- CHAPTER 8 -
- Alliance Space Station Retribution, deep inside the Badlands -
"Report!" General Worf said as he strode onto the command deck.
"The unknown is still closing, range now 1000 kellicams. Readings are still fuzzy but it appears to be a Cartel vessel!" the tactical officer said.
"And they have made no threatening moves? Their shields and weapons off line?" Even among the cartels there were factions. And some of them didn't take kindly the cartel's involvement with the Alliance.
"No Sir, their shields are active," completely justifiable in the energized space of the Badlands, "but their weapons are offline and they have merely continued to close at ΒΌ impulse. wait! I am receiving a hail!"
"On screen."
The viewer mounted high on the wall came to life, revealing a smiling visage. His almost cherubic features were clad in an expensive looking suit. You might even have mistaken him for an important executive or official from the Terran government, except for one small thing that made him seem out of place. On the left side of his face was a small tattoo, located just beneath the level of his brown eyes almost like it was a tear. It was the flame like dagger on a diamond that was the emblem of the Orion Cartel.
"Hello General Worf. I hope that my unannounced arrival hasn't caused you any undue concern." The easy smile remained, and the tone of voice said volumes about what he thought about any concern Worf might have.
"No, no trouble here. In fact," Worf showed a tooth filled grin, "my crews needed an unscheduled alert. I thank you for providing one." Other than a barely perceptible narrowing of his eyes, the Cartel head showed no outward reaction. Worf was sure that it was only due to his extensive dealings with the Orion Pirate that allowed him to even catch it. "You may dock at port A- 5 at your convenience." And before the Cartel head could respond, Worf cut the channel. "Secure from battle stations. And have Captain Luza report to docking port A-5. It is time she was introduced to our gracious benefactor."
Peter "Humpty" O'tole had risen from a mere small time hood in the Cartel to become its most powerful leader in over 200 years. Due to the aggressive expansion of the Terran Empire, the other cartels had been ground down till they virtually ceased to exist. It was this power vacuum that the Orion Cartel had been only too happy to fill. Even the Empire itself had no true idea of just how large and powerful the Orion Cartel had grown.
Which was fortunate for the member races of the Alliance. They had been skeptical at first, many of their leaders having become jaded after being driven from their homes and forced to fight a hopeless guerilla war against the Terran juggernaut. Yet hopeless as it was, they still fought on, attacking where they could, trying to score even tiny blows for their people living as slave species for the Terran Empire. In the end they knew that they would never succeed in their true goal, but with almost fanatical stubbornness they continued to strike at the massive construct that was the Terran Empire.
And just when things seemed their darkest, when nearly all hope was extinguished, a single ray of sunshine filled the pit of despair. The Orion Cartel had approached them with an offer they couldn't refuse. They offered to set up clandestine bases and supply depots, even to build hidden shipyards for the slave species under Terran Empire rule. After seemingly endless years of struggling for no appreciable gain, what the Cartel offered was almost too good to be true. Yet the guerilla fighters had both few other options and little desire to not take them up on their offer.
Which was why what had become the Alliance now boasted a considerable fleet of state of the art vessels. Initially the Cartel had been against building different ships for the individual Alliance races, citing that it was uneconomical to build such diverse designs for each former Empire's use. Yet the Alliance would have it no other way, and so the Cartel had been forced to relent. The brightest minds from each member race had then set upon the task of designing modern warships. The warships they came up with surely beat taking on the Terran Empire in a broken down Bird of Prey that was ancient before the Klingon Empire fell.
But the Alliance's leaders were fools to think that all this 'friendly' support came without a price. The fact that the Cartel hadn't yet named their price gave Worf and many of his fellow warrior's cause for concern. They voiced their concerns on a regular basis, but it fell on largely deaf ears. Worf knew, not just suspected but knew that the Cartel would eventually call in the very large 'favor' that the Alliance owed them. He just hoped that it wouldn't be something that would not bring their newfound, hard-won, sovereignty to a premature end.
- ISS Hopolite, Deck Three, Sic Bay, 4:00 PM Ships Time -
For the second time in as many days, Ulysses Vanguard awoke to the medical/chemical smell of sickbay. The drug-induced haze clouded his mind, preventing him from making the links as to how he had gotten here.
"Glad to see you are awake, Captain."
For a moment his brain didn't take any special notice of the moniker the silken voice had attached so naturally to the end of her greeting. Then it seemed like his brain made all the connections at once. He had killed another sentient being in cold blood. And it wasn't some impersonal attack like pressing a button and ending the lives of hundreds via phased energy or matter/antimatter explosions. No this was something entirely different, something considerably worse. He could still see McBride's blood on his hands, coursing out to coat the front of his uniform. He nearly lost it right there in the sic bay. He had never killed someone face to face like that before, and he found that he didn't like it, not one bit. Yet a small portion of his soul laughed in satisfied glee.
Ulysses reached up with his left arm and felt around where the knife wound should have been. There was only low-grade pain, no sign of any other damage. He was even wearing a new uniform. That must have been a sign of newfound respect. The last time he had been to sickbay, he had woken up in only his briefs. Whatever the reason for his present state of dress, he was eternally grateful. It allowed him to exit more quickly and gracefully than he had the last time. Cynthia noted his questing hand and after waiting a beat decided to clue Ulysses in.
"All of your wounds are fully healed, although you may still be lightheaded. That is just a side effect of the antitoxin. It should wear off in about an hour or two. So, how does it feel to be the new, undisputed master of the Hopolite? All that power, you can do nearly anything you want." The way she said those last few words, it was positively scary. The relish she showed when she spoke of his newfound authority turned his stomach. How could one who's mind was so evil look like an angel and not like a devil made flesh?
Ulysses turned away from the voice, its words flailing like a lash on his battered soul. Swinging his legs off of the bed so that he was sitting up with his back to the speaker, he finally allowed the horror of what he had done to pinch his features briefly. He didn't want her of all people to see the tears welling up in his eyes. Doctor Cynthia Unger was not the person to show any sign of weakness around.
His turn brought the bed beside his own into his field of view. There was a shape hidden by a sheet on it. Thankful for any thing that changed the subject and gave him something to focus on other than the bloody murder he had committed mere hours earlier, Ulysses stood and walked over to the neighboring bed. His eyes narrowed. On closer inspection, the shape on the bed looked almost man sized.
"Now that McBride is out of the way, there is no one between us. No reason to resist the attraction between us. We can be together at last, and what a team we will make." As she spoke, Cynthia walked up beside Ulysses and wrapped an arm around his waist. Ulysses had to force himself not to jump away like a scalded cat. He reached out and grasped the edge of the sheet tentatively. "Go ahead, it's just a small token of my devotion to you." Her voice took on a gleeful edge. "I hope you like it!" Ulysses hesitated, fearing what he might find under it. Finally he pulled the cover down.
It was a body under the sheets, just as he had suspected. But it wasn't McBride like Ulysses had initially thought. That would have been morbid and sick enough. The reality was a million times worse. Cmdr Walter Elas, the ships first officer, lay beneath it. His normally boyish face was warped into a hideous mask of pain and terror, his lifeless eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling.
Now Ulysses did recoil in horror. His hand flew away from the sheet and he jumped away from the embrace Cynthia had initiated. The sheet dropped back, half hiding the tortured features of the body beneath it, yet it could never wipe that horrible visage from Ulysses mind. What kind of monster could DO something like this?!
"It was so easy." She said in an eager, excited voice, staring down intently at the corpse. "He came here to pay his respects to his new captain. I said I had to prepare a hypo in order to revive you. But what I really did was whip up a highly toxic substance. Then I just injected him as I came over to supposedly wake you up. He died in under a minute. I assure you, it was quite painful."
Ulysses stomach was threatening to leap out of his throat, and he felt his knees getting weak. She was so matter of fact about the murder that she had just committed it boggled the mind. Cynthia finally turned to him and saw his ghost pale features. It was only then that she realized how badly she had miscalculated. Someone like McBride would have lauded her actions, but Ulysses Vanguard was most assuredly NOT like McBride. He could see how someone like McBride would be attracted by Cynthia and vice versa. But he wanted nothing at all to do with her, was repulsed by her attempts to win his confidence through murder.
"Don't you see! I did this for you!" She pleaded, her twisted, sick logic trying to convince Ulysses that her true attentions were only to support him. "With him out of the way," she said, gesturing absently to the corpse on the biobed, "there is no one that could challenge you before you secure your power base. The ship is yours! We can rule it together and be unstoppable!"
"STOP!" Ulysses cried, his horror evident on his face. "Not another word!" Without even thinking, Ulysses whipped out the phaser that lay in his holster and pointed it at Doctor Unger. Then he smacked his combadge. "Captain Vanguard to security. Send a team to sickbay immediately!"
"What are you doing!?"
"Making sure that you don't have a chance to kill anyone else." That much should have been self evident, even to someone as deranged as her.
"But. but. WHY?" There was pain in her voice, the pain of rejection, the pain of humiliation, the pain of dawning knowledge that she had made a serious miscalculation.
"Because you are a sick, twisted person and I don't want you in a position of responsibility that you have no right having. I want you behind a force field so you can only hurt yourself."
The doors to sickbay opened and in swept the security team with their phaser rifles clutched tight to their shoulders. They swept the room smartly, slicing the pie as they breached the doorway. The low lights of sickbay gleamed dully off of their matte charcoal gray body armor. The monocle sights attached to their helmets quickly sorted out that there were only two individuals in the room. One was their new captain, who had a standard issue type-2 phaser trained on the other.
"Take Doctor Unger to the brig under the charge of murder." He said in dispassionate tones despite the revulsion he felt. As he spoke, his eyes never left Cynthia. "At earliest possible opportunity she is to be sent to Starfleet Headquarters for a formal court martial."
"Understood sir!" The detail leader said. "You heard the captain. Ramirez, Chadwick, take Unger into custody." As the two security officers went forward, their three fellows spread further apart in order to maintain a clear field of fire on their target. It was only after she had been cuffed and had her phaser and dagger removed that they relaxed slightly. Cynthia put up no resistance as the led her out of sickbay. She appeared to be in shock.
With a shiver of released nervous energy, Ulysses turned and spied a crimson cloak draped over the desk in Cynthia's office. He strode confidently into the office and placed the cloak around his shoulders. The detail guard nodded in approval.
"Your orders shall be carried out sir. Do you have any thing further to add?"
"No that will be all for now Lt. Bingim, you may go."
It was only after the doors swished closed that Ulysses sank down to his knees. Massive sobs wracked his body. Having taken a life to gain command was bad enough, but it seemed like every senior officer in his new command was either dead or insane. Ulysses had always been an outsider, but only one other time in his life had he felt so alone and lost.
- Alliance Space Station Retribution, deep inside the Badlands -
"Report!" General Worf said as he strode onto the command deck.
"The unknown is still closing, range now 1000 kellicams. Readings are still fuzzy but it appears to be a Cartel vessel!" the tactical officer said.
"And they have made no threatening moves? Their shields and weapons off line?" Even among the cartels there were factions. And some of them didn't take kindly the cartel's involvement with the Alliance.
"No Sir, their shields are active," completely justifiable in the energized space of the Badlands, "but their weapons are offline and they have merely continued to close at ΒΌ impulse. wait! I am receiving a hail!"
"On screen."
The viewer mounted high on the wall came to life, revealing a smiling visage. His almost cherubic features were clad in an expensive looking suit. You might even have mistaken him for an important executive or official from the Terran government, except for one small thing that made him seem out of place. On the left side of his face was a small tattoo, located just beneath the level of his brown eyes almost like it was a tear. It was the flame like dagger on a diamond that was the emblem of the Orion Cartel.
"Hello General Worf. I hope that my unannounced arrival hasn't caused you any undue concern." The easy smile remained, and the tone of voice said volumes about what he thought about any concern Worf might have.
"No, no trouble here. In fact," Worf showed a tooth filled grin, "my crews needed an unscheduled alert. I thank you for providing one." Other than a barely perceptible narrowing of his eyes, the Cartel head showed no outward reaction. Worf was sure that it was only due to his extensive dealings with the Orion Pirate that allowed him to even catch it. "You may dock at port A- 5 at your convenience." And before the Cartel head could respond, Worf cut the channel. "Secure from battle stations. And have Captain Luza report to docking port A-5. It is time she was introduced to our gracious benefactor."
Peter "Humpty" O'tole had risen from a mere small time hood in the Cartel to become its most powerful leader in over 200 years. Due to the aggressive expansion of the Terran Empire, the other cartels had been ground down till they virtually ceased to exist. It was this power vacuum that the Orion Cartel had been only too happy to fill. Even the Empire itself had no true idea of just how large and powerful the Orion Cartel had grown.
Which was fortunate for the member races of the Alliance. They had been skeptical at first, many of their leaders having become jaded after being driven from their homes and forced to fight a hopeless guerilla war against the Terran juggernaut. Yet hopeless as it was, they still fought on, attacking where they could, trying to score even tiny blows for their people living as slave species for the Terran Empire. In the end they knew that they would never succeed in their true goal, but with almost fanatical stubbornness they continued to strike at the massive construct that was the Terran Empire.
And just when things seemed their darkest, when nearly all hope was extinguished, a single ray of sunshine filled the pit of despair. The Orion Cartel had approached them with an offer they couldn't refuse. They offered to set up clandestine bases and supply depots, even to build hidden shipyards for the slave species under Terran Empire rule. After seemingly endless years of struggling for no appreciable gain, what the Cartel offered was almost too good to be true. Yet the guerilla fighters had both few other options and little desire to not take them up on their offer.
Which was why what had become the Alliance now boasted a considerable fleet of state of the art vessels. Initially the Cartel had been against building different ships for the individual Alliance races, citing that it was uneconomical to build such diverse designs for each former Empire's use. Yet the Alliance would have it no other way, and so the Cartel had been forced to relent. The brightest minds from each member race had then set upon the task of designing modern warships. The warships they came up with surely beat taking on the Terran Empire in a broken down Bird of Prey that was ancient before the Klingon Empire fell.
But the Alliance's leaders were fools to think that all this 'friendly' support came without a price. The fact that the Cartel hadn't yet named their price gave Worf and many of his fellow warrior's cause for concern. They voiced their concerns on a regular basis, but it fell on largely deaf ears. Worf knew, not just suspected but knew that the Cartel would eventually call in the very large 'favor' that the Alliance owed them. He just hoped that it wouldn't be something that would not bring their newfound, hard-won, sovereignty to a premature end.
- ISS Hopolite, Deck Three, Sic Bay, 4:00 PM Ships Time -
For the second time in as many days, Ulysses Vanguard awoke to the medical/chemical smell of sickbay. The drug-induced haze clouded his mind, preventing him from making the links as to how he had gotten here.
"Glad to see you are awake, Captain."
For a moment his brain didn't take any special notice of the moniker the silken voice had attached so naturally to the end of her greeting. Then it seemed like his brain made all the connections at once. He had killed another sentient being in cold blood. And it wasn't some impersonal attack like pressing a button and ending the lives of hundreds via phased energy or matter/antimatter explosions. No this was something entirely different, something considerably worse. He could still see McBride's blood on his hands, coursing out to coat the front of his uniform. He nearly lost it right there in the sic bay. He had never killed someone face to face like that before, and he found that he didn't like it, not one bit. Yet a small portion of his soul laughed in satisfied glee.
Ulysses reached up with his left arm and felt around where the knife wound should have been. There was only low-grade pain, no sign of any other damage. He was even wearing a new uniform. That must have been a sign of newfound respect. The last time he had been to sickbay, he had woken up in only his briefs. Whatever the reason for his present state of dress, he was eternally grateful. It allowed him to exit more quickly and gracefully than he had the last time. Cynthia noted his questing hand and after waiting a beat decided to clue Ulysses in.
"All of your wounds are fully healed, although you may still be lightheaded. That is just a side effect of the antitoxin. It should wear off in about an hour or two. So, how does it feel to be the new, undisputed master of the Hopolite? All that power, you can do nearly anything you want." The way she said those last few words, it was positively scary. The relish she showed when she spoke of his newfound authority turned his stomach. How could one who's mind was so evil look like an angel and not like a devil made flesh?
Ulysses turned away from the voice, its words flailing like a lash on his battered soul. Swinging his legs off of the bed so that he was sitting up with his back to the speaker, he finally allowed the horror of what he had done to pinch his features briefly. He didn't want her of all people to see the tears welling up in his eyes. Doctor Cynthia Unger was not the person to show any sign of weakness around.
His turn brought the bed beside his own into his field of view. There was a shape hidden by a sheet on it. Thankful for any thing that changed the subject and gave him something to focus on other than the bloody murder he had committed mere hours earlier, Ulysses stood and walked over to the neighboring bed. His eyes narrowed. On closer inspection, the shape on the bed looked almost man sized.
"Now that McBride is out of the way, there is no one between us. No reason to resist the attraction between us. We can be together at last, and what a team we will make." As she spoke, Cynthia walked up beside Ulysses and wrapped an arm around his waist. Ulysses had to force himself not to jump away like a scalded cat. He reached out and grasped the edge of the sheet tentatively. "Go ahead, it's just a small token of my devotion to you." Her voice took on a gleeful edge. "I hope you like it!" Ulysses hesitated, fearing what he might find under it. Finally he pulled the cover down.
It was a body under the sheets, just as he had suspected. But it wasn't McBride like Ulysses had initially thought. That would have been morbid and sick enough. The reality was a million times worse. Cmdr Walter Elas, the ships first officer, lay beneath it. His normally boyish face was warped into a hideous mask of pain and terror, his lifeless eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling.
Now Ulysses did recoil in horror. His hand flew away from the sheet and he jumped away from the embrace Cynthia had initiated. The sheet dropped back, half hiding the tortured features of the body beneath it, yet it could never wipe that horrible visage from Ulysses mind. What kind of monster could DO something like this?!
"It was so easy." She said in an eager, excited voice, staring down intently at the corpse. "He came here to pay his respects to his new captain. I said I had to prepare a hypo in order to revive you. But what I really did was whip up a highly toxic substance. Then I just injected him as I came over to supposedly wake you up. He died in under a minute. I assure you, it was quite painful."
Ulysses stomach was threatening to leap out of his throat, and he felt his knees getting weak. She was so matter of fact about the murder that she had just committed it boggled the mind. Cynthia finally turned to him and saw his ghost pale features. It was only then that she realized how badly she had miscalculated. Someone like McBride would have lauded her actions, but Ulysses Vanguard was most assuredly NOT like McBride. He could see how someone like McBride would be attracted by Cynthia and vice versa. But he wanted nothing at all to do with her, was repulsed by her attempts to win his confidence through murder.
"Don't you see! I did this for you!" She pleaded, her twisted, sick logic trying to convince Ulysses that her true attentions were only to support him. "With him out of the way," she said, gesturing absently to the corpse on the biobed, "there is no one that could challenge you before you secure your power base. The ship is yours! We can rule it together and be unstoppable!"
"STOP!" Ulysses cried, his horror evident on his face. "Not another word!" Without even thinking, Ulysses whipped out the phaser that lay in his holster and pointed it at Doctor Unger. Then he smacked his combadge. "Captain Vanguard to security. Send a team to sickbay immediately!"
"What are you doing!?"
"Making sure that you don't have a chance to kill anyone else." That much should have been self evident, even to someone as deranged as her.
"But. but. WHY?" There was pain in her voice, the pain of rejection, the pain of humiliation, the pain of dawning knowledge that she had made a serious miscalculation.
"Because you are a sick, twisted person and I don't want you in a position of responsibility that you have no right having. I want you behind a force field so you can only hurt yourself."
The doors to sickbay opened and in swept the security team with their phaser rifles clutched tight to their shoulders. They swept the room smartly, slicing the pie as they breached the doorway. The low lights of sickbay gleamed dully off of their matte charcoal gray body armor. The monocle sights attached to their helmets quickly sorted out that there were only two individuals in the room. One was their new captain, who had a standard issue type-2 phaser trained on the other.
"Take Doctor Unger to the brig under the charge of murder." He said in dispassionate tones despite the revulsion he felt. As he spoke, his eyes never left Cynthia. "At earliest possible opportunity she is to be sent to Starfleet Headquarters for a formal court martial."
"Understood sir!" The detail leader said. "You heard the captain. Ramirez, Chadwick, take Unger into custody." As the two security officers went forward, their three fellows spread further apart in order to maintain a clear field of fire on their target. It was only after she had been cuffed and had her phaser and dagger removed that they relaxed slightly. Cynthia put up no resistance as the led her out of sickbay. She appeared to be in shock.
With a shiver of released nervous energy, Ulysses turned and spied a crimson cloak draped over the desk in Cynthia's office. He strode confidently into the office and placed the cloak around his shoulders. The detail guard nodded in approval.
"Your orders shall be carried out sir. Do you have any thing further to add?"
"No that will be all for now Lt. Bingim, you may go."
It was only after the doors swished closed that Ulysses sank down to his knees. Massive sobs wracked his body. Having taken a life to gain command was bad enough, but it seemed like every senior officer in his new command was either dead or insane. Ulysses had always been an outsider, but only one other time in his life had he felt so alone and lost.