Kamea had seen a movie once, about prisoners of war in a camp during the Second World War who had staged a massive escape. One of the characters was something of a troublemaker and was constantly spending time in solitary confinement, and he passed the time by bouncing a baseball off the walls of the cell. Her mother had explained that he was attempting to show his captors that he refused to let them break his spirit.
As Kamea sat against the back wall of her and Malcolm's cell, she was now convinced that her mother was wrong. It wasn't about him proving anything to anybody; it was about him trying not to die of boredom.
She had to hand it to these Andorians; they had acquired a lot of new toys since she'd last had the pleasure of being in their company. In addition to the darts that robbed her of her abilities – brilliant, by the way, she must ask them how they did it – they had somehow gotten their hands on a force field cell, in which she was now imprisoned. It was a giant box with invisible walls placed in the middle of a much larger room, which she deemed to be their cargo bay. They must have thought that putting her in the actual brig was too much of a risk.
They were right, of course. She had broken out of there more than once. She'd only been on this ship that one time, but she made sure she didn't make it easy on them. Eventually they'd had to sedate her.
Kamea stood up and began to walk along the wall, defining the size and shape of the cell. It was roughly the size of her quarters back on Enterprise – if they were cut in half. It was rectangular, stretched farther to the side than it did to the rear. It was enough room so that she and Malcolm weren't laying on top of each other – pity about that – but it was hardly enough room to move around comfortably.
Good thing she wasn't claustrophobic. They might have succeeded in breaking her.
She slumped against the wall and slid to the floor with a sigh. An escape attempt would be futile. Even with her abilities, there were very few things she could do against a force field. Of course, she would have liked the opportunity to at least try. And this was a strong force field, too. She had already tried to break it down using physical force, which had only resulted in her injuring both of her hands and her right foot. She knew that it was pointless, but she had to try something. She knew what the Andorians were capable of, and she wasn't all that willing to be at their mercy again.
And now she had dragged Malcolm into her fight. She looked at him. He was still out cold. The Andorians had laid him on the floor, but when the force field went up, he ended up with his head propped up slightly. Kamea had grabbed him by the boots and tugged gently, drawing him farther into the center of the cell and away from the wall. Having him propped against the wall made it seem like he was awake when he wasn't, and that, to put it simply, freaked her out.
Malcolm did not deserve to be here. No one did. This was her cross to bear. She should never have stayed on Enterprise. She had gotten so comfortable there that she had allowed herself to forget the reason she was running in the first place. She should have finished rebuilding her ship and left as soon as possible. The Andorians never would have been able to trace her to Enterprise if she had only stayed on board a few days.
She furrowed her brow in confusion. How had the Andorians found her? They were light-years from Andoria, in a completely different quadrant, and the Andorians generally didn't like to travel too far from their home planet. She'd been floating in her ship for more than three weeks with no contact. She'd been on Enterprise for over two months with almost no contact. It had been three months since she'd spoken to anyone outside of Enterprise. How had the Andorians even known that she would be out here?
Unless… She groaned. Those damn Ferengi. It must have been them. There was no other explanation. She should have never let them go. She was really sick of being benevolent. When had following Surak ever done her any good?
Malcolm stirred, and she slid over to him. He moaned in pain and opened his eyes in shock when Kamea cupped her hand behind his head. "What are you doing?" he asked, his voice hoarse. It was the most beautiful sound in the world.
"You need to keep pressure on it," she said, which was a lie. She just wanted to touch him, to reassure herself that he was really all right. He'd been unconscious for so long… Or maybe it just seemed like a long time. She had no way of estimating how long they had been in this infernal box. It could have been hours; it could have been minutes.
"I'm fine," he said, struggling to sit up. In the end, she had to help him.
She smiled in spite of herself. "Sounds familiar." But the smile quickly faded as the gravity of the situation hit her. "I'm sorry." The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them.
He frowned. "What on Earth for?"
She sputtered, incredulous. "Are you kidding me? I'm sorry for everything – for staying in that village when I knew we should have left, for dumping all my problems on you, for getting us captured, for staying on Enterprise and bringing all of this with me."
"Oh," Malcolm said, dismissing her apology with a wave of his hand. "Nothing to worry about."
She could only stare at him. "Nothing to worry about? How can you say that?"
He flashed her one of his cocky grins, which she normally found irresistible but at the present time could only find inappropriate. "I've been in worse situations." He paused, raising his eyebrows. "Nothing comes to mind right now…"
Kamea rolled her eyes and bit her lip, determined not to give him the satisfaction of smiling. She removed her hand from the back of his head and shifted into a cross-legged position. "What are we going to do?"
Malcolm shook his head slowly. "I don't suppose you have a plan to get us out of this one?"
His tone was only slightly optimistic. He had to realize the hopelessness of the situation. They were being held prisoner on an Andorian ship, which was currently cruising through the Alpha Quadrant, most likely towards the borders of explored space. Once past the most commonly traveled regions, they could dump Kamea's – and probably Malcolm's – bodies were they would never be found. Enterprise would have no idea what had happened to them, and with no way to contact them, Enterprise never would know. And as the final nail in the coffin, without her abilities, Kamea could not defend herself against so many of them. Unbidden, tears sprang to her eyes. She had considered the possibility of an early death many times in the past eight years, but she'd never seriously believed this day would come.
Malcolm reached out to brush the tears away and winced with the effort. "We'll find a way out of this, Kamea."
Kamea shook her head in despair. He really didn't see. "No, you don't understand." She hated the way her voice sounded – so pathetic and miserable. She could honestly say she had never felt this defeated. "You don't know what they're capable of. They've been chasing me for eight years. Eight years, Malcolm. Do you have any idea what that's like?"
He shook his head no.
She dropped her head into her hands. "I don't see how we're going to get out of this one."
A noise behind her made her turn. "Oh, good," said Akkenar, his voice oily. "Have we finally broken your spirit?"
Kamea leapt to her feet, holding out her hand to help Malcolm to his. He went more slowly, more cautiously, but he went all the same. She kept a firm grip on his arm to keep him from swaying or collapsing and fixed her meanest glare on Akkenar. The Andorian guffawed heartily, and Kamea wanted nothing more than to rip out his heart.
And if he came within two feet of Malcolm, that was exactly what she would do.
"I was so hoping to witness the moment when you finally broke," Akkenar said, stepping further into the room. His entourage of bodyguards stayed close behind him. "And I see you haven't disappointed."
Kamea felt her lip curl in a sneer. She had sworn on her father's katra that she would never let the Andorians see her cry. And the smugness in Akkenar's tone was something she simply could not allow to continue. "You haven't broken shit, you bath'pa coi'a t'jarel."
Akkenar wagged his finger at her. "Tsk, tsk, half-breed. Language. What would your mother say?"
Even though she knew there was a force field surrounding her, Kamea threw herself at the Andorian anyway. She barely noticed the dull throb that set into her shoulder as she painfully slammed against the invisible wall of her cell. She braced her hands on the wall and growled at Akkenar. "Don't you dare mention my makua hine, you keiki manuahi."
Her anger only served to widen the Andorian's ugly, toothless grin, but he said nothing in response to her outburst.
"You haven't broken me," she said, and though she said it with much conviction, she didn't believe a word of it. "You'll never break me. You've tried and failed, because you just don't get it. I don't care what you do to me."
"Do you think we've learned nothing in all these years?" Akkenar asked. His grin was nauseating. "Oh, yes, we've discovered that is pointless to inflict physical pain upon you. You've proven quite resistant to that particular form of suffering."
Kamea slid her hand up her back, fingering the raised, ropy scar that ran the length of her spine, the result of an exceptionally brutal whipping. The scars that peppered her arms and torso were thanks to the multitude of blades and needles in the Andorians' seemingly endless collection of weapons. If the Andorians were skilled at anything, it was torture. They wanted nothing more than to break her.
But she refused to break.
Akkenar was not finished. "Which is how we arrived at the conclusion that in order to really make you suffer, we must make others suffer."
Her stomach sank into her knees as she realized the direction in which this conversation was heading. She cast a quick glance at Malcolm.
"I thought we would have done it when we killed your traitorous parents," Akkenar said, stepping ever closer to the invisible walls that imprisoned Kamea and Malcolm, "but somehow, you survived. And after your ordeal when we bought you on Orion, we thought we had you. Again, we were wrong. And when we learned from some foul-mouthed aliens that you were on an Earth vessel headed this way, we returned to your favorite planet, to slaughter the species that helped you escape." His eyes gleamed; Kamea felt like she was going to throw up. "For you see, you can stand anything that we do to you, but you cannot stand when we do things to other people because of you."
Finally, he was so close to the force field that, had the invisible wall not been there, he and Kamea would have been nose to nose. His eyes flicked briefly to Malcolm before settling on her once more. "So, half-breed, how would you like yet another's blood on your hands?"
Kamea's blood went cold.
Eleven hardly made for an even split, but Archer decided that three MACOs would accompany T'Pol, Hoshi, and Ensign Peters and the other three MACOs would go with himself and Trip. T'Pol informed him that Malcolm and Kamea had been instructed to go west, so Archer reasoned that to be the best place to start. He'd explained the situation to the other three members of the original away team, and everyone concluded that they should start searching as soon as possible.
He was just about to give the order for the search to begin when his communicator chirped. He was not expecting it, since communications were supposed to be jammed, and he assumed that what he heard was some kind of native Altaran animal, like a bird or something similar. But when the noise persisted, he came to realize what it was.
"Captain," Trip said, pointing to the spot on his belt where he kept his communicator, "you expecting an important phone call?"
Archer ignored Trip and answered the communicator. "Go ahead," he said, choosing not to ask why their communications were suddenly working. He was certain that he wouldn't like the answer.
"Captain," said Travis's voice, "the Andorians have broken orbit, sir. Do you want me to follow them?"
At first, Archer thought he had misheard his helmsman. It made absolutely no sense. The Andorians would never have broken orbit unless…
Archer froze. Unless they already had what they had come for. Those bastards had his armory officer and now they were leaving, and if Enterprise didn't follow immediately, there was no telling how long it would take to find them. They had to do something, and they had to do something fast.
"Travis," Archer said, "get someone to the transporter room and beam us up. Now."
He got a surprised, "Sir?" in stereo. Travis's voice came over the communicator, Trip's came from his left, and Hoshi's came from his right. "You heard me, Travis," he said. "Eleven to beam up."
There was a pause, but then Travis said, "Aye, sir," and the line went dead.
For a moment, no one said anything. The others were staring at Archer with appraising looks, as though trying to judge whether or not he had gone insane since landing on the planet's surface. But he was perfectly sane. They had to get Malcolm back, and they had to do it quickly; they might not get another shot at it for quite some time, and Archer was not about to leave his chief of security in the hands of those violent, sadistic Andorians – not while he still had breath in his body.
"Um, Captain?" Trip asked, after a very prolonged moment of silence. He coughed uncertainly and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "What about the shuttle pods?"
Archer shook his head firmly. "There's no time to fly the shuttles back to the ship. We need to pursue the Andorians while we can still locate their warp trail."
Trip opened his mouth to say something else, but before he was able to speak, he dissolved right in front of Archer's eyes. A second later, Archer went, too.
No matter how many times he was transported, he would never get used to the feeling of having his entire body disassembled, moved several hundred thousand kilometers, and reassembled in an entirely different location. It was extremely disorienting, and it always made Archer dizzy and somewhat nauseous.
He didn't stop to even cast a glance at whomever had been responsible for beaming them back to the ship but instead went directly to the bridge. The sound of footsteps behind him told him that Trip, T'Pol, and Hoshi were following. For the entire trip to the bridge, all he could think was that if he had thought of another solution, they wouldn't be in this mess. But that was ridiculous. The only real answer to this problem would have been to forbid Kamea to stay on Enterprise. He knew she'd been delaying in rebuilding her ship; he should have given her a deadline. There was no reason for her continued presence on board his ship. He had known that she would cause trouble, and now she had lured his armory officer into trouble with her.
"I don't get it, sir," Trip said, as he took Malcolm's usual post. "What exactly do the Andorians want with Kamea?"
Archer had no idea, but he didn't need to answer. T'Pol answered for him. "There are some Andorians who are fearful of a Vulcan/human alliance," she said. "They believe that, when we do form an alliance, it will be because we wish to unite against them."
"Why would they think that?" Trip asked. "I mean, we actually owe the Andorians. Shran and his people helped us out with the Xindi."
T'Pol kept her eyes on her console, her fingers dancing across the controls as she tried to lock onto the Andorian ship's coordinates. "Andoria is a divided planet. There are different factions, and there is one that is particularly anti-Earth."
Archer swiveled in his seat to stare at his science officer. "Nice of you to let us know."
T'Pol looked up at him with a blank look and a raised eyebrow. "They have never been a problem before, or I would have informed you of their existence." Something on her console beeped. She glanced at it, then back at him. "Captain, we have located the Andorian vessel."
"Travis," Archer said, rising to his feet to stand behind the boomer, "ahead warp four."
Kamea couldn't look. She wouldn't look. But they were making her look. They had shrunk the size of her cell until she could only stand in one spot. She could shut her eyes but was unable to move her arms to cover her ears. And it was the sounds, more than anything, that got to her. Just seeing it would have been bad enough – she could have closed her eyes – but there was no way to block the sounds, not in her current position.
She wanted to throw up. She wanted to pass out. She wanted to do something – anything except witness what she was seeing now. But her body had revolted. Tired of being abused and ignored for so long, her body was refusing to let her do anything other than watch. But she couldn't watch. Because if she watched, she would break.
She would not break. It was a mantra she kept repeating to herself. She would not break. They would not break her.
The Andorians had finally figured it out – finally learned that the one way to get to Kamea was to make other people suffer because they had come into contact with her. It had happened numerous times before – people that hid her or helped her were slaughtered for no reason other than they had hid her or helped her. Akkenar had ordered his crew to wipe out an entire species of peaceful mystics; of course he would have no problem torturing a single human being.
Every time the crack of a whip striking flesh met her ears, her heart broke. She could literally feel herself splintering from the inside. Eventually she would shatter. She felt cold inside, empty, and she just wished the Andorians would hurry up and kill her so the emptiness would go away. She wanted them to get it over with. Because every time that whip cracked, she sank a little further into the darkness.
But Malcolm refused to break.
She couldn't help but admire his strength. She knew what he was going through, and it was not easy to resist the desire to scream in agony. As soon as the screams started, the spirit was broken. Once the spirit was broken, they won. But Malcolm wasn't screaming. When she dared to open her eyes, she saw that he was in extreme pain – how could he not be? – but he wasn't screaming. He was biting his lip to prevent himself from screaming, and his lip was bleeding, but there were no screams. He was not going to break.
The same could not be said for her. Every time they struck him with the whip, she broke – just a little. The longer it lasted, the more she broke. Soon, there would be nothing left, just an empty, hollow shell.
But that was exactly what the Andorians wanted. So what if she died knowing they won? At least she would die. Then she would finally be free.
Kamea had no idea how long the whipping lasted, but at long last it came to an end. Her muscles burned from staying in one position for so long, but she still couldn't move. She waited anxiously for them to expand the force field and put Malcolm back in the cell, but she waited in vain.
Akkenar, who had watched the entire proceedings with that slimy grin on his face, snapped his fingers. Two Andorians each grabbed one of Malcolm's arms and dragged him over to Akkenar. Malcolm tried to prop himself up so that he could look Akkenar in the eye, but his arms were shaking with the effort. Akkenar tilted his head to the side, surveying the damage his men had done. Finally, he nodded. He snapped his fingers again, and those same two Andorians stepped forward and hauled Malcolm to his feet.
Akkenar licked his lips. "Kill him."
All at once, Kamea's broken shell pieced itself back together. She could feel the fire building in her belly, the familiar fire of uncontrollable rage. She had only really ever felt it once, but now it was returning – with friends. Her head throbbed painfully behind her eyes. Her throat constricted and cut off her air. Black spots flashed in front of her, and the world faded to black, so that the only thing she could see was that keiki manuahi who had the audacity to mention her mother, who insisted on referring to her as "it" and "half-breed", who was about to kill this sweet man for the sole reason that he knew her.
Her father's voice echoed in her head. Ri klau au ik klau tu.
The rage bubbled up. She could actually feel it rising in her, moving from her stomach up to her chest.
Her father's voice got louder and stronger. Kup-fun-tor ha'kiv na'ish du stau?
She clenched her fists so tightly together that her fingernails dug into her skin. She hardly noticed the stinging as the blood trickled down her palm.
Vah mau vah tor-yehat ri stau. Now it sounded as though her father were directly beside her, whispering into her ear.
She ignored her father. She never listened to him while he was alive, why should she start now? She summoned all her pent-up anger and frustration – at the Andorians, at her hellacious life, at her insomnia, at her father. The world around her continued to fade to black until she could see nothing. With a scream that could have raised the dead, she pounded her fists into the invisible wall that surrounded her.
It shattered. Had it been tangible, the force of her assault would have send shards of glass flying across the room. But it shattered nonetheless. She could feel it crumbling around her as she stared down at where the floor should have been.
When she looked up, she could see again. It was instantaneous. She flared out her nostrils and went directly for Akkenar.
His bodyguards rushed in to subdue her, but one fling of her arm sent them hurtling across the cargo bay and into the wall, where they hit with sickening crunches that made her heart soar. Most of them were knocked unconscious, but the ones that weren't made no move to come near her again.
She kept her eyes focused on Akkenar. He recovered from his shock fairly quickly, his face dissolving into that blasted grin of his, but there was no mirth behind it. Only fear. "So, you've overcome that particular obstacle," he said. He was trying to make light of the change in circumstances, but she could hear the quiver in his voice. He was afraid.
Good.
Kamea clenched her teeth. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you."
Akkenar pointed to Malcolm, who – with the absence of support – had collapsed. "If you kill me, they'll kill him," he said, gesturing to his unconscious bodyguards.
Kamea only cocked an eyebrow. "Not if I kill them all first."
"Vulcans don't kill," Akkenar said, in as smarmy a voice as she had ever heard.
She narrowed her eyes. "Try me."
The Andorian shook his head in mock disbelief. "Do you really want all our blood on your hands? Could you live with yourself?"
Truthfully, she thought she could. And she would rather have their blood on her hands than Malcolm's. But now that her anger had subsided somewhat, her mind was regurgitating her father's advice. Vah mau vah tor-yehat ri stau. She shook her head in an effort to free herself from her father and said, "I'll make you a deal, you kekake."
Akkenar's eyes lit up at the mention of the word. "A deal you say?"
She nodded slowly. "You and me. No weapons. No powers. Just skin. You win, and you can kill us both. I win…" She sucked in a sharp breath and looked at Malcolm for a long moment. When her eyes returned to Akkenar, she finished. "…You let Malcolm go, and just kill me."
A/N: bath'pa coi'a t'jarel -- literally means "cursed butt of a horse", but which I use in this context to mean "damn horse's ass"
makua hine -- mother
keiki manuahi -- bastard
Ri klau au ik klau tu -- Do not harm those that harm you.
Kup-fun-tor ha'kiv na'ish du stau? -- Can you return to life what you kill?
Vah mau vah tor-yehat ri stau -- As far as possible, do not kill.
Kekake -- jackass
Surak's sayings are once again courtesy of the Vulcan Language Dictionary.
The movie to which Kamea refers at the beginning of the chapter is The Great Escape, in case anyone wanted to know. She's talking about Hilts, Steve McQueen's character. I don't own either The Great Escape or Steve McQueen, either. Sad but true.
After my shift tonight, my hellish week will finally be over! YAY! Also, I am now part-time at the bank, so I will actually have days off, so hopefully I can get chapter 8 finished and posted sometime next week. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and if you did, then review and let me know. Reviews make me happy and right now I'm not so happy because my trainer got transferred to a different branch and I liked him. And now I'm still in training, I just don't have my trainer. It's very confusing. But anyway, a review might make me feel better.
