The Adventures of Augment Gothic

by Joe Lawyer

A present-day Star Trek fan is forcibly thrust into that dimension and made anew as an Augment, a genetically engineered superman, on the whim of a mischievous god. Armed with knowledge of this dimension's past and future, he's determined to live well, have fun with alien women, and make it look easy. Elements of DS9/TNG/Voy/Ent. Originally co-written with GothicJedi666.

22. Chapter 22

Disclaimer: I own nothing related to or part of Star Trek.

The Adventures of Augment Gothic

Chapter 22

Moon Base. Jeraddo.

"It feels weird not sleeping in the ship. I got used to having the hull all around me," Kira commented as we lounged around the open-air expanse of this cave, most of us lying on the sleeping bags I'd replicated. Of course, these weren't the sleeping bags I'd known in my old world. After poking around the Federation database for equipment commonly used in emergency shelter or colony launch situations, I had found this memory foam portable mattress with attached covers that could open up and expand as well as pack flat in seconds. It was surprisingly comfortable and I certainly wished I had known about it earlier. So many nights spent with a crick in my neck or rocks in my back could have been avoided. "I got so used to it, the closeness of the walls and the constant hum and vibration of the engines. Now without it, I feel… almost naked."

Filling time between missions was never an easy task. But we'd really run out of things to do, and there was only so much studying a person could do before they just had to do something else, anything else. Sadly, there was nothing on the long-term to-do list that could be done at the moment. I couldn't work on my long-term design projects, as I simply didn't have the diagnostic and testing equipment I needed to do more. My research and development efforts, as well as my reverse engineering plans, were stymied quite nicely on account of not having the space or the equipment required for a proper lab and fabrication and design shop.

The funny thing was that with the recent payday from Section 31 I actually had the money now to buy just about anything I needed, but I didn't have anywhere to put it! The irony was just fantastic. My ship was too small and setting anything up on this temporary Resistance base that could be discovered and destroyed just seemed downright stupid. That was of course assuming I had the time to fly back to Earth or elsewhere in the Federation proper to purchase it all and then transport it back, all without being detected. Maybe when I had land and a home of my own on Bajor, in other words a permanent base of operations, one that wouldn't be destroyed the second it was discovered, I could finally make some flipping progress.

Of course, at some point, like virtually every group of bored soldiers in the history of the galaxy, at least those who could get away with it in their downtime between missions, we all started drinking to pass the time. Our current drink of choice was Bajoran springwine, a uniquely Bajoran beverage made from fermented kava juice. It was a delightful drink, of an extremely pale blue color, that ran towards the sweeter end of the spectrum, like someone had crossed a riesling with a pinot grigio. It didn't have the robust flavor of Romulan Ale or the sheer alcoholic kick of Blood Wine, still, it was worth drinking and there was plenty of it.

Why we were binge drinking Bajoran springwine when we had a replicator database filled with thousands of different alcoholic drinks, who knows, but somehow I suspected it was a bout of subconscious nationalism that we were all feeling after our successful liberation of Gallitep. The Resistance as a whole had celebrated like they'd already freed the planet from the Cardassians and that kind of fervor could affect anyone. I'd actually developed a taste for it during my time with the Resistance. It also helped that drinking something so uniquely Bajoran helped me integrate better into the group. It was the little things that often made the biggest impact, though killing Cardassians in horrific ways had helped a lot too, go figure.

"I know what you mean," Ro agreed while sipping her springwine, looking very chill. "Even when I was living on Earth I had metal walls around me. It does feel like being naked and exposed, just not in the fun way."

Even Neela agreed.

"For me it's not having enough people around," she said, opening up a little more to the cell she found herself a part of. "I feel more exposed being part of such a small group in such a large space. The camp I grew up in was always overcrowded."

A chuckle escaped my lips.

"Something funny, Gothic?" Kira asked.

Indeed, there was.

"Being in the same cave with all these supposedly 'naked' women," I replied. "It struck me as funny."

I wasn't sure why.

"Knowing you, you wouldn't mind if we all walked around naked," Kira teased with a smile.

That would be amusing, and sexy, and she was right. I certainly wouldn't mind. Normally it was just Ro Laren that was the devout nudist in our little group.

"Hell yes!" I instantly responded to Kira's shock. "What? Did you think I'd deny it and be embarrassed like a blushing teenager? I'm all man, Kira, so go right ahead and get naked baby," I offered with a smile.

There was a youthful energy in the air, courtesy of Neela I believe, and I felt as if I was a teenager again first exploring their burgeoning sexuality, minus the embarrassment. It felt like we were on the cusp of starting an impromptu game of truth or dare that the Bajorans had no cultural analog for. Of course, Kira, Ro, and I were far from bumbling and inexperienced teenagers, long done with that phase in our lives, considering the amount of group sex we'd had lately. Neela, on the other hand, was practically an innocent, blushing teenage girl and that nervous and excited energy she was putting off was infectious.

"No one would mind," I teased again, subtly glancing at Neela.

Kira actually blushed at that; was she feeling this sexual energy in the air too? I suppose it was one thing to be walking around naked inside an enclosed ship, even with people around, it somehow felt different in a large open-air cave, despite the fact that we were the only people on this entire moon. Besides, Ro was the unabashed nudist in our little group; Kira normally kept something on even if it didn't cover all the important bits that well and Neela made it a point to change in private and wore full body pajamas. For some reason an image of T'Maz and Ro chilling together on my ship naked popped into my mind. That was an enticing thought.

"What's the matter?" I asked, with a mocking grin. "Embarrassed?"

Now Ro and even Neela were chuckling at Kira's blushing face and obvious embarrassment. Kira, blushing? Who knew?

"Hmm," Kira muttered, after taking a few seconds to rally her courage. "I don't think I've ever been naked in front of so many people. First time for everything I guess."

With no further delay Kira reached up and slowly unzipped her jacket, shrugging it off her shoulders and tossing it on a box full of something or other. After kicking off her boots, she then wriggled her pants down past her wide hips to her ankles, and kicked them aside playfully. The look on her face was hilarious, as if she was challenging/daring someone to say something to her about it. This left her in her bluish-grey undershirt, with matching tight boy short panties, which were decidedly on the lacy side rather than practical, something I had replicated for her a while back because I found them so sexy. Kira was happy to wear them for me for that reason, though she did say it didn't hurt that they were so comfortable as well.

"That's not quite naked," Ro chimed in helpfully, a wicked smile on her face. My eager nod accompanied by a silly smile on my face threw some fuel on the proverbial fire.

Kira smiled right back at her friend, giving her the stink eye.

"Just be glad that this isn't the Time of Cleansing," she remarked, to which I practically shuddered in remembered suffering, the memory putting a sudden grimace on my face as I remembered that terrible time.

The Bajoran Time of Cleansing was a custom in the Bajoran religion during which people fasted for a month and abstained from all worldly pleasures. You'd think that during the Occupation they'd have given themselves a pass, like I know humans would have, but nope, they strictly adhered to it. Well, assuming you were physically capable of it. The very young and the very old and the sick whose health would be adversely affected by the fasting were exempt and no one would look down on you if you chose not to adhere to it. It was a personal choice.

I was not looking forward to that time again in the future. An Augment's libido was a fearsome thing. When not satisfied, well, let's just say that it wasn't pretty and Gothic quickly became a moody and unhappy boy. I don't know if it was all the frequent sex in this dimension that had spoiled me or some aspect of Augment physiology I hadn't previously known about, but my hand just wasn't sufficient to meet those enhanced needs and get me back to emotional equilibrium. The Resistance lacked a Federation trained doctor, but I suspected I might have been suffering from a hormonal imbalance which played havoc on my emotions. It was the only thing that explained why I'd lost my shit at one point during that period.

Normally the Resistance between missions was like a free love commune, with many of the lady terrorists seeking me out in particular for some vigorous Augment-level sex whenever the mood struck them, which was a lot. Then the fucking Time of Cleansing came and then suddenly, without any warning ahead of time, it was like I went from being surrounded by sexy hippy nymphomaniacs to devout nuns who had forsworn all world pleasures and only sought communion with the Prophets. Without that outlet available, I had turned to the only other method available that warriors throughout history had available to purge their strong emotions. The last Cleansing had seen me take out that frustration on the Cardassians in such extremely brutal and bloody ways that Shakaar had had to ask me to tone it down. Now that had been a surreal conversation for both Shakaar and myself.

Kira then slowly drew the shirt up over her head, allowing her perky and larger breasts to do a delightful titty drop, bouncing quite nicely. I learned a long time ago that those tight uniforms Kira was always wearing in the show hid a very nice rack, made even better by all the good eating she'd been doing on my ship lately and the unknown nutritional supplements and vitamins I had added to her food composition without her knowing. All smiles, and showing far more confidence than I would have otherwise expected, she swung the shirt over her head and tossed it right into my face playfully. I, of course, not to be outdone, took a very obvious deep breath to fill my nose with her scent then pretended to swoon, the ladies of the Gothic Resistance Cell cheering me on.

She reveled in the attention as she stood back up and swung her hips around somewhat provocatively. Turning completely around she bent over and slid her boy short panties down, giving everyone a sensuous view of her very firm ass and her tight glistening slit, then lounged back unashamedly on the chair, her legs opening and closing provocatively as she rubbed her legs and thigh together.

"You next, Neela," Kira urged.

Ro was far more relaxed about her body than anyone I'd ever met, aside from maybe Jadzia Dax and all the native Risians I'd ever met, for that matter. Neela, however, wasn't so eager to take off her clothes and give us all a show.

"Don't be embarrassed," Kira urged her gently. "You've got a pretty good body yourself, it might even be better than mine."

That, I sincerely doubted. But, then again, I'd never seen Neela naked in this kind of setting and her clothes didn't show off much normally. Of course, the Resistance didn't exactly offer private changing rooms in the various hideouts and safehouses we had access to, so changing out in the open was common and expected, but this was a decidedly different setting and mood. This was a time when you drew attention to yourself and invited others to look at your body sexually.

"Hmm, how about if she does something that daring, for her at least, then you have to do something even more outrageous?" Ro suggested with a grin.

Neela did not look eager, but she hadn't said no yet either, which was very promising. Besides the possibility of this turning into an opportunity for sex, which would be both fun and enjoyable for me and the others, I was actually pleased that this was happening organically the way it was. We had needed an opportunity like this to bond more closely as a team with Neela. Kira, Ro, and I had bonded very closely together and trusted each other with our very lives, having shed blood in combat together, so sharing our bodies with one another was almost incidental to that closeness. The Gallitep mission had helped us get closer to Neela in a similar way, but a final push was needed to truly open her up to the close family bond that being in a Resistance cell together could forge.

"Come on, get into the spirit of things," Kira encouraged gently, a small smile on her face. I wisely kept silent during this entire exchange. When one of your women was working on another one, you wisely kept your mouth shut and let them do the convincing.

Neela seemed to give the matter some thought.

"Um, okay," Neela finally said, thus again proving the truly limitless power of boredom and peer pressure. A mischievous smile appeared on her face, "If I get naked then you have to give Gothic a blowjob in front of us."

Now, where had that come from?! Normally things didn't get this crazy without a lot more drinking, but hell, I was game!

Kira nodded with a smile and got up, reached over and began to help undress the embarrassed Bajoran who probably didn't think Kira would go for it. Once she was fully undressed I saw her light pink nipples harden as they came into contact with the cool air of the cave. Neela was a pretty girl with perky decently sized breasts and long legs, with toned thighs. Her smile, large and shy and bashful, I'd noticed, was really beautiful.

Once naked the two women stood side-by-side, looking each other over and sizing up their assets for comparison. Kira's arm was thrown over Neela's shoulder and Neela had her own around Kira's waist. It looked both intimate and comfortable. This kind of casual closeness was exactly what I was hoping would develop.

"Looks like I'm just a little bigger in the tits department, but that aside, very nice," Kira complimented. "Our fearless leader obviously thinks you're sexy," Kira continued, gesturing to the obvious bulge in my pants. Neela blushed when her eyes were drawn to my cock at Kira's words, but smiled in happiness when she realized that I found her attractive. Neela was no teenager, but she had that same insecurity teenagers often did. I suppose being surrounded by such legends in the Resistance as Kira and I hadn't helped her confidence, or Ro Laren, for that matter, who was a very skilled operator and had graduated from Starfleet Academy.

Kira walked over to the chair I sat in, where I lounged decadently, like a King surveying his Kingdom, and dropped to her knees in front of me. As I leaned back to give her better access, she tugged loose my shirt and unzipped my pants. Since I was already rock hard at the show I'd just watched, my full length came out into the open, practically slapping her in the face.

With a practiced hand she fondled it, stimulating me. Next she leaned down and slowly ran her tongue up and down my manhood, eliciting a low moan from me. Soon she took the head into her mouth and sucked gently, swirling her tongue quickly.

Not long after that she began to bob her head up and down, each time taking more and more of my cock into her mouth and applying a very strong suction.

At this point Ro decided to take things further, no longer willing to just be a spectator. She walked over to us and took her trousers and underpants off at once. Then while touching herself she caressed the future Major's luscious behind and dipped a well-practiced finger into Kira's slit. I couldn't see that, but from past experience it was clear that that was what she was doing.

I looked over at Neela and saw her transfixed by the sight in front of her, one hand massaging her breast, the other playing with her clit. When she saw that I was watching her she blushed, hard, but didn't stop playing with herself. That was progress.

Kira moaned with her mouth still full of cock, and increased her pace, her head bobbing faster and faster. Before long Ro put more fingers into her fellow Bajoran, pistoning and twisting them faster and faster in time with Kira's head bobbing, only to suddenly stop, before replacing her fingers with her tongue. With all of this going on I knew it wouldn't be long before I shot my load.

"Stop, Kira," said Ro, giving Kira's ass a hard slap. "Let Neela have a turn."

Neela, who had been watching us intently, looked startled for a moment, but then eager.

Like the matriarchs or seniors of the cell shepherding Neela into adulthood, Kira and Ro led Neela to me, like a supplicant waiting for their King to offer a blessing. I readjusted my seating position and beckoned her closer, where she straddled my lap, her legs spread wide, my cock reaching between her legs up to her belly button.

I decided to give her one last chance to back out, "Are you sure you want this, Neela? No one would look down on you if you stopped right now."

Kira and Ro signaled their agreement by rubbing Neela's back gently, one woman on either side of her.

"Yes! Yes, I want this, Gothic! I've wanted this for a long time," Neela gushed, leaning forward to kiss me, the moment giving her all the resolve she needed, before a look of uncertainty crossed her face. "But I've never done this before, can you please be gentle with me?"

"Of course, I will," I reassured her, giving her another loving kiss. "When you're ready for more, let me know."

"I will," Neela answered, a huge smile on her face now.

Neela lifted herself up while Kira gripped my cock in her hand angled it up to help. With our moans in concert, I slid balls deep inside her. She was wet as hell and I felt no resistance at all. We went slow at first, but before long Neela's youthful enthusiasm overwhelmed her. She screamed as she impaled herself on me with wild abandon, screaming in extreme passion as she rode my manhood like a woman possessed. Neela grunted and squealed as she moved up and down, riding me like her life depended on it. My hands weren't idle either as I alternately toyed with her nipples or played with her clit, carefully committing to memory every reaction of her body. Kira and Ro weren't idle either, kissing Neela deeply or sucking on a nipple themselves. At one point, Ro got on her knees and spread Neela's cheeks, licking at the point where we were connected. Neela practically exploded at the unexpected but wonderful sensation.

What she lacked in experience she more than made up for in sheer unbridled enthusiasm. It's always the quiet ones that were hellcats in bed.

The pressure built and built until I exploded inside her. This drove Neela right over the edge, and she let out a scream of ecstasy that echoed around the cave.

I was happy we had taken this next step in our relationship. The new closeness between the members of my cell could only be a good thing as we continued to fight for Bajor's freedom. If it further kept her from the evil clutches of Winn, even better.

XXXXX

Dahkur Province. Bajor.

The one good thing about the Resistance losing so many experienced rebel fighters while successfully liberating Gallitep was that they needed my skill and experience more than ever to help them with future operations planet-side, while still tasking me with commanding the moon base. It was more important then ever to keep running missions to keep the momentum up and the pressure on the Cardassians, and those missions needed to be victories.

Just like I had predicted, this huge and visible victory over the Cardassians on such a well-known and hated target had done wonders for the Resistance's recruitment efforts, with droves of patriotic Bajorans, young and old, eager to join the fight, now that they thought we could actually win. Gallitep had renewed their hope that they could eventually be free of the evils of the Cardassians. Of course, these new recruits were more akin to canon/disrupter fodder and pretty much only good for that purpose at this point, some of them never having held an energy weapon in their lives, much less shot one. Tactics and strategy, patience and subtlety, precision and attention to detail, oh, and following orders, were pretty much unknown to them. These guys were as green as green could be. Thankfully there were some roles in the Resistance that didn't require someone to be a frontline fighter, but those were limited and sometimes even more dangerous.

It was a very rare operation where simply throwing bodies at it would lead to victory so until they were trained up a bit they were next to useless and unfortunately, at least in the short-term, a substantial drain on the Resistance's limited resources. Thankfully the last shipment of weapons I'd procured, amongst other sources that Section 31 might have provided through other means, had put the Resistance in a good position weapon-wise, so we could at least arm them. You could kill a Cardassian with a rock to the head, but it was infinitely easier to do the same with a real weapon, especially when the Cardassian could fight back and had military training. The new replicators I'd given the Resistance were even more needed and valuable now considering all the new mouths that had to be fed and supplied.

Putting these new recruits into independent cells together with no one to train or oversee them was a recipe for fucking disaster, so many well-established cells with members who practically had telepathic bonds with one another for how well they worked seamlessly together, had had key personnel reassigned to conduct training. This had weakened many an experienced cell's combat effectiveness and that state of affairs would persist for a good while yet. at least while these recruits were trained to a minimum level and then distributed planetwide.

The Resistance's reasons for keeping me out of sight were still valid, but they just couldn't afford to sideline one of their most successful fighters at this time, regardless of race and the optics of it all. Not when they had lost so many experienced people while liberating Gallitep and so many of their remaining experienced fighters were now on training duty. A few defeats due to inexperience would set back the momentum they currently had and that would do more harm than it becoming even better known that an alien like me was helping the Resistance, even leading a cell of his own. And everyone in the Resistance knew the Cardassians would respond harshly to this defeat. We were all waiting for the proverbial hammer to drop in retribution.

This new state of affairs had gotten me off Jeraddo, which was great for me as I'd been incredibly bored lately and needed a change of pace. There was only so much to do on an unpopulated moon. Granted, I'd been alone with three very attractive and horny women, which now included Neela, who was undergoing a sexual awakening of sorts that nearly overwhelmed my group, however we'd all started itching for the kind of action that required wearing clothes for a change.

Besides, sitting around in a cave wasn't going to get the planet liberated any time soon, and that's pretty much all we could do lately. With a Galor-class warship now around in the system it was hard enough just getting my much more advanced ship off the surface of the moon undetected, there was simply no way the raiders we'd repaired/built could be used for any future operations on Bajor with a warship ready to blow them out of the sky the second that they were detected. Of course, once they were finished destroying that raider, they'd inevitably trace it back to this moon and quickly vaporize the base from orbit, hidden or not. The success at Gallitep had obviously made the spoon heads reconsider the value of keeping a warship close by, even with the war with the Federation raging on and attacks from other quarters causing losses to the Union. Thankfully, it was just one ship.

This period of forced inactivity had been a Godsend for my studies of the phase cloak technology, though, which had led to some key insights into just how the technology actually worked. While I had come to better understand this tech, I had still reached a roadblock in integrating it into my ship's systems. I needed several pieces of advanced technology to safely analyze and adapt my systems to allow its integration.

The Enterprise had successfully done this on the show, albeit briefly, to escape that asteroid that the Romulans had trapped them in. They, however, had had dozens of highly trained engineers and all the technology they needed to make this happen. And they only needed it to work correctly for a few minutes; which was important to remember!

I, on the other hand, would need it to work for much longer than that at any given time, which likely increased the chances of whatever catastrophic malfunction occurring that caused the destruction of the Pegasus in the first place. In hindsight, I also seriously doubted that the Enterprise crew had come to understand the underpinnings of this technology as well as I did, even though they had used it successfully. Plugging a highly advanced Starfleet designed piece of technology into a Starfleet designed ship and using it for all of 2-3 minutes versus truly understanding the intricacies of its operation, were two very, very different things. Lord, what I wouldn't do for just a run of the mill cloaking device at this point, one that I could use without Section 31 (or anyone else) realizing that I had something truly special and unique in my possession.

"Kira!" Ro whispered harshly, her teeth chattering from the cold air now that she had lifted her head from my warm naked chest to admonish Kira. "Stay still! If you want our help we can do this tomorrow. I am not coming with you tonight."

We were in yet another cold, damp, drafty fucking cave at the moment (Bajor seemed to have no end of them!), my girls cuddled up to me waiting for a freak wintery storm to pass so that we could get back to liberating the planet. Something the Bajoran freedom fighters were willing to do inch-by-inch if need be. My enhanced physiology dealt with extreme temperatures much better than my girls, so they were currently cuddled up to my naked chest like limpet mines to take advantage of my consistent body heat. Kira was on my left, Ro on my right, and Neela on top of me with her ear pressed against my chest, my regular and strong heartbeat lulling her to sleep long ago.

My team of veterans (and many others on the planet) had been busy killing high-value Cardassians, sabotaging important equipment and assets, and destroying key facilities when we could get away with it. It was slow, arduous, bloody work, but it was working and the new recruits were slowly being folded into some of the less risky operations, which had increased our operational footprint on the planet.

The spoon-heads were steadily losing control of the planet with each successful operation, which was why so many of the Occupation's top leaders had 'strategically withdrawn/relocated' to Terok Nor, and why all of the ore processing and refinement was now taking place on the station these days. I suppose the Cardassians had finally got tired of us blowing up their facilities over and over again and facing assassination at any random moment. This was a good sign that we were approaching the end of the Occupation.

I chuckled silently in schadenfreude at the fate of Gul Landor who after sitting down to take his morning crap had gotten up to flush the toilet which had triggered the shaped charge I had placed inside the toilet. By the Prophets, that was hilarious and probably one of my better ideas I had shamelessly stolen from Lethal Weapon 2, I think, or was it 1? What an embarrassing way to die…ripped apart and covered in your own poop. Ah, good times. I had passed the idea along to other cells and there had been a series of successful 'crapper assassinations' on the planet before the Cardassians had wised up and started checking. Priceless! When you made your enemy fear for their very lives every time they took a crap, well, I'd like to think you were doing something right and definately harming morale.

Of course, after Gallitep, the Cardassians had responded predictably by engaging in more summary executions and had even reduced the food rations to the planet's populace. The Resistance's new replicators were working 26 hours a day to make Federation-style emergency rations to distribute to the people, which were well known for being great sources of needed nutrition in a small package throughout the quadrant. It wouldn't be suspicious in that regard for the Bajorans to have them. The Cardassians had intended the food ration reduction to encourage the populace to hate the Resistance for causing them harm, which was a very old tactic, but it had actually backfired as the Resistance had started supplying food, increasing the population's goodwill and support of the Resistance. This increased demand had led to the Resistance asking if I could supply them with more of the portable replicators. I told them that the next time I went off planet I'd see what I could do.

Though harsh, this limited response from the Cardassians had confused the Resistance who had expected a much harsher response to Gallitep and the string of recent successful operations. It made me and the other leaders of the Resistance exceedingly worried that something was being planned and the latest evil of the Cardassians was about to be revealed.

The move of the officer-class to the station did have a few downsides, the first being valuable targets for assassination were now in rather limited supply. Who cared about assassinating some low-level grunt or military clerk? The rank-and-file Cardassian soldiers on the planet had long gotten the message that any brutality towards the Bajorans would see immediate retaliation from the Resistance in the form of them being killed or worse, so most of those guys were actually on their best behavior for the most part, believe it or not. The second downside was that more and more Bajorans were being taken up to the station in droves as either workers, or, in some cases, as hostages. The mortality rate was pretty high once they arrived and started the dangerous slave labor of refining ore at unreasonable and unsafe rates to make up for the loss of output from the planet itself. Dukat was under a lot of pressure to keep the Occupation profitable and therefore his position secure.

One of those people being soon taken up to the station was an old friend of Kira's, who was currently still on the planet, but very soon wouldn't be. At Kira's insistence we had begun preparations to rescue the man from his fate, and we would have been doing that right now, if not for this unseasonably strong storm that had come out of nowhere.

"I can't just lay here and do nothing!" Kira responded heatedly, but still semi-quietly, obviously getting more and more impatient. "He could be halfway to Terok Nor by tomorrow."

She said this, of course, as Kira, Ro, and Neela were all desperately cuddled up to me in this cave to keep from freezing to death, because we couldn't risk a fire, not with the patrols around. A temperature anomaly like that could be detected. So, conditions were not exactly ideal to maintain our normal combat effectiveness, to put it nicely. As an Augment I'd be able to handle it, they would be severely affected. The spoon-heads might not have the kind of unchallenged control over the Bajorans that they'd once enjoyed, however they hadn't all retreated into space, and they were still trying to keep order down here despite losing so many patrols to ambushes, snipers and other guerilla actions. I was happy to claim credit for many of those kills/successes and definitely for that first toilet assassination. It wasn't exactly a story worthy of a Klingon song, as they might consider it dishonorable, but we were freedom fighters/terrorists and results were the only thing that mattered in our struggle. My cell knew how to kick ass and take names.

"We'll freeze to death outside, Kira!" Ro muttered harshly. "We also haven't done any surveillance of this camp; we'd be going in totally blind. So, you're staying here until the storm ends and we have the time to do this right. I suggest you try and get some sleep."

I doubted she'd sleep, but she could at least rest for a while.

"Shh!" Came Neela's harsh voice, who had really come into her own recently and was no longer quite as afraid to speak up or argue with the other ladies of the Gothic Resistance cell. "I'm trying to sleep, and it's hard enough as it is."

"Thank you for keeping me warm, Gothic. I promise to reward you later," Neela continued, in a much warmer tone for me, settling down with a few kisses to my chest and grinding herself on my lap before going back to sleep.

Neela, the newest of my girls, had really come into her own recently and was no longer afraid to speak up. She had also awakened a voracious sexual appetite that she was happy to satisfy with my cock. It had shocked us all that a hypersexual tigress was lurking behind that innocent façade. Sadly, with conditions as they were, there didn't seem to be much chance of turning this pre-mission downtime into a small orgy as she, like the rest of the young women, were not exactly in the mood at the moment. I also had no desire to try to tempt them, mostly because I wasn't in the right mood either.

"Sorry," Kira responded, her tone suggesting she had accepted Ro's words and would wait for the storm to settle. I had the distinct feeling that she was bullshitting us.

In short order Neela and Ro fell asleep, lulled to sleep by my constant body heat and the sound of the storm raging outside the cave; I could tell by the change in their breathing. I also felt and heard Kira stealthily get up and move to the entrance of the cave. I had a feeling that she was going to do something stupid, so I carefully slid Neela into Ro's arms and went after her.

"If you're set on this course of action, do you want some help?" I asked quietly.

Kira turned to look at me, obviously surprised that I had caught her and that I wasn't trying to stop her. If I wanted to truly stop her I suspected I'd have to do something drastic, like stun her or bonk her on the head caveman-style and bring her back to my cave.

"No, I'm…" She started to lie, but obviously gave up. "Okay."

Kira's emotions might be overriding her good sense at the moment, however this didn't mean that she was stupid. Fighting a decades long guerilla resistance campaign against a superior foe left no room for stupidity or unnecessary self-sacrificing heroics. If you were stupid, you died, typically in pretty horrific ways, simple as that. Accepting my help was the smart thing to do.

"I assume you're headed for the Ghetto," I guessed, to which she nodded.

On Earth, at least during my time, a ghetto was another way of saying the slums, normally the poorest part of a city that would be inhabited by minorities and other unwanted peoples. On Bajor it was the holding location in various provinces across the planet where Bajorans were kept prior to being shipped off to somewhere else, mostly to work in the ore processing center on Terok Nor these days, but there were plenty of horror stories of Bajorans being shipped off world and never being seen or heard from again. The imagination went wild with ideas of what true horrors awaited those unfortunate souls. Was it any wonder even young Bajoran children were willing to pick up phasers to kill Cardassians?

"I think it's a truly idiotic risk with conditions like they are, especially since we haven't yet had time to do any proper surveillance or intelligence gathering, but I know how much friends mean to you," I admonished gently. "Still, it's going to be tough, the Cardies usually guard the ghetto like it was a maximum security prison."

From the intelligence we were given on Ghettos in other provinces, there were typically fences, locked gates, manned guard posts with heavy weapons, patrols and all the hallmarks of a prison.

"It is a prison," Kira replied as we grabbed our gear, "and Torra is locked inside. That's all I need to know."

I assumed 'Torra' was the family name since Kira wouldn't use even a friend's first name around someone who didn't know that person. She'd never even asked me what my real name was. She'd also never offered for me to use her first name either. Oddly enough, other Bajorans would, Shakaar never called her Kira for one, perhaps it was because he'd been a farmer before and therefore was more used to being less formal around people? Or perhaps because he'd known her since she was a young child? There were many aspects and idiosyncrasies of Bajoran culture and etiquette that still escaped me.

"I can't believe they are taking him for ore processing of all things," Kira snarled quietly as we walked out into the biting cold and rain, each of us gripping our weapons tightly, ready to bring them to bear at the first sign of trouble. Luckily, modern energy weapons were built to withstand exposure to water and yet still fire. "Torra couldn't process ore if his life depended on it. He can't even start a fire."

"Kira!" I called her name harshly, with some bite in my voice to snap her out of her thoughts as we came to a stop. "I'm willing to do this, but I'm in command and you will follow my orders if I call for an abort. I'm not going to let you die today because you couldn't control your emotions. If I have to I will stun you and take you back to the cave. We'll hit this place after we've had time to do the preliminary investigation with the full team to back us up. Do you understand and accept what I'm saying?"

Kira looked positively mutinous for several long moments, moments where I wondered if I would have to stun her right now and call it quits, but she settled down and the veteran soldier with years of fighting experience shone through.

"I understand and accept," she answered sincerely while nodding, coming close to give me a loving kiss and a hug. "Thank you for keeping me safe from myself, Gothic."

I nodded back in response.

"I'll always do that, even if you don't like it," I responded sincerely.

We quickly made it to the Ghetto, the cave we had settled down in only a few kilometers away. The raging storm in the area ensured that no one was out and about that had a choice about it, so we ran into no one. We circled around to the rear of the camp where we'd been told an entrance often was and settled behind a natural berm for cover. What I saw or didn't see, was confusing given the intelligence we had received. I took out my tricorder and started running some low-level scans that would be hard to detect with all the electromagnetic activity the storm was throwing up.

According to my eyes and scans, the rear entrance was just an old iron gate. What the fuck?

There were no force fields here, no minefields, no sensor network, no soldiers in the decrepit guard tower that looked like it hadn't been maintained much recently. There wasn't even a lock on the gate! This area had the look of a place that once corresponded to the Ghetto from the intelligence reports we'd gotten, but all that security was gone now. The people were here, though, if the hundreds of life signs were any indication.

Why hadn't they just…left? There was nothing to stop them from just walking out the gate.

"Does this make any sense to you?" I quietly asked Kira. She just shook her head, looking as confused as I was as she scanned the area too for anomalies and dangers with a pair of Cardassian field glasses. Why would they all just stay here waiting to be transported off planet?

Kira and I scaled a random part of the fence outside the view of the old gate and quietly leaped down. Like many of my comrades in arms had learned the hard way, especially in Afghanistan, it was always safer to breach a place like this, in a location that was unexpected. That way there was far less of a chance that they had prepared an explosive surprise for you. We moved quickly and quietly, staying close to the ground and hugging buildings for cover. Before long we reached a building that had a small amount of light pouring out of its window.

I risked peeking inside and thanks to my genetic enhancements it took me no time at all to see everything going on inside and permanently lock it in my memory. This ability had served me very well during the Occupation. All it took was one glance and I had a perfect memory of everything I saw, no matter how briefly, and the ability to recall what I'd seen, no matter how complex. This was a godsend in a large-scale firefight where I had to quickly assess, with a single brief glance, enemy numbers and locations to come up with a plan of attack.

In this case I cursed my perfect memory, as what I saw inside I really wished I could unsee, one of many memories in this God forsaken Occupation that I wished I didn't have. It was a little Bajoran girl, at best maybe seven years old, being forced to do something to a spoon head that no girl of seven should even know about, never mind be forced to perform. I'd managed to find a Cardie that disgusted me more than Dukat, and that was saying something knowing what I did about the future. At least he only did that sort of thing with adult Bajoran women and there was an element of seduction and wooing involved, no matter how artificial, rather than outright force or threats of harm/death like was obviously involved here, at least that's what I assumed.

Somehow I managed to resist the immediate and urgent desire to go inside the small building and torture this Cardassian to the point where he begged me to die. I was only able to resist due to my super human brain and the battle calm I'd achieved over the course of many such operations and the sight of, yes, even more horrific things done to Bajoran girls and women. This calm allowed me to recognize that killing someone in front of what must already be a traumatized little girl wasn't such a good idea. It would also be detrimental to our mission.

Of course, I wasn't so foolish or naïve to think that the situation couldn't be more complex, but that complexity didn't matter when it came to an 7-year-old girl. It made no difference in my mind if the Bajoran was freely offering their body in exchange for food or medicine. A person's desperate need to survive was a powerful drive and I did not fault the victim for doing whatever they had to do in order to survive. The Cardassians were the cause of that hunger, though, that need, and they ruthlessly took advantage of it. When that failed, I'd seen them addict unwilling girls/women they wanted to various narcotics and when the withdrawal pains became truly horrific the girls would do anything to get their next fix. I didn't blame the victim; I blamed the Cardassians.

The logical action would be to stun both of them, get Kira to take the girl away from here and then do very horrible things to the very bad man. Unfortunately, we had no time for that, we were here to save one person, not to liberate the entire Ghetto. Well, not yet anyway. Besides we couldn't keep the girl with us as we carried out this mission. I also wasn't quite sure how we'd 'liberate' a population that wasn't actually locked inside this camp and seemingly were staying of their own accord?

I was now cursing myself for not waking up the others and doing this right; with the four of us we would have been able to risk sending someone back to the cave with the little girl, but I knew Kira wouldn't leave without her friend and I wouldn't leave her behind to take on this risk by herself.

Of course, that was when Kira looked through the window and saw for herself what was going on. Fuck. The murderous look that appeared on her face told me I had only moments to act before she did. I realized that if I didn't act, right the fuck now, she would, so I quickly and silently entered the building, luckily both were distracted.

Raising my phaser, I shot the Cardassian first, lowered the stun setting even lower with my right thumb, then shot the little girl. No sense risking the health of someone I was trying to save, and I managed to do that before Kira could do anything. All told, it took less than a second. Both of them had had their eyes tightly closed when I shot them, for different reasons, and neither had seen who shot them before they were rendered unconscious.

"What did you do?!" She whispered fervently while racing over to the child and pulling her from the lap of the half-naked Cardassian.

I answered quickly.

"I had to stun her," I explained. "If she screamed someone might have raised an alarm."

Kira wasn't happy, but she didn't argue as she saw the logic behind my action, especially since her impatience had forced this mission to proceed before we could properly surveil the camp and figure out just what the hell was going on around here. Getting into a running firefight right now was not something we could afford; there were just too many unknowns in this situation. I couldn't blame her for being miffed though. No decent person would simply accept a young child being shot, even if it was on stun and in an attempt to spare them another horrible sight on an already horrible day.

Knowing the girl would be waking up quickly from such a light stun shot, I knew I needed to get this fucker out of here. Grabbing a single booted foot with one hand, I dragged the rapist child molester Cardassian fuck out the door, letting his head hit the ground multiple times.

Once we were out of sight of Kira and the little girl, I kneeled behind the fucker, put my arm around his throat and cut off his air flow. If only I had a little more time, I could have had some real fun with this sick fuck; the best I could do was wait till he woke up, which he soon did, his body jerking and struggling to draw breath from my inescapable hold. Good luck trying to overcome the hold of an Augment.

"I hope you burn in hell, you rapist fuck!" I harshly whispered the words in this rapist's native language before I twisted his head near around. Learning the Cardassian language had proved extremely useful during the Occupation.

All those neck bones made such a delightful crunching sound when broken. A baseline human would have lacked the strength necessary to break a Cardassian's neck due to the large number of bones in that part of the body. I had considered waiting for the rapist fuck to wake up then promptly putting a knife into his throat to watch the life leave his eyes, but a giant pool of blood would have been pretty conspicuous. This way I could just pull his body into some thick bushes out of sight to hide it. No blood trails to follow this way, or spreading pools of blood to find.

"Hello, little one," Kira whispered to the girl as she woke up, a comforting smile on her face. "It's okay, you're safe now. We're with the Resistance. Are your parents here, any family?"

The girl pointed towards one of the main buildings.

"Listen, I want you to hide under the bed and wait until I come and get you," Kira instructed the child. "We're going to get everyone we can out, and when we do you'll come with us."

Ugh…seriously? We knew so little about this situation yet just the two of us alone were going to liberate this entire camp AND somehow take this little girl with us? Was I going to have to stun Kira and get the fuck out of here?

"Come on," Kira urged me, once the little girl was safely hidden under the bed.

The two of us moved quickly and stealthily over to the main building the kid had pointed to and knocked on its door. There were still no guards around. Where the fuck were they? At least one Cardassian had been out abusing his power; where were the others? There had been no guards so far, no alarms, no spotlights. The spoon heads must not consider this place important enough to secure correctly, perhaps because they had other places just like this scattered around the planet? That just didn't make sense given our other intelligence, though. How could the report have been so wrong? Was this place some kind of anomaly? If I hadn't seen all those Bajoran life signs I would have just assumed the camp had already transported all its prisoners and was now abandoned.

A door suddenly opened. A tall Bajoran man poked a head out and looked at Kira with surprised eyes.

"Whatta you want?" he asked, his voice dripping with suspicion.

My thinking was that under these circumstances this was a valid question.

"We're with the Resistance," Kira answered quietly and truthfully. "I'm looking for a friend of mine, a man named Deseer Torra."

I blinked upon realizing that Kira had been using the man's first name in front of me. Which made me wonder if they had been more than just friends. Was he a former lover? Or an ex-boyfriend? Perhaps Bajorans didn't mind using first names when mentioning former lovers to their current one?

Again, these little quirks of Bajoran culture still escaped me. Hopefully that would change as I spent more time on the planet in situations somewhat approaching normalcy. Being part of a worldwide terrorist network wasn't exactly giving me a comprehensive view of Bajoran life and culture. What kind of insights about American culture would an alien get if they only spent time with my unit back in Iraq and Afghanistan? Probably a really screwy fucking version of it.

"Black hair?" He asked, eyeing her suspiciously. "Green eyes?"

Kira nodded.

"Yeah, he's here. Follow me," the tall Bajoran man instructed before turning and heading back into the building. You'd think this guy would want to hustle us out of view quickly or would have slammed the door in our face by now. The Cardassians had killed many for even the most casual and brief interaction with the Resistance before.

This all seemed rather casual for people who had been taken as slave labor and forced to relocate to this camp, people who would soon be worked to death on the ore processing station in orbit or sent somewhere else never to be seen again. Weren't they supposed to be locked up? Who wouldn't want to escape that fate? Then I wondered if what was actually keeping them here wasn't guards and fences. Perhaps they'd been told if they didn't cooperate that their families and friends would be killed? That was an all-too-common story. I had found many mass graves in my time here.

Again, I forced myself to silence the need to answer these many questions. This was supposed to be a personal mission, what mattered right now was getting Kira to her friend. Once we found him, we could get him out and then and only then, maybe, plan an escape for everyone who was willing to leave.

Those concerns came to an end when Kira was brought to her friend who was lying in one of hundreds of visible bunk beds, the kind you'd see in an overcrowded refugee camp. She rushed to his side. From what I could overhear, the man was dying of some kind of sickness. One that was apparently burning through the ghetto judging by all the bedridden people. I didn't worry about myself, I was human and had a genetically engineered immune system that would take care of just about anything. Kira, though, could be susceptible to whatever was spreading here. If she caught it, she could give it to both Neela and Ro.

This was why security was such a joke around here, most of these people couldn't escape even if they wanted to. I didn't think they would even be able to get out of bed.

"Torra! Are you okay?!" Kira asked her possible ex in shock and sadness. Tears in her voice. "Prophets, say that you're okay!"

"Kira, you came for me?" Torra weakly answered.

This was going to get super melodramatic, I just knew it, so I turned away from this obviously extremely private and heartfelt moment and started scanning the area for threats, my mind wandering when I found it was just a huge room filled with a ton of very sick and dying Bajorans. There were no Cardassians in here. Many, many times since I'd arrived in this universe I found myself contemplating the very nature of reality. Had the writers of the shows in my universe been given glimpses into this universe's timeline? Or had their writing actually created this universe altogether? There was even an episode of DS9 which suggested that this possibility could be true. Overly melodramatic moments like these, straight out of a television drama, really made me wonder. I suspected only upper tier Gods would know the answer.

"I'm okay, Nerys," Torra replied as he smiled weakly. "Don't you worry about me."

The young man then smiled even more.

"You came to save me," he said. "I knew you would."

Kira smiled back with tears in her eyes.

"I snuck off," she admitted with a laugh. "Against orders."

They were my orders, so I didn't really mind. While I liked to maintain a bit more formal a command structure given my time in the military, most Resistance cells didn't really have a formal chain of command (other than someone like me being designated as the leader/commander of the cell), or rules and regulations for that matter, so it wasn't as if anyone could court-martial her. Though if you did something stupid enough that put everyone in danger too many times or betrayed the movement in some way, execution wasn't unheard of. There was no room for weakness in the Resistance. Once she was formally a member of the Bajoran military after the occupation ended, then it'd be more of an issue if she disobeyed orders.

"Just to save me?" Torra said with a wet laugh. "I'm touched."

Seemed a wasted effort now. Not that I would ever say such a thing out loud. Was I feeling jealous?

"Yeah, for you," Kira said, moving closer so that she could lay a head on his shoulder.

I removed the 'possible' part and pretty much confirmed the ex-lover thing, although given that she had come here to rescue him, against my orders and at great personal risk, I wondered if they'd actually broken up, or if they'd merely been forced to separate. That was a common story in the Resistance. Had this guy been in the Resistance? Our first time hooking up was due to a mission, where she was trying to get me to sell weapons to the Resistance for a very low price and it never really ended. Of course, I was pretty sure her feelings for me had grown considerably since that time, but seduction missions in the Resistance, long-term or otherwise, weren't unheard of. A guerilla campaign required a lot of atypical warfare, after all.

"I love you, Nerys! I love you so much…" the man muttered. "I just wanted to say that before the end."

At this point I moved away quietly. I had no desire to hear anymore and definitely didn't want to hear Kira reciprocate that declaration of love. I figured we'd be leaving very soon without Torra anyway, as the dude looked like he only had minutes left. The stench of the dead and dying was heavy in that room. A discreet scan with my tricorder indicated multiple organs were failing and his 'end-of-life transition' had already begun. Fucking Federation tricorders had a way with words, didn't they? If the primary objective of this mission was no longer alive, then I figured I'd be better off sorting out our 'escape' and gathering some much-needed intel on what the hell was going on around here.

"What is going on in this place? We encountered no security keeping you here," I asked leadingly to the tall Bajoran who'd met us at the door, hoping he'd volunteer information. He looked sick too now that I knew what to look for. Maybe the early stages of this illness? I took a few discreet scans for my records.

"We can't leave," the man responded pitifully, looking out over the hundreds of dead and dying Bajorans in this room. "A few months ago a sickness spread through the camp and many died. Most of the Cardassian military forces left at that point, except for a few in the hospital. Most of us are too sick to leave, and the Cardassians have promised to cure us if we agree to work on the station."

"How do you know they can cure you?" I asked.

"I've seen it!" the man explained fervently. "When they're ready to take you to the station they're given a cure. Within a few hours the sickness is gone."

"Why haven't people left the camp? The gates are unguarded," I asked.

"My family is here. They've contracted the disease; without the cure they'll die. I can't leave them," he answered. "Some considered leaving, but the risk of spreading this disease to others outside the camp is too great. We chose to stay."

This was a big difference between Bajorans and humans. A human from my time in this situation would have said 'fuck everybody else' and just left and wouldn't have worried about spreading the disease to anyone else. The Bajorans were just built different.

Well, wasn't this a fortuitous set of circumstances…for the Cardassians. A huge group of Bajorans just docilely waiting to be brought into their new life of slave labor, with no need to even dedicate manpower and technology to keep them locked up, and a cure for a highly contagious and deadly disease offered in reward for their cooperation. How very convenient.

It wouldn't shock me, not even a little fucking bit, to learn that the spoon heads had created and unleashed this sickness themselves, just so that they could offer to cure it for a price. It certainly made good economic sense and would ensure the Bajorans were weak and cooperative prior to being moved off-world. Their security costs would go way down that way.

"Well then, there's nothing we can do," Kira said from behind me, "and no reason to stay. Let's go."

I had a feeling that Torra had returned to the Prophets.

I sighed as I followed the young Bajoran woman, but didn't speak as there wasn't anything I could say. She'd just lost a friend, a former lover most likely. This wasn't a place she wanted to stay, and since I hadn't spent any amount of serious time studying infectious diseases and virology, my knowledge was extremely limited.

But then I realized that not even the Cardassians would be foolish enough to hang around near sick people if they didn't have a cure immediately on hand. Diseases mutated, especially when a large enough group of people contracted it at once. The fact that there were unintended and naturally conceived Cardassian/Bajoran babies around suggested that even being of different species was no sure protection against the sickness affecting the Cardassians as well in time. If you could make babies together, then your physiology was compatible enough to contract the same diseases. I'd encountered and killed one Cardassian in this camp, that Bajoran man I'd spoken to said others were around somewhere. I had a strong feeling the answers were here to be found.

"You go," I ordered Kira. "Bring that girl back to her family. Only take her and her family if her family agrees and she hasn't contracted this sickness."

Kira looked ready to argue.

"No, Kira. She has a family here. You're not taking her unless they agree. We also can't risk this sickness spreading to the nearby area; that's how pandemics start. I'm already concerned enough about you."

Kira startled at that, as if she hadn't even considered that possibility, but she didn't seem capable of caring about anything right now, so she just meekly nodded and left without a word, and I started looking around. The 'hospital' that man had referred to had to be around here, and if it contained the cure I'd kill every fucking Cardassian in this place to ensure the Bajorans got it. With disease and death no longer keeping them here, I'd encourage them to simply leave and go into hiding. The camp was essentially unguarded; they could simply walk out of here. It wasn't ideal; they'd have to recover quickly and take what they could to survive, but the alternative was worse. If the ultimate path to victory for the Resistance was to drive the spoon heads off planet by making the Occupation too expensive to be worthwhile, then it made perfect sense to deprive them of the free slave labor that kept that Cardassian monstrosity in orbit busy refining ore.

With that in mind I scouted around and soon found what looked to be the hospital or infirmary for this camp. Resistance Intelligence had reported that each 'Ghetto' had one. It was raining still, so I was glad for my hood, and the long black coat which kept me dry. I wore it over my armor, and it helped to hide my weapons. Luckily the Cardassians had repurposed an existing Bajoran structure, rather than building one of their own, or the passive security would have been greater. As it was, there were a few guards here and there at the entrance and walking the halls, wearing insignia which matched the Cardassian I had killed earlier. I suppose he had gotten bored and decided the rape of a young girl was a good way to alleviate the boredom.

The guards here were laxer in their patrols than I had ever seen before, a long period of dealing with a docile population of Bajorans had dulled their edge and they were easily bypassed, especially when I could hear them coming long before they reached my position. They would have been easy to take out, but if one or more went missing, and then failed to report in, the chances of an alarm being raised increased exponentially. The building was only sparsely populated, which also helped considerably, like they were on a skeleton staff.

Going from room to room I took note of traditional Cardassian medical equipment you'd expect to see in an infirmary, but also a lot of DNA sequencers and other scientific equipment that was just out of place and unneeded for a facility like this. I got the distinct feeling that there had been a lot of Cardassian medical personnel working here at one point.

Quietly opening the door to what appeared to be the viewing area of an in-use operating theater I looked down into the brightly lit operating room and found three Cardassian medical personnel in surgical garb working on a Bajoran man who was lying on an operating table. This building must have been a teaching hospital at one point, I idly thought.

The distinct orangish red intermittent flicker of an active restraining field appeared to be at work on the man. Why would that be needed? As I took in more and more details I realized that this was more akin to a torture chamber then an operating room. A Cardassian doctor with long grey hair, suggesting that he was pretty old by the standards of his race, and his two assistants, were cutting the man open with actual metal surgical tools and it wasn't entirely clear that the Bajoran man was yet dead if the restraining field was necessary. In an age of laser scalpels, metal tools were obsolete.

Nothing I knew about the medicine of this time, which admittedly was limited, suggested that there was any value anymore to cutting someone open like this, not when you could just scan them and get far more complete information, or do experiments with a holographic simulation. The more time I spent on Bajor dealing with these bastards, the more it seemed that the Cardassians did evil shit just for the sake of being evil fucks. No wonder everyone hated them and I had zero issue brutally killing every single Cardassian soldier I could get my hands on.

I flipped the switch.

With clinical detachment that I'm sure these Cardassians would have appreciated under different circumstances, I silently swung my legs over the railing and dropped from the upper viewing area, shooting the two assistants in the head with kill shots on the way down, landing softly with a small bend of my knees. They instantly dropped to the ground dead, though I casually shot them once more each while they laid on the ground, to make sure that the job was done. I was tempted to do the same with the Doctor, but I suspected that he knew more about what was going on around here.

With my phaser still pointed unerringly at his head and a dead expression on my face, the doctor dropped his scalpels clattering to the floor, a look of abject terror on his face. Like so many people who dealt suffering and death from a position of power over others, when confronted with their own mortality, he crumbled into a weeping terrified coward.

Glancing over at the medical monitors I saw that the young Bajoran man was actually still alive, even though his chest was splayed wide open and his heart beat feebly in the open air. I felt nothing but pity for him, knowing there was little to nothing I could do for him.

"Turn off the restraining field," I ordered quietly, my command instantly being obeyed, the field flickering into visibility before winking out.

Turning my phaser up to vaporize, I sent a quick prayer to the Prophets, asking that they grant this man a peace that had been denied to him in life, before a bright ruby crimson beam of energy vaporized the man. I did not have the ability to save him and leaving him in that state to continue to suffer would have been no mercy. If he was alive the best I could offer him was a painless death and a return to the Prophets.

If the way this Cardassian was shaking in terror was any indication, I wouldn't receive much resistance from him.

"Tell me, Doctor, what is going on around here?" I asked in a calm, quiet voice, one that I had found the Cardassians responded to extremely well in interrogations. It was the cold matter of fact certainty of their deaths in it that they could hear if they didn't cooperate, I had been told.

"We, we, we… We were tasked by the Prefect to create a bio-engineered virus to infect the Bajorans, highly virulent, but with a variable medium-to-high mortality rate, so as to appear a natural disease," he instantly responded, stuttering his words at various points. This man was definitely not a member of the military.

So, this 'disease' was artificially created by the Cardassians, just as I suspected.

"And this camp's population?" I prompted.

"Were our test subjects as we developed the virus," the doctor answered quickly again, the words jumbling up in his eagerness to cooperate and hopefully avoid being killed like his assistants. "Creating a deadly virus was easy, making it appear natural in how quickly it spread and its mortality rate was far more difficult and required a large testing population. Dukat was also interested in seeing how the camp's population would respond to a seemingly natural disease that we could cure, if only they cooperated with us. We failed in our goals for a natural seeming mortality rate, at least to experienced eyes; it was far too high to appear natural when we released it into the camp, spreading too quickly as well, but we learned a great deal to better modify it in the future, assuming we had more time. We succeeded in cowing the camp's population and securing their cooperation in exchange for the cure, however."

"Well done, Doctor. I'm sure Dukat was very pleased," I snarked, while wondering if I should just shoot this idiot in the head and be done with him, but I suspected he might have more valuable intel that I could use.

"Yes, my team was quite proud of our accomplish-" the idiot Doctor gushed with a small smile, then stopped, upon realizing that being proud of creating a deadly virus to kill the Bajorans, but not too many, might not be the smartest move.

"If you developed the virus here, I'm assuming all your development notes, the virus genome, and the cure are stored in this facility's database?"

"Yes, you can access all of our data from the terminals in this room," the Doctor rushed to say, eager to make up for his previous stupid statement. "I can help pull it up for you, if you'd like?"

"Please do."

The doctor rushed over to the terminal and input his authorization codes to bring up all his data on the virus. I watched him carefully. No attempts at raising an alarm or deleting any data was made. If he had tried, I'd have killed the man instantly.

"It's all here, including a replicator pattern for the cure and all our research notes," the doctor said, turning to the side and gesturing at the data quickly in the hopes that I'd be pleased.

I raised my tricorder to interface with this facility's database and downloaded all of his data to my tricorder's internal memory. This would be incredibly useful if the Cardassians tried to release this virus planet-wide now or in the future. From a quick perusal of the files, it appeared that this camp was both the site where they had developed the virus and the first place that they'd tested its efficacy. Luckily, as it was part of the control program, the cure had been designed to be easily replicated if needed.

"I'm assuming Dukat and the Central Command have all of your research data?" I asked to confirm what I already suspected.

"Yes, yes, they have it all," he answered.

"Why were most of the Cardassian forces reassigned? For that matter, why are you still here, Doctor?" I asked, genuinely curious, but having my suspicions.

For the first time since I'd begun questioning him, the Doctor hesitated in responding, but not for too long.

"The camp is being shut down," the Doctor answered slowly, looking more and more agitated and afraid. "To better conceal our work here, the entire camp's population was to be eliminated, but I successfully argued to let the disease run its course to gather more research data on the virus' pathology, so most of our forces were removed."

"What about the ones being cured and beamed out of here?" I asked.

"Research data is being collected on the cure itself, as well, to determine whether we can successfully stop the virus if it was ever released in a manner outside our control, it naturally mutated to be resistant to the cure, or became capable of infecting Cardassian physiology," the doctor explained. "The cured patients are then beamed away, but are not materialized anywhere. Their pattern purged from the transport buffer for everyone's safety."

"Ah, so in essence, they're killed after being cured so that the fiction can continue," I said, thanking the Prophets that I had flipped the switch on my emotions or I would have killed this motherfucking evil doctor a while ago.

The doctor nodded.

"And just out of curiosity, why operate on that man earlier? And why use metal instruments?" I asked.

"Well, I do have other research interests and he was going to be dead within 24 hours anyway, so I used this opportunity to further my research in another area," the doctor answered. "The metal instruments, well, I feel like I can get a better tactile sense with them which has diagnostic value."

"And the restraining field?"

"A general anesthesia could affect our research data. Better to keep our findings pure."

"So, he was awake and aware the entire time you cut him apart, his chest splayed open?"

"Umm…yes, but he was going to be dead soon anyway," the doctor again tried to quickly rationalize.

"Thank you, Doctor, I think I have everything I need," I said, then holstered my phaser. "I also like to keep things…pure."

I then slowly pulled my combat knife from the small of my back, the metal ringing in the silence as a confused look appeared on the man's face as his eyes followed my weapon. I then gripped him behind the neck to keep him in place, almost gently, then slowly stabbed the man directly in the heart, his hands ineffectually trying to keep the slowly moving knife from stabbing him. My blade pierced easily through cloth and bone, my calm stoic face never once changing. The look of betrayal on the man's face was almost expected as the light left his eyes, like he was surprised that I had killed him after he had been so damn helpful and cooperative with me.

That this man felt no guilt or shame that his carefully engineered disease would kill so many Bajorans was pretty clear to me. Whether that lack of empathy applied to everyone in his pursuit of knowledge or just Bajorans, as I'd seen when he ruthlessly operated on that man, I didn't know. What I did know was that he was too dangerous and too evil to leave alive.

As I pulled my knife out of his heart, I stabbed hard two more times in different places then slashed his throat open before I wiped the blade on the man's clothes then let the corpse drop to the ground unceremoniously. I quickly moved to the replicator to begin replicating a dozen or so fully loaded hyposprays filled with the cure to this disease. Each fully loaded hypospray had a hundred full doses inside that could be quickly distributed. I'd take it back to the workers' barracks where most of the sick were kept and let them distribute it to everyone in the camp.

Before that, though, I had some hunting to do. There were half a dozen Cardassians left in the building that needed to be sent to hell to ensure the distribution of the cure was left unhindered and no alarms were raised calling for help from other Cardassian forces in the area.

Things had actually gone smoothly so far and I saw no reason why that wouldn't continue. The disease was essentially the only thing keeping this place secure and that would all be over soon. For good measure, in addition to the data and replicator pattern for the cure, I kept a sizeable sample of the cure for myself. The replicators I'd given to the Resistance should be able to reproduce it easily, thankfully, as it would not surprise me to learn that the Cardassians had plans to use it in other ghettos on the planet.

The Resistance, while composed of independent cells that didn't otherwise know each other, did have the ability to safely disseminate useful data to each other when needed. When I got back to base I'd distribute the cure's replicator pattern to the rest of the Resistance.

The various Resistance controlled replicators on Bajor might soon be busy churning out the cure for a while, just in case.

XXXXX

Moon Base. Jeraddo.

Since I commanded the Gothic Resistance Cell, as the name implied, and the Galor-class ship had finally left orbit, I had decided it was probably best if we left Bajor for a while and returned to our moon base. Kira needed some time to grieve in solitude before we returned to action or she'd go and do something that got herself, and perhaps others on my team, killed. It certainly hadn't helped that her friend had died just hours before I had secured a cure for the very disease that had killed him.

As for myself, I didn't even know if I should try to comfort the young woman, so I let her be. I figured that Ro would do a much better job than I would anyway. She was both Bajoran and Kira's close friend, and I was an Augment out of his own time. I couldn't relate that well even to my own species. Plus, part of me was shamefully glad that Torra was out of the picture for good now.

So, instead, I kept myself as busy as I could building new raiders and hoping that I could design a superior model while I was at it. That one would be all mine, and a lot less utilitarian and using much more advanced technology. Building these little ships was a great way to familiarize myself with the ins and outs and practical realities of ship construction. The raiders weren't that complex, little more than engines, weapons, and a crude inertial damper and life support system all welded together within a metal frame, so it was great way to build up my knowledge base. Since the gunship I was designing in my head was never meant for mass production, or being made by a very resource limited organization, I could have fun putting as many bells and whistles as I wanted onboard.

All these thoughts and plans for the future were going through my mind even as I was lying under a raider, staring up into its guts, trying to figure out this mess of a wiring job. What had the assembler been thinking? It was such a mess that I was very glad to see Neela when she crawled under the small ship and started helping.

"Why haven't you talked to Kira?" Neela enquired, no accusation in her tone, as she started fiddling with some wires in a much more competent manner than me. Not surprising considering how many raiders she'd rebuilt personally during her time with us.

I took a moment before answering.

"Honestly, I'm not very good at talking to people about personal or heavy emotional stuff," I admitted, somewhat lamely. "Is it even appropriate for her current lover to be helping her deal with the death of her old lover?"

This was the one thing the unaugmented me had been better at. I had far more trouble discussing feelings now than I'd used to. Not sure why either. Perhaps that was the result of so often disconnecting myself from my emotions to do the truly horrific stuff I'd needed to do during the Occupation? Old me would have at least hugged Kira by now. If being slightly less in tune with my feelings as an Augment was the extent of the unintended consequences of being changed so fundamentally, than I'd consider myself very, very lucky.

"When I have trouble doing something I struggle with I just think about what the Prophets would wish for me do and then ask them to grant me the strength to do it," Neela stated.

Normally I'd hear something like that and scoff, but in this case I didn't, as I knew the Prophets did have big plans, and they did try to help their people, granted that help could come at a price. Still, at least they did something to aid us mere mortals, which was more than could be said for the other gods in this galaxy. Q was another 'God' I felt actually helped the Federation, though a bit more subtly than making an entire Dominion battle fleet of a thousand plus ships disappear into the ether, for instance. In another dimension he had brought the Federation into contact with the Borg centuries earlier than they would have otherwise, but arguably that was to snap the Federation out of its complacency, which was partially successful. He also prevented the destruction of humanity itself in the final two episodes of TNG with that temporal anomaly. He was, though, a pain the ass and very annoying to the bridge crew of the Enterprise, but he did attempt to help them (and the Federation) in his own way.

"The Prophets have better things to do than help me talk to and comfort grieving women," I joked. "I doubt it's part of their grand cosmic plan for their chosen people."

Neela turned to look at me in surprise, and I turned to look at her.

"You believe in the Prophets?" she asked in shock, having heard no mockery in my voice. "I didn't even think Terrans had a pagh… I mean of course you do, you're not the Cardassians, I just figured you didn't care about them, not like us Bajorans."

I nodded my head in affirmation and then got back to making more adjustments. Compared to the repair work I'd learned to do on my ship these raiders were simple enough, so it didn't really require my full attention, especially if you disconnected everything and just started from scratch.

"We call them souls, or we used to," I told Neela, before explaining things further. "Humans are mostly secular nowadays, with few believing in Gods anymore or adhering to any organized religion, though there are still a good amount that do. So, humans don't often express our spiritual beliefs to others. But like I said, I believe some people on Earth will have kept to the old faiths, of which there used to be many."

Neela seemed very interested in this subject.

"So, you believe in the Prophets," she said, "and in the pagh, or the soul, as you call it. Are you sure you're not Bajoran? Did you get some doctor to alter your nose?" she joked with a smile on her face.

That made me laugh.

"No, I'm human, mostly," I replied, "just with a whole lot of genetic engineering. But because I'm from a past time when humans weren't so secular, I don't have trouble with people expressing their faith. Well, as long as they don't try to forcibly convert others or use their faith as an excuse to harm people."

That sort of thing did piss me off.

"If you can talk to me about spiritual matters, of all things, then you can talk to Kira about her pain and grief," Neela stated firmly. "Both are very personal, after all."

Now I was wondering if she'd done this on purpose. Trying to get me to open up like a normal person. Not that I really had, since I hadn't actually spoken about my faith, but since we were heading in that direction I decided to go do something less awkward.

"Fine, I'll try," I promised Neela grudgingly, "but if I somehow make things worse, don't blame me."

Hopefully she wasn't crying. I wasn't sure I could handle her crying.

XXXXX

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Chapter 23: 18,993 words

Chapter 24: 22,437 words