Fun Times On the USS Cestus [Star Trek]

Ensign Sam Taylor awoke in an awkward position. The interesting experiences a career in Starfleet brought kept him from startling, or even opening his eyes. He could taste blood. It’s hard to keep your eyes closed, with some headaches. The one Sam felt was the type that made you want to swear off of Romulan Brandy, yet again. Keeping his breathing deep, he let his awareness scan his body. He was bound to a chair of some kind. The human tried to search his memory for clues. There weren’t any away missions recently, were there? Why the hell was he bound to a chair? What the hell was the deal with the shuttlecraft sized headache, or blood in his mouth? He kept his composure and feigned sleep nonetheless. All of that Interrogation training at the Academy paid off. Well that and all of the “practical workshops” his ragtag group of friends often put him through. Shrugging off pain from head injuries was a learned skill. He’d had lots of practice. It was light work compared to the “recreational” drinking contests with a Klingon. Or a Vulcan, for that matter. It was always the quiet ones you had to look out for.

He couldn’t hear anything, but for the soft steady background hum of a starship. As soon as his mind grasped onto the sound, he knew exactly where he was. He’d worked on the machinery of the USS Cestus for the last 2 years, he knew her in and out. His grin of happiness was purely internal, but no less real for it. Damned if he’d ever be helpless on the Cestus. A flash of confusion followed soon after.  He decided to risk looking at his surroundings through narrowed eyes. If there were any captors, he couldn’t hear them. It’d been a minute or two since he’d come to. The likelihood of a guard remaining absolutely silent for so long was low enough, and he felt himself grow impatient with the uncertainty of it all. Starfleet training was heavy on discipline, but that discipline had a point. The first duty of a prisoner is to escape, came the voice of his old I&T professor. The voice of the grizzled old woman, who wore her hard won scars in resisting torture while a serviceman, continued the lecture in his head. Assessment of the situation is crucial, the tools of a prisoner are so limited that no opportunity can be discounted.

Just as he looked through his narrowed vision, he heard a voice. “Ah. I note that you are awake Ensign.” Her voice was calm, and carefully modulated. There was the barest tinge of emotion in the voice. Sam had honestly heard computers with more emotional inflection. The bland voice was comfortingly familiar.

“Did you get the license plate of that car that hit me, T’shir?”, asked Sam Taylor, a he opened his eyes to see the Vulcan sitting several meters in front of him. The headache rallied for a moment as Sam pushed it away. The light in his room had been helpfully lowered, but he could easily see T’shir’s form. She was sitting in some meditative stance on the floor, eyes still closed. Wait, this was his quarters on the Cestus. He strained his eyes and looked at the meditating Vulcan. Only a few seconds later did he realize that he was searching for some sign that she was bound. or shackled. There were no indicators of either, from what he could see.

“I’m unaware of any traffic incidents that took place near you. Though you may be forgiven some confusion. Shargeshi, daughter of Daz, is strikingly innumerate when drunk.” said T’shir, retaining her lotus posture and calmly remorseless voice.

What kind of response was that? Strikingly innumerate when drunk? Sam’s tongue reflexively probed his split lip when Shargeshi’s name came up. The Klingon woman wasn’t as fighty as the usual Klingon. She wasn’t fighty when sober, that is. Apparently it was a form of social protocol to get fighty when alcohol was involved. Shargeshi’s calm aggression and scientific acumen went out the window when alcohol was involved. Somehow Ensign Sam Taylor’s throbbing head managed to stitch the Vulcan’s ironic humor together.

“Shargeshi got drunk, and punched me over * numbers *?” he asked, now attempting to free himself from the chair. No luck there. Whoever tied him down was more serious about knots than he’d ever expect his friend Shangeshi to be, especially if she’d tied him down when drunk. Not that Shangeshi would ever bother to tie him down. It wasn’t seen as sporting to punch a bound person, and Shangeshi was quite the puncher.

“You are the one who claimed that numbers were involved, Ensign Taylor.”, said T’shir in her toneless rebuke. He stopped struggling with his bonds, looking at the Vulcan with unabashed irritation. She was being * funny *, Sam realized. Or petty, maybe. It was hard to tell what exactly she * was * being, but what she was * not being * was understandable enough to the Ensign. She was * not * helping him escape his bindings.

He didn’t mask the angry irritation in his voice “T’shir. Are we being held prisoner?” Life in Starfleet put one in bizarre and unusual situations very often, but Sam’s patience was wearing thin. For all of her coldness, he was certain T’shir was his friend. Just the same as how Shargeshi’s drunken volatility didn’t make her any less of a friend. The same went for Jiamma’s Betazoid inability to respect mental boundaries. Having alien friends was worthwhile, and very rewarding, but there was a time and place for eccentricities.

Finally, T’shir opened her eyes. She gave a sigh of irritation, which was usually a deliberate attempt to emote with a Vulcan. Sam’s head throbbed slightly less in its angry tirade against alcohol. Sam himself was much less angry. He belatedly realized that even attempting ironic humor counted as a pointless social exercise among Vulcans. T’shir was trying, but damned if he knew what exactly she aiming for. Perhaps she was trying to put him at ease, before informing him of some troublesome development. Like that they’d both been implanted with some prisoner monitoring devices. Or the ship had been hijacked. Or some combination of both. Something similar had happened in the middle of last year. Life in Starfleet was many things, but it was seldom dull for long. Ensign Taylor’s mind raced with possibilities, he braced himself for the worst.

“* We * are not being held prisoner, Samuel.” said T’shir, with deliberate emphasis. The use of his personal name set off an an internal alarm somewhere inside. He could feel the meager goodwill he had for the Vulcan sizzling to nothing beneath his angrily flushing skin.

“I don’t have time for twenty questions. Untie me before you get into the details.” said Sam. The Vulcan woman didn’t move from her meditative posture. She looked at him stoically.

“I will not untie you, Samuel.”, she responded.

“Why not?” said Sam, the words spoken between his gritted teeth.

 “I did not tie you up merely to release you at this juncture.” said T’shir

Sam relaxed his body, headache and minor pains cast aside. His voice came out just as heavy and relaxed as his body. Calm and patient, though not quite the emotionless tone of a Vulcan. It was the unnatural calm he often felt when having the burden of command placed on him by circumstance. Even though he was on a different career path than the command track, Sam Taylor’s aptitude had shown through repeatedly at the Academy. Starfleet gave him the tools and training there, as they did with so many others.  Even if you wanted to be a simple engineer, Starfleet made damn certain you could handle whatever insanity the vastness of space decided to throw at you. Sam had never expected to aim this particular weapon at T’shir, of all people. To see and calculate against her as an enemy or obstacle...

“I’m going to need a * very * good explanation for that, T’shir. “ he said, in that relaxed voice of utter seriousness. T’shir gave a brief nod, the fringe of her bob cut shifting with the movement.

“Please allow me to explain fully, before asking questions.”, said T’shir in her voice even more monotonic than it had been previously. She was taking pains to double down on her emotional suppression, guessed the Ensign.

“I’ll ask questions as they occur to me. If you truly wish to share * explanatory * information with me, then my own concerns have some degree of priority here. That is the logic and nature of that type of communication, T’shir. Unless you are only here to give me a uninformative spiel, and my opinion doesn’t matter. Is it the former, or the latter? If it is the latter then you need not logically explain anything.” said Ensign Taylor in his relaxed but heavy voice, as he glared at one of his oldest friends.
The Vulcan no longer held his gaze as she spoke, “Your opinion in this matter is required, and holds priority among other concerns.” She closed her eyes, shifting more presently into her asana, the fixed bodily posture meant to support mental clarity.

Sam couldn’t take that as retreat for certain. He already had a list of concerns, other than the purely obvious ones such as being bound to a chair.

“You are holding me prisoner, correct?” he asked.

There was the slightest hint of a nod as she spoke “Correct.”

Sam cut to the major priority burning in the depths of his brain “Is this related to the safety of the ship, or crew?”

The Vulcan’s answer was immediate “No.”

Something within him loosened, a tension he hadn’t know he was feeling dissipated. He’d been friends with T’shir for a long time. They’d had to rely on each other in more than a few nasty situations. It was so with all of his close friends, even those not officially part of the Starfleet chain of command. Neither T’shir nor Shargeshi were Starfleet, but he’d found cause to trust them in multiple life and death situations. The same held for true for Jiamma, who actually was an Ensign, like himself.

Instinctively, he trusted T’shir’s word. It was difficult to conceive of a good reason for her to bind him in his own quarters. A disturbing set of possibilities spun through his mind. It was better to run through the checklist he could feel assembling itself internally. Dealing with the obscure on a daily basis was the best practice for contingency planning.  When the vast unknowables of the universe collided helter-skelter with sapients, the Federation trained its personnel to face it unflinchingly. Sam had loads of practice, and he was far too stubborn to flinch.

“This reminds me of that time you and Jiamma were in that Pareese Square tournament. The way you two crashed.” said Sam. He chuckled with convincing mirth after speaking. Internally, he was focusing intensely on a select few of the sensations and thoughts running through his mind. The emotions flooded and rushed outward, causing small changes in his face, posture, and musculature.

T’shir opened her eyes to look at him. He looked back at her confidently, brimming with conjured emotion and memory. As the shared look extended, she gave a slight barely visible near frown. The Vulcan stood smoothly, reaching towards her waist with her right hand. She strode towards him cautiously, as she unclipped the tricorder from her belt. She activated it with ease, as she moved forward. She stood beside him as she examined the tricorder reading. She was obviously frowning now.

Sam’s reflexive gratitude for having not just one, but two close friends with telepathic abilities was suppressed in lieu of the delicate form of concentration occupying him.  He wasn’t sure T’shir would appreciate that she’d unknowingly aided him in developing his current tactic. Then again, Sam wasn’t even certain if T’shir * was * T’shir, or even if she were sane. He couldn’t afford to let his mind wander  when forcing his body to produce the current set of responses. There was a delicate edge here, and the non-telepathic human could only maintain it for so long. He had to seize what initiative he could.

“What? You don’t recall that Pareese Square tournament where you guys stumbled into each other? It was pretty hilarious, but I was watching from the * stands *. You’re not still ashamed about it are you?” said Sam, not allowing himself to take too much delight in the Vulcan’s consternation. T’shir really was looking worried now, and not hiding it very well either. He really couldn’t blame her. That Pareese Square tournament was absolutely nothing like he’d described. He kept forcing his body’s hormonal and cortical impulses to mask signs of stress and lying. Doing his best to get the most out of a process that would leave him miserable later, he wove the deliberately wrong story further as he spoke. He was feeling enough mischief that his story made T’shir the central point of mockery.

Sam managed to produce an expression of concern. “You alright, T’shir? You * do * remember that, right?” The Vulcan looked at him, there was a brief moment of unmasked panic on her narrow face, but her inscrutable expression masked it immediately. Internally, Ensign Taylor placed a weak checkmark on a few items under the identity subheading of his internal list. The likelihood of abductors actually having records of a tournament held in a no-name province of a backwater system was low. Still, he might as well make * certain * she didn’t take the hook. He already felt miserable before starting, and most of his verification protocols would only make him feel worse. No point in being sloppy if you’re going to pay for it anyway, thought Sam. Forcing a weakly disturbed expression onto his face, he pushed the matter more, insisting that T’shir respond.

“I do not recall that precise series of incidents, Samuel. The tournament was a long time ago.” said T’shir. The filled parts of his checklist in the identity section grew. He pressed further, it’d let him smoothly move into another section, whether she gave the correct memory or not.

“What exactly do you remember, T’shir?” he asked. She spoke, her monotone showing small fluctuations that were probably anxiety. Her recounting of the events was accurate in Sam’s estimation. He’d thought the tournament was much more exciting at the time, but he didn’t really expect a riveting play-by-play. T’shir was a Vulcan, after all, and she probably suspected some form of memory error on his part. A lack of brain damage would be obvious on the scan, but so would his appearance of honest recollection. She had no other logical conclusion at this point. Now reasonably certain of T’shir’s identity, Sam moved into leveraging the current situation to his next major concern.

He frowned sincerely, knowing that he couldn’t drop the parasympathetic stress suppression at this juncture, even if it was growing more and more unpleasant. He had an easy way to make her mis-attribute the cause of the frown, so that would only help matters. He looked her fully in the eyes as he spoke “I’m sorry T’shir, but that’s not what I remember at all. You can see how I’d be worried, having you tie me up like this. You misremembering a week long tournament only makes it worse. Would you mind showing me a scan of yourself? You have to admit it is a logical concern at this point, given my situation, right?”

Her thin lips parted slightly and she blinked dully at him for a few moments. The meager affect, that was weak confusion on most species, counted as near-hysterics among Vulcans. Sam repeated the argument again, while she floundered in inexpressive Vulcan shock. Hoping to pressure her with confusion and a reasoned argument at the same time was the correct gamble. She pursed her lips slightly as she turned the tricorder panel towards him, while moving the sensors across her form.

“Time-phased gene templates and neurologics, if you would.”, said Sam, not bothering to mask the seriousness in his voice. She complied and patiently moved through the data as asked.  Her hands skillfully moved across the interface by touch and memory, since she couldn’t actually see it from her positioning. It was an unnatural show of skill not common even among Vulcans. That level of precise competence was exactly like T’shir, but the engineer couldn’t let himself indulge in admiration. It never  paid to do things halfway. T’shir of all people would understand that. After a few minutes, he was able to complete most of his identity and sanity listings. This was T’shir all right, and she didn’t show any of the forms of neurological degradation indicative of impaired mental/emotional functioning among Vulcans.

He looked upward to see her looking at him impassively, one of her eyebrows cocked deliberately. Sam slumped feeling somewhat guilty, but not enough to stop the ticking time-bomb that was his parasympathetic system. T’shir wasn’t one to take lightly, and her motives could be justification for one of the escape plans ticking away in his neurological processes. The guilt remained nonetheless.

“I take it you are satisfied regarding * my * identity and mental health?” she asked, forgetting to put the upturn on the phrase, to show it was a question. She must be kind of pissed, concluded Sam.

“I had to be sure, T’shir, and this is an odd wake up call.” said Sam.

“Perhaps your concerns would be more appropriately aimed at you consumption of alcohol and the resulting effects on your memory.” said T’shir, a detectable edge in her voice. Just as she turned the tricorder to face him once more, Sam started to feel the growing agony build up past his parasympathetic suppression. He groaned internally, this was exactly the worst time for it to happen. T’shir was undoubtedly going to resume her scanning out of concern for the memory error he displayed. If he was feeling the sympathetic system response it would definitely show up on the tricorder readings. He had expected the building response to take longer, but he hadn’t started the process in the best of shape.

Well, poor concerned T’shir had just unknowingly given him a pathway to unimpeded escape. He had little chance of fighting a Vulcan in his current state, and T’shir was too capable to let him relay any voice-commands unimpeded… Feeling a bundle of guilt, pain and remorse that he didn’t have the luxury to determine what was going on * before * escaping made clamping down on the deliberately induced agony difficult. His control wavered momentarily, just as T’shir made a subtle birdlike twitch of her head, her acute eyes examining the scan of him in realtime. Shit, he didn’t have much choice in the matter, he’d beg forgiveness later, should T’shir’s mysterious reasoning turn out to be valid. He couldn’t spare her the time to delve into it AND escape from captivity.

Stupidly, he felt like a heel, as the area between her eyebrows narrowed into a little “v” of worry while she looked at the tricorder. Worried that he may have delayed too long already, he spoke “As much as I’d like to believe you about the tournament T’shir, I’m not the one tying people up.”. He had control enough to put goading emotion into his voice, but couldn’t be certain of her response.

“The matter of your memory is problematic.” stated T’shir, but her voice was withdrawn, occupied as she tapped and pressed at the tricorder. Clearly his neurological masking processes were failing. He thought clumsily, feeling drained by the effort. As long as he could justify it and get her to make firm enough contact… Sam blinked a drop of sweat out his eyes, he’d show difficulty breathing soon.

“If you doubt my memory so much, why don’t you just take a look and see how wrong you are?” said Sam angrily, hoping to mask his instability with ‘stereotypical human emotionality’. He continued the tack, not even having to fake his volatility, “You’re really pissing me off with your nonsense Pareese Square story. You don’t have to be ashamed about it, T’shir. Even * you * have your * clumsy *  * awkward * days. It’s all right if you don’t want to dwell on it, but I’d think a Vulcan could tolerate everyone laughing at her for brief momen..” He trailed off as she looked at him, lips pressed together, eyes slightly wider than her normal dull expression. There was a weak muscular twitch at her jaw. It happened exactly once and didn’t continue. Sam shut the fuck up, and tightly tried to reign in his slowly collapsing internal processes. He’d definitely pushed too far, he’d owe her an apology later. Hopefully they could laugh about it later. Or rather he could laugh, and she could tolerate it without killing him. The Vulcan’s mild glare was accompanied with a very long drawn out exhale from her nose.

“Naturally I would be more than willing to help you, Samuel. A memory system damaged by alcohol abuse and concussions would be too much of a handicap when combined with your primitive human emotional regulation and immaturity. Even Shargeshi of Daz doesn’t deserve so damaged a husband.” said T’shir in a perfectly controlled monotone. What the hell was she talking about? Shargeshi wasn’t getting married, was she? Sam couldn’t mask his confusion and panic. Looking into the cold passionless eyes of T’shir as she stepped forward didn’t make it any easier. He’d wanted to bait her into this, but he knew enough about Vulcans to know that the flatter her affect, the more emotional she actually was. Her utterly emotionless expression, meant that she must be incandescent with rage. A small part of him instinctively added a dozen mathematical poems and footrubs to a “keep T’shir from killing me” checklist.

She raised her tanned hands in the distinctive mind-meld posture, and was stock still for a moment breathing deeply. Sam readied the agonizing sympathetic nervous signal he’d been producing. A simple non-telepathic human without tools, he’d been forced to generate it indirectly.  By continuously overstimulating his own parasympathetic responses he’d masked the signs of falsehoods detectable by either far too acute Vulcan senses, or a tricorder. The linkage of both parts of the human autonomic nervous system meant that over-stimulation of one half would generate over stimulation in the other. So the stress inducing sympathetic half of his ANS was building up a powerful but masked stress signal. Vulcans were touch-telepaths, so he needed prolonged contact to transmit the ticking bomb. He’d only get one shot at this, but his chances were both better and worse than they could be.

As soon as T’shir gripped his head securely, he could feel the wisps of her raw murderous rage. He clamped down on the rebellious payload of his own making, waiting for her to connect more fully. All of a sudden they were in the stands at a Pareese Square tournament. T’shir sat beside him, looking at the frozen scene. The projected T’shir looked calm and emotionless, but it was more natural and comfortable looking version of her. She placed a hand on his politely before speaking, “There is no need to worry, Samuel. I am here to aid you.”

 At the touch of her mental projection, he felt himself awash in a storm of rage, mirth, and lust.  Each section of that emotional whirlwind was magnified to an insane grotesque degree. This steely core of control surrounded with a burning aura of delirium was T’shir. Vulcan emotions were not sane or reasonable. Her other projected hand was firm solid sanity on his back, making soothing circles as the whirl of madness emanated from her. All the while, Sam desperately kept a deathgrip on his mental payload. He held it deep within, feeling it slice into his mind as it squirmed. He was hunched and gasping, this mental self of his, as he acclimatized to the feeling of raw emotional bedlam pulsing off of T’shir’s mind-self.

Keeping the deathgrip on his painful surprise, he straightened before turning to look at her. The Vulcan gave her usual passionless eyebrow quirk in query, but a depraved blast of emotion washed over him. The largest were concern and lust, both deep and possessive. A variegated flood of complex swirling and meaningless emotions were mixed in as well. Vulcan emotions were so powerful and spontaneous that most of them couldn’t even be said to have a reasonable trigger or reference to any stimuli. Still as much as Vulcans disliked emotion, Sam was touched to note how well T’shir curated the mad mixture. She was clearly pruning the torrent to keep it focused on him, instead of ignoring it, or letting it spiral into madness.

He smiled at her sincerely, ignoring the sensation of blood pooling in his clenched hand, the one opposite from and furthest away from T’shir. “I really do appreciate this, T’shir.”, he said, and the agonizing sensation of the payload shredding the clenched flesh, bone, and nerve of his mind-hand wasn’t nearly as painful as the guilt he felt. She nodded politely before turning towards the frozen tableau of memory. The Pareese Square tournament. Sam’s skill wasn’t nearly enough to generate * and * contain the mental armament * and * generate a fake memory that could fool T’shir. So, he didn’t even try the last option. At least it was early on in the memory.

T’shir looked at the frozen scene, before looking back at him. Despite her placid face, a burst of confusion and amusement flowed off of her. “I don’t recall smiling. Nor having such a developed figure.”, she said. The still memory of T’shir, standing midcourt on the field, was indeed showing the barest hint of a smile. She was attractively shapely to his eye, as well. He supposed that just enough of a smile for a human to detect was indecent on Vulcan, but he honestly was making no attempt to alter the memory at all. Sam was too exhausted, and concealing his torturous weapon was draining.

“What can I say? I like my T’shir smiley and soft. That’s how I think of you.” he said honestly, more slipping out of him than he intended, but never a hint of the weapon eating away at him. T’shir must’ve liked something in that cloud of sincerity and guilt. She gave a light hum as she regarded the frozen scene. Her mental mouth twitched, before replicating the near-smile of the T’shir in his memory. A pulse of sweet happiness and vivid love washed off of her. Even the heavy streak of lunacy in it, which strongly implied she’d be happy to tear him limb from limb and eat him in some disturbing form of ritual cannibalism, was deeply tainted with love. The part of Sam clenching his payload in anticipation was absolutely certain that he was going to Hell, and deserved every second of it.

Probably having decided that they’d dallied enough, her eyes scanned the scene of memory. She gave a brief sensation of a frown. Probably wondering about the lack of memory degradation, as Sam didn’t have the strength to alter anything. The memory began moving as she mentally pushed it into operation. She still wore the little near-smile on her face as she pushed the memory forward.  I’m sorry, and I swear I’ll make this up to you T’shir, silently thought Sam the assassin, as he bled on his illicit blade. T’shir emanated an even stronger frown as she watched the memory move, she spoke, “I don’t see any sign of deteriorati-”. She had a brief moment to broadcast confusion as both his guilt and payload struck her, just when she was most occupied.

With a flash, they were back in his quarters. T’shir flew back from him collapsing. The tricorder flew from her hand midfall, landing near his chair. Sam watched her steadily, ignoring the shame-guilt-pain of his now dissolving mind-weapon, and his choice to use it. He sat stewing in that seething mess, fixated on watching her chest. Only after being certain that she was breathing steadily did he turn his face away from the unconscious Vulcan. He turned to his left, head facing away from both her and the tricorder. He vomited explosively twice in quick succession. He spat out bile, before reacquiring the blurry shape of the tricorder on the floor. Blinking tears out of his eyes, he’d already planned the next part of his escape precisely. Vulcans were thankfully very durable, but T’shir would recover soon. He didn’t have time to waste. The tricorder signal would let him plot the precise location of his bindings. He’d be able to use a combination of low-level command overrides and stasis fields to cut the ropes and secure T’shir. Best of all, he wasn’t likely to alert anyone else with this series of methods. Whatever T’shir was involved in, he didn’t want to drag others into it, if at all possible. The plan was all there in his head, even before he started rocking his chair back and forth to make it fall near the tricorder. Plans are all well and good, thought Sam as he rocked, but you never really knew how it would turn out until you had to operate a tricorder with your nose.