A Montage of Terrors

Posted on Mon Mar 2nd, 2020 @ 3:37pm by Senior Chief Petty Officer Duran-Yeager Syal
Edited on on Fri Jan 1st, 2021 @ 5:19pm

Mission: Mission 41: The Changing of the Guard
Location: Various Locations - USS Crazy Horse
Timeline: 0345Hrs - August 13 - 23 2391

Day 1....



"So you're telling me," Nechayev spoke skeptically as she looked at the signed confession in her hand, then to the guest in front of her, "that you marched down here in the early hours of the night, to tell me you were the one that caused the explosion."

Zara did not care that Nechayev found her night clothes unappealing in front of an admiral. Her green track shorts and tank top were the only comfortable things she had that were clean.

"I did. Phoenix and I never got along," Zara explained very annoyingly. "Several occasions passed where people had to pry us apart before we killed each other."

"Problem is, Captain Tane...." Nechayev huffed in disbelief, "you are self-destructive. You've only ever gone out of your way to destroy your reputation, career, family life... SCIS does not believe you would sabotage Phoenix's fighter like this."

"I used a remote set-up, but it must of malfunctioned, for I only meant for the fuel cell to dump her gas and strand her a hundred yards from the ship, in front of every one. To make her a fool for all the times she made one of me," Zara spoke as she thought on all those nasty jokes and fights Phoenix started that made her so angry in the past.

"I'm not buying it," Nechayev sighed irritably.

"Doesn't matter if you don't." Zara leaned in to look Nechayev in the eye. "You get one of your most hated nemesis locked up, in exchange for ignoring the other."

Nechayev hit a call button and sighed, "All right Captain Tane. I'll enter your resignation and put you under arrest."

"Ma'am?" Came the voice of a dark-skinned man. He dwarfed Zara by a foot and stood behind her.

"She's surrendered to us. Take her into custody and get as much facts as you can," Nechayev ordered as she pointed to Tane.

Next thing Tane knew, she was cuffed and knocked out with the man's elbow....


Day 4....


At this point, Zara knew not where she was. The first few days were a blur of fists to the face, rotten food that gave her painful bowels of diarrhea and vomiting, and a bloody lip from it being busted in twelve places.

Sleep did not come either. For the guards made it their main purpose to send off klaxon sounds and bright lights. The training she had told her this was the breaking process. That Nechayev was after far more than a false confession.

The dehydration and lack of sleep, however, made it hard for Zara to think about that too deeply. And in that last medium of alertness and sleep she was in, her captors opened the cell.

Head injury or lack of energy, Tane did not know. But she could not fight them when they pulled her up off her padded mat and slammed her into an interrogation chair.

Part of her brain acknowledged the new tactic and subtlety tried to fight the bonds that cuffed her arms around and on the back of the chair.

"The Admiral is not convinced that your ship and crew are innocent of several past deeds," the bulky guard asked. Zara had no idea who he was. Never told her his name.

"I... I didn't," Zara coughed out a bit of blood from the left side of her mouth, as it took her all her energy to stabilize her head. The room seemed to never stop spinning these days. "I told you... everythin' there... is."

"No, you haven't. But you will, Tane." Next thing Zara saw was the massive man's fist to her face. Then blackness.


Day 8....


"She's too weak to stand. And she's stopped eating," Zara heard a male voice as she came to from her padded floor of her cell. She did not know the voice either. "...I think she knows the food has been making her sick. And she refuses the water for a similar reason."

"You were called down here because the boss wants you to keep her alive," came voice of the man she knew to be the dark-skinned man. His species was hard to make out because of her blurry vision.

"Intravenous solutions are the best we can hope for, but we are running out of time," the medic, Zara assumed told his superior.

"Phase Three it is, then," the dark-skinned man nodded and hit the call button on the wall. "She's lost the energy to scream. May as well take advantage of that now. Let's hook her up."

Zara fought. As much as she could, anyway. But three men rushed her all at once and dragged her out of her cell and back to the chair once more. Even without eating, she convulsed in her bonds as she vomited.

"That's Poly-Pentothine in your hand, Sir. That is Federation Intelligence stuff. So flush it out of her once you're done," the medic warned as she set up a hypodrip to keep Zara from passing out from fatigue. "More fluid drips in the cooling unit."

The one in charge, Dick, Zara decided to name him, nodded to the medic and had a seat in front of her.

"What is it that keeps you fighting this system? Not many have a strong willpower such as yourself," Dick noted with curiosity as she loaded what looked like a Klingon hyposyringe. "Not talking still?"

Zara worked hard to raise her head to glare at him in the eyes. What she would give for enough energy to yell at him.

"You will talk, I promise." Dick sneered as she hit Zara in the neck with the drug. "Next gen interrogation drug from Federation Intelligence. Your SCIS agent has probably used this illegally."

"She... has," Zara freely admitted. Why? She could not tell you.

"Have you or anyone in your crew committed blatant murder in the last year, that was not reported to your superiors?" Dick asked.

"Kam Raaboba... and Gonad," Zara answered just a freely and weakly.

"Who is the latter?"

"I... dunno. Didn' keep... up with pilots... much," Zara breathed laboriously at this point. The next thing Zara felt was another shot in her neck, which made her very alert of both her pain and lights.

"Try this again.... Who is Gonad?" Dick pressed for the answer.

"Captain... Jim Chymlier," Zara moaned painfully and fought hard against the wave of nausea. "Torilla killed him.... for trying to kill... her youngest."

"Now tell me about Kam Raaboba," Dick smiled evilly as Zara vomited in his face. Her world went black once more.