Forwarded by the ASC-VSO Posted: 30 Jan 2004 22:28:30 -0800 In: alt.startrek.creative From: thesnowleopard@hotmail.com Title: If You Can't Beat Them... Author: Paula Stiles (thesnowleopard@hotmail.com) Series: MIS Webpage: http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Andes/3071/arch1.html Part: NEW 2/2 Rating: [R] Codes: Sawalha [OC] Summary: Some missions are no-win from start to finish. Disclaimer: The Paramount scroogies own Trek and its universe, but all the characters in this particular tale are mine. Not making any money off of the story. Really. Please don't bother to sue me. I live overseas and I'm skint. Archive: Sure, if you ask. IF YOU CAN'T BEAT THEM... "I'm sure it's not intentional... It's a little hard to explain. It got so confusing." "Try anyway. Take as much time as you need." "We, um...you know that the Jem'Hadar started hunting us about five months in?" "A couple of your shipmates mentioned that, yeah. Why then?" "We were never sure. I think now maybe they got cocky because the war was going so well for them. At the time, we thought it was because we were stealing supplies from them and it annoyed them. I don't know why that would be, though, since the supplies were for the prisoners and the Jem'Hadar just took the different out of them. We felt bad about it, but...well, we were starving." "You don't have to apologise, Alex. It was a no-win situation." "Shit! You need to tell *me* that? ...Sorry, Sir." "It's okay. I keep telling you this isn't an inquisition. When are you gonna start believing me? I'm trying to find out what happened down there, not put anybody in jail." "Well, it wouldn't be the first time for me, now would it?" "Alex..." "At least this time I'd have done what they said I did. That's progress, don't you think?" "Alex, stop it." "Yeahyeahyeah. Yes, Sir. I understand what you're saying. I understand what this is and what it is not. I'm just providing my unsolicited opinion about what it *should* be. What we did wasn't right, and don't tell me that it was war, or it was necessary or whatever happy lies you want to tell me. I know what I did and I know that I did it to survive. And that it was very, very nasty." "If you're looking for a little good old fashioned Catholic confession-and-absolution, Alex, why don't you go see the priest in the station chapel upstairs after we do this?" "What do you want from me, Sir?" "I want the truth. What happened next?" "We poisoned the Jem'Hadar." "Wow. That's something. How'd you manage that?" "Remember when I said that the Jem'Hadar started chasing us about five months in? How I said that we never knew why they started then? That's not quite true. We...well, we stole something that they really needed. And we didn't poison them...exactly." "Son of a bitch. You stole their supply of Ketracel White?!" "You don't need to look so impressed. It wasn't that hard. Surviving it was hard." "No shit. Pretty mad, were they?" "Consider an Orion Slave Girl who just found you in bed with her boyfriend and then increase her reaction by a factor of twenty. You might end up somewhere in the vicinity of how upset they were. Can you blame them? Even Jem'Hadar don't want to die that way." "I gotta admit, that's not a situation I'm familar with, Alex. And since you've been happily married for the past ten years, I'll assume the analogy comes from your misspent youth and take your word for it. So, which one of you did it?" "I was one of the guilty parties, I'm afraid. I got the short straw. Something about how my ongoing goofiness from the head injury made me expendable. Never mind. I was very hungry and a little reckless so I reckon I let myself get volunteered. Halloran went just for something to do. She was going stir-crazy running scared with no way to shoot back. The two of us snuck into the camp galley one morning while the Vorta was out haranguing the prisoners at roll call. The galley happened to be next to the Vorta's quarters specifically so he could keep an eye on any food theft. That's what the prisoners told us later. We went through his stuff, looking for weapons that weren't there, and found this black briefcase. We opened it....It was full of Ketracel White, the Jem'Hadars' entire food supply for what looked like the next six months. I believe my partner-in-crime's first coherent comment was, 'Holy shit.' And then we grabbed the thing and got the hell out of there." "I'll bet. What I don't understand is why they weren't guarding against that." "I think they'd forgotten about us and they never gave the prisoners time to feed themselves, let alone scamper through the Vorta's quarters. The Jem'Hadar had destroyed all of our pods that they could find months before, you see. Saw some bodies, assumed the worst. When they didn't hear from any of the ship's survivors in a month or two, I think they reckoned we'd either starved or frozen to death. It was a reasonable assumption. We almost did. And when we started stealing from them, that was three months in and all we did was take food. So, they must have assumed it was the prisoners who were doing it. The prisoners were in a bad way, so they probably were sneaking some of their own." "But the case...?" "With all the prisoners out there, who needed a heavy guard? Not like the Vorta wanted too many Jem'Hadar near that case. They might decide to take it themselves and make him redundant. The one guard we found in front of the Vorta's office we managed to surprise and shoot a few times with the one phaser we had left. And when he refused to do more than look somewhat dazed, we beat him to death with some handy kitchen utensils. After that, it was a simple case of snatch-and-grab." "Jesus." "What can I say? Even the Dominion's genetically-engineered soldiers make mistakes. We dropped off their radar, I suppose you could say. Maybe that's the problem with being engineered to be the perfect soldier--you lose the innate ability to zig when someone expects you to zag. And thank Cthulhu for that." "They must have been hot on your ass after that." "Oh, yes. Though it took them a few days of shooting and interrogating prisoners to work it through. That's another thing I regret, but as you keep telling me, it's all water under the bridge and you can't break an omelette without making a few eggs, eh?" "Uh...something like that, yeah." "And *then* they came after us. With bombs. That was unpleasant." "But you survived." "Oh, yes. By then, you see, once we got the case back to the hills, we realised that all we really needed to do was wait them out. Naturally, we'd prefer to live to spit on all their graves, but if necessary, we could always do the heroic Federation Last Stand thing. So, we dumped the case. Each of us took a vial or two and put it in our pockets. Then, we all hared off in different directions, two each. We reckoned that if we made them track us down two-by-two, they would die off anyway before they got us all. Fortunately, *they* started dropping, one by one, first." "So, that's good...isn't it?" "In a way, yes. Fewer Jem'Hadar, less pressure. Though they did keep shooting prisoners. Naturally, they thought we were all somehow in league with each other. The prisoners told us later that the Vorta had anyone that he suspected of being a telepath shot, just in case the prisoners decided to communicate with each other that way. But really, it was simpler than that--with the Ketracel White, all we had to do was keep running and wait them out. Since we couldn't run far anyway, we could round back and find the Jem'Hadars' bodies after a while. Not a pleasant sight, but as things got worse for them, their comrades started leaving them to drop--with their weapons, which we collected on the run. By the last month, we could walk straight into the camp and shoot the last five or six guards with no casualties to us or the prisoners. When we let the prisoners out, they celebrated. They *thanked* us. Can you believe it?" "Well, you'd liberated them." "Christ, no. We'd got close to fifty of them killed! If the Vorta hadn't been keeping the Jem'Hadar focused on making them work, just to keep the Jem'Hadar distracted from shooting *him*, they'd have ended up shooting all the prisoners. But no, they thanked us, and they cried. And then one of us--I think it was Halloran--dragged the Vorta commandant out of his hideyhole where he'd been hoping to wait *us* out and all hell broke loose." "I heard he didn't make it." "No. He didn't make it." "What did they do?" "They burned him. Not exactly 'burned', though. Some bright, vicious soul found a tub of acid. They poured it all over him." *For fuck's sake, somebody make him stop screaming! Who ever thought a Vorta could squeal like a pig? Who would ever want to know? The Vorta twists and squeals in the grip of two former prisoners. The acid works very fast, but not fast enough. One of the prisoners must be fond of old 2-D films because they've dug a hole, filled it up with acid and are dunking him in it feet first. They hold onto his arms so he won't go in too quickly. It's like watching the Wicked Witch of the West melt in the Wizard of Oz. He tried to crawl out at first, but now that he's got no legs left, he can't. All the prisoners in their drab, grey uniforms are dancing around and clapping their bony hands, smiles like shark's teeth, while our people just stand there and watch. I can't stand it anymore. I'm sorry. Maybe it's my head, but I have to stop that noise. I have to. Not even a Vorta--I grab the disruptor rifle out of Halloran's hands and shoulder through the gibbering crowd. "Get out of my way! Get the fuck out of my way!" The prisoners still respect a disruptor rifle. Even the two blokes holding the Vorta. They both look up when I come in, raising the rifle. They drop the Vorta's arms and scramble away, just in time, as I fire straight into the Vorta's open mouth. His face flashes into ash before the screaming stops and the rest of the already-disintegrating body drops into the acid. I keep firing down at it anyway until the body is gone and the acid boils. Halloran has to drag me away before the liquid can burn my face off.* "Jesus Christ." "I told you, didn't I?" "Jesus--Alex, here, take a tissue. Take the whole goddamned box." "I don't need a tissue." "Yeah, you do. It's against regulations to get snot all over your dress uniform. Don't laugh. It's true." "You knew all along it was me." "Yeah, I knew." "How? You said nobody would tell you anything." "Nobody would. I kept getting different pieces from different people and a whole lot of dancing around the subject. But by the five or sixth interview, I knew you'd be the one I needed to see last." "You understand why this should be a court-martial, then?" "Alex, come off it. Nobody is gonna court-martial you. So you disintegrated the Vorta. You just put him out of his misery and stopped him being tortured to death. So you helped steal all the Ketracel White and the Jem'Hadar shot a whole bunch of prisoners in retaliation before they starved to death. Truth is, from what we found in the records you guys saved for us, that was only a temporary camp. They were planning to shoot them anyway. You guys probably saved over 200 lives. I hate to break this to you, but you're gonna end up with a shitload of medals out of this." "Fine. Have it your way." "You don't have to look so damned happy about it." "But what do I do now? What happens to me?" "Now, I take you down the bar and get you really, really drunk. Unless of course, you'd still prefer the priest." END -- Stephen Ratliff ASC Stories Only Forwarding In the Pattern Buffer at: http//trekiverse.crosswinds.net/feed/ Yahoo! Groups Links To visit your group on the web, go to:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ASCL/ To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:ASCL-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service. From ???@??? Sun Feb 01 00:53:10 2004 Status: U Return-Path: Received: from n10.grp.scd.yahoo.com ([66.218.66.65]) by emu (EarthLink SMTP Server) with SMTP id 1aNay21wO3NZFnx1 for ; Sat, 31 Jan 2004 21:53:34 -0800 (PST) X-eGroups-Return: sentto-1977044-13070-1075614792-stephenbratliff=earthlink.net@returns.groups.yahoo.