by S M Briscoe
Unlocking and stepping into one of the ship’s smaller sleeping quarters, she stared down at the slimy little toad she had restrained and confined within it since their departure from Isyss, contemplating what she would have liked to do to him. What she had wanted to do since setting eyes on him in Trycon. He had played a significant role in the deaths of a lot of people, including Kam and Meera. She wanted him to pay for that. Someone had to. A lot of someone’s had to.
“Are you planning to kill me?” Traug asked, sounding more curious than worried, from the bunk he was seated on.
“I’m considering it,” she answered him, honestly, as she took a seat on the room’s single chair directly across from the Trill.
“Even if your bounty hunter friend is where I have indicated?”
“That’s a big if.”
“I can assure you, he is.”
Sierra allowed a sardonic smirk to come to her face. “Forgive me for not taking your word for it.”
“Fair enough,” Traug returned. “In your place, I would be as skeptical. I am intrigued though, by the Sect’s interest in your friend. Are you not, as well?”
Sierra shrugged. “They want Orna.” She saw no point in skirting the issue. Traug already new a fair deal about their mission, as she was fairly certain he was the source that had tipped Durak off to their covert extraction and transport of the wanted being in the first place. “They believe he knows where she is.”
“As she is here with us, it would seem he won’t have much to tell them,” Traug said, thoughtfully. “I don’t imagine that will stop his captors from attempting to discern it from him though. They are nothing if not persistent. And unfortunately for your unique friend, they are also quite proficient at that sort of thing.”
Sierra wasn’t about to argue the point. She knew all too well what the Sect was capable of, especially when they wanted something. There were no limits to the depravity they would sink to. A depravity that Jarred very well may have been being subjected to even as they spoke. The thought made her blood run cold, though she didn’t allow it to show on her face. Traug was trying to get a reaction out of her. To trigger an emotional response within her and then play off of it. He was a master manipulator and would be searching for any sign of weakness to exploit towards his own ends.
“They aren’t the only ones,” she countered, coldly.
A sly grin came to Traug’s face. “My dear, while I do applaud your rather amusing attempt at intimidation, I’m afraid it is wasted on me. I have been threatened by the best of them, you see, very recently in fact, and please take no offense to this, but the thought of being tortured by one such as yourself would be rather pleasant by comparison. Besides, I have already told you what you want to know.”
“Not everything,” Sierra disputed.
“Ah,” Traug smiled. “There is something more you wish to know? Why didn’t you say so, my dear? If it is information you desire, there is no better person to have at your disposal. Of course, information does not come free. You will need to offer something to me in return.”
Now it was Sierra’s turn to grin. “How about your life?”
Traug’s demeanor did not sway. “I do believe that bargain was already struck, in exchange for the whereabouts of your bounty hunter friend. Additional information will require a new bargain.”
“What sort of bargain?” Sierra asked.
“Well, that would depend on the nature of the information. And it’s subsequent worth to you.”
“I want the name of the person that tipped you off on our operation with Orna.”
“Now,” he began slowly, his humorous expression changing slightly to something more calculating. “That is some rather valuable information. Frankly, my dear, I’m not sure you could afford it.”
Sierra allowed a sinister smirk to show on her face. “I think I might have something to barter with.”
Traug’s brow rose, curiously. “What are you offering?”
She put a cold chill into her voice, leaning forward. “The same thing I’ve always been offering. Your life. You tell me what I want to know, you leave here in one piece. Don’t . . .” She let the sentence hang, unfinished.
“As I said,” Traug returned, sounding mildly bored, “that bargain has already been struck. A new one-”
“There are no new ones,” Sierra cut him off. “No other bargains. This is the only one you get. Your life for Jarred’s whereabouts. Your life for the name of your contact. And your life for anything else I might want. That’s all I’m offering. You can accept those terms . . . or we can end our dealings now and go our separate ways. Yours will be through an open torpedo tube. It’s your choice, but don’t for a second fool yourself into thinking that this is a negotiation.”
When Traug didn’t immediately respond, she knew she had shaken his resolve, caused him to doubt his certainty in her willingness to kill him . . . or worse. And then she knew she had him.
“It seems that I’ve underestimated your ruthlessness,” he said, finally.
Sierra raised an eyebrow. “Big mistake.”
“It would seem so,” Traug allowed. “But, I’m afraid I still cannot help you. As much as I would like to meet your demands, I cannot supply information I do not have. Though, given the opportunity, it is a requisition I would be happy to pursue at your behest.”
“If we let you go?” Sierra said, finishing the Trill’s thought for him.
Traug smiled. “That would be a necessity, yes.”
“And what if I think you’re lying and decide to pry the answer out of you?”
He appeared to consider her threat. “That, is of course, your choice. But I would warn you that any torture you subject me to would do little more than force false information from a desperate being.”
Sierra was quiet a moment as she considered whether Traug might actually be telling the truth. “I’m willing to take that chance,” she finally replied, activating her comm.
“Kern,” she called into the device. “Prep a torpedo tube. We’re coming up.”
Traug’s eyebrow raised at her comment and she smiled internally. The longer she kept him wondering, the more likely it was that he would give her what she wanted. And if he really didn’t have the answer . . ? How far was she willing to go?
Kern’s voice came back over her comm. “You might want to delay that. We’ve just passed within sensor range of Gaia.”
Sierra met the Trill’s interested gaze. It was time to find out just how truthful he was being . . . and how much longer she might be keeping him around. “We’re on our way.”
Quickly making her way with Traug to the flight deck, she found Elora and Ethan anxiously waiting with Kern. “Sit down,” she ordered the Trill, shoving him into one of the control seats.
“How long until we’re within signal range,” she then asked Kern, stepping up behind his lowered flight seat.
“We should be picking it up now,” he answered her.
“Picking what up now?” Elora asked, looking confused.
Sierra turned to face the woman. She had chosen to hold back on this vital part of her plan for rescuing Jarred, only because there was a more than fair chance Traug was lying. They couldn’t just take him on his word and wander into the heart of Sect Dominion, and into the waiting hands of the powers that were after Orna. They had to have, not only a way to be sure that he was actually on the planet, but a precise readout of where he was being held. That was something Sierra was about to find out whether or not they had.
“Before we dropped the two of you off at the waste plant,” she began to explain, while sitting down at the sensor control station, “Jarred implanted a tracing node in you.”
“I know,” Elora said, stepping up next to the station. “The same one he used to trace Mac’s location to Ryza.”
“Right,” Sierra confirmed, punching a command sequence into her terminal, bringing up a sensor grid of the space around Gaia and it’s solitary moon. “Well, you weren’t the on
ly one. Guessing we might need to come after one or the both of you . . .”
“He shot himself with one, too,” the other woman finished, with obvious excitement in her voice.
“Right again,” Sierra said, a flashing signal appearing on the sensor overlay before her. Focusing and magnifying the sweep, she brought up the sensor information for the signal’s approximate location on the planet.
“We’ve got his signal,” she called up to Kern. “It’s coming in clean, right smack in the heart of the capitol.”
“As I said he would be,” Traug commented from his seat across the deck. “I have lived up to my end of the bargain. As an honorable being, I do hope you will do the same.”
Sierra glanced over her shoulder at him. It seemed the slimy Trill had been telling the truth. Maybe he wasn’t lying about his contact either, though she still felt strongly he was holding back. Regardless, she doubted he would provide her the answer, even under duress. And right now she needed to focus on the more urgent task of attempting Jarred’s rescue. She didn’t have time for a lengthy interrogation.
“You aren’t really considering letting him go, are you?” Kern asked.
“I am,” she answered him.
“You can’t be serious?” Elora exclaimed. “After what he’s done? To your friends? To Ethan?”
“I am serious,” Sierra replied to the woman, her eyes still meeting Traug’s. “We made a deal. He met his part. Now we’ll do ours.”
* * *
“You can’t do this!” Traug exclaimed, from inside the escape pod he had been forced into, the fear of death slightly outweighing his outrage. “We made a bargain!”
“And I’m keeping my part,” his female tormentor replied. “I said I wouldn’t kill you. And I’m not going to. This is a top of the line, fully functioning life pod.” She paused to unholster her sidearm and took aim with it, Traug instinctively raising his hands to shield his face, for all the good it would do him at point blank range. To his relief, the shot fired did not kill him. Instead, it only burned a hole into the control panel next to his head, the acrid smell of scorched metal and components filling the pod.
“Almost fully functional,” the woman corrected. “We don’t want to make it too easy for you, now do we. Without comm or navigational controls, and floating adrift this close to the Homeworld, I’d put your chances of being spotted and picked up at about average.”
Traug stared at the burned hold where the pod’s command console used to be, his anger swelling into an explosive outburst. “You . . . double crossing . . . degenerate!” he shouted.
“Hey, easy,” the woman’s male counterpart said, as he casually leaned up against the archway access door to the pod. “We degenerates have feelings too.”
Traug ignored the pilot’s quip. “You can’t just shoot me out into space in this . . . thing.”
“Would you prefer to go out through the torpedo tube?” the woman asked. “I would be happy to oblige you. It’s your call, but either way, you’re leaving this ship. At least this way you have a chance. And it’s better odds than you would face if I took you back to our people, and believe me, I would like to. But where we’re going, you’d just get in the way, so consider yourself lucky. Whether anyone finds you before your life support runs out . . . that’s another story.”
“Please,” Traug implored her, his mind racing with possible ways out of his predicament. “Let’s be reasonable.”
“This is reasonable for her,” the pilot commented, dryly. “She must be in a good mood.”
Traug’s eyes darted between the man and woman, his heart beating so rapidly in his chest he feared it might actually burst. “But how can I help you if you do this? Consider my value to you alive. Consider the information I could attain for you.”
“That time has passed,” the woman replied, coldly. “I’m afraid our negotiations have adjourned.”
“But wait!” Traug pleaded, reaching for the pod hatch as the woman moved to seal it. “Wait! I can help you!”
“Thanks anyway,” she replied, her features devoid of any emotion, Traug realizing too late how badly he had misjudged the woman. “Have a nice trip.”
“Good journeys,” the pilot added.
Traug’s desperate gaze moved to the other two faces in the main hold, the second woman and young male who had been looking on silently, the second of which stepped forward to stand before the pod’s open hatchway. The boy regarded him for a moment, Traug wondering . . . hoping . . . beyond all reason, he might plead for his companions to reconsider their choice and spare him.
But that was a fool’s hope . . . and Traug knew better.
Instead, the boy reached for the outer control panel and grinned. “Try breathing shallow,” he suggested, as he triggered the pod's hatch, sealing Traug inside. Through the hatch's small viewpane, their gazes remained locked for a long moment, until the pod jerked from a sudden burst of inertia, the boy and the vessel itself rapidly sailing away until they were no more than a glimmering sliver of light, blending into the vast surrounding starfield.
And then Traug was left alone. Adrift in the darkness. A derelict. A castaway. His fate as unknown as the void itself. It was not the end he had envisioned for himself. In truth, he hadn't envisioned any end for himself. He had just assumed he would somehow manage to outmaneuver death when it finally came calling. Or buy it off. He was a brilliant tactician by trade, after all. He was methodical. Calculating. Ruthless.
Where had he gone wrong?
Chapter 40
GAIA
Engulfed in darkness, Jarred hung, with his feet only grazing the floor, by a pair of bindings that covered his forearms from wrist to elbow, their flexsteel cords running up to a mount in the ceiling of his latest holding cell. He wasn’t sure exactly of how long he had been in the large room, having regained consciousness in it after being sedated, yet again, on board the Rai Chi’s transport, his awakening being met with the usual hostility of his warrior captors.
The visit had been a revealing one, though painful. He had been violently stirred from his drugged state by a warrior he had not seen before, though he had been accompanied by the scarred Rai Chi Jarred was familiar with. The older warrior, adorned in more elaborate attire than the younger, was obviously of higher stature and he had taken lead in the confrontation. It hadn’t taken long for Jarred to note the similarity in his features to another warrior. One he had met in combat on the arena floor on Rydel. And from the elder’s response it had become instantly apparent that he was faced with a relative of the dead warrior. His father, he guessed rightly, confirmation of his theory becoming painfully clear with a violent attack from the Rai Chi at the mention of Shu’ma’s name. Perhaps against his better judgment he had continued to mock the warrior, and though the Rai Chi had appeared very ready and willing to end his life, he had held back. Jarred couldn’t fathom the reason why, accept that they still required information from him.
The warriors had left then, and since that time, no other visitors had come, which gave Jarred little to base the passing of time. But his level of dehydration and thoroughly aching muscles told him at least two or three days had come and gone. He could go much longer than the average human without food or water, something his captors were more than likely unaware of, but even so, his fight in the arena had taken a lot out of him. The little strength he had been left with had gone towards healing the life threatening stab wound he’d received from Shu’ma, that act alone taking more than a day in his weakened state, leaving him in serious need of rest and repair. As the situation was, he wasn’t getting much of either of those things, so the lack of adequate hydration was beginning to take it’s tole. More than once he had considered letting the critical wound slowly bleed out and consume him. It would have been a quiet and relatively painless death, as he eventually drifted into unconsciousness to never awaken again, no doubt compared to whatever his captors had in store for him.
His bout in the arena had served as a timely di
straction to draw attention from Ethan and Elora’s escape attempt, and to that end it had been successful. During his departure he had overheard Traug’s mention of a siege and breakout at the waste facility. The Trill had requested aid in the retrieval of the escapees, in light of his efforts to accommodate and please his guests, though his words had fallen on the unsympathetic ears of the scarred warrior now in command after Shu’ma’s fall in the arena.
With the task of aiding Elora and Ethan’s escape complete, and his fate seeming set, repairing himself only to wait out what would probably be an agonizing, torturous death had seemed pointless. Yet he had felt something compelling him to hold on. To not give in. To keep going.
And so he had waited, strung up like an aging carcass, for whatever was urging him to keep breathing to finally reveal itself. The thought of escape was an absurd one, but none the less, it was instinctive for him to move towards it, so while he waited he had also been planning his breakout. Unfortunately, his planning hadn’t progressed much beyond the walls of this room. He knew nothing of what was outside the cell’s blast doors, not to mention the security measures in place that he would need to defeat in order to break out of whatever facility he was being held in. He was sure that it was land based though, as the telltale vibrations and artificial gravity feel of a space born vessel or station were absent. If he was to make any sort of attempt, he would need to get a clearer understanding, beyond that, of exactly where he was.
The cell itself was not an overly complicated construct. It was round in shape, the ceiling curving upward to where the coupling his bindings were shackled to was mounted. Apart from the shock binders, which could send electric pulses through his body if he attempted to tamper with them, or simply if his captors wished to torment him, the room had been outfitted with an array of portable disruptor auto turrets, placed around its perimeter, which watched and followed his every move. He had tested them a number of times, shifting his bodyweight, as much as was possible in his restraints, the turrets adjusting their discharge barrels to match even the slightest of movements. If he did manage to get free of his bindings, the turrets would have little difficulty reducing him to atomized vapor.
