Betrayal

Posted on Mon Feb 27th, 2023 @ 5:13pm by Lieutenant JG Teh'dri Caix & Doctor Samantha Knight, DSci. & Vestra
Edited on on Wed Mar 29th, 2023 @ 6:04pm

2,186 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 0: New Sheriff in Town
Location: Surface of Vela IV
Timeline: TBD
Tags: story

Doctor David Ross was pacing back and forth nervously. 'This is not how things were supposed to go', he thought. He sighed as he took a seat on a rock and waited for Samantha to return, hopefully alone. He closed his eyes and shook his head as he wondered how he developed such poor judgment during what could only be called a midlife crisis.

David had accrued a substantial gambling debt at an underground establishment several months prior to the expedition to Vela IV. He had been required by his criminal debtors that the only way to settle up would be to arrange for the theft of all the artifacts at the end of the expedition. He did not know that those coming to collect the artifacts were going to eliminate the expedition team members and destroy the transport ship sent to retrieve the team and cargo.

David jumped up as the sound of loose stones rattling down a hill came from behind him. He glanced fearfully at the low hill. "Samantha is...is that you?"

Moments later, a single Orion woman and two heavily armed Nausicans came over the small rise. A sneer spread across the woman’s face. “I’ve been called a lot of things before. Samantha wasn’t one of them though.”

She came to a stop, resting one foot leasurely on a large stone. Her hand fell to her belt as if in a casual manner, but it came to rest on the pommel of a long narrow blade. She gave the man a once over, assessing him in person for the first time. He was shorter than she’d expected. “A pleasure to see you in person, Doctor.”

David felt a momentary surge of anger as he stepped forward. "You were supposed to disable the ship's warp engines and tractor the first shuttlecraft into your boat deck. We had a plan that was to avoid unnecessary casualties."

“Last I checked, the ship’s warp engines were quite disabled,” she said with a sinister snarl in her voice. “As for the unnecessary casualties’, there was a change of plans. Starfleet and their silly little uniforms are in our way. So we cleared some obstacles. While we’re on the topic of changed plans though, I’d like to point out that you, Doctor, were supposed to stay on your shuttle. Imagine my surprise when we tractored it in and found only the pilot, and learned you’d leapt out of the ship into the jungle in a panic. And now, you’ve got me traipsing through the forest to find you when I could have done all this from the comfort of my ship.”

David gave Vestra an incredulous look. "Your interceptor destroyed a shuttle and pursued us. What did you expect me to do? You’ve already double-crossed me."

"Oh, but we were very careful, David," Vestra said, injecting plenty of venom into his name. "We destroyed the shuttle you weren't on. Your shuttle would have only been disabled. If you didn't have the heart for this, you shouldn't have gone into business with us."

David scoffed derisively at Vestra's statement as he shook his head. "Like I had a choice. I was swindled by your brother at his gambling den. Fortunately, I still have the one thing that you need to make this venture profitable. The translation key."

Vestra clapped. “Excellent. Then my trip down here was worth it after all.” She stepped forward with a hand outstretched expectantly. “Shall we finish our business then?”

David shook his head and waggled a finger at Vestra. "The translation key is somewhere safe. You will get the location of the key when I and Samantha are safely on our way to Starbase Arcadia."

Vestra grimaced. "Ooh so the other one survived too huh? I don't particularly care for loose ends." She drummed her fingers on the handle of her pistol. "How about this? You give me the translation key and I don't send my men out to find Samantha. As a bonus, I'll even throw in enough supplies to last you until the second rescue ship arrives."

David shook his head. He wasn't about to trust Vestra, much less her Nausican goons. "The true value of the artifacts can only be realized with the translation key. No safe passage for Samantha and myself, no key. I have need to resolve my debt. Once you've got that key, I become one of those loose ends. You know I am not going to the authorities with a 20 year sentence at a penal facility hanging over my head."

"David, I think you might be misunderstanding the dynamic at play here. We just destroyed a vessel from the dominant power in the region, with little concern. What makes you think you're in any position to negotiate?" Vestra said, taking a few steps closer.

The two Nausicans hoisted their disruptor rifles to the low ready as they slowly moved to flank David as Vestra started to close the gap with the middle-aged scientist. One of the goons sneered. "Five minutes and I could have this human begging to tell you where this key is."

David swallowed hard as fear initiated a fight or flight response. He realized that he was dead the moment they found out that the translation key was a person and not a device.

Vestra's voice was cold now. "Now...I'm going to asks again. Where is the key?"

---50 METERS AWAY---

Samantha looked down the hill from their concealed position behind the rock outcrop she and Teh'dri were hiding behind. She glanced briefly at Teh'dri. "You able to hear anything?"

"The occasional word or two, but lacking context I was not able to gain any clarity. He stated something about a translation key?" Teh'dri said, straining to hear the words being spoken given their distance. "She appears to know him somehow."

Samantha looked back at David squared off against the trio as she shook her head. "There is no translation key. Just my notes on the symbols on the artifacts." She gave a long sigh. "Which are in my pack beside those small boulders on David's left." She could tell from the movement something violent was about to go down. "Damn. They're about to hurt or even kill David." She pulled the phaser at her side.

Teh'dri's own read of the situation was the same. She dug her phaser out of her internal jacket pocket, adjusting the settings to high stun and mid-level on the lethal node. The kill emitter flipped to the forward position. "Doctor, I believe we will be outgunned quite quickly if this becomes a shoot out. I would recommend not pulling your punches. Anything of note you can think of before this situation gets out of control?"

Samantha shrugged as she switched the kill emitter to the forward position. "Don't miss on the first shot." She took aim on the Nausican closest to her. "Ready."

"As am I," Teh'dri said, taking aim with her phaser. "3...2...1..."

Phaser fire rained down on the two Nausicans. One went down with a instant kill shot to the chest. The other spun around and fell to the ground with a wound to his shoulder. Vestra immediately dove for cover behind the rock she had put a foot on a few moments before. She drew her disruptor pistol and fired off a few wild shots that were meant more to make who had fired at her and her henchmen take cover than to actually hit a target.

David froze for a few seconds as he processed what was happening. He then stumbled backwards as he now drew a phaser from his inner jacket pocket. Unfortunately it was the last thing he ever did as the wounded Nausican fired at the stumbling archeologist, catching David center mass.

Samantha was pale as a ghost as she watched David go down. The only dead bodies she had seen up to this point were mummified remains of beings who had perished hundreds, if not thousands of years before.

Teh'dri was not a tactical officer, but her Starfleet training meant that she had a fairly strong awareness of her surroundings. Enough to notice the non-Starfleet trained Samantha freeze up when Doctor Ross was shot. Caix was going to try and verbally reach her, when she saw the Orion woman emerge from behind the rock, this time taking aim at them.

"Doctor, look out!" With a running leap, Teh'dri tackled Samantha to the ground seconds before weapons fire ripped through the brush behind them.

Vestra peered out from her cover cautiously. She looked at the body of the dead Doctor David Ross and mumbled a few Orion curses. She gestured for her surviving guard to get to cover and then called out to those on the low hill. "Well, this certainly didn’t turn out how I had planned. How about we just discuss matters before we all end up dead?"

The Science Officer propped her back up against a nearby rock and called out to the Orion. "I trust you'll understand if we remain a bit skeptical given the circumstances. What matters are we discussing?"

Vestra's eyes searched the hillside for a hint of where the two women had disappeared. "I'm not looking for anything too complicated. Doctor Ross was to provide us with a translation key for the writings from this set of ruins. Before your untimely interruption, he was about to provide that. I had no plans of harming him. Now, thanks to you, your friend is dead. I'll let that simmer on your conscience. But in the meantime, I have places to be and a further firefight with you wastes both our time. If you provide me with the key, we'll leave and allow your precious Starfleet to come rescue you. That's all. Give me the key and we can all just part ways."

From behind her cover, Teh'dri looked toward Samantha. She spoke at a whisper. "Doctor, given that they have superior numbers, firepower, and a vessel in orbit, I think we are in a difficult bargaining position. Do you have any idea why they want this key? Or where it is for that matter?"

Samantha gestured to a small boulder that her backpack was resting against. "My personal notes are on a data wafer in my backpack, but it is far from complete." She peeked down. It was just the Orion woman and her one surviving henchmen with the shoulder wound. "Take off back the way we came and hide in the ravine we passed about half a kilometer away. I am going to stall them for a minute or two and follow you."

Teh'dri didn't want to cause a long delay by arguing, so she prepared herself to sneak off. She did, however, meet the other woman's gaze. "I will meet you at the ravine. This is not the time for heroics, Doctor. That can come later when we are in a better position to respond."

Samantha gave a nod as Teh'dri started off. She needed to stall the Orion woman and her wounded Nausican cohort. "Here's the deal. The translation key is in my backpack down the hill near your Nausican friend. You will count to a hundred before looking for it or we blast the backpack and everything in it. Remember, we have the high ground at the moment."

There was a pause as the Orion considered her options in the moment. Deciding that she ultimately couldn't come up with a better plan, she relented with a sigh. "Fine, I accept your terms."

Samantha had a general idea of where Vestra and her henchmen were. She stuck her hand over the boulder and fired two shots in each of their general vicinity. "I Don't hear you counting," she shouted.

Vestra could have shot the woman with how annoyed she was, but that'd waste time. Her voice came out dripping with fury. "One....two...."

Samantha wasted no time. She started down the back side of the hill as soon as the counting began. Half way down the hill she took off at a sprint and was out of sight around another hill. She slowed to a strong jog. She would make it to the ravine and rendezvous with Teh'dri. Then hide until a rescue ship arrived.

The Nausican soon recovered both backpacks and brought them to Vestra. He handed a single data wafer found in Samantha's backpack and a standard tricorder from David's.

Vestra inserted the data wafer into the tricorder and discovered, much to her anger that the data wafer contained only a vague translation of a few of the artifacts. She reviewed some of the last few personal log entries for David Ross and slowly smiled as it became quite apparent that the real brains of the excavation was Samantha. She looked at the hill Samantha and whoever her companion had occupied ten minutes before. "Call the shuttle and prepare for an aerial search. We need to find those two and keep them alive and well....Well....Alive anyway."

END

 

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