A LEAP TO THE STARS
Part XII - How Wonderful to Know
The Brig...
As the NX-Class starship she was imprisoned aboard hovered mostly offline just inside the gravity well of the Talitha Star System, Sotrell, Daughter of Blirna, jerked awake with a snarl and immediately rammed her crest into the bottom of the bed above her. The metal caved in and she grunted in pain, slumped, then looked around through narrowed eyes.
I...I have been caged...like a Ha'DIbaH! These foul bIHnuch cowards, I will cut out every last one of their qoH hearts!
Sotrell stood and stalked to the cell door and started pounding on it, so hard that the tempered security glass rattled like a normal window in a hurricane!
A moment later the exit door slid back manually and a Starfleet Security guard entered, looking annoyed, "Yeah? What is it? This better be good because the ship is on lock-down. So, what, you hungry?"
"YES! Hungry for your blood!"
"Really? How exciting. Sorry, ma'am, but I'm not on the menu."
"Wrong, human! You ARE!" and Sotrell stepped back and raised her right hand, gripped the top of the palm and tore the brown flesh away with a single downward rip! The guard gaped in astonishment, then his eyes narrowed at the sight of silver-blue metal glinting from the Klingon female's outwardly-facing hand, instead of blood and muscle.
"What the-" the center of the Klingon's mechanical palm flashed and a repulsor-wave shot from it and SLAMMED into the front of her cell, shattering the door and sending it all shooting into the guard like a hail of flying knives! They railed into him one-after-another, sending him hurtling backwards in a hail of glass and blood and he crashed into the opposite bulkhead, but did not fall. He just slumped there, pinned to the wall by long shards of metal and glass, through his face, stomach and arms.
Sotrell stepped across the threshold and crossed to the strung-up human, stooped and came up with a sharp piece of the former door, then with surgical precision she began to cut open the man's chest.
"May your heart be but the first of many trophies in honor of my first mate." she grinned through snaggled teeth, "And your Captain, my treacherous second husband, may his heart be the last I take aboard this fetid vessel."
The guard's eyes fluttered open and he began to scream...
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One hundred and fifty-six years in the past...
An octagonal door slid back admitting Donna Elesee into the Control Room and Tina Martinez-O'Farrell looked up from the multi-cubed central console, caught sight of the Project's second-in-command and shot her a relieved look.
"Your hair, Doc! It's a mess!"
Donna patted down her mass of curly hair and realized that somewhere along the way she'd lost her hair clip. The antique sterling one Sam had given her for her birthday. Six years ago...
The last gift he'd ever given her.
"Party'n hardy, huh." grinned Tina and she sighed wistfully, "That's where I should be, been waitin for this night for like a month, but nope, I gotta man the store while Gooshie's out busting his skinny butt on a ladder."
"I...I wasn't at the party." Donna checked her pockets for the hair clip, maybe she had taken it off without thinking. I'm always doing that, and I hope that's where it is-nope, not there, she scowled and decided it must have fallen out up on the veranda ringing the top of the complex.
"You weren't up in the Cafeteria?" Tina frowned thoughtfully, "Oh. Sorry."
"Don't be..."
"You were outside on the veranda, werntcha, Donna, looking up at the stars, thinking about...about...um, sorry, Doc..."
"No problem." Elesee took the busty blonde's place at the console, "It's just the new guest in the Waiting Room. Has me all bent out of sorts I guess."
Tina halted halfway to the elevator and looked back, "Why?" then her big blue eyes went wide, "Oh no, not another vampire!"
Donna chuckled, "No, not another vampire. And Lord Nigel Corrington wasn't a real vampire, Tina, he just thought he was one."
"But Al said he was."
"Al believes in zombies and the boogie-man, Tina."
"And you don't?" the buxum technician shivered beneath her blinking jewelery, "Anyway, I saw Corrington myself through the WR quantum filter, and ugh! Pale complexion, fingers like claws, little beady eyes, and..." Tina paused for a moment and allowed herself a slight smile, "...well, he did have this way of staring at you."
"Did he..."
The Project's PCT arched her back luxuriously, "Yeah, he did. Sort of lustful and haughty, you know? Like he could read a girl's mind and instantly know all her dirtiest thoughts and fantasies..."
Donna decided it was best not to comment. Even better, she decided a change in conversation topic was desperately needed, and immediately.
"Um, so, when you paged me, you said there was a reason for me to come up here?"
"What? Oh, right. Sorry, Doc." and Tina glanced in the direction of the elevator, "Yeah! Gooshie called down and said a Senator from the Pentagon has arrived. And he's on his way down here."
Dr. Elesee frowned, "What, down to the Control Room? He's not waiting in Al's Office?"
"Nope. He refused. And I tried to get Al to come out of the Imaging Chamber, but he wouldn't even listen to me. He and Sam seemed to be arguing with Ziggy about something, I didn't really understand what. Well, have fun with the stuffed suit, Doc, I promised a slow-dance to a Quark Technician."
"Which one?"
"All of'em, actually..." and the blonde vanished into the auxiliary stairwell. Donna rolled her eyes, then looked to the elevator as it's indicator lit-up, indicating that somebody was on their way down from the surface of the mesa high above.
Ugh, here we go, and she put on her best game-face...
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Back in the future, aboard the AI-imprisoned starship...
Dr. Beckett and the hologram of Rear Admiral Calavicci stood in the brightly-lit corridor and stared down at the circular pad of the ship's transporter.
"Sam...is this for real?"
"Is what for real?" he typed at the waist-high podium that controlled the futuristic device.
"This glorified microwave oven! Can it really Leap you back to the Project?"
"Maybe..." Sam's stare was more inward then out, indicating that his mind was deeply entrenched in calculations. He typed a another command into the podium, studied the result, then raised his hand scanner and called up an engine schematic. "Maybe..." he repeated.
Al looked his friend in the eye, then back to the pad, "I'll...I'll leave you to it. I'd better check on the Enterprise crew anyway. Make sure they aren't up to no good, heh..." and he punched a key on his handlink and vanished.
Sam didn't even see him go, he was too lost in the cross-computations. His mind was refusing to allow himself any kind of jubilation, to give into the excitement, to allow hope to flood his system. There was just too much to do, and he needed to be calm and focused.
But a soft smile curled his farmboy's face as he worked. Sam allowed himself that one small indulgence.
Maybe...
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1999, on the bottom level of PQL...
"Welcome to the Control Room, Senator."
Donna beamed overtop her console at the portly older gentleman in the tan suit as he strode out of the elevator, followed by a cadre of three black-suited bodyguards and a slim woman carrying a silver attache case.
"Who are you?" the Pentagon attache demanded in a thick Georgian accent.
"Dr. Donna Elesee, Project Coordinator and deputy-Administrator, under Rear Admiral Calavicci."
"And he is?"
"Indisposed at the moment, Senator."
"Indisposed?" the group halted before the pulsing console. "What do you mean, indisposed?"
Donna glanced at the Senator's staff, "Your people, do they have approval for this facility, sir?"
"What?"
"You are aware that Quantum Leap is a Code-One Clearance."
"Of course I'm aware of that. And yes, they have approval. Now, where is this man, supposedly from fifty years in the future?"
"A hundred and fifty actually." Donna corrected, though she was still having trouble believing it herself, having just read Ziggy's report only fifteen minutes earlier. But it explained how the Leapee could look so much like her husband as to be his older self; he was Sam's descendant, brought back in time so that Sam could...could...
What? So that Sam can fix what's to come? Donna really didn't understand, it didn't seem to make any sense. Sure, if Sam could Leap back into his great-grandfather, why then couldn't he Leap forward into his great-grandson? But to what purpose?
The whole point of this Project is that the future is not set, that destiny is not an absolute, that one man can travel back in time and correct the mistakes of the past, in order to manifest a better future. I'm a prime example of that. On his third Leap, Sam changed my own history and made my life infinitelybetter. Which means I'm the best person to know that there is no point in Leaping into somebody in the future, because the future isn't set. It hasn't even happened yet. Because each time Sam switches places with somebody in the past it's carte blanche all over again. So there can't be a disaster for Sam to fix in the future, that just doesn't make any logical sense. Which means...
Which means...
Which-
A cold chill shot down the spine of Dr. Elesee and her hands gripped the surface of the PQL command console like it was suddenly her only lifeline in a hurricane-wrought sea.
"Doctor?" demanded the Senator. "Is there a problem?"
"Oh my god..." Donna breathed, and her eyes flashed first to him, then to the people he had brought with him.
The politician scowled, "What the hell is going on here! I demand-"
"You know, don't you..." frowned the tall ruddy-skinned woman acting as the Senator's executive assistant, and she tossed aside her attache case.
Her superior started and turned around, "Excuse me, Amri? What did you-" but the woman's hands came up, slapped onto either side of his head, and twisted! His neck broke like a gunshot and the Senator fell to the floor like a marionette with it's strings cut!
The three bodyguards whirled around, eyes wide, but the Senator's aide was way too fast, she rammed her palm up into the face of one, shattering his nose and sending nasal cartilage up into his frontal lobe, another one tried to grab her but the woman named Amri bent low and drove a high-kick into his throat, sending him flipping over backwards while she did did a full three-sixty spin in the air. The man landed on his head with a CRUNCH and pitched over atop the terminated Senator, while his sultry killer landed in a crouch as the last remaining bodyguard finally managed to draw the automatic from his shoulder-holster! He leveled the gun at his unlikely attacker and even fired off two rounds, but she weaved around the two bullets like they were moving in slow-motion, then rose up before him and caught his extended arm in the grip of one elbow, while her free hand delivered a pair of fast chops to the side of his neck, shattering his cervical vertebrae with a sound like snapping glass rods! The bodyguard gasped, then slumped. Amri let him fall, smoothly catching his Glock out of the air as he plummeted to the floor.
Then she spun back in the direction of Dr. Elesee, fired!
Luckily, Donna wasn't an idiot. She had taken off the moment the unknown woman had discarded her brief case, giving her a total of five seconds to make it out of the Control Room and into the corridor that lead down to the Waiting Room. She tore down the curving passageway, thanking the gods that she had worn flats and not heels to the Christmas party, and as the shots roared back in the chamber behind her she watched the Security room door slide back and the pair of MP's spill forth, going for their sidearms.
"NO!" she shouted, "Stay back! It's too-"
"-late!" snarled Amri as she stepped out into the opposite end of the corridor. The gun bucked twice in her hand and Donna actually felt the slugs wing by her and slap into the faces of the two Corporals Al had handpicked and trained himself after the Leon Stiles incident. The shots were perfect, without flaw, each creating a dime-sized hole equa-distance between each of the soldier's eyes. There wasn't even any blood or screams as the two uniformed men flopped over backwards and crashed to the floor.
As horrified as she was, Donna never stopped. For some reason the killer didn't see her as a threat-who would?-and had yet to bring her stolen weapon to bear upon Dr. Elesee's back. Maybe she wanted her alive, or something else equally horrifying. Donna didn't care. All that mattered was achieving her new goal. It was a desperate thing she was about to do, but what other choice did she have?
None...
But I'm still alive, Dr. Elesee's mind rallied, and as long as I am, then there is still a chance this all can work out and what has somehow gone horribly wrong could somehow be put ri-
Two shots rang out.
One of them struck her in the shoulder.
The other struck her in the spine.
This time...this time there was blood. Lots of it. And a scream.
Arms cutting the air in a horrified spasm, Donna seesawed over and crashed face-first to the floor...
"...S-Sa...Sam?" her lips sputtered against the cold white tile, "...Sam...help m-me...Sam...?"
But her husband, so very far away, did not answer her...
To be continued...