Chapter Two
Housecleaning
A moment ago, the Supreme Ruler of the Terran Empire and his Regent had been staring in consternation out the window of his Palace, appalled at the crater that marked the site of the Admiralty of Starfleet, the center of all military might of the known galaxy. Now it and the buildings on either side were gone, obliterated in an explosion so powerful that the full force of the Palace's shields had barely stood up to the barrage of flaming debris that had pummeled it.
There was nothing across the block wide courtyard from the Palace but a column of smoke and flame where three huge buildings had stood with the pride of centuries of dominance.
A moment later they stood in a small room, three sides taken up by off-white bulkheads, the fourth by a glowing doorway through which they could see two MACO soldiers.
Across the short corridor from them was another similar room. Within it stood a woman with long black hair, wearing a light blue dress cut dramatically low and astonishingly short and high black boots coming just up to the calves of her bare legs. On her chest, beside the scoop neck, was an unusual emblem, an irregularly joined pair of gold rectangles, in the junction of which were two interlinked circles. Upon the cuffs of her blue sleeves were single bands of gold.
At least the two MACOs standing outside the door wore proper uniforms.
x
Seeing nothing to prevent their departure from such insecure holding pens, the Regent strode forward, ready to issue the commands to the MACOs that would lead to the retaking of their power. As he started through the doorway, there was a flash of light and he was driven back, startled by the once again invisible barrier.
Ignoring his Regent, though not his example, the Emperor faced his guards. "You men, you know who I am?"
"I know who you were," the taller of them replied, stressing the former tense.
"I am your Emperor! You will open this cell and follow my orders."
"We follow Captain Archer's orders," the man replied defiantly, his tone a clear dismissal of his former ruler. He had been down in this section with his fellow for quite some time, but he knew the signs of a developing coup when he saw it.
"Archer is dead," the woman in the cell behind them declared bitterly. The Emperor could see on their faces the surprise this message carried as they turned to her, looking for confirmation of this news on her face. This was of no surprise to their Supreme Leader – ignorance was always the norm in the lower ranks. This could be useful. "You follow Lt. Sato now," Anderson maintained, though there was no pleasure in her tone.
"Then if she is in Command, she is the one we will follow," the guard retorted.
x
As if on cue, a voice came from the end of the corridor. "I am in Command. And you will follow me." Both men turned and snapped to Attention, executing the Imperial salute, a striking of the closed right fist to the chest and then a stiff armed extension of that fist toward the smaller Asian woman who approached. They held the position as she stopped before them. Flanking her stood a tall black man wearing black pants and boots under a red shirt, on the left side of his chest that irregular pair of gold rectangles such as the woman in the opposite cell wore, this one decorated with a curved bolt of lightning. The shorter woman, dressed in the tight midriff uniform of an Imperial Lieutenant, looked at the guards holding the salute before her.
"I've never liked that salute," she told them. "It's too easy to have something in your hand. Open your hands." Both men complied as ordered. "Raise them slightly; let me see your palms." Again they obeyed, their arms slightly elevated to just above shoulder height. "That's better. That will complete the new salute. Inform your fellows." Both men exchanged a quick, curious glance, but they were not about to question the woman whom they had long known to be the 'Captain's Woman' under two Captains, but who now issued commands to them as though born to do so.
It was clear that much had happened since they had been posted to guard the first of now four prisoners; the arrival of each having been more of a surprise than the previous.
Each man presented the new salute, which Sato returned with an air of satisfaction.
x
"Rather presumptuous of you, Lieutenant," the Regent stressed. The woman did not rise to the bait, but just extended her hand to the black man behind her. He placed in that hand a rather odd looking weapon, considerably smaller and sleeker than a phase pistol, upon on the rear portion of which was a dial, which she turned all the way to its limit. She then nodded once to the taller MACO, who touched a button on the bulkhead beside the door. The glow surrounding the door went off, and she stepped through the portal.
She was barely through when she fired, a blue beam lancing out of the loud weapon to envelop the Regent in a field of red energy. He convulsed as though in pain, but with astonishing speed his body, suffused with the force of the weapon, melted into nothingness. "I always thought he was redundant," she said dismissively, turning to the appalled Emperor.
"So now you kill me."
x
Robert MacNamara had always believed himself a practical and realistic man. He knew without a doubt that he was doomed to suffer the same death as his second, that this woman sought a rise to power even as he had in his time, and in her eyes he could see that she was as ruthless as he himself was. But he knew it took far more than ruthlessness to command.
Far more.
He wondered if this woman had it.
"Not yet," Hoshi told him, the strange pistol not wavering; her manner one of almost seductive insolence merged with ambition. She was working to a plan, and was ready to do all she had to do accomplish it.
"Disintegrating you is not my plan. I need your body."
"I imagine that is something you are told far more often than I."
x
The slight woman ignored this. He had to give her credit for that, if for nothing else. "The Fleet is coming from all corners of the Empire in a desperate rush to make it back to Earth in time to save you," she said, "but they are almost a full day away. In the meantime, this ship has transmitted video records of a battle we had not long ago, where an entire Assault Fleet other than the Avenger was wiped out by superior Rebel forces, which the Defiant in turn annihilated in seconds.
"Accompanying that information is a record of what happened to the former Admiralty building and all within it. And now what is transpiring here is being transmitted as we speak to every ship in the Terran Fleet. They will hear you order them to stand down and hold their positions, and then you will cede the Empire to me."
A slow smile crept across the man's face. "Do you actually believe I will give those orders?"
"No." She turned the dial on the rear of the pistol. "There's no need for you to."
Aiming between his eyes, she pressed the trigger.
x
The blue beam drove him back to fall against the bulkhead, sprawl across the small bunk and then to the floor. Throughout, Hoshi kept the beam trained upon his head. It was ten seconds after he had fallen to the floor that she turned the weapon off.
The red shirted MACO Sergeant entered the room, knelt down beside the body. He examined it closely; then looked up at Sato. "He's dead."
"As I understand this weapon, every neuron in his skull has been fried. His body can be examined by anyone who doubts his termination." She then looked up at the monitor in the overhead.
"This is Empress Sato to all the ships in the Terran Fleet, all forces arrayed on Earth and all our colonies, protectorates and subject worlds. You now know that the former Emperor is dead, and by right and tradition I assume Command of the Empire. All ships and all planetary Military forces are to hold their positions and await orders. You also know that every Admiral, every Commodore, every Fleet Captain and Adjunct is dead. I will need new Officers chosen from among those who prove themselves loyal to me. End transmission."
Hoshi paused for a moment to be sure that the bridge had cut the outgoing signal, then she addressed her guards. "Have the body brought to Sick Bay, but tell Phlox he may not do an autopsy. I want the Imperial doctors to make the examination."
It was no part of her plan to have them come aboard to find him already spread open from neck to crotch on Phlox's examination table. The fatal blow had to be proven by the Emperor's most trusted staff to have come by her hand.
"Yes, your Highness."
Hoshi smiled. She liked the sound of that.
x
Phlox. He was a loose end, something she did not like. Archer had been willing to spare the Denobulan because his people were loyal to the Empire, and the Doctor had betrayed them at a critical moment. He was in Sick Bay only because the ship did not have a doctor without him, but she had no intention of placing herself under his ministry - not until she could determine where his loyalty lay.
The Medical problem was a big one. She did not trust Phlox, but she trusted the former Emperor's doctors far less.
She had to choose a Personal Physician whom she could trust, one in whose hands she could place herself with utmost confidence. At this point she had no prospective candidates at all.
This was something that had to be resolved, but it would have to wait. There was housekeeping of a more immediate nature to deal with.
Stepping out of the cell, she took two steps down the corridor to the next prisoner.
x
The Vulcan bitch T'Pol, still encased in steel clamps that manacled her wrists before her, stood waiting, favoring her with a look that masked her true feelings not in the slightest. She was still wearing the Imperial uniform which she had adopted after being banished to the I.S.S. Avenger.
Several of the survivors of the late, lamented Enterprise had gone over to the clothing of this ship, as had T'Pol when she had been a member of this crew, and over the coming days more would have to. Hoshi herself would need a change of attire soon, but at least hers would be something with ermine.
But what of the others? She had never really cared for that unflattering jumpsuit look.
Perhaps she should simply make the Federation design de rigor for the entire Fleet. It was something to consider. Later.
"So, now we come to you."
"As unpleasant as Jonathan Archer was, if one of you was to die, it should have been you," T'Pol told her with a voice filled with hatred. Her untended cheek wound was still smeared with dried green blood, and her long brown hair was still disheveled from the rough treatment she had received.
"You did your best to make that happen."
"Next time I will succeed."
"I believe you." Hoshi touched the button controlling the force field and shot her.
x
The phaser was still on the lowest 'stun' setting, and the blue beam knocked the woman off her feet. She fell hard onto her back, her body twitching spasmodically from the force that had suffused her body, overloading her nerves.
The two MACOs who had been her guards preceded Sato into the cell, where they grabbed T'Pol's arms and hauled her to her feet. She could not control her muscles enough to stand, but hung limply in the men's arms, unable to even raise her head to look at her detested foe.
Hoshi stood before her, grasped the Vulcan's long brown hair in her hand and pulled upward, bringing T'Pol's face toward her. "Captain Archer kept you alive, made you his First Officer. He gave you a chance and you betrayed him. Then he gave you a second chance because he needed your scientific knowledge, your computer skill, your vast intelligence; and you betrayed us again."
"The Empire you served is corrupt and evil. The Empire you would lead will be an abomination!"
Hoshi drew her dagger from the sheath at her hip. She tapped the sharp blade against T'Pol's cheek. "Captain Archer needed your scientific mind to help run Defiant." She let go of T'Pol's hair and moved slowly around the MACO holding her upright by her right arm. "I, however, have my pick of the best minds of the Empire."
"The Federation is our future!" T'Pol exclaimed, able now to hold her head up and trying to look at Hoshi over her own shoulder, but it was too hard to turn her neck far enough. "Why won't you recognize that?"
"Who knows? You could be right. Vulcans live a long, long time. If you hadn't betrayed us, you might even have lived to see it."
Hoshi rammed her dagger as hard as she could into T'Pol's bare back just above the level of her low pants as the woman cried out, stiffening in the arms of the MACOs, driven forward, her back arched in pain.
Hoshi wasn't sure exactly where the Vulcan's heart was, only that it was low in her back, so she pulled out the dagger and plunged it in again in a slightly different spot as the woman stood stiffly, trying to hold her agonized cries as her hated enemy stabbed her a third time, a fourth, a fifth.
Finally, on the sixth blow, the flow of green blood that was spreading and darkening the blue uniform pants gushed out in a torrent that Hoshi barely evaded. T'Pol collapsed into the supporting arms of the MACOs, her body a dead weight, her long brown hair falling forward to curtain her face.
They released her, and the Vulcan traitor dropped face down onto the deck, dead.
Hoshi bent over the still body, and rubbed her blade back and forth along the woman's bum, clearing the green blood away from the gleaming metal. Her hand was covered in green gore, so she switched the now gleaming dagger to her left hand so she could rub the blood off on the dead woman's ass, and contemptuously between her thighs.
She stood up; glancing at the MACO to whom she had given orders regarding Phlox and the Emperor. "He can have that one."
She left the cell and crossed the corridor to the last remaining bit of unfinished business in this brig.
x
Ensign Ann Anderson had watched the executions of the Regent, the Emperor and Commander T'Pol with mounting horror. As Hoshi Sato approached the glowing portal to her cell, the naked blade once again gleaming in her hand, she backed away, having no doubt about her fate.
She watched in silent horror as Hoshi, a woman she had been apprehensive about long before she had murdered three people, turned off the force field and led the three large men into the cell. They stood arrayed behind her almost as a curtain, or backdrop of doom.
Hoshi, still holding the blade in her green stained hand, regarded her.
Ann's shoulder length chestnut hair, normally drawn back into a pony tail, now framed a face filled with indisguiseable fear.
"And now we come to you."
x
Ann gulped, trying her best not to show how deathly afraid she was, nor to let her eyes and face betray her. She had always thought that when the end came, and she had wanted it to come swiftly, she would face it without fear. Now she tried to hide how badly she was trembling.
She tried to speak, but her mouth was so dry she could not form words.
"You supplied Jonathan Archer with information." Hoshi said with deceptive mildness, but nothing could disguise the menace of that deadly blade. "You were his chief informant, his chief spy, both within and without the Enterprise."
Ann couldn't deny it. She could only nod mutely.
"For how long?"
"Over two years," Ann whispered, her voice rasping in her dry throat.
"Why?" Hoshi asked with cunning casualness, holding the dagger up, turning it slowly, the many lights in the room reflecting off its gleaming surface, casting rotating spots about the room.
"I–" Ann's voice cracked. She swallowed hard and tried again. "I loved him." It was painful to admit it, in light of Archer's betrayal of her feelings, but she couldn't lie. Not now. "I loved him. There was a time when I would have done anything for him."
"Past tense?" The dark woman asked curiously. Her mild tone and manner were more chilling than an outright threat could ever be. She was like a kitten with razor sharp claws and six inch fangs.
"He didn't love me." She did not try to hide her bitterness. "He made me think he did, but he didn't."
"Yet you continued to supply him with information, information even a Commander wasn't entitled to. Things I passed along to Captain Forrest unread and untranslated from Imperial code you gave to him in the clear. You were his chief resource when it came to finding out about this ship."
"That's what he called me. A 'resource'," she said bitterly, more galled by the moment at the painful memory and the fate it had led her to. "I loved him, and he called me a 'resource'. He had no feelings for me, but I knew I couldn't stop."
"He'd have had you killed if you failed him." She nodded. "You were good," Hoshi said, not begrudging the compliment. "I never caught on about you until it was too late. Not until he told me aboard this ship. And you mastered that Sensor/Tactical system on the Bridge with impressive speed." She made a show of considering. "I could actually use a woman of your ability. I need someone who will keep me informed."
x
Ann Anderson stared at her, terror fading in hope; for the first time realizing she had a chance of getting of this alive. "I would serve you faithfully, your Majesty," she swore, meaning every word.
"But there we have a problem, don't you see?" Hoshi asked sadly, visibly changing her mind, gesturing with her dagger in her green coated hand, the lights playing along it the mirror like blade, casting moving reflections throughout the small, crowded cell. "You took an Oath of Loyalty to Captain Forrest, didn't you?"
"Yes, your Highness." Ann tried to speak normally, but fear strangled her voice to a whisper. She could see where the woman's words were leading, and her confidence vanished again.
"Yet you betrayed him and helped his First Officer to mutiny. And then you swore your Oath, enhanced by love, to Captain Archer."
"Yes, Ma'am," she admitted, her death in her whisper.
"So how can I believe any Oath you would swear to me?"
x
Hoshi took a step forward, leading with the blade, and Ann backed away, coming up against the rear bulkhead. She couldn't take her eyes off the moving, flashing dagger. Even the three MACOs flanking the new Empress paled to insignificance compared to that razor sharp blade.
"What did he promise you?" she asked, her voice taking on a seductive tone. Ann thought it was the seductiveness of death.
"A – a Lieutenancy, your Highness."
Hoshi's eyes flickered to the woman's wrists. "You're already wearing a Lieutenant's uniform."
"It was the first one I found that fit me, in the quarters of a female scientist. The database said that blue and two circles are closest to my duties. I didn't mean to…." Her voice trailed off. She couldn't look away from the gleaming dagger.
x
Hoshi regarded her thoughtfully for a long moment, drawing the moment out painfully before she nodded. "All right, you're a Lieutenant."
"Thank you, your Majesty." She tried to say it aloud, but the best she could manage was a whisper.
"You'll work for me, providing me with not only Tactical and Sensor information, but information on what the crew is doing; what those around me are doing, wherever I am."
"Yes, your Highness."
"If he doesn't pull through, you might even find yourself with Major Reed's job."
"Thank you, your Highness!" She was surprised, and made sure she sounded appropriately grateful.
x
Hoshi stepped in very close and Ann drew back in renewed fright. Hoshi advanced until they were an inch apart and Ann's back was pinned to the wall. Hoshi raised the knife, pressing the point under Ann's chin, tilting her head up as Ann fought uselessly to escape the needle sharp point until it was with some difficulty that Anderson could look down into her eyes. The seductive tone was gone, replaced with one of iron.
"Understand me. I don't trust you." She let the deadly pronouncement sink in, watching Anderson's spirit quail.
"It's going to take you a long time to earn my trust, if you ever do. Just as you will watch people, you are going to be watched – very closely. You will never know for sure by whom, or by how many. I will know long before your first move when you are going to try to betray me." She pressed the needle sharp point of the blade deeper until it almost drew blood and Ann froze, fighting to keep still, to hold her breath, knowing what would happen if she even swallowed too hard. "And you've seen that I am not a forgiving woman."
"No, your Highness," Ann whispered, not daring to move enough to speak aloud, knowing she was a wrist flick away from being cut. She knew from the stories of what had happened to the slave Anlor just how vicious Hoshi could be with her knife, and where she seemed to favor using it. When Hoshi withdrew the point of the dagger from under Ann's chin, replacing the razor sharp blade in her hip sheath, Ann breathed a very carefully silent sigh of relief.
"You may return to your post in a short while."
x
Hoshi turned, and her guards cleared a path for her. But after stepping among them, she turned to Travis Mayweather. "She has a lovely face. Don't damage it. But I want you to spend about five minutes educating her on the importance of Loyalty."
Hoshi heard Anderson's sharp intake of breath as she stepped away, accompanied by the two uniformed MACOs as Travis turned to the trapped woman. As Hoshi turned the corner into the corridor, Anderson's piercing shriek followed her, joined an instant later by the sound of heavy impact against the durasteel bulkhead.
As the new Empress walked the length of the long corridor toward the turbolift, flanked by the two MACOs, screams of agony punctuated by heavy impacts of fists on flesh filled the deck, an almost musical accompaniment to her departure. Ann's agonized screams continued as the door slid open and they stepped in, a high pitched shriek the final note as the doors slid closed.
Hoshi could still hear the brutalized woman for several seconds, the screams fading rapidly, receding as the car carried her upward to her bridge.