Chapter Five
Running from the Demons
Tia grimaced in pain from the metal clamps about her wrists, holding her aloft by her bare arms over her head. The tight metal held her immobile between two metal poles in the dim punishment chamber. She looked down at her naked body. She hung by her wrists a meter over a large black collection vat. The chamber was barely visible in the dim light; it was kept that way to emphasize the hopelessness of the captives who found themselves in this horrible metal chamber. In the corridor outside she could hear screams of other Aurans being punished.
She recognized this room; she had hung here before. Her wrists, until Phlox had treated her, had born the scars from the thick steel clamps even as her body has born the scars of dozens of such punishments. This was where Aurans who have defied the will of the Silurians were dealt with. She was to be beaten with a whip; again, as she had been before, and the vat below her was to catch any blood that fell so it may be processed to extract the valuable gold. It amused them to use such low tech methods on a subjugated people. But how could she be here?
She had been on Enterprise!
She had been with Shar-les!
She had been safe!
She felt her heart pounding her terror, even as the pain in her wrists seared her. She could barely feel her hands, could not move them. The clamps dug tightly, holding her over the vat. It hurt as much as it always had. She had been willful; always so. She had never been broken, though they had tried. Oh how they had tried. But as often as they hurt her, so often she defied them inside.
But that did not reduce the terror. Always the black whips seared her naked body, always her blood had flowed, always she had screamed in the agony of the beating and always she resisted their efforts to break her. She looked up, seeing her tormentors before her, holding black whips. They were three Aurans, those who have capitulated and actually worked for the Silurians against their people for the concessions they could obtain!
But the defiance with which she had intended to face her tormentors vanished in horror that gripped her pounding heart in an icy grasp. These three! She recognized these three!
She wanted to scream, to deny the horrible sight, to drive it away!
All three wore the uniforms of workers in the space docks. One's head lolled loosely without the support of a broken neck; one's skull was caved in on the left side with an indentation the size of her fist; and the third had part of his lower chest caved in, several of his lowermost ribs shattered, the bones having pierced his heart.
These are the three workers she had killed in her desperate bid for freedom!
As she stared in terror at the trio, there was a loud, explosive crack in the steel chamber and a searing pain cut through her back! She shrieked at the unexpected pain, arching forward, the searing agony cutting a path from her right shoulder across her back to her left buttock. And as her scream died and she hung gasping for breath and her body stopped its sharp convulsion she felt a trail of moisture flow from the searing line. She looked down past her hanging feet to see large drops of golden blood drip into the vat. They followed a ghastly trail down her body and legs to drip down faster and faster, and she could tell from the intense pain and speed of the bleeding that the cut was very deep indeed!
She heard the hollow footfalls of her assailant as he came around in front of her, and the first thing she focused on was the whip that had struck her. It was different from the others, hideously different! It is comprised of silvery metal. Less than two meters in length, it was a deadly weapon, not one for punishment! She had seen this type before, but had prayed never to have it used against her!
It was metal so it would not waste a drop of blood in absorption, but covered with hundreds and hundreds of razor sharp spikes, each a centimeter long. It was designed to rip the flesh from the body, to tear out gouges and let the blood pour from the deep crevices torn from the flesh. It is a killing weapon, nothing less, that will shred her body from her bones! Already it had torn her back open, and golden blood flowed from the searing wound down her naked body to drip faster and faster into the vat.
She knew this was the end. She had seen the victims of this particular death! Her face would be untouched so her family and friends could grieve at her agonized death, but all the flesh would be ripped from her bones to get every drop of her golden blood. She now knew the price for her willful defiance, for her refusal to submit. The flesh was about to be torn from her bones while she lived, and she would spend her last minutes shrieking in agony!
She looked with dread from the instrument of her death to the face of the man who wielded it, and screamed, her soul torn apart. "Shar-les! Nyas!"
Charles Tucker III looked at her with eyes devoid of love, of tenderness or mercy. "I am more angry with you right this moment than I could ever have imagined myself being!" He repeated to her what he had said on Caldis 3 and raised the killing whip. She screamed as he swung it at her and the thousand spikes ripped through her naked flesh!
Tia's body convulsed as she shrieked, falling off the bunk onto the floor, tangling in the light blanket as the man beside her sat bolt upright, shocked awake as she scrambled away from the bed, desperate to get away, coming up short against the far bulkhead.
Charles Tucker, frightened out of sleep and a year of his life, stared shocked at the wildly disheveled girl who sat pressed against the bulkhead, chest heaving as she gasped in abject terror, staring at him with helpless eyes! "Tia?"
"Nyas!" She screamed. "Pilquis oi nyais! Pilquis oi nyais!"
"All right, I won't touch you. But what's wrong?" But as she looked about wildly for the whip, she realized she was not in the punishment chamber, there was no collection vat catching her flowing blood and he did not hate her. He never had.
"Shar-les!?" She reached out a trembling hand to him. "Qualsia?" She implored in a small, gasping voice. "Qualsia!?"
He got off the bed, coming to kneel beside her and gather her in his arms as she clung to him, clinging desperately to him, trembling so much she could not speak.
---
---
At 0344 Hoshi was deeply asleep in her quarters when the intercom over her head whistled loudly and called out: "Hoshi, its Liz. You there?" It is just enough to partially awaken the woman.
"Yes?" She asked groggily. She forced her eyes open, looking bleary eyed at the chronometer. "It's quarter to four in the morning, where else would I be?"
"I need you down in the gym." She frowned up at the intercom, still barely awake.
"The gym?"
"Yes."
"I'm not a morning workout person, you know that. I prefer to sweat after I leave the bridge. Get someone else to spot you. I'm busy." She pulled the cover up to her shoulder, settling in again.
"Hoshi? Come down here."
"Night, Liz."
"That's an order!" A moment later the words registered, and Hoshi's eyes snapped open. She looked up at the intercom, this time in real annoyance.
"You can't give me orders, Ensign, I outrank you!"
"Got your attention, though." But after a moment, her tone changed, taking on more of a pleading quality. "Hosh, please! It's important."
"All right." She groused, getting out of bed in a bad humor, sliding her feet into slippers and reluctantly getting out of her warm bed, crossing the room to find some shorts. "That had better be good!"
"It's better than good, believe me!"
---
When Hoshi arrived at the gym there were only four people in it, not unexpected for the middle of gamma shift and the middle of the night. Liz was standing near the door waiting for her. "What?" Hoshi demanded as she entered in bad humor. She looked around the room, taking everything in automatically before focusing on her friend. She saw two men paused in their workout, and both were looking at Tia Anlor running on the treadmill across the room.
"Look." Liz directed unhelpfully. Hoshi took another look at the scene. She saw the two men looking at Tia. The Auran was wearing shorts and a light top barely long enough to reach her abs, running flat out, setting and keeping a very impressive pace. Hoshi watched for a few moments as the girl ran at what would otherwise be a breakneck speed. She was covered in a sheen of perspiration that glistened on her golden body, and she was breathing very heavily as she ran. Hoshi turned back to Liz, barely holding her annoyance or keeping her tone low enough to keep the conversation private.
"So? She's fast. And they're horny. So what? For this you got me out of a warm bed?"
"No. But she's kept up that speed since before I called you." Cutler made no attempt to moderate her own tone, something that would be very impolite as the subject of their conversation would be able to hear her quite plainly in the fairly small room.
"And?" Hoshi asked with strained patience.
"Hosh, you remember Pat this evening?" The linguist nodded; in no mood for twenty questions or playing connect the dots. "Turns out Tia's down here most nights, running like this. But flat out, just like this." Something in her friend's tone made Hoshi look one more time at the scene. The Auran was indeed running very fast, and Hoshi had to admit it was starting to get impressive. She herself ran the treads, but usually mixed up the speeds, a light jog, some uphill running, then as fast as she could, followed by a slower pace or walk and then up again, fast and slow, the way it should be done; not this headlong charge.
She took in the rest of the scene. The two men watching had probably started with enjoying watching a very attractive, not at all overly dressed, very clearly braless, girl running the mill. But now as they watched the girl, her golden skin glistening in the lights, something about their expressions showed they were more impressed by the feat than the attractive spectacle. Tia was breathing fast and hard as she pushed herself; her bare feet slapped the treads with almost amazing rapidity. "Pat asked her how she did twenty?"
"Um?" She asked, barely paying attention to her friend.
"Turns out she meant kilometers!" Hoshi turned to Liz, astonished.
"Twenty kilometers?!"
"Flat out, like this, last night. Seems she comes here most every night, but ever since the other day its gone up. Way up. She used to do about ten most nights before she'd leave. She did twenty yesterday; was well past that when I called you. Before you got here, she'd passed twenty five. At the rate she's going, she'll easily break thirty!"
Hoshi looked across the room at their friend, now monumentally impressed. "I always wondered how she could pack away the calories three times a day; to eat easily twice what you and I do and keep a figure like that. I just put it down to a cosmically unfair metabolism."
"Tell me about it." But then she shook her head, negating the thought. "She saw Phlox today so he could finally treat her. Wouldn't tell me a thing about it, of course, darn him. But those biobeds take all kinds of readings. When I got done with Pat, I pulled the logs. You talk about packing on the calories with all those extra full plates; she isn't packing on nearly enough. She's lost nearly five kilos since she came aboard, and she wasn't obese then!"
"No wonder Pat wanted tips. If I could do this…" She watched her friend running as fast as she could, certainly faster than Hoshi herself would try for less than a fraction as long as she'd already watched; and Liz said she kept that pace from before she'd called…
But there was something wrong about it. She was breathing fast and heavy, actually panting, breathing so heavily she seemed barely able to get enough to support herself but not even attempting to pace herself. "Impressive. But she should slow down."
"Now that you've got your mind wrapped around it, I'll lay something really impressive on you!" She pulled her eyes off the sight, looking at Liz.
"What's that?" Cutler cocked her thumb at the charging girl.
"She's asleep."
"What?!" Hoshi demanded incredulously.
"Zonked." Liz elucidated. "Out cold. Dead to the galaxy." Hoshi stared disbelievingly at her friend, then at the girl on the treadmill.
"You're kidding me!"
"My friend, she is in Snoresville." Liz maintained. "She walked in here, looked right past me, got up on the tread, set it for max and charged off." She started across the room, obliging the stunned linguist to follow. They stopped beside the running girl. "I stood this close to her, tried for five minutes to talk to her; she never heard a word. Never heard me."
Hoshi looked at the girl in growing amazement. Perspiration ran down her glistening body in small rivers; her small thin clothes, half shirt and small shorts, were plastered to her body. It was extremely evident that the well endowed girl wore no bra and not anything else either. She was breathing heavily, her chest heaving, literally panting for breath as she ran at the machine's maximum speed. But her eyes were unfocused, staring straight ahead. Hoshi glanced at the controls on the other side of the tread. The distance indicator just then reached 29 kilometers. But it was the other indicators on the panel before them that concerned Liz even more.
"Her respiration's 210 above normal, heart rate more than tripled; her body temp's up 44 degrees, electrolyte count is falling like a boulder, she's well on her way to dehydration: body fluid to mass ratio abysmal and getting worse."
"She's going to burn out!" She was aware now that the other two crewmen were beside her, having realized something was very wrong.
"I'm told yesterday she kept up until she collapsed; looks like she's planning on it again. But that's not what worries me." Hoshi could hardly believe what the biologist said.
"Then what does worry you?" She demanded.
"Look at her. Look at her eyes, her face." She did, and didn't like what she saw.
"She's frightened."
"Frightened hell! She's scared to death! She's not just running; she's running away! She's running like the demons of hell are chasing her!"
"The klusert ku vorklis." Hoshi told her in a dead tone.
"What?"
"The 'demons of hell'. The Silurians." She watched her friend, the terror now clear on her face. "We've got to get her off this thing."
"Yeah, how? If you slow it down and she doesn't know it, she'll charge right into that bulkhead before any of us can catch her."
"We can catch her, right enough." One of the men promised. "She won't get hurt."
"If you startle her awake, you might be the one who gets hurt. Remember Malcolm?" He nodded. The story of what had happened to the Security Chief had made its quiet way around the ship.
"I'm afraid she's the only one who can stop her –." Even as she was speaking, Tia's hand came blindly down upon the emergency stop control. The machine was designed to coast to a smooth stop over five seconds of steady deceleration, and she stayed aboard for the entire time, then fell to her knees, doubling over, her body rising and falling sharply with her deep, gasping breaths. Liz reached down, touching two fingers to the girl's wrist. Her body was startlingly hot. Normally 97, she was at least 141, and her pulse was so rapid it was like a steady hum. "Oh, this isn't good!"
"You're not supposed to stop like that." The other man said unnecessarily.
"Think we should get the doctor?" His friend asked.
"I happen to be a doctor." Liz reminded them; then shrugged. "Of a sort."
Amazingly, Tia pushed herself upright, panting heavily, her full chest heaving, her hair plastered to her body and clothes melded to her flesh by a heavy sheen of perspiration which still ran in small rivers down her body. She pulled herself to her feet by the control panel at her side, leaning heavily on it as she panted, her breath wheezing through dry throat, looked past all four of them. Then she pushed herself off the mill and started walking, though more a controlled stagger, toward the showers in the small room adjacent to the main gym. As she walked, she pealed the thin top off her body, dropping it to the floor, her wet hair molding itself to her bare back. She went through the door, pushing the wet shorts off her hips before the door closed.
"She going to be all right in there?" One of the men asked, concerned, taking a step forward. Hoshi stepped past him, pushing her hand into his chest to stop him as she passed.
"Where the hell do you think you're going?" She didn't look back, following Tia into the showers.
-
Hoshi watched her friend step into one of the transparent aluminum shower stalls and adjust the temperature of the water, her body trembling from the extreme exertion she had just subjected it to. She was still breathing heavily, gasping in great draughts of air. Then she got under the spray, gasping and shivering as the cool water hit her overheated body, opening her mouth to drink in the liquid to cool her dry throat. The linguist stared at all this in disbelief. "Tia?" She called quietly, feeling a bit foolish. "Are you really asleep, or just ignoring us?"
The girl gave no indication of hearing her, and Hoshi debated waking her, but she seemed quite capable of dealing with normal conditions without being awake. Hoshi was sorry she knew so little about sleepwalking, beyond the advice not to wake such a person, so when Tia turned off the water and came out, reaching unerringly for a towel, Hoshi stood aside and just watched. The girl behaved normally, or seemed to; in every respect behaving as she otherwise would, with the one exception of being asleep.
Hoshi had no intention of doing anything to change that; she had no desire for a broken jaw.
The golden girl dried her body and hair, replaced the towel, picked her shorts up off the floor and walked past Hoshi out into the main gym. The linguist was very relieved to find Liz Cutler alone outside; she had evidently appealed to the better natures of the men to get them to depart and miss the show.
The two officers exchanged concerned looks at Tia bent over and retrieved her shirt, evidently having no interest in putting on either garment as she walked toward the exit, pressing the button beside the door and leaving. "Oh, crap!" Liz whispered as they followed her into the corridor.
"Remember, Aurans have no interest in whether or not they keep covered, no parts of the body mean more than any other. Awake, she follows our 'customs'; asleep she's on her own."
"I just hope we get where we're going before …" But it was with vast relief that they saw Tia was headed for her own quarters, a scant thirty meters away. She activated the door, and they followed her in. They watched as she pushed the wet clothing into the recycler, got into her bunk, covered herself and went (or remained) blissfully asleep.
The two Ensigns were left looking at her, and then each other, each wishing she could think of something to say.