"Final Memories of Lazarus Mench"

[Joe Manning 0]

Lieutenant Commander Hager lead his security team slowly up the cargo ramp into the Bird of Prey's interior, phaser rifles raised. Security Chief Petrov tailed the group with a cranky expression and his own firearm lifted at his side. The sounds of disruptor fire and the occasional scream reverberated around the cargo hold's hull. The bodies of many of the pirates were sprawled at the top of the ramp. Most of them were Humans who had been gashed open with blades. Only four were Klingons; two showed signs of phaser fire from outside the vessel, and two showed signs of point-blank disruptor fire.

 

"I told you," Petrov said. "They started fighting each other."

 

"Be quiet," Hager snapped back at the chief. Enough trouble had already been caused by the colonial security. As the team reached the cargo hold level, Hager glanced to either side. To the right, crates with the Goldrock emblem stamped on one side were stacked against the wall. To the left ... "I can't believe it!"

 

Tangled bundles of cables were running from the exposed circuitry within the hull to a large spired mechanism that only could have been Starbase 215's communications beacon. The beacon was making a low thrumming sound, and the security officers could feel the hairs on their necks stand as they approached the device. It was eating a lot of power and generating a lot of electronic noise.

 

"What in the gods' name is that?" Petrov asked.

 

"That is what was interfering with your equipment," Hager answered. He looked at the team's engineer. "Jones, see if you can't shut that thing off. Presley, watch his back."

 

The rest of the team progressed slowly up the middle of the cargo hold. A frantic scratching noise quickly became audible as the team approached the door leading to the rest of the ship. Hager motioned one of his assistants to the control panel beside the door while the team readied their rifles. Nerves were on edge. While Trinidad normally operated along the Klingon border, there was rarely cause to board a hostile Klingon vessel -- even the pirate ships blew themselves up whenever capture became a possibility.

 

The Ensign stood beside the door and awaited a nod from Hager before pressing the control panel's open button. The team was nearly startled out of their boots when a pack of rampaging targs burst through the doorway and made a mad dash for the cargo hatch. "Hold your fire!" Hager yelled as the security officers jumped aside. The targs disappeared down the cargo ramp, barking the whole way.

 

When a disruptor pulse emerged from the doorway, the team's attention was returned to the rest of the ship. Down the wide corridor beyond the cargo hold, the fighting between the Klingon and Human crew was still intense, and there was little doubt that the security team might be confused for one side or another.

 

"Close the door, Ensign!" Hager ordered. "Lieutenant Desmond, take one of the shuttles back to Trinidad and deliver a report to the Admiral. Tell him that we've secured the tritanium shipment on the Bird and we're working to shut down the jamming field. Also, confirm the infighting among the Bird's crew. And watch out for that tank! It's still out there somewhere."

 

"What about them?!" Petrov jumped in, pointing at the door. "We should move in and put them down while they're distracted by each other."

 

"It's a blood bath in there!" Hager chided him. "Enough of your people have been killed today, Chief, I'm not sending my people in there to get massacred. Whoever is running this circus, they may decide to put aside their differences and blow the ship if they perceive us as a greater threat." He waved his rifle toward the comm beacon. "First we've got to remove the blindfold so we can get some decent sensor imagery and some support from Trinidad. Then we make our way to their engineering section, possibly straight through the hull."

 

Petrov merely scowled at the security officer, so Hager continued, "You've provided enough information, Chief. Get out there, grab your hovercraft, and return to your post. Collect whatever personnel you have left and make sure the Goldrock settlement is secure. There's no telling what else is out there in addition to that armed vehicle ... "

 

* * * * *

 

Though the sun was newly rising on Goldrock and its approach to noon was bringing light into the canyons, there was only growing darkness in Lazarus Mench's vision. After the armored car carried MoQtal, Sargh, and the rest of his betrayors away, he made a feeble effort to drag himself back to the hoverbike Smokey had parked nearby. But his blood loss had been too great and the last of his strength had nearly sapped away.

 

There was only a light trickle of blood emerging now from the stump where his right hand had previously been. The hand itself was lying in the dirt several meters behind him, where the Klingon Captain's blade had dropped it. The reduced bleeding was not a sign that he had healed, he knew, but a sign that his death was imminent.

 

Part of the reason Mench had left the Marine Corps was that his head had always been filled by this very image that was now reality to him -- alone on some barren rock after a marine operation gone awry, bleeding to death with no one to save him.

 

Sure, there was his disdain for giving obedience to a superior officer, to the discipline and order that the Corps hammered into its recruits' heads, to the honor and tradition associated with service that he himself never felt close to his heart. All the things his father had tried to instill in him before the old bastard bought it in an enemy war camp on some asteroid who knows where. Lazarus had been nine when the Corps delivered the news to the family. His mother decided that day, he was sure, that Lazarus would take his father's place in the Corps. He would carry on the Mench legacy. Lazarus always wondered why he never had a say in the manner.

 

He feared death, plain and simple. Yet when he left the marines, he fell in with the worst elements. Smugglers, raiders, thieves, the kind of men who jeopardized their own lives even more than the marines. He told himself that it got him out of the shadow of drilled subordination that the Corps had tried to cast over him. But it was, chiefly, his fear of death that had driven him to this end. It was a paradox born of an inescapable truth -- combat was in Lazarus' blood. He was good at fighting, disposed to putting himself in the middle of it, secretely craving the danger ... whether by genetics or upbringing, he couldn't say.

 

He tried to play Commander on a Klingon ship. He could not have been any more out of place.

 

Mench was not sure why Captain Gor'shka had chosen him with his dying words. The unprecedented decision to hand command of a Klingon pirate ship to a Human had been hotly debated by the Klingon officers. In the end they decided that the need for a capable leader was too great and that the wish of their commanding officer, dying on the battlefield, could not be ignored.

 

Mench always wondered.

 

In his own private councils with Gor'shka, Mench learned that the Klingon was beginning to resent his place as the leader of a pirate crew and, consequently, growing to hate his officers. Gor'shka was a patriot who'd always dreamed of commanding an Imperial cruiser. Mench suspected that he had not agreed with the crew's original decision to defect from the Empire, but that he had gone along because he loved the ship, even after its name was changed to match that of a more famous pirate vessel. When he was eventually chosen to replace the fallen Captain Rosen, he got his wish to command a Klingon vessel, but a vessel full of outcasts to the Empire. Gor'shka never seemed to take much pleasure in the crew's raids. Indeed, Mench wondered. Had the old Klingon inflicted Mench on the crew as a last show of displeasure? A Human CO that he almost certainly knew to be a coward ...

 

Now Gor'shka's predecessor, Rosen. There had been a Klingon of the most bloodthirsty order! The Klingon who helped Mench eliminate the crew of Raven, who gave him a place on QoB's crew. Rosen was the kind of leader Mench could enjoy following ... in spite of his desire for battle ... or because of it ...

 

Mench opened his eyes to watch the dust swirling through the canyon. What was happening? His mind was wandering wildly. He would not last much longer ...

 

His eyes caught a glimpse of something green. They shifted to his remaining hand. The envelope that treacherous Sargh had shoved into his hand ... was not green. Something green had rolled out of it. He released the envelop and reached out to grab the green object. It was a small sphere. It was soft, like rubber.

 

It took great effort even for Mench to work his memory in these dying moments. Had Sargh been one of the Klingons in favor of his command? Or one of the ones who had been opposed? He could not even recall. But, wait, that was not what he was trying to recall.

 

Starbase 215? Yes, the mission on the starbase. What was the mission? They were stealing something, but Mench could not recall what it was. He recalled a small green sphere being passed into his hand by Sargh. In an envelope?

 

Squeeze it ... message ...

 

Mench's hand closed around the sphere and tightened. A strong quantum signature was generated, strong enough to pierce the jamming field and reach QoB. A transporter device on QoB activated. Mench's form shimmered feebly as the transporter locked onto the signature and tugged at the body holding the sphere. The quantum signature was strong enough to get through the jamming field, but the transporter was struggling. Mench's form wavered in and out even as his consciousness did so.

 

Finally, he vanished into a transporter stream.