Chapter Five

Words of Hate

Tia Anlor drags herself along the rocky riverbed, every movement, every rock and stone adding more pain to her body. She had been wounded before, several times in her years with the Muutuur, the 'Resistance' battling the Silurians, but she had not been alone. Always there were others in her Dumile to back her up. Now she is alone. The seductive thoughts of laying still, of taking a moment to rest, have to be pushed aside. She cannot stop, she cannot rest, she has to get to the pod and call for help if her friends have any hope of being saved.

Digging her fingers into the stony ground, using first one leg and then the other to propel her along, she crawls through the rocks and dirt, not looking up until, with one more reach, her hand slaps into metal.

Only then does she look up, gasping heavily through parched throat, chest heaving painfully, to see the bulk of Shuttlepod Two towering above her. "Aura, Ealyiis!" She gasps gratefully, her prayer of thanks to the eternally watchful Deity of her people. Then she looks to her right to the inclined door. Fortunately the normally 'raised' top of the door now provides a ramp, but she still has to crawl up it.

Reaching out to her right, she tries to pull herself toward it, and screams at the sharp flare of agony in the middle of her chest. Instantly her protecting left hand is wet. She looks down, seeing the flow of golden blood between her caked fingers.

Looking upward into the sky, she whispers a gasping imploration: "Qualsia, Aura, qualsia. Vas minaq ri sei nyas. Qualsia. Makui ri mrunion miscuraiu caalyuau. Xu ti tuvi vuluyni yue sas vas makui vas tuvi kir. Qualsia. (It just me is not. Please. Let me my friends save. Then to you I return will if it command you do. Please.)

She lies gasping, the pain easing all too slowly. It is only fortune that Auran blood clots more quickly than human, but that is a slim benefit indeed, as the rate is not that much faster to help her now. It will not save her. She knows all too well that this is just a mild rupture, sealable in minutes. If ever she were to completely reopen her wound, she would die where she lay.

x

Pushing this grim thought aside, pushing herself forward with her legs more than her arms, the pain in her chest so sharp she can barely breathe, she tries to fight the pain down, forcing herself up the unwieldy 'ramp', looking into the ship. Nothing has changed, not the white fire suppression powder covering every surface or the body of Lt. John Abrams laying face down on the Pod's 'ceiling'. There are no tracks in the white powder except their own, something that relieves her immensely. She is in no condition to deal with predators.

Grabbing the hinged section of the door, her hand slick with her golden blood, she gets her legs under her and braces herself, pulling and boosting herself forward with a loud cry. She looks down at herself; again the blood is flowing faster, the triple beat of her heart loud in her ears. "Aura, qualsia! Minaq u tur piwu." She gasps, begging for 'just a few minutes'.

Slowly, carefully, she pushes herself forward to the edge of the 'ramp', reaching for the first available surface, trying to ease herself through the hatch and into the pod. But her blood slick hand slips on the smooth surface and she loses her balance, falling into the pod, landing heavily on her side.

For several moments she lies there, too hurt to scream, too agonized to cry, clutching her chest and holding her breath, grimacing tightly. The pain is so intense it robs her breath, leaving her unable to move.

Only gradually, too gradually, does the pain diminish to a point where she can fight it, but she has to keep going. Turning over slowly, she looks up, realizing she has to stand if she is going to make it past the white debris, and the still body of her friend, and reach the controls normally at knee height, now over her head.

Reaching more cautiously now, she grabs a support bar, holds her breath tightly, and carefully rises to her knees, her left hand pressed to her chest, trying to staunch the flow of blood that fills the front of her uniform. The triple beat of her heart is louder in her ears as her system tries to compensate for the lost blood covering her and spread on a trail two hundred val behind her.

Instantly the pod begins to spin about her, and she clutches desperately at the bar, a wave of vertigo making her lightheaded and nauseous. She stands still, trying to control her gasping, her pounding racing heart while trying to force herself not to vomit. It seems to take forever before she forces herself under control, and the pod slows from its dizzying spin.

Carefully she releases her tight grip on the bar and takes a step forward on the powder slick surface of the pod's ceiling, stepping cautiously toward the pilot seat, past the body of her friend. She can spare no thought for him now; there would be time for grief later, for proper prayers to Aura and Sabaoth for the Neetaa that is truly he.

x

Reaching the communications panel, she tries not to fall against it in her relief at having made it this far. Reaching up to the now head high controls beside the suspended seat, she turns it on, grimacing at the burst of static that assails her. That method was useless, but she had to have tried. There is, however, another alternative. Knowing from a conversation with Travis some months ago that it is designed to be easily removed, she pulls on the handles attached to either side of the panel, tugging it off, wincing silently at the sharp pain it causes her.

Inside is a vast array of circuitry. "Shar-les," she whispers feelingly, "Mona edalii tuvi mozca quaxpae tuvi li kir?" (Where are you when need you I do?)

She stares at the mass of circuitry, completely lost. Her years of training in Biology are useless here, and her months of training in the Muutuur had proven to her and her compatriots that she was completely hopeless at either Auran or Silurian electronics.

The panel sways before her eyes and she clings to the frame, holding desperately, gasping; the triple beat of her pounding heart loud as drums in her ears. She knows that, if she falls now, she will never get up again.

She knows, however; that even if they are still being jammed, some signal must still be going out, even if she cannot control it. If she can just interrupt or change the output of the right circuit, she can send a signal through the interference, even if only a change in static. But which one; and how? "Li u Glisnaq eda, zu Weljanno nyasi." she mutters, frustrated by the fact that she is a doctor, not an engineer.

But then she remembers a piece of Earth wisdom from her friend Liz. 'When all else fails, try everything.' At the time she had not understood what it meant; now she thinks she does.

x

Taking the short end of the panel, she inserts it into the 'top' of the opening and slowly drags the metal edge along the circuits. She is 'rewarded' by a sharp buzzing over the static emanating from the speakers, and the sparking of circuits within the recess, and so she slowly does it again, and then again. A moment later she does it three times somewhat faster, then three times more slowly, pausing for a moment and then repeating the triple pattern.

She cannot tell if anything is happening; if a signal is, in fact, being sent out, but it is the only option she has. Fighting off as best she can the wave of nauseous dizziness that assails her, she keeps working, hoping she is sending a signal to Enterprise - and not to the soldiers who had shot her!

xxx

Travis and Liz are brought to another cell in the middle of a long tunnel, a stone room behind a steel door, a small opening of which provides the only light from the outer hall. The door is opened but Travis is held back by three of the six soldiers as two of them force Liz against the wall opposite the door, holding her there. "What are you doing?" Travis demands as Liz tries to struggle.

The Squad Leader, taking his rifle from his back, faces Liz. "No! Let go, you Bas-." With brutal force rams the butt deep into her abdomen. Liz doubles over with a cry of sheer agony as Travis' furious cries echo down the close walls of the tunnel. The soldiers holding her pull her upright against the stone wall as the Squad Leader slams his rifle again into her stomach.

"God Damn You, You Son of a Bitch! I told you she's pregnant! God, leave her alone!"

Liz cannot draw a breath when the 'Squad Leader' slams his rifle into her a third time with such merciless force that Liz wants to shriek, certain something within her has ruptured! The pain is so horrendous she cannot breathe. The Squad Leader then signals the three soldiers holding Travis. As he tries to fight them, they drag him to the door of the cell and throw him in. Rolling to a stop on the stone floor, he comes up on one knee facing the door as the 'Squad Leader' draws back his rifle and, over Travis' enraged shout which echoes through the room and tunnel, slams the deadly weapon low into Liz's stomach with terrible force.

She doubles over, gagging loudly, a horrible retching sound worse than any scream, and she is thrown into the room as Travis, unable to reach out for her, barely gets in the way in time to block her body with his own, both of them falling to the stone floor, Travis trying to protect her as they land hard. The door is slammed shut with a ring of heavy metal, cutting off most of the light. Unexpectedly, the UT is tossed into the room with them.

Liz lies on top of Travis, gasping erratically, unable to regain a rhythm. The room is black save for the thin beam of light coming in from a six inch grill in the metal door. She lays atop him, unable to breathe. Looking up into her face in the near darkness, Travis is horrified. Her mouth is open, eyes wide in pain and terror, but she is utterly silent, her chest working desperately to draw air, but she cannot.

She is suffocating on top of him.

x

"Liz." He tries to call to her as she lies on him. "Easy. Try to breathe. In … out … in … out …Try to control it. In … out … in …" Her panic grows, her eyes alight with terror as she struggles, unable to force herself to draw a breath. "Liz, try to relax. In … out … in … out …You have to control it! In … out … in … out …"

She tries to follow the rhythm he sets up, and forces herself to drag in a breath, let it out again, and the rhythm is violently reestablished as she gasps a deep lungful of air, letting it out and breathing hard again, her lungs working like bellows for several seconds before she can breathe at his direction, and the utter terror fades from her eyes as she lays upon him, panting.

It is many moments before she can breathe normally, now able only to cry. "My baby!" She sobs onto his chest, a more poignant terror than suffocation robbing her of everything but one overwhelming thought. "My baby!"

"I know, honey. God, I know."

She moves and falls off his body, rolling onto her side, curling into a fetal position, sobbing brokenly. "My baby. My baby!"

"Liz." He sits up, trying to work his way around her body, trying to get a look at her in the dim light. He becomes aware of a strong scent of something resembling honeysuckle pervading the cell; not entirely unpleasant but powerful, but pushes the thought aside as meaningless.

The punches have blackened Liz's face with horribly mottled bruising, blood flows from her nose, mouth, and a gash across her forehead and another on her left cheek, but it is the damage he cannot see that is more frightening. The damage to her swelling face only hints at the marks that surely cover the rest of her body. She is sobbing, great body wracking sobs that are more frightening than anything he could imagine. "Try to -."

"They hurt my baby!" She cries to him in terrible fear. "They hurt my baby!" She sobs, unable to think of anything else.

"When did they capture you?" A feminine voice from the darkness surprises them. Travis looks to the far corner, just barely able to make out the dark outline of someone seated on the floor in the corner.

x

Alah Korvakai had recoiled apprehensively when the steel door opened. Weeks of torture had been an excellent teacher of caution and mistrust, so she had kept silent and watched from the black far left corner as two new prisoners had been thrown into her cell. She had not understood at first what the man was yelling so furiously while still in the corridor, but her view into that corridor showed he had ample and all too familiar cause.

She'd watched apprehensively, mistrust one of her very few companions since the death of the last member of her squad. The others were now pain and hunger, and she'd recently been introduced to hopelessness as her captivity and the interrogations both dragged on.

She did not know how long she had been here. The days of blackness cut by one unchanging light are mind-numbingly empty, broken only by beatings and interrogations, far less frequently by food or drink. She'd slept well only once in the beginning, to be awakened to more abuse. Now she sleeps lightly indeed, when she dares to at all.

Time means nothing in the black darkness broken only by a shaft of dim light from the single bulb outside the door as it slices through the small grill in the steel door, but her eyes have long since adjusted to the dark, allowing her to see perfectly what little there was to see in her dirt covered stone cell. She is perpetually too cold, wearing only the uniform she had been captured in so many weeks ago. Her last 'shower' had been an agonizing drenching by a blast of scalding water directed onto her from the doorway.

She'd tried to count the days by how long it took for each successive series of wounds to heal, but her initial injuries were not yet healed and as the interval between the small and stale meals she received drew longer, what healing her body could manage slowed as well, and even that measurement was denied to her.

Her green one piece camouflage uniform, once a perfect fit, hangs loose about her emaciated body, and the cramps in her stomach have gone on for so long that they no longer mean anything to her. She wondered occasionally if her shrunken stomach could even hold a meal now.

So when the two new prisoners are thrown into her cell, she watches them cautiously, apprehensively. Hands bound behind her, so starved she can barely stand up, she cannot protect herself. What new pain will these two strangers inflict upon her as she lies helpless? What toll of abuse will be taken upon her by these two?

x

She did note however, and was impressed by, the man's effort to break the fall of his companion, unsuccessful though it was. Her own imprisonment had resulted in a bruised and swollen face when she'd struck the far stone wall – no one had moved to protect her from the collision.

Now she watches distrustfully as the man kneels beside the woman, his words now clear, hers incomprehensible in her fearful sobbing, but it does encourage Alah. Certainly she cannot stay hidden for long in the stone cell, so she has to take a chance. The man, at least, seems capable of compassion – at least to his fellow.

It has been a long time, a very long time, since she has seen or experienced compassion.

"When did they take you?"

x

"About an hour ago, give or take." Travis answers. Liz is unable to stop crying, weeping as much in fear as pain; fear for her child. He realizes whoever is in the cell with them can likely see them far better than he can her.

"I don't know how long I've been here, maybe for over a xinyax." The UT fails to render the unknown time. The figure starts to move, trying to get her legs up under her. Travis watches, barely able to distinguish anything about her in the darkness, as she works her way up and knee-walks closer until she is with them and can come down, sitting on her legs. Her arms, like theirs, are tied tightly behind her back. She catches his eye, though he can barely see her face in the dim light through the grill in the door. It is not directed at her, so she is still very much in the shadows. Clearly, if she has been here as look as she looks to be, she can see better than they can. "They only let me loose to eat;" she answers the question in his eyes, "when they let me eat." She does not know when the last time that was; at least two interrogations and a scorching hosing ago.

Now that she is close, and his eyes have time to adjust to the darkness, he can see her by the pitiful light from the door grill. Kneeling, she is of a height with him, painfully thin, hair long and of indeterminate color in the darkness. Her face is covered by dark spots he is sure are not dirt, and streaks that are even darker.

He now recognizes the source of the powerful honeysuckle 'aroma' he'd smelled earlier, and gives thanks that she is not human.

"Who are you?" She asks in a voice parched by long thirst. "You don't look Drailen, and you're certainly not Manaxian. Not with flesh that color."

Travis half smiles, glad to meet someone here who would take the obvious for what it was. "Ensign Travis Mayweather, this is Ensign Elizabeth Cutler. We're from the starship Enterprise, from Earth."

"Corporal Alah Korvakai, 703rd Battalion. We were on a reconnaissance mission when we were captured forty two glasks from here." The UT could not render the distance, and to Travis it meant nothing anyhow. He sees that Liz has recovered enough of her composure to take notice of her surroundings.

"You --?" He had been about to ask if she was 'okay', but refrained from so monumentally asinine a question.

"I'm sick." She says in a slurred whisper through broken and swollen lips, not looking up from the ground, unable to straighten from the fetal position she'd taken. "Next time, you provide the object lesson!"

"Gladly. How's…" She shook her head.

"Don'know!" She gasps. "I – I'm sorry. I - ." She rolls away from them as quickly as she can before starting to retch. Travis fights not to withdraw from behind her, offering hopeless support until finally her protesting stomach ceases its rebellion and she turns over again, humiliated. "I'm sorry." She gasps, more to their 'hostess'. Corporal Korvakai shakes her head, her matted and kinky hair waving like a moldering curtain.

"They wanted you to convince him to talk." Her tone, more than anything else, says to them how familiar she is with the technique. Liz just nods, recognizing a fellow sufferer. "There were six of us. They haven't killed me, mostly I think because they want to use me again if they capture any more of us." She fixes Liz with a look both sad and dooming. "If they decide torture isn't working, they'll start the next phase with rape."

They can both see the color drain from Cutler's face even in the dim light.

x

With great care Korvakai gets to her feet and goes behind Liz, using her boots to move small piles of debris and dirt about, facing away from them. As she does, Travis; whose eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough to make out some details, sees the condition of the woman's right hand. When she finishes her task, Korvakai returns to kneel beside her 'guests'. Starved and dehydrated, the effort is more strenuous than she'd expected, and she slumps down upon her knees, tired and dizzy.

"Your hand…" Travis hesitates, not wanting to finish, but the words were already out. Their 'hostess' nods regretfully.

"A couple of weeks ago, to convince Sergeant Quovik to give up our 'secrets', they tied my hand to a block and used a rifle butt on my fingers and hand up to my wrist. Then they tied me up again and let the bones 'heal' as they would. I guess I'm 'lucky'; I haven't felt a thing since."

"What the hell is going on here?" Travis tries to keep it one notch below a demand, but it is hard.

"You really don't know."

"Not a damned thing."

She shakes her head sadly, taking a deep breath, preparing to unravel a story too old to be retold. "We're in one of the staging areas for the Drail, on the outer perimeter of one of their shelters. This complex is huge – I think there must be three or four thousand Drailens here. Originally it, like most, was an emergency shelter built during the colonization of this world, a place to retreat to should climate on the surface become too hazardous. It's now the only sort of area these people, and we, use." She says sadly, recalling a time of hope and ambition now long abandoned.

"Salacki ago," the UT rendered 'years' belatedly, "Manaxia and Drail, two of the most powerful nations on our home world Bethesna, went to war; and here the colonies dug in and joined in the conflict. Bethesna has been fighting all this time, and so have we here. At last count, there were eleven 'colony caverns', four Drailen and seven Manaxian, scattered all over this continent – all at war." She sighed sadly. "Far too often, open hostility breaks out on the surface."

"But why did they think we were involved?" Liz asks as well as she can. "They could see we're not of your race."

"We've been fighting so long; I think some of us are unable to break out of it. They see Manaxians everywhere."

"They beat her to get me to confess." Travis says bitterly. "I'd have even done it if I knew what to confess to. I tried to get them to stop. I told them everything about us – the truth – told them she was pregnant, but that didn't matter to them."

Alah is rocked, looking at Liz, her slightly gray face ashen even in the dim light. "You're pregnant?" Her voice is barely a breath, laden with horror. Liz nods. They can see the color drain from the woman's face. "I am so sorry."

"What do you mean?" Liz demands.

Massively embarrassed that the people out in the complex are actually from her own planet, Alah reluctantly explains, her voice rasping from thirst and quieted by shame. "There are many who would see this war ended by assuring there are no more generations of Manaxians. I heard them boast in monitored communications with another Drailen colony of one civilian who was pregnant when she was captured in a raid upon another Manaxian colony cavern. They kept her alive only long enough to assure that the fetus was dead, and that she knew it to be dead, before they killed her."

They stared at her, horrified.

"I'm so very sorry. If they start interrogating you again, they will make sure there are no more Manaxians born."