JMJ

Chapter Twenty-Four

Vitality

Pel had not gone straight to her hotel room. Perhaps she should have. She might have been better prepared, but it was too late to wish that even if it did pass fleetingly through her mind. She fired her pistol before giving herself a chance to utter a sound.

The snarl the Nausicaan gave was beastly. Though, he staggered and fell the other one had her instantly with her jaw between his strong fingers so that she bit her cheeks as he lifted her tiny figure right off the floor. Her mind was racing but to nowhere as she more automatically than consciously tried to fire again.

Her apartment was already destroyed. The furniture stripped, the walls scratched, and the carpet, looked literally chewed on where it was gnawed from the smooth floor beneath. She fell tumbling into it. She tried to get up as the metallic taste of blood filled her mouth. Her cheeks throbbed with pain. Then her head was shoved back into the floor. Her mouth was held and she almost passed out as she hissed into that massive paw.

She heard the Keeoopii. Before looking she knew that they were there and that they were ready for her. So these cronies had not come to kill her after all.

Why more than one? She thought she was just meant to be merged, but that was not good enough for her, she supposed now.

It was the ritual Dance of Death for her performed as in ancient times by the Keeoopii as a token to the gods, now renewed for the worst punishment imaginable. Simply: torture. How anyone could stoop so low made her tremble with fury in spite of her terror. As the first Nausicaan tried to approach her despite being already wounded, Pel swung out her leg enough to pull it, just to get a chance to kick him between the legs, but not fast enough. She was too small and the brutes too large. She was completely helpless and her head was already spinning.

Traymak betrayed her after all, but why had he waited so long? Why had they not just done this at the meeting?

She screamed into that hand, but her hotel room was sound proof. The door had automatically shut. No one would hear her even had she been allowed to scream at the top of her lungs unless one was really listening and very nearby.

She thought even the way the Nausicaans slapped the Keeoopii parasites onto her face might have injured the parasites a little, but it did not stop them from their course. They had only one. Trained from birth, if she recalled correctly as it had been explained to her by Dr. Bashir, to do nothing more than drive a person insane.

They slithered cold and slimy through her ear canal. She felt like throwing up, but just as she began to gag she was dropped again by her larger attacker. He threw her against the floor, and she could hear the pair of them echoing like a nightmare of banging feet and savage laughter as they left through the door.

Without waiting, she leapt to her feet and ran after them ignoring all pain and fear. She found her pistol still on the floor as she slammed into a wall to steady herself enough to fire at the closing door. A howl proved she had at least skimmed one. She almost wished it had been Traymak or even Brunt, but even had it been, she knew she had to contact help, not race out for revenge. Unlike so many other Ferengi she believed wholeheartedly in Rule Number 88, and even the time wasted on considering it was too much time.

Heart racing wildly, the weight of the Keeoopii swam through her head making her dizzy and nauseous like swimming through toxic filth in a space capsule with no way to know which way was up or down. She could feel them and hear them inside her testing their way around. A migraine was coming on like she had never felt before, but she could still see clearly the transmition station.

She grabbed the consol, but her vision faded. The rest of her senses were following even as she tried to contact Dr. Bashir who was the only one she could think of to trust at the moment. Her frustration burned like fire. Was it her own frustration, or was the Dance now just beginning…

A pain struck her, but it was not a current pain. Even as she felt it, she knew it was a memory even if vivid. She let out a scream despite herself as she was swallowed into a vision of splashing mud from the tree she had been sitting in— a small child then. Her ankle throbbing, her shoulder aching, but it was frustration and embarrassment flooding through her more than anything else.

Just a memory, she told herself. Just—

Frustration was turning quickly into renewed fear. A fear and a dread that overcame her and her mind compensated again with a reason for it.

"You're mother's dead, you know," said a voice before the vision of Foraneel had reached the side of the crying child beneath the tree.

This new voice so suddenly overtaking her in the dryness of a sullen chamber. Jembar? Pela?

No, Dabri!

How could she even get them confused?

She could not tell, but she thought she could see Foraneel lying on the floor. The fact that she could not get near enough to know made it all the more horrible. Emotions overpowered her even as she tried to tell herself again this was not real.

"There was nothing that could be done…" Dabri whispered like a breath of death itself; his voice carried the husk of a dried out branch on Pelipa but with the intensity of a preserved skull in a desert sand dune.

Jembar was with her lying also on the floor as rage built up inside her.

"You did it!" shrieked Pel swinging around and firing at the sneering face of Dabri ruining his otherwise handsome face with his ugly demonic interior.

Or was it the naturally ugly inside-and-out Brunt she had just left.

She fired at the face, and Brunt shrieked like an unnatural spirit as he clasped his face in his hands as though it was boiling with acid. The shadows of the nearby swamp trees looked like they were ready to suck him into the depths of the bayou with tangled bony fingers. Heavy breaths were deafening as they escaped her lungs, and she watched him writhing in agony screaming as though far away despite being only yards from her vision. He fell onto his back in the mud.

As she stared in blank disbelief from his not passing out and still wailing, she felt something cold snatch upon her ankle.

She let out a high-pitched squeal despite herself, which ended in a hiss like a frightened child. Swung into the floor again, terror of the unknown filled her pulsing heart to bursting.

"It's not real!" she tried to scream, but her voice was strangled as some hand snatched her throat and a set of teeth gnashed in front of her face as though to chew it off from the rest of her head.

"You're mine now, pet!" spat a voice she knew too well.

The voice of her father, but it was not her father. Not unless he had been controlled too by a Keeoopii.

No, no. It was Quark. Wasn't it?

"You want me?" he said in a careless, sarcastic tone. "You got me! Better get my latinum's worth from Dabri, so make it count!"

To see him so vile whether Quark or Gleb was harrowing beyond comprehension— beyond living. Such cruelty had not even glinted in Dabri's sniveling face in life. They were the eyes of a soulless being.

"Stop!" Pel tried to wail, but he was holding her by the cheeks now, so that she only bit them again.

He kissed her bleeding mouth as hard and as painful as he could.

But in an explainable twist of thought that was more horrible than horror, she felt a swell of joy in a stomach-churning back-flip. She kissed Quark in return for all he was worth and sighed beyond ecstasy, "I love you, Quark."

"I've always loved you," cooed Quark stroking her cheek and she stroked his ear so that he trembled.

She felt his body bend willingly towards her as a weak and docile as a newborn kitten, and closing her eyes she kissed him again as hard and as full as she could. Tears swelled in gobs down her cheeks. Her heart clouted full to bursting with the longing of the moment rather than repulsion. Somehow that made her more repulsed rather than less, but she could not bring herself to be concerned just yet. It was out of her control. Besides, she did not love Quark like that anymore…

This is a dream, she found herself lazily thinking as she could not be alarmed, but when she opened her eyes she saw that who she held so tightly was a Nausicaan.

She tore away and fell, and she felt like her body was burning. Burning, burning, burning.

In a rush, she leapt grabbing the reigns of Fera, and they were riding from the fire swelling hotter upon the dry grasslands of Pelipa like a dark fancy she had once had in the dry wavering heat in summer. The wind stung her eyes and her ears pounded with dry hot ash that skimmed them. She heard screams and she shuddered, but again the universe flipped.

The screams turned to cheers and she was riding out beyond the wild and joyous crowd. Her heart again swelled with joy. The pride and honor to have this life. Fera and Pel were one and the same beast riding out over the seas of aquamarine and violet. They felt as free as the triumphant scream of the Pelipan eagle. The wind was brusque, but it was bracing and strengthened her soul regardless of how arid. It sang harshly in her ears with power scorching like a flash of fireworks. How she could ride this way forever, and at this moment she truly wished she could and truly escape all pain and trouble in this endless wave upon an endless sea of grass, but the feeling again was stripped away as though being plunged into a dungeon of blackness.

She felt sorrow beyond sorrow, and she did not even know why. She was no longer riding but running. Her mind was racing faster to know the cause. Then she saw her father. She grasped him from behind and spun him around.

He laughed and swung her around too, but she was too miserable to be consoled.

"You did it. You went back into the jungle. Why did you do that?" she demanded.

"'The bigger the risk, the better the profit!'" Gleb chirped back, gazing at her with his familiar loving and lazy smile as though he did not in the least understand her grief. "Pet…"

"You're going to die now! It wasn't worth it!"

Coldness overcame her and anger. She thrust herself away. Even though she was still sorrowing for him, she almost felt hatred against him. The fear that swelled within her because of that hatred for someone she loved so dearly made her hate herself. She hated herself most of all.

She was all alone now. Away from everyone.

The Keeoopii are still dancing, she managed to tell herself.

She could see their fire behind her eyes, and she was in the dark abyss falling, falling into the Vault itself where great jaws like a Krokatwa with sharp needles on the ends of tentle-like appendages ready to snag her towards that forked tongue to devoir her. Then she was again warm and safe and happy. A surge of comfort overwhelmed her as she nestled in a cozy safe bed with the sound of gentle rain outside. She was sucked into a dark dry tunnel with no way out and her breath coming short before falling again.

The emotions were becoming stronger, but the visions were fading. She was fading. All was emotion. The emotions made no meaning. At least her agony would end… but it did not.

In fact it had only just begun… the Dance shifted to a rhythm that was almost perceivable like the waves of an endless boiling sea swirling into themselves one after another. Just when she felt her mind rising to a conscious surface, she was dragged down again. Fear. Anger. joy, and sorrow and everything in between. Envy. Pity. Amusement. Disgust. They did not let up. Her whole body felt as cold as ice and then as hot as being fried in an oven as the emotions sprang on her and leapt from her with hooklike claws and dagger beaks that tore at her heart like scavenger birds fighting over a piece of meat already dead.

Her mind felt weaker and weaker like flame losing oxygen. Her consciousness was slipping. Her weariness was becoming numb. The numbness was a last desperate escape.

No. Consciousness at last. Solidity.

She grasped for it with arms scrambling just like that little girl clinging to her mother as she lifted her wounded younger self from the mud beneath the tree in that all-but-forgotten courtyard of her childhood. Then blackness overcame her and silence in all senses and emotions died into nothing.

"She's stabilizing…" a voice echoed painfully through her throbbing skull.

At least she felt no emotion, except maybe a vague sense of relief.

She tried to open her eyes but her eyelids were sealed shut, and when she finally loosened them enough to flicker, she only closed them again giving up exhausted from the effort. She had heard the soft, familiar voice— the sound of the beating heart, the breathing lungs.

"D…Doctor… Ba…shhhahh…" Pel's voice was hardly a whisper and she faded out again.

#

"How soon will this plot unfold?" asked Dr. Bashir turning darkly to Traymak.

"It's unfolding now," said Traymak just as darkly back. "Why do you think I had you come to my ship? It's not safe down there. I'm only surprised you came at all and believed me."

"I almost didn't."

Traymak had not wanted to risk harm done to Pel, and he knew Bashir knew that. There had been no time for second-guessing. Not if she was enduring the Dance. Bashir had allowed himself to be transported onto a strange but exceptional ship called the Vital. It was custom-made, speedy and strong, and although it was relatively sting-ray like in its shape on the outside like many D'kora, it was definitely its own class. Its captain likewise was a unique specimen. In some ways the almost stereotypically Ferengi, but at the same time so much so that he was class of his own like his ship.

There was nothing much about him physically to speak of that marked him differently than anyone else. Aside from his rather plain suit for Ferengi standards, it was very refined and a show of prowess more than some of the more ostentation clothing with a very large golden buckle resting neatly upon his proud chest and a single glistening crystal at his throat. He stood like a terrier unafraid of a far larger dog, who in this case happened to be Bashir who if a dog felt more like a silly oversized golden retriever to such a stubborn little creature. His ears were medium in shape and size, his gray eyes shifty, his face sharp and his teeth sharper. Bashir recalled with pristine clarity that devilish sneer the Keeoopii that had once been part of him had pressed through his face, but the keenness of Traymak's current expression was still very much there, and in fact more-so. There was a balanced sense of sympathy even, though at the same time guarded experience and even coldness, but the type of coldness that would do what had to be done if the need called even if it was not nice.

But the question remained whether or not his sentiments leaned more towards being an opportunist or more towards loyalty to his people. He obviously had streaks of both and very strong ones, and his complex guise as a one of the merged was a testimony to his skill that earned him his high position upon his planet whether under the reign of Zek or the Keldars.

He recalled Jadzia Dax's advice about them, to accept that about Ferengi and embrace it head on. The trouble was that Bashir now knew enough Ferengi that he trusted with his life that it was rather more like mistrusting another Human to mistrust Traymak, and it made him rather uncomfortable about it. How could one not accept the facts about a man who had been ruthless in his quest for profit and as courageous in his quest for the freedom of his people? For the first time, Bashir felt he understood the relationships between rulers of ancient earth and their privateers— immoral, perhaps, but a sense of power as though trying to control where fire spread.

It was interesting still that as Traymak studied Bashir back, he seemed to share similar thoughts about Bashir if his expression meant anything at all. After all, he had certainly been taught his entire life whether by persuasion or personal training not to trust a Federation Starfleet officer and much less a Human scientist.

Maybe he should pick up poetry again. It was a good way to free oneself from pent up tangles of thought like this. He shook his head.

"I'd ask you how you did it," said Bashir, "but another more pressing question is, should we pick up the Grand Nagus and his family?"

Traymak sighed and closed his eyes with a huff.

"Normally, I wouldn't want to draw that kind of attention to the Vital, but as her name implies, Vital moments call for hard decisions," Traymak remarked. "So, yes, they are in danger, if that's what you're asking. It'll start in Lagoran. It probably already has. There's no time to contact your Starfleet, and even if you do anyway, what can one ship, even the Defiant of your Captain Sisko do against those that are part assassin and part hostage of an entire planet."

"So this is about merging the populous?"

"This is about fear and anger and frustration by using an attack on the sub-Nagus by supposed Hidden Profiters hired by Gloobram and funded by Quark through using his sister as a go-between. There will be some debate about whether the Old Coursers were in on it as well, but who did it is not so much important as the uncertainty it will cause everyone. The doubt about the entire history of one's own people is the doubt of a people that can be made to do just about anything. They'll hardly notice when the Keeoopii slip into their empty lobes, and as for the Grand Nagus and his staff… they're scheduled to be assassinated by somebody, and the Acting Nagus will become the Nagus."

"Ooaseel?!" cried Bashir.

"She did what a lot of Ferengi did behind the backs of you and your friends," said Traymak with a shrug. "They are addicted to the power that the Keeoopii give them. I almost fell for it myself." He smiled unpleasantly. "I went through the scanner with my Keeoopii in a little vial in my boot."

Very slowly Bashir nodded.

"But before I could put it back into my lobes, I was interrupted by someone."

"Who?"

"Who isn't exactly important, but she reminded me of Quark's silly little speech. You know the one. It made me laugh. I thought to myself in that laugh that was my own, that I was a Ferengi, and it was enough to break me free of my addiction long enough to secretly take my Keeoopii and damage it beyond repair without actually killing it, so that no one would know I was not still part of the resistance, so to speak."

"I see. Well, you can explain more later what you've discovered since then, and we'll pick up the Grand Nagus. He's still with his family and Dr. Tal at the Residence. Do you know if Ishka is with the Nagus?"

"I know nothing about the actual doings of Ishka," said Traymak. "I've been really way too occupied with the espionage I've been into without adding to my mission. She's not merged if that's what you mean, and they want her to be very badly. They're willing to kill her if they can't but they would rather she be on their side. She has a deep connection with Meegs, I understand."

"Meegs? Does she know about the Keeoopii… resistance?"

"That's what they call it," said Traymak. "And yes, she does."

"Why doesn't she say anything?"

"She has no proof, and Meegs has something over her."

"Then you know a lot considering you don't know anything about her doings. Do you know anything about Meegs' doings?"

"Some. I know at least that the Meegs you have in custody is not the Meegs we're after but a decoy, but as you say we should concede to my duty as a Ferengi and save my Nagus. You tend to Pel as your duty as a doctor. I'm afraid that I almost forgot that I was not completely infallible in regards of my handle on the situation. I regret deeply what happened to the girl. She's wise beyond her years, but she's spritely to put it lightly— not like my cohort."

Bashir opened his mouth to ask, but Traymak shook his head.

"I regret it, but there's no way to contact her now. She knows the odds more than Pel knew. But I will say this, Meegs… the real Meegs," he smiled and shook his head with dry amusement. "He is what Hew-mons call a personality."

"What would Ferengi call him?" asked Bashir as Traymak turned to leave.

Without looking back or even stopping, Traymak replied chirped simply, "Oh, insane."

The door shut behind him with a slight but rather sinister chuckle.