Story:Bait and Switch/A Nightmarish Rage

We materialize on a wooded hillside and I have to adjust my footing immediately. It’s dark, but the area is lit up by a burning building about fifty meters ahead. I flick on the underslung flashlight on my rifle’s rail. “Athezra, Cdebaat, take point. K’lak, rearguard.”

“Aye, Captain,” Chief Athezra confirms. He raises his rifle and moves ahead of us with the Tellarite. I count to five and follow, moving to cover their advance. Tess has her minigun slung and is covering with her pistol, and Biri and I have our rifles held across our chests as we move from cover to cover.

We come to the building. Standard colony prefab, plastic construction with duracrete foundation. Staying clear of the flames I pull my tricorder and run a low-power scan. “Got traces of accelerant,” I mutter. “Sher hahr kosst, the bastards used a flamethrower on this.”

“I got bodies!” McMillan calls from around front. I run around the side to join her. Six or seven, all Bajoran. I kneel by one lying face-down, and check for a pulse. Nothing. I roll the corpse over. Light-skinned woman, maybe twenty-six, brown hair, high cheekbones, dark eyes staring blankly off at the night sky, shot in the gut with a disruptor. I recognize the burn pattern from that terrible night on the Kira over a decade ago. Definitely a KDF-pattern weapon, a compression-style pistol if I were to guess. At least she died quickly. I mutter a quick prayer for the dead to the Prophets and brush her eyelids closed.

“Captain!” K’lak calls. “Over here!” The Klingon and McMillan are on their stomachs at the crest of the hill. The rest of us run over and hit the ground. K’lak hands me his binoculars. “Those two buildings down the hillside.”

I look through and zoom in. A pair of two-story buildings in a clearing at the bottom of the hill, mostly burned out and—“Got ‘em. Five, no, six greenskins. Looks like they’ve got a couple of hostages, one up, one down.”

“Can I see, ma’am?” Tess asks. I pass her the binocs. “Well, they’re agitated about something.”

“Probably trying to figure out what happened to their ride,” McMillan says. “Sir, you want to set up here?” K’lak grunts an affirmative and extends the bipod on his rifle while McMillan reaches into his backpack for the spotting scope. “We’ll stay up here and cover you, ma’am.”

“I’ll wait for your signal, Captain,” K’lak agrees.

I give them a thumbs-up and get up, moving carefully down the steep hillside towards the pathway between the two buildings. It takes about two minutes to reach the buildings. Tess holsters her pistol and unslings the minigun and we work our way around to the front, opposite the hill. I lean against the cover of the building, feeling the duracrete still warm from the fires that burned inside, hand-signaling the lighter-armed Biri and Athezra to go across to the opposite building, quietly, and I wait.

I overhear one of the greenskins say something into a communicator, then say more loudly, “I can’t raise the ship, boss. Something’s wrong.”

I count off on my hand from five, then jump out from cover with my rifle raised and hit the amplifier on my armor. “This is Starfleet! Throw down your weapons!”

“I’ll kill her!” one of them yells, grabbing a sobbing woman—no, girl, she can’t be more than fourteen—and holding his pistol to her head.

“K’lak, take him!” I bark into my combadge. A single bright orange particle beam lances out from the hilltop and neatly skewers the Orion’s head from behind. The girl is aware enough to hit the ground as I pull the trigger on my rifle and strike another of them full in the chest. He stumbles backward and tries to bring his own weapon to bear but Cdebaat hits him again and he goes down.

A disruptor shot hisses into my shields. I swing the rifle and trigger a burst in its direction and the greenskin dives for cover behind a large chunk of fallen wall material. I stand and flatten against the wall as more beams hiss past me.

I hear a whine from over my shoulder and suddenly a spectacular spray of purple bolts goes past me. One of the greenskins takes it full in the front and flies backwards with a dozen holes in him, while number five, this one with a personal shield, gets to cover in one piece. I hear Tess yelling something in Andorian but I can’t tell what over the racket from her weapon.

I advance with Athezra while Biri and Cdebaat fire their rifles past to keep them honest. An Orion pokes his head out of cover with his gun, but I spot him and shoot him in the face and half his head paints the wall behind him. Another throws a grenade blindly over their cover. I go right, Athezra dives forward and the detonation sends a wash of heat over me. “I’ve lost my shields!” Athezra yells. Another orange lance reaches out from K’lak’s position and hits behind the Orions’ cover. One jerks to his feet and Cdebaat shoots him in the side and sends him sprawling.

“I say again, throw out your weapons and surrender! Last chance to live, you damn greenskin!” The last Orion says something my universal translator refuses to elaborate on, pops up with weapon leveled, and Biri, Tess, Cdebaat and I all shoot him at once. His shield generator explodes with a shrieking crack and sends bits of him everywhere.

“Check the civilians!” I bark at nobody in particular. I run over to the girl. She’s basically fine but won’t stop crying. and begging, “I don’t wanna die! I don’t wanna die!” in Hathoni dialect.

''“Shel na tal. Vo bo tal shek.'' You’re fine. You’re safe now,” I gently say to her in Hathoni. She’s still shaking and crying. “Look, look at me.” I grab her head in both hands and force her to look me in the eye. “Look at me, at my face. I’m Bajoran, not Orion. You’re safe, understand?” She’s still sniffling a bit but at least she isn’t outright wailing anymore.

“Skipper, this one’s been shot!” Tess shouts to me in English.

“Biri!” I yell over my shoulder. She may be my science officer but she’s trained in field medicine.

“On it, Eleya!”

“Talk to me,” I say to the girl. “What’s your name?”

She sniffles. “Ansela. Shakaar Ansela.”

Oh boy. “Shakaar? As in the former First Minister?”

“No relation.”

“Whew.” That’s a relief. At least I don’t have to deal with Bajoran politics on top of all the rest of this mess. “Are you hurt anywhere?”

“They took my mother. They shot my father in front of me.”

“Where did they take your mother?”

“Beamed her out.”

“When?”

“I don’t know!”

She starts crying again. I’m not going to get anything else out of her like this, so I slap my combadge. “Eleya to bridge, get me Dr. Shree. I need to send her a guest for a while.”

“Shree here.”

“I’ve got a traumatized fourteen-year-old for you. Mother’s MIA, father’s dead, she’s physically fine but I don’t have the training to deal with this and there’s more greenskins down here.”

There’s a pause. “Captain, I keep telling you to do something about that racism of yours.”

“You can criticize my feelings on the enemy later, Shree. Right now I need to do your job.”

“I am doing my job.”

“No, I am not dealing with this right now! I’m in a phekk’ta war zone! I’ve been able to get her name, Shakaar Ansela, but nothing else. I need you to take her until I’m sure the area’s secure. Need me to make it an order? ‘Cause I will.”

“All right, fine, send her up. Anybody ever tell you you’re a terrible patient?”

I pretend I didn’t hear the last part. “Thank you.” I turn back to the girl. “Listen, Ansel, I’m sending you to a friend of mine. No, no, focus on my face. I’m sending you to a very good friend. Her name is Shree. She’s on my ship, and she’s going to take care of you for a little while. Is that all right?” Ansel nods. “Okay then. Chief Bandicek, one to beam directly to Dr. Shree’s office.” Blue sparkles wash over the girl and she fades from existence.

I turn around and dash over to Biri, who’s running a tricorder over the other Bajoran. Male, I’d say mid-forties, green-eyed carrot-top, wearing a muddy tunic that was probably white at some point. Disruptor burns to the right shoulder. “How is he?” I ask Biri.

“I’ll live,” her patient answers. Who—Ahel Bajor’eta,” he suddenly says in an startled tone in Hathoni.

“Yes, I’m Bajoran,” I respond. “Who are you?”

“Surmak Remal, town council. Ansela’s my niece.”

“Kanril Eleya, Captain, USS Bajor.”

The man swells about a size, smiling despite the pain. “By the Prophets, one of ours, a Starfleet captain. That’s wonderful! OW!” he suddenly says as Biri jabs his carotid with a hypospray. Then he blinks rapidly, probably to clear the medicine fuzz out of his eyes.

“What’s the Orion Syndicate doing here?”

“Raiding for slaves, I’d wager. They showed up about four hours ago and started beaming people out. Anyone who mouthed off or fought back, like our local Militia unit, they shot. Although they stopped beaming folks out and started torching buildings, I think for laughs, about half an hour ago.”

I run the math in my head. Half an hour ago would be at least ten minutes before we arrived, which means it’s likely there was another ship in orbit that left before we arrived, so we didn’t blow up any hostages with the battleship. Then I realize there’s something that doesn’t add up so well. “Wait, go back a page. Four hours ago? DS9 only picked up the distress signal an hour ago.”

“You got a distress signal? That means—OW!”

“Sorry,” Biri says, and adjusts something on her protoplaser.

He shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it, I’m former Starfleet myself.” Off my look, “Security noncom, got out in ‘04. Anyway, if you’re here, that means Captain Jerek got through to the backup transmitter in town hall after all. Maybe they’re still alive.”

“Where’s town hall?”

“South of here, past the stone archway.”

I turn away and pan a tricorder in that direction. “Reading about a dozen life signs, some Bajoran, some Orion. Also burned buildings.”

“Like I said, they were burning our houses for laughs. And, damn, our workshops, too. Tholis gets by on furniture sales. We make furniture from local woods and sell it down the mountain and offworld. Even if they hadn’t kidnapped so many of us they’ve destroyed our livelihoods.”

“Eleya,” Biri says, “I’ve done what I can for him but there’s a lot of deep tissue damage. He’s going to need Warragul to look at him.”

“Mr. Surmak?”

“Go ahead, send me up. Just make sure Ansela knows.”

“Chief Bandicek,” I say into my combadge, “one to beam directly to sickbay. Bridge, inform Shakaar Ansela that her uncle is on the ship in sickbay.” More blue sparkles as he’s beamed out. I hand-signal everyone to form up and move out.

We move south, past a natural stone arch draped in moss and reach a clearing with several burned houses in it. More bodies, and a vegetable garden that was once neatly manicured but has been partly trampled. Among the bodies is a dead greenskin slumped against a pile of crates. We run over and Biri checks him with her tricorder. “Based on these readings, he was killed with a Type 2 phaser. Definitely a Bajoran Militia model, too.”

Suddenly a disruptor bolt strikes Chief Athezra full in the chest. He screams as he flies backwards and the rest of us hit the ground as more bolts and beams shriek out of the woods. I grunt as I land painfully on my phaser rifle. I hit my combadge. “McMillan, we’re pinned! I can’t see a thing! You see anything from your angle?”

“Hold on. Got ‘em. Four Orion males, thirty-two meters ahead of you at the treeline.” I overhear her say to K’lak, “Sir, if you’d do the honors? Reference, large stump that looks like your—”

A searing orange lance hisses over our heads. Somebody ahead of us shrieks in pain as I unsling my grenade launcher and pull a proton grenade off my belt. I arm the charge, crack the breech, shove the grenade into the barrel, and snap it shut. More disruptor fire, some fired blindly at K’lak’s sniper perch well beyond their effective range. I link the launcher’s electronics to my tricorder, find a target, angle the weapon into the air, and yell, “Grenade out!” There’s a sound that goes something like choonk as the mass accelerator in the launcher throws the grenade, then a thunderclap, followed by an eerie silence as a fireball rises over the partially trampled katterpod stalks in front of us.

Tess rises into a crouch with her pistol ready and makes her way forward; I cover her with my rifle. She checks ahead of her with her tricorder and signals all clear. “Your grenade was a TPK, ma’am. One of them had a flamethrower and you set off the fuel tank.”

We get up and run over to Athezra. He’s twitching but alive. “I’m all right, Captain! ARRGH!”

“No, you’re not, Chief,” Biri says, “you just took a disruptor set to kill right in the chest. Now hold still!” She jams a hypospray into his neck a little harder than strictly necessary and slaps her combadge. “Riyannis to bridge, Chief Athezra needs an emergency beam out. Single EWW to the chest, but conscious and lucid. Send him straight to sickbay.”

Chief Bandicek’s voice comes through her badge. “Affirmative, beaming out.”

Secondhand via McMillan’s combadge, I overhear K’lak say, “Ensign, what are you doing comparing a tree stump to my—”

Tess dryly comments, “McMillan, you know your combadge is still transmitting, right?”

There’s a loudness-distorted “OH GOD!” Then I don’t hear anything else apart from Biri struggling to hold back a paroxysm of laughter.

One man short, we advance through another grove of trees, past a burned-out, formerly two-story storehouse with packing crates piled up next to it, and begin climbing a hill. At its crest is a squat one-story building with a canvas portico. I see more greenskins, including a scantily clad matron, clustered around the door, and drop flat. I pan my tricorder over the building. “Got five life signs inside, all Bajoran.”

I hear the matron bang on the door and yell, “Open up in there! Open up in there!”

“Skipper,” Cdebaat whispers, “We can take them even without Chief Athezra.”

I nod. “Move in slow and quiet, and shoot to kill.” We get up, advancing by fire and movement. We’re less than ten meters away when I hear a sharp crack. Somebody stepped on a branch. The Orions spin around and raise their weapons but I shoot first and hit one of the males below the left clavicle. The force of the shot spins him around and he goes down, hitting his head on the wall and landing sprawled. Tess rakes the side of the building with her minigun and sends the others looking for cover. Biri opens fire with her rifle and a stream of particles reaches out and hits another of the males in the top of the head.

“I lost the matron,” Cdebaat shouts. “Where’d she—GHALK!”

I spin and the matron comes around a tree and is in my face kicking the rifle out of my hands. She raises a pistol in her right hand but I sidestep, grab her wrist and yank, hard. I bring my right fist down on her hand and smash the gun out of it. Still moving I sweep my right leg into her stomach. I grab her head, smash it into my armored knee and she goes down. The sound of firing is muffled. My ears are ringing as she rolls over and I dive on top of her with my knee landing in her midsection and start hammering her face with my power-armored fists over and over. And over. And over.

Somebody grabs my arm, I throw the hands off. Then somebody tackles me off the matron and holds me down. I swing and connect but the blue-skinned Orion grabs my wrist and presses it into the ground.

Then my brain catches up with my eyes. The blue skin belongs to Tess, not an Orion, and she’s screaming into my face, “Eleya! Stand down!”

I just lie there for a moment. All I can say is, “Tess.”

“Yes, it’s Tess, it’s your friend. You back? You went full-on section 8 for a minute there.”

“I’m back.”

She gets off me and I sit up. “What the hell happened?”

I look over at the matron, whose entire head is a bloody ruin, and the arm I grabbed is bent at an impossible angle. I look at my armor’s gauntlets, covered in blood and bits of flesh and brain matter. I look back to Tess, whom I now notice has a split lip. “I have no idea.”

“Eleya, you know I’m no stranger to killing people, but I’ve never seen anyone just lay into someone like that. You beat her to death with your—okay, not with your bare hands but you know what I mean.”

“What happened to the rest of them? What about Cdebaat?”

“That matron had a stealth module. Got the drop on him and broke his neck. Nothing we can do. The other Orions are dead, too.” Biri walks over, grabs Tess by the chin and runs a dermal regenerator over her split lip. “Birail, get off, I can do that myself.” She grabs the regenerator and starts using it on her mouth.

I wipe my gloves off on the matron’s loincloth, spit out a bit of her blood from my mouth, and step over to the console by the doorway to see if I can contact the Bajorans hiding inside. I tap the screen for the doorbell function and a brown-skinned woman maybe a couple years younger than me appears. “I thought I told you sons of Pah-Wraiths to—Hang on, you’re not an Orion. Who are you?”

“Captain Kanril Eleya, USS Bajor.”

“What happened to the Orions?”

“I did.”

She snorts. “Ha ha. Let me see some identification before I believe you are who you say you are. Slide it under the door.” I pop the chestplate on my armor, withdraw my Starfleet credential, and shove it under the doorway. A couple moments later there’s the heavy click-clack of a deadbolt and the door opens, and five Bajoran Militia troopers, weapons held ready, warily step out into the predawn twilight.

“Jerek Enya,” she introduces herself, “Captain of the Tholis militia detachment. So, our message did get through after all.” She looks stern but I can see fatigue in her eyes, and something else.

“Yeah, DS9 got it about an hour ago. It’s over.”

“No, it’s not,” she says, leaning forward. “The Orions shot thirty of us that I saw, men, women, children, anyone who fought back or mouthed off, and beamed away over fifty.”

“I thought this place had over 700 people in it,” Tess queries.

“Most of the town’s at a festival down the mountain. The spaceport’s had heavy antiorbital guns since the Dominion War and hitting it would’ve been suicide.”

“You fought back,” I tell her. “You did right.”

“I started with twenty men. Five died holding the datanet transceiver against the Orions. They took a flamethrower to the building. Five more died defending civilians, and I lost the others trying to break through to the backup transmitter here in town hall. I even picked up Surmak, ex-Starfleet security guy, but he didn’t last five minutes.”

“Surmak’s fine,” I tell her, “and so’s his niece. We found them a few minutes ago and beamed them out.”

“Oh, that’s good.” Her knees suddenly give out and she goes down, hard, slumping against the building. “I’m sorry,” she says, looking like she’s near tears.

I kneel in front of her. “First time in a real fight?”

“I’ve never even fired my weapon outside the range before. Captain, this wasn’t a fight, it was a massacre.”

Now I know what the look in her eyes reminds me of. It’s me. She’s me, ten years ago on the gunnery deck of the Kira Nerys.

My combadge chirps and JG Park’s voice comes through. “Bridge to Captain Kanril.”

“Go ahead, Park.”

“The Jadzia Dax and Amaterasu just arrived in orbit and they’re sending down supplies and medical personnel. We read a cluster of life signs about four klicks east-southeast of your position. Surviving civilians, we think.”

“Never mind that, get me Admiral Marconi immediately.”

“Aye, Skipper. I’ll have Esplin pipe the feed through your tricorder screen.”

A moment later the screen lights up with the face of an officious-looking Tellarite petty officer. “Admiral Marconi’s office.”

“This is Captain Kanril of the Bajor. I need to speak with the admiral immediately.”

“I’m afraid the admiral is busy. Can I take a—”

“I don’t believe this, does it say ‘captain’ anywhere on my uniform? You either put me through now, or you get to explain to Starfleet Command why you interfered with a superior officer in the conduct of her duties. Is that clear, Petty Officer?”

It’s clear enough, apparently, as he promptly forwards me. If Marconi was in a bad mood before, now he looks frankly shellshocked. “Let me guess, Kanril: Orions again?”

“Yes sir. Wait, ‘again’?”

“We’ve got reports coming in they’ve raided ships and backwater planets all over the sector block and nearby areas nearly simultaneously. At least twenty-five raids in all. What did they do at Dreon VII?”

“Blew up anything in orbit, beamed in, kidnapped at least fifty people—I don’t have an exact count—from an isolated village called Tholis, shot anyone who fought back, and burned the place down for good measure.”

He nods. “Fits the M.O.” I hear the Tellarite say something unintelligible from offscreen and Marconi turns his head. “What’s that, Petty Officer? They’re sending whom?” Somebody hands him a PADD, which he skims and tosses out of the frame. “Captain, I’ve just been ordered by Fleet Admiral Riker to release the Bajor and the Amaterasu from my command. You are to rendezvous with USS Marduk, flagship Marduk Carrier Battle Group, and place yourselves at the disposal of Admiral Amnell Kree. I’m sending you the necessary files now.”

“Sir, I’m needed more here.”

“Captain, you’ve been in Starfleet long enough to know that you’re needed where Starfleet says you’re needed. The Dax can handle the mop-up: They’ve got the best medical team of any ship in the sector and they’re beaming in specialists from all over the planet. Frankly I’m the one who deserves to complain about you being reassed. I started this week expecting to have three more ships to protect the sector block and now I’m only up by one.”

I’m not really sure what to say to that, so I ask him what he knows about Admiral Kree. “She’s a Trill, and a former Peregrine pilot. Scored nineteen confirmed kills during the Dominion War, including a Galor-class at Third DS9. Now Command’s got her in charge of a permanent task force they use for troubleshooting and surgical strikes. She’s a bit of a jerk but she gets the job done.”

“I know the type, sir. I suppose I’d better be on my way.”

“Good luck, Captain.” The tricorder screen goes blank.

“Chief Bandicek, five to beam up, one to beam to the ship’s morgue.”

Author's Notes
A little bit of terminology here:
 * "EWW" is my Trekkified version of "GSW". Instead of "gunshot wound", it's "energy weapon wound".
 * "TPK" I just borrowed straight out of tabletop gaming parlance. If you don't know already, it means "total party kill".
 * "Section 8" is US military slang for crazy, after a (now defunct) category of medical discharge for mental illness.

Eleya's "Does it say 'captain' anywhere on my uniform?" line is a reference to one of Jack O'Neill's lines in the  episode "The First Commandment".

Fleet Admiral Riker is, indeed, supposed to be William T. Riker from TNG.