Live & Let Die

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What does it matter to ya,

When you got a job to do?

You gotta do it well

You gotta give the other fellow hell!

 

- Wings

 

 

The district had seen better days. Rubbish was scattered on the ground in piles, the nearby buildings were covered in unsightly cracks and a few of the structures were obviously uninhabited. The occasional piece of rusted, broken machinery lay abandoned in the street. The after-effects of the Dominion war on the local scale were blatantly apparent. Resources that would have been used to keep a place like this going had been siphoned off to keep the front supplied and in doing so had let the area degrade. It was quite pitiful, and most horrible to be about in.

 

 

 

The rain didn’t help either.

 

 

 

Atticus crouched behind the wreck of some type of personal transport vehicle, soaked to the bone. But he couldn’t feel the water showering on him, couldn’t sense the icy cold enveloping him, he was concentrating too hard for that.

 

 

 

He was on the prowl.

 

 

 

J’Ai had double-crossed them like the Trill knew he would. That meant trouble any way you looked at it.

 

 

 

The betrayal may have just been a lack of information given. Perhaps there were things J’Ai knew about the mission that his moronic faith in the founders prevented him from telling. Maybe he’d been grabbed by associates with a vicious agenda and was now only realizing how much his silence had damned him. And he’d likely die with that foolishness.

 

 

 

That was the nicest possibility though by far.

 

 

 

If there were acquaintances of J’Ai’s here, perhaps their intentions weren’t so unfriendly towards him at all. Perhaps this whole mission was a way for J’Ai to get ferried back to his compadres whilst also getting an opportunity to spy on one of the most important Federation vessels in the Gamma Quadrant.

 

 

 

That was still not as bad as what Segami began to suspect was the honest truth.

 

 

 

This was a trap. A deadly one.

 

 

 

Excalibur had been distracted by something, Al-Ucard were mentioned. That was a major coincidence considering their current situation and as he’d voiced to the team, though he believed in coincidences, that he agreed they happened every day, he sure as hell didn’t trust them.

 

 

 

With the ship occupied the away team were all on their own, completely isolated. The proverb “divide and conquer” was definitely not far from the security officer’s lips. The entire group could be picked off one by one by the time Excalibur heard about it and in all likeliness if that happened, J’Ai’s helping hand would be involved.

 

 

 

But not if Segami had anything to say about it.

 

 

 

If the little rotter had beamed out he could be anywhere, maybe a thousand miles away or on a ship. But if he hadn’t, then there was a chance he was still nearby. A big chance. Popping out of view is easy, it only requires a few moments of opportunity and the nerve to do it. The hard part is getting away.

 

 

 

Atticus rolled out of his spot and barreled through the torrent of damp towards a nearby pile of rubble. He scoped it out, keeping his body in as small a target size as possible. He didn’t know or care if there were Jem’Hadar in the district, a person in his charge had escaped and he was not going to stand for it. If those horned hotheads did appear and fire on him he’d drop his weapon immediately and raise his hands but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

 

 

 

To explain his determination, it didn’t matter that Laarell had ordered him to back off away from the ‘survivor’, it didn’t matter that he’d only followed procedure by taking the lead in the team to maintain safety. It was still his fault J’Ai had got away. Nobody’s perfect, but every Starfleet officer knows that performing duties with anything less than perfection can always bite them in the ass before a hearing. This escape was a personal insult, a blight on his record which if not resolved quickly would remain forever. Just like Kathleen’s death on his soul.

 

 

 

Movement!

 

 

 

The average person would never have noticed it. It had just been a quick, dark blur. A humanoid figure had stood from behind a crate of some sort and darted into an alley. Segami considered staying in place as told for a moment but remembering his duty as well as the motion sensor he’d left on the platform, he sprinted after his quarry.

 

 

 

He stopped at the alley’s entrance and leaned round the corner. It was dark and foreboding, the exact picture of “perfect spot for an ambush” in any dictionary. Anyone who walked in there surely had the odds against them.

 

 

 

He tapped his commbadge and spoke in a cold deadpan voice.

 

 

 

“Commander Laarell, possible threat identified. In pursuit.”

 

 

 

As he flicked on the rifle’s torch and prepared to step into the black he whispered to himself in jest,

 

 

 

“Well, no one lives forever, not even me”

 

 

 

Then considering what Corizon’s instructions were regarding the escapee he added with a lot more menace,

 

 

 

“And certainly not you J’Ai.”