Chapter Seven
Conspiracy
In the communal room of the Slave's section, a large room on Deck G Aft with numerous small chambers surrounding it, the varied slaves, men and women, conferred. They kept low to the floor in the room's center, their whispers quiet even, or especially, in their own compound. There were eleven who listened to their instructions carefully; the Orion female Leena, the blue Bolian male Vist, the El-Aurian male Martek, the Mintakan female Alura, the Trill male Volare, the Tellerite female Garz, the Argelian male Qupek, the Caitian female M'Rawl, the Ligonian male Liram, the Andorian female Kaspar and the Markellian female Salir. They were all gathered closely about another Andorian male, Kris, their nominal leader since his arrival some weeks ago. He addressed them in quiet but intense tones. A few feet to the rear of the room, on a bunk, lay the thirteenth member of the group; an unconscious Auran woman whose moans of pain still punctuated Kris' intense words.
"I don't like it, Kris," Volare insisted, the lines of distinctive spots trailing from his forehead down either side of his neck dark with her elevated blood pressure as she passionately challenged her leader's plan. "Even if the plan works perfectly, they still have to–" The unjoined Trill shut himself up as the door unexpectedly slid open, the slaves turning to look apprehensively to the door, fearful that despite all their cautions they might yet have been discovered. But as they recognized their fellow slave their manners relaxed.
Elizabeth Cutler stepped into the room, letting the door close on the two MACOs assigned to keep them in and secure when they weren't working to serve the Imperials, and breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief. She'd tried to keep her manner casual as she'd approached the guarded chamber for fear that the MACOs might pick up on her tension, but they were singularly unconcerned about the 'helpless and beaten' slaves they guarded.
In fact, both MACOs outside their door considered the duty to be an empty one. This bunch of beaten and defeated slaves wouldn't be making trouble for anyone anywhere.
It was just the kind of attitude that the varied aliens within did their best to support.
x
As Cutler entered the room, gathering her brown hair back from her shoulders in a habitual motion, the tall Andorian Kris rose gracefully to meet her. She looked past him at Tia Anlor where she lay on the bunk, groaning. "How is she?" she asked as quietly as she could.
"He fixed her wounds," Kris admitted grudgingly, "but I hear there was little gentleness about it."
"Tell me about it. I was there. Phlox is in one of his experimental moods. This time it's surgery without anesthetics."
"Bastard!"
Cutler and Kris stepped past the others, who broke up their conclave, each returning to his or her usual positions in the room, restoring 'normalcy'. Both slaves stood over the groaning Auran. "She's unconscious," Kris said, "but it's from the pain, not anything he'd spare to give her. She's been like this since they brought her in an hour ago. She's lost Qell knows how much blood, and you've seen what the Terrans did to her!"
The golden girl wore another gray dress, her former one a total loss, but she lay still, her moans testifying to pain that went beyond consciousness, that intruded even into the delirium she'd fallen into. Liz reached into the top of her own gray dress, pulling from her bra a small silver case. "I managed to smuggle some of this out. It'll ease her pain."
A moment later the green Orion female Leena was beside them, a stolen hypospray having been retrieved from its secreted place. Liz opened the canister, revealing 6 small phials of an amber liquid. She took one out and placed it in the injector compartment. "One dose every twelve hours; I got her three day's worth." She said this as quietly as she could. In this room, it didn't pay to let more than the person you were speaking to hear what you were saying.
"It's going to take more than three days to heal this much damage," Kris protested. "You'll bring more?"
Cutler shook her head. "Can't. I barely managed to get this much out unnoticed. Besides, it's highly addictive. Three days is all she gets." She pressed the device to the young woman's golden neck and there was a soft hiss. "It suppresses the pain receptors. She should feel better almost immediately. This should help her sleep." Even as they spoke Tia started to relax, the tension easing from her body. In a few moments her groaning stopped and she appeared to sleep normally.
x
"Powerful stuff."
"Yes it is."
Leena touched her arm. "Can't you–?"
Elizabeth shook her head. "I said it's addictive and I meant it. Three days and that's it. After that, well … I'm sorry. I've done all I can."
"Sometimes it's amazing to us that you can do as much as you do. You're down here yourself as a slave, but as a Terran–"
Elizabeth's hand flashed out faster than the man could see, and she pinched one of his prehensile antennae between thumb and forefinger, squeezing tightly. The man groaned, trying not to wake his friend even as he fell to his knees in his own pain. The other slaves were about them in an instant, but no one moved to break her grip, fearing to do more harm than good to the sensitive organ.
"Don't ever call me a Terran unless you really want a fight!" Cutler grated between clenched teeth. She released the sensory stub with a flick that made the man topple over, looking up at her, shocked by her vehemence. Cutler drew herself up to her full height, proclaiming proudly: "I am a Centauri!"
x
The old colonies of Alpha and Beta Centauri had been developing a true Nationalist fervor over the past few years, uncomfortable at first with the Empire's policies and actions but too weak to try to break away. The Nationalist passion was particularly fueled by their closeness to Earth. It was one thing for the outer regions to express dissatisfaction with the Empire, but the Centauri citizens who chose to dissent took a particular pride in their independent streak, doing so right in the Emperor's back yard.
Even when the movement made the ones who actively voiced their protests into slaves within their own Empire, they didn't back down. They claimed that the same spirit that had seen their ancestors carve out a living with primitive, untested tools, far from aid on an inhospitable set of planets in the earliest days of colonization, now saw them standing tall even as the Empire sought to grind them under its boot heel.
Kris looked up at the woman, gingerly touching his sore antenna. "I apologize, Centauri."
Elizabeth smiled, reached down to help her friend up. "No hard feelings?"
He shook his head "None." He smiled tightly. "Pink skin."
She patted his bare blue chest. "Now that you may call me."
She looked around among the other members of their group. "How goes the progress?" she whispered as quietly as she could.
"Slowly, but we'll be ready," Kris told her with equal softness. "We have two days left. Everything is on schedule."
x
When Kris had come aboard over two months ago, apparently captured in a one-man scout-ship, he'd given them some astounding news. The Andorian militia had chosen to make a stand, and to openly oppose the excesses of the Empire. They had concocted a plan that was bold and daring, and if it succeeded it would deal a heavy blow to the Imperial forces. The plan was complex, required exact timing, but if it worked they could score a major victory.
The Andorians were not yet ready to strike against the supremely powerful Empire, but they could weaken it by some carefully timed surgical strikes.
One plan, which Kris was assigned to help orchestrate, was to win the support of the slaves aboard Enterprise and, at precisely 1530 hours two days hence, they would sabotage the main power systems aboard the Imperial flagship. The method of accomplishing this, five small melankite bombs, carefully smuggled aboard and planted by the slaves just before zero hour in appropriate locations, would disrupt the power flow throughout the massive battleship. The target locations were not near heavily guarded sources of the power, but at the more vulnerable junctions.
x
The smuggling of the bombs had been a masterpiece of insane planning, which owed its success to its apparent lunacy. The bombs had been partially beamed into a module less than one meter in length, the energy of the incomplete transport held while the module, its shields calibrated to make it appear as a piece of rock and therefore virtually ignored by the massive Battleship's sensors, had been 'planted' in space along Enterprise's patrol route.
Admittedly, it was the unswerving nature of Enterprise's routine that had worked against the ship and had allowed the Andorians to doom it. They didn't need to know when the Enterprise would pass a specific point, only that it would. Had the Imperials ever varied their routine, ever used even a modicum of inspiration, the plot would never have worked.
But the Imperial mind-set was deeply ingrained, not only aboard this ship but on all the other targets. That had led to the Andorians' inspirational insanity.
Eventually the on-board sensors in the rocklike module detected Enterprise on its usual patrol course, and at the appropriate instant the transport was completed, the bombs materializing in the slaves' chamber where they were carefully secreted. The power of the transport, practically at point-blank range, was so low that it had gone undetected.
It was a mad, lunatic scheme that could have gone wrong in any one of a thousand ways. No intelligent planner would ever have considered the plot, nor relied on it as the crux of the plan. And that very impudence was the reason for its success; for it was so incomprehensible in its audacity that no reasonable planner would ever have thought to guard against it.
x
The bombs themselves were of sufficient yield to do considerable damage on their own, but their true effectiveness lay in the supply of liquid melankite which would saturate the area. Melankite was a compound created in an oxygen free environment. When exposed to oxygen, it became an extremely powerful corrosive that would rapidly dissolve anything not destroyed in the initial blasts. Repairs would be out of the question; everything would have to be completely rebuilt, the task of days if it could be done at all. And that time wouldn't exist for the Terrans.
With their power systems completely disrupted or destroyed, warp drive, sensors, weapons, defenses would be gone. At 1530.50 an Andorian cruiser would drop out of warp at point blank range and blast the battleship with everything it had. It would take a lot of firepower to take the Enterprise out, but in the time that the starship was sitting helpless in space the slaves would get to the escape pod on F deck starboard aft and jettison themselves for retrieval by the Cruiser.
Similar carefully synchronized maneuvers would take out the 'Avenger', 'Vindicator', 'Destructor' and 'Emperor's Fist'. It was hoped that the sudden, simultaneous loss of five of Starfleet's mightiest Battleships would be what the people needed as a rallying cry, as the proof and assurance that the Empire could be weakened enough for star systems to break away; or indeed that it could be defeated.
x
"Will she be able to do her part?" Vist asked; the Bolian's blue features dark with concern as he looked at the unconscious Auran lying on the bunk. Each of them had their role to perform, no one was expendable.
"I doubt it," Cutler replied. "I'll be surprised if in two days she can walk. But it won't matter; she and I were supplementing each other."
"I'm covering the distribution of food." Kaspar said, her antenna shifting toward her fellow Andorian.
"But they are not used to you, they might be cautious."
"They knew they had nothing to fear from her," Kaspar agreed. "She couldn't stand up to any of them. They were sure to beat that capacity out of her early." The Andorian woman looked at the Auran, wanting to be critical but the best she could manage was pity. "She came aboard a Firebird, and they broke her into a gobfly." The comparison disgusted the blue woman.
"Doesn't matter," Elizabeth Cutler insisted, pushing a lock of her hair from her eye so she can see her opposer. "Whether the sedative gets into the food or air or both, it's all the same. She and I were backing each other up, and I'm ready to go."
"We're ready to deploy the bombs over the next two days," Kris said quietly. "You're sure you're ready at your end?"
"Phlox trusts me implicitly. I've been here a long time, and I have access to all the medical stores. I've been gradually siphoning off the supplies I need to introduce the sedative into the atmosphere. It won't have any apparent effect, won't knock them out or anything, but it will slow reaction time by ten to fifteen percent. They'll be tired, but it will be end of Alpha shift and no one will take particular note of some fatigue after a full shift," Elizabeth Cutler told him with a feral smile.
"By the time the Terrans notice, it will be too late."
