”
“Because they know that my crew will not give in, any more than I will.”
“Actually, they very well might,” said the fake Calhoun. “But that is not the way of the D’myurj.”
“The D’myurj? Is that who they are? Who you are?”
The fake Calhoun put his hand to his lips in a mocking gesture and said, “Did I say that aloud? Oh my, did I inadvertently slip and provide you with a piece of information that will ultimately do you no good at all? In the final analysis, it is merely a name. Nothing more. Use it if you wish.”
“Very well. What is the way of the D’myurj, then, if not negotiation or employing leverage against opponents?”
“Crushing them entirely,” said the fake Calhoun. “Annihilating them through force of arms. Forcing them to rise to their greatest heights and see if they can, in fact, survive. It is all about survival, is it not? Survival of the fittest? Accomplishments that you previously would not have dreamed possible?”
“In that case,” said Mueller, “why am I still alive? Why is the rest of my bridge crew still alive?”
“No reason,” said the fake Calhoun with a shrug. “No reason other than that I find you interesting to speak with.”
“Just that arbitrary, is it?” said Hash.
“Yes, Lieutenant. Just that arbitrary. If you’d like, I can prove it by asking my associates here to kill you where you stand. What would you say to that?”
Hash looked warily at the armored figures. “Don’t feel any need to provide a demonstration on my account.”
“Very well. In that case, we shall wait,” said the fake Calhoun. “And we shall see. And then we shall kill you all. No offense.”
“None taken,” said Mueller.
The one option left open to her was to trigger the ship’s self-destruct protocol. She could have done so. The invaders appeared to have taken no steps to impede her interaction with the ship’s computer. She did not, however. Suicide wasn’t in her nature. Furthermore, there was no reason to think that doing so would simply prompt the invaders to remove themselves from the ship the same way they had arrived, thus leaving her crew to perish in the explosion and accomplishing precisely nothing.
Where there was life, there was hope. And at that moment Kat Mueller’s hope was to find a way wherein the fake Calhoun’s throat would wind up between her fingers.
?
Four minutes, thirty-seven seconds…
Thirty-eight seconds…
Thirty-nine seconds…
Selar counted off mentally as she staggered unprotected through the brutal environment. The skies were inky black above this barren wasteland. The ground was frozen and uneven, and a range of mountains loomed in the distance. Every step she took was torturous, and her body screamed in protest and begged her to simply lie down and wait for death to overtake her. That would certainly be soon enough, because she had mentally calculated just how long she could survive under these sorts of conditions. She had arrived at approximately eight minutes, nineteen seconds, give or take. She hated to be imprecise, but it was the best she could do under the circumstances.
Five minutes even…
Five minutes, one second…
She went to her knees yet again, shielding her face as best she could under the pummeling wind. After having gotten a basic mental picture of the lay of the land, she kept her eyes closed, for there were millions of grains of dirt blowing around at high speed. With her eyes open, she would have been instantly blinded.
Five minutes, fifty-nine seconds…
Six minutes…
Her breathing was becoming more labored. She felt as if a sword had been driven through her chest and remained there, causing her unending agony. She cried out briefly and then her practiced stoicism kicked in. Gritting her teeth against the brunt of the brutal weather, she continued moving. She had no idea where she was moving toward. Even if the mountains might provide some form of shelter, she was never going to make it. But she did not once consider turning around and making her way back to the small room in which she and Rulan had been imprisoned.
Seven minutes, eighteen seconds…
Seven minutes, nineteen seconds…
She became aware that her knees were giving out completely about two seconds before they actually did. She hit the frozen ground and remained there for a moment on her hands and knees, trying to find the strength to keep moving. Selar forgot what it was like not to hurt. Then again, she had been in mental anguish for so long because of her son’s condition, pain had become part of her day-to-day existence.
If you die, then you die. A small enough price to pay for the sins you have committed, and even then it will do nothing to truly balance the scales.
Seven minutes, forty-five seconds…
Seven minutes, forty-six seconds…
“What do you think you’re doing?”
She did not require her eyes to know who was standing in front of her. She would have recognized the voice anywhere.
Selar was unable to move, her body having completely given out. Her face was flat upon the frozen ground, and her body temperature was dropping rapidly. She didn’t have much longer until hypothermia overtook her. She wondered if she would lapse into a coma and die, or go straight to death. Her thoughts were wandering so far that it didn’t even occur to her that the false Xy who was standing directly in front of her—apparently unbothered by the horrific surroundings—had not issued a rhetorical question. “I said what do you think you’re doing?” he said again. “How much longer do you expect to last out here?”
“Thirty-seven seconds,” she managed to say between cracked and bleeding lips. Particles of whatever the hell was blowing around worked their way into her mouth. She paid them no mind. It didn’t matter anymore.
“Is that what you want? Do you want to die?” he asked.
She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but she actually managed to raise her head. “No. And I do not think you want me to die, either. If you did, you would have killed me by now.”
“So you are expecting me to save you, is that it?”
“That is…my plan.”
“And if you have guessed wrong? Then you will die.”
“That is my…alternate plan.”
He made a tsk noise as if disappointed in a stubborn child. “What do you want, Selar? What do you hope to achieve?”
“Answers,” she said as she sensed her heartbeat slowing down. “Answers…or…or…”
“Or what? You’ll die in ignorance? There’s a threat to conjure with. Besides,” he continued, “my people value the free will of all races. If it is your desire to die, then I will not stop you.”
It is my desire to find answers…dying is my default position…
“Even with death hovering over you, you embrace the sardonic,” he said, and she realized he was responding to what had gone through her mind rather than anything she had articulated. “I applaud that. I applaud you, Selar. To be honest, I would far prefer that you lived. You are very important and I would hate to see you removed from the equation of life.”
How…? She forced herself to speak. “How…am I important? Important to what? Tell me what…this is about…at least tell me where I am…”
“No,” said the image of her son. “No, I’m afraid I’m not going to do th—”
Then she heard a thud—a scuffling. She couldn’t fathom what it might be and forced herself to open her eyes and see what was going on.
To her astonishment, “Xy” was on the ground, and crouched on top of him, hir claws poised and a feral, infuriated look on hir face, was Rulan 12. “Answer her questions!” s/he snarled at Xy. “Tell her! Tell her or I swear I’ll
gut you!”
“Xy” struggled to get out from under Rulan, and failed utterly in the attempt. The sight buoyed Selar’s hopes. Until that moment, she hadn’t been sure if the creature before her had had any substance at all. Now she saw that, whatever he was, he was very real, and obviously could also be injured.
Eight minutes, nineteen seconds…twenty seconds…twenty-one seconds…
Her rational mind told her that she was out of time, that she should be dead. She refused to allow her knees to give out. She acknowledged the stabbing pain in her chest and then pushed it aside and to the back of her mind where it would not bother her.
As she staggered to her feet, she was pleased to see a look of utter fear on the face of the creature pretending to be her son. Then she shielded her eyes against the pounding of the wind and dirt.
“Fine,” said Rulan. “If you’re such a big believer in free will, then it’s my free will that I kill you.” S/he started to swing down hir claws.
“You are on AF1963!” screamed “Xy.” “We are the D’myurj! And we just wish to help. We have always just wanted to help.”
“Help who?”
“All of you! None of your races would have survived were it not for us! Don’t you understand? You owe us your existence!”
“What are you talking ab—?”
Suddenly a blast of energy ripped through the freezing air, catching Rulan in the side. It knocked hir clear of “Xy” and s/he hit the ground, unconscious.
Selar saw the same armored figures that had invaded the Spectre advancing upon them. She turned to face them, having no more an idea of what she was going to do now against them than she had had earlier. Yet she was determined not to back down. She began to advance upon them, and then the adrenaline that had managed to propel her to this point ran out. She crumbled, striking her head on the ground. She saw armored boots advancing toward her, and the last thing she had time to think was, I am getting sick and tired of lapsing into unconsciousness, right before she lapsed into unconsciousness.
Starship Trident