Okay, gang, this one has violence, humor...and a long-delayed reunion. Enjoy
****
At the door of the warehouse where he had observed the young trio gain egress, the Master of Onada paused to examine the entry panel. He had seen the dark-skinned man defeat the door mechanism; however, the old man’s practiced eye noted the subtle security system Gunn had missed. The owner of the warehouse – most likely, Kaiser Muldoon – would no doubt be alerted to their presence.
Sighing in exasperation about impatient youth, the old man employed his own methods, similar to Gunn’s but refined by decades of experience, to open the door. Slipping inside, he stood still near the entrance. He could sense the presence of several other beings having recently transported into the warehouse, the ionization of the tranporter beam reminding the old man of spring rains in Japan.
Those kids attract trouble, the old man thought, making his way quickly but stealthily into the warehouse proper. I knew there was something I liked about them!
****
Tara suddenly stiffened, prompting Willow and Gunn to a state of higher alertness. “What...?” Willow asked, knowing her girlfriend’s empathic sense had been tripped.
“We’ve got company!” Tara hissed.
Eight meters ahead of them, two men, one a Bolian, burst out of the shadows and charged pell-mell towards the trio. Yelling “G’down!” he drew his phaser from under his coat in a swift motion, snapping off two shots with practiced speed. Both beams hit their targets and their would-be attackers collapsed in mid-sprint.
Willow barely had time to register this when someone grabbed her shoulder from behind in a crushing grip, startling her enough to drop her tricorder. Reacting instinctively, she kicked behind her, hitting her unseen opponent’s lower abdomen more by luck than design. Spinning around, she grabbed her attacker’s arm in a wristlock and hit him hard in the throat with the edge of her hand.
Meanwhile, Tara and Gunn both had been jumped by other henchmen of various species. Gunn dealt with his opponents with swift lefts and rights, as they were too close to stun with his phaser. Not being as adept in hand-to-hand combat as her colleagues, Tara was having a bit more trouble with the Boslic who was trying to strangle her into submission.
Willow finished off her adversary with a left hook to the chin, taking a couple of seconds to shake out her aching knuckles. She noticed Tara struggling with the Boslic and was moving to help her, when she was grabbed again from behind. Before she could mount a defense, she was shoved bodily into a stack of crates. Fortunately, most of them were empty and light-weight, cushioning the blow. Nevertheless, Willow was too stunned to stop the Nausicaan from picking her up and hurling her again, this time into a solid partition. The young redhead impacted with bone-jarring force, then slid down to the floor.
Gunn had dealt with his first two thugs and was now trying to keep a Tiburon from taking his head off with lightning-fast snap kicks. Unlike the other bargain-basement henchmen, this one had had training and knew what he was doing. Gunn would have admired his form better if one of the kicks hadn’t connected to his head and sent him sprawling. Okay, it’s time we got serious here, he thought woozily, scrambling at his right boot.
The Nausicaan beckoned one of his cohorts, a Cardassian, over. Pointing to Willow, he gave quick instructions and watched as the Cardassian picked Willow up and spirited her away.
Tara unsuccessfully tried to pry the hands pressing against her windpipe away from her throat. Her vision wavered, the Boslic inexplicably turning into her brother Donny, who had cornered her behind the barn again where Dad couldn’t see and he was trying to—
Long-buried rage boiled to the surface as Tara smashed her fists upward against the Boslic’s elbows, breaking his grip on her throat. Before he could recover, she delivered a snap-kick to his groin, hoping that like most humanoids Boslics carried their genitalia in the usual place. Thankfully, they did. As her opponent doubled over, Tara clasped both hands together and, with all the strength she could muster, hit the Boslic in the neck near the right shoulder. The impact juddered back along her arms, but the Boslic dropped like a bag of stembolts. Taking in deep gulps of air, Tara clawed for her phaser.
The Tiburon had knocked Gunn down and was moving in to press his advantage when something shattered his knee. Sinking down, he only had time to utter a short, strangled shrief before Gunn’s collapsible wand hit him upside the head and knocked him cold. Gunn rolled out of the way as the Tiburon hit the floor, scrambling to his feet as he heard a gutteral roar coming from the Nausicaan. The petty officer braced himself for the onslaught of an alien juggernaut seemingly half-again his size as it charged towards him...
...only to get pole-axed by a phaser beam coming off from the side, cutting the Nausicaan’s charge in mid-stride. Gunn would later swear the floor shook when the big oaf did a face-plant. He looked over to see Tara, holding her little phaser at arm’s length, breathing deeply and a little unsteadily. He glanced at her handiwork, then back. “Nice zapping,” he opined.
The counselor’s deadly-serious expression was suddenly softened by a lopsided grin. “My first.” She nodded toward the spring-loaded wand Gunn was now collapsing back down. “That’s, um, interesting...”
“Family heirloom,” he snapped, unable to keep a grin off his face. “I keep it for close—“
“Willow!” Tara shouted, looking around and not seeing the redhead. “O-One of them must have taken her!”
“There’s her tricorder.” Gunn pointed to the instrument lying on the floor. Tara picked it up and tapped in a sequence.
“I’m picking up her combadge!”
Gunn nodded, retrieving his phaser from the floor. “Let’s go.” The pair moved off deeper into the warren of rooms in the warehouse.
****
Blood William stepped off the turbolift onto the bridge, his girlfriend Cilla trailing along languidly behind him, carrying an antique doll. Seraph turned with a tired expression barely concealing the contempt he felt for the younger, more impetuous man. “Well?”
“She’s not here,” the blonde augment reported crisply. His allegiance to Muldoon had less to do with loyalty than with having opportunities to satify his sadistic traits. Being used as a flunky was not what he considered a perk. “We’ve had people scouring the entire bloody ship. She’s not on board.”
“The kitten’s found a wainscotting,” Cilla purred, addressing not the two men but the doll she held. “She’s very naughty. We will have to punish her!”
Seraph rolled his eyes. “I suppose she could be down on the planet – but the only ones that transported down the last time were the captain and the security chief. Everyone else is here –“ Seraph took a breath “—almost.”
“’Almost’? Whaddaya mean, ‘almost’? Who else is missing?”
“The first officer, Faraday,” Seraph shook his head and looked around the bridge, littered with unconscious Starfleet officers. “She’s gone. And the computer insists that she hasn’t left the ship. So where is she?”
****
The Cardassian, whose name was Melok, carried Willow through various corridors until he reached a staging area of sorts, which had once been the site of gene resequencing but had since been cleared out. Other some bare tables, stripped consoles and the odd discarded piece of furniture, virtually nothing remained of Muldoon’s operations.
Melok let Willow drop to the floor, then turned as he heard footsteps behind him. Glory strode in, looking hell-bent on kicking someone’s ass ... which was normal for her, Melok reflected. He noticed that one side of her face looked slightly swollen as if from an almost-healed injury; deciding the discretion was the better part of curiousity, he forebore querying her about it.
“She’s one of the intruders we caught,” he told Glory, indicated the unconscious woman. “I don’t know what’s going on with others; Grngnak told me to bring her here and report to you. You know her?”
Glory peered at her a second. “No,” she answered a second later. “I thought that might be the one Muldoon’s looking for, although why she’d be down here-- Wait a minute.”
“Wha—“ was all Melok got out before Glory shushed him with a curt gesture. The blonde augment stepped out into the accessway. Other than a couple of crates, there was nothing to see in the feeble illumination.
“Thought I heard something,” Glory muttered. Shrugging, she turned back to Melok. “Get rid of her, then head back to the office. I gotta check in and see what’s going on with the ship.” Without further ado, she walked out the accessway and out of sight.
Melok shrugged. The redhead was disgustingly smooth-faced by Cardassian standards, but she had a nice figure on her. Oh, well. Drawing a small energy weapon from a rear holster, he extended his arm, took careful aim...
...heard a slight whooshing sound overhead and was seized by the neck and arm by a grip of duranium. Melok felt himself swung around with incredible force, unable to get a look at his attacker as he flew headlong into a wall.
The Master of Onada completed his pivot, his left hand effortlessly catching his walking stick that he has tossed into the air before grabbing the Cardassian. His right hand pulled at the handle, drawing out the blade partially, ready to use against Melok as needed. As it turned out, there was no need: Melok had impacted headfirst against the wall and died instantly.
Disgusted with himself, the old man knelt over the body, double-checking for signs of life and absently pocketing Melok’s weapon. “Question first, then kill,” he admonished himself. “Doesn’t work very well the other way around.”
He had lost track of the trio that had preceded him into the warehouse; he had then come across the Cardassian carrying the young redhead. The old man was still astonished that the blonde woman had nearly spotted him crouched in the shadows, no doubt due to the enhanced senses of a genetic augment. Besides that, he truly did not like the vibe he got from her, even from a distance. If all of Muldoon’s flunkies are like her, this could get truly serious.
He turned towards the unconscious girl whom he had saved moments before. He chuckled to himself; up close, the resemblence of this girl to Willow Rosenberg was...
Crouching down next to the girl, he turned her completely face-up. The ancient countenance of the Master of Onada softened, blooming into childlike wonder at his discovery. It was several seconds before he found his voice, such was his surprise and his joy. “Oh, mi hija, how can you be here?”
****
In another part of the warehouse, Gunn and Tara were tracking Willow by the signal from her combadge, registering on the tricorder Tara carried. Both had their phasers out and were alert for trouble, moving from one piece of cover to another.
Tara had already tried contacting the Hannibal, figuring that being attacked by goons meant their cover was blown. However, there was no response to her signal, nor to Gunn’s when he tried his combadge. Ominous thoughts passed unspoken between the two, and Tara’s anxiety level ratcheted several notches upward.
Gunn split his attention between the shadows ahead and Tara, watching her work the tricorder’s display. He saw her shoot up a hand palm-first and halted. She checked the display, tapped on the screen to bring up a higher-resolution scan, then whispered to Gunn, “Ten meters ahead. She’s in that room. One person with her.”
Gunn nodded as Tara closed the tricorder and stowed it in her duster pocket. Moving as silently as they could, the two crept towards the open doorway of the room Tara had indicated. Slipping inside, Tara and Gunn scanned the room quickly, looking for Willow and any possible attacker...
...and found Willow lying on the floor in the middle of the mostly-empty room...with an old humanoid man kneeling next to her.
Professional instincts triggered Gunn to point his phaser at the old man and say “Don’t move!” Personal impulses, on the other hand, prompted Tara to step to one side, brandish her phaser and shout “Get away from her!”
The old man, dressed in an tan tunic, brown slacks, black shoes and cream-colored duster, looked back at them with the air of a kindly uncle at a children’s birthday party. His lined face, framed by white hair tied in the back, betrayed no fear at the weapons pointed at him. “Well, either I ‘don’t move’ or I ‘get away from her’ – make up your minds,” he added with a slight chuckle.
Damn. Good point. Tara grimaced at Gunn, who gave an exasperated exhale. “Stand up, slowly, and walk towards us.”
The old man complied, rising from the floor like smoke, moving with the ease of a much younger man. Stepping around the unconscious Willow, he stepped towards the two of them with almost liquid grace, the walking stick in his right hand hardly more than an affectation...
...which didn’t sit well with Gunn, regardless. “Hey, gramps,” he ordered, gesturing with his phaser, “leave the shillelegh behind.”
Tara watched as the old man’s features hardened slightly. She could see that his skin tone, ostensibly fair like hers, had a tannish undertone; she wondered if he had any Asian ancestry. She found it difficult for her empathic senses to take any impressions from him; his mental discipline was nothing short of incredible.
“I’m not used to taking orders from children,” the old man muttered, stepping forward while leaving his stick balanced on its end, “and I don’t like being called ‘gramps’!” He strode forward, leaving the walking stick pointing straight up, seemingly defying the law of gravity. Tara felt herself blinking, certain that her eyes were playing a trick on her, feeling a cold place in her stomach and one in Gunn’s, too.
Professional that he was, Gunn was not about to let himself get rattled by an old man’s parlour trick. “That’s close enough. Put your hands away from your sides and step next to the wall.”
An annoying smile creased the ancient face. “And what if I don’t happen to feel like it?”
Gunn was in no mood for this dried-up dingleberry and his attitude. “You see this?” he barked, gesturing again with the weapon in his hand. “It’s called a phaser. That stands for ... P utting! your Hands! Away! from your Sides! Is! Required!”
The old man blinked, seemingly in confusion. “I don’t think that spells ‘phaser’.”
“He’s right,” Tara added, “you need something for ‘E’ to, y’know, stand...” She trailed off as she noticed Gunn giving her a don’t-help-me look. She was feeling more apprehensive than ever; in spite of having him outweaponed, Tara was getting the nagging feeling that the old man had the upper hand. There was a sense of contained, channeled energy coming from him, like the power eminating from a warp core. The miniature Antartica in her mid-section reached up her spine as the horrible thought came unbidden: He’s an Augment!
If Gunn had noticed this, he gave no outward sign. “I’m not playing around, gramps. Don’t try anything funny.”
Again the amused, rather condescending twinkle. “You mean like this?” the old man quipped as he quickly slid a hand under his coat, as if going for a weapon.
Taking no chances, Gunn fired his phaser at the old man at more-or-less point-blank range. Then he blinked in incredulity: his target failed to fall down. He fired again. This time, he saw the old man twist out of the way of the beam.
Tara watched Gunn, for the third time, fired at the old man, only to have him dodge by mere millimeters. She could feel intense concentration and heightened perception from this seemingly-magical adversary. Shaking off her paralysis, Tara aimed and fired her own phaser. Incredibly, the old man seemed to anticipate this, avoiding the phaser beam by milliseconds and millimeters. Even when the two fired together, trying to catch the old man in a crossfire, he managed to twist his body in mid-air, over, under their phaser beams.
Tara was adjusting her aim for another shot when the old man glided towards her with preternatural grace. She fired again, gritting her teeth as he again avoided being hit. Gunn held his fire, wary of hitting the counselor accidently. A finger suddenly flicked out towards her wrist...
“Aaagh!” Tara’s phaser flew out of fingers suddenly rendered numb, as had most of her lower arm. The old man gave her a second’s disapproving glance and a wagging no-no finger, before turning back towards Gunn. The chief petty officer bided his time, waiting for a clear shot. The Master of Onada moved towards his second adversary, his focus never entirely leaving the young blonde woman while he absorbed every facet of her companion, the minute shifts of balance, the flickering of the eyes, the involuntary flutter of metacarpals, all part of a lexicon of body language that enabled the ancient, through skills honed over a century, to anticipate his opponent’s moves.
When the old man had moved far enough, Gunn fired again, twice more, missing the old man by millimeters even as he crept close enough to grasp Gunn’s wrist, twisting it so fast and hard that his phaser flew out of his hand...to drop right into the old man’s other hand. Helpless in the steely grip that immobilized his hand and arm, Gunn could only watch as the old man’s fingers moved like spiders over his weapon, deftly, minutely...
Tara gasped as Gunn’s phaser fell to the floor in pieces. Oh my God, he crushed it! was her initial thought... Then, after she reflexively blinked and looked again, she saw the components of the phaser -- pre-fire chamber, actuator, power cell and so on – were intact; the weapon had been expertly disassembled... with one hand.
The extraordinary task completed, the old man released Gunn’s wrist and stepped back, looking for all the world like a host at a garden party. “Now then,” he said, convivially but with the merest trace of condescension, “maybe we can continue this in a more –“
Pushed beyond his endurance, Gunn threw a right haymaker at the old man’s chin. Not unexpectedly, he didn’t connect, feeling his half-completed blow deflected and he himself propelled towards the wall. Instinctively, certain that his opponent would attack him from behind, he kicked backwards where the old man should have been. However, the Master of Onada has already noted the younger man shifting his balance to accomodate his defensive kick, and had already moved out of the way.
Meanwhile, Tara, moving as unobtrusively as she could, had put herself in the old man’s blind spot opposite Gunn. She knew she had virtually no chance in taking this guy out, but maybe she could distract him long enough for Gunn to get an edge...
Now. His back was turned to her as he dodged a series of punches from Gunn. Clasping her hands into a doubled fist, Tara launched a blow towards the old man’s neck...
...which he blocked at the last possible instant, his forearm stopping her strike like a steel beam. Gunn, hoping to seize the instant advantage, set his balance and threw a snap-kick to the mid-section. The old man managed to block it, but it was clear he was having to work at dealing with two opponents at once. Still, neither of them seemed to really lay a finger on the old man. He dodged, deflected and blocked their blows and kicks with relatively little effort. Granted, he didn’t seem inclined to counterattack...
Changing tactics, Tara tried bodily tackling the old man, trying to throw her arms around him in an effort to slow him down and enable Gunn to hit him at least once. The old man pivoted in place, somehow managed to propel Tara right into Gunn and knocking them both to the ground. The counselor grimaced slightly at Gunn by way of apology as she scrambled back to her feet. Gunn used the momentary cover of her body to retrieve his collapsable wand from his boot. Tara noted this and raised an eyebrow, rolled her eyes towards the old man to indicate her intentions to Gunn, who gave a barely perceptible nod in return.
Charging the old man with she hoped would be an intimidating series of yells and blows, Tara hoped to distract him long enough for Gunn, still holding his weapon close to his body, to nail this geezer. The old man easily sidestepped her, as she had planned, enabling her to get to the far side of him, to presumably draw attention away from the chief petty officer now swinging his wand in a wide arc...
...only to miss as, at the last possible instant, the old man bent backwards at the waist with the grace of a limbo dancer. Before either Gunn or Tara could take advantage of his position, he twisted and scrambled upright.
Gunn shifted his balance to swing his wand again as Tara readied a high kick at the old man’s head, again more hoping to provide a Gunn an opening than thinking she was going to knock their opponent out. Unexpectedly, a steely hand caught her ankle at the apex of her kick, effectively immobilizing her. At the same instant, the old man, while holding Tara’s leg up in the air, shot his other hand towards the approaching Gunn.
Gunn only caught a blur heading towards his midsection as he came forward, wand raised, when the entire right side of his body cramped up like the mother, grandmother and great-aunt of all charlie-horses. What felt like a sledgehammer knocked him back against the wall; his legs could not seem to find the strength to hold him upright.
Spinning back around in the next split-second, the old man’s foot swept Tara’s other leg from underneath her, causing the counselor to fall to the ground as he let go of her leg. Caught completely off-balance, she failed to orient herself to fall correctly as taught in self-defense classes; she took most of the fall on her right buttock.
Gamely, Gunn tried to stand up, but he felt half his body was trapped in cement. The other half, by virtue of not being paralyzed by a precisely-delivered nerve-blow, just felt horrendous.
Wincing, Tara stood up, feeling the bruises already starting to form on her backside. And to think I was worried about teethmarks, the other day. Hope Willow likes purple, ‘cause my ass is gonna look like an eggplant pretty soon... She knew that renewing her attack on the old man was pointless, given that Gunn was effectively out of the match.
Curiously, the old man seemed to have no interest in further hostilies, regarding his erstwhile adversaries as a pair of eager, if somewhat backward, students. He retrieved his walking stick from where it had been balanced on point during the entire donnybrook, and turned back towards Tara with a bemused and not unkindly air. “I do hope we can continue this conversation more genially,” he said with hardly a trace of smugness.
“Um, I-I would like that,” Tara began, feeling somewhat foolish but unsure how otherwise to proceed. “We didn’t come here for a fight.”
The old man’s eyebrows arched. “You could have fooled me,” he muttered in a reprimanding tone. “After all, your greeting, not mine, lacked a certain bon ami.”
Tara conceded that he had a point. “I know. Y’see, we had already been attacked in this warehouse by a bunch of thugs, one of whom had t-taken Willow...” She pointed towards the unconscious girl a couple of meters away.
“Yes, I know, I wasn’t able to help you with them,” said the old man, displaying what seemed to be genuine regret, “I had lost track of you in this slap-dash maze of rooms and corridors. But I was able to get here before that fellow could shoot her.”
Tara’s eyes followed over to where the old man’s hand was pointing...and nearly bugged out as she saw the dead Cardassian against the wall near the far entrance to the room. “Ohhh...you did that? Um, thank you...”
Gunn had managed to get his legs underneath him and, using the wall to brace himself, force himself to stand upright. His sight wavered as he overcame excruciating pain...only to fall again as his overloaded nervous system failed him once again.
Tara and the old man glanced in his direction as Gunn involuntarily grunted in pain. “Ah. Well, perhaps I should sort your friend out,” the old man averred as he strode to where Gunn sat slumped against the wall, trying to find the energy to take a full breath. Kneeling down easily (once again, Tara was struck by how strong and limber he was, like a man of thirty instead of – in her estimation – a century or more) he stuck a thumb high into Gunn’s chest. Before either of the two could protest, the old man made a sharp, decisive movement. Tara would later swear she hear a mild cracking sound, like the popping of air bubbles. For now, she could sense the almost unbearable agony Gunn was feeling suddenly dim down to a dull ache. Gunn, for his part, felt an almost orgasmic relief as his body once again came under his command.
Crossing over to Gunn, as the old man stood and moved aside to make room for her, she knelt down to see to him. At the same time, an odd yet familiar light was starting to illuminate itself in her mind: Willow was regaining consciousness...
“How do you feel?” Tara asked, somewhat unnecessarily but mainly to give them all some time.
Grinning wearily, the chief petty officer sighed. “Feel like a million dollars. Too bad we don’t use money anymore.”
Tara chuckled, then turned her attention back to the old man as a thought struck her. “Wait a second...you said you knew we had been attacked. You followed us here?”
“Yes. I’ve actually been looking for evidence of genetic engineering on this planet; I ran across you and your friends a few days ago by coincidence. It seems that we’ve been working at more or less the same goals, judging by what I’ve learned about some of the inquiries you’ve made.”
Tara wasn’t sure how much she should reveal of their mission to this stranger. “What’s your interest in genetic engineering?”
The old man’s face hardened. Tara had a hard time getting a solid empathic impression from him, but she was pretty sure his emotional state fell far short of equinamity. “Let’s just say, for the moment, I’m looking for an old...aquaintance.” His lined face then quirked up in a smile. “Speaking of old acquaintances, there is the matter of the young lady behind me...”
“What’s your interest in her?” Tara queried, a bit more sharply than she had intended.
If the old man picked up on the depth and nature of Tara’s interest, he gave no outward sign. He merely affected an offhand expression and replied, “That’s a story for more casual surroundings than this place...which, now that she’s apparently woken up, judging by the way you are judiciously avoiding looking at her... He trailed off as he saw Tara’s crestfallen expression.
Willow, for her part, wasn’t sure who this man was, or how she had gotten here, or why Tara and Gunn were so wary of him. However, she had her own phaser, and she pointed it now at his back. “Don’t move,” she said in her best commanding tone.
Very slowly, the old man turned towards her. “I never thought that so much time would pass,” he intoned evenly, “that you would ever point a phaser at me, Willow Rosenberg.”
With her empathic senses, and her clear view of Willow’s face, Tara could feel her lover’s confusion turn to recognition…and an almost palpable joy.
“Captain Cumberland?!?
Francisco Cumberland, the last captain of the original starship Hannibal, Willow’s former commanding officer back in the twenty-third century, gazed with fond affection at his former junior science officer. “I always knew we’d meet again, mi hija…but you picked the damnedest place for a reunion!”
_________________ Love is an angel, disguised as lust Here in our bed until the morning comes -- Patti Smith, "Because The Night (Belongs to Lovers)"
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