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Faces in the Flames (The Chase, Season 2) Fanfic.
patrickngo
Member Posts: 9,963 Arc User
Writers:
Gulberat
Patrickngo
Sander233
Knightraider6
Takeshiyamato
This is going to be another long one-each episode is divided into multiple segments to cover the story. We'll be posting in bite-size pieces, thankfully, to try and avoid 'wall of text' problems.
PROLOGUE:
0.1: Live Without This
I will break
Into your thoughts
With what's written on my heart
I will break
Break
I'm so sick
Infected with
Where I live
Let me live without this
Empty bliss
Selfishness
I'm so sick
I'm so sick
If you want
More of this
We can push out, sell out, die out
So you'll shut up
And stay sleeping
With my screaming in your itching ears...
Hear it
I'm screaming it
You're heeding to it now
Hear it
I'm screaming it
You tremble at this sound
You sink into my clothes
This invasion makes me feel
Worthless, hopeless, sick...
I'm so sick
Infected with
Where I live
Let me live without this
Empty bliss
Selfishness
I'm so
(I'm so)
I'm so sick
(I'm so sick)
I'm so
(I'm so)
I'm so sick
(I'm so sick)
Lacey Mosely, Sameer Bhattacharya and Pat Seals of Flyleaf - "I'm So Sick"
Mount Sinai Hospital, Nha Tranh reconstruction zone - 02.14.2412
"I can't say it won't hurt," the Cardassian doctor told her.
Lisa nodded. "I understand," she said.
"You're sure you want to go through with this?" First Minister Moskowitz asked her. "I mean, we could just use documentation..."
Lisa looked at the head of state. "And then what?" she said. "They're going to be watching for us, even if I had a bodyguard thirty hours a day-"
"Cardassia has a twenty-six-hour rotation," Dr. Mocet reminded her. "You had best get used to shorter days."
"Right, twenty-six hours, every day of the week... I'll still be alien enough even after the treatments that I'll stand out, but there's damn little chance that my grandmother's kin would accept a girl who looks...Bajoran," she stated. "I'm out of the Marines now; I want to have a family while I still have one - they're just inactivating some inherited false genes anyway - I guess I get to see what I'd look like if Grandmama had gone back to Cardassia..."
She leaned back in the bio-bed.
"Just remember - no matter what you look like, you're still one of us," Saul told her.
"I do... I will," Lisa told him. "Did you fix my records?"
"Yeah... you're Lisa Makbar in all your official records now," Moskowitz told her. "Even your service record."
She nodded and looked away. Moskovitz was adept at reading body language - he knew there was something else she had to say, but she didn't think she could. "What's eating you, Lisa?"
"I still think it's wrong to discharge everyone en-masse like that, sir," she said. She'd gotten used to calling him 'Sir' instead of 'Uncle Saul.' "It isn't fair to the men."
"Neither is growing up in uniform, Lisa," Saul told her. "The Reserves were supposed to be just that - we had to make do, but if we want to keep the support of our allies, we have to make changes - the Klingon High Command got someone to explain human growth cycles, and even they were shocked at how young you kids really were... The rules have changed for Humans; minimum age for drafting and enlistment is now eighteen, not fifteen, and Academy enrollment now starts at sixteen instead of twelve - and that's only with permission from a legal guardian. Now that we're getting serious support and a decent-sized defensive garrison, the Confederacy government's under pressure to let you kids go back to being kids." He folded his hands. "Which I'm in favor of. We'd have done it sooner if we could've - maybe even before the Fek invasion."
"But we can't be kids again," Lisa protested. "I don't know how!"
"Oh, you'll learn," He told her. "Think of it as a new assignment - grow up, have a life, some peace and some peace of mind... an extended leave with no termination date. You did your part, and several other people's; now it's time to have a life."
As the anaesthesia started to take hold, she said, "But... the world is... scary... I... won't... know what to doooo..."
She was out.
As the doctor worked, she asked, "What did she mean by 'us'?"
"Lisa's a Marine, doctor. By 'us' she means her Marines. Even though it's just a reserve position with the KDF, the enemies we've been fighting have sympathizers who'd hurt us any way they could... anywhere. After a while, most of my troops develop more than a little paranoia." Because if I told you that the True Way were allied with Orions that are trying to destroy civilization you'd think I was nuts, he did NOT say.
"The first twelve hours after the treatment will be the most painful, of course," Dr. Mocet told him. "She will also endure several weeks of her body voiding the non-Cardassian tissues."
"I saw her consent form," Moskovitz reminded the doctor. He'd had to sign as a witness, since the patient was an emancipated minor. He looked down at the girl - now unconscious - and kissed her forehead. "God will send his angels to watch over you, and so will I."
Starfreighter/liner SS Proud Mary, Beta Ursae Sector Block
The doctor wasn't kidding: the next twelve hours hurt like hell, and she was sick for the following three weeks as her body flushed the 'alien' tissues out and rebuilt itself.
Three weeks in transit aboard a civilian trade ship, and she looked into a mirror.
By human standards, she knew she looked Cardassian - her skin was a little on the darker side, the scale patterns a little less pronounced, the ridges on her face softer... but Cardassian.
It was a face that resembled her uncle Michael's 'skin condition'.
Well, I guess the hair-color's just natural. she noted, looking at the mouse-brown hair she still had, even after the treatment. Her shoulders were... taller, and she could feel the difference in the set of her muscles and bones, the difference in sensitivity in her skin, the weird almost-smell sensations... Focus... Gunny Wilson's lessons... she took out a small holoprojector - it was a gift from Commodore Cham - a portable sparring partner to help her adapt to her 'new' body shape... "You're still one of my Marines, Lisa. I expect when I see you again, you'll be 'Doctor' Makbar instead of Corpsman Quhon, but martial arts aren't just about fighting - they help you maintain health and focus," he'd told her.
She began with stretches - trying the body's ligaments and muscles to see just what she could do now...
The ship's navigation display said she had four more weeks - just under a month to become used to a body that was stronger, and heavier, with different senses...
She found that at least her clothes still fit - mostly. The civilian blouses were ruined - her neck ridges just deformed the shapes, but field-grade fatigue shirts fit just fine - and her bra almost fit properly - if she let the straps out all the way. Step one when I hit landfall, buy underwear!
Tee-shirts and fatigues at least could be worn without a bra, and fit well enough... and the skirt still worked. Hash that; buy clothes! The red/green tigerstripe camouflage just looked... wrong.
She tried the khaki dress uniform blouse... it fit... sort of. The collar sat too high, even with two buttons undone. "I'm a frikking pinup in this..." she muttered. The extra bulk from her shoulders to her neck pulled the blouse up and spread it out, revealing her midriff and too much chest to be comfortable, while pulling the sleeves to a too-short position on her arms. "TRIBBLE...yuck."
So it was back to the tee-shirts, and field jackets - clothing designed to be loose and to fit a variety of similarly-sized yet radically different people. The scars were still there. So was the tattoo - Marine Corps over a dredhundt, with the words "Son Tay 2410" - the tat she and the rest of the company got after Son Tay - it was something stupid that a fifteen-year-old would do to fit in... "Well, I'm not likely to forget that..." she muttered to a Commander she knew was hundreds of light-years behind her.
She felt lost as she looked at her pitifully small collection of civilian clothes, and the uniforms that didn't fit... and the face in the room's mirror. An Alien face... her face, the face she could have been born with if Grandmama had gone to Cardassia instead of following a teammate to Moab after the Dominion War.
Light-years away, in the Moab system...
"Her genetics were very pure under the false codes," Dr. Kasella Mocet stated. "Unusually pure. Who were her parents?"
"Um... Olivia and Jinh Quhon. Why?" Saul asked.
"Because she's more than a quarter Cardassian," the doctor told him. "I'd say thirty percent or better. It took about an hour longer than it should have to set her genes to rights."
"Um..." Saul mumbled.
"What was that?" the doctor asked.
"I said... nothing. Nothing... as far as we know, she's only a quarter Cardassian," he stated. He sighed and reviewed her family history. More dead friends... "Her father died during one of the Orion raids after the Starfleet pullout of '03; he was an immigrant. Akaria didn't like him much, but I think she'd have told me if he was ex-Order... and I think I'd have known if Jack's widow was stepping out on him... any chance you can amend your report?" he asked.
"No... but I won't highlight it either," she told him. "I will say that both Bajoran and Cardassian women are fertile well into their seventies, and it's not unusual for large families to have uncles young enough to be their nephew's infant sons."
"We tend to have big families too," Saul said. "It's a survival strategy of sorts - with the death rates being what they've always been, you pump out the kids as fast as you can and hope some survive and grow up before you die."
Dr. Mocet nodded. "Understandable. But I've reviewed records; your people's genetic condition is actually on a down-slope, percentage-wise. At first contact with Earth in the 2150s, it was close to fifty percent; now it's fifteen and declining."
"Fresh immigration helps... so does better screening," he said. "Over the last couple centuries we've mostly focused on reducing infant mortality - because we haven't figured out how to beat the defect."
"In another ten generations, DNSS should be bred out of the population based on these projections," she told him. "Or at least, it will become extremely rare."
"Now that, doctor, is good news." Saul smiled.
Nature doesn't HAVE to be nice, or polite.
Free Hong Kong.
Free Hong Kong.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
*Subscribes to thread*
I really want that watch, but considering it's a limited-edition model that's been out of manufacture for a few years and the best price I can find for one is ~$23,000 and I already have a perfectly serviceable Invicta dive watch, probably not gonna happen.
Jesu's is a family heirloom passed down from father to son when the son is ready to appreciate the value of a good watch (usually a graduation present.)
I made Ssharki's pimp suit in-game for the Risa event and the look just works on him. I can't explain it. [EDIT] Just noticed that the suit is actually three buttons, not two. [/EDIT]
I was going to give Rusty a personal holoemitter to let him move around "discreetly" and then I had the thought of a sort of monk's robe but then he suggested how badass he would look with a hooded trenchcoat.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
That's definitely how I envisaged Ssharki looking, and indeed, it's a pretty badass look for Rusty, made all the more so by Berat's reaction to him when he removed it :cool:
Great. I'll never be able to see Ssharki again without hearing this in my head.
"he's as dangerous as a ferret with a chainsaw."
You're welcome.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
I drug my heart with doublespeak
All my misgivings disappear
It helps to keep my conscience clean, the ends will justify the means
Still I'm always careful what I hear
I don't want to know
Who really pulls the strings
Just as long
As it's not you or me
There's a jackboot toe tap keeping time
While the children dance and play
Honey, if you think you've seen a crime
You just look the other way
I slowly carve my soul away
Piece by piece, I sacrifice
To comfort and peace of mind, I keep my toes on the party line
There's nothing wrong, dear, don't think twice
I don't want to know
Who really pulls the strings
Just as long
As it's not you or me
There's a jackboot toe tap keeping time
While the children dance and play
Honey, if you think you've seen a crime
You just look the other way
There's a jackboot toe tap keeping time
While the children dance and play
Honey, if you think you've seen a crime
Won't you look the other
Look the other way...
I drug my heart with doublespeak
All my misgivings disappear
It helps to keep my conscience clean
The ends will justify the means
Still I'm always careful what I hear
Dustin Kensrue of Thrice - "Doublespeak"
OWS Princess of the Night, Defera Sector - 05.03.2412
Thot Glab looked over the consignment. "Small," his electronic voice-box declared in a tone that sounded like a computerized growl. "Not like Tellarite-small. Scrawny."
"You asked for 'easy to train' - these are pre-pubescent male humanoids," Matron B'Renna said. "All from hardy races, impressionable and conditionable to a degree adults simply are not."
"But their nourishment demands are greater," Glab rumbled.
"So is the durability factor - youths recover from injuries and adapt to conditions far faster than adults," she pointed out. "Properly maintained, these animals can provide years of service with increasing outputs, rather than months you typically get out of adults before expiration."
"The job is mining dilithium - typically months are all it takes to tap a vein," Thot Glab pointed out.
"So you have a pre-trained labor force ready for the next site," she said. "Yes, you will have to transport them, but they have minimal space requirements. And they will need less of a guard force to control them than adults."
Glab looked down at a terrified Vulcan child, shivering as he stood there wearing nothing but a dirty loincloth. "They're too weak to work in the mines. This one would freeze to death in a day." He looked at the next item, a Human boy, taller than the Vulcan but most of his bones were visible through his skin. "And I doubt this creature could even pick up a mining laser. Show me something with more muscle tone."
She sighed. It was the dance... "Fine... I have some Romulan teenagers," she told him. "Also labor-stocks from an Orion dealer... but they're more expensive." The children had been a gamble, picking up the leftovers from the demise of an old colleague - so far she had not yet found buyers for more than a few of the males, but the potential sales outweighed the cost of maintenance. Selling them as labor had been Harkan's idea, and she had thought at the time it was a stroke of brilliance. Now as she watched him usher the children out and bring the older merchandise in, she wasn't so sure. She hoped that she could attribute this missed sale to Glab's stupidity rather than Harkan's.
Glab looked at the Romulans first, and expressed approval. "Good muscle tone, decent health," he said. He examined the tattooed shoulder of one older boy and asked. "You - have you ever held a mining laser?"
The Romulan looked at him with empty eyes. "I was a miner," he said.
The Breen turned to the Matron. "Why did you not show me this first?" he asked.
She smiled, and said, "They're more expensive - it took weeks to condition that one to make any kind of response that wasn't violent."
Thot Glab shook his head. "A skilled miner is worth the extra, Matron - because, see... those last longer, and work harder, and more important, work smarter."
"Do you want the full lot, then?" She had hoped to convert some of them into soldiers - mercenary contracting was still big business, bigger even than the pleasure trade, in some sectors. Maybe some of the prepubescents could be converted as well - how big do you need to be to learn to fire a gun?
"Let me see the Orions you have for sale," Thot Glab said. "I might take this lot - for the one skilled miner - but if the other Romulans and the Orions look good enough, I may take the whole lot for what you're asking."
Labor Stocks and Enforcers both tend to be bred toward big and durable, the greatest difference is, generally, that Enforcers are somewhat smarter and show a shred of initiative.
The Breen looked over the laborers, which were, if B'Renna was honest, the dregs of her cargo. She even had a few females thrown in which she couldn't imagine using for breedstock. Even through the mask of his refrigeration suit, it was clear the Thot was looking at them with disdain, although probably for different reasons. "None of the females," Thot Glab said. "But I will take the males, along with all of your Romulans for the agreed price... you can keep the children."
B'Renna handed over a PADD with the weapons list as she covered her disappointment. She had really wanted to hold on to at least a few of those Romulans - a couple of them could have even made decent pleasure slaves. But with the additional training requirements for military or pleasure use, she figured she'd break even. Still, this left her with a hold full of small boys and a few ugly wenches - she prefered to keep a more diverse stock.
Thot Glab signed the consignment, and said, "Our scheduled business is complete. I can recommend to you a buyer for the... dregs." Thot Glab said, "There are pit-fights on Traelus II, the managers will buy anything - even worn out miners, to keep the games going."
B'Renna considered the proposal. Watching children fight to the death may have a certain appeal... She looked to Harkan. His signal indicated that he'd calculate the potential. "I may look into that. As always, Thot, doing business with you has been a pleasure."
"Of course. I will leave now... before you try to charm your way under my mask." And he beamed out with his consignment. A moment later, crates of weapons and components were beamed in. She could feel the deck plate strain beneath her feet before her engineers rerouted the structural integrity field to compensate.
"Harkan, be a dear and examine the payment," the Matron commanded her most loyal enforcer. "If we were short-changed I want Glab's head in a freezer before supper. I will be in my bath - those Romulans stank."
"Yes, Matron," Harkan nodded. "And if the account is settled?"
"Set a course for the Badlands. We must make a delivery to our friends, and we must discuss the next phase of our business..."
The Badlands, a few days later...
"...Transphasic torpedoes, including the cluster modification, targeting system components... class ten disruptor banks... it's all here. Here is your latinum." Gul Skrain Koheber's men brought the Latinum in cases as they finished re-crating the weapons.
Matron B'Renna Djokhar smiled as her staff slaves examined each case to verify the contents. "As always, Gul, I am impressed with the dedication to your people you show." she said.
"Flatterer," the Cardassian said. "That latinum represents the hopes of the Cardassian people, traded for the weapons to drive the Federation from Cardassian soil."
"I do support your cause, Gul Koheber. I will have technical teams and soon, new and improved systems to help you in your cause... just remember it was the Orions, and specifically myTrading House that supported your mighty struggle."
Koheber looked at her skeptically. "Just remember who the senior partner is in this - once the proper social order is established, there will be room for you and your... associates, be assured," he added a smile.
"Of course," she said, just as falsely. When the Holy Work is done, we will seewho grovels to whom... and what the proper social order shall indeed be. "Naturally. The work on your transwarp network proceeds at a good pace, by the way - this latinum will help speed that considerably."
Koheber's smile turned genuine. "Excellent. When we have removed the chains of the Federation, we will be needing it to assert Cardassia's supremacy and bring our former subject races back under control. Besides, with shortened travel times throughout Cardassian space, those who gather resources and trade goods for us will benefit enormously from our foresight."
"And you will help us in our revenge against the Klingons?" she reminded the gul. "Remember, your people are not the only ones under a yoke."
Koheber nodded. "Bringing vengeance to the damned Klingons is definitely on the long-term list." he said. "Punishing them for their invasion of our space is reason enough to aid your quest."
"I am pleased that the terms of our agreement continue to support both of our plans," she said in that uniquely Orion tone that makes an ordinary business meeting sound like a seduction. "I will keep you apprised of the construction progress, and I will notify when your next delivery is ready."
"Any idea when that will be?" Koheber wondered.
"I need to collect new merchandise to trade for weapons," she told him, "and I need to offload what I was unable to trade to make room for fresh cargo. A month at least; six weeks, more likely."
Koheber frowned displeasurably, both at her timetable forecast and at the particular merchandise she was doubtlessly alluding to. Still, so long as her tainted goods never crossed his hands and none of it was Cardassian in origin... "Very well. I look forward to our next transaction."
Cargo Bay 6
"Ha' long've we been stopped, Sokar?" the Bolian whined.
"SSSHH!!" Kenny hissed.
"Three hours, eight minutes, and forty-seven seconds," the Vulcan boy whispered back. Sokar was sitting in the floor in a posture of meditation, but he wasn't focusing on spiritual matters. He was only thinking about time.
Kenny, the tall, skinny, Human eleven-year-old, held his ear to the bottom of a plastic cup and held the cup to a bulkhead over an ODN conduit that ran through another cargo bay where the matron's latest exchange was taking place. He frowned with concentration, struggling to make out more than half of the words. Sokar had better hearing than he did, but the Vulcan was also the only one who could keep four or five stopwatches running in his head. Kenny wished to hell they still had N'Kkitt, but the Caitian cub had been sold to a pleasure-seeker a few weeks ago.
"Someone's coming!" Barryn, the Andorian whispered loudly.
Kenny immediately moved off the bulkhead and positioned his ear to the door. "Soft-shoe," he announced, using their name for the Orion thug who wore lightweight boots. "Passing the mark... now."
Sokar nodded. "He's lost two minutes, eleven seconds on his pace."
Kenny returned to his ODN line. "I think they're wrapping up. Matron just said 'pleased'..." his lips moved as his mind subconsciously tried to fill in the words he couldn't hear. "Uh-oh."
"What?" the Bolian kid asked.
"She just said something about offloading us to make room for fresh cargo." Kenny looked around the cargo bay at all the eyes watching him. A few were dull and listless. Many more were confused. But some - those who understood what was going on - were filled with panic. "Everybody relax," he ordered. "We'll get out of this." He shifted his focus to the conversation a hundred meters away. "Sounds like the Cardies are leaving." He moved away from the bulkhead. "What do you think, Sokar?"
"I think it's too risky," the Vulcan replied. "We have no idea where we are, and if we should manage to successfully break out, we may find ourselves in a worse situation, like, jumping out of a pol-tor pan only to land in the cook-fire."
"Wherever we are, it's better than Traelus II," Barryn muttered.
"I agree." Kenny wished, as he did with every waking breath, that his brother Kyle was still alive. Kyle had been the real leader of the group, before he became "an example." Kenny had been forced to watch with the others as an enforcer repeatedly violated and finally murdered his twin. He'd felt Kyle's agony, through that sympathetic bond twins sometimes share, right up to the end. He knew if they were caught trying to escape, he'd end up like his brother. But that was better than being forced to fight his friends to the death in a pit on Traelus II.
"How 'bout you, Bo?" Kenny asked, turning to the Bolian who, for the life of him couldn't remember his own name.
"I'm in."
"That settles it, we're going." Kenny looked at his Vulcan friend. "Are you with us, Sokar?"
"I suppose I am, considering your chances of escape are greatly reduced if I do not assist."
Matron's Quarters
B'Renna Djokahr reclined her couch, smiling contentedly. One of her attendants fed her grapes from Nueve Castille, while another cleaned every molecule of Cardassian grease from her fingernails. "Let us not linger here any longer than necessary, Harkan. As soon as the navigator can see a clear path through the plasma storms, take us away from this place."
"Are you sure you do not wish to inspect the construction progress, Matron?" the enforcer asked.
"Echk. Construction makes dirt and grime. I have no desire to cover my hands in flilth."
"Then will you object if I beam over and inspect the gate myself?" Harkan enquired. "The navigator says it will be at least forty minutes before a window opens up in the plasma storms."
"Oh, very well. But make sure you are aboard well before it is time to leave, won't you?" B'Renna gave him her sweetest smile. "I can't afford to leave you behind."
Cargo Bay 6
"Shuffle's gone around the corner," Kenny announced, once the the thug with the distinctive gait was out of earshot.
"That gives us sixteen minutes, twenty-three seconds to escape into the corridor before Bigfoot enters range," Sokar announced.
"How are we coming with that, Bo?" Kenny asked.
"The mechanical locks won't be a problem," the Bolian replied. "But the magnetic one is gonna be tough unless I get parts..."
"Where are we with that, Barryn?"
"See for yourself." The Andorian waved to the other end of the cargo bay, where most of the rest of the boys were hurling the heaviest objects they could get their hands on at the security holocam (already blinded by a well-placed blanket) in a contest to see who could knock it down.
"Bo, do you have any heavy parts you don't need?" Kenny wondered
The Bolian rolled a few piston springs and and thick nuts in his direction. "Lucky this old barge is held together with manually-sealing stem-bolts."
"Thanks." Kenny gathered the pieces in his arm and carried them to a table on a side of the cargo bay that the holocam wasn't looking at. He stood up on the table, stripped off his loincloth, and used it as a sling to hurl a nut at the camera. It missed by two meters, and he was only three meters away.
Barryn grunted. If he could still laugh, he would have. "Try again!"
Kenny did, this time releasing later, and got a piston spring to rattle off the bulkhead near the mount point. He tried another spring, and this time he struck the holocam squarely the in the side of the housing with a satisfying crack! Sparks flew and the camera wobbled almost-off its mount. Then some other kid chucked the nut Kenny had used for his first shot, striking the camera just below the 3D lens, flipping it off the mounting hardware.
"Nice shot! First prize!" Barryn said, rushing forward to intercept the kid who'd made the kill before he could stomp on the camera.
"What'd I win?" the Human nine-year-old wondered.
"Um," Barryn hadn't that about that.
"A ticket outta here," Kenny announced, as he scooped up the camera. "You wanna get outta here, right Brandon?"
"Uh-huh."
"You good at throwing stuff?"
"Uh-huh. I hit that camera a lot but I didn't have anything heavy 'nough to knock it until I found that big TRIBBLE thingy."
"Okay. There's more TRIBBLE thingies on that table. Grab 'em and follow me."
"Okay, Kenny!"
"Have the rest of them start breaking tables and stools," Kenny instructed Barryn. "It's all plastic, so if you bend it far enough, it should just snap."
"A plastic table leg isn't gonna do much good against an Orion with a disruptor," Barryn said morosely.
"Better than nothin'." Kenny brought the camera to the Bolian. "How's it comin'?"
"I've almost broken the lock, but I need help holding these two pistons back so they don't drop this plate down and cut my fingers off."
"That would be bad."
"Hmm. Actually though, my blood's acidic," Bo mentioned.
"It's not corrosive enough to eat through that kind of metal," Sokar informed him. "At least not that thick."
Kenny reached in over Bo's shoulders. "I've got the pistons. Pull it."
The Bolian yanked on something, and a series of deadbolts snapped back. "Arright, that leaves the magnet."
Sokar was already picking through the smashed camera, searching for useful components. "This should suffice to invert the polarity field," the Vulcan announced, holding out an asynchronous inducer. "You will need to find an adequate power source."
"Let's try that light over there," Kenny pointed. "How much time do we have left?"
"Six minutes, thirty-six seconds."
Barryn spoke up. "You realize, the ship could go to warp at any time, which would leave us in deep ****."
"Yeah, but I think they'll wait for the Cardies to get outta sensor range first," Kenny figured, "so they won't know where the Orions are headed next."
"How do you know so much about ship systems and operations?" Sokar wondered.
"Our dad was the TacOps officer on the Claymore. It got... destroyed. Mom was taking us back home from Dee-ess-kay-seven when the Orions caught us. But dad brought us aboard a few times between missions to show us how stuff worked, even things like watch rotations and security patrols. Got that cable isolated?"
"Yes."
"Okay, pull here." Kenny and Sokar carefully brought the live wire over to Bo. "How long 'till you're ready to pop this?"
"Two minutes, tops."
"Okay, Sokar's here to help if you need him. Barryn, Brandon, lets sort out kids and weapons. Okay!" Kenny called out as loudly as he dared. "Everyone who wants to get out of here, stand up against that wall!"
All but four of the boys sprinted to the bulkhead. Barryn and Brandon started passing out improvised clubs and shivs made from the broken plastic furniture. Kenny approached one of the boys who'd refused to move. He was a Betazoid, and he just stared through Kenny and off into space as he sat hugging his knees and rocking back and forth. Kenny didn't think he could help him. He found another one - a six-year-old Human named Gagan. Kenny tried to pick him up. The boy screamed.
"Don't!" Sokar seized Kenny's arm with a powerful grip. "Put him down. Leave him. He's gone." The Vulcan looked at the other catatonic children. "They're all too far gone."
"But we can get them to doctors-" Kenny started to argue.
Sokar shook his head. "They will slow us down, and larger boys will be forced to carry them instead of fighting the Orions. We must leave them behind for the best chance at success. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
Kenny nodded. He'd heard his dad say that before. "Alright." He set Gagan down on his cot and walked away.
"Gather weapons for yourself. Bo's almost through."
Kenny found his loincloth/sling and realized he hadn't been wearing anything for the last ten minutes or so. He decided the strip of dirty fabric was more useful as a weapon than as clothing. He wrapped it around half a dozen piston springs. He also found a large, jagged shard of crystal from the light he and Sokar had broken. He tore off a piece of his cloth and wrapped it around one end of the crystal for a handle, then he looked down at himself again.
"You okay, Kenny?" Brandon asked. He had a little bag for his stem-bolt nuts tied to the right side of his waist, with a nasty-looking shiv tucked through the other.
"Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out how I'm gonna... hold this stuff."
"Oh. Edym! Kenny needs your help!"
A Bajoran boy approached, wearing a well-secured toga fashioned from shredded blankets. He tore of a strip of another blanket and tied it around Kenny's hips, forming a belt-skirt that covered most of his buttocks but allowed free range of movement. "Want something to cover the junk?" the would-be tailor asked.
"Sure. And can you do a pouch for my ammo?" Kenny asked, as he slipped his knife into a loop Edym had left when he tied the knot securing his belt.
Edym ripped another strip and handed it to him. "Tuck that through." Next the Bajoran ripped out a square and tied opposite corners together over the belt on Kenny's left hip. "That should do."
"Thanks." Kenny dumped the springs in the pouch and wrapped the sling around his right hand and wrist.
"Are we ready?" Barrym asked. He held a... mace, crafted from several plastic rods all lashed together, with sharp barbs pointing out at one end.
"I think so. Bo?"
"Ready when you are."
"Sokar? We good on time?"
"Two minutes, thirty-three seconds."
"Okay, listen up, guys!" Kenny called to the other kids. "That door's gonna open in a minute. I can get us out of here, but everyone needs to follow me and do what I say. Do you guys understand?"
The kids nodded enthusiastically.
"I'm gonna try to get us off without anybody seeing us. But if we're spotted, we'll have to kill the bad men who saw us. Do you understand?"
The boys nodded again, solemnly this time.
"Okay." Kenny led the group to the door. "Let's go."
Cargo Bay 8
Nerrin didn't know why. "I know I'm ugly, but at least I'm strong..." She was near tears these days, always. "Stronger than the males they did buy." Being rejected by the Breen. The damned-by-all Breen. Those horrible meat popsicles would buy anybody. Anybody but her. No buyer, no prospects, no chance of advancement.
Worthless.
"They didn't buy me either," Leera said. She sighed resignedly. "I guess the next stop is reprocessing as nutrients for the organic protein cyclers."
Zarah, the third of the six, huddled in her corner and wept. "We're worthless!" she wailed again.
"Someone hit the fat b*tch?" Mala grumbled irritably.
"What can we really do?" Leera wondered. "Nobody wants us, we're all ugly... except Mala there - she's just bad-tempered."
"Am not," Mala said. "Say it agin'n we'll have a go and I'll burst you."
The other two had gone catatonic days ago.
Nerrin frowned. "Do you believe in the Good Masters?" she asked.
The ones that weren't wrapped in hysteria looked at each other. "No, it's a myth," Leera declared. "Stories they tell you in the pens."
"Me neither... what if we escape?" Nerrin asked. "What if we just... leave?"
"She'll chase us," Mala said.
"We're worthless. I don't think she'll chase that hard... and maybe if she does, we'll have some value - initiative."
"She'd geld you," Leera told her.
"And the cost of the cosmetic surgery?" Nerrin proposed, "I'd be the most expensive brain-burn in the Trade," she scoffed. "See? none of us are 'sexy' or alluring - not by any race's standards I've ever heard of. The worst they could do is kill us... But what if we get away? I mean really get free?"
Mala and Leera both made mocking laughs. "That's crazy talk."
Security Station
"What's with the holocam in cargo bay six?" Dugan wondered.
"It went out a few hours ago," Rodav told him. "Don't worry about it."
"Um, that's where most of our remaining cargo is," Dugan replied. "You say 'don't worry about it'?"
"That's what the boss told me," Rodav said with a yawn. "He'll look into the problem personally when he gets back."
"What if the cargo gets out before then?"
Rodav rolled his eyes. "They're a bunch of stupid kids, Dugan. How hard can it be to round them up?"
Cargo deck, corridor 6-D
"Keep moving," Barryn hissed, prodding the stragglers. "Bigfoot's right behind us!"
Kenny led them through a hatchway. "Go down that side and hold up," he ordered. He turned to Barryn once everyone was through. "We need to take him out."
"Bigfoot?"
"Yeah. We can't let him push us through the ship - we need time to stop and look around, figure out where we are - we can't do that if we're trying to stay ahead of him."
Barryn looked back down the corridor. "This is a good place for an ambush. I wait at the corner and hit him in the knees, you and Brandon hold here and get him from range."
Kenny nodded and turned to Brandon. "Watch for his disruptor. If he points it at you, duck behind the door."
"Got it."
"He's coming!" the Andorian hissed from the corner.
Kenny stepped into the middle of the corridor, unwrapped the sling from around his right wrist, loaded a piston spring and whirled it over his head. As soon as Bigfoot stepped into view, he released. He'd been aiming for the middle of the Orion's face, but a sharp blow to the kneecap made him stiffen and holler in pain. Straightening from his slouch, the thug caught Kenny's shot right in the mouth, knocking out teeth and dislocating the lower jaw. Hands went up to protect the face an instant before another heavy lump of metal was fastballed into the side of his head, breaking two fingers on his pistol hand and making his ears ring.
Barryn slammed his mace into the back of the knee he'd just attacked, and then dropped it and grabbed the Orion's disruptor pistol. Kenny sprinted forward, drew his knife and rammed it full force into Bigfoot's diaphragm. The thug collapsed, driving the improvised blade into his lung. Barryn finished him off with a disruptor bolt to the back of the head.
"Well, he's dead," the Andorian announced.
"We should move him," Kenny figured, "before somebody finds him."
"He's gotta weigh a hundred kilos at least..."
"We'll get everyone to help. Brandon, bring everyone back here." The kids carried Bigfoot into a storage compartment that was otherwise packed with strange pieces of metal and electronics. Kenny retrieved his knife and Barryn took the holster for the pistol.
"Can I see that?" Kenny asked the Andorian.
"No, it's mine," Barryn said, stroking the handle of the pistol.
"I just wanna look at it. I'll give it right back."
"Get your own."
"Which way?" Sokar asked.
"We gotta get to a turbolift," Kenny told them. "We hafta get off this deck."
"No, we're looking for escape pods," Bo declared. "Those are in the back of the ship, right? This way."
"Escape pods are all over," Kenny informed, "except on the cargo decks. Think about it. If you were the matron, and the ship's about to blow up, would you let your cargo just fly away?"
"Okay, so where's the turbolift?" Barryn wondered.
Kenny didn't know. But it made sense that there would be at least one turbolift at each end of the deck. He pointed down the corridor after the Bolian. "That way."
Bo shrugged and kept walking. Kenny jogged past him, paused at each door and hatch he came to, listening for enemy movement if it was closed, cautiously peering through the portal if it was open, before waving the other boys forward. He came to a large door that looked like the door to the cargo bay they'd just escaped from.
Kenny leaned his ear against it and listened, and he frowned.
"What is it?" Sokar asked.
"Listen," Kenny suggested.
The Vulcan did. "More prisoners," he announced. "They're talking about escaping."
"That's what I thought I heard," Kenny acknowledged. "We should help them."
Sokar shrugged. Bo opened the cargo bay.
Sherrin, Leera, Mala and Zarah looked up at the door as it clanged opened, revealing a young Human boy wearing less than they were. "Hi," the boy said. "Um, do you want to get out of here?"
Nerrin looked at the others, who were staring at the children gathering outside the cargo bay with bewildered expressions. She looked back at the Human and said "Yeah!"
"Okay, great. C'mon. We've got to find escape pods... anybody else not wanna be a slave anymore?"
Zarah huddled frightened in the corner. Leera and Mala shook their heads vigorously. The other two were out of it.
"Well, we'll leave the door open for you in case you change your minds."
Security Station
"Um, what the hell just happened?" Rodav demanded, staring at his viewer.
"It looked like the door opened up and she just... walked out," Dugan observed.
"Thank you - my eyes work just fine..." Rodav called one of his thugs. "Nozar, check the security panel for cargo bay eight and close the door. Capture team one, we have a female laborer who's left her holding area in cargo bay eight. Make sure she is returned there."
Dugan replayed the escape on the viewer. He noticed something strange on the second runthrough. "What's that?" he wondered, pointing out a pair of pinkish, bony, bare feet at the top of the screen.
Rodav leaned over. "Computer, isolate grid alpha-nine, run a comparative analysis to identify and enhance."
"Looked like one of those little kids," Dugan remarked.
"Yeah, it did. Security team three, check out cargo bay six. Now."
The Orion ship's operating system was about the equivalent of what Starfleet was using fifty years ago. It took a while to identify and render the owner of the feet that had been seen in the corridor. But eventually... "He looks familiar," Dugan announced.
"I don't know about that, but he's definitely escaped cargo."
Cargo Deck, corridor 11-B
"See, they couldn't sell you, and they couldn't sell me," Nerrin was saying. "I don't think they'll bother to chase us at all. It would cost them more than we're worth to bring us back."
"Makes sense," Kenny said. "But she still thinks she can get something selling us for pit fights."
Maybe she could have sold me for a pit fight, Nerrin thought ruefully... No. If I get out of here, I'll never be bought or sold again. I will decide how much I'm worth.
"Can you read that?" Kenny asked, pointing to a sign. "Does it tell us where the turbolifts are?"
"Yeah." Nerrin had actually received some elementary education before her breedholders realized that she wouldn't stop growing and her face was filling out all wrong. "Next corridor over, and two sections down."
They crossed into corridor 11-A and walked straight into an Orion capture team, to both group's surprise and consternation. The Orions had expected to find only two escaped slaves, after all - not twenty armed children. Everyone froze for a second or two, trying to overcome the shock and formulate a response.
Brandon was the first to respond with a polysteel stem nut fastballed into a thug's eye.
"Shoot to kill!" the enforcer leading the ten-man capture team ordered. "Shoot to-" he was silenced by a compression bolt shot from Barryn's pistol. Nerrin scooted forward, following a wave of children armed with plastic weapons. One thug recognized her and tried to wrestle her into submission. The Andorian boy struck him in the back of the head with his club, then turned around and resumed shooting. Nerrin flattened herself against the wall and watched, terrified, as the horrible battle unfolded.
"Little TRIBBLE!" a thug yelled, stepping forward with a pulsewave rifle charged and lowered. He pulled the trigger, and three little destroyed bodies tumbled across the corridor.
"Hey!" Kenny shouted at the thug. The Orion looked up and saw the piston spring just before it struck him between his eyes, cracking his skull apart like an eggshell. His head snapped back and his arms went limp as he stood there, stunned. Kenny charged up, pulled the disruptor pulsewave from his hands and used it to smash his nose up and back into his brain.
Kenny watched two more boys get gunned down before he could figure out how the pulsewave worked. He blasted through the remaining thugs, stepping in front of the last one as he was about shoot Brandon. The pistol bolt went wide as the pulsewave shot tore through the thug's chest. But the bolt struck the bulkhead right next to Kenny's head - close enough of a miss to knock him to his knees and briefly overload his nervous system with disruptor shock.
"KENNY!" Brandon squealed as he rushed up to his leader. "Are you okay?"
"Uh. Dunno," Kenny mumbled. He spat out a mouthful of blood, but when he ran his tongue along the inside of his mouth he couldn't figure out where it came from. "I think so."
"Pick up their disruptors!" Barryn ordered the survivors. "Bo, you're the biggest - grab that other rifle."
Kenny stared at the slain bodies of the five dead kids- no, six! A ten-year-old trill without a head lay on the other side of the corridor. Kenny wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn't come. He'd gotten six of his boys killed, and they hadn't even made it off the cargo deck yet.
"It's not your fault," Sokar told him. "The odds were against us from the start. There had to be losses. It's only logical. You are hurt."
"I'm alright," Kenny lied as he staggered painfully to his feet. It felt like every nerve had been burned and was left smoldering. "Um. Power cells. Barryn. Check power cells on the disruptors. The Orions should be carrying extras." He checked his own weapon. 48% - he'd need more He found the dead brute he'd taken the weapon from and removed his hip pouch, trading that for the blanket bag he'd been carrying his piston springs in.
The three Orion females they left in the cargo bay came out. "We heard shooting," the oldest, Leera explained. "But when no one came to check on us we thought... maybe..." She looked at the scene of carnage. "But how..."
"The kids," Nerrin told her. "They did this."
Zarah approached Kenny. "You... really wanna get of here, don't you?"
"I wanna get us all out of here," the skinny Human boy replied.
"I wanna go with you."
Kenny hefted his pulsewave rifle, pre-charged it and said, "Turbolift's that way."
Security Station
"Damn it all!" Rodav watched three more females wander out of cargo bay 8 through the open door. "Nozar! Report! Why haven't you secured cargo bay eight?" There was no response. "Nozar? Damn it, man, report in!" Still nothing. "Maybe his comm unit's broken."
"Or he's found something more interesting to do," Dugan suggested.
"Ha! Yeah, that must be it. Capture team one, report in." When Rodav couldn't raise them either, his frustration became concern. "What the hell is going on?"
"Check the equipment."
Rodav did. "There's nothing wrong on our end..."
"This is security team three," someone said over the commline. "I have a report to make."
"Finally." Rodav switched channels. "Go ahead, three."
"Sir, cargo bay six is empty, except four sleepwalkers, and it's been... trashed. It looks like they just smashed or shredded everything they could get their hands on on their way out. Also, we saw blood in corridor six-delta. Orion blood."
Sh*t. "Understood. Check out cargo bay eight, and look for Nozar and the capture team."
"It's the kids," Dugan realized. "They're making a break, and they've got weapons."
"C'mon, a bunch of kids took down Nozar? And a capture-team?"
"Think about it. The matron was planning to sell them for pit fights. Or convert them for military training. Why? Because feral boys are fighters."
"All of them?" Rodav frowned in disbelief. "They've been conditioned..."
"I guess it didn't hold." Dugan called up the image of the skinny barefoot Human boy. "This one. Or his brother, rather... I remember two boys, lookalikes, twins. I got to make an example of one of them. He was inciting the others to hunger strikes, escape attempts, disobedience. He was a menace."
"Maybe you exampled the wrong one?"
"No, I definitely had the right one." Dugan smiled at the memory. "I have to admit, it felt good. Especially watching his brother while I was finishing him. We hadn't any trouble since, but..."
"We have trouble now."
"Not for long." Dugan stood up, grabbed a high-density beam rifle from a rack and strapped on a personal shield generator. "Call up internal sensors. Look for a concentration of non-Orion lifesigns. They must have been heading for the aft turbolifts - let me know what deck they got off on and send another security team to that location."
"What are you going to do with them?" Rodav wondered.
Dugan looked at the image of the boy on the viewer and gave a cruel smile. "I'm going to make more examples."
...
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
No, that was the closest model I could see, for some reason, the rep manufacturers haven't been as swift on the uptake of UN models as they have been with other marques, and there're some glaring vacancies from the line up which would sell in a heartbeat, most notably, the rhodium-dialled maxi-marine diver... They have replicated a white and a black dialled version, but the rhodium dial is magic...
knowyourmeme.com/memes/this-is-why-we-cant-have-nice-things
The idea of spending crazy amounts of money so I can wreck the glass inside of a month is just incomprehensible to me.
Tonight I'll find a pic of Berat's civilian outfit, because it actually kind of does look like a Cardassian style, even in game.
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Likewise, this is why I collect replicas
I actually named Kenny and Kyle after friends of mine - I didn't notice that I'd accidentally made a South Park reference until I gave Kenny disruptor shock and one of our co-conspirators commented in the googledoc "Oh my God, he killed Kenny!"
Stay tuned for part two of this little saga, which is even darker, grittier and nastier...
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
:eek: Awesome, I'll be looking forward to it :cool:
Spoilers
Bo and Sokar were my favourites
/End Spoilers
Really nice pacing throughout :cool:
Those two you mentioned as being your favorites were based on me at that age, so I'm glad you liked them! :cool:
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Very much so :cool: PM Incoming :cool:
This is shaping up to be one hell of a story. And I think I should try to get my roommate to read the conversation between Elim and Tos, just after Lisa left - he needs to remember that he needs help too. Sometimes it's hard to get him to realize that being afraid when you seen a car along the roadside isn't normal in the States...
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
There's a lot of great stuff there. My favorite parts were all those things Lisa was thinking but did NOT say. You get a real sense here that she's fully aware of how messed up she is, but she has this attitude that is sadly far too common among returning servicemembers, that "I can hide this. I don't need your help to get by. I'll take this on my own."
[/spectator mode]
This is easily our most ambitious colab project to date. How well our ambition translates to your enjoyment is for you to judge, but I don't think you'll be disappointed. :cool:
Like I said, it's a story I hear far to often. Not all Wounded Warriors have physical scars. Sometimes the guy who walks away from the IED blast without a scratch comes home the most damaged of all.
Even though I had nothing to do with the scene in question, I echo the sentiment. If our writing touches someone's life in a positive way, that means more to us than any measure of our success as writers.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Do you know what it's like when
You're scared to see yourself?
Do you know what it's like when
You wish you were someone else
Who didn't need your help to get by?
Do you know what it's like
To wanna surrender?
I don't wanna feel like this tomorrow
I don't wanna live like this today
Make me feel better
I wanna feel better
Stay with me here, now
And never surrender...
- John Cooper and Dave Bassett of Skillet - "Never Surrender"
...Still I tried to find my way
Spinning hours into days
Burning like a flame behind my eyes
Drown in out, drink it in
Crown the king of suffering
Prisoner, a slave to the disguise
Disappear the only thing
Bittersweet surrendering
Knew that it was time to say goodbye...
- David Grohl of Foo Fighters - "Come Alive"
USS Chin'toka, Badlands - Stardate 89360.62 (05.11.2412, 1508 hours)
Golden light roiled outside, causing the bridge viewscreen on the Chin'toka to bathe the faces of the bridge crew with eerie glows and flickering shadows as if from a giant bonfire. The ship glided into the heart of the double pulsar system that formed the core of the Badlands, navigating the paths of least turbulence where in a normal star system, the Lagrange-1 solar collectors were often located. That didn't stop them from being buffeted every so often by the periodic gravitational waves typical to these rare systems.
Even rarer, however, was to find a double pulsar in the middle of a stellar nursery where not just the spinning neutron stars' own volatile magnetospheres generated disruptions, but constantly stirred up the dust, hydrogen, helium, and ionized gases typical of gentler nebulae. The unique gravimetric properties of the Badlands had created in the Lagrange-1 region the strange appearance of two sheafs of churning plasma separated by a plane of nearly normal space.
Normal, that is, except for the gouts of plasma that spun like two-ended tornadoes whenever the ionized regions in Derevak A's influence happened to pull hard enough upon an opposite-charged region in the sphere of Derevak B's influence.
Neither Captain Strannik nor helmswoman Mirrsh were strangers to gravimetric shear. The approach to 75-Tau, the under-construction starbase of the 77th Fleet in orbit of Tagra in the Argolis Cluster, was fraught with its own navigational hazards if one strayed from the standard flight paths.
Not to mention the Bajor-Cardassia Warp Eddy. And the McAllister Nebula, the only Devidian in Starfleet thought to himself. That particular protostellar nursery was outright hostile to life; ships could only remain inside for 96 hours or so these days before the particle flux inside damaged unlucky craft beyond repair.
The entire Federation-Cardassian border was spatially 'deranged' to some extent, though most areas were much more passable than the three most serious anomalies. Stellar development wasn't as far along here as it was in other parts of the galaxy - and the corresponding reduction in heavy metals, while not so great as to prevent the formation of Class-M planets, played a key factor in the resource-poverty of the Cardassian territories. Bajor, one of the first worlds far enough out of the zone to mirror more typical Class-M worlds like Earth in its mineral composition, had suffered the consequences in spades.
While the 77th Fleet often saw combat, and Alexei Ivanovich in particular was often pulled out into other regions of the galaxy for a variety of other missions, this research presented one of the greatest rewards in this posting. Researching why things were this way here - why there were so many anomalies - the Devidian scientist loved it. Space and time were living things to him, revealing many facets depending on where... and in what phase... you looked at it. Regions like this, where that dynamism was revealed to all, where he could share in that awe with the great majority, who had no idea of his nature... they were as immensely beautiful as they were dangerous.
Lieutenant Wikiriwhi in Astrophysics had floated a proposal for further study of the most perplexing phenomenon in the Badlands: the planets found within. How they had formed - and when - was a subject of tremendous contention in the scientific community, and with good reason. Had they formed before the pulsars came to be? And if so, how had they not been blown clear when the two stars went supernova? Was it something to do with the unique gravitational properties of the Badlands, or were the planets formed afterwards?
Or, even more perplexing - and potentially disturbing, given the technologies involved - artificially created?
The Chin'toka's current survey was a preliminary analysis; the plan was to travel to each of the five Lagrange points within the Badlands phenomenon and conduct a thorough gravimetric analysis, searching for any perturbations or unusual patterns that might suggest what the rest of the particles and dust in the area might have been doing at the time of the supernovae. Normally such tasks would be assigned to a true science vessel - but various smugglers, pirates, and the True Way were known to utilize the Badlands for their own purposes: meaning ships planning to spend extended amounts of time in the Badlands needed teeth. And the Chin'toka had plenty of those.
It also had nearly a full suite of Vesta-grade sensors, as many as the previous chief engineer, Temm, had been able to wangle into the escort's tight spaces. This gave the Chin'toka a unique mission profile: seek out new phenomena, new life, and new civilizations where it's too dangerous for others to go.
Thus far the survey had been uneventful, insofar as such could be said of a double-pulsar system full of gravimetric waves and swirling plasma currents.
"Departing L-three now," the Saurian helmswoman, Ensign Mirrsh, calmly announced. "One quarter impulse."
The Devidian captain nodded. "Acknowledged." He turned to look up at Commander Chirithraz th'Valek - a gesture physically unnecessary both for him and the Aenar, thanks to photoreceptors all over his body and Thraz' reliance on senses other than sight. But Alexei Ivanovich was 'human,' after all... and by now maintaining the illusion was more than necessity - it was a part of who he chose to be. "Based on your readings at L-three... shall we launch probes ahead of us on the way?"
"That would be wise," Thraz replied. "The area up ahead is extremely turbulent."
"Do it, then. Proceed to L-five..."
Pod 24 (Fourth day after escape)
"Hypo," Kenny whispered.
"Okay, hold on." Zarah opened up the medkit again. She had no idea what most of the chemicals preloaded into the hyposprays were for, but she recognized one as a common painkiller. And Kenny was in a lot of pain. At first he'd only asked for it once every six hours. Then it was every four. Then two. He'd last asked for a shot twenty-eight minutes ago. "Here you go." She pressed the hypo into his neck and depressed the trigger.
Kenny trembled and sighed and seemed to relax for a moment. Then he resumed shivering.
"Still cold?" Zarah asked him.
"Yuh-yeah."
Zarah frowned with concern. Kenny was bundled under two thermal blankets, and his forehead felt almost hot to the touch. She couldn't figure out why he'd feel so cold. But she knew next to nothing about Humans; certainly not how they reacted to injury.
"You'll be okay, won't you Kenny?" Brandon asked him.
"Sure. I'll be fine." Kenny had been hurt and sick before, many times. For a couple of years, when he and Kyle were growing up in Prescott, Arizona, it seemed like every other week one of them would scrape a knee, cut a hand, or break an arm. Or if not then coming down with a cough or breaking out in a rash. But they got better. They always got better. Kenny wasn't getting better now, but then he'd never been hurt this badly before. But he was sure he'd start to get better, eventually.
"Want my blanket?" Brandon offered.
"'S okay. You keep it."
"I don't need it though," the nine-year-old persisted.
Kenny glanced at the fuel and power gauges. They'd run out of fuel tomorrow, leaving them adrift, and lose backup power three days later. He wasn't sure how long they could live without life support, but he guessed the cold would kill them before lack of oxygen. "You might later." At least there were plenty of ration packs.
Zarah was looking at the fuel gauge too. According to the onboard navigation system, once they ran out of fuel, they wouldn't make it out of the pulsar's gravity well. She knew she should tell Kenny - he was the leader, he had to know these kinds of things so he could decide what to do. But she was afraid to tell him bad news, afraid he would be mad at her, that he wouldn't love her. She stroked his soft hair and wished she knew how to make him feel better.
Kenny looked up at her and gave her a faint smile before a fresh wave of intense pain gripped him. Everything hurt. Breathing hurt most of all. But he couldn't give up, couldn't surrender to the pain. I am going to survive this...
Chin'toka - 16 hours later
"Sir!" tactical officer ch'Sherrin cut in. "Picking up what looks to be an automated distress beacon at heading 326 mark 008! They're on a slingshot trajectory around Derevak B, heading for L2, but they're slowing and they may not make it. Signal's weak but - it's looping. No... it's the same signal, but multiple points of origin. Boosting the signal through our advance probes... distress signal confirmed! Could be several life pods."
Aiming his apparent gaze back at ch'Sherrin, Strannik asked, "Any indications of other vessels in the area?"
"Long-range sensor range is limited, even conducting periodic active sensor sweeps," the Andorian answered. "If there are, we may not know until they're right on top of us. We won't even know the make of the pods until we get a visual; it's an automated, multilingual broadcast."
"Go to yellow alert," the captain decided, then looked straight ahead again, at the helm. "Adjust course and take us in."
Pod 22
"Whaddaya 'spose is in these?" Todd wondered, sniffing at the contents of his nutrient pack.
"Dead Orions," Barryn told him as he sipped at his own food slurry.
"Get out!" The Xarantine boy laughed. "Really?"
"No, not really," Edym told him, with a sidelong glance at Barryn. "He's kidding."
"No, think about it," the Andorian insisted. "The Orions are a slave society, right? Everybody's owned by somebody. So if you own a slave, and it dies, what do you do get your money out of it? You turn the body into food. Cheap food for your next slaves."
"That's horrible!" a Denobulan named Keddit said.
"It's gross, and it's not true," Edym insisted.
"If it is true, it's awesome." Todd ate his nutrients with relish.
Edym sighed. The Bajoran boy was good at making and fixing things, but he wasn't as persuasive as Barryn was. Which is why Barryn was the leader of their pod. Edym looked at their fuel status. They'd run out in six hours. He didn't know what would happen then - whether they'd drift until they ran into something or if they'd just sit there. He sighed again and leaned back in his seat, staring up through the viewports at the starship... "Um, guys?"
A powerful-looking Starfleet vessel hung outside amongst the swirling spouts of plasma. Outside of the Badlands, the hull would have seemed dark in places, but trimmed in lights that were the blue-white of the hottest stars, accentuating the lines of the sleek, four-nacelled escort. In here, though, what stood out the most was a golden sword-and-crosshairs emblazoned on the hull, almost seeming to burn in the complementary light of the Badlands, forming the image of a cross when seen from afar.
Speakers crackled to life aboard the tiny pod - poorly maintained, but the masculine voice they emitted was comprehensible enough. "This is Captain Alexei Ivanovich Strannik of the Federation starship Chin'toka." The Starfleet captain spoke Fed-Standard English with an American accent like Kenny's, except when he gave his name - the switch back and forth so abrupt and effortless as to suggest the man had been raised bilingual. It was what he said, though, that was sweetest to the escapees' ears: "We have received your distress call and are prepared to render aid. Do you have any medical emergencies on board?"
"How do we answer?" Edym wondered.
"Communications - that button there, I think." Barryn started to reach for it, but before he could get there, Zarah's voice came over the channel.
"Chin'toka! We need help! Kenny's shaking and I ran out of hydrozone and his pain is getting worse and he was talking crazy and IDUNNOWHATTODO!!"
"Do you have a medical tricorder? Would you be able to take a reading of him for me?"
"I don't know what a tricorder looks like!"
"Scanner," Kenny's weak voice told her. "Big display."
There was a the sound of someone rummaging through a box. "Can she figure it out?" Edym wondered.
Barryn shrugged. "She seems to be good with computers."
"I've got... graphs with wavy lines and numbers but I don't understand the words that come with them. I don't know how to use this thing!" Zarah sounded like she was almost in tears by now.
"Understood," the Starfleet captain calmly replied. "Please stand by while we prepare our rescue plan. This will not take more than a few minutes."
"TRIBBLE, sounds like Kenny's hurt bad," Edym remarked.
Barryn nodded as he looked at the starship. He hit the communication button. "Um, Captain Strannik, this the other pod. We want to be picked up too, but please save Kenny first."
"We will have you all safe very soon."
Chin'toka
Severe pain, possible hallucinations and febrile seizures - and it sounded like there was no one aboard who could make a full enough diagnosis to stabilize this Kenny for transport. From the sound of what they were dealing with, this case was well above most laypeople's heads. But more than that... aside from the woman who initially answered, were those children's voices? "Beam-in might endanger them further," Commander th'Valek said, confirming Strannik's suspicions. "We're close enough, though - we can pull them in."
Strannik reopened the channel. "Stand by - we're going to tractor you into our shuttlebay. You might feel a slight jolt when the tractor beam locks on, but it'll be a smooth, fast ride from there. You'll be on board very shortly and there will be a full medical team ready to receive you. Chin'toka out."
Thraz spoke up ominously at his captain's side. "I should warn you - I'm getting indications of serious, prolonged psychological trauma. I'm too far for a more detailed read than that... but it's definitely worrisome. It also means they're going to need a lot of care. More than we can provide for more than just a brief stay." The Chin'toka, being an escort, had a crew of only 150, which meant a limited medical team. There was only one full-time counselor aboard, and one of the nurse practitioners who doubled part-time as a secondary counselor. After stabilizing the patients, they would need at the very least to transfer soon to 75-Tau, or to even better facilities aboard DS9 or on Bajor, until their relatives arrived.
"Understood." The captain tapped the comm panel on his armrest. "Strannik to Sickbay: we're bringing in two lifepods - looks like escaped prisoners from an Orion slaver."
"What-" Dr. Sei sputtered. "Here? In the Badlands?"
"That's what it looks like. We have confirmed ill and wounded, possible long-term torture and abuse... I need you to have a full medical team ready to enter the shuttlebay immediately. And I am going to have a small security detail come as well. They will not draw their weapons unless someone takes a shot at them... but I want it for their reassurance as well as ours. I think there are kids - I want them to know the 'good guys' are looking out for them now." That... and it could still turn out one of their captors had escaped with them.
There was no further response from the Trill CMO: all she had needed to hear was 'wounded' and 'immediately' to know what she had to do.
Shuttlebay
Jiana Sei practically flew into the room the instant the pressures equalized. A full med team followed behind her, antigrav stretcher at the ready. "Which one-"
She didn't have to finish the question. One of the two security officers was a Ferengi who had mentioned on the way down that he'd studied Orion in grade school; he recognized the markings on the hull immediately. "That one." Frek pointed with his tricorder, and scanned. "No weapons active. I've got the door controls, Doctor, with your permission."
The hatch opened on Pod 24. The stench was overpowering. The security team had to take a couple of steps back. It was the smell of unwashed children and rotten food and urine and TRIBBLE and... something else.
September 2372. Archanis IV. Ensign Zadrin Sei woke - just barely - as another bout of shivering? ...convulsions? ...released him. For a second, he'd felt... tiny. Enclosed. Paralyzed. Then he'd snapped back to his full self. F***ing Klinks. It hadn't been enough to graze him with a disruptor at range. They'd had to try to disembowel him, too, laughing cruelly as their CO drove the mek'leth into his abdomen, hunting, he was sure, for the symbiont to make sure it was dead too. Extra points for that, after all. Idiots. All they would've had to do would be to lift up my shirt to look for the symbiont pouch, he thought weakly. Strange... he felt almost... giddy. Wanted to laugh, even though the movement would send his intestines and symbiont both spilling out of the gash in his abdomen.
They'd hit something, though, before a colonial militia team had rushed to the lines with a bloodcurdling shriek Zadrin had heard referred to as the Rebel Yell, phaser rifles belching fire. The Klingon cowards had cut and run then. Zadrin had thought he had a chance last night. But then it had become clear that relief wasn't coming for another couple days. And then the disassociations had started.
Zadrin locked eyes with Commander T'Khif. Never mind that she was his superior officer. This was an order. "Find a Trill who has signed the release. NOW."
"You will be ending your life, Ensign. Are you certain that is wise?" T'Khif intoned - passionlessly, on first appearance, but Zadrin could see the barest hint of her hand moving towards his in concern.
"F***ers got a chunk of the nerve bundle. The symbiosis is breaking down and it will take all of me with it if you don't find a volunteer and start prepping me for surgery." He'd gone into another disassociated blur, losing half a self and feeling, disquietingly, the sense of innards out of place and protruding into the symbiont pouch where they did not belong, sliding up against the sensitive body of... Sei.
That was the last thing Sei remembered before unconsciousness and then being lifted up by giant, terribly powerful hands into the cold air and-
Lt. Cdr. Garen Sei awoke - shot bolt upright... the face that was once his - Sei's - lifeless and slack; they'd used all of the blankets to comfort both patients and hadn't had one to cover the dead until Garen had stood. He could see the coils of intestines spilling out of Zadrin. He could smell the fetid, rotting mess. Gangrene had already been setting in, and if that hadn't gotten him, peritonitis would have, for he could smell the waste as well. Added to that was the fact that the host had lost control and pissed himself at some point too, most likely during one of those disassociative periods.
Garen Sei's first act as a newly joined being was to turn his head and vomit.
Now Dr. Jiana Sei smelled that rancid combination again, coming out of Pod 24.
"Sepsis," she declared. "Excuse me, I need to get in there." She found a teenaged Orion female and two young boys, a Human and a Lurian, gathered around a slightly older Human boy buried under thermal blankets. "Excuse me, please. I'm a doctor."
The children made way and the younger Human spoke up. "Doctor? You can make Kenny better?"
There were no promises in medicine. "I'll do everything I can for him," she said, as she scanned him with her medical tricorder, starting with his vital stats. Heartrate, 129 bpm. Blood pressure, 77 systolic, 52 diastolic. O2 saturation level, 89%. Temperature, 40.9C... "Oh, holy ****..." She peeled back the thermal blankets and gasped. The boy's entire upper torso was one massive bruise.
"N-no... too c-c-co..." the boy started shivering, then convulsing, and was soon in the grips of a seizure.
Sei gave him a shot of a neural sedative to bring him out of it and hopefully also block some of the pain... She continued her scans. Every one of his ribs was cracked or broken. His lungs had been crushed and all but destroyed by sepsis, and boiled by the fever. His liver, spleen, pancreas and kidneys were all on their way toward shutting down. There were wounds to the feet and ankles that had been dressed with dirty bandages that were likely the source of the infection, which she confirmed with a sniff. If he was going to survive, he needed aggressive treatment and he needed it now. "Transport team!" she yelled. "Get in here on the double!"
The arrival of the transport team, led by Nurse Anene, was heralded by the hum of an antigrav gurney. "Multiple organ failure in progress," Sei snapped. "Numerous broken bones. I need an immobilizer field and antigrav lifts, stat."
This combination replaced the backboard of older times, allowing for the smoother, safer lifting of a patient. Sei oversaw the placement of the antigrav and immobilizer units, checked her tricorder for the 'balanced' indicator, then keyed them on, raising Kenny up and guiding him onto the gurney with barely even a bump as he landed and the table's own antigravs and security fields took over.
"Computer! Medical override, authorization Sei-twenty-three-blue on Cargo Turbolift 2. Discharge all current passengers at the nearest deck and reserve lift immediately."
Pod 22
Five half-naked boys stepped out, staring warily at the security team. Senior Specialist Ressthe, one of the nurse practitioners, quietly scanned the boys from a short distance with her medical tricorder. Minor lacerations, abrasions, and contusions, with some mild inflammation, but nothing serious.
"Welcome aboard the Chin'toka," Lt. Frek announced. "If you'll just follow Nurse Ressthe there to sickbay, she'll get you all checked out." He noticed the heavily-armed Andorian youth. "Son, I need to ask you to surrender those weapons."
Barryn looked the uniformed Ferengi over. "Go f**k yourself," he said. "These are mine."
The rest of the security team laughed, most tried hard to keep it quiet. "I can't let you carry a live disruptor around the ship," Frek insisted. It didn't matter that he and Barryn were almost the same height. Frek was not backing down. "Would you at least remove the power cell?"
Barryn shrugged, drew his disruptor, cracked it open and yanked out the power cell with startling speed and practiced ease. He tossed the power cell over his shoulder, whipped the pistol around to snap it back together and slipped it back into the holster in the same fluid motion, like an expert gunslinger. He fixed Frek with an ice cold stare.
Frek just nodded and said, "Thank you."
The Selay nurse practitioner stepped forward. "This way, boys..."
Sickbay, wash station
"Where's Kenny?" Brandon bawled. "I wanna see Kenny!"
"Your friend is being taken care of," Anene assured him. "Let's get you cleaned up, and get you some clean clothes."
"Yeah, quit crying," Barryn told him. "He said he'd be okay."
The Human ignored Barryn. "Why can't I see Kenny?" Brandon sobbed.
"Because Kenny is very sick and he needs a lot of help," Ressthe told him, figuring honesty would be the best policy. "We can't let you in the operating room, but..." She hesitated. "Maybe I could let you watch on a viewer. Let Anene wash you first though, okay?"
Brandon sniffled and rubbed his eyes, missing the look of surprise and disapproval from Anene at her superior's violation of privacy protocols.
"Okay," the boy said.
Anene wrapped the boys in towels and brought them back to their biobeds, where freshly replicated gowns and pajama pants were waiting for them. She got started treating Brandon's cuts and bruises with dermal and vascular regenerators.
Ressthe came out a few minutes later with a portable viewer. "Here you go, young man," she said, her voice a soothing, velvety hiss. She activated the monitor, which displayed an overhead view of the operating theater. There was a microsurgical panel arch covering Kenny's chest cavity. His lower legs had been unwrapped, revealing the extent of the infection which left ugly black blotches festering around several of his open wounds. Kenny had a mask over his face and a breathing tube down his throat, and was surrounded by icepacks, packed around him and covering every part of him that wasn't being operated on.
"What's wrong with him?" Brandon wondered.
"Your friend's chest was crushed. That hurt all of his ribs." The Selay traced Brandon's ribs with one of her fingers - claws, technically, but she blunted her claws even though it went against tradition, for the sake of her many mammalian patients with their painfully delicate hides. "And his lungs, and a lot of his other insides. And then then the places where his feet got hurt got infected, making him very sick on the inside. That gave him a very high fever. Also, he had something called 'disruptor shock' from being shot at. All of this combined... your friend was in a lot of pain."
Brandon frowned. "He never told us. Kenny never let us know he much he was hurt, or that he sick, just that he was cold and he needed pain medicine."
Ressthe nodded her wide, reptilian head forward. "Kenny is a very tough little boy." Not all toughness had to do with the hide, after all.
"Nurse Ressthe, may I speak to you for a moment?" Anene asked.
"Of course. Just rest here, Brandon, and keep an eye on Kenny for me."
"I will."
The Selay walked over to the nurses' station where Anene was fuming. "It's wrong to let him see that," the young Human nurse insisted. "It's a violation of patient confidentiality."
"If he doesn't get to see his friend, he will be uncontrollable," Ressthe told her. "From what I've seen, Kenny held this group of children together, and Brandon is obviously very attached to him. So unless you want to deal with a highly agitated and very frightened little boy who will simply not calm down until he sees his friend again, I suggest you get comfortable with the idea that patient privacy is not the most important thing right now."
The Nigerian nurse sighed. "What if something happens during the operation, though? If Dr. Sei needs to amputate, or, God forbid, Kenny dies on the table? And Brandon watches it happen? He would be devastated."
Ressthe tabbed a viewscreen showing a live feed. "I added a fifteen-second delay and a dump button. If anything should happen, the nurse on duty can cut the feed, and talk to him."
"I still think we should have permission from the patient," Anene said, grumpily.
Ressthe puffed her neck and hissed with exasperation. "How could he give permission? He was delirious when we found him and unconscious soon after. Besides, he's a minor. Legally we'd have to get permission from his family, and who knows what's happened to them." She looked at Brandon, watching wide-eyed as a freshly cloned pair of lungs were transported into Kenny's chest cavity and microsurgical nanites were released to connect them to his airways and blood vessels. "As far as we know," Ressthe concluded, "That little boy over there is the closest thing to family that Kenny has."
Bridge
"I was only able to find Starfleet personnel records on two of them," Ensign Caldwell informed Captain Strannik. The Caitian's actual name was K'rrgldiyaolh in his native tongue, and aside from the captain - whom he'd heard pull a disturbingly accurate rendition of the name - most non-Caitians wouldn't dare touch it. "Kenneth Cameron, Jr., that kid who came out eight kinds of messed up; and Barryn th'Nazzrim, our Andorian gunslinger. I'm searching missing persons reports from border colonies and passenger manifests from missing transports looking for the rest."
"Understood." The Devidian felt a faint, invisible current skitter across his skin. "I'm not comfortable with our making a connection with Memory Alpha or 75-Tau just yet, though. If the slavers they escaped from are still anywhere around, I don't want to signal them that we're looking for information, even with an encrypted transmission. If they're around, they may not even know we're here."
"That may limit our results, sir."
Strannik acknowledged. "We'll see if we can get some better search terms for you, then. We'll be interviewing some of them soon - those who are healthy enough for it." He moved towards the ready room, pausing first to glance up at Tactical. "Lieutenant ch'Sherrin, you have the conn. We'll remain here at L2 for the moment; keep scanning for more pods and alert me if conditions change."
As soon as they entered the ready room, the conversation went... silent.
I think I ought to be the one interviewing the Orion, Alyosha suggested telepathically as he sat down at his desk and politely gestured for Thraz to pull up a chair. The only other person on the ship as non-responsive to pheromones as I am is Blaze. Not only did he as a Devidian lack both the senses of smell and taste - he was also, as far as Preserver-descended humanoids were concerned, devoid of sexual desire. The same counted towards Devidians... but that was a matter of mutual contempt as far as he and his biological species were concerned.
You know... she's a teenager, Thraz said. Only a little older than the rest of the kids we pulled out of those pods.
Alexei Ivanovich nodded as he let that sink in. They're all kids, he thought to himself without broadcasting. Zarah had sounded older than that over the comm - but he supposed that Orions raised their kids for that, or at least the ones born to the lower socioeconomic classes. Especially since some clients had tastes that were illegal throughout Federation and Cardassian space. Horrible. That thought escaped in spite of himself, accompanied with a wave of disgust towards the slavers. Maybe, then... it would be best for both of us. It could be tough on her, having people respond to her in ways she might not intend.
Asylum? Thraz thought after sending a wordless assent to Alyosha's last suggestion.
If she checks out, I think so. But... He thought back to the odd rash of terrorist incidents across the Federation last year - none of them great in scale, but unsettling enough. We don't want to invite in a Klingon loyalist. The Lunabomber was only a few years older than her. He might not have been there for the explosive decompression at a park in Tycho City that claimed thirty lives before emergency forcefields kicked in, but thinking of what that young Orion had done still evoked images of that day when he and a few others from the Chin'toka were pulled back in time. When they stood under the shadow of buildings soon to fall. When they waited in vigil at St. Paul's Chapel for the temporal foreshocks to carry them back to their time.
Thraz remembered it too. We'll be careful. You know... that may be another advantage to you interviewing her. A small smile traced across his lips. People don't look at 'Humans' and think 'telepath.'
He wouldn't scan deep, but it was true: people didn't generally guard their thoughts around him as they might around Thraz.
Once again, Alyosha's XO caught his intent to acknowledge and proceeded; Starfleet regs didn't exactly say much about telepathic communications protocol, so the Devidian didn't bat an illusory eye at this. You might also do well to speak with the Humans, Thraz thought. You're culturally closest to them. That also included the Bajoran, Counselor Myndel. I should probably be there when the Andorian is interviewed. I may not be Andorian, but you have to know a lot about them to be Aenar and survive there.
This time it was Alyosha who acknowledged without words, and began entering notes on a PADD. Thraz did the same - quickly - on his customized PADD as the two continued to confer. They didn't have time to drag this process out, not when there could be more pods, and a slaver running around in the Badlands that they needed to know about now.
Seems like only yesterday
Life belonged to runaways
Nothing here to see, no looking back
Every sound monotone
Every color monochrome
Life began to fade into the black
Such a simple animal
Sterilized with alcohol
I could hardly feel me anymore
Desperate and meaningless
All filled up with emptiness
Felt like everything was said and done
I lay there in the dark, and I closed my eyes
You saved me the day you came alive
Still I tried to find my way
Spinning hours into days
Burning like a flame behind my eyes
Drown in out, drink it in
Crown the king of suffering
Prisoner, a slave to the disguise
Disappear the only thing
Bittersweet surrendering
Knew that it was time to say goodbye
I lay there in the dark and I closed my eyes
You saved me the day you came alive
No reason left for me to survive
You saved me the day you came alive
Come alive, come alive, come alive, come alive
Come alive, come alive, come alive, come alive...
I lay there in the dark and I closed my eyes
You saved me the day you came alive
Come alive, come alive, come alive, come alive
Come alive, come alive, come alive, come alive
Come alive, come alive, come alive, come alive
Come alive, come alive, come alive!
Nothing more to give
I can finally live
Come alive!
Your life into me
I can finally breathe
Come alive!
I lay there in the dark
open my eyes
You saved me the day you came alive...
David Grohl of Foo Fighters - "Come Alive"
Counselor's office
The Andorian child had insisted on taking his weapons with him. He still had the disarmed disruptor pistol securely holstered at his right hip, and he clutched his improvised club to his chest like most children would hold a teddy bear. His eyes were the color of glacial ice, and his stare was every bit as cold. According to Starfleet Personnel records, three of Barryn th'Nazzrim's parents served in the Imperial Guard, and his thaan-father was a Starfleet reservist. Barryn had been declared missing eighteen months ago along with his shen-mother and chan-father when their shuttle disappeared. They had been travelling to Rigel X to visit relatives.
Barryn stroked one of the sharp barbs on his mace, the blue-gray plastic stained with dark orange Orion blood. He stared at the adults who were there to talk to him - to help him. He didn't want their help. He didn't need their help. There was nothing wrong with him - he wasn't hurt like Kenny was, or a whiny crybaby like Brandon - he could take care of himself. The old Bajoran man wouldn't give him any trouble. The Aenar, though... he would be a problem.
He relaxed a little bit. He wouldn't have to hurt anybody here. These were Starfleet people - good guys - not the Orions. Nobody would try to beat him or molest him. He could let his guard down around these people, just a little.
"So," he looked at the adults in turn. "Whaddaya wanna talk to me about?"
Chirithraz th'Valek, for his part, could not mask his outward emotions as effectively as Alyosha when needed, but he made a valiant effort to hide the shudder and the frown that wanted to take shape as he came to grasp the extent of how the Orions had taken a child's soul, and twisted...
CMO's office
Brandon still held his portable viewer, watching Kenny as he slept in the ICU, still with the breathing tube and mask and surrounded by a hazy bluish cloud of... things. "How much longer will Kenny hafta stay asleep, Dr. Sei?" he asked, not looking up from the viewer.
"A while," the Trill answered. "A few hours more at least. Those tiny robots Nurse Ressthe told you about need time to finish their work." Dr. Sei disapproved of the Selay N.P.'s decision to let Brandon remotely monitor his friend, even though she understood the reasoning behind it. "Could you please put down the viewer for a few minutes and talk to Captain Strannik?"
Brandon gloomily folded the viewer against his chest and stared at the benign face of the Captain. "Okay."
"Hi... Brandon," the captain began. "I wanted to see how you were doing. Is there anything else we can do to make you more comfortable until we can get back to spacedock?"
Brandon tugged uncomfortably on one of the buttons on the sleeve of his gown. He hadn't worn a... shirt? ...in what seemed like forever and he didn't like it. "Is it okay if I take this off?"
"As long as Dr. Sei doesn't believe it would cause any problems for your health... then I don't mind." The boy's discomfort reminded Alexei Ivanovich of his own sense of claustrophobia in his dress coat, or winter gear - his normal uniform was part of him, not ordinary clothing.
Brandon looked to Sei for a nod and pulled the strange garment off. The pajama pants he didn't mind. Somehow, they were familiar, and comforting.
"Feel better?" Alyosha asked the shirtless boy.
"Yeah, thanks, Captain Strank."
"You're welcome, Brandon." He allowed a small, gentle smile, choosing not to point out the mispronunciation. He knew that for a non-Russian Human, the alternatives were even worse. "Can you tell me your last name?"
Brandon stared at Captain 'Strank,' confused. My last name? I've always just been called Brandon. I don't think I had another name before I was called Brandon... "I don't remember," he said.
"Oh," Strannik said. He'd sensed Brandon's uncertainty, but didn't want to add distress to it. "We can figure that out later," he acknowledged offhandedly, trying to make it sound like no big deal. "Do you remember any family?"
"Family?" He knew the word. Kenny had used it. Or was it Kyle? "Kyle and Kenny are family. But Kyle is dead now... Kenny is my family."
Alexei Ivanovich had seen the Cameron family records, which had not indicated any other brothers besides Kenny and Kyle, natural or adopted. "Sometimes people we go through difficult things with... they can be like that. Right now... I'm wondering if you remember your parents back home."
"Home..." Brandon remembered Home. "That was where I lived before the Orions took me and mom..."
All right... we're looking for a mother and son who went missing together. It was becoming fairly clear that detailed information about the child's family would not be forthcoming; however, DNA records would be able to be matched at 75-Tau, most likely, or trained counselors with far stronger telepathy than his could perform an assisted memory retrieval when deemed medically appropriate, meaning that it might be better to avoid further pressing a line of questioning that was likely to cause more pain than anything. Still, the sooner Brandon's next-of-kin could be contacted, the better.
He had a terrible feeling Brandon's mother had been sold or killed - human mothers, if the relationship was healthy, did not abandon their children willingly. How to learn if this was the case... or if others were out there waiting for rescue? "You might not have had any way to know this - you can tell me if you don't - but did you ever happen to hear of other kids, or adults, escaping the ship you were on?"
"Dunno if anyone ever escaped before... a bunch got sold, though. All the girls got sold, some of the boys, too. I remember Kenny was really mad when someone bought N'Kkitt. There were some big Romulan kids, a bunch of grown-ups... They all got sold. I think we were the only ones left. Kenny could tell you more when he..." Brandon checked his viewer. Kenny was still asleep.
The only ones left... did they sell his mother, too? How to ask that question without focusing on that terrible fact... "There were no adult prisoners left?"
"No, only Zarah and her friends who tried to come with us. Her friends all got killed, though."
Alexei Ivanovich nodded... a somber gesture. He noticed Brandon's casual tone: he'd gotten used to watching people die. "I see." It took him a moment to formulate his next question: while Brandon was able to function, at least, the damage was clearly serious. He had no wish to hurt this child further with an ill-considered word. "When you did escape... did you happen to see out the window? Do you know how many pods launched?"
"There were two," Brandon told him. "One pod had Barryn, Todd, Edym, Keddit and Aran. I was in the one with Kenny, Zarah, and Nilius. Sokar was s'posed to be in our pod too, but he got shot."
"Is there any chance anyone else made it off?"
Brandon shook his head. "No. The Orions killed everyone else."
Two pods only. The captain felt at that some meager portion of relief. Of the survivors - so horribly few - they had them all. But nine... just how many hadn't made it? How many children tortured, beaten, shot, and who knew what else? That ship was still out there, too - ready to do it again. "I'm sorry," Strannik said softly. "I thank you, though. The information you've given me will help us find people's families. It will also help Starfleet and the Cardassian Defense Force find the terrible people who did this." That emerged in just as low of a tone, but one full of steely resolve.
Brandon stared at him, confused, remembering what Kenny was saying just before they made the decision to escape. "But the Cardies and the Orions were working together," he told the captain. "They were selling stuff to each other. That's why the ship stopped."
"The True Way," Strannik said, almost to himself at first, disturbed. Then he looked up at Brandon and offered an explanation. "Some of the Cardassians... are fighting each other. The good Cardassians hate slavery. They punish people like the Orions. And they get especially angry when they catch their own people doing things like that. The bad ones call themselves the True Way. I wonder what the True Way was doing." Usually they relied on the Breen as their source for... whatever illegal wares they sought after. Or the strange Dominion enclave in the Alpha Quadrant that the Detapa Council had been forced by the Federation HQ types to leave in the Orias system, over the vehement protests of the Council and the 77th Fleet. Why the Orions, here, cutting in on Breen territory?
"Oh," Brandon said. "Dunno what they were doing. Maybe Kenny knows. He was listening to them talk." He checked his viewer again. "Hey! Kenny's awake! Can I see him now?" he asked Dr. Sei, excited eagerness bubbling out of him.
"Not yet," the CMO told him. "The nurse needs to make sure he's really okay first. But as soon as he's ready, and as soon as the captain is done talking to you, then you can see him."
Alyosha smiled - this time a real one. It was not instinct as for a Human, of course, but still true in the meaning he was signaling: seeing happiness in Brandon, finally. "Don't worry," he said. "I don't have much left. I just need to ask a few more things. Can you tell me more about your home, and the people who lived there with you?"
Brandon smiled at Captain 'Strank.' He wasn't like the other grown-up men he'd known, the Orions or his mom's boyfriends. The captain didn't ignore him or beat him. The captain cared about him. Like Kenny. And Kyle. "Okay. My home was in a little town called Hoople, on a planet called Dakota..."
Sickbay ICU
Kenny woke up in a panic. Something was down his throat and it burned. He reached for his mouth and wrapped his hands around the plastic tubing and tried to pull, but it wouldn't move.
"Easy! Easy!" Anene gently pulled his arms away, unclamped the breathing tube and extubated him.
"Aaaah!" he gasped. "Water!"
"I have some right here. Can you sit up?"
Kenny tried, and was surprised to find he could move without pain. He accepted the straw Anene offered and drained the glass. "Thanks," he said.
"You gave us quite a scare, you know. People with a hyperpyrexic fever should not be under thermal blankets. More water?"
"Please. No, wait... unh. I feel like... like... you know that feeling you get when you know you're gonna puke?"
"Nausea," Anene nodded. "It's a withdrawal symptom. Zarah said she was giving you shots of hydromorphone every ten minutes before she ran out."
"Zarah..." Who was she? He knew that name, he knew he should remember her...
Anene selected a hypo and administered a small dose. "This should help. Let me know if you start feeling anything else weird like that. I need to do an evaluation now, just a few questions so I can asses your mental state. Can you tell me your name?" She passed him another glass of water.
"Kenny," he said, before taking a long sip. The nausea was fading fast.
"Kenny what? What's your last name?"
He knew he had a last name. He tried to remember what it was. Suddenly he couldn't think about anything but the hot needles all over his body. "AAAAUUGH!!"
"What's the matter?"
So much for being able to move without pain... "Every part of me hurts all of a sudden!" He told her, as he gritted his teeth and suppressed his scream. He could control it. He'd gotten good at controlling it, at not letting himself show how much he hurt.
"On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the worst pain you can imagine, how bad does it hurt?"
"Um..." He'd felt worse. "Like a nine I guess... Ahhhh..." The last sound that escaped was something between a sigh, a scream, and a whimper.
"Can you tell if you feel it in your bones, your nerves, your muscles, or on your skin?"
"Um," he moved his arms and legs to test them and the pain shot up. "Ow! Muscles. Can I get some of that hypo stuff Zarah gave me before? This hurts different, but, it hurts about the same amount."
Anene winced. Hydromorphone withdrawal could be incredibly intense. She couldn't imagine how the child was holding himself together. "Hold on. Let me talk to Dr. Sei." She ran to the CMO's office and knocked on the door.
"Come in!" Captain Strannik called from within.
Anene did. She wasn't sure which was a stranger sight - the Captain seated behind Dr. Sei's desk or the shirtless, teary-eyed child seated across from him. She focused on the CMO, seated to the Captain's left. "Doctor, his withdrawal symptoms are more severe than we anticipated. He's experiencing hyperalgesic muscle pain."
Sei nodded. "Give him twelve milliliters of trimethadone. We'll start him on a taper dose."
"Thank you. Sorry for interrupting, sir," she said, addressing the Captain.
"No trouble," Strannik replied. "We're nearly done here."
Anene returned to the ICU and found Kenny trying to get out of bed, struggling against the pain and somehow not screaming at every movement. "Whoa! Hold on!" She sprinted forward and caught him as he fell off the side of mattress. He made that whimpering sound again as she picked him up and repositioned him on the biobed. "What were you trying to do?"
"I was... looking for a painkiller."
"You don't need to do that. We'll take care of you." Anene selected the hypo with the non-narcotic analgesic and gave Kenny a shot. "Does that feel better?"
"Unh. Yeah."
"What's your pain level now?"
"Um, I dunno, like a six, mebbe? It hurts, but not too much."
Anene wanted to cry for the little boy. If twelve mL of trimethadone had only dropped his pain from a nine to a six, his "nine" had to be off the end of the normal pain scale. She couldn't imagine the kind of pain this child must have experienced.
"I'm okay. You can ask me more questions now."
Anene looked at Kenny. "If it starts to hurt too much again, just let me know."
"Sure."
"Do you know your last name? Your family name."
"Family..." Kyle was dead. Mom had been sold off separately to another buyer while Kyle and I had been purchased by... Orianna Leeus, that was her name. That isn't my name. My name is the same as dad's name. Dad was... "Cameron," he said.
"Good. Now what year is it? Do you know?"
"Uh, lemme think." It was 2411 when we got taken, but that was like a year ago now, so... "2412?"
"Very good! Do you know where you are now?"
Kenny looked around. "Sickbay on a Federation starship." Zarah - the Orion girl! The one who found the pods and got them programmed! - had been talking to a starship, before I blacked out. It was called the... "Chin'toka."
"Perfect!" She made a note in Kenny's chart. Mild cognitive dissociation, but patient seems able to reform connections on his own. Brain damage not as acute as feared. "Okay, that's all from me..."
Dr. Sei entered. "Kenny, do you feel up to having a visitor? We have a little boy outside who really wants to see you."
Kenny smiled. "Brandon. Sure. Send him in."
A few seconds later he heard his name in a high-pitched squeal. "KENNY!" Brandon scampered across the room, but skidded to a stop at the edge of the bed. He looked up at Anene. "Is it okay to give him hugs now?"
Kenny rolled over and grabbed his little friend, pulling him up into the bed. "Sure it is," he said with a grin.
They were brothers, it seemed to Alyosha Strannik as he watched from Dr. Sei's office - just as surely as the Azarovs were Alyosha's parents, and the others at the SPIRC were aunts and uncles. The Devidian reflected: Not all ties are by blood.
Counselor's Office
Thraz th'Valek let his emotional control drop as Nurse Ressthe led Barryn from the room. He felt his heart break for the boy. Gone was the Andorian youth's gunslinger swagger, his tougher-than-nails facade. And gone were his emotional barriers. The boy was crying.
"Clear signs of sociopathic tendencies," Counselor Myndel declared. "Not to mention long-term physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. The Cardassians..." He caught himself. "Certain Cardassians... used to do this kind of thing to Bajoran children during the Occupation. I treated some of the survivors during my practicum at the University of Ashalla, several years after the fact. He will have long-term needs, and he needs an immediate start to have the best chances. We need to get him to 75-Tau right away, if not to better facilities on Bajor. His surviving parents will need to be consulted before any treatment can begin, of course."
"I concur." th'Valek added his final notes to his report. Barryn hadn't given them any actionable information on the Orion slavers, but his psychological issues made it imperative that they return to base as soon as possible. "You take the lead on the next one, Counselor." He tapped the side of his head. "Empathic backlash. I knew I ought to shield for something like this - but I didn't shield enough." Some things just couldn't be adequately shielded against.
Myndel nodded. "Got it."
Ressthe brought in the next patient, the Bajoran boy.
The boy looked at the ridges on Myndel's nose and at his earring and smiled. "Hi! I'm Edym!"
Thraz sighed with relief, sensing a kind and open spirit. This one would be much easier...
Do you know what it's like when
You're scared to see yourself?
Do you know what it's like when
You wish you were someone else
Who didn't need your help to get by?
Do you know what it's like
To wanna surrender?
I don't wanna feel like this tomorrow
I don't wanna live like this today
Make me feel better
I wanna feel better
Stay with me here, now
And never surrender
(Never surrender)
Do you know what it's like when
You're not who you wanna be?
Do you know what it's like to
Be your own worst enemy
Who sees the things in me I can't hide?
Do you know what it's like
To wanna surrender...
Make me feel better
You make me feel better
You make me feel better
Put me back together
I don't wanna feel like this tomorrow
I don't wanna live like this today
Make me feel better
I need to feel better
Stay with me here, now
And never surrender
Put me back together
Never surrender
Make me feel better
You make me feel better
Stay with me here, now
And never surrender
John Cooper and Dave Bassett of Skillet - "Never Surrender"
ICU
Kenny sat up in his bed, in the near-dark, sipping a chocolate milk. His latest withdrawal symptom had been photosensitivity, and so Dr. Sei had lowered the lights in the ICU to twenty lumens. His pain level had gone down, gratefully, but there was a hypo full of trimethadone waiting for when it spiked again, along with another filled with diazofran to control his occasional bouts of nausea. Dr. Sei had someone outside the door standing ready to administer either as needed.
Kenny's memory continued to improve. He'd remembered that chocolate milk was his favorite drink, for instance. And that his grandma's house in Flagstaff smelled like cat pee. And that his other grandparents talked funny and lived in this big old house in Scotland full of cool stuff he and Kyle were never allowed to touch. And that he'd have to live with one of them, because the rest of his family was dead.
Alexei Ivanovich Strannik had no trouble seeing in the near-dark, with his photoreceptors tuned to the ambient light. And even if there had been no light, his other sense would have flagged the boy as surely as a signal flare on the battlefield: his neural emanations were clear - but even now in recovery read to Strannik as off. He'd always been able to do that, including back when Starfleet Intelligence had used him, and on rescue teams since: to spot the injured in order of severity of their injuries. Even if he couldn't see how they were hurt, he could perceive the degree of disturbance to their systems almost unerringly, and direct the others to the ones in the greatest need.
And this boy was most certainly still not healthy. The captain spoke gently. "Dr. Sei says you want to talk to me, Kenny."
Kenny looked for and found the pips that identified the speaker as a captain. "Yeah, uh, Captain Strannik, sir. I wanted to thank you for saving us. All of us."
"Pleased to be of assistance," the Captain said. "From what I've heard, it sounds like you had a lot to do with that, too."
Kenny put down his glass. I couldn't save everybody, he thought. I got a lot of boys killed...
Captain Strannik couldn't hear the words... but the feeling he sensed from his scan at that moment was familiar somehow... then it dissipated as the boy pushed it away.
"I'd been listening to the Orions a lot," Kenny was saying. "We had a Caitian with us who was able to hear a lot more, but he got sold a few weeks ago too... Unh, can't remember the name... It'll come to me. Um. I had figured out the ODN lines connected to different cargo bays, so I was able to listen to the matron as she made her sales. I figured out her pattern. It might help you catch her." He organized his thoughts for a moment, picking out the things Captain Strannik needed to know out of the chaos that filled his mind. "She starts by buying slaves from the Orion markets - that's where she got us. Then she takes the slaves to the Breen and exchanges them for weapons - she sells a few here and there along the way to people like Gras - that's who bought N'Kkitt! Mr. Gras... Anyway, then she takes the weapons here to the Badlands and sells them to the True Way, and takes the money back to Orion space and starts over. Also, I think she's helping the True Way build a transwarp network."
Whoa.
Alexei Ivanovich recognized the pattern from his Earth history lessons: it was called triangle trade, and just like this one, it had involved slaves and guns. This had to be reported immediately. But even worse - a terror network with independent transwarp... the Cardassians were restricted by treaty from traversing the Bajoran wormhole without supervision. The restriction had been extended to transwarp when that technology came along: they had to use Starfleet's network, with approval. The True Way had burned to circumvent that restriction for a long time - it had been one of their motives for the strikes on Deep Space Nine: seize the gate, detach it from Starfleet control, and sweep across the Union. If they meant to build their own network... they had to be stopped. Immediately.
"Did they say anything about how many gates? Where they are?"
"I don't know how many or where. They didn't say. But one of them is here in the Badlands. It's where the ship was stopped. It looked like it was about half-finished."
"You saw the gate," Alyosha clarified. Kenny nodded. "And you were at the gate when you launched the escape pods?"
"Pretty close," Kenny said. "I wasn't sure why we waited around so long after the Cardassians left. At first I figured the matron was waiting for them to get out of sensor range. But I think now she wanted to check on construction progress. Yeah, we launched our pods right past the gateway - you can probably check their nav logs and find our point-of-origin if you're looking for the gate."
Now that was most clever, Captain Strannik thought: apparently the True Way had taken the risk of contracting out the gate construction, knowing they were under scrutiny, up to and including possible Cardassian Intelligence Bureau informants. But who, including Alexei Ivanovich until now, would have thought to cross-check Orion Syndicate records, practically on the other end of space from here? Oh, that's not going to stand, he thought with grim satisfaction. That was what the Orions and True Way got for underestimating the beings they considered no more than voice-activated merchandise.
And the matron certainly wasn't the only one who was clever. Strannik couldn't help but notice and admire, even in the young man's state, the attention to detail and forward thinking. "We will definitely do that," he said as he keyed notes into his PADD - immediate orders to Lt. Cdr. N'Vek to send a team to tear into those pods. He looked as though he were typing blind, but was actually watching the touchscreen through his fingertips even as he kept his main focus on Kenny's face. He decided to volunteer a little more detail. It wasn't a classified technique, but he had a feeling it would pique Kenny's interest. "We're also going to trace how the pod would've drifted on the gravity currents in here. That way, we can extrapolate where the gate might be even if the nav computers got incomplete readings."
"Sounds good. Zarah would be the one to ask about navigation - she programmed the flight paths, and I was kinda... out of it, while we were in the pods. Oh, one more thing," Kenny said. "Traelus II. I dunno if it's a Federation planet or not but my dad's ship used to fix satellites over there on its patrol route. Um, there's pit fights going on there. The matron was gonna try to sell us there - that's why we escaped when we did. She couldn't sell us anywhere else. The Breen thought we were too scrawny to work their mines. The adoption racket that bought all the little kids thought we were too old. And no one wanted to have sex with us - well, except for some of the Orions, that is. So... she was gonna sell us there and we were all gonna be forced to fight each other to the death. I don't know how long these pit fights have been going on but somebody should put a stop to them."
"That will absolutely go in my report," Strannik concurred. "I have no sympathy for the kinds of people who think it's okay to treat sentient beings like meat."
"Thanks, Captain Strannik." Kenny picked up his chocolate milk again.
This time, as the Devidian focused his telepathic senses upon the boy, he found... Wow. And in a child so young... He faced a solid wall. Humans generally couldn't shield deliberately without training. So when it did happen, it typically indicated something serious; either deliberate deception or (he suspected in this case) a measure of self-protection. There was something inside of Kenny that he very much did not want to face.
Alexei Ivanovich waited a second, letting Kenny finish his drink. The milk bubbled at the end as it went up the straw, provoking a tiny smile of satisfaction. He probably hadn't experienced that in a long time. Alyosha took that opportunity to speak. "How have you been doing? A lot's happened at once..."
"I'm okay. Dr. Sei says I should be all better in a coupla days."
There it was again - just an instant. Barely enough for Alexei Ivanovich to consciously register the emotion. What sprang unbidden to his mind was an image of the enlisted mess aboard the Chin'toka, painted by phase discriminators in blue-shifted colors that ordinarily only he could see: the Devidian hunting party with his people strung up telekinetically in midair drawing the life out of them to the tune of a mind-consuming fear... Alyosha himself, forced out of form by the eidolon, swiping at them with telekinesis and also with claws he barely knew how to use...
...then the moment when Thraz took them down and Alyosha took over the grip on his people with his mind, except the energies flowed in reverse from him - God help me, I'm losing them! No - please, no...! Отче наш, иже еси на небесех! Да святится имя Твое, да приидет Царстве Твое, да будет воля Твоя -- Отче наш...! Отче...! And he'd stepped across the boundary then, into the valley of the shadow of death.
Petty Officer Ximbra's face before his mind's eye... the one he couldn't bring back from the foot of the grave.
Alyosha narrowed his field of vision to something like the human norm and looked into Kenny's eyes, allowing a ghost of his own memory to be illustrated upon his face. "They took people from you... people you cared about..."
"I cared about all of them," Kenny said, his voice heavy. "Sokar and Gagan and Ripaskik and Nerrin and Aldie and Jack and Mala and Hersh and the Bolian and Oolias and Rayce and Leera and Tyim... and Kyle..."
For some reason, Alyosha's mind had whispered, Katya, as Kenny spoke the last name. So many names, especially for a child to bear...
Kenny couldn't hold it anymore. He couldn't hide it anymore. "I lost them. They put their lives in my hands and I lost them."
My God, he sounds like a Starfleet captain. "Kenny... you fought a battle against people who have probably been raised for combat their whole lives, if what I've heard about the Orions is true. And with less physical strength, and no resources to speak of... just what you knew, which from the sound of it is way more than anyone should ever expect of someone your age. I didn't have that kind of understanding of starships and fighting at that point in my life - I was focused on science. I probably wouldn't have been able to do what you did, how you did it. I know that doesn't stop you from seeing their faces... like I see the people I've lost under my command. But I want you to remember what I just told you."
Kenny stared at Captain Strannik. He'd seen him as everything he'd wanted to be when he grew up - commander of a powerful escort, respected by his crew - he'd wanted to impress him. But now... he almost saw him a
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
The kids getaway and rescue was supposed to be a minor subplot, but once we started to let the characters grow we found out just how damaging the life of a slave really is.
I'm glad the resolution to this little part of the story was so satisfying. It wasn't easy to write, but I'm glad Kenny found a sort of catharsis. I think he makes a good counterpoint to Tersok, and represents the other direction that Lisa Makbar can take.
MUCH more to come - look for 1.3 to drop in the next couple of days. :cool:
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
I think Alyosha was the key factor there, and how his beliefs were able to be of support to Kenny. Had they been picked up by another by the Tiburon or the Valkyrie, for example, I don't think there would have been the same level of spiritual support. Medically speaking, yes, they would have been treated just as competently, but in terms of truly providing what was needed, Alyosha was definitely the best man for the job... The right person in the right place at the right time :cool: It was also really nice to see Alyosha at ease with himself, with no anxiety of 'being outed', or his species held against him, he really is evolving and developing :cool: Really looking forward to what comes next :cool:
He had a job he needed to be focused on. He knows something big is happening, and that is at the forefront of his attention.
I also think that it felt right to him, helping Kenny, because in some ways his own experiences, however alien, were actually giving him a way to relate rather than setting him apart. Even though he could not say it out loud, I suspect Kenny could see that it wasn't just theory on Alyosha's part. Alyosha could talk about how to cope because he too lives with an unintentional but terrible burden from his youngest years.
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Of course, that's understandable, but it was nice to see him without it being his overriding concern