Chapter 4: Delenda Est II
Late 2407
They are on a pickup again.
The team is walking to the extraction point. There are four targets this time – all women, all reunificationist, all engineers pinned for taking down the bridge that supplied the Imperial depot on the colony with primitive, improvised explosives. There were no explosives in the houses, of course, Aurelia found. No evidence. There was never any evidence. The women trudge alongside Aurelia’s team with the heavy footfalls of people who know they are damned. The small town behind them will wake to a mystery tomorrow; rumpled sheets in one house, blood in another, shattered glass in a third.
The colony, located close to the Klingon border, is rich. It has an almost-impenetrable dampening field, meant to keep bands of marauders from engaging in a straight beam-in assault. It had the secondary effect of keeping out Imperial surgical-strike teams, as well, and so this brisk walk to the hills outside the colony was a necessary evil.
She looks up for a moment as she walks, her rifle still trained on the four captives. She looks towards the colony’s dark sky, trying to pick out the flash of the orbiting warbird among the peaceful, twinkling stars. The Project had been slowly outgrowing its original home in the long-term medbay, stretching out into the rest of the ship, corridor by corridor, long fingers reaching out, grabbing room by room, going dark and upsetting the work of the rest of the ship. She thought of the sick-looking doctor, walking those corridors in the shadow of Major K’haeth, her eyes always on the ground. Sitting in the dining hall, staring blankly out into space, being whittled away just as slowly and surely as Aurelia felt.
Unbidden, she thinks of her mother and father, and if they’d taken this kind of walk to an extraction point.
If they’d even made it this far, she thinks. They’ve probably long since gone to dust. No, this is nothing like what happened to them. I have no choice in this matter. I am not allowed to fail. I’ll be punished if I refuse these orders. I am not anything like the Tal Shiar.
Then, in the back of her mind: No. You are just like them, as long as you continue their work.
“Centurion, we’re at the extraction point.”; The mission’s second officer.
"Now!; An unfamiliar voice. Not her team.
Aurelia looks down quickly enough to see one of the women – the one in the red tunic – coming at her from nowhere, using the heavy restraints on her wrists as a battering ram. Pain lances through her jaw; she stumbles back, drawing her disruptor, firing. Luckily, her team isn’t full of complete idiots, and a few seconds’ work has the four of them on their knees, two unconscious, and Red with blood at her temple, looking up at Aurelia with utter hatred.
For three terrible seconds, she almost wishes they had been successful.
“Save it” Aurelia breathes, advancing, her disruptor at her side. “That’ll do you no good. You chose to go up against the Empire and you will now pay the cost for your disloyalty.”
Red laughs bitterly. “… I had nothing to do with the bridge, kllhe,” she spat. “Those culprits are long gone. I – we – we’re innocent. I would never hurt my colony.”
Aurelia walks closer to her, weighing the gun in her hand. “It’s not my job to determine guilt or innocence. Now, shut up, before I end up having to knock you out and drag you.”
Red’s eyes are bright in the starlight, and fearful. “No, it’s not your job, people like you, it’s never your job – you’re – just a functionary, and when you’re done, they’ll feed you to the machine, too. I know this. This is black-ops, darkside high-level, isn’t it, and you’re just a worm with a gun. What do you think is going to happen to you?”
Aurelia forces herself to put a smirk on her face, for the sake of her men. “Something far more comfortable than what’s going to happen to you, I imagine.”
“Are you sure?” Red says. “Are you damned sure, you-- you monster?”
“Centurion,” one of the Uhlans registers. “Ready to beam up, on your orders.”
The other woman who was awake wavers, cries, but does not fall. “Shut up, Tallana! I’m innocent,” the woman begs, “I never believed in reunification, I’ll never speak against the Empress again, just let me go!”
Aurelia walks over to her and brings the butt-end of the disruptor down on the side of the woman’s head. She crumples. Red continues to stare, but says nothing else as the team tags the captives for transport. She continues to say nothing even as she is pushed off the transporter pad and into the waiting arms of K’haeth, the little doctor with her sallow sick-face and the ever-present silver-coated Tal Shiar retinue. The doctor keeps her eyes on the floor, of course, where they seem like they are always trained, these days.
She hands off her gun, like she’s done dozens and dozens of times before, to the waiting security Uhlan, and, off-mission, walks back to the lounge, mentally berating herself for thinking of things she hadn’t thought about for years, things that she’d long since put to rest, things that distracted her from the mission at hand. But a lot was distracting her these days, she knew: the knowledge of what was going on behind those closed doors, the lack of advancement she’d been promised, her own participation in what she was starting to realize was the shedding of innocent blood, Romulan blood –
I can’t do this alone. Not anymore.
It was time to talk to the little doctor.