Chapter Thirteen
Blades of Death
"Contact confirmed, 204 meters directly ahead," Malcolm Reed's voice reported in the blackness of the bridge.
"Status?"
"Sensor filters at maximum. Weapons locked on."
"Fire."
The huge starship fired seven phase cannons while launching three volleys of five torpedoes, all weapons converging on the doomed Andorian battleship. The phase barrage overloaded the Andorian's shields, the first barrage of five torpedoes obliterated those shields and inflicted first damage on the Andorian ship's bow. The second volley blew a hole deep in the warship and destroyed most of the forward section, the third quintet expended their deadly payloads within the bowels of the ship.
Eight seconds after the Krathis had dropped out of warp; it was a field of rapidly expanding metallic debris centered on a dimming cloud of fire as the exposed atmosphere is burned off in the fury of the titanic explosions that had obliterated the warship.
"Engineering," Forrest called, "restore main power. Let's have a look at them."
As the lights came back on, and the sensor filters that had disguised the ship's weapons signatures were shut down; the silence was replaced by the sounds of systems being restored to full strength. The viewscreen illuminated to show the extent of the destruction. The mass of the vessel had been reduced to an expanding cloud of debris. Only one vessel hung poised in the heavens; Enterprise.
"Lt. Sato, contact the other ships. Let's find out how they fared."
xxx
On F deck, starboard aft, thirteen slaves hurry carefully but quickly to the single mass escape pod located in this section, using personal torches to pierce the blackness. Armed with captured phase rifles, Kris and Volare led the way, but the Andorian and Trill were content to find nothing to shoot at. In the rear of the group, the Argelian Qupek and Ligonian Liram support Tia between them, the Auran being able to stand but not walk on her own.
"Where is she?" Salir exclaimed. They should have rendezvoused with Elizabeth Cutler at the previous junction, but she had not been there. In seconds the ship would be under attack; there was no time to wait.
"I don't sense her," Kaspar reported, her antenna twitching in her concern. "She may already be at the escape pod."
"That wasn't the plan!"
"Maybe she was captured," Vist cut in. "They might–"
"Quiet!" Kris commanded; his whisper sharp. "You're making too much noise." He too was worried; the plan had been for all of them to escape. But if Vist was right, and Cutler has been captured, he can only hope that his fellows aboard the warship outside will make the Terrans pay in full measure for her.
He expected that at any instant the ship to be rocked with the first volley of weapons fire as the warship cut loose on the helpless starship.
They reached the port to the escape 'tunnel', pulling it open just as the lights came on along with all ship's power.
x
"What the farg's going on?" the Mintakan Alura exclaimed, squinting against the sudden light.
"I don't know and it doesn't matter," Kris said sharply. "Get to the escape pod – now!"
En mass, the fleeing slaves rushed to the port midway down the length of the 'tunnel' and the Trill Volare activated the controls. He'd been prepared to use the manual overrides; but now this isn't necessary.
The huge circular door swung open to their left and they hurried aboard, each stepping up over the high lip of the circular port, pressing close together as they crowded in, the pod barely big enough for them all. In the final, mad scramble to board, to get away before whatever had gone wrong affected their escape, Qupek and Liram released their hold on Tia, letting her cling to the door so each could get in, then reach back, taking her hands.
In that instant they hear 'swffttt' and Tia stiffened with a scream as the handle of a dagger appeared in her right side. Her hands slipped from the other slaves' and she staggered backward and fell to the deck. Barely able to breathe, though the blade had struck low enough to miss her lung, Tia reaches imploringly for aid from her friends; aid that is now several feet away, a light year beyond her reach. "Help me! Please!"
"I'm sorry." Liram said sadly. The door started to swing closed.
"Please. Don't go! Not without me!"
She saw the distressed faces of her friends, the only friends she has on this ship, stare at her helplessly an instant before the port, controlled from the main panel in the pod, clangs shut. "NO!" Tia screamed in hopeless despair, not even feeling the dagger as the launch mechanism engaged and the pod shot out of the starship.
x
Unable to get up, Tia looked to her right toward the entrance to the tunnel, to the source of her agony and failure, and her universe exploded in madness.
Commander Charles Tucker stood well inside the door, flanked by two dark gray uniformed MACOs armed with phase rifles. With him, a few feet deeper into the room, stood Elizabeth Cutler!
Cutler wore the two piece blue Imperial uniform, the black and silver shoulder bars of a Lieutenant, an expression of merciless satisfaction and an empty dagger sheath. It's her dagger buried deep in Tia's side.
x
Tucker strode into the tunnel, to the controls beside the sealed port and activated them. On the large screen they watched the receding image of the escape pod running at full burn. Obviously, once they ejected from the ship and had discovered the true situation, they put everything into the engines, trying to get away. Tia watched helplessly from the floor as Tucker activated the intercom. He knew Forrest's attention is on receiving the reports of the other four Starships in the fleet, and not on what is happening elsewhere in the ship. "Reed, are you tracking?"
"Locked on," Major Reed's voice comes back with a terrible satisfaction.
"Fire."
"NO!" Tia screamed, trying to get up, reaching helplessly to stop the inevitable.
A lance of red energy leaped after the pod, touched it and the pod exploded in a brilliant but soundless fireball, utter silence an unfitting end for the lives of the twelve slaves.
Tia shrieked, horrified at the dimming light of the fireball that marked the last instant of her friends' existence.
"There's your 'tidy profit', Captain." Tucker says to no one.
"Well, at least we salvaged one," Elizabeth Cutler said, turning to where Tia lay on the deck.
x
Tia Anlor of Aura, former slave who had 'escaped' into slavery, then had tried again for the freedom that had again cost the lives of all those whom she cared for, never knew what gave way in her in that moment. Long intense training on her home world, months of kill-or-die conditioning against the Silurians that had been thoroughly beaten out of her over months of abuse and deprivation, washed over the terror that had become her life. Her fury at constant, merciless abuse and her hatred of these people centered on the woman who'd betrayed them.
Suddenly Tia doesn't feel the dagger embedded in her side, nor all the other wounds that Sato and Tucker had inflicted upon her. She's on her feet before she could think, before the MACOs could bring up their guns, and all she felt was the surprised woman's hair in her left hand, Cutler's chin in her right as she twisted as hard as she could.
A loud double 'crack!' and Lieutenant Elizabeth Cutler fell to the deck.
x
For a moment there was utter silence in the short corridor.
"You really oughtn't to have done that," Tucker said, looking down at the dead woman. "She really was a good agent, you know, if inclined to be a bit dramatic." But despite his words, his tone said he really didn't care one way or another.
And he didn't. She'd been aboard to root out rebellion and her job was finished. She'd have gone onto another ship, begun the process again, but whether she lived and worked or died, she was only a woman so it was all the same to Tucker.
"Still, she was right about one thing. We do have one slave left."
x
Looking at Charles Tucker, the monster she'd feared above all, the pitiless sadist who'd abused her for months simply because he could while she was helpless, Tia felt her hatred burst. It flooded her soul, her essence, her being with a white hot, all-devouring and all-destroying hate!
She grasped the handle of the dagger protruding from her side, got a tight grip on the surface slick with her golden blood, and yanked it out, her scream of rage overwhelming the pain. She brandished the dripping blade, not caring about the golden blood flowing from her side or the pain that robbed her breath. All Tia cared about was burying this blade in his black heart.
"Vor'nesh-d'krakas'zund!" The translator, which had been handling Auran for these many months, can't render the hate flooded epithet, but Charles Tucker felt he understood it quite well.
When she'd drawn the blade the impressed but wary MACOs at the door, too late before to have countered her unexpected killing of Elizabeth Cutler, had raised their phase rifles, but Tucker waved them down as he faced the enraged young woman and drew his own dagger from the sheath at his hip.
"All right, bitch." He tossed the gleaming dagger deftly from hand to hand. "You wanna dance? Let's dance."
x
Tia, driven by rage, lunged but he parried the oncoming blade easily, stepped aside lightly as the metal chimed out for death. Tia attacked again, calling on all her skill, but he deftly moved aside at the last instant, his dagger striking hers, ringing as he nimbly escaped her impassioned rushes. Golden blood flowed from her side and carried her strength with it. The hilt of her dagger was slick with her blood and she could barely hold onto it. Tucker's strike almost knocked it out of her hand.
She met Tucker's own attack with a fast series of counters and the twin daggers rang to reverberate off the bulkheads. But the exertions made the blood escaping from her wound flow faster. She felt herself grow weaker, loss of blood, the wounds in her side and crotch and the privations she's endured left her nowhere near a match for Tucker. She lunged desperately at what looked like an opening but he turned, got behind her and raked his blade downward across her back as she fell past him.
She slammed against the bulkhead, gasping for breath as her back exploded in searing pain. She felt the wet blood flow down her back even as she turned toward the grinning monster. The dress, sliced open in back, hung off her, hindered her movements.
x
She tried to keep him turning, judging that the scarring would have weakened his vision even as it pulled his eye out of line. But this is a ploy he's long prepared for, knowing dozens of people would want to take advantage of that perceived weakness; and when Tia lunged he sliced the blade up along her arm.
She cried out, staggering away, almost dropping the dagger as blood welled up from forearm to elbow. She skidded, slipped on her own blood and just barely managed to keep her feet, but felt sharp pain between her legs and a trail of blood flowed down her thighs. Her exertions had reopened Hoshi's vicious wound.
Tia felt herself grow lightheaded, her hands shook as the initial strength of fury faded, overwhelmed by loss of blood. She's covered in golden blood from her right side, back, right arm and crotch but hasn't succeeded in touching Tucker once. There's not a drop of red on him or the deck. And as he moved about her with casual grace, she knew she couldn't win.
She shrieked, a high, piercing screech she hoped would startle him, and lunged for his heart, but he caught her arm, pulled her to him, and rammed his dagger deep into her stomach. Her scream becomes one of pain, this pain worse than any other, the pain of utter failure.
He grabbed her body, pulled her close. He held her firmly despite the blood flowing down her body and now marking his blue uniform, and pulled out the blade, a wash of golden blood flowing down both their bodies. She can't fight anymore, can't even push against him as he held her tightly, her body to his. He grabbed her knife hand, thrust her arm up, bent her backward, twisted her wrist sharply. He twisted her wrist further and further as she grimaced in pain, trying to keep hold of the dagger. She tried to fight the pain but as he continued twisting further she could no longer hold on, and the dagger slipped from her bloody fingers to clatter to the deck.
With his left hand he grabbed her long hair, bent her head back, came in close, his face to hers. "It doesn't have to be over," he told her. "You don't have to die. You can stay on, with me."
Tia gathered up what she can and spat in his face.
x
He let her hair go; she still bent backward, and gathered the rags of her clothing into his left fist. He raised his dagger high, letting her see it gleaming high above her, and plunged it into her chest.
Tia's body stiffened, head thrown back, her mouth open in a silent scream, but the pain robbed her of everything.
When he pulled the blade out of her chest, her blood gushed out, covered her from chest to legs. She started to lean back further and he released his grip on her 'dress'.
Tia fell heavily to the deck, but though she slammed down upon it she barely felt the impact. Her breath came in fast pain-filled gasps. She looked up at Tucker as he came down on one knee to kneel beside her, the dripping blade still in his hand. She couldn't raise her hands, couldn't move her body. She felt the ship, the entire cosmos, twist and turn to move in an unreal direction as the loss of blood overwhelmed her.
She stared up at him, gasping, unable to get enough air into her protesting lungs, but she could barely focus on him. Ironically, in this last moment, as her vision blurred, the scars that distort his face faded away, leaving him looking human, unmarked, handsome...
"Last chance, bitch!"
x
Tia took as deep a breath as she could against the agony in her chest, and whispered her reply, the oldest English words she knows to express her answer.
Enraged, he rammed the blade into her chest again. But this time, though she cries out, she barely feels the pain.
She didn't feel the impact, didn't feel anything, but he didn't care. He was so enraged he brought the blade slamming down into her chest again, again, and then again.
She didn't feel it.
"Aura," she whispered weakly, barely a gasp, her vision blurring more, the ship slipping deeper in that unreal direction, "I return… to you… my breath."
Her whisper faded in one final long sigh, and her vision faded.
Tia's eyes closed, her body stilled and she breathed no more.
x
Tucker held the dagger in her chest a moment longer, then opened his hand, letting go of the hilt covered with golden blood. Her body and the deck are awash in gold.
Vastly angry, frustrated, he looked down at her face but saw nothing of the agony, the deprivation, the terror that had characterized her life aboard Enterprise. He saw nothing of her torment as a refugee slave captured in the full hopes of freedom and enslaved again to a far more personal and painful servitude.
Instead, on her placid face is an expression of final peace, the peace she had never known in life.
Tia Anlor lies still, her long torment over.
x
Tucker stared down at the woman and is jealous. In that moment, all he could feel was how jealous he was.
Jealous of her peace!
Standing up, not letting the MACOs see the look in his eyes, Tucker stared down at the young woman's body. "Get someone to clean this garbage up." He suspects they'll bring her down to the morgue, to Phlox. He was sure the Denobulan would love her for his explorations.
He stepped over her corpse and walked off the deck.
The two men approach silently, looking down at the still body of the former slave in the pool of her golden blood.