Disclaimer: I am only borrowing these characters. They will be returned for a full refund with no permanent damages incurred. Unfortunately, I paid nothing, so I will get no money back. Damn refunds.

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MIND AND BODY

Chapter 6: Long Memories

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Hoshi looked through the viewscreen at the small figure of Enterprise, traveling quickly through the stars. "Where is he taking the ship?" she asked, looking up at Constable Hamisis.

His golden eyes tracked the ship's progress on sensors. "He is on a direct course for the colony in which he was sentenced, seven hundred cycles ago. I do not know what he wishes with it," he replied finally, speaking slowly as if this were something he did not want to tell the young ensign.

"Revenge, maybe?" Hoshi suggested.

"Perhaps. But it is no longer a penal colony. Several million Halparens live there," Hamisis said. "Our weapons will easily stop your ship, if he should attack the colony---but we must stop him before that happens, or all your friends will die."

"Constable," said one of the lieutenants. "Their warp speed has increased. We have thirteen hours until he reaches Paleya Colony at present heading."

"Your ship's maximum speed is a little under warp five, is it not?" Constable Hamisis asked Hoshi, who nodded. "Very well. We will board them and search out the thought-saver. We may be able to neutralize the fugitive. I feared not when we received your first message, but your ship is not as advanced as I had guessed." He turned and looked straight at her. "I will need you to go with us as a guide, since we do not know the layout of your ship."

"Of course," Hoshi said, although the thought of Jolas made her shudder. "I wouldn't let you go without me." She looked back at Enterprise, silver against the deep black of the stars. "What are we going to do?"

"You will have to wear this," said Hamisis, holding out a silver circlet with circuitry running along the edges. "It will shield you from the limited telepathy the thought-saver allows our race." He smiled grimly. "Not all of our people have that ability. Once the telepaths ruled over those who did not. That is why Jolas is a fugitive from the law; he follows the old ways. His terrorist cell kept a garrison of non-telepath slaves for years, culling them from the local population on the colony world and working them to death like animals, even though most telepaths would treat animals better than he did those poor people." Hamisis sighed. "There are still some who feel that non-telepaths should be treated as lesser beings."

"That was seven hundred years ago?" Hoshi asked.

"Change comes slowly to our people," said Hamisis. "It is partly the effect of using the thought-savers and clones to prolong life. Ideas which would have died in fifty years stay for five hundred." He had explained to her earlier that aspect of their society. "And it does not help that telepaths are rendered virtually immortal by the use of these devices. Non-telepaths lose synaptic functions after a few transfers; memories fade and personality disappears if the process is kept going. Any non-telepath would have been dead if no one had activated the transfer, but Jolas lasted for seven hundred cycles."

"Lucky us," Hoshi said petulantly.

Hamisis laughed. "Do not worry. He will spend the rest of eternity in that box, with safeguards taken so that he will not be able to trick anyone into releasing him again. We did not have these shields when he was apprehended last time."

"Did you apprehend him last time?" Hoshi asked.

Hamisis looked startled. "Me personally? Even if I had been born then, I would now not be alive to tell the tale, Ensign. I am not a telepath. My years would be at most five hundred, if even that much. No, but the memories are long in my people, and we know what Jolas is capable of doing. We do not forget a threat."

Hoshi looked down at the silver circlet in her hands. "Fortunately for us," she said. "Thank you for your help."

"Oh, it's not for your sake that we are helping. Jolas is a criminal many hundreds of times over," said Hamisis, squinting at the viewscreen. "But we do not kill innocent bystanders. Your friend did not know what he was picking up when he took the thought-saver from the planet, and in a way it is a relief to be able to close the casebook on this one."

She nodded and put the silver circlet on her head, dropping it down low over her temples. "Well, when do we get started?"

Hamisis smiled at the young ensign. "We get started right now," he said.

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They transported onto F-Deck, near the armory. Hoshi, dwarfed by the company of tall Halparens, bit her lip with nervousness as she beckoned them forward. The ship seemed oddly quiet, and no crewmen passed them in the halls. She didn't quite mind this, not certain of what she would say to explain why she was leading five aliens around the corridors.

"Here's where Jolas' thought-saver is being kept," she said in a low voice to Hamisis, who nodded and carefully pressed the panel to open the door. As it swished open with a low hiss, they quietly peeked past the frame and then slipped into the dim armory, weapons at the ready.

Hoshi pointed to the console, where a mass of silver wires sprouted, glowing where they fed into the computer. Hamisis dug through them, hand encased in a heavy steel-cloth glove, and turned to her with a scowl. "It's not there," he said.

"It's not there?" Hoshi pushed her way past the other Halparens and looked into the tangle of wire. "It's not there!"

"Are you sure no one moved it?' asked Thatmisit, Hamisil's second-in- command.

"I don't know if anyone would," said Hoshi. "Maybe Malcolm. Jolas had him pretty well brainwashed. He would probably do anything Jolas asked of him."

Hamisil and his officers exchanged a glance. "If the thought-saver is gone, but the computer links are still working, we may have a bigger problem than we thought," said Thatmisit finally, resting her rifle against her shoulder.

"What does that mean?" asked Hoshi, glancing at the wires.

"That means Jolas may have taken one of your people as a host. Telepathy is not hampered by biological circuitry the way it is in the thought-saver."

"Wonderful," said Hoshi.

"Wonderful indeed," said a voice from the doorway.

"Major Hayes!" Hoshi cried, turning around to find a phase pistol pointing straight at her head. "What's going on?" The rest of the MACOs and a few of Reed's security team stood behind them, all aiming weapons at the five Halparens and Hoshi.

"I could ask you the same question, Ensign Sato," he growled. "I have orders to take you into custody. Please come with me to the brig. If you resist I will apply deadly force."

"There is no need for that," Hamisis said, lowering his weapon. "We will go peacefully." As he set his rifle down on the floor, he tapped a control box on his wrist, and the armory dissolved around them.

Thamisit shouted a curse as soon as they rematerialized inside the Halparens' ship. "Blast that double-crossing son of a blind mule!"---or at least that was how it translated through the Halparens' translator, making Hoshi wonder at the sophistication of the machine---"I knew he would do something to foul up our plans! I say let the ship run itself aground on the Paleya defense systems. They would make short work of that primitive rust bucket you call a ship!"

"No!" Hoshi cried. "You can't let the whole crew just die! They didn't do a thing!"

Thatmisit growled low in her throat, golden skin darkening to orange around her eyes. "Be glad you are still alive, at least, whelp," she said, words hissing out through her teeth.

Hamisis put a hand between the two women, both glaring at each other with daggers in their eyes. He spoke to Thatmisit in their own language, switching off the translators. She growled at him but stepped back.

"Please disregard my lieutenant," said the Constable. "Her family lost members in Jolas' purge. She has grown up with tales of the barbaric deaths they endured."

The more Hoshi heard of the golden alien, the less she liked him. "I understand," she said, nodding to Thatmisit, who averted her eyes in anger. "But I cannot allow you to let my ship be destroyed just like that. Can't you just transport them onto this ship like you did me, so they'd be out of his thrall?"

"If I could, I would," Hamisis said. "I have neither the resources nor the room, though. To completely release them, if he has indeed taken one of your crew's bodies as his own, we would have to outfit them all with the shielders. They are difficult to manufacture. We possess only ten, one for each member of the crew of this ship."

Another of Hamisis' officers ran up at that moment. "Sir," he exclaimed, "the human vessel is hailing us!"

"What? We're cloaked. How do they know we're here?"

"We just transported onto the ship, we had to come from somewhere," said Hoshi, but Hamisis ignored her.

"What does it say?" he asked.

Captain Archer's voice filled the room. "Hostile ship. Cease following us, or I will be forced to open fire. I repeat, cease your pursuit or I will be forced to open fire."

Hoshi shook her head. "He doesn't sound like himself. He sounds like he's reading from a script."

"Do you really think he is acting on his own?" Thatmisit snapped at her. "Jolas' control extends over every aspect of your ship."

Hamisis sighed. "Open a channel," he said to the communications officer. "Convict Jolas, there is no use pretending. We know you have taken control of the human ship Enterprise. Release your control at once and prepare to be boarded. Your sentence will be less harsh if you do not resist."

"Filthy Normal. I would bathe your ship in blood had I the chance," said a silky-soft, mildly accented voice---Hoshi gasped and cut Hamisis off in mid- sentence as he started to reply.

"Malcolm!" she cried.

"Ah, so there you are, Ensign Sato," Jolas replied, speaking in Reed's voice. "I wondered where you had gotten to. Such a pity our little tryst was so rudely interrupted. I have changed since last time, though.... You'd hardly know me now." He laughed, sounding nothing at all like the stoic lieutenant. The sound rang through the silent Halparen ship, high and cold and cruel.

Hoshi wanted to be sick; the bile rose in her throat and a rushing filled her ears. "You took his body," she said, forcing each word out. "What happened to the real Malcolm Reed?"

"Oh, he's floating around somewhere," said Jolas, chuckling softly.

"Where is he, you bastard?" screamed Hoshi. Hamisis laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and shook his head. She fell silent, biting her lip. Damn Malcolm Reed, why did he have to get himself into these situations? And this time he couldn't even blame it on Trip!

"Your ship will not survive a direct attack," said Hamisis. "Release Enterprise at once and we will not fire on you. You will be removed from the human's body and will await sentencing on Halpar. It will be much better for you if you cooperate, telepath."

Reed smiled, not his own tentative smile, but a malevolent leer, twisting his face into cruelty. "I will do nothing of the sort," he told the Constable. "There are many innocent people on board this ship, controlled by the power of my mind. Every shot you take, I will kill one of them. They are lining up at the airlock as we speak. You may be able to transport some of them to your filthy little ship, but not all. Oh, no, not all."

Hoshi could not speak; the words caught in her throat. She looked at Hamisis and Thatmisit in terror, begging them silently not to let him kill her shipmates.

Hamisis growled low in his throat and then shut off the communications channel with a hard knock to the console. "Curse him!" he swore, adding a few things in his own language that Hoshi did not precisely understand. Thatmisit spoke quietly to him in a low, comforting tone.

But another idea had entered Hoshi's mind. Taking the silver circlet off of her head, she turned it around in her fingers and then tapped Hamisis on the shoulder. He turned to look at her, bemused.

"Tell me, Constable," said Hoshi, "what would happen if you put this around the head of a telepath?"

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