Surefoot 48: Immaterial Girl

She had taken a risk tonight, when she deliberately cut the Shipmaster's scalp while shaving him but still making it look like an accident, apologising profusely and repeatedly dabbing the bud on the wound, soaking up his blood... and his DNA. He was furious... but his fury was soon sated with some enthusiastic attempts on her part to make it up to him in bed. And soon after that, and a shot of V to put him to sleep, he was spent and exhausted.

Now she switched off the lights and returned to the main room, guiding herself to the desk computer, pressing the bud on the genetic security lock, hoping it was enough to-

She smiled as the screen menu lit up. Turning the display away from him, she bent forward and worked the keyboard, exploring the directory; the operating system was similar to the one her father used in his shop, and had taught her to use. She bypassed most of the subsystems, detailing merchandising, expenditures, fuel and maintenance reports, intelligence on Starfleet movements in the sector, trades, profits-

Yes, as she suspected: they had been in Federation space for over - three months now? That long? - and due to approach the Federation Starbase Sierra Tango tomorrow at approximately 1100 Hours, when Hazaak Sur would be on the Bridge. And she could use her access to his command systems here to maybe create a diversion and let her make her flee via one of the escape pods just outside-

Suddenly the ship's Call sounded, making her jump. Had her actions triggered an alarm? But a second later, Maatoz, announced, "Shipmaster, we're being hailed by a Starfleet vessel! They're on an intercept course with us!"

She looked in the direction of the bed, where she heard the Shipmaster sit up and order, "Lights on!" She blinked in the sudden illumination, as he stared at her, growling, "And just what do you think you're doing over there, Immaterial?"

She froze, unable to respond as he rose and approached the wall intercom, never taking his eyes off her as he opened a channel. "Hazaak here. Which Starfleet vessel is it?"

"The USS Triumph, Shipmaster."

Hazaak Sur cursed. "That cuksir Regan's ship. What's their ETA?"

"Ten minutes, Shipmaster."

"Don't respond to any of their hails, Maatoz. I'll be up shortly, as soon as I take care of some business here." As he closed the channel, he grunted, reaching for a bottle on the nearby shelf and drinking straight from it, before slipping into his trousers... but removing the leather belt from them and doubling it up. "Come here, Slave. If the mark on your pretty little face wasn't enough to teach you, I'll leave your back and rear a bloody mess."

She stood by his desk, shaking.

Shaking from terror.

Shaking from rage. "No."

He smirked with amused disbelief and returned the bottle to the shelf. "What did you say?"

Don't say it again, Zir, she told herself. Take your punishment, he might even give you some V afterwards to numb the pain. You can't get away from him. You can't do anything.

She almost listened to her cravings, her fear.

Instead she repeated, more forcefully, "NO!"

The big male sneered, charging towards her.

She stayed where she was, as if frozen with fear, keeping his eyes locked on hers.

And never letting him see her lift the straight razor from the shaving kit on the desk.

By the time he was upon her, reaching up to clasp his hand around her throat, she had opened the razor and sliced the soft, fleshy underside of his arm, making dark green blood erupt between them,

He yelled and drew back, dropping his belt and clutching the gushing wound with his other hand, as she drew back as well, holding the opened razor in front of her, unable to stop her own shaking - Gods, there was so much blood! - but working her away around him to get to her bag and then, "G-Give me the key! L-Let me go!"

Hazaak Sur bared his teeth, growling -- and, using the hand on his injured arm, picked up his desk chair and threw it at her.

She tried to dodge it, but it caught her lower half and made her stumble and fall, dropping the razor. She scrambled along the floor, looking for something, anything to defend herself with, but he was upon her, lifting her up by the waistband of her trousers and hefting her bodily into his weapons display, shattering the glass and sending many items within falling with the shards of glass, and herself. She'd felt something crack in her shoulder as she collapsed to the floor.

Then he was crouched upon her, in a parody of intimacy, releasing his grip on his wound to slam his fist into her face, again and again, screaming, "YOU LITTLE BITCH! I'LL KILL YOU!"

He broke her nose, and she was choking on the blood pooling in her mouth and down her throat. Blindly she reached around, looking for something, anything, grasping something with a handle, drawing it up-

Thunder exploded in her ears, in her hand. In Hazak Sur's face.

Or what was left of it.

Smoke filled her remaining working nostril, and she opened her remaining working eye to see part of the Shipmaster's face replaced by a charred, smoking mess, exposing his right eye socket, skull, brain... and a fixed expression of confusion.

She stared up at him, then down at her trembling hand, and the squat, gold-handled pistol it held.

It had been loaded.

An armed weapon had been close at hand all this time, and she never knew.

His face oh Gods his face was a charred open wound-

He was toppling to one side, and she helped him topple, slithering away from his dead body, his blood still pooling from his open wound. When she crawled away as far as she could, she coughed up blood, breathing through her mouth, and spitting out a tooth or two, until she had enough air to sob in a staccato wail.

She'd killed him... His crew would rip her to pieces...

A voice snapped her out of her thoughts: Maatoz. "Shipmaster? Are you on your way? The Triumph has appeared dead ahead! I've called for Full Stop!"

As if in illustration, the ship shuddered to a halt, and it seemed to snap Zir from her shock.

She definitely had to get away now.

His face oh Gods his face was a charred open wound-

Ignoring the desire to clean herself up now, she tucked the pistol into the waistband of her trousers and staggered towards her bag, almost tipping over from dizziness, before going to his clothes, retrieving the access key for the door. Someone would be down here soon-

She stopped, looking over at the Shipmaster's wall safe, where he kept his Vraxoin.

Go on get his blood to open the safe there's plenty there you'll need the V soon very soon already the Need was crawling up through you like worms get it get it get it-

SHUT UP!

She caught her breath, head pounding for many reasons, and returned to the doorlock, fumbling with the access key. Come one, you bastard, I saw you work a hundred times-

The door slid open, she slung her bag over one shoulder and started out, limping painfully down the corridor, fighting the panic of suddenly, finally being out of that confined space after so long with Hazaak Sur-

His face oh Gods his face was a charred open wound-

She forced back those images, as she struggled to remember where the nearest escape pod was, finding the hatch-

"HEY!"

She glanced back, seeing a young crewman at the other end.

He raced towards her. "Where do you think you're going, Slave-"

She raised the pistol in his direction with a shaking arm, letting him see her bloodied face and clothes, her one good eye fixed murderously on him as she declared through clenched teeth, "I'm no slave. Now fuck off."

He stopped in his tracks. And scurried away.

She turned back to the hatch, activating it, the door rolling open. She threw her bag inside, following it and closing the hatch behind her. The interior was small, cramped, basic: four harnessed seats, facing forward, a tiny round porthole in the front, and the actual controls mostly automated, designed to carry the pod and its occupants away from the ship, send a distress signal, and seek out and find a place to dock or land.

His face oh Gods his face was a charred open wound-

She ignored the nausea, the sweats, and the thunder in her head as she strapped herself into one of the seats, took a deep, ragged breath... and opened the panel beside her seat, turning the single key and pressing the single button beneath it.

Acceleration shot her back into her seat as the pod shot outward, the porthole view becoming a kaleidoscope of stars, her stomach twisting inside out as they left the gravity well of the starship, and began banking this way and that.

Suddenly she realised two things.

One: if there was a way to manually control the pod, she didn't know it.

Two: she never secured her bag, and the lack of gravity and the wild manoeuvres the pod was taking was bouncing it around, threatening to hit her in the back of her he-

*

NOW:

Peter ground his teeth and paced around his corner of the chamber. Loudly, to make sure the others could hear him. Yeah, Pete, he told himself, because that'll make your friends decipher an ancient alien artefact that much more quickly.

He took a cue from Niles, who was sitting down nearby, his back against a wall, staring ahead, his wide guileless eyes open and fixed, and Peter slid down beside him. As Medical cadets, they worked together, though Niles was always the quiet type, and it was only after he started dating Zir that the other man began to be more confident, assertive.

Peter couldn't complain; the relationship seemed to do both parties good, an observation he had forwarded to Kami Hrelle in one of their sessions, prompting the Caitian to suggest he consider specialising in Counseling. "She'll be fine."

Niles breathed out, as if he hadn't done in hours, and ran his long, slender fingers through his curly blonde hair. "We don't know that."

"No, we don't," Peter admitted, watching Stalac interface with the alien technology, his own silicon-based brain structure making him so brilliant at analysing different technologies. "But we do know we have some of the finest minds here to help her get back from wherever she is. And Zir's a fighter, a survivor-"

"I think I love her," Niles declared in a soft, fragile voice.

Peter nodded at that, having guessed it but otherwise not knowing how to respond.

"I-" Niles continued, faltering. "I- I just wanted you, I wanted all her friends, to know that. That I'm not- not like some of the others, who'd loved to get her into bed, because she's an Orion and there's so much said about Orions and sex." He flushed with embarrassment. "I haven't told her. That I love her, I mean. I've been working up the courage, thinking I'd always have time to tell her later. And now this..."

Peter reached out and patted his hand. "You will get that chance, Niles. I can feel it." He smiled slightly. "And we know your feelings for Zir are genuine."

Niles looked to him. "You do?"

Peter smiled. "Sure. If Alpha Squad thought your intentions were less than honourable, we'd have had a little talk with you by now."

"Oh." He let himself smile at that. "I'm glad it didn't come to that. Urad Kaldron is rather intimidating."

Peter smiled back. "Urad's a pussycat. Tori's the one you have to worry about."

"That's it," Stalac declared suddenly. "Without a doubt."

Peter and Niles rose to their feet and raced up, Peter asking, "Have you found her, buddy?"

The Horta never turned away from his work. "Hmm? No, not yet. But we know what this Device is now: a Transphasic Projector."

"Which is what?"

"A mechanism capable of altering the phasic frequency of matter and energy," Grehk explained, the Tellarite female's snout wrinkling. "The basic technology is prevalent in transporters, cloaking devices, phasers, wormhole and quantum slipstream technologies-"

"The quantum slipstream technology applications are only theoretical," Yuluron, the Boslic Engineering cadet for Gamma Squad, argued.

"Are you kidding? You didn't read the article in Starfleet Subspace Physics about-"

"The point is," Stalac interrupted. "The Donatui were advanced, but had no interest in exploring real space, instead choosing to explore other dimensions, by altering their phasic frequencies, moving them out of phase with our level of reality, and appearing in another dimension. And when they learned that their planet was about to be purged with solar flares, they fled to safety in another dimension. Well, their upper classes did, anyway; the proletariat were apparently left to burn."

Peter's jaw dropped. "Other dimensions? Is that where Zir is? Is she with the Donatui now?"

"I don't think so. The Projector wasn't properly programmed when it powered up and struck Zir. She's... nearby, perhaps in a sort of interphasic level between ours and other dimensional planes, but hopefully- THE POWER! TURN OFF THE POWER! NOW!"

Quickly the Engineering cadets rushed over to the generator and shut it down... but Peter read the reactions on the cadets, and the darkening, smoking crystals around them, but it was Jexa who asked, "What happened?"

The Horta rotated in place and faced her, the anger coming through his voder unit. "What happened? What happened was that you had your squad hook up a power unit to a thousand-year-old piece of technology without knowing what it could do, it sent my friend into some transphasic Limbo, and now the very mechanisms that could help us get her back have burned out!"

The Grazerite looked out in horror at the array. "It's... lost? The Donatui mechanisms, the databases?"

"I don't know! It'll take better experts than us to sort through what's retrievable!"

Niles looked to each of them in turn, alarm rising on his face. "What about Zir? Can we still find her and bring her back without all of this?"

Stalac shifted back to him. "Fortunately, we don't need it at this stage; the data I collected from the Donatui, added to our own knowledge of phase technology, should suffice. We can collapse the chroniton field around Zir and bring her back to our reality with a high-intensity anyon beam."

"Yes! We can create anyon beam emitters using the deflectors and transporters from the runabouts!" said Yuluron excitedly, as others joined in, making further contributions and arguing again about who would do what.

"Enough!" Jexa cut in, clearly wanting to take command again. "Get up top and do what's necessary, strip the runabouts to nothing if you have to! I want those beam emitters built and ready in twenty minutes! Move it!"

The others made sounds of acknowledgement and rushed out, leaving Peter, Niles, Stalac and Jexa, the Squad Leader turning back to Stalac and asking, "Once those are ready, what do we do?"

"We find her."

"And how do we do that?"

"I... don't know."

Peter felt like his heart had stopped. "What?"

"I don't know, Peter. She's out of phase with our normal continuum, our tricorders and scanners won't be able to find her. I'm making adjustments to mine now to compensate, but even then, it will be of very limited range. If she still had her combadge, we could pinpoint her location through its power cell... we have to hope that she hasn't moved far from here. And that the environment she's currently in isn't inhospitable to our forms of life."

The four of them went silent.

Peter felt his blood run cold, and he glanced around again, as if her spectral image might suddenly appear, to let them know she was alive and waiting for them to save her. Where are you, Zir? You'd better be safe, girl. I know what you went through you to get out of your own Hell and join Starfleet. You can't die like this.

"She saved my life," Jexa muttered numbly. "She pushed Francis and me out of the way of that beam. What made her do that?"

"Decency?" Peter suggested acidly. "Honour? Courage? Compassion? She's got all that, and more. You'd have seen that from the start, if you didn't spend all your time putting her down for being Orion."

The Grazerite bristled. "I don't think that's very fair, Mr Boone-"

"No?" Stalac countered. "Just before she saved your life, you were calling her 'a citizen of an outlaw state, a race of criminals and slavers'! She's had to work twice as hard as everyone around her in order to be seen as half as good! She's endured suspicion, ridicule, smuttiness, she's had to have medical implants-"

Then he paused.

And a noise erupted from his voder, as excitement acid leaked out from under him. "EGG MOTHER, I AM AS THICK AS NEUTRONIUM!"

Peter, Niles and Jexa stepped back to avoid any possible acid seepage, Peter demanding, "What's wrong, Stal?"

The Horta curbed his acid and rotated in place, his perimeter cilia tapping excitedly. "Her hormonal suppressor implant! It has a power cell similar to our combadges! We can use that to track her location!"

Peter brightened; for the first time since this crisis began, he began to have hope that they could rescue their friend...

*

Nearby, and not, Zir stood staring up in horror at... "Hazaak Sur? N-No! No, you can't be! You're-"

The leer widened His face oh Gods his face was a charred open wound- as blood and bile dripped from his lower lip. "Dead? Well, you'd know better than anyone else, wouldn't you, Immaterial?"

Panic rose up within her, and she twisted from his grip and stepped back. "You're not real! YOU'RE NOT REAL!"

He tilted his head towards her. "Then why am I here?"

She turned and ran to the door, watching it slide open-

-To take her straight back into his quarters.

"Miss me?" he taunted.

*

THEN:

She stirred, pushing past the haze of pain and confusion to blink into strong light, trying to focus on the voices around her. "...paired the injuries to her mouth, shoulder, ribs, and fingers... and as you can see, I removed that horrible slave brand on her face. There was evidence of narcotics abuse in her bloodstream, but we've removed the addictive contaminants. And there's also definite evidence of sexual activity."

"Sexual activity, or sexual assault?"

"Hard to determine at this stage. But the evidence of physical assault alone doesn't paint a good picture of what she underwent over there."

"How old is she, Doctor?"

"Again, Commander, it's hard to be precise at this stage. And there was blood on her clothes that didn't come from her. An Orion male, with evidence of long-term Vraxoin use himself- oh, she's awake."

Zir opened her eyes fully, seeing herself cleaned up and clad in a simple one-piece slate-grey jumpsuit and footwear, and lying on a bed in a clean medical facility, and humans and other races in similar uniforms standing around, some of them looking at her.

One in particular: a human male with pale skin, sharp nose, ginger hair, moustache and beard... and kind, sympathetic eyes. He drew closer- stopping as she reacted to his approach, folding his hands behind him and smiled. "Welcome onboard the Triumph, Miss. I'm Commander Wallace, the Chief of Security. May I ask your name, please?"

Zir glanced around again; most of the others had resumed their business, but one, a blue-skinned humanoid with antennae, a member of a race she couldn't identify, proceeded to study readings overhead. She cleared her throat and focused on the human. "Zir Dassene."