The Sequel to "Yesterday's Terrors"
Chapter 6Dunar was growing impatient. Voyager's away team was already five minutes overdue for the planned rendezvous, and it was not like Starfleet to be late, especially in matters as risky and important as this one. Surely they understood the urgency of the situation? The entire resistance movement was assembled in the basement of the Cardassian Institute of Art. Parents were desperately trying to keep their children quiet. The crowd was growing nervous. There were simply too many people for such a confined space, and the musty smell of the stale air in the abandoned basement did not help.
But there was another, far larger problem. Dunar had not mentioned it to any of the others yet, and he doubted that anyone else had noticed. One member of his cell was missing. Zarel had failed to turn up. It worried him more than he would care to admit. Zarel had never agreed to this plan in the first place. But now Dunar suspected that she might have had other reasons for her rejection of this operation rather than just the customary xenophobic feelings against the Federation. He was not a man to easily jump to conclusions, but he had the nagging feeling that the traitor among the resistance had resided right under his nose all along.
Could Zarel be that traitor? He knew very little about her. She had never been one to openly discuss her past. That in itself was a little suspicious since resistance members usually found comfort in telling each other the stories of their individual struggles against the oppressive government. Zarel however had always been quiet and reserved, a loner.
A cold shudder went down his spine as he thought of the implications if she really were the traitor among them. She knew about this meeting. She could have given their plan away to the authorities. As a matter of fact the basement could be swarming with soldiers any minute now. It was a risk too great to take. Voyager's away team was now seven minutes late. He could no longer afford to wait for them. He had to act now to protect himself, his family and the entire resistance movement.
Uncomfortably he cleared his throat to get his people's attention.
"Friends, I believe something has gone wrong. We cannot afford to wait here any longer. We must leave this place now. A member of my cell is missing and I have reason to doubt her loyalties. I suggest we make our way out of here as quickly as possible..."
That was when the sounds of disruptor shots carried dully from the surface into the basement. Immediately a mad panic broke out in the basement. Everyone at once was trying to get out of the small opening that lead into the sewers. Dunar's heart froze. In the current pandemonium he was helpless to stop the panic. He grabbed hold of his wife and his children and joined the queue to the sewers. What the hell had happened up on the surface? He helped his son, daughter and wife climb through the opening and then began to follow them down himself. He had just made it when the old barricaded door to the basement exploded. Guards stormed the small cavern and disruptor shots were fired. He heard the screams of the women, children and men who had put their trust in him. If only he had put the pieces of the puzzle together just a few minutes sooner... They could all have been saved. If only...
His wife's hand pulling urgently on his sleeve jolted him back to reality. There would be plenty of time for 'what ifs' later, but for now he had to get his family out of here...
Kathryn Janeway sat on the hard bunk in her cell, clenching her jaws to keep her teeth from shattering. The cell was chilly and the guards had taken her cloak away from her. She had no doubt the cold in the cell was artificially and quite deliberately generated. After all, the climate on Cardassia Prime was usually several degrees warmer than that on Earth. However, her cell increasingly began to fell like an icebox.
Kathryn sat hugging herself in her thin black cat suit. What the hell had happened out there? And where was Marlow? Had he escaped? She had gone over the events at the armory exhibition again and again, but nothing seemed to fit. It just did not make any sense. Surely if they had arrested one person in a monk's attire they would have spotted and stopped the other... He must have escaped somehow. It was just as well that they had split up a few minutes before her arrest; otherwise the guards would have had two prisoners in their possession now. Or maybe even four. She could only hope that Chakotay and Tom had escaped. The fact was, she was the only prisoner here. That was encouraging.
Marlow had wanted to take a look at the basement. Apparently there were some files that he had to retrieve for Starfleet Intelligence. Kathryn had nodded and let him go, whilst pretending to be a tourist interested in the exhibition. She did not have to pretend all that much. The armories had been impressive. In style they were very similar to their terran equivalents of Earth's medieval period, but they were several millennia older. Amazingly they were very well preserved, proudly displayed on constantly rotating turntables within carefully illuminated glass cabinets. At the press of a button a voice would recite the respective exhibit's origin and history. It was really quite sobering to think that the Cardassian culture was so much older than human civilization. There had been a time when the Cardassians had been a people who valued fine art as their highest quality. Unfortunately history had taken an ugly turn, which had changed these people into the xenophobic sadists they now were. Not that everyone on Cardassia Prime fell into that category. That was why she was here -- to help those who thought and felt differently, those who wanted Cardassia to change back to the old ways of culture and peace, she reminded herself.
From the corner of her eyes she constantly scanned the room, growing more and more impatient as no one approached her. Where was Dunar? Punctuality was of the utmost importance here. There was no room for error. So why was he nowhere to be seen? Was this a trap? Had Dunar been discovered? Too many questions and as usual very few answers.
Then all hell had broken loose. Two-dozen Cardassian military guards had stormed the exhibit, all pointing their disruptor rifles directly at Janeway. Her heart stopped. Someone had betrayed their mission. She suspected it must have been a member of the resistance. Probably the same person who in recent weeks had sent so many members of the underground movement to their deaths. She should have been better prepared for such a case, she thought, angry at her own miscalculation of the risks involved in this mission. There had been no way out. All she had been able to do was to surrender.
The guards had stripped her of her cloak and recognized her as human, which in itself was reason enough to get arrested on Cardassia Prime. They had grabbed her and roughly escorted her out of the building. When she asked where they were taking her they stopped and started beating her with the butts of their disruptor rifles. Prisoners were not supposed to ask questions or even address their guards. That was a lesson she had learned painfully. Once they had arrived at what she presumed was some kind of a prison, she had been asked to remove her clothes. When she refused they had stripped her, an experience she certainly could have done without. She made a mental note to cooperate more willingly the next time she would be asked to undress. Then she had been submitted to several DNA tests as well as a retinal scan, all standard procedure in the Cardassian justice system. Afterwards the guards had thrown her into this small cell and amused themselves by resuming their earlier assaults on Janeway, spurring each other on, beating her brutally and when she hit the floor hard, finally kicking her with their heavy military boots. From her former experiences with the Cardassians both as Ensign and six months ago as Captain in her second encounter with Gul Camet she fully expected them to rape her, but for some reason they only gave her a good beating. When she lay unmoving on the ground, no longer able to show resistance, they had stopped and left her bare body sprawled over the cold stone floor, blood trickling from her mouth and nose.
She had made a quick assessment of the damage. Janeway was certain she had several broken rips, a fractured nose and jaw, sprained or maybe broken wrists from the feeble attempts to cover herself against the unforgiving blows, and cuts and bruises all over her body. Every bone ached, and by the way her head throbbed she suspected a possible concussion. The contents of her stomach had forced itself up, and she had fought to move away from the puddle of sick on the floor right next to her head. Shivering from the cold she had eventually managed to pick herself up and had dragged herself onto the hard bunk at the rear of the tiny cell. They had left some new clothes on the bunk, but she did not have the energy to put them on. Every move was so painful that she almost blacked out. Eventually she had managed to wrap herself in the brown blanket that came with the bunk. Now she kept as still as possible to avoid any greater pain. There was nothing she could do right now but wait for whatever was to come her way...
Intruder alert claxons bellowed all around and the door he had come through began to slide shut automatically as did the other seven access ports to the central computer room. The controls were locked out. He would have been trapped had he not foreseen this situation as one of many possible complications. Ross Marlow always had an escape route. That's what made him so good at his job. He had never been caught. Then again if he had, he would be dead by now. Marlow pulled his tricorder out of a pocket in his cloak and pressed a few buttons. Then he attached the tricorder to his belt and pressed one more button. He vanished an instant before the doors to the central control room burst open and a barrage of soldiers stormed the place. Marlow let put a silent sigh of relief and watched them interestedly as they searched for evidence of intrusion. They found none. As always his work had been flawless. However there was a very small chance that the soldiers who were busily scanning the room might detect the power output of his cloaking device. So he quietly slipped passed his nemesis through one of the doors, which were now wide open and escaped up the stairs and out of the building onto the market place. He was just in time to see a garrison of soldiers drag off Kathryn Janeway. So she had been captured. It was a minor complication since he had intended for her to die in a transporter accident, but the result would eventually be the same. She would stand trial and be executed. An evil grin spread across his hidden features. Maybe he would attend the execution cloaked. It would be far more satisfying to watch her die slowly at the hand of the Cardassian whose torture was feared across the quadrant and further. Yes, it would be a lot more entertaining than simply watching her perish in a transporter accident. He wanted few things more than seeing Kathryn Janeway suffer. This mission was getting better and better...
She must have been lying on the bunk for about half an hour at most when the door to the prison opened with a loud metallic clank, heavy footsteps rapidly approaching. The door to her cell sprung open and two Cardassian guards entered the tiny room. They told her to get dressed. Janeway unfolded the clothes that still lay on the bunk and tried to put on the black trousers and matching tunic, but the guards grew impatient. In the end one of them held her upright, while the other pulled the clothes over her body. The pain was almost too much. Without any regard to her injuries they then grabbed hold of her and half carried, half dragged her out into a labyrinth of corridors. Janeway thought she was going to pass out from the intense pain her injuries caused her, a pain now magnified many times through movement. The guards were non-too gently leading her through the prison and into a darkened room. In the middle of the room stood a single chair, lit brightly by a small, yet unusually bright spot light. An interrogation chamber. She could not see anything or anyone else in the room, since the rest of the room lay in complete darkness. The guards sat her onto the chair, fastening her arms and legs to it with metallic restraints. Janeway cried out as one of the guards roughly manhandled her broken wrists, forcing the swollen tissue around the fracture into the metal restraints. Then they left.
For a long moment the room lay in absolute silence. The pain the sudden movement had caused her injured body slowly ebbed. Many minutes passed and the room remained pitch black and silent. Was she alone? She thought it unlikely. She strained her ears and thought that she could hear someone breathing somewhere in front of her. But she couldn't be sure...
Suddenly a male voice emanating from the darkness spoke,
"You may see to her injuries now, Dr. Lovok."
Out of the shadows stepped a Cardassian man of advanced age, pushing a table with medical equipment in front of him. He ran a handheld Cardassian medical scanner along the length of her body, and then administered a hypospray to the side of her neck. Seconds later the pain in her body lessened a little, reaching almost bearable levels. Then he began to treat her broken bones one by one with a cortical regenerator. This took a while, especially along the area of her rips. Finally she felt that she could breathe again without experiencing a sharp pain each time her lungs filled or emptied themselves. The doctor continued to work on her, never uttering a single word. When he had finished healing her cuts and bruises with a dermal regenerator he stood back.
The voice in the darkness said,
"Human, do you confess your crimes against the Cardassian Empire?"
Well, they certainly seemed to be in a hurry. Confess? What crimes was she supposed to have committed?
Janeway steeled herself and asked,
"And what crimes might that be?"
"Do you confess?" the voice repeated calmly, almost bored.
"I can't confess if I don't know what I'm confessing to."
A short sigh followed, then without further questioning the voice ordered,
"Lovok, proceed with the molar extraction!"
Janeway felt a surge of panic go through her as she recalled the Cardassian custom of removing the molar teeth of each and every citizen and prisoner, so that they could be filed. It was a system devised for identification purposes, not unlike taking fingerprints, retinal scans and DNA tests, only far more painful. She had heard of Federation citizens being subdued to this procedure whilst in Cardassian custody. Miles O'Brien of Deep Space Nine and formerly the Enterprise had probably been the most notorious Starfleet officer ever to experience this. She remembered reading a report in which he had stated that on prisoners the molar extraction was performed without sedation. It was the start of the standard torture routine that the Cardassian military had devised for its captives.
Dr. Lovok approached, holding what looked like a crude pair of pliers in his hands. Janeway felt the palms of her hands grow moist. The two guards reappeared out of the darkness and fastened her head to the back of the chair with the help of a metal contraption that was attached to the high back of the chair. Obviously this chair had been designed with a very specific purpose in mind.
Kathryn pulled against the metal restraints but there was no budging them. Her head was held firmly in place. Her eyes grew wide with panic as four automated metallic bolts, two on either side of her head, shot out of the contraption and forced apart her jaws which were still tender from the recent fractures. The memory of the pain her broken jaw had caused was still fresh. She had no desire to experience it again any time soon, and so she tried to put up as little fight as possible as the inevitable molar extraction began. She soon discovered that the painkiller she had been given earlier had worn off...
Tuvok had assembled the senior staff plus Chakotay and Tom Paris in the briefing room. Chakotay had filled them in on Marlow's betrayal and his plans to destroy the Cardassian food industry which the Cardassians sorely relied on since Cardassia Prime was a basically a barren planet devoid of soil nutrients. There was no doubt that the destruction of all its industrial replicator would spell disaster for Cardassia. They would be at the mercy of the galaxy so to speak, at best relying on the charity of the Federation and at worst be conquered by the Klingons or the Romulans. Such an event would inevitably result in an imbalance of power in the Alpha Quadrant and that meant only one thing: war. And the Federation might loose such a war.
B'Elanna Torres and Lieutenant Carey both certified that the transporters had been sabotaged to cause a malfunction, which neither member of the away team would have survived. Tuvok had studied Marlow's padd and come to the same conclusions as Chakotay: the man was out to destroy Cardassia. However, no one new exactly why. Even the Maquis would not go thus far in their hate for the Cardassians.
But the one matter that occupied their minds above all was how to help the Captain.
"How do we even know she is still alive?" Harry asked dejectedly, obviously deeply distraught by the loss of the Captain.
"We don't," Tuvok said in typically logical manner. "However it would be irrational of them to kill her without first attempting to extract strategical information."
Chakotay nodded in agreement.
"Tuvok's right. She'd be far more valuable to them alive although I have no doubt that they plan to kill her eventually."
Tom Paris stood up and paced in front of the viewscreen of the conference room.
"So how're we going to help her? Or are we just going to sit here wasting time while Janeway rots away in some Cardassian prison? They're probably torturing her right this moment or worse."
Chakotay put a calming hand on Tom's shoulder,
"Tom, we all know what the Cardassians are capable of. There is no reason to dwell on it. We are all worried about her, but she is strong. She'll manage to stay alive for awhile."
Tuvok stood up,
"I suggest we try to determine where they are holding the Captain. Then we can form a rescue plan. Mr. Kim, scan all local channels on the planet for reports of her capture. I will have Mr. Marlow's quarters searched for any additional information on his mission and any Cardassian strategical information he might have withheld from us. Ms. Torres, Mr. Carey, you will perfect the cloaking device on the shuttle. It appears we will need to put Captain Janeway's plan B in motion after all. Mr. Chakotay and Mr. Paris, you will join me in the Ready Room. Dismissed."
Warily everyone got up and went their separate ways.
Mercifully Janeway had passed out before the final tooth had been fully extracted. When she woke up next, she found herself still sitting in the chair, her restraints removed, except for those that bound her arms and legs to the chair. Her face felt as if it had swollen to three times its normal size, and a stream of blood and saliva continued to trickle out of her mouth and onto her clothes. Her head was heavy, and while she had been unconscious it had dropped onto her chest causing her muscles and ligaments to cramp and strain so that she could barely move her neck now.
She heard the voice again, but was too dazed to make out any words. All she knew was that the Cardassian doctor administered another hypospray. Slowly the pain subsided until her face was completely numb.
"It wouldn't be much use asking you questions if you cannot speak to answer," the voice said with what might have been a tinge of humor.
She still couldn't see anything. Dr. Lovok disappeared and the voice continued,
"What is your name?"
Janeway refused to answer.
"Kathryn Janeway, I strongly advise you to cooperate, or you may not get out of here alive."
Kathryn fixed her eyes on the part of the room from where the voice seemed to emanate.
"Are you trying to tell me that I have a choice? I don't believe you'll let me out of here alive whatever I say or do, so I suggest you get on with whatever you have to do and stop wasting both our time."
Her speech was slurred, the consonants barely distinguishable. It wasn't really surprising since she had been highly sedated and her jaws and cheeks were severely swollen. The mixture of saliva and blood continued to flow uncontrollably out of the corners of her mouth but she was way past caring about appearances. She felt feverish, her mind foggy. No doubt the crude molar extraction would cause an infection, if the broken bones had not already taken care of that.
The man in the darkness chuckled in response to her assessment of the situation. The he admitted,
"You are very perceptive, Captain. Naturally the Central Command cannot afford to let you go. As for myself, I would not want you to leave before I have had a chance to show you my very special kind of hospitality. I enjoy my job too much to let a prisoner, especially one as high profile as you, slip out of my hands. But you can spare yourself a lot of pain by answering my questions. Of course I'll still torture you, but it will be a very brief affair if you cooperate -- hours instead of days. The choice is entirely yours."
She had not fallen for this speech when she was an Ensign; she certainly wouldn't now that she was a Captain.
Her captor paused briefly for emphasis, then continued,
"So, what where you doing on our beautiful homeworld, Kathryn Janeway?"
"Taking in the sights," she replied without hesitation.
She could hear a sharp movement from him. He obviously did not like her answer much. It gave her a small feeling of triumph over whoever he was, but it didn't last for long.
"I see your sense of humor hasn't left you yet. That will soon change. But a word of advice: let me tell you that it is not very well applied here. Lovok, you may go now."
His tone had switched from bored to mildly amused.
Somewhere in the room she could here the doctor move. Then she heard a door clank shut. She and the man in the darkness were alone now. Janeway had a sense of foreboding. Something told her that as long as the doctor had been present she had been marginally safe. But now she was entirely at the mercy of whomever the man who belonged to the voice was. And that made her heart freeze with fear. On the outside however she remained the perfect picture of control.
"Once more, what were you doing on Cardassia Prime?" Still boredom, but was it real or just a clever way of interrogation devised to taunt her?
"I was brushing up on Cardassian history," she replied. She could give as good as her opponent.
A chair was carelessly shoved aside and footsteps approached her. Apparently her opponent had had enough, so the earlier boredom must have been a facade. A large middle-aged Cardassian appeared out of the darkness, and before she knew what was happening he had slapped her hard across the face. She nearly passed out. Obviously the sedative was losing its effect. The man had considerable strength, and she realized that she would not last very long unless she changed tactics. Maybe she should make her lies less obvious, or the next time he might very well break her neck with one blow of his hand. She wasn't ready to die yet.
"What were you doing on Cardassia Prime, Kathryn," he asked once again, his voice unchangedly calm, as if this were the first time he had asked her the question. He was a professional, totally in control of both his victim and himself. When she did not answer straight away, he struck her again, this time across the other cheek. Not having anticipated this blow, she groaned at the unexpected rush of pain. Before she could answer his question he had struck her again, and again, and again, seemingly spurred on by the slight moans and whimpers that escaped her tight control. And as she was about to find out, he was only getting started...
Hold on, she told herself as he struck her again and again, feeling blissful unconsciousness approaching. But he wasn't going to give her the opportunity to pass out yet. Just when she felt reality recede from her he administered a hypospray to her neck. Immediately the pain lessened slightly and she felt a nervous energy course through her veins, almost like a caffeine overdose.
"Are you ready to answer my questions now?" her Cardassian tormentor asked, his voice still as calm as if he were discussion the weather.
Kathryn squinted at him through bloodstained and swollen eyelids. Her skin was glistening with perspiration, blood and tears she hadn't even known she had shed. If only she were allowed to pass out for a moment, she might be able to hold on. But with the amount of pain he was inflicting upon her body in addition to the constant drugging to keep her just this side of awareness she wasn't sure she would last another minute without blurting out every bit of confidential information Starfleet Command had ever let her in on. She just wanted the pain to stop. If he carried on she was sure it wouldn't be long until she would betray her own mother, not to mention Starfleet and the Maquis. Her only hope was that she might die before she reached that level. After all, there were only so many drugs the human body could take in without going into cardiac arrest...
He placed his hands onto her tied arms and looked straight into her eyes, stroking her tear-streaked cheek with the back of his hand,
"Kathryn, you can end this now." His voice seemed to caress her skin. She diverted her face from him signaling clearly that she was not ready to talk.
The man activated his Cardassian communicator,
"Kressik to Lovok! Return to the interrogation chamber at once!"
Kressik.... So now the enemy had a name. What devious plan was forming in his evil mind? Why was he calling the doctor back?
Kressik leaned over her spoke softly into her ear,
"We can't leave a beautiful woman like you in such a shambles now, can we. Not before I have enjoyed that beauty thoroughly..."
Despite her exhaustion a cold shiver went down her spine. Was that what he had in mind for her next? Rape? And then what? Would she surrender to such torture? Unlikely, considering what she had already been through. Perhaps he was bluffing. But no, Kressik definitely wasn't the bluffing kind. He meant what he said. Every word of it.
The door to the torture chamber opened and Lovok appeared in the spotlight.
"Fix her up and take her back to her cell!", Kressik ordered, before he disappeared from the room.
The doctor cleaned her up, healed her wounds, dressed her in a fresh prisoner's uniform and gave her another sedative. He was like a robot. There was no emotion in his face. Any Federation doctor would have been appalled at the injuries that had been inflicted on her. What kind of a work ethic did this man have?
"Tell me," Janeway addressed him, "do you enjoy fixing up his victims?" He gave her a look that was devoid of any emotion. Then he continued his work.
"Is this what you went to medical school for? Does your mother know what her son is earning a living with? Do you think you're making her proud?" Janeway continued to taunt him.
Suddenly he looked up and opened his mouth as if to say something, however the only sound that escaped was a prime-evil guttural moan. And then she saw. It was only brief, but her eyes had caught it. Lovok's tongue had been cut out. Had Kressik done this to him so that he would never been able to tell of the things he saw in this prison? Sympathy spread across her features and their eyes briefly connected in what might have almost been kinship, but the moment passed so quickly that she was not sure she had not simply imagined it.
After he had fixed her up Janeway had been taken back to her small cell. Whereas she had seen it as a prison before it had now become a welcome sanctuary. Her she could rest free from pain -- well, not entirely, but at least no one was adding to it here. She knew she should try to stay awake and come up with some sort of an escape plan, but she was so tired, her mind clouded by a near lethal cocktail of painkillers, artificial stimulants and sedatives. All she wanted to do right now was close her eyes. She wrapped the brown blanket around her form and fell into a deep sleep.