Shadows

Posted on Feb 06, 2015 @ 12:16pm by Captain Michael Turlogh Kane
Edited on on Feb 06, 2015 @ 12:17pm

Mission: Limbo

"SHADOWS"

(Continued from "Win If You Can")

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Location: USS PHOENIX, docked at Limbo
Stardate: [2.15]0205.1700
Scene: Bridge


The bridge was practically deserted. Michael Turlogh Kane was the only organic life-form there, but he was not alone. Lieutenant Byte, the Maddox android, sat at the Ops station, but apart from the pair of them, there was nobody else.

All Kane could see was the back of Byte's head as it monitored the sensor data on the Ops console. Occasionally it would make an entry, and the staccato beeps of the touch-screen's acknowledgement would break the silence. The main viewer was offline, but there was nothing to see except a great transparisteel bulkhead and one side of the umbilical tunnel that linked Phoenix to the space station. Most of the crew had already departed the ship via the transporters - it was a necessary evil to be connected to Limbo via an umbilical, so Pia Kuenzi and Joseph Massimo were manning the main entry bulkhead. Kane was in no doubt that they wouldn't be enough to stop a determined group of intruders, but the fact that two armed Marines were down there gave some solace.

Otherwise there were only a dozen other people on the ship. Wandering the Phoenix's corridors on the voyage here had made him realise just how big this ship was. Most of the Phoenix was inert like cold stone, with power systems simply bypassed on most of the decks. It meant the dilithium wouldn't need to be replaced for over a century, but it also meant that the existing crew was having to work much harder to keep vital systems running. They desperately needed to find nine hundred other souls to fill up the positions or sheer exhaustion would put paid to any hope they had of surviving as fugitives. They'd all end up dead, with Richard Edgerton's Neo-Essentialist boot crunching down on their collective throat.

Death. It wormed its way back into his thoughts again, slithering through brain canals and bridging neural gaps to remind him once again that his life was coming to an end. It made his heart beat faster, made his thoughts race, made him feel more alive than anything. Limbo. Rawyvin Seth. And murder.

"There has to be a way out," he muttered to himself, suddenly thumping a balled fist on the armrest of the centre seat. Drake's prophecy was not inviolable. No prophecy was. Perhaps the timeline had been changed that he did not have to die here. He might escape Rawyvin Seth's knife by simply staying put on the ship and never leaving, the future be damned.

But that wasn't an option. If Drake was right, and he had been broadly right thus far, then Selyara needed to be found. If she could be persuaded to give up her information, there would be no Neo-Essentialists in Starfleet come the year's end. If that happened, then he would not have died for nothing.

If. If. If. So many ifs.

{{Is everything alright, Captain?}}

Kane started. He saw that Byte had turned around in its seat and was looking at him. He realised that his fist had made a louder noise than he thought. "Yes, Mister Byte. I was lost in thought."

{{A fascinating biological process,}} said Byte. Its beautiful cornflower blue eyes were staring at him in wonder. {{I have observed it in Humans before, but still do not understand it. May I ask what you were thinking about?}}

Kane frowned. "Thoughts are private, Lieutenant. They must be volunteered, not enquired after."

The android nodded. {{Of course, Captain. My apologies.}} It swivelled in its chair, its back to him once again.

Kane felt guilty. In many ways, Byte was so childlike and filled with wonder. Its soul - if it had one - was still youthful and buoyant. How many centuries would it take before Byte got jaded? He stood up and approached the Ops station. "I was thinking about death, Mister Byte. Specifically, my own death."

Byte turned in its chair to face him again. {{Ah. Death. Another fascinating biological process.}}

Kane smiled wryly. "You'll not find many biological life-forms that agree with you."

{{Do you think about dying often, Captain?}}

Kane folded his arms. "That's a difficult question to answer, Byte. All Humans know that their life-span is finite, but we spend a lot of time ignoring that fact. We try not to think about the end. Sure, we make plans for years and decades ahead, but we tend not to truly acknowledge that death is coming for us all, in its own unhurried inexorable time. Sometimes we get sick, and see it coming, and meet it with family or friends at our side. Sometimes we fall down and die in the street with no time for goodbyes."

{{Interesting. And do you fear death, sir?}}

Kane paused for a moment. He had come close to dying so many times while in the service, in combat, in accidents, in dangerous situations he had found himself in. Each time, the true fear had hit him afterward. Not the adrenaline-fuelled fight-or-flight response during the dangerous moment, but the shivering terror that crept into bed with him in the days following his escape from the danger. He had realised how close he had come to being snuffed out of existence, how truly fragile he was. His heart-beat was drowned out a million times over by the background pulses of the universe. So when he answered, he spoke with almost forty years of living behind him. That and the knowledge that, for Michael Turlogh Kane, there were more days behind than there were ahead.

"Yes, Mister Byte. I am absolutely terrified of it. If I think about it too long, I feel like I'll go insane."

The android looked at the floor, seemingly processing the answer. {{I did not mean to - }}

"Of course you didn't, Byte. Don't worry about it."

{{I only ask, Captain, because I too think about dying.}}

Kane raised an eyebrow in surprise, but the android was serious. It was looking at him with something akin to desperate earnestness. "You, Byte? I thought you were practically immortal."

{{No, sir. It will take centuries, but eventually my positronic matrix will degrade to the point that my primary systems will go offline permanently. My higher cognitive functions and central processor are protected by multiple back-up systems, however. They will be the last to stop working. By that time, I expect that my core data will have been transferred to storage and I will have long since lost this body.}}

"But your data will survive - "

{{It will not be me, Captain, not truly. At that point in my life-cycle, my matrix will have degraded so much that my main processor will be functioning at a bare fraction of its current power. There is currently no known technology to prevent this cognitive degredation from occuring.}}

Kane nodded. "I'm sorry to hear it, Mister Byte."

{{You will be long dead, Captain. In fact, everyone I know at this point in time will have been dead for centuries. You will be a memory file somewhere in my databanks.}} The android looked apologetically at him. {{You see, Captain, like you, I too was born to die.}}

There was nothing more to say. Kane turned back to the centre seat and slumped down into it, his mood blackening.

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Location: Limbo
Scene: The Forum


Commander Merak surreptitiously pushed his hands into the pockets of his tunic. With his right hand he felt the butt of his disruptor pistol, with his left the hilt of his serrated dagger. His communicator stud was strapped to his wrist and a miniature tricorder was in his back pocket. He was equipped with everything he needed to find Rawyvin Seth. Killing or incapacitating the target was a different matter, but that was why there were nine other Romulan commandos spreading out through the station at this very moment.

Merak had never seen such a place as Limbo's Forum. It was enormous, multi-levelled and full to the brim with aliens of all species. From what he had seen so far, one could buy or sell almost anything here. There were high-end jewelry stores selling beautiful Spican flame-gems, while outside on the walkways poverty-stricken pedlars yelled out their prices for rat pastries.

There were many Black Stars here. Merak had done his homework on Limbo's mercenary army and he knew they were a force to be reckoned with. While not in the same league as any Romulan force, Merak had been a soldier long enough to realise that he who did not respect an opponent he was fighting stood the risk of being killed by something unforeseen. All of the members of his strike team knew it too. Limbo was a deadly place, and it was going to take a clear head to walk away with their mission accomplished.

He stepped off an elevator into the Skyscraper district, moving with the crowd, a piece of driftwood floating on a river of bodies. The tricorder in his back pocket was programmed to go off as soon as Rawyvin Seth was within one hundred metres, but Merak privately wondered if the instrument was good enough to pin-point one set of life-signs from this great heaving mass.

Side-stepping out of the crush of bodies, he stopped outside a warehouse store. A sign in metallic red symbols indicated that it was a weapons store - the proprietor was one Kalanda the Black. The writing was that of the Klingon barbarians.

The door whooshed open, admitting Merak. Inside, there was not much standing space. The front office was small - immediately behind the counter was an arched doorway leading into the warehouse. Through the gap, Merak could see rows of blaster rifles, grenades, various types of body armour - some of them were Romulan, others Klingon, other again were from the Federation.

There was a Klingon female behind the counter, regarding him with cool revulsion. In his turn, Merak suppressed his own disgust - Klingon females were little more than animals. This one was wearing a metal tiara over her face, disguising some of her forehead ridges. Her features were hard-edged and angular, and Merak could see her sharp teeth as she slowly bit into a tuka root. They were about the same height, although Merak had the edge in bulk.

"What do you want, Romulan?" the woman said. Her voice was harsh. "I don't get many of your kind coming in here. They must be afraid of Klingons."

Merak ignored the implied insult. He reached into his back pocket, producing the tricorder. Activating it, he called up a holographic likeness of Rawyvin Seth. "I am seeking this Terran," he said. "He is a skilled warrior. It is possible that he may have been here seeking new weapons to supplement his armoury. Have you seen him?"

The woman looked at the hologram for a moment, then shook her head. "No."

"Are you certain?" said Merak. "It is important that I find this Terran. He is worth a sizeable amount of latinum to someone who can lead me to him."

The Klingon woman bared her teeth in anger. "You insult my honour, you Romulan dog! I am not a Ferengi trader! You asked me a question and I have answered it honestly! Take your latinum and choke on it!" Her hand went to her waist and clamped down on the hilt of a met'leth.

At the sound of her voice, two warehouse staff approached the archway - one a Gorn, the other a shaggy-haired Kzinti. Merak deactivated the hologram and stepped backwards. No point in forcing a confrontation, he mused. "If he does come here, do not speak of this meeting. I will leave now."

"You do not rule me, Romulan!"snarled the Klingon. "I speak to whom I please!"

Merak shook his head in disgust. "Klingon animal," he spat, stepping back out onto the walkway. As he gazed out at the many levels of the Forum, at the tens of thousands of aliens moving to and fro, the emormity of his taks began to sink in.

Finding Rawyvin Seth was going to take some time.

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Location: USS PHOENIX
Scene: Sickbay


Kane tried not to glower as he crossed the threshold into sickbay. Tried not to, but still did. Sickbay was Cade Foster's domain, and the two of them had gotten off to the worst possible start to working together. Kane had not seen the doctor since he had given him a verbal shredding here several days ago, but there was no avoiding Cade now, not if he wanted this job to get done.

The sickbay doors closed behind him as Kane looked around. Everything was offline. The biobeds were standing inert, and everything was packed carefully on shelves. All of the monitors were dark and blank, and the workstations were unmanned.

"Hello?" Kane called. "Is there anyone here? This is the captain."

Like a solar eclipse blocking out the light, Cade Foster appeared in the empty doorway that led to his personal workspace. He was especially dishevelled-looking today - he was sporting several days of stubble, his hair was lank and hung around his face like speckled grey curtains. His uniform was greasy and stained with several days worth of sweat. When he spoke, he grated the words out. "I'm here. This is the chief medical officer."

Kane turned to face him. "Doctor Foster."

"Captain Kane."

Kane approached him. "What are you doing down here alone, Doctor?"

Cade shook his head. "Research, Captain, research. There are one-hundred-and-sixty-seven different alien species living on Limbo, did you know that? All of them riddled with pathogens. Riddled! An entire station of plague rats!"

Kane frowned. "So you are researching - "

"Everything! There's no telling what the away teams will bring back! Rigellian fever! A macrovirus! Synthococcus novae! Galloping Triangle Death Pox!" Cade gestured to the empty sickbay. "If I have to work alone I'd better be bloody well ready for anything!"

Kane held up his hands. "Calm down, Doctor."

"With Galloping Triangle Death Pox loose on the ship?" exclaimed Cade in exasperation. He turned back into his office and slumped down at his workstation - the only monitor in sickbay that was online.

Kane followed the doctor to the doorway. He leaned against the archway, not really wanting to go onward in case he caught a dose of Cade's mania. "I have a job for you, Doctor Foster. A real job. Something you can get to work on immediately, that has a definable goal, that doesn't deal in hypothetical space viruses, and definitely doesn't gallop."

"Oh?" Cade sat up. He jabbed a finger on his desk's control panel. The illumination in the room went up to normal levels.

"It's about Lieutenant Commander Drake."

"Drake?" Cade frowned. "The man from the future, yes? Where is he, anyway?"

"He's aboard Limbo. Most of the ship's hands are."

"I see. Is he ill?"

"No," said Kane. "You know about Drake. He's been a part of the crew for weeks now. I've been doing a lot of thinking about him lately."

"None of it good, judging by your body language," said Cade. "What are you thinking?"

"Only that I wouldn't mind knowing more about the man. If he's in Starfleet, he has medical records. He beamed aboard the ship from Starbase Three - there's a transporter bio-readout of him. I'd like you to turn your critical eye upon those records. Be as detailed as you can. Look for anything unusual. After all, coming back in time by twenty-nine years is bound to have an effect on a body."

"So just recall him to the ship. I'll put him on a biobed and go down to the cellular level."

Kane shook his head. "I'd like to keep this quiet for now. Drake doesn't have to know we're looking closely at him."

"You suspect something?"

"Suspicion is a strong word, Doctor. I'm more interested. It's an itch that needs scratching."

Cade nodded. "Very well, Captain. I'll get to work. You're not planning on leaving the ship any time soon, are you?"

"Not for a while," Kane said pointedly.

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Location: Limbo
Scene: Harad-Sar's penthouse


Harad-Sar sat back from his monitor and steepled his fingers. The diagnostic had shown nothing untoward, and the trace he had run on the message had drawn a complete blank. It was not altogether surprising - he would hardly call himself a computer expert - but his network security system had been installed by Bynars at a high cost in latinum.

So who, then, had sent him the anonymous message to his private dwelling that had changed the mood of his evening?

He reached out with his long-nailed green fingers and played the message again.

The screen winked,showing a grainy, fuzzy black-and-white image. The message had been run through many filters to disguise who had sent it. All he could see was the outline of a vaguely humanoid figure, surrounded by spatters of static and white noise. It was as if the messenger was standing in the middle of a digital storm.

When it spoke, the figure's voice was heavily modified. It rolled and heaved like water, deeper than an ocean's dark trench, not betraying any hint of accent or gender. Short stacatto words.

{{Greetings, Harad-Sar. I am the Shadow Master. Hear me. There will be a Shadow Market in three days time. I am telling you because you are interested in my business. What you do with this information is up to you, but know this - I see everything. I hear everything.}}

The Shadow Master. A overtly dramatic name for the man, mused Harad-Sar, but there was no doubting his power. The Forum was not the only place to buy and sell goods and services on Limbo. There was always a market for dark deeds, be it information, murder, the fencing of stolen goods, or slavery, and rumour had it that the Shadow market was where one could deal in all these things and more. It had no fixed location or schedule. Nobody knew who organised it, but grizzled old traders sometimes swapped horror stories about accidentally stumbling across it in a dark, secluded part of the station, and of the awful things they saw for sale.

It was illegal, of course. Tella Yavin knew about the Shadow Market, and she wanted it stopped. Not because she was opposed to black marketeering, but because the Shadow Market was the only thing on the station that she had no influence over. She made no latinum from the Shadow Market, no cut of the deals made there went to her, and thanks to its mobility, it had proved impossible for the Black Stars to break it up. If there was one thing guaranteed to arouse fury in Tella Yavin, it was the knowledge that another Shadow Market was in the offing.

Harad-Sar had his own reasons for wanting to meet the Shadow Master. If he could be persuaded to join forces with the Orion Mercantile Association, then it would only be a matter of time before the cursed Ferengi were driven off Limbo for good. On the other hand, if Harad-Sar could take over the Shadow Master's business then the result would be the same.

It was too much to think about right now, and he had time. He needed to blow off some steam. Switching off the monitor, Harad-Sar got up and took a silken whip from his desk drawer. Crossing the floor to the doorway, he keyed in the security code that opened the portal to the room where Nyada lay naked and bound to a golden bed, her eyes wide with fear and her body streaked with barely-healed welts.

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NRPG: Something tells me that the Shadow Market/Master will have a role to play in the climax of the story. As will the Romulans. Right now, Admiral Radaik on the War Hawk is being quiet, but Commander Merak's people are disseminating through the station. You might even bump into one of them.

As of this post, it seems that Kassandra Thytos and Aerdan Jos are on their way to meet with Alket Daheel in his gladiatorial Pit.

Raxl Drayton, a bounty hunter, has just come aboard. Raxl Drayton has been on Limbo before, and has come back seeking the bounty on Selyara/Rawyvin Seth. He fought in the Pit, and is known to Alket Daheel, but right now he's making contact with DaiMon Snek of the Ferengi Trade Alliance for his own reasons.

Jake and Russ are on the Atria, wondering what to do next.

And as ever, Rawyvin Seth and Selyara are somewhere in the ocean of people.


Jerome McKee
the Soul of Captain Michael Turlogh Kane
Commanding Officer
USS PHOENIX


"He speaks an infinite deal of nothing!"
- Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", Act 1, Scene 1.113

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