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Chapter IX: Decidedly Complicated
Cradling his left arm, Semil limped doggedly down the hallway. Klaxons continued to blare through the corridor, despite his having taken the lighting controls offline.
His pulse and breathing were just returning to normal after his last encounter - this time with a pair of particularly aggressive Nausicaans. The one had managed to knock him down with a solid roundhouse sweep, twisting his ankle rather badly in the process. Add to that, landing on the shoulder he had dislocated some time before that.
Once he had gotten the upper hand with the disruptor he'd picked up, Semil had made sure to spare the Nausicaan the merciful efficiency of a swift death. Twisting the mek'leth blade run into his rib cage clearly made an impression, as the Nausicaan had growled and grunted in excruciating agony, his chest cavity pulling wide and ribs cracking.
Still, Semil felt little pain, in spite of his several injuries. In his many times welcoming Jem'Hadar back from battle, they had never acknowledged as much - but only with hindsight could Semil recognize the quiet, furtive thrill behind their eyes that they had worked so hard to conceal.
They had been, after all, only servants of the Founders. Taking pleasure in combat was something for these silly warrior races, with all their posturing and chest-puffing - not soldiers.
And most certainly, not Vorta. The closest he had ever been to live combat before had been watching the multiparametric tactical displays relaying holotelemetry from his platoons.
Still, it had never before occurred to him to inquire of his Jem'Hadar about the thrill of combat, the white hot rush of adrenaline and danger. How his pulse sharpened, his hearing and vision attuned, his movements became a dance - a single fluid expression of purpose and control.
Or moreover - the abject satisfaction of staring into a defeated opponent's eyes as the life drifted away from them. How was it this had never been a topic of the Vorta combat psychodynamics conferences he had attended in the past?
He would gloat, if there had been anyone else around to listen.
Only a few more slow, hobbled steps on his rapidly swelling ankle took him to the one last door, which swooshed open unbidden. Behind lay a cavernous space, with only a few small craft parked, and a great expanse of inky space beyond the open doors - a shuttlebay.
He stepped into the large room, towards the nearest craft when he saw the tall, lone Klingon standing there.
On instinct, he drew the disruptor, aiming squarely at the new interloper. He had counted through the remaining biometric signals on the internal sensors. Surely, his counting skills couldn't have been so off. And a Klingon, at that - this was the first Klingon he'd encountered.
The species he'd encountered made little sense working together. Letheans, Gorn, Nausicaans - the petty thugs and rabble of the Alpha Quadrant. None of whom could orchestrate so methodical and technical an achievement as he had discovered in the scant few hours since his escape. Of course, it could only make sense if they were working for someone else.
As Semil eyed him warily, cautiously stepping closer, the tall Klingon began to chuckle in earnest. "Very good. Very good, indeed."
"I imagine my readings on the nuances of Klingon comedy may have been lacking, Colonel...?" Semil punctuated his question with a brandish of the disruptor pistol, recognizing the Klingon's rank marks.
"K'vot. I am K'vot." The Klingon stood his ground, unwavering.
Clearly, he knows something - or has some reason for such bravado. Not that I should let my guard down regardless.
"And you, Semil." K'vot gestured magnanimously at the Vorta. "Reading material aside, you have mightily demonstrated some skill and cunning here today."
Of the many things he had considered to explain these circumstances - trap, ambush - 'test' had not been among them. "You've been watching the whole time."
"Of course. How else to assess your progress? And you can relax now. I'm compelled to award top marks."
Semil kept the disruptor at eye level, stopping well short of K'vot's reach and range. "Then this test of yours. What makes you so certain..."
"So certain you won't shoot me?" K'vot interrupted calmly. "You won't shoot me. You can't. You won't."
Semil tried brandishing the pistol again to make his point, whoever this Klingon was - he had answers Semil wanted. But it occurred to him, that K'vot was right. Upon considering, Semil's pulse and breathing were slow and calm, there was no white hot flush, or rage. It was actually the most calm he had felt in a very long time. Possibly ever.
Considering he had just spent the last couple of hours killing his way out to this room, with his own two hands - he felt surprisingly serene confronted with the only being between him and escape.
Still, this was no time for weakness. "You're remarkably confident about that for someone with a disruptor pointed at their face."
"You can trust me, Semil. I'm going to take you away from here."
"To another prison, no doubt. For a more forceful interrogation, perhaps?"
"Actually..." K'vot stopped mid-sentence as a disruptor bolt buzzed over his head, from to the side of where both men were standing.
Both K'vot and Semil turned to the source of the shot, to find an Orion woman, wielding a pair of disruptors "YOU!" she shouted, her voice rasping from exertion.
She hobbled towards K'vot and Semil, clearly in much worse shape than the Vorta, bleeding from the corner of her mouth and several other places. "I knew you would try something like this. Every time I so much as turned my head, you thought I couldn't tell you were plotting -- scheming?" Asiliaa fired another disruptor shot over K'vot's head, this one just a little closer to the mark. She had never been so fortunate as to see a Klingon fearful, but damned if she wasn't going to try.
Semil slowly stepped back from the Colonel, clearly not being the subject of the Orion woman's ire. He knew he couldn't completely escape her notice. How could someone have escaped his notice? There was one Orion woman he had kicked down an empty turboshaft. Is this her? Semil made a mental note that recalling those kinds of details became that much more difficult, and yet that much more important through the plush, white-hot delirum of a bloodlust.
Asiliaa had halted her forward advance, clearly paying attention to the both of them now. "First rule of this kind of project, am I right? Eliminate anyone with operational knowledge who could give you up? Anyone who could throw a wrench in the gears?"
K'vot stood impassively, his hands raised in mocking surrender, staring intently at Asiliaa.
"I'm surprised you waited this long, Colonel. Typical Klingon, thinking he can do everyone else's job better than them."
"Semil, I'd like to introduce Doctor Asiliaa." K'vot gestured slightly. "You've been in the good Doctor's care, while you've been our guest. Doctor, you're to be commended for managing to evade the internal sensors."
The Orion doctor reached up behind her ear with one hand and roughly pulled out some device. She threw it in K'vot's direction, the small device skittering to a halt closer to Semil. From the blood and skin still attached, it was clearly some kind of implant. "Biomimetic dampener, to be precise."
Whatever this game was, it had turned decidedly complicated. K'vot was still apparently unarmed. Semil kept his disruptor trained on K'vot, though with far less immediate import. Though Asiliaa had them both sighted, it wasn't likely she could target them both successfully, not if they were moving.
"Why?" Asiliaa continued, unperturbed by K'vot's patronizing condescension. "Why now? What is it you hope to gain by taking him now?"
"Because, Doctor..."
Asiliaa hadn't time to react before realizing Semil wasn't just moving, but was already upon her. A sparkling flash of metallic reflection was all she saw before drawing her arms in defensively. That's when she realized her hands had been severed - amputated cleanly with one lightning quick stroke of Semil's mek'leth.
She staggered backwards, unable to focus on the gushing stumps where her hands were supposed to be. Instead, through her ragged breaths, she caught sight of one of her hands on the floor, only a couple of meters from her, still gripping the pistol, a couple of the fingers paroxysmally twitching.
The shock and surprise had not worn off before she felt her breath knocked out of her, and the cold slap of the bulkhead behind her against her back.
The blade had run straight through her , and lodged itself into the bulkhead behind her. Asiliaa didn't need her medical training to recognize bleeding out would only be a matter of seconds.
With her last few breaths, through the deepening dizziness, she mustered what strength she was capable of to lean in despite the shaft of the blade holding her in place. She drew as close as she could to Semil's ear, a mindless rictus emblazoned on his face, and whispered. Through ragged gasps, her words coalesced like faint clouds on a clear day, "You -
you are my greatest achievement."
If she was to expire, the last thing she could do, the only resort left her would be --
The Doctor's breathing slowed and deepened, then ceased, and she slumped forward, supported only by the blade running through her midsection.
His breaths returning to normal, Semil released his grip on the blade handle. He turned to face K'vot, who continued to stand unmoving, in the exact same spot he had been in when Semil had first entered the room.
He no longer felt the need to reach for his disruptor as he stepped towards the Klingon, this time, taken over by a compulsion. "You're the one who left me the blade. Of course." A feeling of reflex washed over him - something with an echo of familiarity, and yet deeply and wholly alien.
Within a few feet of the Klingon, still unarmed, Semil lowered himself to one knee. His neck folded slowly into a bow.
"Very good, indeed, Semil." The Vorta couldn't bring himself to look up. He couldn't tell if K'vot was grinning, or training a disruptor on him - but in that moment, none of that mattered. Semil felt a warm flush in his veins as his pulse slowed.
"Computer! Initiate auto-destruct, authorization K'vot eight-eight-one-five-blue."
Semil looked up. K'vot had reached into his utility belt, retrieving some kind of device. It wasn't a recognizable weapon - perhaps a communicator? Transporter control remote? "I think you'll find this next part will go much easier if I take care of this."
Semil couldn't understand what K'vot was saying, when the Colonel input a couple of commands into the device.
Semil felt a metallic buzzing deep in his consciousness, as his eyes rolled back in his head. His thighs and hips softened as he crumpled to the ground.
As the room turned from gray to black, Semil could just make out a computer voice begin a countdown.
- END PART I -
