From: Kenneth Field (envision_at_fidalgo.net)
Date: Thu Dec 13 2007 - 21:00:11 PST
"Curtain Call"
(continues from Sarah's "Stranger In a Strange Land")
Location: GS-2
Stardate: 2.71213.2010
Scene: Corridor
"You don't get how big this is!" Mikey insisted.
But he did.
Commander Eugene McInnis knew exactly how big this was. He turned to Lt. Kor, reached out a hand which by all rights should have been shaking, but wasn't, and placed it carefully on the woman's shoulder.
"Take the kids, Lieutenant. I'm going to buy you some time. I want you to seal this section of the Habitat ring. Nothing in, nothing out until I say so."
"Sir, if this is a matter for security, I'd better be involved," Kor protested.
"I'm placing the people I care most about in your care, Lieutenant. Do what I ask and don't let me down," Gene said, his voice quiet and calm. "If this is what I think it is, you're going to need time to respond. Angus may have given us that time. I'm going in to make sure."
Kor was not happy, but not only did he outrank her, Gene McInnis had placed a family debt upon her. She had become the guardian of his children. It was something sacred. She could not deny him. But she did have a gift for him, which she placed carefully in his palm so that the children would not see it.
"Thankyou, Lieutenant. I owe you," he said.
"Yes," she said. "You do."
-------------------- =/\=
Scene: Bonviva/McInnis Quarters
aXana almost reacted out of character when Gene McInnis stormed into the room from the outer corridor.
"Gene!" she cried.
"Xana!" he strode across the room and took her in his arms, held her tightly as the shapeshifter had expected him to. The emotion was not feigned, she was certain of it. "I thought you were dead."
"There were moments," she breathed in his ear. "But I think we might be out of the woods ... finally. The Founders will negotiate."
Gene let go of her, reluctantly and put his hand casually into his uniform pocket.
"I would never have believed it," he said. "I didn't believe you could get through to them. I thought we'd have to employ the Corbomite Device."
aXana went very still.
*Corbomite Device*? she wondered. There was nothing in any data record they'd managed to infiltrate that mentioned anything similar. But as a former CO of the Station, the real Xana would know about such a thing. She had to take a chance.
"You can't be serious!" aXana cried. "I've never failed the GATE before. We never needed that damned thing. I can't believe you even considered using it. Was that Kane's doing?"
Gene nodded, his look stricken as if chagrined at the mere thought.
"We were desperate. The device would kill us all, right enough. But it would devastate the Dominion Fleet, ANDARA, and the entire sector would be uninhabitable for at least a decade. It was all we had left."
"Thank the gods I was successful then," she breathed a sigh of relief.
Now that she knew of the thing, she would kill this man, take his place and gain access one senior officer at a time if necessary. The Corbomite Device could be useful, she thought, smiling to herself. She almost didn't see Gene draw the pocket phaser and point it at her.
"I wish she had been," Gene breathed, the sorrow in his voice was like the wind in an abandoned building.
"Gene?" she tried to brazen it out. "What are you doing?"
"There is no Corbomite Device," he snapped. "And the real Xana would have known that."
aXana moved in the blink of an eye, faster than humanoid muscle tissue ever could. Snatched the pocket phaser from the man's hand and hit him squarely in the chest with force double anything a Bajoran could muster. Gene went backward over the couch and fetched up against the wall.
"Time to switch roles," aXana smiled, her features morphing into a copy of Gene's own. "But there can't be two of us, now can there?"
aGene raised the phaser and depressed the trigger.
-------------------- =/\=
Scene: Corridor
An explosion rocked the Habitat Ring. Kor shielded the children and animals with her own body, and though they were a hundred yards away, the heat and concussion were intense. She ordered another security officer to take over with the children, pulled her own phaser and picked her way back up the corridor. The lights were out; the bulkheads of the McInnis/Bonviva residence had blossomed out under the explosion.
She took out a palm light and managed to push her way through what was left of the door into their quarters. There wasn't much left. She hadn't figured there would be. Kor had given Gene her pocket phaser. He'd had security training. He knew as well as she did what would happen if he rigged the thing to self-destruct. He must have been right. The woman who looked like his wife had been a Dominion shapeshifter. And he'd done what needed to be done.
Lieutenant Kor found him lying against one of the bulkheads, partially shielded by the remains of a couch. It was the only thing that had prevented him from being vaporized in the blast as the Founder had been. Even so, it was hard to tell who he was for sure. A phaser overload was a terrible thing.
She tapped her combadge.
"Ops. This is Lieutenant Kor. Xana Bonviva was a shapeshifter. She's dead. So is Commander McInnis. I need some help down here in the Habitat Ring. Send everyone you can."
Andorians do not cry.
-------------------- =/\=
Kenneth Field
envision_at_fidalgo.net
aka Commander Gene McInnis, deceased
CNS/GS-2
aka Lt. JG Mowree Nurunyon
aCNS/GS-2
aka Tomas' Alexei Vukovic
Former Chief of Staff to Ambassador Xana Bonviva
currently with the BORG
aka Maury R. Tee
Professor of English (Retired)
Proprietor of "Impulse Drives,"
a little shop of horrors
GS-2, Promenade
"I dreamed a dream ... but now that dream is gone from me." -- Morpheus, "Matrix Reloaded"
From HyperNews_at_youth.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Feb 17 2008 - 03:10:18 PST