Major Le Clerc
Major Le Clerc feels the prickle of his skin as his corporeal form materialises around his soul. The process is an existential quandary that he can never quite resign himself to without questioning where his consciousness exists while his physical form is reduced to fragments of energy. He shakes off the feeling and chides himself again for his stray into philosophy at university. He came out it with a degree but no job to back it up and finally pleased his father by following family tradition and joining the military. Even though he is a good soldier the philosophy is an interest that he has never been able to shake and he has come to be known as 'Professeur' to superior and subordinate alike.
His reflections on the philosophy of transporter units is cut short by the full return of sensation to his extremities. From the perspective of a soldier, metaphysical implications aside, this is the thing he hates the most about transporters, the slight lag between physical presence and returning sensation. It is a dangerous vulnerability. Hopefully the recon team he had inserted three weeks ago have done their jobs and there is no one here who can take advantage of it.
He transported with his weapon up, ready to defend against any attack that may be forthcoming and in his periphery can see the other members of his team doing the same. Not due to any perceived threat, just the habits of training.
"Professeur, Sir?"
The light mounted oh his phase riffle picks out two unarmed men, dressed in heavily padded khaki coveralls with utility belts. He lifts the riffle slightly, illuminating their familiar faces.
"Park, Stanic, is this location secure?"
"Yes, Sir."
He drops his weapon in response, but his team remain on alert. "Stand down." He instructs them as he secures his weapon and walks towards Park and Stanic. "You two gear up, it is time for the real work to begin."
Within a few minutes he's standing with Park and Stanic looking over a schematic of the facility while Park briefs him.
"We placed transporter tags in the locations highlighted with the yellow crosses. By our analysis that should give us the best strategic locations for taking the base with minimum loss of life."
The Professeur nods and looks at the schematic. "Wilson, how long before the other teams are in place?" He asks without taking his eyes off the PADD.
"Just waiting for White Fox and Cobra to check in, Sir." Wilson replies. "Ten minutes tops."
He nods again. It's a complex location. A lot of places for people to hide, he'll have to trust his recon team on this one. The intention had been to extract Park and Stanic before the raid so they could have had this information in advance. But some intel had blown in from Section 31 that something big was being planned at this location which had bought the whole operation forward by a month. He sighs at the thought of Section 31, it's always an ill wind that comes from the direction of that particular organisation. His eyes narrow as some something catches his attention on the blueprint.
"Park, what the hell is this?" He asks pouting to a spot on the schematic. He's not a fool, he knows exactly what it is.
"It's a warp core, Sir."
"You are kidding me. This whole base can pick up and warp out, leaving everyone below sucking vacuum. I hope you have done your job and come up with a way to neutralise this." He's sure they have, he doesn't keep soldiers on his team that can't think, but it doesn't hurt to ride their asses every now and again.
"Yes, Sir." Park points to a location on the schematic. "This is an auxiliary power generator that links into the warp core and impulse engines. The impulse drive and matter/anti matter injectors draw power from here for their start-up phase. If we place a couple of small charges, here, " he points to a location on the diagram then shifts his finger to another location. "And here, we'll disable the generator, without power to the engines and they won't be able to start them up."
"Good thinking, Sargent."
Park gives a wry smile, "Je pense, donc je suis, Professeur." It's the unofficial motto of his unit.
He gives a small smile. "You are correct, Park. This auxiliary generator, it is not linked to any essential services, no?"
Park twists his mouth a bit. "Not as far as we can tell," he points to another location on the diagram. "Power is being drawn from this unit into this section of the base, but we haven't been able to determine what's in there. As near as we can tell it's medical of some sort, but the only people who get in there are the big boss and his chief lackey."
The Major presses his lips, he doesn't like unknowns, especially in a location like this. "Medical, so cutting power to this area could terminate life support for some unknown person, is this what you are telling me?"
"We can't say, Sir. We haven't seen anyone go in there for medical treatment since we identified it."
The Professor nods his head thoughtfully. He doesn't like the idea that some innocent person may pay the price for this decision but a lot more people will suffer if this thing takes off and spaces everyone below. "Okay, take Rodriguez, lay the charges and get back here." He turns to the Corporal manning the comms. "Wilson, report."
She looks up at him. "White Fox are in place, Sir. I"m expecting to hear from Cobra any minute."
He takes a deep breath and feels the twitch in his muscles as his adrenaline levels rise and his heart rate increases. His body is preparing for engagement and it won't have to wait long. He tries to calm himself, he needs the hormone for the fight, but too much at the wrong time is counter productive. He closes his eyes for a minute. Right now all he has to do is to wait and to breathe.
XXX
Trip
He dreams he is drowning. It's not how the dream started. It started as one of his normal dreams, him and T'Pol, doing something, he can't remember what, it doesn't even matter. Suddenly everything changes. It's pitch black and he is submerged in warm viscous fluid and he's dying. He is in the dark, surrounded by the liquid and it's in his lungs and he can't breathe.
XXX
T'Pol
She wakes up with a scream. She doesn't remember screaming but she knows she did. She can feel the echo in her ears. She begins to shake. Something has been torn away from her. She recognises the feeling from when her father died. She can't understand it, she drops her barriers, all her bonds are intact. This makes no sense, it feels as if a part of her katra is being bled away. She knows it is mental anguish, but it feels like physical pain.
"What's wrong with her?" A voice, she doesn't know who.
Her shaking gets worse. Someone answers but she can't focus on the words. She feels the gentle pressure of fingers against the psi points on her face. She feels the calm of another, familiar, more stable, presence in her mind. It's then that she realises that she needs to breathe.
XXX
Malcolm
He meets the Captain at the turbo lift on D deck.
"Do you have the orders, Sir?" He asks as they walk towards engineering with Chang and McKenzie, armed and following along behind them. Archer hands him a PADD, in response, Malcolm hands him a phase pistol. "Just in case, Captain."
Malcolm looks at the PADD and reviews the orders, he knows he a stickler, but that's part of what makes him good. "Masaro and Rhodes are in Engineering, Skippy's got them working together on the warp injector matrix so it'll be easier for us. Baird's in the mess, Burrows and Austin are picking him up."
Archer looks at him with raised eyebrows. "Skippy: again, Malcolm?"
Malcolm gives the Captain his tight smile. "Apparently he doesn't mind. He had a long conversation with Hoshi about it and she explained that the psychology of nicknames is complex but they are often used to signify belonging. He decided it was logical to allow his human crew mates call him by a nickname if it helped him assimilate into the crew."
The Captain shakes his head. "He's a very different animal to T'Pol."
"I not so sure about that either Captain. Apparently T'Pol compiled very extensive notes on human psychology and suggested small changes that Vulcans could make to their behaviour that would improve Vulcan/human interpersonal interactions. Skippy is taking that advice on board, because it's logical."
Archer shakes his head. "Maybe there's hope for human/Vulcan relations yet."
"Even more so when we get rid of the likes of these three." Malcolm stops at the hatch to engineering, opens it and stands aside to let the Captain through first. "After you, Captain."
Archer pauses as he steps through the hatch. "Are you ready to go get them, Malcolm."
"Captain, I've been ready for the past month." He replies.
Truthfully, he's been on tender hooks since Hoshi first came to him with evidence of the data breach. He hates that he was ordered to keep these three on board, in their positions, with nothing but surveillance. Considering what the three of them managed to achieve in just over a year, he's felt like he needs to monitor every movement each of them has made. If one of them so much as scratched their bum in bed, he knew about it. It hasn't been the most restful month for him, he's been so dedicated to making sure the trio don't attempt anything else, his sleep and eating has been compromised. He's been watching them so closely some days, he's almost forgotten to breathe.
XXX
Major Le Clerc
He and his team are following Park and Stanic through the narrow corridors of the base. He can hear distant shouting and the whine of phase weapons indicating that engagement has begun for other teams in the mission. Through his ear-piece he can already hear some teams calling in their objective as secure.
The group halts as a unit when Stanic throws up his arm, instantly flattening themselves against bulkheads. Before Stanic can move to the door a booming sound reverberates through the halls and the complex shakes and rocks causing the collected soldiers to grab whatever they can to stop from falling.
The Professeur feels a moment of fear, that any minute the atmosphere will be sucked out of this structure and he will feel the cold hand of vacuum squeezing his lungs. The creaking and shuddering of the base settles but the atmosphere is not compromised. He can hear panicked voices over the comms as various teams report in. He listens in, ticking off each group from a mental list. There's a lull and still no word from White Fox.
Finally, he hears the deep, round tones of Okeke reporting in. The explosion was of an unknown source in sector Three dash four seven. The hull has been breached but the bulkheads of the breached section were sealed at the time so the cause of the explosion and casualties are unknown. Park passes a PADD over Le Clerc's shoulder, with the schematic of the base open, and points out the relevant location. He looks up at Park with raised eyebrows. Park nods in confirmation. It is the mystery medical bay the recon team had been unable to penetrate. The explosion must have been triggered by someone on the base, perhaps in response to their presence. The Professeur has a feeling that whatever they find in that section it's going to be relevant to why they are here.
His team have recovered from the disorientation of the explosions and resumed their previous positions. He watches as Stanic opens a panel next to the door they are in front of, lays a charge and steps clear of the blast. The team moves through the door and clears the room with the efficiency born of hours training together.
He looks around the bridge of the moon base. There had been three people stationed there when his team breached the entry. The two who had been armed, were taken out by his team. The third, standing before him in a dark three piece suit and red tie, he recognises from the mission briefing. The man starts to move and six weapons are trained on him immediately.
"Monsieur Paxton," Le Clerc tells him. "I suggest the only move you make, is to breathe."
XXX
Trip
He wakes from the dream gasping and shaking, tangled in his sheets, with a sheen of sweat coating his forehead. He lies in bed for a moment contemplating the vividness of the nightmare and trying to shake off the hollow feeling of fear and loss that persists after waking. He realises it will be impossible to sleep again so he gets out of bed and reaches for his running gear.
It is starting to get light by the time he returns home. Despite the physical activity he still hasn't lost the strange feeling of grief brought on by the dream. He prowls restlessly around his condo, grabbing food he doesn't want to eat, looking at the clothes in his wardrobe but not wanting to get dressed for work, going on to balcony and looking down at the pool and listening to gentle lap of the water and the sucking sound of the filter.
Eventually he realises that he can't face work today so he calls the office and leaves a message with his PA about a headache, or something similarly generic, that will prevent him from making it into the office. He feels a twinge of guilt, he's never been one to skive off, but he just doesn't think he can face people today. Then he puts on some swim shorts and heads down to the pool. He has a moment of panic as he steps into the water, and the fear from the dream returns. He pushes it away, plunges into the water, which is already warm for late June, and swims lengths for an hour, the rhythmic moving and breathing having a calming, almost meditative effect on him.
When he gets back home, he turns on the news while getting some breakfast and watches the reports of arrests been made all over the world and on the moon, of people with affiliations to an anti-alien group called Terra-Prime. He doesn't even really notice the report about the moon raid and the arrest of John Frederick Paxton. He has no way of knowing it's significance to him anyway. More importantly to him, a cog has just fallen into place, he has recognised a high level EU minister and Admiral Jackson as among those arrested. This is what was behind getting rid of T'Pol.
He drifts around his apartment for the rest of the day, never quite sure what to do with himself. He can't seem to shake off the melancholy of the dream. He tries watching some of his favourite movies but every one seems tied to a memory of Lizzy or T'Pol and he doesn't want the reminder, he feels exhausted by grieving for them. In the end he fills the time channel surfing and internet surfing and wishing he had something to repair.
Eventually the day ends and he lies in bed and stares into the blackness above his head and tries to ignore the fear. The pitch black reminds him too much of the horror of the dream. After a while he can't take the darkness anymore and he pulls back the expensive blackout curtains and lets the lights from the city flood into the room. He realises he's afraid to sleep again, just like he was after Lizzy. He's afraid of the dream, of loss, of dying, of the feeling of not being able to breathe.
Major Le Clerc
"Professeur, Sargent Park thinks you should come and see this, Sir." He nods to the Corporal who's been sent to summon him and indicates with a tip of his head that she should lead on.
As they walk through the corridors she informs him that the engineering team have sealed the hull breaches in sector 3-47 and they have discovered something of interest.
The first person he sees when he walks into the room is Sargent Park scrolling through menus on a monitor. He stands to attention and salutes when Le Clerc enters.
"Monsieur Park, what have you found for me."
"This whole section was rigged to blow, Sir, triggered from the bridge. There was only one charge tied into main power, that's the one that blew. The rest were on the auxiliary power supply we took out. If all the charges had detonated this sector and everything in it would have been space dust"
Le Clerc gives a nod in acknowledgement "So, Sargent, what were they doing here that they did not want us to find."
Park give the Professeur an odd look. "That's the other thing I need to show you, Sir." He leads the Professeur to a door and palms it open to reveal a small darkened room, and indicates the only object occupying the space, illuminated by the open door.
"Merde," Le Clerc mutters under his breath. "Is it alive?"
"No, Sir." Park presses his lips together not liking the news he has to deliver. "The life support for the tank was being powered by the auxiliary generator we took out."
"Putain!" He walks up to the tank, the fluid inside seems to almost glow in the soft light that filters in from the rest of the room. He notices that it is a female. She looks fully formed, perfect, with her delicate features and pointed ears. He wonders if she was developed enough to survive outside the tank.
"Putain." He says again as he turns away from the tank and it's tragic occupant. "What was that fils de pute, Paxton doing, breeding a Vulcan child up here?" His rage is obvious to all who see it and they know why. He gave the order that killed her.
"Sir," Park feels the need to alleviate the guilt of his superior. "If we hadn't cut the power they would have blown this entire section to kingdom come. We wouldn't have even known she existed."
Le Clerk nods at the Sargent, acknowledging the truth of his words. But still he doesn't like to think of the suffering he may have caused this innocent child. He tries not to think of her as he walks away, never having known the comfort of her mother, not even in the womb, dying alone in her tank, unable to breathe.
XXX