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seren_ccdChapter Eight
The reed works. She can blow air in and out of it and she spares a second to be grateful. But, she also knows that the water level will extend several feet above the reach of the reed.
She's only bought herself minutes.
The water is up to her shoulders.
She breathes in slowly and deeply.
The water is up to her neck. Chills wrack her body and she does her best to calm herself, but her lip trembles and she calls out for help one last futile time.
She puts the reed in her mouth and breathes in and out. She tilts her head back and grips the pipe with her bound hands, her knees resting on the mud wall. She's going to have to maintain her grip otherwise if she slips, water will fill the reed and she'll choke and then…
The water is tickling her ears and jaw.
She closes her eyes, tightens her grip and aims the reed directly upwards with her mouth.
The water closes in over her head.
"We were unsure of the guide's role in all of this, so we put her in another room," Ruthan said as they approached one of the meeting rooms in the main complex hall. "However, we were able to find the men she described and brought them here. We've been questioning them and while they have admitted to placing the bombs, they refuse to say any more about the entire set-up or if anyone was helping them from the inside, as it were."
The ambassador nodded to the two guards outside the room. One of the men opened the door. Kirk said something quietly to the other guard. He looked taken aback, but nodded and said, "Yes, sir."
McCoy followed Kirk and Spock into the room and eyed the four men positioned with their backs against the wall. Three of them looked nervous and stiff and their eyes kept darting around the room. The leader, Atro, was standing tall, his eyes focused on the door and the people who walked in. He smirked when he saw the Starfleet uniforms and seemed to laugh a little. Then he looked away. There was severe discoloration around his nose, McCoy noticed.
Someone decked him a good one, McCoy thought.
"You gentlemen are in very serious trouble," Ruthan said. "I hope you are aware of this."
Three men nodded. Atro did not and merely continued to look smug, his eyes narrowed and his posture relaxed.
Kirk watched him quietly and then walked over to him and stood directly in front of him. McCoy tensed in anticipation, as did Spock.
"Let me guess," Kirk said in a casual tone as if he was discussing the weather. "You were promised a lot of money and recognition in return for doing a bit of damage to the project. You were given codes and times when the facility would be empty. Then you were told to go wild and smash the place up. Of course, it's not like you actually knew what you were looking for, you weren't exactly trusted that far."
Kirk tilted his head. "And I bet it never occurred to you to ask exactly why you were being asked to sabotage this project. You just – followed orders. It's not like this was all your idea, am I right?"
Atro met Kirk's eyes and leaned into the other man’s face. "Wrong."
"Am I?" Kirk asked his eyes going comically wide. "Well, it certainly wouldn't be the first time. What exactly am I wrong about?"
"This was my idea," Atro said proudly. "All mine."
"Really?" Kirk said, cupping his chin and looking thoughtful. "See, I wouldn't have guessed that. How'd you get the codes to get into the facility?"
Atro remained silent and looked away. McCoy raised an eyebrow and watched as Kirk geared up for what would probably be a big reveal.
"Okay. Let me run something past you," Kirk said moving away. "Someone did give you the codes to get in because he or she thought that the fact you had so much, oh, let's call it, community spirit, which was so inspiring and all they wanted to do was help. Am I getting close?"
"He said we would be held up as examples to our planet," one of the other men said. He flinched back when Atro glared at him.
"Oh, did he?" Kirk said. He moved in close to Atro once again and stared him down. "Here's what I don’t know. What exactly did he say to get you all riled up? Hmm? That it was a mistake to trust Starfleet? What? He must have sweetened the deal somehow?"
"He only told us the truth," Atro said at last, his lip curling. "That once the genome was released Kalpharia would be forgotten. That the Federation only uses and when they're done using, our planet would have nothing left that was ours."
"And you believed him?" McCoy asked incredulously.
Atro didn't reply, simply straightened his posture and lifted his chin.
"Who?" Dr. Owen asked quietly. "Who gave you the codes, Atro?"
A knock at the door forestalled any response Atro might have given. Ruthan nodded to the guard who opened the door. Dr. Hall entered followed by the three geneticists, Drs. Rankin, Burkett and Saller.
The Enterprise's security officer was right behind the men and closed the door.
"So, what's this all about?" Dr. Burkett asked, the shorter man crossing his arms over his chest.
"Just wanted to ask you a couple of questions," Kirk said nonchalantly. "Or see if there was anything you wanted to tell us."
There was a long silence while Kirk just stared at each of the geneticists and they stared back blankly.
"About what?" Dr. Saller finally asked. "Or do we have to guess?"
"No need to guess, I asked for you gentlemen to come here because I suspect one of you has been handing out the codes to the facility to these other gentlemen here so that they could sabotage the work on the blue rice genome," Kirk said.
McCoy swallowed a laugh that threatened to escape and Spock raised an eyebrow at the captain's blunt statement.
Here it comes, McCoy thought. You knew who did it the second we walked in the door, didn't you, captain? Well, amaze us. Lay it on them, Jim.
The geneticists all looked confused and then displayed various expressions of outrage.
"That's preposterous," Dr. Rankin said looking offended and confused. "We've done so much work on the genome, why would we want to destroy it?"
"This is ridiculous," Dr. Burkett said. "Why would we do something like this?"
"Because you were tired of only being a part of the whole," Kirk said. "One of you went against the rest of the team and told these men here some kind of story that was intended to appeal to their sense of national pride and get them to do your dirty work for you.
"You did all this because, and honestly I can't believe how clichéd this is," Kirk shook his head, "you did it for the money."
Dr. Saller looked horrified. "What money? We don't even use money."
"Perhaps you don't, but one of you does," Kirk said. "One of you most certainly does. In fact, you are in so much debt that you were going to sell the last three years of hard work for an amount that is far, far beneath what it's actually worth."
He looked at the Kalpharian men. "You were used, gentlemen. And not only that, your patriotism was bought and sold for a very, very low price."
One of the men glared at the geneticists. "You said you agreed with us!"
Burkett frowned and Saller blinked. However, Dr. Rankin was far more dramatic. He shoved Burkett towards Dr. Hall and broke for the door. He’d almost made it , but Spock and a security officer was on his heels in a second and each grabbed an arm. The geneticist struggled, wrenching from side to side, trying to loosen the grip on him. It grew apparent to him that he wasn’t going to let go and finally slumped over, his head hanging down and his mouth in a grimace.
"How could you?" Dr. Saller whispered. "Paul, how…"
"Oh, how could I not, David?" Rankin spat. "All our work. All this time spent on this backwater planet and for what? To just give it over?"
"It's for the good of…"
"Oh, don't give me that old rubbish," Rankin said turning to Dr. Owen who had spoken. "This was going be quite the feather in your cap, wasn't it? Unlimited possibilities would await you all over the universe. Well, forgive me for wanting to advance a little."
"Advance?" Kirk asked quickly. "How exactly? By waiting until food production hits an all-time low and then bargain your way to gaining power? Or was it to help pay off your buddies with the Syndicate?"
Rankin's face froze. Kirk leaned forward. "What? You thought you could go and spend your shore leave on a place like Torpus Beta and no one would wonder why? Not smart, doctor, not smart at all."
"You liar!" Atro yelled leaping forward, startling everyone in the room. A guard quickly restrained him.
"You lied to us!"
"Of course I lied to you!" Rankin said spitefully. "How dense do you have to be to not have seen that?"
"Liar!" Atro struggled with the guard and another came in to grab his arms.
"Yes!" Xanphar broke in. "You were lied to, Atro! The community stood to gain a great deal from this partnership. As part of our agreement with the Federation, our land wasn’t going to be touched."
The young man’s face went white and his jaw clenched.
“What have we done?” one of his men whispered, sounding defeated.
“Sounds like you’ve made a mistake listening to Dr. Rankin,” Kirk said rocking back on his heels. McCoy shook his head.
A guard stuck his head into the room. "Ambassador!"
"Yes, officer?"
"We searched the area where we picked the men up, we've found no trace of the other woman," the guard said.
"What other woman?" Kirk asked with a frown.
"When the guide reported that her brother and his friends were responsible for the sabotage, she also told us that they had abducted a woman earlier this evening." Ruthan said eyeing Atro and his men with distaste. "I've had a team out looking for her. The guide was quite insistent we find her."
"You won't find her," Atro said spitefully as he glared at Kirk. "And even if you do? It'll be too late."
"Who is she?" McCoy asked.
"What have we done?" the same young man asked again.
All eyes in the room turned to him, while he stared at Atro.
"You promised us... You said this would work! You said this was right! For the good of Kalpharia! We were never supposed to--" The younger man broke off when Atro glared at him. His eyes darted about the room frantically.
"Marcev? What is it?" Ruthan asked.
Atro and Marcev stared at each other. Finally the younger man shook his head and said, "The girl overheard us. We-- We had to do something. We didn’t know!"
"Who was she?" Ruthan asked. "Was she one of your friends?"
"No! Not one of our friends. She was Starfleet! The blonde one," Marcev said. "She was there when Atro confessed to Annha. She heard everything."
McCoy felt his stomach churn and his heart thudded loudly in his temples. “Christine. Where is she?”
The young man wiped the back of his hand over his mouth while Atro looked away in disgust. McCoy leaped forward and grabbed the front of Marcev's tunic.
McCoy slammed him against the wall as he shouted, “Where is she?”
"Bones," Kirk said sharply.
The young man shuddered and didn't answer; his mouth slack in the face of McCoy's anger. McCoy leaned in so that he was only an inch away from the boy’s face. When he spoke it was soft and low and menacing:
"Let me clue you in to something, son. I am a doctor. I can take you apart and put you back together and I can make every second of it hurt like nothing in this universe. Now where. Is. She?"
Kirk’s put his hand on McCoy’s shoulder and squeezed, but McCoy ignored the warning.
"In the basin! We put her in the basin!" Marcev shouted. One of the guards holding Atro sucked in a breath.
"The what?" Kirk asked looking over at the ambassador.
"Oh, Marcev," Ruthan said shocked.
"Traitor!" Atro shouted as he twisted in the guard’s grasp, a trickle of blood from his nose making it’s way down his face.
"Silence, Atro!" Xanphar said. “Guards, get him out of here and into a cell!”
"Someone tell me what the hell the basin is!" McCoy’s grip tightened on Marcev’s front, his fingernails breaking through the fabric.
"It’s the collecting pond at the bottom of the terraces," Ruthan said quickly. "The water drains down to be collected, when it reaches a certain level, it drains out."
"Where did you put her?" McCoy asked jostling Marcev roughly.
"Basin Thirteen. At the bottom," he whispered, his face pale and drawn. "It's too late, though. It won't drain until mid-day."
McCoy couldn’t feel his legs, just the feel of the fabric in his hands and the cold seeping into his bones and the terror in his heart. This wasn’t right. It wasn’t Christine. Not her and not like this.
"Bones, let him go," Kirk said, his tone flat and even. McCoy obeyed mechanically, his hands clenching into fists. "Show us. Now."
Next
The reed works. She can blow air in and out of it and she spares a second to be grateful. But, she also knows that the water level will extend several feet above the reach of the reed.
She's only bought herself minutes.
The water is up to her shoulders.
She breathes in slowly and deeply.
The water is up to her neck. Chills wrack her body and she does her best to calm herself, but her lip trembles and she calls out for help one last futile time.
She puts the reed in her mouth and breathes in and out. She tilts her head back and grips the pipe with her bound hands, her knees resting on the mud wall. She's going to have to maintain her grip otherwise if she slips, water will fill the reed and she'll choke and then…
The water is tickling her ears and jaw.
She closes her eyes, tightens her grip and aims the reed directly upwards with her mouth.
The water closes in over her head.
"We were unsure of the guide's role in all of this, so we put her in another room," Ruthan said as they approached one of the meeting rooms in the main complex hall. "However, we were able to find the men she described and brought them here. We've been questioning them and while they have admitted to placing the bombs, they refuse to say any more about the entire set-up or if anyone was helping them from the inside, as it were."
The ambassador nodded to the two guards outside the room. One of the men opened the door. Kirk said something quietly to the other guard. He looked taken aback, but nodded and said, "Yes, sir."
McCoy followed Kirk and Spock into the room and eyed the four men positioned with their backs against the wall. Three of them looked nervous and stiff and their eyes kept darting around the room. The leader, Atro, was standing tall, his eyes focused on the door and the people who walked in. He smirked when he saw the Starfleet uniforms and seemed to laugh a little. Then he looked away. There was severe discoloration around his nose, McCoy noticed.
Someone decked him a good one, McCoy thought.
"You gentlemen are in very serious trouble," Ruthan said. "I hope you are aware of this."
Three men nodded. Atro did not and merely continued to look smug, his eyes narrowed and his posture relaxed.
Kirk watched him quietly and then walked over to him and stood directly in front of him. McCoy tensed in anticipation, as did Spock.
"Let me guess," Kirk said in a casual tone as if he was discussing the weather. "You were promised a lot of money and recognition in return for doing a bit of damage to the project. You were given codes and times when the facility would be empty. Then you were told to go wild and smash the place up. Of course, it's not like you actually knew what you were looking for, you weren't exactly trusted that far."
Kirk tilted his head. "And I bet it never occurred to you to ask exactly why you were being asked to sabotage this project. You just – followed orders. It's not like this was all your idea, am I right?"
Atro met Kirk's eyes and leaned into the other man’s face. "Wrong."
"Am I?" Kirk asked his eyes going comically wide. "Well, it certainly wouldn't be the first time. What exactly am I wrong about?"
"This was my idea," Atro said proudly. "All mine."
"Really?" Kirk said, cupping his chin and looking thoughtful. "See, I wouldn't have guessed that. How'd you get the codes to get into the facility?"
Atro remained silent and looked away. McCoy raised an eyebrow and watched as Kirk geared up for what would probably be a big reveal.
"Okay. Let me run something past you," Kirk said moving away. "Someone did give you the codes to get in because he or she thought that the fact you had so much, oh, let's call it, community spirit, which was so inspiring and all they wanted to do was help. Am I getting close?"
"He said we would be held up as examples to our planet," one of the other men said. He flinched back when Atro glared at him.
"Oh, did he?" Kirk said. He moved in close to Atro once again and stared him down. "Here's what I don’t know. What exactly did he say to get you all riled up? Hmm? That it was a mistake to trust Starfleet? What? He must have sweetened the deal somehow?"
"He only told us the truth," Atro said at last, his lip curling. "That once the genome was released Kalpharia would be forgotten. That the Federation only uses and when they're done using, our planet would have nothing left that was ours."
"And you believed him?" McCoy asked incredulously.
Atro didn't reply, simply straightened his posture and lifted his chin.
"Who?" Dr. Owen asked quietly. "Who gave you the codes, Atro?"
A knock at the door forestalled any response Atro might have given. Ruthan nodded to the guard who opened the door. Dr. Hall entered followed by the three geneticists, Drs. Rankin, Burkett and Saller.
The Enterprise's security officer was right behind the men and closed the door.
"So, what's this all about?" Dr. Burkett asked, the shorter man crossing his arms over his chest.
"Just wanted to ask you a couple of questions," Kirk said nonchalantly. "Or see if there was anything you wanted to tell us."
There was a long silence while Kirk just stared at each of the geneticists and they stared back blankly.
"About what?" Dr. Saller finally asked. "Or do we have to guess?"
"No need to guess, I asked for you gentlemen to come here because I suspect one of you has been handing out the codes to the facility to these other gentlemen here so that they could sabotage the work on the blue rice genome," Kirk said.
McCoy swallowed a laugh that threatened to escape and Spock raised an eyebrow at the captain's blunt statement.
Here it comes, McCoy thought. You knew who did it the second we walked in the door, didn't you, captain? Well, amaze us. Lay it on them, Jim.
The geneticists all looked confused and then displayed various expressions of outrage.
"That's preposterous," Dr. Rankin said looking offended and confused. "We've done so much work on the genome, why would we want to destroy it?"
"This is ridiculous," Dr. Burkett said. "Why would we do something like this?"
"Because you were tired of only being a part of the whole," Kirk said. "One of you went against the rest of the team and told these men here some kind of story that was intended to appeal to their sense of national pride and get them to do your dirty work for you.
"You did all this because, and honestly I can't believe how clichéd this is," Kirk shook his head, "you did it for the money."
Dr. Saller looked horrified. "What money? We don't even use money."
"Perhaps you don't, but one of you does," Kirk said. "One of you most certainly does. In fact, you are in so much debt that you were going to sell the last three years of hard work for an amount that is far, far beneath what it's actually worth."
He looked at the Kalpharian men. "You were used, gentlemen. And not only that, your patriotism was bought and sold for a very, very low price."
One of the men glared at the geneticists. "You said you agreed with us!"
Burkett frowned and Saller blinked. However, Dr. Rankin was far more dramatic. He shoved Burkett towards Dr. Hall and broke for the door. He’d almost made it , but Spock and a security officer was on his heels in a second and each grabbed an arm. The geneticist struggled, wrenching from side to side, trying to loosen the grip on him. It grew apparent to him that he wasn’t going to let go and finally slumped over, his head hanging down and his mouth in a grimace.
"How could you?" Dr. Saller whispered. "Paul, how…"
"Oh, how could I not, David?" Rankin spat. "All our work. All this time spent on this backwater planet and for what? To just give it over?"
"It's for the good of…"
"Oh, don't give me that old rubbish," Rankin said turning to Dr. Owen who had spoken. "This was going be quite the feather in your cap, wasn't it? Unlimited possibilities would await you all over the universe. Well, forgive me for wanting to advance a little."
"Advance?" Kirk asked quickly. "How exactly? By waiting until food production hits an all-time low and then bargain your way to gaining power? Or was it to help pay off your buddies with the Syndicate?"
Rankin's face froze. Kirk leaned forward. "What? You thought you could go and spend your shore leave on a place like Torpus Beta and no one would wonder why? Not smart, doctor, not smart at all."
"You liar!" Atro yelled leaping forward, startling everyone in the room. A guard quickly restrained him.
"You lied to us!"
"Of course I lied to you!" Rankin said spitefully. "How dense do you have to be to not have seen that?"
"Liar!" Atro struggled with the guard and another came in to grab his arms.
"Yes!" Xanphar broke in. "You were lied to, Atro! The community stood to gain a great deal from this partnership. As part of our agreement with the Federation, our land wasn’t going to be touched."
The young man’s face went white and his jaw clenched.
“What have we done?” one of his men whispered, sounding defeated.
“Sounds like you’ve made a mistake listening to Dr. Rankin,” Kirk said rocking back on his heels. McCoy shook his head.
A guard stuck his head into the room. "Ambassador!"
"Yes, officer?"
"We searched the area where we picked the men up, we've found no trace of the other woman," the guard said.
"What other woman?" Kirk asked with a frown.
"When the guide reported that her brother and his friends were responsible for the sabotage, she also told us that they had abducted a woman earlier this evening." Ruthan said eyeing Atro and his men with distaste. "I've had a team out looking for her. The guide was quite insistent we find her."
"You won't find her," Atro said spitefully as he glared at Kirk. "And even if you do? It'll be too late."
"Who is she?" McCoy asked.
"What have we done?" the same young man asked again.
All eyes in the room turned to him, while he stared at Atro.
"You promised us... You said this would work! You said this was right! For the good of Kalpharia! We were never supposed to--" The younger man broke off when Atro glared at him. His eyes darted about the room frantically.
"Marcev? What is it?" Ruthan asked.
Atro and Marcev stared at each other. Finally the younger man shook his head and said, "The girl overheard us. We-- We had to do something. We didn’t know!"
"Who was she?" Ruthan asked. "Was she one of your friends?"
"No! Not one of our friends. She was Starfleet! The blonde one," Marcev said. "She was there when Atro confessed to Annha. She heard everything."
McCoy felt his stomach churn and his heart thudded loudly in his temples. “Christine. Where is she?”
The young man wiped the back of his hand over his mouth while Atro looked away in disgust. McCoy leaped forward and grabbed the front of Marcev's tunic.
McCoy slammed him against the wall as he shouted, “Where is she?”
"Bones," Kirk said sharply.
The young man shuddered and didn't answer; his mouth slack in the face of McCoy's anger. McCoy leaned in so that he was only an inch away from the boy’s face. When he spoke it was soft and low and menacing:
"Let me clue you in to something, son. I am a doctor. I can take you apart and put you back together and I can make every second of it hurt like nothing in this universe. Now where. Is. She?"
Kirk’s put his hand on McCoy’s shoulder and squeezed, but McCoy ignored the warning.
"In the basin! We put her in the basin!" Marcev shouted. One of the guards holding Atro sucked in a breath.
"The what?" Kirk asked looking over at the ambassador.
"Oh, Marcev," Ruthan said shocked.
"Traitor!" Atro shouted as he twisted in the guard’s grasp, a trickle of blood from his nose making it’s way down his face.
"Silence, Atro!" Xanphar said. “Guards, get him out of here and into a cell!”
"Someone tell me what the hell the basin is!" McCoy’s grip tightened on Marcev’s front, his fingernails breaking through the fabric.
"It’s the collecting pond at the bottom of the terraces," Ruthan said quickly. "The water drains down to be collected, when it reaches a certain level, it drains out."
"Where did you put her?" McCoy asked jostling Marcev roughly.
"Basin Thirteen. At the bottom," he whispered, his face pale and drawn. "It's too late, though. It won't drain until mid-day."
McCoy couldn’t feel his legs, just the feel of the fabric in his hands and the cold seeping into his bones and the terror in his heart. This wasn’t right. It wasn’t Christine. Not her and not like this.
"Bones, let him go," Kirk said, his tone flat and even. McCoy obeyed mechanically, his hands clenching into fists. "Show us. Now."
Next
