Fan Fiction/Labor Day 2010/Payback

GAME MANAGERS NOTE:

The story below contains descriptions of GRAPHIC VIOLENCE and may not be suitable to all readers.

Operation: Stiletto, Action #17

Stardate: 59322, Fri Sep 18 2381 21:38:00 (Central Daylight Time)(Terran Reckoning)
0244 hrs local time

Thirteen days after Operation: Masakari

Main spaceport, Ferenginar.

Gral’s ship had landed in its usual spot, a place of honor befitting his stature as a successful merchant. His crew, making the usual comments on how they would spend their latest fortune followed a few paces behind him. Rata, the ship’s cook was blabbering about buying fresh vegetables for the galley. Smeet his bodyguard made an off hand remark about a Dabo girl. Muk, his first officer had mentioned gambling, a prospect Gral found repugnant, why take unneeded risks with profit? It was beyond him. Frool, his second officer had been complaining he was hungry; the fool ate constantly Gral thought to himself. As they walked down the walkway, Gral noticed a pair of hooded figures moving to block their passage. Tog, Gral’s tactical officer, and final crew member made a move the intercept the tall humanoids. Gral threw up a hand to halt him as the two figures threw back their hoods and revealed they were Cardassian. “Out of my way, I have much business to attend to” Gral said, annoyed. One of the Cardassians only sneered at Gral and replied “You and your men will come with me” as he and his partner held open their cloaks to reveal the disruptor pistols they wore. Gral looked over his shoulder, past the worried expressions of his crew to see two more of the shadowy figures behind them. He turned back to the lead Cardassian and smiled, “Of course” he replied. “These crazy Spoonheads” Gral thought, “with their warped political ideals and their cloak and dagger approach to everything”. The cloak and dagger he found intriguing, the dissident part concerned him, most likely you could not bribe a dissident into letting you walk away from a bad deal. They made the most dangerous of customers.

The Ferengi followed the Cardassians to a dimly lit corner of the spaceport where they simply stopped in the middle of the walkway and looked as if they were waiting for someone else to show themselves.

High above the party of Ferengi, a lone man watched the group through the scope of a rifle. Covered in black rags he blended perfectly with his dark surroundings. His callsign was “Golem” and like his namesake he had been molded from the clay of his past life. Born anew to defend the Maquis and all they held dear. Golem was a member of the Maquis SOC’s ultra secret Epsilon section, a group of elite special operators whose mission profile included everything from simple reconnaissance and intelligence gathering to “direct action” terror/counter terror operations and assassination.

His rifle, an XMR-5A2, it fired a caseless 12.7mm projectile. The ammunition he and his team leader had selected for this operation was a hollowed out version of the standard 12.7mm cartridge filled with a special polymer that turned into a rapidly expanding gas on impact. This meant that when the projectile struck its target, the polymer would force the round to expand from its normal diameter of 12.7mm to just over 30mm. To put this in perspective, the bullet would enter at just a little smaller than an old Terran “nickel” and, make an exit wound about the size of a dinner plate. The rifles he and his teammates now carried were fitted with an additional sound suppressor to muffle the report of the weapon. Most operations of this type would use phasers, but energy weapons would set off alarms. This was meant to be messy. The maximum amount of violence was called for here.

He and five other members of his team looked down on the group from various vantage points.

The Ferengi and their Cardassian escorts had waited only a few moments when out of the shadows appeared a Breen officer with three bodyguards. The bodyguards moved out around the officer, taking up defensive positions nearby, and then drew their sidearms taking aim at the Ferengi. Suddenly, Gral noticed the Cardassians were nowhere to be found. He turned back to the Breen officer and spoke, “General Enron, as always a pleasure”. The officer replied in a mechanical voice. “Enough of your meaningless blathering Gral.” To which Gral replied, “But general, I was merely expressing my respect to a man of your stature”. The Breen laughed and then removed his helmet to reveal long auburn hair with a pretty face and piercing green eyes. Gral recoiled, “You’re not General Enron” as he stared mouth agape at a human woman. The woman smiled a wicked smile and replied “No, but he’s met a similar fate”.

“It’s a trap!” Tog exclaimed as he threw a hand to his holstered phaser. A large caliber slug tore the arm off at the shoulder before he could unfasten the retaining strap, another striking him low in the chest, flinging his body against the bulkhead a few feet away. Tog slid lifelessly down the wall into a crumpled heap. Muk began to cry out and a large caliber slug tore off his lower jaw, followed half a second later by another that struck him in the middle of his back, eviscerating him. Rata, fell to the deck Where he curled into a fetal position and began whimpering and crying for mercy. A heavy projectile tore through Smeets upper right chest at a downward angle exiting about where a human spleen would be. The momentary cavitation caused by the round pulverizing Smeets insides and splattering them against the deck beside him. Frool, in shock and not knowing what to do was shot down as he stared awestruck at the violence around him.

In the midst of the carnage the woman relived the last day of her old life, her life before Epsilon. She had been engaged to a handsome Marine Lieutenant named Victor Romanov. She’d had only a few months left on her own enlistment when she had been “interviewed” by several “Big Brass” types whose faces were hidden in shadow. They had asked a great number of questions about how she felt about the Maquis, and how she thought things could be improved in their defense. A few days later she had been given a choice, a choice to either continue her life or make a real difference. After weighing her options she chose to give Victor his freedom and disappear from all she had known. No easy choice, but there was a higher calling to heed here. The last morning of her “normal life”, she had awakened before Victor, which wasn’t hard to do, as he enjoyed his sleep. Gently she kissed him and whispered her goodbye into his ear as he stirred; she slipped out of the house and made her way to the place where her old life would die.

Very cliche she thought now, the “accident” that would take her away from her old life involved a hover car out of control, ramming into a public transporter. Civilian transporters being slower than the military equivalent made for the perfect means to “whisk” her away at the last second, replacing her with a genetic copy. The officials would have DNA evidence along with a “body” and the incident would be quickly glossed over to avoid too many witnesses and questions.

She had kept tabs on Victor, soon after her “death” he had resigned his commission in the Marines and left their home on Nivoch. He spent a few months serving as a security officer on a merchant freighter in and around the Badlands finally ending up on Havaris. There, he had helped the fledgling government as a member of the Militia.

Gral turned this way and that, there was nowhere to run. “I’m sure we can make some sort of bargain?” he exclaimed, looking so save his life. The humans’ eyes seemed to take on a fire as she said “Mene, mene, tekel Upharsin”.
Slowly she drew a sidearm and took aim at his chest. “What, what is that?” Gral asked trying to buy time to think. "It has been counted and counted, weighed and divided.” She replied as the weapon fired with a slight hiss. Gral, stunned looked to his chest to see a small feathered object protruding where a huge hole should be. He looked back to the woman with a questioning expression. She smiled as she answered his look, “Don’t worry Gral, it’s only a neurotoxin. It won’t kill you. It only causes a short lasting paralysis.” Gral fell forward onto his face as the drug took effect.

The woman moved to Gral and turned him over. Staring into his frozen eyes and, with no small amount of venom in her voice said “This is for Victor and all the other innocent people on Havaris that paid for your greed”. She held a knife before his eyes, a blade of Bajoran manufacture. She drove the blade into the Ferengi’s throat, cutting his vocal cords so that when the neurotoxin wore off he would be unable to cry for help.

As she slashed, she remembered her own horror at discovering the blackened corpse in the Havaris Comm. center was her Victor. She remembered her sobs as she clutched the half melted I.D. tags into the palm of her hand until it bled. The comm. center security cameras had shown him quickly moving from one source of cover to another during the short battle. Move and fire, move and fire, just like the good Marine he had been. Finally, running low on power and with exhaustion setting in, and realizing the futility of his situation Victor set his rifle to overload. He took one last look around his compatriots and, seeing there was none left he charged from behind his cover shouting out a name, her name. And as if making a bayonet charge into his foes, slammed the muzzle end of the rifle into a Breen driving him back into the other invaders. The phaser rifle then exploded in the small space of the doorway flinging Victor’s body back against the opposite wall of the room and killing four of the Breen. With his last word, she felt that he had called to her to avenge his death and the deaths of his friends.

Now, all the pain turned to anger as she flayed this most recent object of her hatred. She proceeded to make numerous cuts on his torso, cuts intended to cause little vascular damage but excruciating pain as she severed nerve endings and muscle layers, exposing his entrails then, making several more cuts under the arms and near the thighs, severing tendons to keep him from moving once the toxin wore off in a few moments. Gral would die a slow death from hypothermia in excruciating pain and not exsanguination, as he lay with his vital organs exposed to the cool night air.

Finished with her work, she stood from Grals now steaming body. She dropped the knife from her gloved hand and let it clatter on the deck.

Rata, still curled into the fetal position on the deck continued to sob and beg for mercy. Gently the woman laid her hand on Rata’s head and “shushed” him like a mother to her baby. The only mercy given was a quick death brought about by the silenced 10mm round she fired into the back of Rata’s head, ruining his face and adding to the gore on the deck.

She turned to her team mates and said, “It’s done, let’s go”. They holstered their weapons and began to walk quickly away from the scene. The woman produced a small comm. device from a pocket and moved to follow her team mates. She held the device close to her face as she activated it, then spoke into it, “Black Sun, this is Jackal, mission accomplished. We’ll be at the extract site in three minutes”.

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