Inaction

Posted on 28 Oct 2013 @ 1:44pm by Lieutenant Lilou Zaren & 6 of 8

1,205 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Episode 04 - Exodus
Location: Borg Cube - Subjunction 22, Grid 8-9, Repair/Engineering Conduits
Timeline: MD05 - 0630 hrs

[ON]

They came to again with a savage ache in Their back and neck, the muscles in Their left calf seizing painfully, and an inability to stretch or even move. After a few moments of terror, They remembered the careful climb into the repair hub and a swift hiding spot in an empty metal crate. No wonder They ached. Had They fallen asleep? Or had the Borg somehow remotely triggered the nanoprobes in Their system? No way of knowing and it didn't matter. They were awake, alive, and wholly Them. Them was better than them. That much was certain.

Licking Their dry lips, They tilted Their head against the side of the crate, listening to the sounds of shuffling outside. Someone was there. Not someone. Some-not-one. We're all Multiple here, Lilou trilled in the dark. They held Their breath. Exhaled shallowly. Inhaled quietly. Prayed to spirits, gods, angels, and the wisps of ancient disappearing stars. Black and white and grayscale pooling dark expanding elegantly and timelessly to absorb every last morsel of light...

They woke again, unsure of how much time had passed, but there was color. Shadowed color, but color nonetheless. Color other than the greenscale lens that had replaced her eye. The mustard yellow of Lilou's uniform. The pale, nearwhite of her spindly fingers. The brownish red of her pooling, drying blood. Their remaining eyelid twitched, fluttered, twitched, every nerve sang, breath heaved out of her in great swells - an inverse slow motion hyperventilation. She couldn't see- there wasn't anything to see, except her knees and her life slowly filling the crate instead of her veins. Everything keened and bucked. Too bright. Too dark. Too loud. Too loud. Images surged through her mind, overlapping her visual senses: trees, oceans, sky, enormous sky, so much blue, children running, and then to want and not to have to want and want for how could anyone begin to comprehend this wonder and then to want and not to have- was this death? Was this what it meant? To be leaving? Or were They awake? Visions came with blood loss, that was a natural phenomenon, but even knowing that it was impossible not to ache when Selik watched his lover turn his back and stride off through the tall, drooping trees- Stirring stroking. Sounds of battle. Heartbreak. Death, death, death, death. Love, so much, how was it possible to feel so much at once all at once without stopping. Overlapping. Tests and nurses and monks and heroes and warriors and sleek ships and dirty ones and dry planets and wet. Wet. Touch. Feel. Kiss. Be. Live. All of it. All of it. Worth it. Forever. Every moment. Every breath.

Zaren tried to focus on listening, on the outside, and, with shaking hands, gingerly lifted the lid of the crate and peeked out. Satisfied the area was clear, They crept out and stretched, scanning the room. Lilou dragged Them in one direction, then Arjin tugged them in another to the point where an observer might have suspected the small, sweaty Trill had been caught by two invisible ropes and was being tugged in opposite measure. This, They mused, is why there is supposed to be a strong personality, and clamored back into the crate as more footsteps came. Then went. And came again.

The symbiont twisted viciously in Lilou's abdomen, trying to settle in a body that was much smaller than it had ever inhabited. That body, clammy with fear, folded up on itself and crushing it inside like a compactor was... not good. Spirits, they were never going to get out of this mess. They were going to die in a parts box. Not entirely lacking in symbolism, but still not a pleasant future to look forward to. Not a future at all. Destructive thoughts, those wouldn't do Them any good. Focus on the now. On the transporter and the escape. Happy thoughts. Right. They held themselves still as the footsteps came closer. There was something wet pooling where They sat and all They could think was at least the box was sealed and would not leak... whatever it was.

The footsteps had ceased. The drone had gone. It must have, because... well, there was simply no evidence to suggest that there were any 'sneaky Borg'. They tended to be rather direct and expedient in accomplishing their goals. The reliable sort. So once again, They nudged the lid of the crate up...

-and stared at Raifi's back. Not Raifi, They thought. Not anymore. He bent over a center console of the room, a tubule from his arm attaching him to the main-

The arm!

Swears in too many languages clustered on the tip of Their tongue in a holding pattern. It lay on the ground right outside the crate where They had dropped it in their hurry to hide. Their only weapon. And here was a part of them, standing eight feet away, back turned, ignorant of their presence. Zaren was not ignorant.

They had been thinking so specifically about getting off this ship, they had not stopped to consider... Raifi. It was dizzying to see him upright and walking. They had never experienced this... out of body experience. He had to be saved, if for nothing more than respect to the adventures and experience he had given them. But if he were to be saved, then the others must too. Tarishiana had a child - where was it? Where was she? And Nicholas was somewhere on this cube. And Holliday, who had looked at her without a flicker of remorse, watched as she'd been severed and implanted-

Candles flickered on tables, the scent of freshly sliced zinzin branches filling the air and covering the antiseptic scents of the chamber. Voluminous fabric pooling on the walls, shimmering weightlessly to the floor. Clean. A gentle slumber induced by medication, that pleasant waking moment as the drugs slid away and the sun warmed them and they were one, destined, and whole.

-there wasn't time for all of them. Nor means. Of course there was. Wasn't. They had one weapon and it was outside the crate. And there was a limitation to its use. Was killing one of them equal to saving them? YES, Raifi's voice drowned them all out for the first time, kill it. Kill it now, it isn't me. But how could one kill a home, a host, a man, a brother? No, really, how? Lilou wondered. He was exoskeleton and nanoprobes. They had one phaser, attached to an arm, that They hadn't even been able to test to see if it worked. It had been discarded. There was no telling. They carefully lowered the lid of the crate and huddled again in silence.

And that silence stretched on. And on. The lap of waves against shore, the scent of soft, fresh fuoret resting open by a fireside, its juices pooled into a vial of Terran rum, gleaming and expectant in the sunset. Warm sand pooled around them, scent of copper, and the overstar's perfect rays casting colors like a paintbrush through the sky.

[OFF]

Lilou Zaren
Assistant Chief Engineer
USS Galileo

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