"I said 'wake up'!" Chekov came to with a stinging slap to the face. His head lolled to one side and straight away realised that he was lying spreadeagled on a cold stone floor. His mouth was full of grit from his fall. It ground between his teeth. He tried to lick some of the dirt from his lips which stung from being rubbed into the earth, but the taste was so foul it made him spit and cough. Another blow struck him across the face followed by sharp kick to the stomach. He rolled onto his side, doubling up and clutching his stomach as he tried to open his eyes, blinking against the bright lights and the throbbing of his swollen cheekbone.
"That's enough, Nassac. He has awoken." A deep female voice reverberated around the room.
He screwed his eyes up against the pain and looked upwards. His head spun, but through the dizziness he could see the white haired thrall that had been so keen on his immediate death at the henge standing over him, arm at the ready to deal him another blow. The man watched him with a violent hunger as he stepped over him and backed away and out of view. Chekov wanted to be sick. The transporter must have had a stun effect, he realised. The nausea and disorientation of the stun blast left him gasping on the floor, his head pounding. Through half opened eyes he could see that he was in a large room lined with shelves and cupboards containing what looked like chemicals and specimens of every sort. Equipment and glassware shone in the white, antiseptic light of the laboratory, their names etched onto each bottle. To his left was a large metal table, sleek and smooth, with brackets on either side on which were mounted leather restraining straps. He gave an involuntary shudder – something about it seemed familiar and significant and filled him with the uncertain fear that had been plaguing him from the moment the name of Triskelion had been mentioned. A bottomless feeling of repetition overtook him. He became painfully aware that there were several people in the room – all watching him in silence. They stood at the end of the table. Two of them were from the thralls who had attacked him at the henge. The one who had held him was tall and strong. He had the lumpy brown skin of a Nivari and the large, jagged teeth of an Arryite. The other he didn't recognise. His yellow cat-like eyes hunted out his every move. Chekov got the feeling that he was eagerly expecting his imminent demise. He pushed himself up to a sitting position, propping himself up with his arms, panting slightly with the exertion and pain from the blow to his stomach. Two other forms caught his attention. Almost at a respectful distance stood the willowy and ethereal Galt, his face just as grey as Chekov remembered, his eyes blank and lifeless. The same black robes hung over his sagging shoulders. Next to him stood Tamoon, his former drill thrall. Her small pointed yellow features glared down at him from underneath her thick bush of silver white hair. Something about her expression troubled him. It had changed. Between them he noticed a glass dome on a pedestal. In it was a brain of a Provider, but not as he expected. Instead of being the pulsating, visceral mass that it should have been, it lay dark and shrivelled. It looked dead.
Tamoon saw him analysing her and the dome. She stepped forward, holding herself erect and proud. There was a confidence in her stance, he noted, and an arrogance that he did not recognise.
"I wagered a bet that we would see you again, Navigator" she said in her gravelly mannish voice. "But we never really thought we would".
Chekov looked back at her in silence, confused by her choice of words and her strange mannerisms. He expected to be greeted by her simple and brutish outlook. Nothing except basic instincts had mattered to her as a thrall. They governed her life – the need to eat, sleep, train, win, procreate. She had been lustful and overbearing which had only repulsed and scared him. But at the same time he had felt sorry for her. As all the thralls, she had been born into the gladiator's life like her parents before her. Indeed, none of the thralls had ever known their families, she had told him. Training began almost from birth and they lived and fought like animals. But this new Tamoon had a presence and an almost imperial gait.
"Why have you come back to Triskelion?" The question was direct and demanding. Chekov looked away. Tamoon swept down upon him and grasped his jaw in her powerful hand, yanking his head back up and round to face her. She bent over him, fury flashing in her eyes. "Don't turn away from me, boy!" she snarled. "Answer me!"
Chekov tried to free himself from her grasp but he found himself in an iron grip. He put an arm up to try and pull her off him, but she was too strong. He considered lying but wasn't sure what that would achieve for him in his present situation. He looked up into her furious green eyes. "We're looking for our aid ships. We're looking for the Providers," he tried to say as confidently as he could, but he could hear the break in his voice. Tamoon bent down even further till she was level with him, her expression suddenly absent and searching. Her lips twitched. He thought she was going to lean forward and kiss him. This change of attitude confused tried to pull his head away but still he couldn't move. As she detected his fear, something shifted in Tamoon's expression, as if she had just remembered something. She released him and cupped his face in her hand. "Yes, I wagered you would be. You are everything she said you would be. Your eyes drew her in but you shut her out. Betrayal comes easily to you, doesn't it?"
Chekov pulled his head away from her. "I did not give you love. There was nothing to betray," he ground out between his teeth.
She shook her head sadly. "How can something so beautiful be so poisonous?"
"You were training me to kill and be killed. It was my duty to escape from you," he said harshly.
Tamoon's face turned white but then a slow sneer spread across it.
She released his jaw with a nonchalant push. She stood up, turning away and walking back to the dome. Galt watched her like a dark sentinel as she placed her hand on the glass top. "But you don't remember the most important part of our story. You don't remember a thing. Good…" She looked down at the dark blue dessicated brain and stroked the surface of the dome as if caressing it fondly. "So you're looking for your aid ships? Well, that's an easy one for me to answer for you. We destroyed them. We risked all and 'll find their hulls to the west of the city. Their crews are probably all dead by now."
Chekov listened in shock at her dispassionate tone. "Killed? But why? We sent them to help you. Why would you kill them?" And who are 'we'? he thought to himself.
Tamoon turned as if surprised by his question. "Why? Because they came to help the enemy, of course."
Chekov shook his head. "The Providers didn't have any enemies. Who was the enemy?"
Tamoon narrowed her eyes and tilted her head to look at him. "There were more Providers on Triskelion than just the three your interfering captain struck a deal with. It's a big planet, you know. You started a civil war the moment you left."
"But, Tamoon, you were free. The aid ships would have helped you." Chekov was confused. None of this seemed to make any sense. "They weren't your enemy."
She gave a hollow laugh. "Oh Chekov. I admired you because I thought you were clever and because you didn't miss a thing, but you really are being stubbornly stupid. Galt explain it to him."
Galt's mouth opened as a reflex. "The Providers pitted themselves against each other. The destruction was cataclysmic. Those that want the old ways have almost been defeated. The Providers and their thralls who want the new order are too numerous and too strong for us. The end has been coming for centuries but your captain accelerated the process. The Providers must leave. They must return to Cyliss from whence they came. They need to find new planets to conquer and new thralls for their amusement."
"How can they leave? They are just brains in glass… jars…" A slow realisation dawned on him as he spoke. Galt's eyes had not lit up with the fire of the Provider's consciousness when he spoke. He looked from the lifeless lump under the dome to Tamoon. A sneer twisted her thick lips. Horror overcame him. He looked around him, trying to seek out an exit as he pushed himself backwards across the floor, scrabbling for grip. He shook his head in desperation. "No… you haven't… you killed her…" His back came up against the shelves and he could go no further. Small glass bottles fell off the shelves around him, smashing into tiny pieces.
Tamoon looked back at him as if insulted. "Come now, there's no need for that. No, Tamoon is not dead. She's still in here." She tapped her head. "She gave herself willingly to us. When she knew our plan to escape back to the stars she wanted to join us… for the remote chance of seeing you again. She plays for high stakes. I like that." She motioned for the thralls to pick him up. They dived eagerly forward and dragged him up off the floor, pulling him back to Tamoon. He tried to struggle free of them, but they were too strong. "I think it's time we refreshed your memory and put our own strategy into action. Nassac, give me his arm."
Nassac grasped Chekov's arm firmly in his large hand and pulled at his sleeve. The material ripped straight up to his elbow, exposing his forearm.
"What are you doing?" Chekov's dread-laden question went unanswered. Galt drifted over to one of shelves and took down a bottle of thick, green liquid before opening a cupboard to retrieve what looked like a crude hypospray and a small injection device. He brought them over to Tamoon and put them on a table next to her. "The Providers have a long history of science and experimentation," she went on, picking up the hypospray and carefully decanting some of the liquid into it. "We have always been expert chemists, skilled in the art of medicine and neuroscience." She replaced the silver stopper back into the vial before picking up the injector. "I was able, for instance, to transfer my consciousness into Tamoon while preserving both of us. There's no going back for me. And now I am going to control you."
Nassac thrust Chekov's arm out towards Tamoon. He tried to twist himself away with his whole body, but it was no use. He clenched his fist helplessly as she walked over and stretched out her hand to stab the injector below the crook of his arm. He cried out as he felt its pins stab into him. She removed the device and watched the blood well slowly from the wound. "Hush. It's just a small chip. No harm done." She placed the device back on the table and picked up the hypospray. She rolled it between her forefinger and thumb.
"What is that?" he asked, his head spinning.
"This?… this is the marvel. You see, I need you to take me to Cyliss. When you were last here I questioned you. You're a navigator. You're knowledge of the stars is like nothing I've ever come across before. Your ship has traversed this sector for months and you found our home world out there. Yes, I know you've never been there, but I recognised it in your mind immediately. We were exiled from there a long long time ago. But they will welcome us back. And your own world, mir, your called it in your language, Earth – it's full of people just ready to become thralls for the most exciting wagering exactly as your captain promised. You will take me to Cylisss. I will rally our people. And then you will take us to Earth. I think a starship will be more than enough to subjugate a planet." She nodded to the thralls. One of them grabbed him by the hair and pushed his head forwards, holding him painfully bent double. Tamoon ran her rough hand across his back and up his neck with a lasciviousness that made him shudder. She leant over him. He could feel her hot breath on his ear. "You were Tamoon's betrayer. Now you will betray your whole world. I call that poetic justice." Suddenly he felt the cold metal of the hypospray pressing into the nape of his neck. He heard its hiss as she released the liquid. He cried out.