by LT SG Rada Dengar
80804.2000
A little while after Not So Friendly
80804.2000
A little while after Not So Friendly
He could feel every drop, every line and every dent of the casing being forced into his back but his other senses told him much more than that. He could hear the subtle vibrations of the plasma chamber and the slow creaking as the case contracted and expanded with the slightest changes in temperature. Sounds only a trained engineer would recognize, almost inaudible even with the magnitude of a Starship’s phaser array but here they seemed to screech at him.
Every breath, every sound the man made was almost completely drowned out by Rada’s own pounding heartbeat. He desperately searched and analyzed every one of them in a futile quest to find some clue as to who the man was or why he was doing this. What he heard was an angry man desperately searching for a solution, a desperate fool who is in way over his head and would do anything to get out of it. He heard no fear of pulling the trigger.
His mind’s eye constructed a verbatim replica of the device. This tool of the modern age which was carried by so many of his kinsmen had been dismissed so often that it had been almost forgotten that it had no place in a civilized time. It was a weapon to rival the Thunderbolts of Zeus, considered by some to be the swords of the modern world. A Swordsman however needed to learn patience and to practice his craft before he could ever hope to go into battle. To foolishly charge into causing harm without thought was an opportunity reserved only for Kings, that’s what the phaser had done; given every maniac the chance to be King.
As Rada gazed at the image before him he was well aware that his time was dominated by staring into the Phase emitter, the contemporary barrel of the gun. The cloth across his eyes prevented him from seeing where he’d been taken but he could sense this place. He could tell from the stillness of the air that they’d moved inside somewhere. This place must be old, the floor was uneven as if constructed from stone blocks and the walls seemed to radiate the cold in a way modern architecture could not capture.
It was extremely quiet here, not that that meant much, he could be surrounded by dozens of Betazoids in a lively discussion of what they’d do with him and he wouldn’t hear a thing. He decided though that they were alone by listening for breathing, besides his own carefully controlled respiration only the deep pained wheezes of his captor remained.
It had felt like a very long journey here, Rada didn’t recognize the craft but like everything he’d encountered it seemed to have been silenced. The conversation had quickly ended the moment they were alone and no longer needed to maintain the facade. When they were still in public Rada had been able to ask a single question, he was forced to stick to questions that would not seem out of place for two old friends so he’d asked about the man’s uncle Bill. The man had oddly denied ever having such an uncle even though it would have played better into the act had he done otherwise. There must be some reason why claiming such an uncle existed would have given the game away, such a lie could only have hurt if observers were aware that it weren’t true, the people here must know this man.
The silence demanded by the man, who quickly lost his calm demeanor as soon as he had the opportunity to do so discretely, had afforded Rada the chance to listen. He heard the sound of electronic gates opening, security details being entered into pads and magnetic seals being released and then quickly reinstated. Wherever he was it was seemingly secure. He heard no birds.
The door behind them finally creaked completely shut and locked into place. Rada was thrown roughly down to the floor. He was unable to slow his fall as his hands were still bound behind him and so his face smashed into the cold ground, luckily being cushioned by some natural substance reminiscent of Lucerne. Though clearly artificial, this place had the smell of nature.
Rada felt his hands being released and he reached up to grab the blindfold.
“NO!” screeched the man “If you remove that blindfold before I leave the room then I will fire.”
“Okay, calm down,” Rada said reassuringly as he lowered his hands back to his side and began to stand. “How about you tell me where I am?”
“NO!” the man once again screamed, “I will only reveal what I want when I want!”
The man gestured for Rada to back away but realizing that Rada couldn’t see the gesture, he screamed. “Get back, get back!”
Rada did as he was told and once standing fully upright began to take slow steps backwards. Satisfied that he was back far enough, the man replied more calmly now. “Good, you just stay there while I get out of here.”
Rada then heard the steps of the man walking away and the door opening again. Suddenly there was a thud as it sounded like the man had fallen down. Rada remembered the steps he had walked on as he entered the room and realized that the man must have slipped. He ripped his blindfold off his head and had his first look at the room. It took a second for his eyes to adjust, but he didn’t have that kind of time. The man was flat on his back and his phaser had slid out of his hand to just in front of Rada. Rada pounced on it and directed it towards the man. The man began groggily to get up whilst Rada kept the weapon locked on him, it’s funny how much smaller it felt in his hand than when it was jammed into his back.
“Don’t move. It’s over,” Rada said slowly with an air of authority.
The man stood fully up and raised his hands. For some reason he was smiling and he began to laugh. He was laughing really loudly. He now filled the doorway to stop Rada’s escape.
“You are threatening me? YOU and threatening ME?” he kept laughing. “Go ahead and fire!”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Rada said calmly.
“You can’t hurt me, can’t even stun me. I know you Rada Dengar. You are incapable of violence outside of a holodeck. So go ahead, give me your best shot,” the man kept laughing.
Rada realized that this man knew him better than he thought. There was only one person, only one woman he had ever shared this information with.
“Do you really want to risk your life on that?” asked Rada putting on his best confidence face.
“No,” said the man whilst badly repressing a smirk and gesturing for the door. “Please, go ahead and get out of here.”
Rada made no move for the door. He knew he would not be allowed to simply walk out.
“No? I guess you’d rather just stay here with me,” added the man mockingly. Rada could tell that as much as the man joked, he was very nervous about everything he was doing.
“I’ll leave after I get some information,” lied Rada, he realized that he’d been made and that they both knew the phaser was no use to him.
The man began to walk towards Rada and it was becoming ever more apparent that he didn’t fear him. Rada glanced at the phaser in his hand, he considered just throwing it to the floor and then getting out of here when the man ran to retrieve it, but he knew he wouldn’t stand a chance of escaping when in a few seconds this man would be armed again. He had to get rid of the phaser first.
With a minor adjustment he set the phaser to overload and it began to whir. The man was clearly not worried as he now stood face to face with Rada. He knew that Rada wouldn’t allow the phaser to overload and kill them both. Rada brought the phaser behind his back and threw it across the floor of what he could now see was some kind of stone basement.
The man was unworried as he easily breached Rada’s defensive stance, punched him in the jaw and chest several times knocking him to the ground and then casually strolled over and deactivated the overload. As he passed Rada again he viciously kicked him in the stomach for good measure.
Rada felt like all the oxygen was being forced out of him. His throat seized up and he couldn’t even groan as he lay there clutching, his stomach and involuntarily curling up towards a fetal position.
The man smiled. “This is going to be fun.”
LT. SG Rada Dengar
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Alchemy NX 53099
Chief Engineering Officer
USS Alchemy NX 53099