Max awoke to a skull-splitting headache powerful enough to kill a hundred targs. She tried lifting her head off the dirt, but before it got an inch the pain redoubled and quintupled until she was forced to let it drop back down with an agonized groan.
Wincing painfully, she muttered in a slurred voice, "Damn I hate sonic grenades..."
Gritting her teeth, she forced herself up onto an elbow and looked around. Her TR-116 still lay at her side, and looking at her feet saw that her boot was still untied. "Damn."
There wasn't a sound in the air. Carefully, inch-by-painful-inch she crawled back up the slight incline and looked down the other side to where the rest of her team had been. They were gone, but track marks in the dust clearly showed where their unconscious bodies had been dragged away. Toward the prison of course. When the sonic grenade had knocked them all out she had been behind the small ridge, and that had apparently been enough to hide her comatose form from being discovered by whoever had come and taken the others. Lucky me, she thought. We come here to rescue one person and I wind up having to rescue that one plus the rescue team! Who's going to rescue me?
She crawled back down the far side of the slope and retrieved the TR-116. At least she still had her equipment. She swore an oath to the woman they had come here to find. "If anything happens to my friends, Jazz, I'm going to personally take it out of your hide!"
Checking her combat tricorder, she saw that Carter and the others had been taken to one of the ramshackle buildings on the far side of the complex. It was about fifty yards in from the encircling wall, set apart from any other structures. In addition to the four blips representing the captured Banshee members, there were several others inside with them in close proximity, and five blips slowly orbiting the building on the outside; most likely guards.
She checked the time. The ruddy Lazon sun would set within the hour, which would give her the advantage of concealing darkness. Plus, no one knew she was here-she knew Carter and the others wouldn't give away her existence -- so she had the advantage of surprise also in her favor. An insane plan was beginning to coalesce in her brain. Carefully, she sunk as low as she could behind the slight ridge and settled in to wait for the approaching night.
Lee Carter awoke to a skull-splitting headache powerful enough to kill a hundred targs. She tried lifting her head off the hard cement floor, but before it got an inch the pain redoubled and quintupled until she was forced to let it drop back down with an agonized groan.
Wincing painfully, she muttered, "Damn I hate sonic grenades..."
"Dat'll teach you'ze ta land on a prison planet, lady!" snarled an unfamiliar voice from somewhere in the room.
Carter cracked open her eyes to the blinding light of late afternoon filtered through a dirty window shade -- at least it seemed blinding to her, still suffering the after-effects of the stun grenade -- and tried to identify the source of the voice. A rotund, bald-headed, snaggle-toothed troll of a man stood near a half-open door, leering unpleasantly in her direction. On seeing one of his prisoners was awake, he leaned out the door and called to someone, "Go find Scar. De dames is wakin' up."
Carter looked around the small room. She was lying on her side on a bare cement floor, feet securely bound at the ankles and knees, hands tied behind her back. In a neat row beside her were Sam, Jo and Alex, similarly trussed. Where was Max? Being held elsewhere? Still at large? Dead? Taking a quick inventory, she discovered that her phaser was missing -- naturally -- as were her tricorder, communicator and medikit. The three other Banshees were also starting to wake up from their involuntary snoozes.
The troll had swaggered over from his position at the door and was looming over Carter. She tried to get into a sitting position, but her bonds were too tight and cut deeper into her flesh with every move she made. Finally she was forced to give up her struggles and content herself with glaring angrily at her captor.
His unsavory leer only intensified at watching her struggle against the ropes. "What say you'ze an' me have a little fun, huh? Whad'ya say, dolly?" He took another threatening step closer and reached with groping fingers at her. However, before Carter was forced into hurting this troll in order to defend herself, a loud voice from the direction of the door saved her the trouble.
"Halfnose!" the voice barked. "Leave dem dames alone or Scar's gonna shoot off the other half o' your nose too!"
"Rrrrarr! You'ze a rotten spoil-sport, Spike!" growled Halfnose, but the threat to his demi-proboscis had its intended effect. Scowling in anger for having been deprived of his 'fun', he opted for lobbing a last threat at Carter instead as he backstepped towards the door. "Jus' wait till Scar gets here. Den de fun will really start!" With that he stepped back through the threshold and slammed the door shut. Carter heard the heavy lock click shut, and they were alone. They immediately set about getting themselves free.
Out beyond the second ridge, a motley entourage shuffled and gamboled after a mysterious lead figure shrouded in dark concealing cloak and hood. As they approached the five exotic spacecraft parked behind the last hill, their chatter grew more and more excited -- to the poor wretches who had been consigned to this wretched hive of villainy, the five planes were five priceless tickets to freedom.
The cloaked figure stopped a few dozen paces from the closest starfighter and just stood there, cloak slowly flapping in the stale evening breeze. The lapse into inactivity was not to the liking of the figure's lackeys however, and they surged forward towards their prizes. They didn't get far though. A sudden shot rang out and a patch of dirt before their feet exploded in a hail of stone shrapnel, making them screech to a halt and look back at their leader. The long muzzle of an evil-looking projectile weapon slipped unobtrusively back into the folds of the cloaked figure's shroud. After it was clear the minions were under control, a gloved hand motioned to the group's lieutenant.
The lieutenant was a muscular bruiser. His bare arms were covered in tattoos depicting an assortment of skulls, snakes, daggers, devils and an entire menagerie of vicious snarling beasts. He stumped off in the direction of the closest fighter on legs the size of beer barrels, eager to do his leader's bidding.
The fins of the closest fighter were emblazoned with the image of a fabulous monster having the head of a man, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion -- a manticore. At the touch of his hand on the pressure point, a small ladder extruded from the silvery hull leading up to the cockpit. On massive feet barely able to negotiate the small rungs, he climbed up and began fumbling with the canopy release.
A blinding flash of light engulfed his body a split second later though, sending him flying backwards through the air to land with a wet thud more than ten yards from the fighter. He rolled a few times, twitched spasmodically, then lay still. The onlookers cringed back at the unexpected explosion, while a few snickered at the lieutenant's misfortune.
Behind the mask, the cloaked figure scowled darkly. The death of that inept fool was no great concern -- plenty more where he came from -- but getting at the contents of the starfighters was going to be harder than hoped. As suspected, the starfighters were protected from unauthorized tampering by a sufficiently lethal forcefield.
The ship type was familiar -- Federation Banshee class starfighter -- which was good. The cloaked figure walked closer; close enough to finally notice the heraldic beasts colorfully emblazoned on their fins: griffin, basilisk, chimera, wyvern and murderous manticore. A sudden flash of recognition evoked an electric thrill of elation. Suddenly, finding the pilots of these craft became the most important concern -- gaining entrance into the fighters themselves no longer even mattered.
The cloaked figure spun on a heel and was about to motion to the waiting thugs to head back to their base at the prison when a running man skidded to a halt and breathlessly grunted, "Scar!"
"What is it?" said a muffled voice from behind the mask.
"Message from Halfnose. He captured some intruders sneaking around the compound and says you should come right away!" huffed the messenger.
The pilots! thought the figure. If that moron Halfnose has inflicted his usual heavy handedness on them he's going to have to change his name to Nonose. To the runner though, the figure just nodded receipt of the message, then turned and started back towards the prison on the double.
Behind, the herd of followers were momentarily perplexed -- being so close to the means of their liberation only to turn away and head back the way they came made no sense to them -- but in the end they did what followers did best: they followed.
It hadn't been difficult for Carter and the three others to untie themselves once their captors were out of the room. They wriggled across the floor until two of them were back-to-back, then got to work on each other's bonds. Once one pair of hands was free, all the rest of the knots were made short work of.
Now Carter stood in the center of the small room rubbing some feeling back into her wrists and looking about. The window was high up on the wall, and was far too small for any of them to squeeze through anyway, so that escape route was out. The only other exit was the large metal door, but it was shut and locked from the outside. The only furnishing in the room was a narrow shelf attached to the wall opposite the window which held a few bits of broken machinery and small glass jars of some clear liquid.
"How are we going to get out of here?" asked Sam, echoing Carter's own thoughts.
Alex walked over to the window and stood beneath it looking up, trying to decide if she could climb up there and squeeze her slender figure through, while Jo went over to the door and began inspecting the lock.
Carter stood back and let her people work -- if anyone could figure a way out of their predicament, they could. Her faith was quickly rewarded. Jo straightened from her inspection and turned towards Carter. "I have an idea."
Seconds after the sun had set, Max was in motion. Staying as low as possible and flitting from cover to cover, she was scarcely more than a shadow on the desert floor, her flight suit automatically darkening in color until it matched the night in blackness. Methodically she made her way around the outside of the prison complex to a position near where the rest of her team was being held. The prison was large, so it took her more than an hour to circumnavigate it, but finally she settled herself behind an outcropping of upthrust masonry and took stock of the situation with her combat tricorder.
The four blips demarking the locations of Carter and the others hadn't moved; they were still inside a building just inside the prison walls, but there were now additional blips moving along the wall itself-sentries posted after dark.
She cursed darkly and considered her options. She hated to use the TR-116. It was a kinetic weapons that fired solid projectiles, and there was no 'stun' setting on a bullet. Anyone she took out would be taken out permanently. On the other hand, since she was alone against an entire compound of bad guys, it was by far the more sensible choice. While her phaser could be set to stun, the beam could be traced back to her hiding place. Alone, she wouldn't last long under the return fire.
She decided to reconnoiter a little more before deciding on an attack plan. Unfolding the TR-116's headset from her pocket and settling it on her head, she flipped the targeting eyepiece down into position and toggled the rifle's tracking mode with her thumb. As if by magic, the tracker's X-ray vision penetrated the prison complex's outer wall as if they were smoke and continued inward to the building where her friends were being held. In her eyepiece, Max could see several goons positioned around the outside of the building, all armed with beat-up old Cardassian disruptor riles.
She zoomed the tiny X-ray view forward and through the building's walls. In the first room she could see two more goons sitting at a small table playing cards. The first had a spiky mohawk hairdo, while the second had only half a nose. Each had a pistol strapped to his belt. The second room held the jackpot however -- Carter and the others. Sam and Alex were rummaging around some piles of junk apparently looking for something, while Jo was fiddling with the door lock. Carter was supervising. Looks like they've got an escape plan in the works already, thought Max smugly. They might not know about the goons in the next room though. But with that realization, Max knew how she could help the plan. She slapped a fresh magazine into the rifle and settled down to wait for her cue.
Jo and Sam had inspected the junk on the small shelf and retrieved for themselves a plastic drinking straw, one of the jars of liquid, which had turned out to be turpentine, a hunk of rough metal, and a rock. It turned out that Alex had an extra clip of rounds for Max's TR-116 stashed in one of her pockets, and the goons either hadn't discovered it or didn't recognize it as something dangerous, so they hadn't confiscated it, and the bullets now also joined Jo's junk pile.
Carter was supervising as befit her rank and position, but she wanted to help too.
Jo thought a moment, then suggested, "Well, I could use your sleeve." She wasn't trying too hard to hide her smirk.
"My sleeve?" replied Carter, not sure she had heard right.
"Yeah. Just rip it right off. It doesn't have to be neat."
Sighing and vowing to keep her mouth shut next time, Carter began tugging at the quantum fiber cloth of her uniform. Alex came over with a sharp-edged piece of metal she'd found and helped until they were rewarded with a very satisfying shredding sound. Carter handed the tatters of her sleeve to Jo, who received it with an obviously fake attitude of solemnity.
"Alex, use that sharp piece of metal you've got there and tear this into long strips, as thin as you can." Alex got to work.
Jo turned her attention to the door lock. She stuck one end of the drinking straw in the keyhole, then began carefully prying open the bullets, emptying the gunpowder into the straw so that it poured down into the lock mechanism. After all the bullets were emptied, she pulled out the straw and tossed it aside.
By this time, Alex was finished shredding Carter's sleeve, and passed the strips back to Jo, who stuffed them into the jar of turpentine. When they were thoroughly soaked, she pulled them out again and tied a few of them end-to-end so as to make one long, wet strand. She stuffed one end into the keyhole and lay the rest out in a straight line across the floor. "You guys might want to stand back while I do this. And plug your ears," she warned.
"As soon as the lock blows, be ready to rush whoever is outside," said Carter. "We'll only get one chance at this, and the explosion is likely to attract a lot of attention."
The others nodded their understanding, and Jo proceeded to try and make a spark with her hunk of metal and rock. It took a few minutes before she got her technique right, but a spark eventually caught on the flammable turpentine-soaked ex-uniform and flashed upward toward the lock. Jo dove for the far end of the room just as the gunpowder exploded. In a terrific crash and puff of smoke, half the door shattered, spraying sharp slivers of wood and metal in all directions. Alex caught a piece in the shoulder and cried out, but when the smoke dissipated it was clear that the way out was open!
Carter was the first to dash for the exit, but the others were right on her heels. As she burst into the next room however, Carter's jaw came into forceful contact with the iron fist of Halfnose, spinning her violently around and sending her sprawling flat on her stomach across the floor.
Jo's explosion had apparently taken out Halfnose's partner Spike -- he was lying on the floor in a slowly spreading pool of blood, a wedge of metal embedded deeply in his skull -- but Halfnose was still standing, and he was not a happy camper. With an impossible burst of strength, he slammed what was left of the door back, smashing it into Sam, Jo and Alex, throwing them back into their cell, then swung to face Carter.
Carter turned herself over onto her back. She had a salty taste in her mouth and could feel the warm trickle of blood running across her cheek from the gash on her lip, but had no time to worry about it With a ferocious animal snarl on his ugly face, Halfnose raised his pistol to finish Carter off. At the last instant though, his victorious sneer transformed into a grimace of shock and disbelief. A tiny transporter sparkle had formed in front of his chest and solidified into a bullet. The projectile hit him dead-center, its force of impact throwing him back against the wall, where he slumped and landed in a heap atop his buddy.
A TR-116 shot! Max must still be alive! finally registered on Carter's stunned brain.
She staggered to her feet, wiping the blood off her chin with the back of her hand, and went to see to her friends. They were staggering back to their feet as well. The blow they had suffered had been a terrific one -- Jo had a painful-looking gash on her forehead and probably a mild concussion, while Sam's arm had been caught between the door and the doorpost, ripping away uniform and part of the artificial skin covering her cybernetic limb, and judging from the amount of blood soaked into Alex's uniform, her shoulder wound was still bleeding. "Let's go!" she urged them. Medical treatment would have to wait.
They bolted through the outer room, but not before relieving the two goons of their weapons, so semi-armed now burst into the cold night air. There were several more dead bodies sprawled around the immediate area, all with bloody holes in their chests. "Looks like Max is playing guardian angel," said Carter.
"Looks more like she's playing the angel of death," commented Sam, looking around at the carnage.
Carter looked back to see how her people were doing. Not so good, she realized. Jo's head wound and Alex's blood loss were taking their toll. She motioned for Sam to grab ahold of Alex while she did the same for Jo, and in this manner, in pairs, they started semi-running for the prison's outer wall. Several prison inhabitants tried to stand in their way, but Carter and Sam leveled them with their captured Cardassian weapons -- set on stun. Carter spotted a breach in the wall and angled her course in that direction.
Moments before reaching the relative safety of the hole however, a tall dark cloaked figure suddenly loomed up before Carter, appearing out of nowhere, while at the same time a large group of armed goons began encircling their position from the rear. Carter and Jo came up short, almost causing Sam and Alex to rear-end them.
She thought furiously -- where was the way out of the trap? Even with Max safely out in the surrounding desert somewhere sniping with her TR-116, there was no way they could eliminate everyone before they were either gunned down themselves or recaptured, and Carter had no desire to be recaptured by these filthy animals. Casting a quick glance at Jo, Carter saw the same grim realization behind those blue-green eyes, and the determination to go down fighting.
Carter propped Jo up on her own two legs and handed her a disruptor, then tightened her grip on the Cardassian pistol she toted, intending to take the cloaked figure with her into oblivion.
The cloaked figure took several steps toward Carter, but its minions had halted their advancement and were now just expectantly watching the unfolding drama. Amid their chatter, Carter heard the name 'Scar' repeated over and over -- apparently the cloaked and masked figure. A gloved hand reached up and Carter tensed, but the hand went not for a weapon, but for the figure's hood. Tossing it back, the figure revealed itself.
Carter just stood there, every muscle turned to stone, paralyzed by the whirlwind of emotions that had hijacked her brain: disbelief, shock, horror, revulsion, elation, curiosity, anger.... Beside and behind her, Jo, Sam and Alex were similarly calcified, and if Max was watching through her headset from her desert vantage point, she was likely motionless with shock and indecision as well.
Under layers of grime, behind the wicked red scar that ran from her forehead all the way down the right side of her face, and through ten years of hardship living on this hell of a planet, Carter could still recognize who the cloaked figure had once been, a lifetime ago.
"Jazz Phoenix!" she whispered.
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