Safe Passage

[Chirakis 1]

Safe Passage

 

"How does it feel?"

 

Clad only in a thin sleeveless tunic and shorts, Kirel lay in a near-fetal position upon the dank cave floor, totally compliant to her captor's wishes. That was what was required, or at least she vaguely remembered it was. Much had become hazy over the past few days. Still, the urge to attack was strong, and, if by some strange quirk of fate she could muster the strength from her emaciated body, she probably would fall into his trap, attack, and die. "One never knows how one will respond in any situation until one is presented with that situation," her instructor had said not so long ago. She trusted him then. She had to trust him now.

 

Her captor's tongue hissed in her ear, and then his voice, gruff and taunting, whispered insult and innuendo as he worked his way within an inch of her face from one side to the other. She felt a harsh, calloused hand brush slowly down the center of her back and across her thigh, but she remained still and unresponsive, except for a slight shudder she could not control. Threats of violating her body – and those of her teammates – spat from his lips in the company of a putrid odor.

 

After a long pause a second voice, not her captor's, came from farther away, close to the drip of cave seepage that nearly drove her insane from thirst. "How does it feel?" it said again. Another male, familiar and yet not familiar. Water. She couldn't even remember its taste. One drop. Only one. One… drop. "How long will you last? Just say the word."

 

"Tomar," she replied, though the voice didn't sound like her own. Perhaps she could suck some moisture from the damp cave floor. "Tomar," she said again. Safe passage. She knew nothing of the Federation and their strategies. All she required was safe passage, nothing more.

 

Not even in the Cardassian slave camp of her childhood, where hunger and thirst drove them to the garbage heaps of their masters and the puddles that gathered after infrequent rains, had she known such a heaviness. A feral instinct had engulfed her very being, trapping it in a desperate struggle for survival. Her head pounded, everything magnified a thousand fold, the drip… drip… drip from deep within the cave, the floor spinning with the slightest movement of her head, the anguish from constant retching when there was nothing left to retch, her tongue swollen beyond speech, her cracked lips oozing what little moisture was left in her body.

 

"Y ka'alat tomar," Kirel repeated. I require safe passage. Yes. That's what I'm supposed to say. Nothing else.

 

"Tell me your name." Her captor again. The first voice, not the second.

 

"Tomar." No name. Nothing.

 

"Who sent you?"

 

"Ka'alat… tomar." Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth and her lips pasted together as she struggled for words.

 

"Where are you from? Say it, and you will live."

 

"Ka'al…." Kirel choked, her head lolled on the cave floor, and what she could still see spun uncontrollably.

 

Her captor withdrew to be replaced by another – not the second she had been hearing in the background for the past few… hours, were they? Or days? Or weeks? The third one had a different manner, a different smell, a different touch, and a calm, soothing voice. It knelt next to her and the sound of a tricorder flicked past her ear. "That's it. No more," it said. And it sounded like… a female?

 

The second, more distant presence joined the third next to her. Kirel craned her neck to see who it was, but her dry, unfocused eyes were beyond seeing, and her mind, becoming more confused by the minute, would not give her the information she required for reason. The language she did recognize – Federation Standard – and she had a faint recollection that she knew this second person, but the rest wouldn't come. He knelt next to her and seemed to study her for a long time, then spoke carefully and with authority.

 

"Remember how you feel, Lieutenant. Remember every sensation in your body. The swelling, the disorientation, the pain… everything. Remember it well. Now you know how far you can go. Beyond this there is only death."

 

A rustle of hurried bodies approaching, the hiss of a hypospray, and a cool, moist cloth over her face brought her mind back to remembering her mission, which was not a mission at all. It was, instead, an investigation of self-awareness, who she was and how far she could go, into learning the signs of her own body and realizing how much she could endure. All operatives, in a course called, strangely enough, Survival, endured – or did not endure – this test.

 

 

"And how they groan and grumble when their Midway is barren," said Kirel as these thoughts passed. Now a Commander and second in command of Sky Harbor Aegis, she was taking a few minutes to enjoy a lemonade on the concourse. She had been watching the excitement of opening day for several of the smaller concessions, somewhat pleased that the crew had a place besides their quarters or the holodeck for relaxation. She imagined that Ambassador Drankum was also pleased with the resurrection of commerce, of profitable ventures, though she knew his heart was in the shipyard.

 

Was this the feeling they called command satisfaction? For a brief moment Kirel considered that she might have become addled, and that perhaps she was actually settling into this post. Immediately after that, however, she began to wonder how the crew would endure in times of famine, though she knew from their files that many already had. Some had seen the Dominion War, and some had experienced the dire events of the Cardassian plague. Those thoughts had, in turn, led her to question the extent of their emergency stores, which led to wandering thoughts of her youth, her time with the Maquis, and her first few years of training with what they called The Service. In short, a long, involved, mostly useless mental journey had interrupted her enjoyment of one tall glass of fresh lemonade.

 

"Porter to Commander Chirakis. Your birds are in the bay."

 

Kirel smiled as she answered the comm. Supplies had arrived, the shipyard had begun construction, businesses were opening, and now they had fighters. Could it have been a better week? A better day?

 

"I'll meet you there," was her succinct reply, and in less than an hour she and Operations Manager Porter were taking stock of two fighters, with promise of more on the way. Their outward appearance mimicked the Mongoose Mark IIs but their interior configuration and accompanying technology was, according to R&D, beyond imagination. But to Kirel, the bottom line would be do they work?

 

She took a deep breath and climbed aboard to find out.