by Greg Cox
Fatigue attacked her like a blow to the stomach. Torres gasped, choking, as she felt her life-force yanked from her body. She had never experienced anything like it. This was no ordinary weariness, brought on gradually over the passage of time; instead the debilitating effect of the Elder’s eyes robbed her of energy at what felt like warp speed. Some sort of bioelectric conduction transference, she guessed even as her knees went weak and she collapsed to the rubble-strewn floor, coming to rest atop the buried remains of the Ryol’s first victims. Through blurry eyes, she saw both Kes and Neelix succumb as well to the parasitic influence of the Elder and his allies. Kes’s eyes had rolled upward so that only the whites of her eyes could be seen. Neelix struggled valiantly to hold her unconscious body erect, but his strenuous efforts lasted only a heartbeat or two; they fell, side by side, onto a pile of bones and sand. Torres could not watch them any longer. Her mouth felt as dry as a Vulcan desert; her arms and legs were numb. She barely noticed when Varathael bent over to pluck the commbadge from her uniform.
“Hello, Captain?” he spoke into the badge. “Lieutenant Torres and her friends cannot answer you. I believe we have much to discuss.”
Don’t listen to him, Captain! Torres thought furiously. Get Voyager away from here! Pure primal rage kept her conscious for a few seconds more, as she silently vowed bloody revenge on the Elder and all his kind.
Then she blacked out.
CHAPTER
13
DESPITE HER RECENT INJURIES, SUSAN TUKWILA REPORTED to the bridge exactly on time. Good for her, Chakotay thought, hoping Voyager’s morale problems were now a thing of the past. Nothing like a common threat, he thought, to pull a crew together. Now if only they could get all their people off that damn planet safely!
Sitting in the captain’s chair, he opened a link to the transporter room. “What’s the story?” he demanded. “Do you have Torres and the others yet?” According to Captain Janeway, B’Elanna and her party had run afoul of hostile Ryol down on the planet.
“No luck, sir,” the transporter chief reported. “We got the rest of the crew earlier, but there’s some sort of shielding over the harbor area where Lieutenant Torres and the others are. We upped the frequency ratios on the phase transition coils, but all we managed to get was their commbadges.”
Frustrated, Chakotay smacked his fist against the armrest of his chair. This was sounding more and more like a hostage situation. Exactly what the captain wanted to avoid, he thought. “Understood,” he told the transporter chief. “Chakotay out.”
The relief officers currently manning the bridge, a mixture of Starfleet and Maquis personnel, waited silently for his next orders. He felt their eyes upon him, wondering what he could do to rescue their crew mates. “Ensign Tukwila,” he said. “Activate the long-range sensors. See if you can locate Lieutenant Torres and her party.”
Without the commbadges to indicate their location, it was like searching for a needle in a planet-sized haystack, but maybe they would get lucky. We have to do something, he thought.
The turbolift doors at the rear of the bridge slid open. Chakotay swung around in his seat, expecting to see Captain Janeway coming to take command during the present crisis. He stood up quickly, ready to surrender her chair to the captain. He was anxious to hear what she had learned from Tuvok and The Doctor.
He hadn’t anticipated a Ryol boarding party pouring onto the bridge, led by none other than Lieutenant Tom Paris. Half a dozen Ryol men and women fanned out across the bridge, assuming standing positions near each of the major control stations. A striking Ryol female, her furry dome striped like a tigress, approached the command platform. Paris followed after her, a dazed look upon his face.
At the tactical station behind the captain’s chair, Lieutenant Assink, a human of Aleutian descent, reached for a phaser, but another Ryol female moved even faster. Knocking Assink’s arm away from the phaser compartment, she locked her gaze on Assink, who instantly crumpled behind the station, gasping for breath. Although he kept his face impassive, Chakotay was shocked at the suddeness of Assink’s collapse. All she did was look at Assink, he observed with alarm. Apparently that was all the Ryol needed to do.
“I am Laazia,” the lead female declared, approaching the seat Chakotay now occupied. Unlike her companions she wore a large velvet cloak whose hem swept the floor of the bridge. “Heir to the Elder. I claim this vessel for the Ryol.” Her eyes scanned the bridge, checking the deployment of her agents. “Remember the plan,” she instructed them. “Strike anyone who even touches a control panel. Don’t give them a chance to beam us away.” She turned to Paris. “Confiscate every phaser, then seal off the bridge manually.”
“I might have something to say about all this,” Chakotay responded, placing himself between Laazia and the captain’s seat. Years of Starfleet training went into effect and he tapped his commbadge. “Chakotay to Janeway,” he said, a determined expression on his face. “Ryol have boarded the bridge. Go to red alert. Repeat. Ryol have—”
A vicious slap across his face cut off his warning. “Silence!” Laazia snapped, plucking Chakotay’s commbadge from his chest. His cheek stung where Laazia had struck him, surprising him with her strength, but at least he had alerted the captain to the crisis on the bridge. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Susan Tukwila tensing to leap to his defense.
“Nobody move,” he ordered the crew. “Hold your positions.” Chakotay quickly evaluated the situation. None of the Ryol appeared armed, but obviously the Ryol didn’t need weapons to immobilize their foes. Their alien powers were all they required to overwhelm the crew on the bridge.
Chakotay shook his head at Tukwilla. Until he knew the extent of the mysterious powers of the Ryol, he did not want to sacrifice any member of the crew just to find out how deadly those powers could be. Laazia and the other Ryol were certainly acting like they had nothing to fear from the bridge crew. A bad sign, Chakotay thought.
Moving like a zombie, Paris moved across the bridge, handing off an armful of hand phasers to one of Laazia’s lieutenants, who in turn distributed the weapons among the Ryol. Then Paris headed for Tuvok’s security station, which was currently unoccupied. Chakotay glowered at Paris, trying to look the junior officer in the eyes, but Paris’s glassy expression remained unchanged by his commander’s gaze. “What’s this all about, Lieutenant?” he demanded.
“The Ryol have need of this vessel,” Laazia began, her chin held high in an imperious manner. “Consider it payment,” she said with a smirk, “for our hospitality.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Chakotay interrupted her. Beneath his tattoo, his face was grim. “Lieutenant Paris, I asked you a question.”
Paris stared at Laazia as if hypnotized. “I’m sorry, Commander,” he mumbled softly. His hands moved deftly across the security controls. Chakotay could guess what he was doing there, raising forcefields all around the bridge, and he didn’t like any of it. “I can’t help myself,” Paris said.
Laazia wandered over and stroked the young man’s cheek absently. “You have no more authority over him,” she informed Chakotay. “I have placed him entirely under my control. Trust me, Commander, there’s no point in appealing to his duty to Starfleet. He’s too far gone. Isn’t that right, Tom?”
Laazia scanned the bridge. “Where is Captain Janeway?”
Stony silence greeted the Ryol’s demand. Chakotay wasn’t about to give Laazia any extra advantage. He wondered how and when the captain could get a security team past the forcefields cutting the bridge off from the rest of the ship. And then what? he worried, imagining an all-out battle between the crew and the Ryol. How many phasers would it take to overcome the preternatural abilities of the Ryol? Good thing I got through to her before the shields went up, he thought.
Laazia grabbed on to Chakotay’s chin and yanked his face toward hers. Pointy nails jabbed into his jaw. “Tell me what I want to know or I will drain the life from you. You know I can do it. I can tell.”
“You know, Tom,” Chakotay said through gritted teeth, “I never did think much of your taste in women.”
Laazia’s nails dug deeper into his flesh, but she did not respond to his taunt. “My father was right,” she said coolly. “He said I would have to destroy one of you as an example to the rest.” She grinned mercilessly at Chakotay. “Guess who just volunteered?”
Just as Paris had described, the eyes of the Elder’s daughter darkened. Chakotay tried to look away, but Laazia held his skull in place with inhuman strength. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping that would spare him, but a chill began to spread through his body nonetheless. The heat was being leached from his body through a million invisible punctures. His legs began to buckle. His heart pounded in his chest. He knew that he was finally in the presence of the same inhuman predator that had stalked his vision. Akoo-cheemoya, he prayed, great spirit of my grandfathers, preserve me from this unholy demon.
“No!” came an anguished voice. He opened his eyes in time to see Susan Tukwila lunge from her station. The Ryol standing guard over her grabbed her by the shoulder in hopes of restraining her, but the former Maquis freedom fighter flipped him using a textbook anbo-jyutsu move, clasping the Ryol’s hand with both of hers, then executing a forward roll that sent him flying through the air while Tukwila somersaulted back onto her feet. He landed flat on his back only a few centimeters short of the curved divider separating the command platform from the aft station consoles. Chakotay heard the man’s skull crash against the sturdy duranium floor.
Shouting a Maquis war cry, Tukwila came at Laazia, whose head snapped around to face her attacker. Chakotay felt the force of Laazia’s energy-sapping eyes diverted away from him. His depleted strength was not restored to him, but the constant drain on his resources ceased for the moment. He wobbled unsteadily on his feet, and Paris, acting on instinct, perhaps, hurried away from the security station to prop up his debilitated crewmate. Chakotay rejected Paris’s attempt to support him, yanking his arm away so vehemently that he nearly toppled over onto his side. He threw his body upward, fighting to keep his balance. His vision blurred; he thought he saw a strange black aura surrounding Laazia, like the silhouette of an enormous beast.
Laazia appeared oblivious to the drama going on behind her back. She fixed her eyes, fully dilated to an inhuman degree, on the charging figure of Susan Tukwila, whose battle cry turned into a strangled choke as the Ryol’s eerie powers literally halted her in her tracks. “Laazia, wait!” Tom Paris exclaimed, but the Elder’s daughter showed Tukwila no mercy. Susan convulsed, the muscles of her face twitching erratically, while Chakotay looked on in horror. Staggering across the command platform, he tried to seize Laazia, but the Ryol knocked him aside with but a wave of her hand, never removing her gaze from the stiff and jerky body of Susan Tukwila.
Stunned, his head ringing from the unexpected strength of Laazia’s blow, Chakotay watched Tukwila wither away before his eyes. Her face grew gaunt and haggard, her frightened eyes disappearing into their sockets, her lips receding to reveal pallid bloodless gums. Her Starfleet uniform hung loosely on her newly emaciated limbs; she seemed to shrink within the pressed black-and-gold costume. Unable to stand, she collapsed onto the floor of the bridge, falling not far from the supine form of the Ryol she had flipped so effortlessly mere minutes before. She gasped for breath for a heartbeat or two, then fell silent. Chakotay raged inwardly at the Ryol, vowing to avenge Susan Tukwila’s death. You didn’t deserve to die like that, he mourned.
Her body, with its skeletal limbs and agonized expression, reminded him, oddly, of a neffaler’s. They both looked as though they had wasted away in the service of the Ryol, their vital energies drained from their bodies—just as the shadow beast had ripped out Chakotay’s heart in his vision.
“That was almost too easy,” Laazia purred, a satiated smile upon her elegant face. “She’d already given us so much, been tasted so many times over the last few days, that there was little left to feast upon.” She licked her lips.
She turned to confront Chakotay, towering over the fallen first officer like some bloodthirsty pagan goddess. Her dark aura flickered around her, casting a bestial shadow over her deceptively refined features. I know you now, he thought. My ancestors showed me your true face days ago.
“Now,” she demanded, “tell me where the captain is.”
He barely had enough breath to respond. “Never!” Chakotay said, determined to deny the Ryol anything they craved. The longer the captain stays free, he reasoned, the better our odds.
“Idiot,” Laazia cursed him. Her blacked-out eyes widened ominously. “Do you think that I cannot kill another so soon? If so, you are very wrong. The more I consume, the greater my power. So it is with us all. Your people cannot resist us.”
“We’ll see about that,” Chakotay whispered, defiance written on his face. That’s just what the Cardassians thought back home, he thought.
“Oh no,” Laazia said. “You shall not be around to see anything beyond the next few seconds—unless you tell me where I can find your captain.” Bending over, she put her hand upon Chakotay’s chest. Chakotay felt his heart flutter within his breast. Despite his stubborn determination, an involuntary gasp escaped his lips. A chill came upon him like an Arctic storm; all the warmth in his body seemed to rush out through a sucking hole in his chest. Once more he stood upon the desolate mountain of his vision, while an unclean beast feasted upon his heart. “Ah.” Laazia sighed, an ecstatic expression on her face. “This is much better, Commander. You have so very much to give. . . .”
Chakotay knew he couldn’t last much longer. I have to stay conscious, he thought. Someone has to deactivate those forcefields. But he couldn’t lift his hands, let alone speak the necessary command. I’m dying, he thought, just like poor Susan. He winced at the memory of her ravaged body. Akoo-cheemoya, receive my wayward spirit. Do not let this foul creature cast me into darkness forever. . . .
“Stop it,” Paris blurted. Chakotay had almost forgotten Tom was there. “The captain’s in the sickbay.” He grabbed Laazia by the wrist, pulling her hand away from Chakotay. “You don’t need to do this.”
The Elder’s daughter looked as surprised as Chakotay. “What’s this?” she asked Paris, sounding slightly intrigued “One last flickering flame of rebellion? Or are you merely jealous?” Laazia fixed her gaze upon Paris, who backed away obediently. “Very well then,” she said, straightening her back and turning away from Chakotay. “There will be time enough for such refreshments later.” She addressed those Ryol still standing; none of the invaders had shown any interest in tending to their unconscious comrade, still knocked out cold near the almost unrecognizable remains of Susan Tukwila. “You there,” Laazia said to the two Ryol nearest the turbolift entrance. “Go to this ‘sickbay’ and apprehend Captain Janeway. Deal harshly with anyone who tries to interfere, but waste no time feasting on your foes. We may indulge ourselves freely once Voyager is truly ours. Go.”
The designated Ryol, a man and a woman, both bronzed and athletic-looking, bowed their heads to the Elder’s daughter, then stepped promptly into the turbolift, taking with them just one of the captured phasers. Chakotay watched the doors slide shut. “You see, Commander,” Laazia said to him, “I don’t need your cooperation to capture this ship. Two Ryol are more than a match for your paltry defenses.”
Good thing I alerted the captain, Chakotay thought. Sickbay was only four decks below the bridge. The turbolift would take the Ryol there in a matter of minutes. His throat was dry, but he summoned up enough saliva to speak a little. “This ship will never be yours,” he announced to Laazia. “The captain will—”
Laazia didn’t allow him to finish. Shod in a sandal, her foot connected with his jaw, kicking him hard enough to loosen a few of his teeth. I hope The Doctor’s been programmed to perform dental surgery, he thought wryly, assuming I get out of this alive. Her pointed nails left a jagged gash along his cheek, mere centimeters beneath his tattoo. His mouth filled up wi
th blood, which he spit at the tiled floor in front of Laazia’s feet. The captain will take back the bridge, he thought. He wasn’t exactly sure how, but he had to hold on to that idea. He couldn’t give up hope.
“Don’t say another word,” Laazia said. “Don’t even breathe or I’ll finish my banquet here and now.” She stepped over Chakotay’s sprawled figure and lowered herself leisurely onto the captain’s chair. “Tom,” she said, resting her bare arms upon the arms of the chair, “please take control of the helm.”
Paris hesitated for a minute. His gaze darted back and forth between Chakotay’s bloodied face and the regal vision of Laazia upon her newfound throne. The young navigator seemed uncertain, confused. Maybe there’s still a chance for him, Chakotay prayed. Come on, Paris. Remember whose side you’re on.
“For me, Tom,” Laazia entreated him.
“Okay,” he muttered, looking away from Chakotay. He crossed the bridge to his usual station, where Ensign Krevorr, an apprehensive-looking Ktaran, sat nervously beneath the watchful gaze of an imposing Ryol invader. “Give me the conn,” Paris instructed her. Krevorr appeared to briefly consider her options, then realized she stood no chance of keeping the helm controls from Paris and his powerful new allies and surrendered the seat to Paris. Thank heaven, Chakotay thought, observing the episode from the floor of the command area. He didn’t want to see another crew member throw away her life uselessly.
“Excellent,” Laazia declared. “That’s more like it.” She slid back in her seat, relaxing against the back of the captain’s chair. “Lieutenant Paris, prepare to land this vessel on the surface of Ryolanov. At last,” she proclaimed, “our long exile is over!”
• • •
They found the sickbay easily. The turbolift delivered them straight to the entrance of the ship’s medical facilities. Sitruua was impressed by the efficiency of the visitor’s technology; for a people who were, in essence, little more than a new breed of neffaler, they possessed some undeniably useful skills. A stolen phaser rested comfortably in her grip, and she looked forward to operating all of Voyager’s systems. To think, she thought, that we are finally going to escape that backwater planet! She wondered if she would ever miss Ryolanov after they had regained their rightful place in interstellar civilization. Probably not, she decided; she wasn’t the nostalgic type.
