Is That A Light?

Posted on Sat May 10th, 2014 @ 9:27pm by Commander Rylie Cattmor & Lieutenant JG Rami Miral

1,995 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: Landreah
Location: Landreah Rebel Holding
Timeline: T-47 minutes to trial and executions

There seemed to be few of them, but from what she could discern, they were incredibly well organised. And armed, apparently. Cattmor kept having to reel her mind in, to think about what she really knew, engines, instead of trying to formulate attack postures and thinking up escape routes. But then, Starfleet was not the only training she'd received, and she was their X-O. She also had to hold her mind back from the thoughts of their Lantiri captors. Their cells were already occupied with prisoners, and so Rylie and her group had been hauled up in an adjoining chamber, and although they were free to move about the room - albeit with their wrists bound - with a pyro-rifle trained at them, there was not that much need for higher grade security. The area was bare and rocky, set up like a remote secret outpost hidden in a random cave. As far as she was aware, they had all been either knocked unconscious or blind-folded for the journey here, but it could not have been that far from the main town as it had only taken about twenty minutes for the trip by road from her perspective, one that was skewed as she had been unconscious herself.

One of the security officers was still out cold, but the myriad of thoughts and voices were really starting to aggravate Rylie by giving her a major headache, and that wasn't counting the gash on her forehead coupled with her fractured cheekbone making the entire left side of her face sting and throb. She closed her eyes as she sat on the hard stone 'seat', and tried to concentrate on her own thoughts.

It was too hard.

She could sense all too clearly the minds of the guards, the Lantiri outside, and those of her own team. That was all apart from McCreevy who was still unconscious, and of course Sehra, who was still missing. What she needed was a distraction - and she got a minor one, just not in the way she was really expecting as Rami Miral joined her.

"This is definitely the kind of information we were sent to find, just not the way we were supposed to find it," she said, smiling wryly. "Are you doing okay?"

"After a fashion. How are you doing? The leg and all." Rylie replied.

"Hey, the pain is hardly noticeable," Rami quipped. She wasn't going to mention that her leg was going numb. There was no time for self-pity now. They had to find a way to get out of here. "I don't think I'm up for dancing, though."

They both paused a second before Cattmor tried to ignore the inward thoughts she'd heard regarding Rami's leg, and broke the brief silence again. "We have to get out of here. I know where they're holding the others but with these guys by the door..."

"I know you don't like doing it," Miral said after a moment, "But if I can get the guards to come to the door and open it, could you do something to knock them out with your mind? You know, like before?"

Rylie closed her eyes momentarily before answering. "It's not that simple." she replied. When she was under the employ of various factions back home, she was often called on to make use of her natural abilities to carry out such tasks as sabotage and assassination. She'd thought, she'd hoped though that she could leave that life behind, those memories to get buried in the deepest recesses of her mind. But this mission had brought some of those things flooding back, along with a new memory...

~~~~

// Athera

"You know what your problem is Quaice; you like initiative too much, 'kay? Now you see we got a problem." Fragir was saying as he paced the room, not even looking at Quaice who hung upside down near the doors with two top of the line H-230 pistols pointed at his head. He wasn't saying anything, not even to confirm. Fragir had ordered the triggers to be pulled if he so much uttered a word, and so he went on. "You don't run Larking Road, Trish does, 'kay? You don't have runners doing your work, and you sure as hell don't get any points for blowing up the police stand because someone ticked you off! Now I have to fix it since Trish is off getting the south organised. You know who else is going south, Quaice? Hmm?"

He paused slightly in his questioning, suddenly remembering that he ordered his people to shoot if anything came out of Quaice's mouth. Turning to one of his other off-sider's, "Get the teep out here." he ordered. "You know, I can't tell if you're incompetent, nuts, or just plain stupid. So before I let you out of here, or tell my people here to smear your ugly ass brains all over my rug, I got to be sure, 'kay?"

A wisp of a girl, with long straggly blonde hair looking like straw, and tattered clothes was lead out to the chamber, though she attempted to stay in the recess of the door and the shadows. "Now tell me girl," Fragir said turning to her, "what the hell was this guy thinking?" Rylie didn't answer. Not altogether that she didn't want to do this criminals bidding, but she was just so weak, not having been allowed to eat for a couple of days, and with little sleep, mostly broken, she was in no condition to do anything, even if it was only with her mind. "Well? What the hell was he thinking?!" Fragir repeated raising his voice slightly.

"He... he uh..." Rylie started weakly but then faltered to silence.

"You will tell me girl or so help me I'll turn this on" he started to say while gripping the control pad on his belt, "and leave you in agony till the lights go out."

Rylie swallowed uselessly since she had no saliva to expunge, and attempted to moisten her lips with what little moisture she had. Then she started to pick out specificity in the thoughts in the room, that was all but Fragir, that damn device he wore. "He thought the police were overstepping their bounds," she reported quietly, "with Trish away, he thought it fell to him to sort the area into stability and let the police know that his, and your presence was still there, and in force. He contemplated telling you about the plans but thought there wasn't enough time and that he needed to act or miss the opportunity."

"A call takes ten seconds, Quaice. That's mistake number one. And you don't tell me anything, 'kay? Like I said, you don't own Larking, and you don't run operations here. You answer to Trish and ultimately, you answer to me, 'kay?"

"He also thought you'd appreciate the ingenuity of his plan to link the explosion with the Tydor Corporation on the supply of faulty materials and equipment..." Rylie continued spilling out before Fragir cut her off --

"Mistakes number two and three, you don't get paid enough to have ingenuity, Quaice. The Tydor Corporate Initiative would never fumble so bad as to get caught up in the area, let alone the supply of faulty goods. They're too well organised, too well protected for that, you should know how the so-called Noble Families operate, 'kay? You fracked up, Quaice, you fracked up good, and now you got to pay the piper. Do it." he ordered to Rylie.

She couldn't. That would make this number forty-seven. Forty-seven innocent deaths by her act, well as innocent as they got in these parts.

"Do it!" Fragir practically shouted, but still nothing. "Listen here sweet piece, I could just as easily have my girls here finish it, but that would mean that I would once again have to get the rug cleaned. I've only just got it back from the last poor squib that got fracked here, so I don't want to do it again so soon, 'kay? Now do your little trick or you're cleaning the mess after you spend the next couple hours willing the pain to stop."

If he only knew. Killing with a thought was far from easy, and far from painless. She hated her life and the situation she'd buried herself in, hated who she was forced to become, that she just wanted it all to end. But right now, the alternatives were not all that palatable either, and so with a tear forming in her eye, she took the life of number forty-seven, searing pain shooting behind her eyes until the end.

~~~~

"Not that simple; it takes a lot of effort," Cattmor continued before the silence was uncomfortable, and continued her brief explanation; there was no reason right now to expand much, "and it's not altogether painless. It hurts almost to the point of unconsciousness if it's anything more than a quick minor burst. Besides, I don't know if I can get that specific; if I push, they're not just unconscious, they're dead."

"Okay, so maybe that's not the best option," Miral said. She hadn't realized how complicated or difficult it was physically for the other woman.

"I think we need a lot more than a quick distraction where I'd need almost as much help as McCreevy on getting out of here. Now that they've contacted the Ranger, I think there might be an easier way, a safer way out of this."

"As long as we can do it quickly," the Intel officer replied. "Didn't they say they'd start killing prisoners in an hour? We don't have much time left."

Rylie looked down and sighed. "No, you're right, there's not a lot of time, but I need to have other options. I've done it enough. I can't do it any more."

"There are always options," Rami said. "We just need to come up with one that works. If we could let the Ranger know where we are, they might be able to beam us out of here."

"I don't suppose you have anything on you in a little bag of tricks or something to allow us to do anything like that huh?" Cattmor asked, only half joking. "What about medical attention?" she asked discreetly. "McCreevy is still out, and once they open the door, we're practically home free. They have weapons, comm equipment, they've already talked to the ship." Rylie paused seeing the one major problem, "But then they still have numbers."

Suddenly the grating passing for a door opened, and one of the guards entered the chamber. "You," he said abruptly pointing out Rami, "come with me."

Cattmor stood quickly, "I'm the senior person of this group, if anyone wants to speak to someone it should be me."

"But he didn't ask for you. He did send for her." he replied flatly.

Rami stood slowly. "It's okay. I'll go." She sent a mental message to Rylie to keep track of her thoughts in case she learned anything interesting. Miral had a recording device on her. It would only take a quick movement to activate it. If this went horribly wrong, at least there would be some information to get back to the ship -- if they found her body.

Rylie suddenly felt very bad for Miral. The problem with what she requested was that to keep track of a single person's thoughts when they were not in any line of sight required a hell of a lot of training, and while she was a very high-level telepath and had gone through the complete Athera training program, a lot of it was still in the deep dark recesses of her mind, and so she didn't know how. She tried, but try as she might, she could not hold on beyond a minute.


...to be continued.


Lieutenant Commander Rylie Cattmor
Executive Officer

Lieutenant JG Rami Miral
Intelligence Officer

 

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