Test of Endurance

Posted on Apr 14, 2015 @ 12:04am by Lieutenant Commander Aerdan Jos
Edited on on Apr 14, 2015 @ 12:04am

Mission: Limbo

"Test of Endurance" (Continued from "Clearing the Way")

Location: LIMBO
SD: 2.150413.2200
Scene: Corridor

~*~
"The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose."
~ Frederick Douglass.
~*~

Aerdan Jos gazed at Sedna Montoya in the way one looks at a photobook with pictures of people who are long dead. There was a deep hint of melancholy and a undercurrent of nostalgia, caked high with sadness and loss.

Sadness, loss and paranoia.

While he was a kind soul, a gentle personality and all around a nice person he also had to admit that he was no where near naive enough to believe that there wasn't a trap laying in every corner of LIMBO. Especially where Sedna, cohort of Rawvin Seth, was concerned.

“Why are you telling me this?” His voice came in his usual soft, lisping tone.

“Because I have to tell someone.”

He canted his head. “Where’s Seth now?”

Sedna grinned in a deranged way. “Closer than you think.”

He did not look behind him, even as he saw her twitch, hoping the veiled threat would spook him. While Seth could outmatch Aerdan Jos a hundred times in martial combat skill, he couldn't best the neurosurgeon's hearing which was good even for his race. No, Sedna Montoya was not running away this time. He believed her when she said Arn was dead. The faint communication he had gotten from his teammates insinuated as much and the look of disjointed sorrow in her eyes told him she played a part in it.

Hell, her own wallowing self pity said she played far more than a part in more murders he would care to contemplate.

Which was exactly why she wasn't getting away.

"You're a hard man to rattle, Mr. Jos." Her voice took on a sweet tone.

He offered her a gentle smile. "I'm bullheaded and stubborn, you know that."

"That I do." For a moment a fond expression crossed her features, dreaming of a time and a place far away. "I always liked that about you."

Aerdan took in a sharp breath as his antennae flickered. He could hear the high pitched whine of weapons fire and the shriek of the crowd from the pits. Still too soft to carry to a human's hearing, but growing louder by the second. His heart yearned to rush back there, to see what was going on, to be the hero saving his friends - but the simple truth was either they were safe or they were dead. He had something better to do here.

He took a step forward, getting closer to Sedna, offering the soft smile that usually graced his brother's face. "I miss you, Sedna. You should come back with us."

She had the good graces to blush, even if her gaze was wholly insincere. "You know I can't do that."

"Everyone can forgive." He edged closed once again. "Everyone can forget."

She shook her head. "I can't"

"So it's back to Seth?" He queried lightly, hovering over her in a protective manner.

Sedna bit her bottom lip so hard it hurt. There was something tempting about the warmth of old times, the familiar, the familial feeling. But it felt like a lifetime ago. So much had changed. She had changed. Even the way she felt when she opened her eyes each morning had changed. "That's never going to happen."

"You're right, it's not." His voice was curiously cold.

She felt something equally cold press against the side of her neck and suddenly ehr vision started to swirl into blackness.

That bastard sedated her!

"You can't save me." she whispered as she collapsed into his arms, staring at the hypospray as if it was a vicious and cruel betrayal.

"Never said I was going to." he tossed back, scooping her unconscious form up and dragging it with him. His antennae were twitching wildly at this point, trying to discern what the hell was going on in the pits beyond...

~*~

Location: USS PHOENIX
Scene: Sickbay

"You're brooding." Suvek said it as if it was the most logical conclusion in the world.

"I am not. I'm being pensive." Cade sassed back, reaching out to take a sip of his disgustingly cold coffee. "Ugh, gross."

"Next time don't order it double bitter." the Vulcan tossed back, moving over to the one place Cade was pointedly failing to pay attention to - where Phia's body still lay in a recuperative coma.

Cade grunted, wrinkling his nose at the advice. "I like it bitter. I'm bitter."

"Only because you choose to be." Suvek tossed back lightly, checking the vitals and refilling the medication drip.

"What the hell, are you a counselor all of a sudden?"

Looking up the Vulcan doctor let a note of amusement play through his dark eyes. "I have seven years of psychological medical training."

"Smarmy Vulcans." The old man huffed, getting up from his seat and stretching. "There's no change, I checked."

"But no degradation, either."

"So what?" the CMO huffed. "She's a mental vegetable until we get her to a class A medical facility. And considering we're considered criminals and the whole of the Federation has gone crazy, that may be a very long time."

Suvek paused in his checks and watched Doctor Foster. He could sense the emotions welling in him, no matter how hard Foster tried to tamp them down they came back with a vengeance. "Perhaps there is an alternative."

"What alternative?" He fussed, folding his arms across his chest. "Take her off life support? Let her die?"

"Build a class A facility." Suvek said it as if it was the most obvious solution in the galaxy.

Cade blinked. "What?"

"This is a state of the art ship, is it not? With every accommodation already built in for expanding the ship's capabilities as the crew sees fit." He paused, cannily playing to Cade's ego. "And you are the most capable doctor in the quadrant."

"In half the galaxy." he puffed his chest out. "But I'm no engineer."

"But we have engineers."

"And we have no parts."

Suvek clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "And we're hovering around the biggest trade hub in the the sector."

"Yeah and they really sell high end medical equipment on the black market." Cade shot back.

The Vulcan gazed back at the greying human man with that cold superiority that doesn't just come from being Vulcan- but comes from being right as well. It didn't hurt that one of Suvek's sisters worked in the Federation criminalistics service and her explicit specialty was tracking down black market medical equipment. "They do." He slid a PADD over to Cade.

Foster grabbed it and drained the last of his nasty cold coffee before reading, finishing with a dull, "why am I not surprised?"

"It is possible."

"It's unethical."

Suvek arched a perfectly Vulcan brow. "One could logically argue that it is better for the medical equipment to find its way back into Federation hands than to let it go to a back-alley 'chop shop.'"

"Mikey won't like it." Cade muttered, after glancing behind his back to make sure Captain Kane was, in fact, no where within earshot.

"Captain Kane won't like it, or you don't like it?" he queried with ineffable calm.

"Both." Cade muttered.

~*~

Location: LIMBO
Scene: Tunnels

Aerdan Jos uttered a highly colorful curse as the last he saw of Kassandra Thytos was her being picked up by a man he barely recognized from the barfight, who hauled some impressive ass for a man of his frame to get out of the carnage.

Then again Aerdan himself was hauling some impressive ass for his frame only in the opposite way. With an overloaded armful of Evangeline Montoya, he looked more like a wobbly bicycle trying to carry a Saint Bernard than any sort of decent doctor. But at least she was quiet. He had filled her up with enough sedatives to knock her into next week, and decided to wait and gloss over the curious cocktail of illicit substances he found in her bloodstream. There were more important things to worry about. he also found no less than seven different tracking devices implanted all over her body which he had removed with all the care and grace of a neurosurgeon on a tight time limit. Meaning there were some nasty cuts he could fix later, too. Or he'd make Cade do it.

Then, for good measure and to buy himself some time, he had shoved said tracking devices into the back pocket of an overly rich, overly drunken, overly panicking Ferengi, telling himself he could agonize of that decision later as well.

He had to find the Major.

Having lost the sight-trail some time ago, he was resorting to a combination of uncanny hearing and his tricorder readings. And with the chaos radiating out of the pits he was starting to trust his hearing more.

Heavy footfalls. The telltale grunt. He rushed to catch an intersection.

"Stop!" Aerdan's voice was soft but cutting, enough to give the mountain of a man pause. "Where are you taking her?"

Jacen paused, eyes narrowing in the darkness. Fortunately his quarry was rather recognizable. "I need a doctor." he stated simply.

"I am a doctor." Jos replied, eyes darting back and forth. This was no place to do first aid. "And I need somewhere dry."

"I know a place." Barnes started moving again, without preamble. Aerdan followed without complaint.

They came to a junction, crawling into an access way and from there it was a short run up a stairwell into a block of lower end rooms. Jacen Barnes selected one he knew would be empty and kicked it open. "Will this do?"

It was dark, with a cot, two chairs and a sink. It smelled like old socks. But it fit the pre-requisite of 'not wet'

"It'll do."

He dumped Sedna in the shower, plucked his phaser from his belt and dialed it down to one of the lowest settings before sweeping the cot's bedding with a wide spread heat beam. Noting the look of confusion on the big human's face, the lithe little Andorian simply shrugged. "Killing bacteria. I'm not dealing with infection."

He lay Kass down in a curiously gentle manner, taking a step back as the Andorian medic went to work. If Kass was fast at fighting, this man was fast at medical aid. His fingers were flying so fast it looked like one blue blur. In less than a minute her clothing was cut and stripped away, the hiss of a hypospray was heard and the man was pulling portable medical supplies from every hidden pocket in his oversized coat.

Jacen let out a low whistle. "Guess you are a doctor."

"Neurosurgeon." Aerdan replied. So much for small talk.

Another agonizing minute stretched by, and as the Andorian's head perked up once again Jacen ventured another question. "Who's she?" Thumbing back towards the woman collapsed in the shower.

The answer was oddly reminiscent to what the man in the tunnel said to him: "Someone I used to know."

"What's wrong with her?" he queried.

"Brain damage." Aerdan lisped back.

And so it went for another minute or two, the silence only broken by Kassandra Thytos' raspy breathing until the pounding of running footsteps reverberated down the hallway. Jacen Barnes immediately tensed, stepping behind the door in a stacne that said he was ready for a fight. Aerdan Jos took a position in front of Major Thytos as the door wasn't kicked or forced open... it compliantly opened with a mechanical chirp of acceptance.

"You!" An angry, hot - and familiar voice yelled out, stabbing a finger at Jacen.

Wordlessly, the mountain grabbed the man with the wings and hauled him inside bodily, not listening to a word of protest. As the door snapped shut behind them both he let Varn go, dumping him unceremoniously to the floor.

"Thomas!" Aerdan yelped, holding out a hand in a desperate attempt to avoid needless violence.

"You know him?" Thomas looked at Jacen, mouth agape.

"You know him?" Jacen shrugged towards Thomas.

Aerdan took in a short breath through his teeth. "Yes and sort of, he brought Kass here."

"We're not safe here!" Thomas' eyes were wide. "I saw Sedna looking for you!"

"She's in the shower." the Andorian tossed back, going back to tending Kassandra.

"What?!" Thomas' eyes went wide. "She's a murderer!" He grabbed for his phaser before Jacen blocked his path.

Putting a hand on the mountain of a man considered the winged man for a few seconds. "Hang on now... she's sleeping, what harm can she be?"

"Harm? She's in Seth's grip. She's the reason Solomon's dead!" Thomas protested, heat rising up the side of his neck and into his cheeks. "And if he finds her with us, we're dead too."

"I removed over half a dozen trackers from her, Thomas. You might want to rescan and see if there are any others." Aerdan called lightly.

Folding his arms across his chest the scientist was not convinced. "There is no reason to keep her with us, her mind's destroyed. She's not the Sedna we knew."

"She's a human with type A+ blood." the doctor reasoned back evenly. "And unless either one of you can offer up for a transfusion, I need her keep Kass alive."

Thomas frowned deeply, feeling a very bad knot form in the pit of his stomach as he considered that. Turning towards Senda's still form, he glared at the wall of a man between her and himself, his jaw going tight. "I don't like it."

"There's nothing in this situation to like." Jacen surmised simply. "Either you endure or you don't."

~*~

Jamie LeBlanc
Lt Commander Aerdan Jos
Executive Officer (and part time neurosurgeon)
USS PHOENIX

"Why do we fly? Because we have dreamt of it for so long that we must"

~Julian Beck