Tiger- Crusade

by David Smith

  As known drug runners, a FLEA undercover operative would set them up as mules for a huge sting operation.

  The Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel was embroiled in a never-ending war with another drug cartel, and was losing ground. Los Zetas had managed to strangle supplies of Columbian cocaine to the Sinaloa, and with no product to sell, they were in terminal decline.

  To shore up their position, they’d decided to partner with a Chinese Triad, the Tai Huen Chai, who’d ship drugs into Mexico to make use of the Sinaloa’s established supply routes into the USA, the world’s most lucrative drug market.

  The Sinaloa weren’t particularly fussed about the low value of this trade (they’d only have a handling fee), as it would be enough to build up funds for a massive armed insurrection in which they planned to crush Los Zetas and win back control of cocaine supplies.

  FLEA and the Mexican Police force had got wind of the situation and attempted to set up a sting operation in the hope of disrupting two major drug rings. They planned to use Delgado and Marco as drug mules, and Marco would carry the very latest in signalling and recording technology implanted inside his body to incriminate both the Sinaloa and the Chai triad.

  Sadly, things had gone badly wrong. Marco and her had ended up in a tiny back water town called San Alvarez, where the Sinaloa were making their first big trade with the Chai.

  They met a group of intense and scary looking Chinese at a dilapidated old warehouse on the docks. Her and Marco were supposed to take the heroin straight across the US border, but in fact as soon as they left the town, FLEA intended to intercept them, recover the recordings of their meetings and move in to arrest all of the drug lords.

  Sadly before they’d even laid eyes on the merchandise, things went disastrously wrong. Before their very eyes, the FLEA undercover agent who’d arranged their smuggling operation was killed by a sniper.

  Instantly blaming Los Zetas, and desperate to save face, the head of the Sinaloa had barricaded himself into his personal villa-come-fortress and ordered his troops to go out and attack anyone and everyone associated with Los Zetas.

  It was apocalyptic. Keeping as low a profile as possible, Marco and Delgado had listened with increasing trepidation as the battle ebbed and flowed. With the element of surprise at the start, the Sinaloa slaughtered dozens of Los Zetas, but they were still out-numbered and out-gunned. Before long it was clear that the Sinaloa were being annihilated.

  Things had looked grim until the main dealer of the Chai had his head blown off by a sniper. The Tai Huen Chai had nailed their colours to the mast and joined the battle with a vengeance. They hired every hit-man in Mexico to take out the key-players of Los Zetas, and sent their own troops out on the streets of San Alvarez to join the fray.

  As the day went on, things became more confused, more chaotic and more dangerous. Delgado knew they were in trouble and they tried to escape from the ultra secure villa. As they did, they passed an unmarked high-tech security point and the alarms went off as they detected a recording device.

  They were immediately surrounded, and a careful scan had revealed a recording device implanted deep inside Marco’s skull.

  Delgado could only watch in horror as the psychopathic drug dealers took their revenge (and removed the recording device) with a chain-saw.

  Although she wasn’t carrying a recording device, she was clearly guilty by association and her life expectancy was about as long as it would take all of the drug-dealers to beat her and rape her.

  Bizarrely, she was saved when Los Zetas came calling. Having already lost most of their foot-soldiers to the Sinaloa and Chai they were clearly looking to finish the war for once and for all, and gathered their remaining forces to lay siege to the villa.

  Los Zetas’ assault was in full spate when FLEA had arrived with the local Police and a large contingent of the Mexican Army. Somehow, Delgado had survived the carnage that ensued and been taken to a safe-house.

  Although her mission had failed, the FLEA Agent in charge of the operation had taken pity on her. After giving evidence about the events of the day, she had been released and placed in a witness protection programme.

  During the trials of the few surviving cartel leaders, death threats and worse were levelled at her by the defendants, although in truth she’d had very little to do with their demise.

  She had no choice but to disappear, leaving Brazil, then Earth and eventually ending up in Starfleet, aiming to get as far away from Mexico as she could get. She’d always known that one day the Tai Huen Chai and the Sinaloa might hunt her down, but it had never occurred to her that she’d actually been serving with her hunters aboard Tiger.

  The phaser in her face never wavered. ‘Kwok, I don’t know what’s going on here, but killing me will achieve nothing.’

  Kwok spoke very little English, and there was a heavy Mandarin lilt in what she said. ‘You kill my boss. My mentor. I must revenge he.’

  ‘WHAT??? I didn’t kill anyone! I was a plant by the Feds! All I was trying to do was record the trades!’

  She saw her words bring an instant of hesitation on Kwok’s face.

  Kwok looked no less angry, but did look less certain: ‘You are only body was inside Sinaloa warehouse and survive. You would say that’ she added dismissively.

  Moss spoke hesitantly ‘Er . . . are you on about Chan Lun Fat?’

  Kwok’s phaser wavered. ‘You knew Fat??’

  Moss’ previously unswerving sense of self preservation failed him again. ‘Actually, I killed him. Sorry. My bad.’

  Kwok’s phaser whipped around to point at Moss.

  By instinct Delgado trained her phaser on Kwok. ‘Don’t do anything stupid, Stephanie’ she said quietly. She was vaguely aware of the distant jangling of a transporter beam. That would be Modric, IPAD, Nowacki and Ben-David leaving.

  Moss saw Delgado’s phaser train on Kwok and aimed his at Delgado. Reluctantly he said ‘Same goes for you, Lieutenant.’

  Delgado was surprised and disappointed that he’d taken aim at her, but being confused as she was, it only seemed fair. Weirdly, she noticed that Moss had now managed to reset his phaser to stun.

  Moss spoke slowly and evenly. ‘It was just business Kwok. I took a lot of contracts that day. I believe I even took some direct from yourself. I assume you used to go by the name Basilisk?’

  There was a spark of realisation in her eyes. ‘Long-shot?’

  ‘The one and only.’

  Kwok was breathing hard. Delgado could almost smell her anger, doubt and confusion.

  ‘You kill Fat??’ she growled.

  ‘I killed a lot of people that day, Basilisk. I’m a hired gun; you aim me, you make the decision. I just pull the trigger.’

  Kwok looked uncertain but didn’t move her phaser. ‘If you kill Fat, who make contract?’

  ‘Does it really matter? It’s done, Basilisk. The Sinaloa, Los Zetas . . . they’re all gone. I even hear the Chai are a thing of the past.’

  ‘Tai Huen Chai live as long as Kwok do!!’ she snarled defiantly.

  Moss spotted the inference. ‘So you’re the last, huh?’

  Delgado thought she could see tears forming in Kwok’s eyes.

  Moss lowered his voice. ‘If it makes a difference, it was a set-up. When I checked back later, I found that the Sinaloa contracted Chan Lun Fat. I can’t be sure, but the logical conclusion is that the Sinaloa only set-up the trade to get the Chai involved in a war they were losing. They figured they could get the Chai to fight their battle for them and beat Los Zetas that way.’

  Kwok looked horrified. ‘They LIE???’

  ‘Sorry to break it to you. I can’t be sure of the reason why, but I do know for an absolute fact that it was the Sinaloa who paid me to make the hit. When the Feds interviewed me, my assumption was that whoever Basilisk was had come out here looking for me. I didn’t even know Delgado had been in San Alvarez. She’s not the one you’re looking for.’

  Kwok looked devastated. Her entire life these las
t four years had been a revenge mission aimed at tracking down the FLEA agent who’d killed her mentor and inspiration. She now faced the fact that she was wrong, not only about who had killed him, but also why he’d been killed.

  Moss shrugged. He didn’t know where this sudden attack of honesty had come from, but he seemed unable to stop it. ‘I have no reason to lie, Kwok. I’m a professional. Telling you who paid me is probably the least professional thing I’ve ever done: I’m doing it because they’re all dead and it doesn’t matter anymore.’

  Delgado was stunned. She couldn’t believe that she’d been on the same ship as two of the most lethal killers of that day, completely oblivious to their presence. She wished she had a second phaser to train on Moss.

  Her mind was brought back on task by the jangling of the transporter beam, slightly louder this time. That would be Jeb Hogan and the Security team leaving. It was just the three of them left now.

  She considered trying to communicate with the ship, but dare not risk it with a phaser still pointed at her. Quietly she said ‘This is going nowhere. If we don’t go soon, the Sha T’Al will get in here and we’ll all die. If we delay Higgs, our whole game-plan goes out the window and we risk allowing the Sha T’Al and Tana going to war, for the sake of something that was done and dusted four years ago.’

  Kwok and Moss didn’t move.

  ‘Come on guys! I’ve seen enough death and destruction. I don’t want to see millions more dying!’ she pleaded.

  She couldn’t understand either Moss or Kwok's motivation, but it seemed they understood each other. Moss lowered his phaser, then raised his hands but never stopped looking into Kwok’s eyes. ‘I’m done. It was all for nothing, and I’ve left it behind.’

  The anger seemed to drain out of Kwok. Delgado knew very little about her, but had seen how close all of Tiger’s Locally Recruited Enlisted Personnel had become. With the Chai Triad long-gone, Tiger’s hookers were probably the only family she had now. The phaser wavered, then dropped. ‘We go home? Go Tiger?’

  Moss nodded: Tiger was home for him too.

  Delgado breathed a sigh of relief and called Tiger. As she closed her communicator and felt the tingling sensation of the transporter beam enveloping her she realised that when she’d set foot on Tiger after two years lost in a crazy mirror universe, her first emotion had been relief. The relief that comes when you’re home.

  Chapter 18

  On the day of the Grand Final, Lyndsey spent hours rehearsing with Skid in a local pool. Over the last two weeks she’d managed to get him to do backward somersaults and had persuaded him to stand on her back as she swam along. She’d worked this into a routine and practiced it as much as she could.

  She’d been worried that Skid would lose interest once he’d had his fill of sardines, but he didn’t seem to have a limit. She’d even prod his tummy from time to time, trying to work out where all the fish went, but Skid kept eating and eating.

  She kept Biff out of the way as best she could, worried that he might try to hump Skid too, but she felt guilty about this and fed him odd sardines to try to keep his spirits up. The most positive thing was that Biff wasn’t a great swimmer and once Skid was in the pool, Biff couldn’t get anywhere near him.

  She’d watched the rest of the performances with her support team and had to admit that there was very little to separate the acts. They knew their best chance was to try and hog the news headlines and try to win sympathy votes. They’d got the fraudsters aboard Tiger to hack into the local hospital records to show that Lyndsey had overcome a crippling and life-threatening childhood illness and also reveal that Lyndsey’s fictitious parents had perished separately in terrible accidents.

  These facts had mysteriously leaked to various news sites and dominated the headlines in the days leading up the night of the Final.

  She’d done everything she could. She was as ready as she would ever be.

  --------------------

  There were eight acts in the final and she’d be performing last, which did little for her nerves.

  Wobbles was still a nervous wreck, so she’d transported him back up to the ship. As well Skid, Biff accompanied her to the final, under the watchful eye of PO Errol Ismail from Stellar Cartography who was playing the part of her mentally-impaired boyfriend.

  They all waited patiently as the other acts did their thing with varying degrees of success, until at last it was their turn. The music played and Lyndsey carried Skid up the steps and lowered him gently into the tank.

  She looked down to the wings of the stage, where Ismail was waiting with Biff. The Labrador seemed as excited as everyone else and was straining on the leash for some reason.

  A little warning sounded in the back of Lyndsey’s mind. She’d brought sardines on stage with her but hadn’t left any with Ismail to give to Biff. She gulped and hoped Biff would behave himself and not expect to be fed. The dog looked up at Ismail, then at Lyndsey and sat down whimpering.

  The music began, and Lyndsey opened the tin and picked out a sardine. She smiled at the audience but before the lights could go down, she caught a flash of blonde out of the corner of one eye.

  As soon as Biff had seen the fish, he leapt forward, jerking the leash out of Ismail’s hand. Ismail dived full length to try and grab the leash but missed, and landed with a thump on the side of the stage much to the amusement of the audience.

  Lyndsey shouted ‘Biff, NO!! Sit!!!’ but the dog was having none of it and thundered up the steps at the side of the tank like a blonde heat-seeking missile.

  He jumped up excitedly, his front paws landing on Lyndsey’s shoulder as she turned to try to get the dog under control. She flailed as she lost balance, but Biff neatly picked the sardine out of her fingers as she tumbled sideways into the tank, landing with a huge splash.

  The tin containing the rest of the sardines flew through the air and landed on the stage below. Skid, seeing the fish scatter, leapt out of the tank, squawking furiously, and chased Biff down the steps on his belly, like a little black toboggan.

  Biff reached the stage and began to scoff the sardines, but Skid was right behind him pecking furiously at his hind quarters, bringing howls of laughter from the audience.

  Lyndsey clambered out of the tank, soaking wet and found that her skimpy white leotard had become completely see-through. She tried to cover herself as best she could with her hands, but as she screamed at Biff again and started down towards the stage, she found the steps were now wet and very slippery.

  Her feet shot out from under her and she landed flat on her backside with a jarring thud and a groan of agony. She slumped backwards, smacking her head hard on the upper steps, very nearly knocking herself out. In a daze, she slid the rest of the way down to the stage, her head making an audible ‘thump, thump, thump . . . ‘ through the microphone she was wearing as she bumped down the steps.

  The Tana presenter ran on stage and bent over Lyndsey to see if she was ok, but as she did she suddenly found herself being mounted by a very excited Labrador.

  As the music for the act reached its peak, Lyndsey’s head lolled to one side. She could see Ismail still trying to catch the slippery penguin, while the Tana presenter was down on her knees now, fighting a losing battle to try to avoid Biff’s attentions. Weirdly, just before she lost consciousness, she could hear thunderous applause . . .

  --------------------

  There was glitz. There was glamour. There were even peculiarly polite paparazzi.

  ‘Excuse me Lyn Styalz. If it isn’t too much trouble, could we possibly get a picture?’ was the chorus as Lyndsey stepped out of the little shuttle pod onto immaculate and very deep-piled grey carpet outside the Imperial Theatre, a newly opened state-of-the-art temple of entertainment.

  The ‘state-of-the-art’ was particularly obvious. The Theatre was a very large, and mostly featureless building of steel construction clad with bland composite material in entirely predictable shades of grey.

  Huge and square, the ins
ide was filled with rows of plastic seating that looked to be left over from a college sports-hall, all gently tiered with featureless steel steps and flooring coated with very sensible non-slip grey paint.

  Overhead, odd spotlights seemed to have been strung almost at random, with a few pointed vaguely in the direction of the stage.

  Lyndsey sighed. At least they’d remembered to put a stage in. The changing rooms probably started life as a broom-closet, and while everything to the rear of the stage had been built functionally and simply, it was astonishingly badly laid out.

  None of the dressing rooms had any toilet facilities. A separate toilet facility was right next to the stage, but the showers were at the opposite end of the stage.

  Lindsey’s changing room backed onto a power room that housed the mechanisms that ran the various screens, curtains and hoists around the stage. It was unbearably loud at times and the sudden noises unsettled Skid, making him even grumpier than usual.

  There were rehearsal spaces right underneath the stage, which the competitors had already been politely asked not to use if anything was actually happening on stage.

  Strangest of all, areas had been set aside for an orchestra, but it was split in two halves either side of the stage. This made it virtually impossible to conduct a full orchestra and made access to the stage-wings a difficult approach between the wood-wind and string sections. One performance had already been cancelled when an unfortunate competitor took a violin bow in the eye.

  The heavily bandaged Tana competitor had apologised profusely for causing the inconvenience and bravely offered to continue, although the partner he’d be catching in their trapeze act looked less willing.

  The producer of the show eventually stepped in and stood them down, largely on the grounds that the dressing on his eye didn’t really go with the rest of their stage outfit.

  Lindsey waited in a nice orderly line of performers with Skid the penguin. Everyone else had transported back to Tiger, and after some discussion, they’d even sent back Biff, purely as a risk-reduction measure. It was just her and Skid left on the Tana world now, to meet the Tana Emperor, Ch’Zar the Wise and Beneficent, prior to the start of the show.