No Good Deed

Posted on Jul 01, 2015 @ 2:30am by Selyara Chen & Lieutenant James Barton
Edited on on Jul 01, 2015 @ 2:31am

Mission: The Lights of Hyperion

No good deed"

(cont. "A family affair")


* * *=/\=* * *

"No good deed goes unpunished" -Clare Boothe Luce

* * *=/\=* * *


Location: USS PHOENIX

Stardate: 2.14.0630.2200

Scene: Corridors, deck 30


"Embry might be the face of this, but I think Savaar is the dangerous one. Do you know he had the nerve to call me a half-caste?” Selyara Chen, the half-Betazoid/half-Vulcan sociopath led the man called Jacen Barnes, who didn’t know if he was still the Sheriff of Shantytown, through the abandoned corridors of the USS PHOENIX back towards Cargo Bay Three. Barnes brushed a handful of hair back out of his face and sighed; he could almost hear the the sounds of shouting and shooting from the decks around him. He knew the sounds were born in his imagination, so he was glad that they weren’t loud. As they coursed down the hallway, Selyara was explicating her feelings on Savaar, Arthur Embry’s Vulcan right hand. They weren’t complimentary. "…As if being pure Vulcan is such a damn achievement."



"Vulcan with an ego problem. Man bites dog," Barnes said shortly. He could think of at least one other Vulcan-whatever-the-hell-she-was that also suffered from an ego problem. He hoped that she would stop talking. Just for a moment. He needed...he just needed a few moments of quiet to think.



He hadn't known Selyara Chen long, but in the brief time since he'd made her acquaintance, she'd impressed him mightily. She had ingratiated herself to Embry, and thus into the heart of dangerous situation in Shantytown, with seemingly no more difficulty than it took to make the decision to do so, He'd seen her be quick on her feet, fiendishly clever, resourceful, and most importantly to him, efficient, against a variety of obstacles in the past few days. She was possessed of a hangman's wit, which had almost teased a laugh from him more than once.



Moreover, his hands still remembered the feel of her body when she'd pulled him close as part of one of her ruses. It had been a long time since he'd given much thought along those lines, but he'd found himself wondering about that body in the past few days. Yes, there was a lot about Ms. Chen that he had come to like, very quickly. There was really only one minor concern.



He hated her, too. She made his skin crawl.



It wasn’t just that she was self centered, he’d dealt with enough egos that that didn’t really phase him, it was the lack of regard for others that infused every word, the way everything she said had an angle; a subtle turn of phrase, an intonation, all designed to push and pull someone in the direction she wanted. Like a less charismatic, more insidious Arthur Embry, who wanted the control but didn’t particularly care about being liked, or gaining trust. She would whisper, promise, fuck, and lie brazenly to get her way, and if that failed, she’d just slip into your mind without a second thought and take what she wanted anyway.



And she also wouldn't stop talking. Barnes tried to focus on her positive qualities and stuff his concerns far enough away that she wouldn't see them. She was annoyingly perceptive and he didn't need this situation getting any dicier. It'd be so much easier if they didn't have to talk...



"Is that so, Mr. Barnes?" She didn’t take the hint, and turned instead, her eyebrow raising and a hint of a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes on her lips.



"So, it is." He tried the monosyllabic answer routine again. Again, she ignored him, and he began to feel as though the continuation of the conversation was some sort of power struggle, each of them attempting to control the situation.



"I almost feel obligated to point out that an excess of ego is not-"

"Not logical," Barnes cut her off. Then he actually snorted. "You can point it out if it satisfies the compulsion, but you don't strike me as the type to buy into the magic religion of logic any more than I do."



"You don't believe in logic?" Her head slowly tilted to one side and her dark green, pupil-less eyes regarded him unblinkingly, reminding him, against his will, of a spider’s.



"Oh, I believe it exists. But I sure as hell don't believe *in* it. You want to hear some amazing logic? Listen to an addict who's three days off of his drug of choice. Listen to him tell you why it only makes sense for him to get himself a fix. Try to poke a hole in his logic. You won't be able to. Because logic's built, from toes to tits, on your priorities so when your priority is getting loaded, it's only logical to do so.. And I've known a whole lot of Vulcans who prioritize being superior above just about everything else." There. Maybe a longer answer would satisfy her.



"Spoken like a man who's spent some time on Vulcan." Selyara laughed, a dry, brittle thing that was more bitter than mirthful. She clearly had spent time on Vulcan herself if her bitterness was anything to go by, though not long enough to learn to control over her emotions. Her demeanor gave him the impression less of control over her emotions, and more a lack of them. Or at least lack of some of them.



At the mention of the desert planet, Barnes' expression darkened and he glowered at her, than clamped his mouth shut and continued down the hallway again, playing his move in this miniature tug of war for - Control? Dominance? They continued in silence, making their way toward the turbolift Selyara said would get them back down to Cargo Bay 3, and Barnes thought she’d given up.



“You don’t like me.” Selyara said suddenly, blindsiding him with the dry, no nonsense statement.

He pulled up short. "What? I never said-" His thoughts went frantic, as he wondered if she was just hazarding a guess or a revealing a discovery. He also wondered with a sudden nervousness what the consequences of either might be. He wasn’t sure what sort of things she could stir up in his head if she decided she disliked him.



She ignored his protests, and continued as if he'd been willing to admit the truth. “Why not? And don’t lie, it’s beneath you. Your opinion doesn’t really matter to me one way or another, so it’s hardly like I’m going to be offended.” Her tone was flippant, and frankly insulting. Barnes wondered if she was purposely trying to get a rise out of him for her amusement, was genuinely interested, or just refused to let him win his moment of silence. Maybe all three, maybe none.



"I don't have a problem with you. I don't know where you're getting that from. I'm tired and this is a bad situation. I'm sorry if it seems like I'm taking-"



"Don't try your weak-ass diplomacy on me. I can understand cowardice and dishonesty from a child, or from a ninety-five pound pencil pusher, but coming from someone with your frame and your responsibility, it's an absolutely repugnant character trait. Quit being such a scared little boy and tell me what your problem is."



He moved to walk past her, to continue to the turbolift and away from this confrontation, but then, surprising himself, he stopped. She just made it impossible. Fine. She wanted an answer?



She’d get an answer.


Forgetting all about her positive qualities that he'd been trying to focus on, he stuck a meaty finger in her face. “You’re condescending, you’re self absorbed, and you have absolutely no respect for anyone else. Frankly, you’re just as bad as Savaar, probably even more-so, because, however rock-eater stupid it is, at least he’s working for something because he believes in it, at least marginally. You on the other hand, you seem to do this for your own entertainment." At that, he gestured at the empty corridor around them, and the ship gripped in chaos beyond that. "You don’t give a shit about anyone in the bay, you don’t give a damn about any of the Starfleet officers so I can’t figure out what you’re *doing* here, aside from amusing yourself by playing games - using people as pieces - and you seem to have no goal other than to prove your superiority to everyone you come across. You're absolutely fixated on winning some game that you're the only one fucking playing!” Barnes glared at her. He was on a roll now, and all of his previous restraint had burned away. Some part of him knew that he wasn't just addressing her question, he was releasing the violent tension of the last few days, and he guessed he should feel guilty about that. He didn't. Her lip twitched slightly into a sardonic smirk, further fuelling his annoyance. “And I think your little penchant for screwing around with people’s minds to steal information, or hallucinate like you did to Steiner, or whatever you did to those people in the cargo bay, is predatory. And...disgusting. Just because you can make people your puppets doesn’t give you the right to do it and the fact that you don't even care just makes you some kind of animal.”



For an instant the woman’s eyes narrowed, and it felt as though the temperature dropped several degrees. She seemed almost hurt for a split second before she threw her head back and laughed at him.



“That’s disappointingly boring, and hypocritical coming from you, Mister Barnes.” Her contempt was the first genuine amusement he’d heard from her. “You think that it’s predatory and disgusting that I use my particular talents to get information in a way that the person I get it from doesn’t even know that I’ve taken it? Or that I convince them to do something that they already were thinking of doing in the first place? Which, by the way, I’m flattered you think that I’m powerful enough to simply force people to do things they don’t want to...but I’m not, and even if I could, I do draw the line somewhere.” Her lips drew up into a harsh smile. “Please, though, tell me how it is so much worse than what you do? I fail to really see the moral drop-off between me doing what I do, and you beating someone nearly insensate, and threatening them with mutilation, all for three strips of latinum? Oh, don’t look at me like that. I only had to ask around the old fashioned way to hear *that* little bit of information. So if I'm 'some kind of animal,' then what exactly does that make you?”



He didn't answer. They merely stared hatefully at one another and then, after a moment, they continued on. She paused by the door of the turbolift. The lifts had been locked down, but near as Barnes could tell, she’d somehow managed to get herself free rein of the ship. When she used Kane’s command codes to unlock the turbolift, Barnes suspicions about who had authorized her freedom were confirmed. Barnes had to wonder about Captain Kane, who would treat someone who’d saved a member of his crew like a common criminal, but let this clearly dangerous woman free rein. She’d definitely done time in prison, judging from the tattoo work that showed everywhere her flesh was visible, and everything she’d done so far indicated that she only cared about herself. So why did Kane trust her, but not him? It joined every other decision of Kane's he knew of in the pile labeled 'Short-sighted at best and idiotic at worst.'



“Back to Cargo Bay Three?” She asked him, her voice again taking on a mock subservient tone. He grunted his assent, and stood next to her. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “You know, I rather wish I’d known I was going to have to work with you sooner. I just might have tried to be someone you would have liked. I wonder what would have worked. A damsel in distress? A tough, competent, silent mercenary type? An adoring fan who thinks you’re god’s gift to women? Or maybe a reformed mass murder with jus’ selflessly riskin’ her life for her crew cos she jus’ so regrets her life a’ killin’, and you kinda see yerself in her a little bit?”



As she said each option her mannerisms and voice changed to fit the part, and if her face hadn’t remained the same, he might have been convinced they were different people. He wondered briefly if she was actually crazy, but seeing as the last had been a dig about his ‘relationship’ such as it was with Kassandra Thytos, he discarded that thought for the conclusion that she was trying to twist his screws.



He felt his right hand curl suicidally into a heavy fist, and, with an effort, forced it to uncoil. “If you’re going to be like that, will you just shut up?” Barnes finally growled once he reached the end of his train of thought. She shrugged, flashing him a smug smile. "Let's just...let's just go to the Cargo Bay. Please."



"Deck 22, Cargo Bay 3, Computer," Chen announced with an over-exaggerated cheerfulness.



Only a moment after the lift began to move, Barnes stiffened. "Computer, belay that." The turbolift, not recognizing Barnes' authority, didn't reply or slow. He fixed Chen with a frustrated, plaintive stare. She grinned bloodlessly at him.



"Hold," she announced and the lift came to an easy halt.



"The entrance is still going to be a nightmare. We need to get to a transporter. Do you-?"



"Deck 33," Selyara interrupted, and the turbolift resumed hurtling through the PHOENIX, now in a different direction.


* * *=/\=* * *



SCENE: Cargo Bay Three



There were far fewer people stuffed into the Cargo Bay than there had been, but for the shouting and chaos it was hard to tell. What was plain to see was that Shantytown, whatever the strange community of refugees had built into a community, was gone now. The constructs that had been set into place by the former residents of LIMBO had never been lovely, or even particularly sturdy, but they had served as physical embodiments of the efforts that people had made to band together. There had been a certain, just barely held together beauty about the place before. Now, cots and ramshackle tents laid twisted and mangled, strewn haphazardly across the floor of the Cargo Bay. Fires had obviously been set, than extinguished by the ship's automated systems. There was scorching where the heat had time to take root and the residue of the suppression measure's flame retardant foam - dried now, and crushed to powder under the boots of the crazed, rushing denizens - piled into drifts like dirty snow. There were bodies, too. Most of them moaned, or cried out for assistance, or wept quietly; but several made no sound or movement at all. It was impossible to tell where one terrified scream ended and the next bellow of rage began.



Barnes and Chen materialized in a flash of blue amidst the bedlam. Barnes staggered in an uneven circle, his face awash with what looked like grief, as he took in the nightmare around him. Selyara kept her face impassive as she reoriented herself, carefully stepping to keep her clothing away from a foam pile near her feet.His eyes jumped from horror to horror, and twice he bellowed for everyone to stop, to be calm down, to listen to him, but to no avail. Finally Jacen turned to Chen.



"I tried to keep... Embry can't undo this. I don't see how...even if he wanted to. I need to find my team. Maybe we can...I don't know. Something."



"You said we were coming here to find Embry," she chided him. "We're not going to be able to stop what's happening out there by making everyone play nice in here."



He nodded, composing himself, or trying to. He was exhausted and it was affecting his thoughts, his temper, his decision making. "You're right. I'll-" he trailed off as he saw, several yards away, a gang of several men chasing down two others. Even as Barnes watched, the larger swarm surrounded the two, and the pair disappeared amidst the stomping, kicking crowd. He saw, just for an instant, the man's eyes as he fell, wide and panic-stricken. Those eyes drove all thoughts of practicality from him and replaced them with a hot-coal anger. With a roar, Barnes pulled his stun baton and charged into the fray. For her part, Selyara Chen just rolled her eyes.



The fighting felt good, and that shamed him. He made quick work of the first gang and moved on, moving with no consideration other than interceding where he could. He realized, after his third scuffle, that he was, in fact, drifting in the direction of his cot and Silsby's tent. He brawled more than half the way there. He knew that he was proving out every contemptuous word Chen had spoken to him, but he couldn't stop, wouldn't stop. He'd given these people his word to protect them and their community and, that promise shattered, he felt no compulsion stronger than to avenge it. Even as he reached out and put his hands, again and again, to their brutal purpose on angry men smaller than he, he knew that he was bastardizing his original aim. He'd only wanted to help, not to harm. *Remember that?* And though the goal had been laughable, it had at least been a man's goal. Not the aim of an...



*An animal,* he repeated to himself as he crushed a Bolian's clavicle with the stun baton.

"Barnes! Barnes!"



The shouting came from behind him. He turned and told himself he was relieved to see Virgo Silsby, but his fingers spasmed outward as his hands instantly missed their bloody work. He forced a cork into his rage and released the Bolian he'd nearly crippled. As the middle aged blue skinned man crawled away, favoring his arm, Barnes found himself wondering what he would have done if Silsby hadn't arrived when he had. Finally giving his full attention to Silsby, Barnes was surprised to see the bruising and blood on Silsby's face. "What happened to you, Virgo?"



Virgo Silsby, he of the black eye and bloody lip, was coming around a collapsed pile of crates alongside another man with skeletal cheeks and hungry eyes. It had been the first time that Barnes had set eyes on the smaller man in days. All of their communication had been clandestine, around corners or like their meeting in the public lavatory. Barnes wondered how much of the damage and fatigue he saw on Silsby had been there before the riots started. He was certain that not all of it was fresh, and he resolved to find a way to pay back Silsby for his help. For his initial reservations, Silsby had taken to the work like a duck to water. "We've taken a beating, is what's happened. We couldn't stop it all, but we've kept a lot of folks from getting beaten to death. Things have actually quieted down some in the past twenty minutes or so, but it's been rough." As if remembering that he wasn't alone, Silsby gestured to his companion. "This is Finn Putanski. He's one of ours, but I haven't introduced you yet. We-"



"Hold up, Virgo. You've been working? You've been in the fighting?" Barnes was stunned. His deal with Silsby had been clear, and the instructions to the men Silsby had brought him, equally so. It had all hinged entirely on preventing the riots as long as possible. He'd never asked any of them for help after the unrest had jumped off. The amount of racing around and networking Barnes had put Silsby on was enough in itself, but actively putting himself in harm's way? It was true, when he'd beamed into the Cargo Bay, he'd thought to find Silsby, but he'd expected that he'd have to negotiate with Silsby for further assistance. The notion that Silsby, or any of his acquaintances, would take the initiative to continue their work hadn't occurred to him. Barnes was moved. "Thank..."



Silsby fixed him with an unblinking look, one that spoke of resolve and being far too tired to cater to Barnes' sentiment. "Until the job's done, Big Man. We're still not safe. Like I said, this is Putanski." The other man, the hungry-looking one with wide eyes and the high forehead, gave him a nod and they shook hands. "He ran into Subek and Jeff Perry. I saw Cam Carter and Marta a while back, further down in the heart of things." Silsby launched into the best status report he could, who was where and what they'd been able to do to beat back the waves of violence, considering how badly the situation had collapsed already. As he rattled off names, Barnes began to lose track of who he'd worked with, who he'd met, and who he hadn't. He marveled at Silsby's ability to keep everything straight in his head, especially in light of the confusion. Then he said a name that Barnes' did recognize. "Harmon Tolliver paired up with that kid, Maines. They've been-"



"Wait, Maines? He's one of Embry's."



"I don't know if there is such a thing any more. Embry's out of action and a lot of your guys were seen powdering out with the Vulcan, but there's more left here. I don't think they were all involved in Embry's plans, considering the way some of them have been helping us to try to put Humpty Dumpty together again and considering what it's gotten some of them."



"What do you mean?"



"Weaver, the short bald fella. He's dead."



For a moment, the Sheriff said nothing. "How many of them are working with you," Barnes asked,



"A handful. Not as many as I would have asked for."



"Outgunned and undermanned. What else is new? Okay, here's what I'm going to need..."



* * *=/\=* * *

Selyara wandered off as Barnes began to order around his men. This was uninteresting to her; she didn’t care much whether or not anyone died here as long as it wasn’t her.

She thought that Michael had been an idiot for not flushing the bay into space as soon as they breached the doors, and the small red-headed Marine even more of an idiot for not just going behind his back and doing it anyway. Kassandra would have known it was the safest tactic, that it would have removed any danger to her men or the Phoenix’s crew, and yet… And yet instead of doing it, she’d let Kane decide, and been willing to let his bleeding heart potentially sacrifice herself and her Marines on the altar of morality.

Selyara grumbled softly to herself, brushing aside the errant thought that she really wished she was back on LIMBO rather than being crammed into the hold of this crummy ship. She knew that thought didn’t belong to her. That along with the urge to storm up to the bridge. That wasn’t hers.

Probably.

Although, to be fair, it seemed to her that things might be better all around if she was in charge. Just like things would have been better on Limbo if she’d managed to wrest control from Tella Yavin. She knew how to run things, she knew how to keep control, not out of fear, but by an interlocking network of self interest - people would never betray you as long as you kept keeping you around in their best interest. Blackmail, bribes, promises, favors owed and given, enough profit that everything seemed fair, and people could be kept in line without over the top displays of firepower.

She was musing on this as she came face to face with the woman who had been with Rawyvin Seth on Limbo. The two of them stared at each other, trying to decide whether to attack or ignore.

“You. You were the one he was after. If you hadn’t ran, if you hadn’t kept running, he might have set me free, he-” Evangeline Montoya said, her voice thick with the weight of competing emotions. Selyara pitied her. She hadn’t been smart enough to escape Rawyvin, she hadn’t been brave enough to end her life, and she was not strong enough to brush it all aside now that he was dead.

“Don’t kid yourself. None of your problems would have been solved if you’d found me.” Selyara said harshly, cutting her off. She didn’t need Rawyvin striking a blow at her from beyond the grave using this woman’s addled mind as the weapon. “Do you think he would have let you go? No. He was the type of man who liked to break his toys when he was done with them so no one else could have them. It might even have gotten worse, you know. He probably would have made me hurt you for his own amusement and to break me down so I’d do what he wanted. We aren’t enemies, Rawyvin Seth was the enemy.”

“But… He…” Montoya’s face screwed up, unwilling to let it go. Selyara crossed her arms.

“He’s dead, and all you’re doing right now is keeping him alive. The best revenge is to forget him, completely and utterly.” Selyara’s voice was rough and hash now, and she eyed the woman, waiting for her to make a move, waiting to see some tension in the muscle that would indicate an incipient physical attack. “What are you doing down here? I thought you were in the Sickbay.”

“There were lights, and then the cranky doctor said that we were sick with radiation poisoning. So I left them, and came down here because someone mentioned there were kits.” The human woman crossed her arms across her chest confrontationally.

“This is just my advice, but you should really take the second chance you’re getting here. Use those kits, heal the doctor and whomever was in the Sickbay with you, take the praise, take the trust, and take the chance to move out from under Rawyvin’s shadow. We fight, or you blow your chance, well he wins, and we both know the last thing we want is for him to have won in *any* way, shape or form.” Selyara edged back, her eyes narrowed. Montoya didn’t look convinced.

“I’ll do what I want.” The woman finally snapped, snatching up a handful of the radiation kits, and vanished such efficiency that Selyara found herself taking notes. She stared at the fading back of Evangeline Montoya meditatively. Rawvyn Seth’s former puppet was a wild card, and she didn’t like wild cards one bit. Her mouth tightened, and she began to search for Embry. She wasn’t sure what to do with him once she found him. Would he even be awake? Not much time had passed since the moment he went down and now. Nonetheless, she needed to know where he’d sent Savaar.

There were two options, the Bridge, and Engineering, and either one would be disastrous in its own way. She knew from when she’d connected Chaucer to the Bridge that the bridge was limited to the android operations officer Byte, the incognito Cardassian counselor Eve Dalziel, a helmsman named Russ BaShen, Kassandra the MCO, and Michael. The Marine would probably be prepared to die defending Michael, but she couldn’t protect all four of the others, and Selyara didn’t know how their combat skills were. The Android would probably fare well enough, but the fact of the matter was that the bridge was a very delicate center of operations, and the two back up bridges weren’t even functioning at this point, based on the power schematics she’d seen in her perusal of the computer systems. Any significant damage to the main bridge and the ship would be brought to a halt, listing rudderlessly through the blackness of space.

If Savaar was going to Engineering, he’d likely be able to storm it, even if the Gorn Chaucer was a less than active participant. Engineers were not by and large, to her mind, particularly renowned for their bravery and get up and fight attitude. The plasma pushers were smart and brave in the face of imminent irradiation of antimatter explosion but put a phaser to their throats and you’d suddenly find yourself facing a scared bunch of nerdy sheep. The Marines, for their part, were no doubt guarding the doors to Engineering against the bulk of the rioters, but they were mind blowingly inflexible linear thinkers. They wouldn’t have considered an assault from behind the doors. Which, to be fair, most enemies they would ever face wouldn’t do something as indirect as that, just like all the rioters had gone the obvious and direct route. Fighters thought like Marines, Marines thought like fighters, but Savaar was a Vulcan, and Vulcan’s were surprisingly sneaky. If Savaar got in, he’d be able to take control, no problem.

So she had to find Embry and figure out where to go to intercept Savaar. She thought about it for a moment and made a beeline for Embry’s “HQ” section of the camp. Her hunch turned out to be right, and she found him seated in a slump at the head of his damn ‘council’ table. She took a long look at him, feeling slightly triumphant. He seemed tired, exhausted. Perhaps the enormity of what he’d done had begun to sink in. Perhaps he suddenly realized what a big mistake all of this was.

It turned out it was none of those things. Embry’s eyes flickered open as she approached, and his face fluttered into a ingratiating, patronizing smile.

“Oh, Miss Chen, you’re safe! I’ve been quite worried about you, those Marines were such brutes, and then those lawless troublemakers began looting and overrunning the ships, I’d been afraid that one of them might have gotten you, I’d worry about what they might do to you…” Embry’s smile was so genuine, his voice so eager, that if Selyara had not been cut from the same devious cloth as he she might have been taken in. As it was she heard the over emphasis on the words, the furtive glances to see how she was reacting, and she was having none of it. The smile on Embry’s face faded as he realized his words were having no effect. “So, it seems I misjudged you, Miss Chen. Not exactly the naive, scorned Captain’s slut, are you?”

“Not exactly the benevolent patrician, are you? More like a devious, self-serving mutineer,” Selyara retorted, glaring at him. She grabbed the lapels of his suit and gave him a sharp shake. “Not even a very smart devious, self-serving mutineer. Did you even think this through, Embry? Do you really think they’re going to let you take over a top of the line ship? They’ll kill us all before they’ll let the ship fall. They will blow this ship to pieces before they let you take control.”

“I doubt that.” Embry said dryly. “They’ll try to talk me down, then they’ll be forced to bargain. I’ve noticed how few crew members there are. Anyone with that small a crew is on the run, they’re flexible.”

Selyara studied his smug face. She wanted to slap it, or else reach out and wipe his mind and that smirk off his face permanently, but the fleeting satisfaction would not be worth the fall out. She didn’t think he’d let her touch him this time anyway. So, change of tack, how would she weasel the information out of herself? By appealing to his ego, his desire to crow about his brilliant plan.

“I doubt you could even manage to take over the ship anyway.” Selyara said injecting scorn into her voice. “A bunch of rabble will have no chance against those Marines. You *DO* realize that little slip of a woman they have in charge of them is The Butcher, right? How are you going to make it past her?”

“Au contraire, Miss Chen.” She was right, Embry couldn’t wait to prove her wrong. “I don’t have to make it past her. Any moment now, Savaar, Chaucer, and my men are going to take over Engineering, once we’re in control, they’ll have to bargain, won’t they?”

Selyara didn’t react until Embry’s eyes narrowed at her, trying to figure out her lack of approbation, and then she smiled at him, a toothy insincere smile to rub his nose in it.

“Thank you Arthur, that’s what I needed to know. Have fun in the war zone.” She turned and flicked her fingers in farewell over her shoulder.

As she walked away she heard the sound of a forming mob and looked over by the emergency transporter just in time to see Jacen Barnes being engulfed by a teeming mass of riff raff. He fell to the floor somewhere among them, no doubt trampled, kicked and beaten. She looked at the situation with cold calculation.

She didn’t really need Barnes anymore. He had served his purpose, and she could likely do the rest on her own if she just planned well enough, besides, as soon as she got where she needed to she’d have many others willing to offer her protection, probably far more enthusiastically than Barnes, to boot. They knew how important she was to their little war.

Besides, Jacen Barnes didn’t even *like* her, why should she bother trying to help him? She turned away and was about to leave him to his fate when she heard his enraged roar echoing like a glacier shelf crumbling into the sea. She turned back and saw him rise from the ground, a mad look in his eyes.

She began to turn away again when that annoying voice that sometimes made itself known began to talk to her. She tried to ignore it, and told herself it was one of the hundreds of thoughts she’d accidentally picked up today that weren’t hers, but even as she tried to convince herself of it she knew it was a lie.

**When he comes out of this, he’s going to regret it. You could save him from himself. You should save him from himself. Don’t you wish someone had saved you from yourself?** The voice would not go away, haranguing her mercilessly.

**Saving him will make you look good. Michael will like that. Saving him is the right thing to do, your Da told you so, he always looked out for anyone who he could help. Don’t you want them to be proud of you? It’d be so easy, one little mind meld and you could fix it, easier for you than breathing. They’d both be so disappointed with you if you could have helped but didn’t.** Another thought chimed in. Selyara stood frozen, undecided. **Besides… I bet he has *really* interesting stuff in his head.** The second thought continued.

Selyara sighed and turned around to go and help the giant man, wondering just when the hell Michael Turlogh Kane and her father had become her missing moral compass and conscience.

* * *=/\=* * *

Barnes fumbled at the console trying to remember how to use the transporter. Silby had unlocked it for him using the command codes Selyara had provided, and now Barnes was busy with his plan to lighten the load on his men.

He was just about to give the order to energize when the bottle struck him, just over the eye. In an instant, blood and tears had robbed him of his vision, so he couldn't really see how many people swarmed him. He could only pick up flashes, twisted scowls and glaring eyes, even as his body sang to him of the multitude of blows he was taking.

Time slowed as he fell to the floor, many in his mob of attackers joining him. It felt like he had entered some other, far off place - a dimension constructed entirely of pain, and fear, and hate. He was distantly, insanely, aware of the difference in sensation between when he was punched and when he was kicked. He felt his left hand flare up in an excruciating glory and he knew it had been crushed under someone's boot. He sent a tenuous query and received a reply from only two fingers and his thumb, the others were broken too badly. Then he felt the agonizingly dissonant chord of the first rib breaking, then the second.

He was going to die here. Crushed and beaten to death by those he'd tried to protect. That wasn't such an awful death, if you stopped to think about it. Probably better than he deserved. All he had to do was relax, unclench, surrender to the hail of blows he was in. He just had to accept that he'd lost and he would finally-

*NO!*



The voice wasn't a voice and it didn't scream from his head, or his heart, or his soul. It was a wordless cry that came from all of his cells at once, and it was the same blind compulsion that had gripped his ancient ancestors when they'd first crawled on newly evolved feet from the oceans of Earth. From eons in the past, every ancestor he'd ever had sent a message, special delivery, right down the center of his spine. "Survive." So he did.



He dreamed. He dreamed of Embry, and Rawyvin Seth, and Savaar, and LIMBO, and Kane, and Kass, and just how goddamn tired he was, and while he dreamed he leapt to his feet and the dream made him do unspeakable things. He took eyes with his fingertips, and he felt the strange sensation of their jelly under his fingernails. He twisted limbs until they threatened to pop off. There was blood in his mouth, far too much for it to be incidental; so he must have bitten someone. He considered swallowing it, decided against it, and spit it into the eye of whatever was standing next to him. He glanced at his right hand and was surprised to see two teeth embedded into his fingers. He didn't take note of the man, standing next to him, whose jaw had been dislocated and half torn off, and he wouldn't have drawn the connection if he did. He had abandoned the part of his mind that thought about such things. He'd abandoned his morals and his confusion and his guilt. He'd completely abandoned Jacen Barnes. Now he was only The Fight and he would kill them all until they killed him back and that was just fine. That was as it should be. That would satisfy the little boy with the blood gone tacky in his blonde hair. That was just fine...



Selyara Chen was in front of him now. He was surprised he recognized her, but the recognition spurred no interest. She was small. He could kill her, too. She had it coming. Everyone did.



Then, as he reached for her, she touched his face with her hands and spoke, "My mind to yours..."



Time slowed, and Barnes could see everything in the cargo bay in sharp relief, suspended in the moment. He could see Selyara's face close to his in sharp relief, and he knew her face intimately. All at once, he could remember all the mornings she had gazed at it in the mirror. Through his eyes, he could see his own face, and it was a stranger. What an odd face. It made him sad. It was too big and too young. He panicked and tried to pull away from that face...from the feeling... he couldn't, and he felt a flash of anger. It was different from the anger he was used to. It was deep, burning, overwhelming in intensity, not his familiar blinding rage. The strange anger whipped through his fingers as he tried to pin it down, and he realized it wasn't his.

**Relax, will you? I'm trying to help** Selyara's voice said stridently in his head. **Calm the fuck down.**

"Our minds are one..." she whispered. He mouthed the words with her.

***He's not going to calm down if you talk to him like that.*** A soft, gentle voice said, barely a whisper, a half forgotten ghost. For a moment Selyara's face in Barnes' field wavered, like a reflection in a pond after a pebble is dropped in, and then it was replaced by a kindly faced version of Selyara with smile lines around her eyes and mouth, wearing a Starfleet Captain's uniform. **Just relax, you've got to let this happen. I don't want to force this because it will hurt you, but I will, because otherwise you're going to do something you won't forgive yourself for.***

**Oh, for crying out loud. I don’t have time for this. It’s not like you can actually stop me from doing this.** The more familiar, annoyed voice chimed in. **Put on your big boy pants, and lets get on with this? It’s not exactly my favorite thing either.**

Barnes stiffened, torn between resistance, the galling realization that this was going to happen whether he allowed it or not, and the concession that the second, kindly voice was right- he was going to regret what he was doing, but he was incapable of stopping himself alone. When he didn't respond, the whisper of a voice repeated itself, urgently.

***Jacen? Jacen are you listening?*** Captain Selyara said softly, and when he didn't respond, she called him by a different name, and older name, one he'd almost forgotten... and he listened. ***Relax.***



He relaxed. His mind emptied and he had the not altogether unpleasant feeling of a second mind slithering into the empty spaces in his, and pulling his consciousness around it like a blanket until they melted together. As the edges of his reality merged with hers, he felt rummaging in the corners of his mind. He was rounding up his anger and rage and packing it up into neat bundles and partitioning it off efficiently in the far corners of his mind, arranging them with a deft logic so that they made sense, so that he could understand the cause and effect of it, finally understand where the anger came from.

No, he wasn't doing that. It was her. As he felt her doing so, Barnes suddenly remembered the almost compulsive way he'd seen her building card houses, and he realized that it was the way she made sense of her world, the way she kept everything in her head from descending into chaos and falling apart. That was why he built them. That's why he needed them. It was his meditation. No, not his. Hers. He preferred to sweat, to stretch. Didn't he?

She hadn't had a good workout since the night Seth had come to her apartment and left the bottle. Seth had wanted to dominate him, Seth wanted to consume him, Seth wanted to watch her suffer and die. She blocked out the yearning to punish her muscles again and resumed her mental card stacking exercise. As she touched his memories to move them around he had flashes of them, and they layered with Selyara's memories. The destruction of a preschool on Vulcan, the destruction of a Vulcan science station. A blonde child lying dead in the rubble of a school, a young girl lying hidden under the body of her father, too scared to leave, certain no one would ever come. Fighting with a father who'd gone too far, fighting herself. Rock bottom on Limbo, rock bottom in the Jaros Stockade. They were the same now. His stories were her stories; her thoughts were his.

He could feel his emotions, his feelings, related to the memories. Each moment was tied to two feelings...the way he felt when it occurred and the way he felt as he remembered it. He remembered the heady rush of his first kiss, his hand on his first breast, but now he felt a bittersweet nostalgia for his bygone adolescence, and maybe just a touch of embarrassment at his overexcited fumblings. Her feelings were different though. He could feel the way she'd felt at each moment of her life, but her feelings about those moments in retrospect were conspicuously absent, like a gaping omission, as though the moments had all happened to someone else. She was focused wholly on her task of sorting out his tangled emotions and compartmentalizing them to notice when he fell deeper into her.

He slipped sideways into some earlier memories. He was interested in that second voice, the kind and friendly one that didn't fit at all with the woman that he'd been working with. Where could it have come from? Where had it gone? It took a little bit of effort to find her... Some heavily muscled part of her mind tried to bar his way, and he felt her scream for him to stop. The scream was the same as his own and neither could pay it any heed. She pulled him into her even as she forced her way further inside him and they invaded each other.

He looked on in surprise as he remembered her as a cadet, as a young counselor, saved from crystalline beings by the sacrifice of a Captain. A beloved dog, now guarding a beloved adopted father. He remembered the feel of the teal uniform as she looked at her reflection while she wore it. She'd kept the uniform all this time, hidden in her knapsack which he'd given to Silsby for safekeeping. He could still fear the strain in his throat as she screamed. He could still smell the dog's fur the day she said goodbye.

He chased the ghosts of emotion that clung to the memories, was chased by them, and pulled them up to look at them.

He remembered her and Kane as CO and XO of a ship called the Discovery, and remembered her telling him she was leaving to become a Captain in her own right because she was afraid that she would become hard and cold like him. There'd been another Discovery, hadn't there? Earlier? She told Kane that she was leaving because of the horror on Byss that she didn't think she'd ever be able to forgive him for. He was drowning in how much that hurt her because she'd loved Kane. She hadn't liked Kane from the moment Kass introduced him, she remembered. Then he remembered her new crew, the pride of being Captain of the Patriot.

There was no making sense of who was drawing on which memory, but it was simple, organic, as easy as breathing. Suddenly, that changed. Strong emotions began to batter Jacen from all sides, at a fever pitch loud enough and deep enough to drive a Human insane - the full intensity of a Vulcan’s emotion combined with the laissez faire control of a Betazoid. For an instant, her regret and shame overtook his own and only her memories were there, he was eclipsed. There was the Orion Syndicate, there was incarceration, there was a woman who kept saying she was her mother, there was long periods of grogginess, and something in her head, breaking her mind up, rearranging it, much as she was doing to Jacen's right now, obliterating connections and pieces as it suited her. There was the woman stroking her hair and whispering that if they just gave the Patriot to the Orions that they could be a family again, there was numb agreement, a desire for the picture the woman painted, and then there was a period of time that was all confusion.

He was returning now, because he'd had these thoughts, too. They reminded him of himself. Why had she done that? Why had he done that? How could she have done that? It wasn't her, it couldn't have been her? Oh god. She'd been played. She'd been used. He'd been made a fool of. Trying to fix things. Despair. Begging with the guards, with the head of the prison, something was wrong. But they didn't listen. Why would they listen? She was what they said. Numbness, picking up the pieces, or trying to, then realizing that if she did, it would be little better than torture.

Giving up. Discarding what she'd been. Forgetting. Fighting just to survive among the criminals. He took to drinking heavily. Becoming the powerful person she could be once she didn't give a damn about anyone but herself. They told him the genetic therapy was a crapshoot, but what did he have to lose? Giving in to what she'd been molded into, playing her games because she was never going to be used or manipulated again. Making money hurting people until he couldn't bear to do it any longer. Escape, Rawyvin Seth, fear, schemes on Limbo, everything coming crashing down, thanks to Michael, Kane had brought too many people aboard. Were they going to put her back in jail? They'd find him out, he was sure of it. She'd rather die than being back in Jail- He was getting lost in her anger, her feelings, her neuroses, and he felt him dragging her under, she permeating his mind and he hers so that they could both be quiet and ruined forever. They were the same-

They were in the cargo bay.



Selyara was pushing him away, hard, with all her Vulcan strength behind it, her eyes nearly as wild as his had been in the seconds before she'd mind melded with him.



He felt the emptiness of her absence in his mind, and he felt exposed without her identity to hide in. Unable to express the feeling, he opted instead to growl, "You bitch. You damned bitch..." He could scarcely wrap his mind around what she'd done to him. It was a violation unlike any he'd ever experienced.



She looked... Upset. Genuinely upset, not cruel or hateful...she looked, for all her customary smugness, like she was on the verge of a panic. She couldn't even bring herself to meet his eyes, and she turned her back on him swiftly. She was mortified to feel the wet progress of a single tear down her cheek and hoped he hadn't seen.



For a moment he thought about taking that opening and snapping her neck, before she could defend herself, before she could force herself into his mind ever again, before she could tell anyone what she now knew about him. He knew he could do it and he knew she deserved it, but he...just... Reality quickly reasserted itself as he saw her shoulders tremble just slightly while she fought to control the tangled mess of emotions he'd inadvertently dragged up, He was ashamed of himself for even having the thought. He didn't want to be the man she'd just seen in his memories, any more than she was able to be the woman he'd seen in hers.

"Thanks." He said instead of killing her. His anger had faded, and he could think about things with a clear head, the background noise temporarily quieted by whatever she'd been busy doing while he had been snooping.



Her back reflexively curled as though she’d been struck. ‘No good deed goes unpunished. I was trying to help and you went prying? I know the workings of a mind, I know what will hurt and what will heal, you’re like a bull in a china shop,’ he could practically hear her saying angrily.



Her hands flew out viciously dropping to of the fighters insensate to the deck, and Jacen was suddenly aware that very little time had actually passed. They were still in the thick of things. Her shoulders were hunched, and she battered some poor sod in the face with a particularly violent punch.



"I'm *NEVER* doing that for you again, so don't fuck it up," she said over her shoulder with a snarl. Having so recently been sharing a brain he could hear the subtext under her voice, the recrimination for having gone messing boldly though those particular parts of her mind. "You need to take a fucking nap. But first, we need to get to Engineering.”

"Why?" Barnes intercepted a refugee, armed with a handmade shiv, who was making towards Selyara with a clothesline that separated the man from his shoes

"Because that's where Savaar is going. There are a good amount of Engineers, but if Savaar takes one of them hostage, they won't have the stones to fight back, and Savaar being in control is potentially disastrous and leaves us floating dead in space with a bunch of radioactive, explosive phenomena manifesting on the ship at random?” Selyara said snidely. She was still very angry with him. “Listen, if it’s not too much trouble, will you just do what I say? I’m much better at thinking than you. You just… I don’t know. Smash things when they get in our way.”

They fought now, together, without speaking and without uncertainty. A keen-eyed observer might have noted that Barnes was a little more careful and methodical as he brawled. That same observer might also point out that Selyara's face was uncharacteristically flushed as she threw punch after punch. They circled each other seeking weaknesses in the wall of refugees in front of them, but they could make no progress. There were just too many bodies coming at them.

Pulling the grav trap Kass had provided him, he thumbed on the power and dropped it to the deck. In the moment before the delay timer went off, he kicked the trap so that it skittered across the deck into a knot of their assailants. There was no sound, but even four feet away, he felt his balance rock as the localized gravity field snapped into being. His stomach rolled and he felt a nauseating vertigo, but it passed quickly. The trap collapsed the group, pulling fully half a dozen of them to the ground in garish positions that only just seemed anatomically possible. It cleared a chunk of the wall of flesh around them, but it was quickly apparent that it wasn't enough.



“With absolutely no respect, I’d like to suggest that right now you and your big brain better just shut up for the moment and let me save our asses by ‘smashing’ things in our way.” Jacen said grumpily.



His spirits were bolstered as he saw Virgo Silsby returning with not only Putanski, but also a decent pack of backup. He recognized Subek, the dark skinned Vulcan as well as Marta Villalobos. She'd been the first woman that Silsby had brought him. He recognized three others, but was embarrassed to admit to himself he couldn't remember their names to save his life. Silsby, as advertised, was also accompanied by Maines, but Barnes was surprised to note that the kid wasn't the only one of Embry's - and Savaar's - deputies to make an appearance. Casigllio looked excited at the prospect of letting his left hand dance, and Salvador Guerrero, who'd served all of his patrols with a cool head, seemed to have joined in the bloodlust. All told, they weren't a terrible calvary. For just a moment, he let the thought gladden him, and he sent it out to a man he knew would appreciate it, if he could see what Barnes was seeing now. *There they are, Arthur. Look at them come. Look at them come to fight for this thing we did.*



But even as his angels waded into the rising battle, they were outnumbered by the demons surrounding them. Every riot had a moment where all the individual brawls and squabbles coalesced into one great squirming thing. Barnes had seen it on LIMBO, and he could remember that Selyara had seen it on Jaros. It was part of the lifecycle of the thing. However, he could feel that it was preparing to happen here, now, right on the verge of their departure and right at the transporter they needed to make good on their next plans. The Sheriff knew that he had to shut this fight down, immediately, but he had no clue how. He took a brief inventory of his options and found them sorely lacking. There were too many for the stun baton to even dent their numbers. The grav trap was lost to him, even though he could see that it had pulled in another dozen combatants. He thought of the disruptor he still carried, but rejected that notion almost immediately; even if he didn't manage to shoot one of his own rescuers, the odds were good that he'd shoot through a bulkhead. He didn't know if the emergency shielding would work better than the force field at the main doors, but he didn't want to test it and find it didn't either.



So, with what he had available, he made what he hoped was the decision he could. Barnes bellowed to his compatriots to hold their breaths as best they could, then he removed the tear gas canister and triggered the aerosol release. Tossing the gas canister into the heart of the fray, he raised his hand to at least partially block his eyes as the thick smoke began to roll off of the grenade sized delivery unit. He wasn't concerned about the effects of the gas on his lungs, but if he couldn't see, then he'd falter at the next step in this improvised plan and this whole thing would be for naught. Around him, people began to cough and fall to their knees. Some were grasping at their throats, others rubbing their eyes. Virtually no one, even among his own party, seemed inclined to continue the fight.



Taking advantage of the sudden ambivalence of the mob around him, he made his way to the transporter. It had been a long time since he'd operated a transporter, but luckily, it was a technology that had made it's last great evolution a century prior. The console had all the controls he expected to find, pretty much exactly where he expected to find them. He keyed in a series of commands, giving the transporter two queues of tasks and the timing to achieve them in. The surging crowd and the twisting smoke forced him to improvise. Twice he had to clear a command prompt and start over; the watering in his eyes was rapidly becoming too great an impediment to work around. He just needed a few...more...



*Yes,* he exulted silently to himself. Then he thumbed the ENERGIZE prompt.



The emergency transporter wasn't designed to move large numbers of people like the standard transporter rooms, nor could it reach the distances. Instead, it was specifically constructed to operate quickly, so it would only lock on two signatures at a time. However, it would transport those two lifeforms at a speed only a fraction of the time it took to use one of the more familiar transporters. So when the device began picking individuals out of the group, it had already vanished a dozen people before anyone began to notice. It took only seconds, and in seconds more, the crowd had been thinned further. Barnes ended it's madcap cycle and keyed the console to it's second queue. Instead of grabbing life signs, the transporter was now keyed to transport the contents of the air above Barnes' head into the expanse of space on the other side of the Cargo Bay doors. It certainly didn't scrub all the tear gas, not even a majority of it, but it was enough to evacuate the thickest of the choking smoke and give the starship's environmental scrubbers the chance to eradicate it eventually.



It took less than a minute. The transporter whine was everywhere, hidden in the folds of the noxious smoke. Then the smoke was gone and almost two thirds of the crowd was gone. As people blinked in surprise, Barnes coughed to clear his throat. His eyes were bright red, leaking tears freely down his cheeks. He stood with his back to the transporter console, the Ferengi disruptor in his outstretched hand, aimed at the nearest refugee, a redheaded young man of twenty five with a lazy eye. "Anyone want to see him burn?!" Barnes voice was a harsh croak as he shouted, but even still, it carried a deadly intensity. He spun the disruptor away from the young man and toward the crowd in general. "Who wants to be first?!" Unsurprisingly, there were no takers. "Silsby," Barnes called.



"Yeah, Big Man," came the wheezing reply.



"Get up here." The crowd parted to let the blonde man pass. He looked worse than Barnes, and he wheezed as he stepped forward. As he approached, Barnes gave him an apologetic glance. Then he shoved the disruptor into Silsby's hand. "Listen up," Barnes shouted. "There's not gonna be any more fighting! No more beatings! No more looting! None of it! You break that rule, you either get beamed out of here or you get killed! This is Virgo Silsby," Barnes pointed to the gambler, who brandished the disruptor and put his gamest face on. "And he's in charge now! If he says it, it might as well come from me, so it might as well have come from Embry. If that doesn't mean anything to you, well then...he'll shoot you with my blessing." He turned his back to the crowd and whispered directly to Silsby. "So...guess what?"



"You are...such an asshole," Silsby said through gritted teeth. He didn't look at Barnes, instead maintaining his grimace down the barrel of the disruptor at everyone around him.



"I know. I'm sorry. Look, you're the man in here now. When we're gone, send runners around and have everyone you can rendezvous with you here. I'll communicate with you through the port on the transport console. One job. Keep as many people safe as you can. If you've gotta shoot someone to do that... Honestly, it would be great if you didn't shoot anyone. But if it happens, it happens. That's on me, and not you. I'll take the heat when I get back."



"Such an asshole..."



"Seconded," Selyara said as she approached. Her hair was disheveled and there was an ugly green bruise forming on her cheek. She seemed unaffected by the tear gas, and one look at the milky whiteness of her second eyelid that obscured the green of her eyes explained why.



"You ready," Barnes asked her.



"Yes."



"Okay," Barnes said. "Marta! Maines! Guerrero! And...you!" He pointed at the tallest of the men he'd met.



"Carter, Cam Carter," the tall man with the sandy hair volunteered.



"Carter. You're all with me now. The rest of you...ALL of you...you listen to Silsby." He turned back to the transport console and began to key in further commands. "Selyara, what deck is engineering on?"



"Thirty five," she answered without hesitation. As he began to key in commands, her eyes went wide. "Wait...you don't know the ship! Where did you beam those people?!" Her voice was a reed-thin whisper.



He looked her dead in the eye. "Nowhere. They're still in the pattern buffer where they'll be no trouble to anyone. When we get to engineering, I'm hoping they'll do the same to every loose runaway on the ship."



"That's...ruthless," she said, with a tone to her voice that he hadn't heard before. It might have lived somewhere between admiring and disconcerted.



He smiled at her. It seemed to Selyara Chen a very familiar expression, a smile she’d seen on her own face more than once. "Right. To Engineering then."

* * *=/\=* * *


NRPG: Alright. Next post is hemingway length. No adjectives for you.


a Joint Post, brought to you by:


The letters:

A (Alix Fowler, as Selyara Chen, possessor of daddy issues.)

and

D (Dale Rasmussen, as Jacen Barnes, possessor of daddy issues.)


and the number 42