"Are you sure you know how to connect the collar properly?" asked Nanno. The other man, whose name was Sheppard, gave him an oily smile.
"Of course," he replied. "I fully understand the procedure. I assure you I have done it before for some of the lower Syndicate Houses. Everything will go fine as long as you have my fee handy."
Nanno glared at the man. "You'll get your credits. Just be absolutely sure you know what you're doing. This isn't some uncooperative pleasure slave we are talking about here. One thing not done right in the procedure and we wouldn't live a microt once we turn that man loose."
"Relax. I'm well aware of what a Syndicate Enforcer is capable of," replied Sheppard. "While we wait for your source to produce the collar, may I see the subject so I better understand what I will be working with?"
"Of course," said Nanno. "Right this way."
Sheppard paused to pick-up a sinister looking black bag that Chiana supposed contained the instruments he required for attaching a control collar to a slave. Both men turned and headed through the door and down the staircase. As soon as they were out of sight, the Nebari woman silently dropped to the floor of the office and cat footed over to the opened doorway. She arrived just in time to observe the pair turn a corner and continue descending the next flight of stairs.
"He's a Sebacean male," she heard the tall one say.
"That should be a easy attachment then," replied the other man. "Hynerian's usually present the most trouble with collar attunement." Their voices faded as they moved deeper down in to the staircase. Chiana moved a little way from the door and turned her comm badge back on.
"Aeryn?" she whispered.
"Chiana! Report!" came back the ex-Peacekeeper's tense response.
"I'm closing in to where they're holding him. Two of the men we watched come in just headed down a staircase under the warehouse," she whispered. "I'm going to follow them down and I'll get back to you when I have an exact location."
"Pip! Wait for us to..." started Crichton over Aeryn's comm just as Chiana closed the comm link and shut the device off so it wouldn't give her away. She reached behind her and drew her pulse pistol. Unlike the PK issue ones that the rest carried, this one was a civilian model. Thinner and sleeker then the military guns, it didn't have the same ammo capacity but was easier to conceal on her smaller frame. She clutched the silver pulse weapon in both hands and peeked around the door jam to make sure no one was on their way back up the staircase. Seeing no one, she thrust her pistol out before and silently started padding down the steps.
"Hang on, Berret. I'm coming," she muttered barely above a whisper.
"Damn that kid!" cursed Crichton as he heard the comm link close. "Now what do we do? She didn't even wait to tell us where the hell the staircase was located inside the warehouse."
Aeryn frowned as she pinned her badge back onto her shirt. "Well, we can assume that the first floor is now empty so we could began making our entrance and then wait for her to give us a more detailed location once we're inside."
"I agree," rumbled D'argo. "We should not waste the time now that we know its safe to proceed that far."
"We don't know that for sure!" exclaimed Rygel. "That silly tramp didn't say for positive that the first floor was clear. There could be a hundred of them in there waiting for us."
"Then we shall deal with them," said the Luxan.
"You mean, 'you'll deal with them.' I'm not going anywhere near there," replied the Hynerian Dominar.
"Wrong again, Bucko," said John. "We need you to pick the lock for us. So that means... you go."
Rygel started to back his thronesled away from the human. To his relieve Malika spoke up.
"We don't need him," she said. "I can pick the lock... much faster and a whole lot quieter then Toadface."
Crichton and Aeryn looked at her in surprise. "Are you sure about that?" John then asked.
"Believe her. Take my word, she can do it," Andar put in from his turn at sentry position watching the warehouse before the Delvian girl could respond. Zhaan lifted an eyebrow in question to her protégé.
"I've had a very interesting life," Malika told her with a slight shrug of a shoulder.
"Very well," Aeryn broke in. "Rygel... you stay here then and guard our escape route. The rest of us will go inside and retrieve Chiana and Berret. Do you have the tools you'll need?" she asked Malika.
The Delvian woman held up a small pouch of tools she'd removed from a leather bag on her belt.
"All set. Let's go and get this the frell over with so we can go home," she said.
Danner didn't like the way the Shrike looked, not in the slightest. He still looked unhealthy but now he regarded Danner with a look of dispassionate detachment. It was eerie the way the man just quietly watched him. They both had been silently staring at each other from across the length of the cell for the pass few microns waiting for Nanno and Sheppard to join them. The assassin's eyes never blinked as far as Danner could tell, and he seemed almost not to be breathing at all he was so stone still. None to soon, Danner heard the other two men approaching and sighed outwardly in relieve when they came inside the cell.
"There he is," Nanno told the collar-tech.
"He doesn't look well," commented Sheppard. "You'll have to take better care of him once the collar is attached if you want him to last very long." He moved closer to the prisoner held to the wall. "You say he had scars on his neck that might have been from a pervious collar?"
Nanno nodded an affirmative.
"Can you remove the slave collar so I can get a look at them? There might be established pathways I can use to make the procedure go much easier."
"Yes," answered Nanno as he removed the control from his belt. He pushed a few buttons and the collar's hold on the cell wall released. Berret was able to move his head slightly forward now that it was free. Nanno pushed another button and there was an audible click as the collar itself unlocked. Sheppard stepped forward and removed the device from around the Shrike's neck so he could view the scars there.
"Yes. Yes," he said over his shoulder. "We might be able to use these point here. They're..." he cut off his sentence as he turned back and noticed something strange. Berret had begun to smile... wickedly.
Chiana had been able to move into a position where she could see what was going on inside the metal room. The outside of the place had been hastily constructed judging by the rough and sloppy wields. There was a bank of machinery attached to the outside of one wall that hummed with power and she wondered what it could have been for. Through the open door she could see the two men had joined the heavyset third. When they finally moved aside she could see for the first time who she had been searching for.
"Berret!" she murmured, hidden in the shadows from the men inside the room. The Shrike looked awful. His face was drawn and haggard but his eyes showed no emotion. He seemed even more dispassionate then usual. If she hadn't reached Lassar before he could get them a collar, she would have sworn by the man's appearance it was already too late. The trio spoke for a few microts and then the man with the black bag set it down and walked over to Berret while the tall one played with a device he'd taken from his belt. A couple of microts later the collar-tech reached up and removed the slave collar from Berret's neck. Chiana found herself becoming angry as the man examined his throat.
"Frelling bastard," the Nebari cursed in building fury as she lifted her pistol ready to charge in and kill them all. Before she could, the man in front of the ex-assassin turned to say something to the other two behind him. The look on Berret's face froze her in place - he was smiling.
The eerie grin raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck.
The man before him sensed too late that something was wrong, turning back to see the look on the Shrike's features just as Berret lowered both arms. He seized Sheppard by the hair on the back of his head with one hand and yanked it backwards sharply. Berret tore the slaver collar away from the shocked man with his other hand and as Sheppard inhaled to scream for help... the ex-Enforcer drove the metal collar into his open mouth with such force that Chiana heard the collar-tech's neck crack from her position outside the makeshift cell.
Danner step forward to assist Sheppard a microt before he actually thought about what he was doing. He realized his mistake a split microt later as Berret dropped the collar-tech's body and lunged at him. The shorter man started to backpedal away from the semi-lose Shrike but was too late to totally avoid the blow. Berret's stiffen hand chopped downward catching Danner on the collarbone, the hard edge shattering the bones there and driving the man to the floor with a painful yelp. Chiana watched it all take place in the blink of an eye from her hiding place. The tall man scrambled back away from the snarling Shrike, the only thing holding Berret in place was the pair of bonds still attached around his ankles. Danner groaned out in pain while Nanno cursed loudly and brandished his control device in Berret's direction. He savagely stabbed at a series of buttons and the machinery on the outside wall hummed into life. Inside the cell, the ex-assassin howled in pain and rage as arcs of electricity jumped from the cell wall to his thrashing body.
Chiana understood instantly then what the piece of equipment mounted on the wall was for. She flicked the safety off her pulse pistol and aimed at the device without a microt's hesitation. The gun bucked slightly in her hands and she was rewarded with the sight of the apparatus bursting apart as the bolt struck it. Inside the cell the bolts of energy stopped electrifying Berret but the manacles on his lower legs still held him fast to the cell wall. Chiana cursed silently as she realized they must draw their power from a secondary source. Nanno apparently didn't hear her shot with his attention focused on Berret. Seeing the Shrike was no longer being electrocuted, he pounded on the control device in his hand for a few microts trying to get it to work again. He cursed Berret loudly as the Shrike made another futile attempt to grab at his captor before giving up on the handheld apparatus and drawing his own pistol. With an angry roar he leveled it at Berret's face.
Chiana saw the tall man point his weapon at her friend, without thinking she charged the cell doorway.
"No!" she shouted as she snapped off a pulse bolt that nearly missed the man.
Nanno, his fear giving speed to his reactions, spun to face Chiana at her cry, the move allowing him to barely escape her wild shot. He brought his own gun up and sent a bolt in the rushing Nebari girl's direction. Chiana's instincts took over and she tucked herself into a forward roll in mid air, the pulse bolt passing through the space her head had just occupied a fraction of a microt before. As her feet passed over her head, she straightened out as she came out of the roll, thrusting her legs forward and allowing her boots to impact the man high in the chest. The combination of her speed and weight drove Nanno backward and they both crashed to the ground. As she hit the floor, she kicked hard downward with both legs, pinning the man's shoulders with her feet to the cell wall they had slid up against. Nanno snarled at her and attempted to bring his pistol around their tangle of limbs to aim at the woman's head, it became a race to see who would kill the other first. With a shrill war cry, Chiana thrust her pulse gun between her thighs and fired several times point blank into Nanno's face.
The man stopped moving and when the Chakan smoke cleared, the tall man didn't have much in the way of a head left. Chiana sighed in relief and then rolled off the body. Quickly she checked to see that the shorter one had passed out from his injury as she got to her feet, of course the collar-tech was clearly dead. His head laying at an awkward angle and his jaw obviously shattered from Berret ramming the slaver collar down it. Berret himself was silently regarding her with dead hateful eyes.
Berret's attitude confused her until she realized that she still had Crichton's shirt wrapped around her face hiding her identity. She reached up and ripped the material off her head so he could see that it was her.
"Are you all right, Retty?" she asked.
Berret now cocked his head and regarded her curiously. Chiana thinking everything was all right and that he now knew who she was, stepped forward to embrace him.
"I'm so glad to see you," she started and caught the change in his eyes just in time. She was just able to drop and roll backwards out of his reach as he swiped at her with an envenomed hiss. The strike would have been a killing blow to her head had she been one step closer to the half-bound man.
"What the frell is wrong with you?" Chiana exclaimed in shock as she bounced back to her feet.
Berret was now regarding her again with expressionless eyes, the savageness leaving them as quickly as it had surfaced.
"I already killed you," he said a moment later, his voice dry and departed of all emotion. "I serve Arckatius and the Syndicate."
"Frell!" moaned Chiana in a whisper. "The control collar pathways... they're active again."
She looked at the man and calmed her voice. "Listen to me. You're not a Syndicate Enforcer anymore... remember?"
Berret's stare didn't change. "My purpose is to eradicate the enemy," he recited.
"I'm not your enemy. It's me, Chiana. You have to remember," pleaded the girl.
"Chiana...Nebari, female...Status: eradicated by Shrike457," responded Berret as if making a report. "Arckatius is to be obeyed at all costs."
"You're not Shrike457 anymore. Your name is Berret. You didn't kill me... I'm right here," Chiana said as she began to hear D'argo and the others calling her name from the floor above. The Nebari woman turned her comm badge back on and called the rest of her crewmates.
"Are you in danger?" demanded D'argo over the comm.
"No. Everything's pretty much over with down here."
She then gave them direction on where to find the staircase to the lower level.
"Is Berret all right?" asked Aeryn next.
Chiana looked back over at her friend. "Leave - no - witnesses," Berret recited in a graveyard voice while glaring at her with his lifeless eyes.
"He's here... but something's wrong with him. He's not acting right. Is Zhaan and Malika with you?"
She could hear John and D'argo swearing in the background as Aeryn answered.
"They're both here with us. We'll be at your location in just a few microns. Are you safe from him until we can get there?" the ex-Peacekeeper asked with a note of concern in her voice.
"He's still bound to the cell wall somehow. I'll be okay," Chiana replied.
"Don't touch anything until we get there. We're on our way," Aeryn said and then closed the comm-link.
Berret had fallen silent again and merely watched her. Waiting for her to make a mistake and stray within reach.
"Hurry up, guys," she murmured to herself.
"I can't tell what's wrong with him for sure until we get him back to Moya and I can examine him," said Zhaan a few moments later as she observed the Shrike who was still restrained to the metal wall.
"That just great," grumbled John. "How are we gonna do that when every time someone gets near him, he tries to take a bite out of them? Are you sure its something to do with those pathways left inside him from the old collar and nothing these guys did to him?"
"That's the best deduction I could make without my equipment," replied the Delvian.
"I'm perfectly fine," Berret said suddenly in a calm easy voice. "Why don't you release me?"
The Luxan narrowed his eyes. "He's lying," said D'argo. "He's trying to draw us in."
The Shrike's charade faded as he hissed in pent up rage, his eyes turning dark and hateful once again.
"Well, according to Chubby here," said Andar while trying to ignore Berret for the moment. He gave Danner a shake, making the injured man moan in pain with the movement, "He and his deceased compatriot didn't do anything to Berret other then shock him as punishment."
Malika stroked her cheek in thought with one forefinger. "That might be enough depending on how strong the charges where. The microbes would have been making demands on his system to help repair damage to his body the electrical current caused and not being fed enough to compensate would weaken him considerably. Those experimental Peacekeeper microbes were not designed to operate in conjunction with a control collar device to begin with and the current passing through the nervous system might have re-energized pathways that should have been dormant." The younger Delvian glanced over at Zhaan to see if she concurred with her assessment. The older Pa'u nodded in agreement.
"The Syndicate had no idea what they were creating when they mixed the two technologies together," Zhaan concluded. Malika crossed her arms and then looked at Chiana.
"Its actually a scientific wonder that he was able to function at all while with the Syndicate."
"Well, I'm glad you find him so fascinating," the Nebari snapped sarcastically and then waved the comment off. She'd known the younger Delvian long enough to know that while she was normally moody and unpredictable as far as Chiana could tell. The woman had a passion for the sciences and when presented with a problem she found interesting, she became so focused she was like a different person. Sometimes Chiana envied the other girl, being flighty and contrary one minute and the next having everyone take her seriously when her area of expertise came up. Even Zhaan would seek her out and ask her advise when something stumped her... and there wasn't much that could stump Zhaan. Nobody went out of their way to ask Chiana for her advise, except maybe Berret. And right now it looked like the only thing he wanted was to kill them all. It bothered her that he kept insisting that she was already dead and that he'd been the one to kill her. She softened the look in her eyes and apologized to Malika.
"I'm sorry. Anything you can do to help him, I'll be glad for," she said. Despite Malika's earlier grousing, she surprised Chiana by giving her a small smile of understanding.
"The big question is how do we get him off the cell wall and back to Moya in the condition he's in?" asked Aeryn.
"He IS a tad violent at the moment," put in Crichton. Chiana was happy to note that her crewmates were making a serious effort to bring him home despite his dangerous condition when a half cycle earlier they might have elected to leave him behind or kill him outright. She knew deep down the man considered himself still an outsider among the crew, she wished he was in his right mind so he could see the risks they were willing to take on his behalf. She wished he could see that they wouldn't abandon him.
"What about putting him to sleep?" asked Andar.
"The microbes are probably so hyperactive now they would counteract any agent we could give him to knock him out," said Zhaan.
"Maybe we should get Sparky down here and have him talk to Berret. That should put him to sleep... works for me," quipped John.
"This is serious, Crichton," said Aeryn irately.
"Sorry, just trying to help by lightening the mood," replied the human.
From his place in the corner, D'argo growled. "Enough of this!" he said as he strode forwarded toward Berret.
"Yo Darg! What are you doing?" asked Crichton in alarm.
"Taking care of this so we can get the frell out of here," the Luxan rumbled.
Chiana watched opened mouth and unable to voice a protest. She was sure D'argo meant to hurt Berret.
D'argo walked to just with in Berret's reach. The Shrike watched him come and without warning sprang at the huge warrior. D'argo leaned his upper body back just far enough to avoid Berret striking blow. As the Shrike's fist sailed passed, D'argo's right arm pistoned in a blur as he threw a right cross that landed squarely on Berret's jaw. Without so much as a groan, the ex-assassin folded up and hit the floor unconscious.
"There," said D'argo as he shook out his right fist. "Problem solved." The Luxan turned to John and then said, "Go turn off the power supply so we can free him and let's get the yotz outta here."
Zhaan walked out of her med-lab with a dire look marring her beautiful blue face.
Chiana jumped up from the seat she'd occupied for the last two arns at the Delvian's appearance.
"Well?" she asked hopefully.
Zhaan gave her a weak smile. "I'm afraid I have some bad news, Chiana dear. His mind is damaged. I'm afraid the stress of his treatment for whatever reason has caused him to break with this reality."
Chiana tilted her head to one side. "H-How can that be?" she asked. "Can't you fix him?"
The Delvian shook her head. "It's not as simple as that. The mind is sometimes a fragile thing. Something happened that caused it to snap. Something he finds he's unable to deal with or refuses to deal with."
"Can't you do that Unity thing and bring him back?" the girl pleaded. Zhaan grasped both of Chiana's hands in hers, trying to comfort the distraught younger woman.
"He has to want to come back... and I feel he doesn't want too. For all intensive purposes I'm afraid the person we lost on the planet is gone," Zhaan explained to her. "Even if we could bring him back now you would be forcing him to live whatever nightmare he's living in his mind, here in our reality. None of us would be real to him."
"So that's it? We just give up?" Chiana said in disbelieve. "There nothing we can do or try at all to help him? He's lost to us... to me... forever?" Tears started to streak the girl's gray cheeks and she wiped them away in frustration.
"There's nothing we can be sure that would work. No," Zhaan said in a quiet voice. Chiana caught the slight hesitation in Zhaan's tone and pounced on it as if it where a life raft and she were drowning.
"What is it, Zhaan? What is it you're not telling me that you think has a small chance of working?"
"I really don't think it's a viable option, Chiana. As it has little likelihood of success so I don't want to get your hopes up," Zhaan started to say.
"Tell me! Any chance... no matter how small... is better then no chance at all," Chiana persisted.
Zhaan drew in a heavy breath and sat down. Bidding Chiana to sit besides her she continued once the young Nebari woman was seated.
"There is a ancient Delvian healing method that is suppose to restore a being's mental balance."
"That's good," said Chiana brightening slightly at the ray of hope. "Let's try it."
Zhaan held up one hand to stop her from going on. "Let me finish, dear. The only problem is it's something usually only attempted by the rare twelfth level Pa'u. I am only a tenth level Priestess. It requires much more mental control then I feel I possess. I have only read about it in the ancient scripts and if I were to attempt it I would need Malika's help and she has just started her studies."
Chiana nodded in understanding. "So what's the worse that could happen? It doesn't work?" she asked.
Zhaan looked Chiana straight in the eye, becoming deadly serious. "Despite the risk to ourselves, if Malika and I make a mistake or fail in anyway... we could destroy his mind totally and forever, or worse yet... we could kill him outright." She paused for as few microts to let her words sink into the Nebari woman's mind.
"At least the way he is now, he's still technically alive," Zhaan finally added.
"Of course," he replied. "I fully understand the procedure. I assure you I have done it before for some of the lower Syndicate Houses. Everything will go fine as long as you have my fee handy."
Nanno glared at the man. "You'll get your credits. Just be absolutely sure you know what you're doing. This isn't some uncooperative pleasure slave we are talking about here. One thing not done right in the procedure and we wouldn't live a microt once we turn that man loose."
"Relax. I'm well aware of what a Syndicate Enforcer is capable of," replied Sheppard. "While we wait for your source to produce the collar, may I see the subject so I better understand what I will be working with?"
"Of course," said Nanno. "Right this way."
Sheppard paused to pick-up a sinister looking black bag that Chiana supposed contained the instruments he required for attaching a control collar to a slave. Both men turned and headed through the door and down the staircase. As soon as they were out of sight, the Nebari woman silently dropped to the floor of the office and cat footed over to the opened doorway. She arrived just in time to observe the pair turn a corner and continue descending the next flight of stairs.
"He's a Sebacean male," she heard the tall one say.
"That should be a easy attachment then," replied the other man. "Hynerian's usually present the most trouble with collar attunement." Their voices faded as they moved deeper down in to the staircase. Chiana moved a little way from the door and turned her comm badge back on.
"Aeryn?" she whispered.
"Chiana! Report!" came back the ex-Peacekeeper's tense response.
"I'm closing in to where they're holding him. Two of the men we watched come in just headed down a staircase under the warehouse," she whispered. "I'm going to follow them down and I'll get back to you when I have an exact location."
"Pip! Wait for us to..." started Crichton over Aeryn's comm just as Chiana closed the comm link and shut the device off so it wouldn't give her away. She reached behind her and drew her pulse pistol. Unlike the PK issue ones that the rest carried, this one was a civilian model. Thinner and sleeker then the military guns, it didn't have the same ammo capacity but was easier to conceal on her smaller frame. She clutched the silver pulse weapon in both hands and peeked around the door jam to make sure no one was on their way back up the staircase. Seeing no one, she thrust her pistol out before and silently started padding down the steps.
"Hang on, Berret. I'm coming," she muttered barely above a whisper.
"Damn that kid!" cursed Crichton as he heard the comm link close. "Now what do we do? She didn't even wait to tell us where the hell the staircase was located inside the warehouse."
Aeryn frowned as she pinned her badge back onto her shirt. "Well, we can assume that the first floor is now empty so we could began making our entrance and then wait for her to give us a more detailed location once we're inside."
"I agree," rumbled D'argo. "We should not waste the time now that we know its safe to proceed that far."
"We don't know that for sure!" exclaimed Rygel. "That silly tramp didn't say for positive that the first floor was clear. There could be a hundred of them in there waiting for us."
"Then we shall deal with them," said the Luxan.
"You mean, 'you'll deal with them.' I'm not going anywhere near there," replied the Hynerian Dominar.
"Wrong again, Bucko," said John. "We need you to pick the lock for us. So that means... you go."
Rygel started to back his thronesled away from the human. To his relieve Malika spoke up.
"We don't need him," she said. "I can pick the lock... much faster and a whole lot quieter then Toadface."
Crichton and Aeryn looked at her in surprise. "Are you sure about that?" John then asked.
"Believe her. Take my word, she can do it," Andar put in from his turn at sentry position watching the warehouse before the Delvian girl could respond. Zhaan lifted an eyebrow in question to her protégé.
"I've had a very interesting life," Malika told her with a slight shrug of a shoulder.
"Very well," Aeryn broke in. "Rygel... you stay here then and guard our escape route. The rest of us will go inside and retrieve Chiana and Berret. Do you have the tools you'll need?" she asked Malika.
The Delvian woman held up a small pouch of tools she'd removed from a leather bag on her belt.
"All set. Let's go and get this the frell over with so we can go home," she said.
Danner didn't like the way the Shrike looked, not in the slightest. He still looked unhealthy but now he regarded Danner with a look of dispassionate detachment. It was eerie the way the man just quietly watched him. They both had been silently staring at each other from across the length of the cell for the pass few microns waiting for Nanno and Sheppard to join them. The assassin's eyes never blinked as far as Danner could tell, and he seemed almost not to be breathing at all he was so stone still. None to soon, Danner heard the other two men approaching and sighed outwardly in relieve when they came inside the cell.
"There he is," Nanno told the collar-tech.
"He doesn't look well," commented Sheppard. "You'll have to take better care of him once the collar is attached if you want him to last very long." He moved closer to the prisoner held to the wall. "You say he had scars on his neck that might have been from a pervious collar?"
Nanno nodded an affirmative.
"Can you remove the slave collar so I can get a look at them? There might be established pathways I can use to make the procedure go much easier."
"Yes," answered Nanno as he removed the control from his belt. He pushed a few buttons and the collar's hold on the cell wall released. Berret was able to move his head slightly forward now that it was free. Nanno pushed another button and there was an audible click as the collar itself unlocked. Sheppard stepped forward and removed the device from around the Shrike's neck so he could view the scars there.
"Yes. Yes," he said over his shoulder. "We might be able to use these point here. They're..." he cut off his sentence as he turned back and noticed something strange. Berret had begun to smile... wickedly.
Chiana had been able to move into a position where she could see what was going on inside the metal room. The outside of the place had been hastily constructed judging by the rough and sloppy wields. There was a bank of machinery attached to the outside of one wall that hummed with power and she wondered what it could have been for. Through the open door she could see the two men had joined the heavyset third. When they finally moved aside she could see for the first time who she had been searching for.
"Berret!" she murmured, hidden in the shadows from the men inside the room. The Shrike looked awful. His face was drawn and haggard but his eyes showed no emotion. He seemed even more dispassionate then usual. If she hadn't reached Lassar before he could get them a collar, she would have sworn by the man's appearance it was already too late. The trio spoke for a few microts and then the man with the black bag set it down and walked over to Berret while the tall one played with a device he'd taken from his belt. A couple of microts later the collar-tech reached up and removed the slave collar from Berret's neck. Chiana found herself becoming angry as the man examined his throat.
"Frelling bastard," the Nebari cursed in building fury as she lifted her pistol ready to charge in and kill them all. Before she could, the man in front of the ex-assassin turned to say something to the other two behind him. The look on Berret's face froze her in place - he was smiling.
The eerie grin raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck.
The man before him sensed too late that something was wrong, turning back to see the look on the Shrike's features just as Berret lowered both arms. He seized Sheppard by the hair on the back of his head with one hand and yanked it backwards sharply. Berret tore the slaver collar away from the shocked man with his other hand and as Sheppard inhaled to scream for help... the ex-Enforcer drove the metal collar into his open mouth with such force that Chiana heard the collar-tech's neck crack from her position outside the makeshift cell.
Danner step forward to assist Sheppard a microt before he actually thought about what he was doing. He realized his mistake a split microt later as Berret dropped the collar-tech's body and lunged at him. The shorter man started to backpedal away from the semi-lose Shrike but was too late to totally avoid the blow. Berret's stiffen hand chopped downward catching Danner on the collarbone, the hard edge shattering the bones there and driving the man to the floor with a painful yelp. Chiana watched it all take place in the blink of an eye from her hiding place. The tall man scrambled back away from the snarling Shrike, the only thing holding Berret in place was the pair of bonds still attached around his ankles. Danner groaned out in pain while Nanno cursed loudly and brandished his control device in Berret's direction. He savagely stabbed at a series of buttons and the machinery on the outside wall hummed into life. Inside the cell, the ex-assassin howled in pain and rage as arcs of electricity jumped from the cell wall to his thrashing body.
Chiana understood instantly then what the piece of equipment mounted on the wall was for. She flicked the safety off her pulse pistol and aimed at the device without a microt's hesitation. The gun bucked slightly in her hands and she was rewarded with the sight of the apparatus bursting apart as the bolt struck it. Inside the cell the bolts of energy stopped electrifying Berret but the manacles on his lower legs still held him fast to the cell wall. Chiana cursed silently as she realized they must draw their power from a secondary source. Nanno apparently didn't hear her shot with his attention focused on Berret. Seeing the Shrike was no longer being electrocuted, he pounded on the control device in his hand for a few microts trying to get it to work again. He cursed Berret loudly as the Shrike made another futile attempt to grab at his captor before giving up on the handheld apparatus and drawing his own pistol. With an angry roar he leveled it at Berret's face.
Chiana saw the tall man point his weapon at her friend, without thinking she charged the cell doorway.
"No!" she shouted as she snapped off a pulse bolt that nearly missed the man.
Nanno, his fear giving speed to his reactions, spun to face Chiana at her cry, the move allowing him to barely escape her wild shot. He brought his own gun up and sent a bolt in the rushing Nebari girl's direction. Chiana's instincts took over and she tucked herself into a forward roll in mid air, the pulse bolt passing through the space her head had just occupied a fraction of a microt before. As her feet passed over her head, she straightened out as she came out of the roll, thrusting her legs forward and allowing her boots to impact the man high in the chest. The combination of her speed and weight drove Nanno backward and they both crashed to the ground. As she hit the floor, she kicked hard downward with both legs, pinning the man's shoulders with her feet to the cell wall they had slid up against. Nanno snarled at her and attempted to bring his pistol around their tangle of limbs to aim at the woman's head, it became a race to see who would kill the other first. With a shrill war cry, Chiana thrust her pulse gun between her thighs and fired several times point blank into Nanno's face.
The man stopped moving and when the Chakan smoke cleared, the tall man didn't have much in the way of a head left. Chiana sighed in relief and then rolled off the body. Quickly she checked to see that the shorter one had passed out from his injury as she got to her feet, of course the collar-tech was clearly dead. His head laying at an awkward angle and his jaw obviously shattered from Berret ramming the slaver collar down it. Berret himself was silently regarding her with dead hateful eyes.
Berret's attitude confused her until she realized that she still had Crichton's shirt wrapped around her face hiding her identity. She reached up and ripped the material off her head so he could see that it was her.
"Are you all right, Retty?" she asked.
Berret now cocked his head and regarded her curiously. Chiana thinking everything was all right and that he now knew who she was, stepped forward to embrace him.
"I'm so glad to see you," she started and caught the change in his eyes just in time. She was just able to drop and roll backwards out of his reach as he swiped at her with an envenomed hiss. The strike would have been a killing blow to her head had she been one step closer to the half-bound man.
"What the frell is wrong with you?" Chiana exclaimed in shock as she bounced back to her feet.
Berret was now regarding her again with expressionless eyes, the savageness leaving them as quickly as it had surfaced.
"I already killed you," he said a moment later, his voice dry and departed of all emotion. "I serve Arckatius and the Syndicate."
"Frell!" moaned Chiana in a whisper. "The control collar pathways... they're active again."
She looked at the man and calmed her voice. "Listen to me. You're not a Syndicate Enforcer anymore... remember?"
Berret's stare didn't change. "My purpose is to eradicate the enemy," he recited.
"I'm not your enemy. It's me, Chiana. You have to remember," pleaded the girl.
"Chiana...Nebari, female...Status: eradicated by Shrike457," responded Berret as if making a report. "Arckatius is to be obeyed at all costs."
"You're not Shrike457 anymore. Your name is Berret. You didn't kill me... I'm right here," Chiana said as she began to hear D'argo and the others calling her name from the floor above. The Nebari woman turned her comm badge back on and called the rest of her crewmates.
"Are you in danger?" demanded D'argo over the comm.
"No. Everything's pretty much over with down here."
She then gave them direction on where to find the staircase to the lower level.
"Is Berret all right?" asked Aeryn next.
Chiana looked back over at her friend. "Leave - no - witnesses," Berret recited in a graveyard voice while glaring at her with his lifeless eyes.
"He's here... but something's wrong with him. He's not acting right. Is Zhaan and Malika with you?"
She could hear John and D'argo swearing in the background as Aeryn answered.
"They're both here with us. We'll be at your location in just a few microns. Are you safe from him until we can get there?" the ex-Peacekeeper asked with a note of concern in her voice.
"He's still bound to the cell wall somehow. I'll be okay," Chiana replied.
"Don't touch anything until we get there. We're on our way," Aeryn said and then closed the comm-link.
Berret had fallen silent again and merely watched her. Waiting for her to make a mistake and stray within reach.
"Hurry up, guys," she murmured to herself.
"I can't tell what's wrong with him for sure until we get him back to Moya and I can examine him," said Zhaan a few moments later as she observed the Shrike who was still restrained to the metal wall.
"That just great," grumbled John. "How are we gonna do that when every time someone gets near him, he tries to take a bite out of them? Are you sure its something to do with those pathways left inside him from the old collar and nothing these guys did to him?"
"That's the best deduction I could make without my equipment," replied the Delvian.
"I'm perfectly fine," Berret said suddenly in a calm easy voice. "Why don't you release me?"
The Luxan narrowed his eyes. "He's lying," said D'argo. "He's trying to draw us in."
The Shrike's charade faded as he hissed in pent up rage, his eyes turning dark and hateful once again.
"Well, according to Chubby here," said Andar while trying to ignore Berret for the moment. He gave Danner a shake, making the injured man moan in pain with the movement, "He and his deceased compatriot didn't do anything to Berret other then shock him as punishment."
Malika stroked her cheek in thought with one forefinger. "That might be enough depending on how strong the charges where. The microbes would have been making demands on his system to help repair damage to his body the electrical current caused and not being fed enough to compensate would weaken him considerably. Those experimental Peacekeeper microbes were not designed to operate in conjunction with a control collar device to begin with and the current passing through the nervous system might have re-energized pathways that should have been dormant." The younger Delvian glanced over at Zhaan to see if she concurred with her assessment. The older Pa'u nodded in agreement.
"The Syndicate had no idea what they were creating when they mixed the two technologies together," Zhaan concluded. Malika crossed her arms and then looked at Chiana.
"Its actually a scientific wonder that he was able to function at all while with the Syndicate."
"Well, I'm glad you find him so fascinating," the Nebari snapped sarcastically and then waved the comment off. She'd known the younger Delvian long enough to know that while she was normally moody and unpredictable as far as Chiana could tell. The woman had a passion for the sciences and when presented with a problem she found interesting, she became so focused she was like a different person. Sometimes Chiana envied the other girl, being flighty and contrary one minute and the next having everyone take her seriously when her area of expertise came up. Even Zhaan would seek her out and ask her advise when something stumped her... and there wasn't much that could stump Zhaan. Nobody went out of their way to ask Chiana for her advise, except maybe Berret. And right now it looked like the only thing he wanted was to kill them all. It bothered her that he kept insisting that she was already dead and that he'd been the one to kill her. She softened the look in her eyes and apologized to Malika.
"I'm sorry. Anything you can do to help him, I'll be glad for," she said. Despite Malika's earlier grousing, she surprised Chiana by giving her a small smile of understanding.
"The big question is how do we get him off the cell wall and back to Moya in the condition he's in?" asked Aeryn.
"He IS a tad violent at the moment," put in Crichton. Chiana was happy to note that her crewmates were making a serious effort to bring him home despite his dangerous condition when a half cycle earlier they might have elected to leave him behind or kill him outright. She knew deep down the man considered himself still an outsider among the crew, she wished he was in his right mind so he could see the risks they were willing to take on his behalf. She wished he could see that they wouldn't abandon him.
"What about putting him to sleep?" asked Andar.
"The microbes are probably so hyperactive now they would counteract any agent we could give him to knock him out," said Zhaan.
"Maybe we should get Sparky down here and have him talk to Berret. That should put him to sleep... works for me," quipped John.
"This is serious, Crichton," said Aeryn irately.
"Sorry, just trying to help by lightening the mood," replied the human.
From his place in the corner, D'argo growled. "Enough of this!" he said as he strode forwarded toward Berret.
"Yo Darg! What are you doing?" asked Crichton in alarm.
"Taking care of this so we can get the frell out of here," the Luxan rumbled.
Chiana watched opened mouth and unable to voice a protest. She was sure D'argo meant to hurt Berret.
D'argo walked to just with in Berret's reach. The Shrike watched him come and without warning sprang at the huge warrior. D'argo leaned his upper body back just far enough to avoid Berret striking blow. As the Shrike's fist sailed passed, D'argo's right arm pistoned in a blur as he threw a right cross that landed squarely on Berret's jaw. Without so much as a groan, the ex-assassin folded up and hit the floor unconscious.
"There," said D'argo as he shook out his right fist. "Problem solved." The Luxan turned to John and then said, "Go turn off the power supply so we can free him and let's get the yotz outta here."
Zhaan walked out of her med-lab with a dire look marring her beautiful blue face.
Chiana jumped up from the seat she'd occupied for the last two arns at the Delvian's appearance.
"Well?" she asked hopefully.
Zhaan gave her a weak smile. "I'm afraid I have some bad news, Chiana dear. His mind is damaged. I'm afraid the stress of his treatment for whatever reason has caused him to break with this reality."
Chiana tilted her head to one side. "H-How can that be?" she asked. "Can't you fix him?"
The Delvian shook her head. "It's not as simple as that. The mind is sometimes a fragile thing. Something happened that caused it to snap. Something he finds he's unable to deal with or refuses to deal with."
"Can't you do that Unity thing and bring him back?" the girl pleaded. Zhaan grasped both of Chiana's hands in hers, trying to comfort the distraught younger woman.
"He has to want to come back... and I feel he doesn't want too. For all intensive purposes I'm afraid the person we lost on the planet is gone," Zhaan explained to her. "Even if we could bring him back now you would be forcing him to live whatever nightmare he's living in his mind, here in our reality. None of us would be real to him."
"So that's it? We just give up?" Chiana said in disbelieve. "There nothing we can do or try at all to help him? He's lost to us... to me... forever?" Tears started to streak the girl's gray cheeks and she wiped them away in frustration.
"There's nothing we can be sure that would work. No," Zhaan said in a quiet voice. Chiana caught the slight hesitation in Zhaan's tone and pounced on it as if it where a life raft and she were drowning.
"What is it, Zhaan? What is it you're not telling me that you think has a small chance of working?"
"I really don't think it's a viable option, Chiana. As it has little likelihood of success so I don't want to get your hopes up," Zhaan started to say.
"Tell me! Any chance... no matter how small... is better then no chance at all," Chiana persisted.
Zhaan drew in a heavy breath and sat down. Bidding Chiana to sit besides her she continued once the young Nebari woman was seated.
"There is a ancient Delvian healing method that is suppose to restore a being's mental balance."
"That's good," said Chiana brightening slightly at the ray of hope. "Let's try it."
Zhaan held up one hand to stop her from going on. "Let me finish, dear. The only problem is it's something usually only attempted by the rare twelfth level Pa'u. I am only a tenth level Priestess. It requires much more mental control then I feel I possess. I have only read about it in the ancient scripts and if I were to attempt it I would need Malika's help and she has just started her studies."
Chiana nodded in understanding. "So what's the worse that could happen? It doesn't work?" she asked.
Zhaan looked Chiana straight in the eye, becoming deadly serious. "Despite the risk to ourselves, if Malika and I make a mistake or fail in anyway... we could destroy his mind totally and forever, or worse yet... we could kill him outright." She paused for as few microts to let her words sink into the Nebari woman's mind.
"At least the way he is now, he's still technically alive," Zhaan finally added.