I Wanna Say I Do
Title: Nixaan Theta [4/?] Fallout
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Kirk/Spock pre-slash so far.
Rating: R
Summary: An away mission goes horribly, horribly wrong.
Warnings/Notes: Warnings for this section: I got a bit violent again, possibly overly lyrical and shamelessly exploited an OC for exposition purposes. SHAMELESSLY. Oh, and I still suck at nameology. Hard. XD
General blathery notes at the end because I'm a chatty bastard tonight.
Nixaan Theta
Part the Fourth : Fallout
They were screaming into his skull, like fine needles coated in salt driven through the bone to scrape his brain. Stabbing and stinging, scalding pain resonating long after the first pinch. There was no voice to this agony - no words, no punch, just a pitch that whipped down his spine and wracked his body with shudders. This was familiar.
This was torture.
His eyes were pried open from their reflexive clench and he watched helplessly as the speculum was latched into place, the delicate instrument dwarfed by the thick fingers and split talons. His eyes dried out immediately in the too-bright-too-sharp light, a dull fire adding to the encyclopedia of complaints his body was registering. His head was immobilized in some barbaric cage out of Earth's Dark Ages, cold iron wrapped in what felt like barbed wire - tiny steel knives biting into his scalp, making rivulets of dried blood crack against his skin as he tried to speak.
“What..?”
“Quiet now, Kirk.” The raspy voice was like chewing glass, forcing words out through a tongue sliced into ribbons, thick and swollen. Alien.
Vertigo wiped through him as he was suddenly swept horizontal. His view of limed stone walls was replaced with a limed stone ceiling before the buzzing argon lights spotted his vision. A chunk of rough white hair tickled his nose as the hitherto unseen face of his captor swelled into clarity, seamed yellow skin faded like parchment around pale green eyes, the jutting under bite loosened with age.
The grating voice sounded again, a grind of stone powdering vibrations into words, each one pitched just shy of rattling his eardrums.
“You are awake now. You are here, with me. I am -” The noise emitted from the alien throat was a flux of bleeding agony. He got as far as Kiri'eee before it stopped registering as something distinguishable from pain. The Nixaanite frowned, bracketing mouth lines deepening and throwing the curve of fang into sharp relief against his upper lip.
He kicked himself for half halfheartedly wishing for this during his incarceration, one thing he'd learned in his chaotic life was that no matter how many times the Universe chewed you up and spit you out it was always ready for another go. Usually when you thought the worst was finally over.
Especially then.
He'd long since suspected he was a favoured object of the Universe's open schadenfreude and the urge to laugh along was probably hysterical given his circumstances. He forced it back and narrowed his eyes against the stiff wire, diluting his concerns into one small word he was able to push past his dry lips.
“Why..?”
The expression that flitted across the alien's face passed almost too quickly to be labelled, but Jim had a sense of puzzlement from his host as it craned it's neck over him and watched him closely.
“You are James Kirk. Dog of the Federation. You ask me why?”
“I am Captain James T Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. Why am I here? Why were my men murdered? What happened to the Vulcan?”
The alien hissed through it's fangs and the pure frustration in the sound loosened some the fear around Kirk's heart.
Spock's OK. No way anybody's that pissed if they'd just killed him and gotten me.
“We found the Vulcan dog trying to carry you out of here. Two of my people died taking you from him but we failed to stop him from returning to your ship.”
Satisfaction and sorrow wove through him. He couldn't bring himself to regret his decision to delay their departure if Spock had managed to get away, though he knew the Vulcan would be troubled by the deaths at his hand. His men had deserved better than a macabre display of their sacrifice.
He tested the restraints surreptitiously. The bands around his forehead were bolted to the table, barbs biting deeply if he tried to move his head. His arms were locked at his sides with more steel, though he might be able to work his way free if he could dislocate his thumb. His ankles were similarly bound and he had his doubts that he would be able to wriggle his broken foot free even if they had been loose enough to allow him the hope. His thigh felt tight and heavy, as if the wound had been swaddled in cloth.
I'm not getting out of this.
His eyes were burning.. He regretted he couldn't close them against the realization that he was probably going to die here if Spock couldn't rescue him. Again.
Captured twice in one mission, gotta be a new record for me. Gotta get him talking. Keep him going long enough for Spock to round up the cavalry. Maybe figure out what the Hell happened.
A solid hand rested on his chest, fingers tapping in thought. He felt the body shift above him and braced himself, a sharp bite of pain blooming with hot blood opening along his ribcage. He clenched his teeth against the cries and tried to keep his voice steady.
“Why? Why are you doing this? Why did you kill my men?”
Kiri'eee shook his head, somehow managing to convey his disappointment in Jim's questions. Another line opened up, parallel to the first, blade scraping bone and bursts of pain lancing up from the inflamed tissue over his fractured rib. His sucking breaths aggravated the injury and he couldn't stop the tiny whimper from leaking past his lips..
The slicing strokes ceased and the fingers went back to their maddening drum beat over his skin while the alien watched him quietly.
“It is horror and pain your kind understand, yes? I will give you that. “
The surreality of the scene, him strapped to some sort of swivelling surface, splayed out and damaged with more of the same ahead of him, juxtaposing against this undercurrent of resignation from the alien, as if it regretted the necessity of his actions, threw him.
He worked to submerge the discomfort and confusion behind his command persona (Starfleet Academy Year Three, Mandatory Seminar for Command Track Cadets : Resisting Refined Coercive Interrogation Techniques Through Mental Preparedness and Discipline)
It was an unusual staring contest since the speculum guaranteed his victory. The alien got it's points for wringing out a few more gasps of pain from him with the slow slicing cuts over his heart.
“Why are you here Captain Kirk?”
“I asked you first.”
His smart remark earned him another slice, a shallow bite across his stomach this time. He could feel the sting with every beat of his heart, echoing the aches from his earlier wounds.
His grade on the Discipline section of the Seminar hadn't been his best that year. He'd gotten extra credit for smack talk, though his instructor had called it something official and boring like Ability to Deflect Hostile Speculation to Personal Vendetta. He'd had to write a paper explaining why it's sometimes better to have the aggressors more focused on hurting you than probing for Federation secrets or remembering their other hostages, if available.
“Why will your Federation not leave us in peace?”
Certain questions didn't follow the established pattern of Refined Coercive Interrogation.
“What-?”
A punch this time, hard and direct to his gut. His reflexive curl dug the spikes from his cage further into his temples and wrung another twisted scream.
“Why are you here, Captain Kirk? What does the Federation want with us now, after all these years?”
He was gasping now, sweating and panting beneath the pain. Something in the alien's voice snagged at his brain, it sounded like fear and rage. For the Federation. Definitely outside the pattern.
He gritted some truth out between clenched teeth.
“Trade - we were here to trade with you.”
The laugh was musical, at odds with the gravelly vibrations of growled Standard and the high pitched eagle shrieks of it's native tongue. It pealed out even as the drumming fingers splayed into claws and deliberately raked over the open wounds on his chest. He felt the edges of his skin tear further and and the prickly numbness spreading into his system spoke of toxins.
Shit, shit, shit.
He didn't know what the effects were supposed to be, some new variant of truth serum seemed probable. He doubted it was going to be the aphrodisiac again, pins and needles ran counter to lascivious lassitude, and upon reconsidering the size of his captor, that was a positive.
He shuddered and tensed as spasms of gravity crawled up through his torso, dulling the slices and cracked ribs to a low pulse. He wasn't sure if this was a mercy or if he were being lulled into a slow death. It seemed counter intuitive for the torturer to numb his victim and felt a flash of real terror.
He fought the fear and thought desperately, cursing Starfleet for leaving out the part about the Nixaanites being a race of biped humanoids, no known psi-talents, with a grudge.
A grudge for what? What the fuck is going on here?
It was a good question, he decided somewhat fuzzily, so he asked it.
“I don't understand. We were asked to come here to discover if the reports of dilitium on this planet were true. If so we were secure an agreement with your kind on top of the unofficial agreement for mineral wealth in exchange for medical supplies in place since you refused to join the Federation a decade ago.”
He flinched and added verbal diarrhoea to his symptoms. A measure of comfort could be taken in the knowledge that he had no fucking clue what was going on and thus wasn't likely to betray anything that would get him court-martialed
The alien laughed again, it would have been a friendly sound if clawed fingers weren't clenching over the raw meat of his thigh. His keening cry rose in counterpoint and he was left dizzy and breathless as the twinges worked their way through his nerves. Tears blurred his vision and left their haze when he couldn't blink to clear them.
“Is the what the Federation calls it, our refusal to join their ranks? Your people are gifted in euphemism, Kirk.” Another squeeze, less vicious, a warning.
“What else did your masters tell you about the people you were to destroy, hmm? Did they linger over the details of genocide, perhaps call it an unfortunate and necessary result of a failed experiment in genetics? Or did they gloss over the lurid details of tortuous existence - reducing the years of slavery and mutations to a simple accounting of cost over runs and wasted resources?”
“Dilithium. We were supposed to trade for dilithium. Keep it quiet.” He was babbling in his need to refute the charges levelled at the Federation through his proxy. Information skipping directly from his brain to his lips.
“No project, no experiments. We didn't know anything about you! I had a holo projection attached to a 2MB Data chip and a god damned rendezvous! There is no order for destruction, there wouldn't have been one, we're the Federation of Planets, not the Klingon Empire.”
The eyes narrowed on him again, anger eclipsing whatever lingering traces of regret Jim thought he had seen.
“At least the Klingons are honest about their brutality.” The accusation was hissed into his ear and he had to work to prevent flinching back against the spray of saliva against his face.
“Your people sneak in with pretty lies and promises to commit atrocities under a veil of secrecy and gloss it with a patina of discovery. No, better by far we'd been subjugated by the Empire.”
“How can you say that? We're a peacekeeping force, we're explorers, dedicated to the good of all life. Our goddamned Prime Directive is non interference in cultural development, not conquest. We have equal members, not tributaries.”
“Perhaps you are just a tool then. An ignorant tool. Allow me Kirk, the opportunity to flesh out your history. Defend your Federation and your trade mission here when I am done, if you can.”
***
The Nixaanite kicked the support lock free and Jim was shot vertical again. The anger emanating from Kiri'eee was a tangible buzz against his nerves as he paced in front of his captive audience, massive shoulders twitching with the effort of recapturing his calm.
When his breathing finally evened out and the tension smoothed away, Kiri'eee settled his bulk on a plain steel stool on the extreme edge of Jim's periphery and spoke in a detached voice.
“We came to this planet to transform it. We had cutting edge technology to test and we were going to force this planet into habitability. We erected the domes and dug our tunnels - sensor charges to aerate soil and make things grow, geo-biological hybridization to create a forest of crystal that could synthesize oxygen and filter the methane from the atmosphere and allow us to cultivate a new paradise from unforgiving rock and gas.
“They didn't tell you, Kirk, that we were partners?”
The question was rhetorical, Jim doubted Kiri'eee was even aware of his whispered no.
“We wanted our chance to to make a difference and the Federation was providing the tools. Change us, they would help us adapt and all we had to do was let them help.”
“The first lab was finished a year after the dome went up. There was celebration throughout the settlement and we sent charges into the skies to revel under the fires of creation. It was a spectacle, a symbol for our new beginning.” Thin lips curled in contempt, lacing the words with irony.
“The next day we volunteered in droves for simple adaptive procedures that would allow us breath stronger underground. We took the hypo injections and tissue grafts gladly. It was a time of great hope and we were on the cusp of discovery. We were all pioneers. We were all heroes. It was a heady feeling, this idea of straddling breakthroughs in organic transmutation. Improve ourselves like we would this wasteland of poisonous shale.”
“The modifications were minor and they made the underground work so much easier. In the first season, we'd accomplished so much, so quickly. We had developed the network of tunnels to radiation hot points beyond even our dome and the sensor readouts were incredible further out. My team was able to synthesize the first crystal matrices months before we'd anticipated. Enthusiasm for the project was higher than ever in the wake of such results. A few of our bolder youth signed up for further enhancements, eager to make their mark. It was a series of more intrusive genetic manipulations and re-combinations to alter skeletal structures intended to make underground exploration faster and easier on our bodies.”
“The new techniques were failures, all failures.”
“Limber young bodies morphed into hulking things, tortured by the pain of unending internal transformations Some of them started going mad with it, the pain. Eventually they all died, most driven to suicide to escape.. Two of them had to be put down like animals after attacking their own families.”
The Nixaanite paused at this, shifting uncomfortably on the stool. His voice had a rasp when he picked up his story again and Jim felt a stab of sympathy at the naked sorrow behind the clinical recital.
“The bio-genetic experiments were called off and we marked the tragedy with solemn vows to never repeat our arrogance. We worked side by side with the Federation researchers to conquer this planet with more traditional sciences and technological advancements.
“We were making progress. Promising signs continued to show in the sensor probes, sections of caves exposed to the fluctuating radiations and crystals began to grow moulds and other simple celled plant life was created in the underground.”
“I was working in one of the Federation labs on how to encourage the crystal growths to the surface when the children started to disappear. The rumours sprung up of horrible lizard monsters emerging from the tunnels around the same time. Bodies were found, ravaged and rent by claws, women torn asunder, their wombs ripped through and shredded. Soon the attacks were happening in the daylight.
“We speculated on the tunnels, perhaps we'd breached a core of life and creatures that developed in the bowels of the earth were finding their way to the surface for the first time. Some of the biologists among us were excited at the possibilities and organized a survey. Those who ventured down into the depths never returned and the attacks continued, for weeks until our colony was a hollowed out shell of old men and children hiding in their homes, afraid to leave. ”
“I was still continuing my research, I had no wife, no children. My work was everything to me and I was convinced I was on the verge on a breakthrough. It took me weeks to notice that sections of the labs were being closed off to me, to my team. I didn't even question it, I was so absorbed in my crystals and moulds.”
“I was a blind fool.” Kiri'eee stood abruptly and paced over to Jim, leaning in close to lock eyes and say, “We were all fools in our faith.”
He spun away and his voice was rising as he told his story to the empty stool. Anger was working into the sorrow now, speeding up the narration and painting the air with involuntary emphasis.
“The attacks were escalating. We petitioned the Federation scientists for aid and were soothed by their pretence and avowals. A great show was being performed before our eyes and we had no idea it was all a lie.” A taloned hand shot up and jerked it's way through the thick white hair.
“We stayed secured in our homes, so willing to believe that the precautions were necessary and that we would be safe if we could just hold the trust and wait. The highest minds and greatest engineers were among us, after all. We had such faith the nightmares would end, completely unaware that it was already too late.”
The Nixaanite blanched and spat at the wall derisively.. “We were naive, we were fools.”
“You're lying.” The words coated his throat like rotting milk, gagging him with contained bursts of fragmented confusion and nausea. This gamma grade horror holo being described was so disconnected from the Federation he knew, the ideals that pushed him into the boundaries of space to seek out and explore that it was unbelievable. This institutionalized cruelty was a betrayal of principle.
It wasn't real.
The Federation was Dhosan plague relief, Physler treaty negotiations and IDIC. It was Remembrance Day ceremonies for fallen heroes in pursuit of liberation from the very viciousness this creature was purporting it had not only condoned but initiated. It was him and Spock, two vastly different beings united in purpose to further discovery and become the tangible arm that put the ideals onto practice. It was Christopher Pike daring him to do better. It was the Enterprise.
He braced himself for another assault as his denial hung in the air. Kiri'eee waved it off with a bitter laugh.
“We found the first monster a month after the curfew was established. We were keeping close to each other and barricading ourselves in our homes after dark. We thought it was working, no new attacks or disappearances were being reported. Our leaders and the Federation representatives were assuring us that progress was being made in the investigations.”
“When a girl failed to return home from school one afternoon, her frantic father gathered a search party. There were twenty of us willing to brave the dangers of the tunnels to find the child.”
“It had been many weeks at this point since any of us had entered the tunnels. The smell was the first thing that hit us, musky and fetid, a mixture of mould and refuse that made it impossible to breathe without choking even with our enhanced lungs. Twisted bones and rotting meat decorated the deeper sections and the air felt so close that it was as if we were swimming against a current to push through.
“In the darkness it was impossible to know what exactly happened.. I heard a scrape of claws and seconds later one of the search party fell to the ground, trying to hold his guts in with his hands as he bled out screaming beside me.”
“I couldn't save him. I was terrified, I'd never seen death up close before. There was so much blood. So much pain.”
“It was chaos. We were under siege from a thing we couldn't touch, couldn't see, couldn't catch. It happened so quickly. Of the twenty who went in, five were dead.. None of us had escaped unscathed when we finally subdued the creature and got our first look at one the monsters who'd turned our home into a living nightmare.”
Kiri'eee broke off his narrative and turned haunted eyes to Jim.
“Can you guess, Kirk, what we found when we struck our lights over the fallen monster?”
Jim swallowed sickly, fear syphoning the moisture from his mouth. “It was the girl.”
The alien blinked as if surprised and Jim's stomach clenched.. He hadn't wanted to be right.
“Yes. There was just enough of her left beneath the scars and mutations for her father to identify her. She had been altered and the pain had driven her insane.”
“The scientists-”
Kiri'eee stalked back to face him again, sneering with perfect scorn, a clawed hand reaching out to press over his knife work. Jim bit down hard to stifle the cry, the sharp tang of blood hot on his tongue.
“Yes, Kirk. Your noble Federation scientists had been kidnapping our children and penning us like livestock to continue their research. We all knew it, as soon as we saw her face, twisted almost unrecognizable by terror and pain.”
“When we left the tunnels, her father carrying her destroyed corpse, they were waiting for us. Two more of us died in that fight, would that we all had been struck down and spared what happened next.”
“Our friends and families were told that we all had perished in the tunnels. The Federation held us a beautiful service, I was told. One of the first things we did when we escaped the labs was tear the memorial to ground.”
“Escaped.” It was too much to hope that he was wrong about this too.
Kiri'eee was flexing his hand again, seeming fascinated by the extension of his claws as they ran over Jim's chest.
“They took their time with us. Everyone believed we were dead, there was no need to rush. No need to kidnap other colonists when they had such a windfall in us. Thirteen healthy specimens. They refined their techniques, so that none of us were granted the asylum of insanity while they improved us.”
“It took us months before we were able to escape. Months of torture written up as scientific experimentation. My handler, a geneticist who worked with me on the synthesizer matrix for months, named me Nixaan Specimen 8 in his reports. I had taught him my name over a coffee when he joined my team.”
“We were never alive to your people. Our dreams were a convenient edge for them to stick us. I still remember the satisfaction of using their gifts to crush Garrick's skull with my bare hands when he finally got complacent.
“Despite that, they were ready for us. Garrick sent the signal before he finished thrashing his life out over my claws and they fled the planet rather than fight. They had prepared for the need to hide their crimes by destroying the evidence.”
“Thousands died when they breached the domes - choking as the very air that sustained them turned to poison in their lungs. More died in the tunnels from starvation before we discovered the phosphorous mould was edible and could sustain our bodies. It took us many years before we were able to repair the dome with the tools abandoned by the scientists in charge of the project as they fled the scene of their arrogance.”
Kiri'eee's face lost the edges of sorrow and rage and he stared at Jim contemplatively. He bent forward to adjust the table and Jim went back to staring at the ceiling. That feeling was back, the one that told him the Universe was about to start munching on him again.
“And now. Now you have returned. We didn't believe it, even after we received the signal.”
Jim focused sharply, “What signal? You knew were coming, there was supposed to have been a rendezvous, or was that a lie too?”
Kiri'eee ignored his questions and uncurled his arm in an unnatural line, wrist and elbows curving slightly up. He flexed the massive hand before Kirk's face, letting the talons extend to point a hair away from his exposed eye. Jim couldn't flinch away, watching as the point filled his sight. The talon retracted into a sheath of skin and Kiri'eee displayed his entire set of impressive fangs in an expression that resembled a smile if one was oblivious to the overt threat. Kirk wasn't.
“What do you mean dammit? How did your people know where we were?”
His head was spinning, struggling to reconcile this story with the rest of this clusterfuck of a mission. If this alien was telling the truth it meant he'd been set up. But for what purpose? By who? He knew he had few friends in the higher ranks of the Federation and among the Admiralty, Pike had even warned him that most considered his promotion a slap in the face to the more experienced and, in their minds, capable Captains though they agreed it was politic to give the flagship to the Hero of the Narada Incident. There were easier ways to get him killed than sending him on a suicide mission to a planet of illegally genetically modified aliens with a hate on for the Federation and Starfleet by association.
Illegally genetically modified aliens. With a grudge. Oh shit.
“You have to let me go.”
“Why would I do that, James T Kirk? So you can run back to your ship and finish the job from ten years ago? How many more dogs will I have to kill before the Federation leaves us alone?”
The reminder of his dead men, dead boys, dead friends wouldn't help him here. He pushed it away. He needed more than rage to make his point.
“Listen. Please, listen.” He spoke quickly Pleading passionately while immobilized and supine wasn't ideal, but he had to try. There was no new pain delivered and Kiri'eee had moved out of his immediate view. Kirk fought to reach him.
“If what you're saying is true than we're both being used. You're supposed to kill me. My First Officer, the Vulcan that escaped witnessed the effects of the general massacre of the security force and was present for my recapture. If I end up dead after this he will be forced to conclude that this planet is hostile to Starfleet and the rest of the crew will back him. There is nothing that will stop my crew from executing General Order 24 and destroying your entire civilization. This far out, this level of affront, there probably won't even be an investigation.”
“Please, let me go back to my ship. I will personally petition for your entry into the Federation, after which you will be protected. As a member you will not be relegated to a dark footnote in somebody's sick history. Your people will be able to thrive and grow.”
He felt the unmistakeable prick of a hypo at his neck and ignored it, gritting his word out desperately.
“You're supposed to kill me. My crew is supposed to destroy you. We can't let this happen, we can't kill each other and let this whole mess be swept under the rug as an incident during an away mission.”
“Let me get back to my ship and I swear to you by my name, this can be stopped. Nobody else has to die. I can help you.”
The Nixaanite positioned himself to hover over him again. Solemn lines at odds with the fevered brightness of grass green eyes, he poured a trickle of sharp cold water down Jim's throat and watched him choke it down, drowning out the desperate questions even as he could feel the creeping wrongness spread through his veins.
“You have other things to worry about now, Kirk. I have given you something. A gift, like the one your Federation gave me. Perhaps you will not go insane when you begin to change. Perhaps you will. Either way, it is fitting that you should come to understand intimately what your Federation is capable of.”
“It will take some time for you to change. The compound has never been tested on a human.”
Jim felt the panic rising and fought to contain it. His eyes flickered desperately, following the path of the electrode fixing over his heart with exacting precision. Kiri'eee smiled at him sadly.
“I regret that it was you who came, James T Kirk of the Enterprise. You seem to be a decent man.”
He flinched back against the barbs when the hand came up again. The speculum was removed from his eyes and he blinked furiously.
“Please.” His voice was choked and shaking. “Please, don't do this.”
“It is too late Kirk. It is done.”
He heard the click of a switch being thrown and screamed.
The broken brutal animal cries burst past his split lips, echoing wails of fear and pain haunting over the current of electricity attacking his spine. The sections of his brain still alert were mentally cataloguing the effects until the grey fog of oblivion began to creep over his sight. Either the table was spinning again or he was caught up in traumatized vertigo but, in the last sweeping moment of clarity before his consciousness ceded the battle, he could have sworn he saw the flash of human teeth in a satisfied smile follow him into darkness and a whisper sounding against his ear.
“If you survive, you will be welcome here.”
End Notes
This is all your fault. Every last bit of it. This section didn't even exist until I was a few paragraphs away from my next post and I got a review praising my world building and hoping my alien gimmick had a point because they were really digging it.
Enter the Holy Grail Plot Bunny of DOOM that completely invalidated the very first scene I'd written for this story and had me scrambling to play catch up this week to get this thing back on track. *facepalm* (If I can't use it here, I'm totally posting it as a one shot. HA! XD)
All I wanted was a new way for Kirk to get hit and a new world to hit him on. Was that too much to ask? This was supposed to be a romantic story, uh, at some point along the way.
To everyone that has commented with excellent questions that are forcing me to be a more responsible writer, your support and interest have been invaluable~! Thank you for needling me out of lazy!author mode. This thing just broke 10 000 words (a personal landmark!) and has morphed from a simple five and one prompt to an epic space!horror/drama/thriller. I'm still going to try to fit the prompt in, I just have to depart from trying to fit one in every chapter because really, six chapters just ain't gonna cut it anymore.
Many many thanks also go to my hetero life mate / non sexual life partner for stepping up and helping me smooth out the kinks in this section. It's partly his fault anyways, he's the one who lent me all three seasons of TOS after I saw the new movie. Actions have consequences, hippie. Remember that.
And to my darling war hammer of truth, I hope that you are still enthralled despite the rather sharp left turn this one has taken.
Master Post here
Previous
Next
Fandom: Star Trek XI
Pairing: Kirk/Spock pre-slash so far.
Rating: R
Summary: An away mission goes horribly, horribly wrong.
Warnings/Notes: Warnings for this section: I got a bit violent again, possibly overly lyrical and shamelessly exploited an OC for exposition purposes. SHAMELESSLY. Oh, and I still suck at nameology. Hard. XD
General blathery notes at the end because I'm a chatty bastard tonight.
Nixaan Theta
Part the Fourth : Fallout
They were screaming into his skull, like fine needles coated in salt driven through the bone to scrape his brain. Stabbing and stinging, scalding pain resonating long after the first pinch. There was no voice to this agony - no words, no punch, just a pitch that whipped down his spine and wracked his body with shudders. This was familiar.
This was torture.
His eyes were pried open from their reflexive clench and he watched helplessly as the speculum was latched into place, the delicate instrument dwarfed by the thick fingers and split talons. His eyes dried out immediately in the too-bright-too-sharp light, a dull fire adding to the encyclopedia of complaints his body was registering. His head was immobilized in some barbaric cage out of Earth's Dark Ages, cold iron wrapped in what felt like barbed wire - tiny steel knives biting into his scalp, making rivulets of dried blood crack against his skin as he tried to speak.
“What..?”
“Quiet now, Kirk.” The raspy voice was like chewing glass, forcing words out through a tongue sliced into ribbons, thick and swollen. Alien.
Vertigo wiped through him as he was suddenly swept horizontal. His view of limed stone walls was replaced with a limed stone ceiling before the buzzing argon lights spotted his vision. A chunk of rough white hair tickled his nose as the hitherto unseen face of his captor swelled into clarity, seamed yellow skin faded like parchment around pale green eyes, the jutting under bite loosened with age.
The grating voice sounded again, a grind of stone powdering vibrations into words, each one pitched just shy of rattling his eardrums.
“You are awake now. You are here, with me. I am -” The noise emitted from the alien throat was a flux of bleeding agony. He got as far as Kiri'eee before it stopped registering as something distinguishable from pain. The Nixaanite frowned, bracketing mouth lines deepening and throwing the curve of fang into sharp relief against his upper lip.
He kicked himself for half halfheartedly wishing for this during his incarceration, one thing he'd learned in his chaotic life was that no matter how many times the Universe chewed you up and spit you out it was always ready for another go. Usually when you thought the worst was finally over.
Especially then.
He'd long since suspected he was a favoured object of the Universe's open schadenfreude and the urge to laugh along was probably hysterical given his circumstances. He forced it back and narrowed his eyes against the stiff wire, diluting his concerns into one small word he was able to push past his dry lips.
“Why..?”
The expression that flitted across the alien's face passed almost too quickly to be labelled, but Jim had a sense of puzzlement from his host as it craned it's neck over him and watched him closely.
“You are James Kirk. Dog of the Federation. You ask me why?”
“I am Captain James T Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. Why am I here? Why were my men murdered? What happened to the Vulcan?”
The alien hissed through it's fangs and the pure frustration in the sound loosened some the fear around Kirk's heart.
Spock's OK. No way anybody's that pissed if they'd just killed him and gotten me.
“We found the Vulcan dog trying to carry you out of here. Two of my people died taking you from him but we failed to stop him from returning to your ship.”
Satisfaction and sorrow wove through him. He couldn't bring himself to regret his decision to delay their departure if Spock had managed to get away, though he knew the Vulcan would be troubled by the deaths at his hand. His men had deserved better than a macabre display of their sacrifice.
He tested the restraints surreptitiously. The bands around his forehead were bolted to the table, barbs biting deeply if he tried to move his head. His arms were locked at his sides with more steel, though he might be able to work his way free if he could dislocate his thumb. His ankles were similarly bound and he had his doubts that he would be able to wriggle his broken foot free even if they had been loose enough to allow him the hope. His thigh felt tight and heavy, as if the wound had been swaddled in cloth.
I'm not getting out of this.
His eyes were burning.. He regretted he couldn't close them against the realization that he was probably going to die here if Spock couldn't rescue him. Again.
Captured twice in one mission, gotta be a new record for me. Gotta get him talking. Keep him going long enough for Spock to round up the cavalry. Maybe figure out what the Hell happened.
A solid hand rested on his chest, fingers tapping in thought. He felt the body shift above him and braced himself, a sharp bite of pain blooming with hot blood opening along his ribcage. He clenched his teeth against the cries and tried to keep his voice steady.
“Why? Why are you doing this? Why did you kill my men?”
Kiri'eee shook his head, somehow managing to convey his disappointment in Jim's questions. Another line opened up, parallel to the first, blade scraping bone and bursts of pain lancing up from the inflamed tissue over his fractured rib. His sucking breaths aggravated the injury and he couldn't stop the tiny whimper from leaking past his lips..
The slicing strokes ceased and the fingers went back to their maddening drum beat over his skin while the alien watched him quietly.
“It is horror and pain your kind understand, yes? I will give you that. “
The surreality of the scene, him strapped to some sort of swivelling surface, splayed out and damaged with more of the same ahead of him, juxtaposing against this undercurrent of resignation from the alien, as if it regretted the necessity of his actions, threw him.
He worked to submerge the discomfort and confusion behind his command persona (Starfleet Academy Year Three, Mandatory Seminar for Command Track Cadets : Resisting Refined Coercive Interrogation Techniques Through Mental Preparedness and Discipline)
It was an unusual staring contest since the speculum guaranteed his victory. The alien got it's points for wringing out a few more gasps of pain from him with the slow slicing cuts over his heart.
“Why are you here Captain Kirk?”
“I asked you first.”
His smart remark earned him another slice, a shallow bite across his stomach this time. He could feel the sting with every beat of his heart, echoing the aches from his earlier wounds.
His grade on the Discipline section of the Seminar hadn't been his best that year. He'd gotten extra credit for smack talk, though his instructor had called it something official and boring like Ability to Deflect Hostile Speculation to Personal Vendetta. He'd had to write a paper explaining why it's sometimes better to have the aggressors more focused on hurting you than probing for Federation secrets or remembering their other hostages, if available.
“Why will your Federation not leave us in peace?”
Certain questions didn't follow the established pattern of Refined Coercive Interrogation.
“What-?”
A punch this time, hard and direct to his gut. His reflexive curl dug the spikes from his cage further into his temples and wrung another twisted scream.
“Why are you here, Captain Kirk? What does the Federation want with us now, after all these years?”
He was gasping now, sweating and panting beneath the pain. Something in the alien's voice snagged at his brain, it sounded like fear and rage. For the Federation. Definitely outside the pattern.
He gritted some truth out between clenched teeth.
“Trade - we were here to trade with you.”
The laugh was musical, at odds with the gravelly vibrations of growled Standard and the high pitched eagle shrieks of it's native tongue. It pealed out even as the drumming fingers splayed into claws and deliberately raked over the open wounds on his chest. He felt the edges of his skin tear further and and the prickly numbness spreading into his system spoke of toxins.
Shit, shit, shit.
He didn't know what the effects were supposed to be, some new variant of truth serum seemed probable. He doubted it was going to be the aphrodisiac again, pins and needles ran counter to lascivious lassitude, and upon reconsidering the size of his captor, that was a positive.
He shuddered and tensed as spasms of gravity crawled up through his torso, dulling the slices and cracked ribs to a low pulse. He wasn't sure if this was a mercy or if he were being lulled into a slow death. It seemed counter intuitive for the torturer to numb his victim and felt a flash of real terror.
He fought the fear and thought desperately, cursing Starfleet for leaving out the part about the Nixaanites being a race of biped humanoids, no known psi-talents, with a grudge.
A grudge for what? What the fuck is going on here?
It was a good question, he decided somewhat fuzzily, so he asked it.
“I don't understand. We were asked to come here to discover if the reports of dilitium on this planet were true. If so we were secure an agreement with your kind on top of the unofficial agreement for mineral wealth in exchange for medical supplies in place since you refused to join the Federation a decade ago.”
He flinched and added verbal diarrhoea to his symptoms. A measure of comfort could be taken in the knowledge that he had no fucking clue what was going on and thus wasn't likely to betray anything that would get him court-martialed
The alien laughed again, it would have been a friendly sound if clawed fingers weren't clenching over the raw meat of his thigh. His keening cry rose in counterpoint and he was left dizzy and breathless as the twinges worked their way through his nerves. Tears blurred his vision and left their haze when he couldn't blink to clear them.
“Is the what the Federation calls it, our refusal to join their ranks? Your people are gifted in euphemism, Kirk.” Another squeeze, less vicious, a warning.
“What else did your masters tell you about the people you were to destroy, hmm? Did they linger over the details of genocide, perhaps call it an unfortunate and necessary result of a failed experiment in genetics? Or did they gloss over the lurid details of tortuous existence - reducing the years of slavery and mutations to a simple accounting of cost over runs and wasted resources?”
“Dilithium. We were supposed to trade for dilithium. Keep it quiet.” He was babbling in his need to refute the charges levelled at the Federation through his proxy. Information skipping directly from his brain to his lips.
“No project, no experiments. We didn't know anything about you! I had a holo projection attached to a 2MB Data chip and a god damned rendezvous! There is no order for destruction, there wouldn't have been one, we're the Federation of Planets, not the Klingon Empire.”
The eyes narrowed on him again, anger eclipsing whatever lingering traces of regret Jim thought he had seen.
“At least the Klingons are honest about their brutality.” The accusation was hissed into his ear and he had to work to prevent flinching back against the spray of saliva against his face.
“Your people sneak in with pretty lies and promises to commit atrocities under a veil of secrecy and gloss it with a patina of discovery. No, better by far we'd been subjugated by the Empire.”
“How can you say that? We're a peacekeeping force, we're explorers, dedicated to the good of all life. Our goddamned Prime Directive is non interference in cultural development, not conquest. We have equal members, not tributaries.”
“Perhaps you are just a tool then. An ignorant tool. Allow me Kirk, the opportunity to flesh out your history. Defend your Federation and your trade mission here when I am done, if you can.”
***
The Nixaanite kicked the support lock free and Jim was shot vertical again. The anger emanating from Kiri'eee was a tangible buzz against his nerves as he paced in front of his captive audience, massive shoulders twitching with the effort of recapturing his calm.
When his breathing finally evened out and the tension smoothed away, Kiri'eee settled his bulk on a plain steel stool on the extreme edge of Jim's periphery and spoke in a detached voice.
“We came to this planet to transform it. We had cutting edge technology to test and we were going to force this planet into habitability. We erected the domes and dug our tunnels - sensor charges to aerate soil and make things grow, geo-biological hybridization to create a forest of crystal that could synthesize oxygen and filter the methane from the atmosphere and allow us to cultivate a new paradise from unforgiving rock and gas.
“They didn't tell you, Kirk, that we were partners?”
The question was rhetorical, Jim doubted Kiri'eee was even aware of his whispered no.
“We wanted our chance to to make a difference and the Federation was providing the tools. Change us, they would help us adapt and all we had to do was let them help.”
“The first lab was finished a year after the dome went up. There was celebration throughout the settlement and we sent charges into the skies to revel under the fires of creation. It was a spectacle, a symbol for our new beginning.” Thin lips curled in contempt, lacing the words with irony.
“The next day we volunteered in droves for simple adaptive procedures that would allow us breath stronger underground. We took the hypo injections and tissue grafts gladly. It was a time of great hope and we were on the cusp of discovery. We were all pioneers. We were all heroes. It was a heady feeling, this idea of straddling breakthroughs in organic transmutation. Improve ourselves like we would this wasteland of poisonous shale.”
“The modifications were minor and they made the underground work so much easier. In the first season, we'd accomplished so much, so quickly. We had developed the network of tunnels to radiation hot points beyond even our dome and the sensor readouts were incredible further out. My team was able to synthesize the first crystal matrices months before we'd anticipated. Enthusiasm for the project was higher than ever in the wake of such results. A few of our bolder youth signed up for further enhancements, eager to make their mark. It was a series of more intrusive genetic manipulations and re-combinations to alter skeletal structures intended to make underground exploration faster and easier on our bodies.”
“The new techniques were failures, all failures.”
“Limber young bodies morphed into hulking things, tortured by the pain of unending internal transformations Some of them started going mad with it, the pain. Eventually they all died, most driven to suicide to escape.. Two of them had to be put down like animals after attacking their own families.”
The Nixaanite paused at this, shifting uncomfortably on the stool. His voice had a rasp when he picked up his story again and Jim felt a stab of sympathy at the naked sorrow behind the clinical recital.
“The bio-genetic experiments were called off and we marked the tragedy with solemn vows to never repeat our arrogance. We worked side by side with the Federation researchers to conquer this planet with more traditional sciences and technological advancements.
“We were making progress. Promising signs continued to show in the sensor probes, sections of caves exposed to the fluctuating radiations and crystals began to grow moulds and other simple celled plant life was created in the underground.”
“I was working in one of the Federation labs on how to encourage the crystal growths to the surface when the children started to disappear. The rumours sprung up of horrible lizard monsters emerging from the tunnels around the same time. Bodies were found, ravaged and rent by claws, women torn asunder, their wombs ripped through and shredded. Soon the attacks were happening in the daylight.
“We speculated on the tunnels, perhaps we'd breached a core of life and creatures that developed in the bowels of the earth were finding their way to the surface for the first time. Some of the biologists among us were excited at the possibilities and organized a survey. Those who ventured down into the depths never returned and the attacks continued, for weeks until our colony was a hollowed out shell of old men and children hiding in their homes, afraid to leave. ”
“I was still continuing my research, I had no wife, no children. My work was everything to me and I was convinced I was on the verge on a breakthrough. It took me weeks to notice that sections of the labs were being closed off to me, to my team. I didn't even question it, I was so absorbed in my crystals and moulds.”
“I was a blind fool.” Kiri'eee stood abruptly and paced over to Jim, leaning in close to lock eyes and say, “We were all fools in our faith.”
He spun away and his voice was rising as he told his story to the empty stool. Anger was working into the sorrow now, speeding up the narration and painting the air with involuntary emphasis.
“The attacks were escalating. We petitioned the Federation scientists for aid and were soothed by their pretence and avowals. A great show was being performed before our eyes and we had no idea it was all a lie.” A taloned hand shot up and jerked it's way through the thick white hair.
“We stayed secured in our homes, so willing to believe that the precautions were necessary and that we would be safe if we could just hold the trust and wait. The highest minds and greatest engineers were among us, after all. We had such faith the nightmares would end, completely unaware that it was already too late.”
The Nixaanite blanched and spat at the wall derisively.. “We were naive, we were fools.”
“You're lying.” The words coated his throat like rotting milk, gagging him with contained bursts of fragmented confusion and nausea. This gamma grade horror holo being described was so disconnected from the Federation he knew, the ideals that pushed him into the boundaries of space to seek out and explore that it was unbelievable. This institutionalized cruelty was a betrayal of principle.
It wasn't real.
The Federation was Dhosan plague relief, Physler treaty negotiations and IDIC. It was Remembrance Day ceremonies for fallen heroes in pursuit of liberation from the very viciousness this creature was purporting it had not only condoned but initiated. It was him and Spock, two vastly different beings united in purpose to further discovery and become the tangible arm that put the ideals onto practice. It was Christopher Pike daring him to do better. It was the Enterprise.
He braced himself for another assault as his denial hung in the air. Kiri'eee waved it off with a bitter laugh.
“We found the first monster a month after the curfew was established. We were keeping close to each other and barricading ourselves in our homes after dark. We thought it was working, no new attacks or disappearances were being reported. Our leaders and the Federation representatives were assuring us that progress was being made in the investigations.”
“When a girl failed to return home from school one afternoon, her frantic father gathered a search party. There were twenty of us willing to brave the dangers of the tunnels to find the child.”
“It had been many weeks at this point since any of us had entered the tunnels. The smell was the first thing that hit us, musky and fetid, a mixture of mould and refuse that made it impossible to breathe without choking even with our enhanced lungs. Twisted bones and rotting meat decorated the deeper sections and the air felt so close that it was as if we were swimming against a current to push through.
“In the darkness it was impossible to know what exactly happened.. I heard a scrape of claws and seconds later one of the search party fell to the ground, trying to hold his guts in with his hands as he bled out screaming beside me.”
“I couldn't save him. I was terrified, I'd never seen death up close before. There was so much blood. So much pain.”
“It was chaos. We were under siege from a thing we couldn't touch, couldn't see, couldn't catch. It happened so quickly. Of the twenty who went in, five were dead.. None of us had escaped unscathed when we finally subdued the creature and got our first look at one the monsters who'd turned our home into a living nightmare.”
Kiri'eee broke off his narrative and turned haunted eyes to Jim.
“Can you guess, Kirk, what we found when we struck our lights over the fallen monster?”
Jim swallowed sickly, fear syphoning the moisture from his mouth. “It was the girl.”
The alien blinked as if surprised and Jim's stomach clenched.. He hadn't wanted to be right.
“Yes. There was just enough of her left beneath the scars and mutations for her father to identify her. She had been altered and the pain had driven her insane.”
“The scientists-”
Kiri'eee stalked back to face him again, sneering with perfect scorn, a clawed hand reaching out to press over his knife work. Jim bit down hard to stifle the cry, the sharp tang of blood hot on his tongue.
“Yes, Kirk. Your noble Federation scientists had been kidnapping our children and penning us like livestock to continue their research. We all knew it, as soon as we saw her face, twisted almost unrecognizable by terror and pain.”
“When we left the tunnels, her father carrying her destroyed corpse, they were waiting for us. Two more of us died in that fight, would that we all had been struck down and spared what happened next.”
“Our friends and families were told that we all had perished in the tunnels. The Federation held us a beautiful service, I was told. One of the first things we did when we escaped the labs was tear the memorial to ground.”
“Escaped.” It was too much to hope that he was wrong about this too.
Kiri'eee was flexing his hand again, seeming fascinated by the extension of his claws as they ran over Jim's chest.
“They took their time with us. Everyone believed we were dead, there was no need to rush. No need to kidnap other colonists when they had such a windfall in us. Thirteen healthy specimens. They refined their techniques, so that none of us were granted the asylum of insanity while they improved us.”
“It took us months before we were able to escape. Months of torture written up as scientific experimentation. My handler, a geneticist who worked with me on the synthesizer matrix for months, named me Nixaan Specimen 8 in his reports. I had taught him my name over a coffee when he joined my team.”
“We were never alive to your people. Our dreams were a convenient edge for them to stick us. I still remember the satisfaction of using their gifts to crush Garrick's skull with my bare hands when he finally got complacent.
“Despite that, they were ready for us. Garrick sent the signal before he finished thrashing his life out over my claws and they fled the planet rather than fight. They had prepared for the need to hide their crimes by destroying the evidence.”
“Thousands died when they breached the domes - choking as the very air that sustained them turned to poison in their lungs. More died in the tunnels from starvation before we discovered the phosphorous mould was edible and could sustain our bodies. It took us many years before we were able to repair the dome with the tools abandoned by the scientists in charge of the project as they fled the scene of their arrogance.”
Kiri'eee's face lost the edges of sorrow and rage and he stared at Jim contemplatively. He bent forward to adjust the table and Jim went back to staring at the ceiling. That feeling was back, the one that told him the Universe was about to start munching on him again.
“And now. Now you have returned. We didn't believe it, even after we received the signal.”
Jim focused sharply, “What signal? You knew were coming, there was supposed to have been a rendezvous, or was that a lie too?”
Kiri'eee ignored his questions and uncurled his arm in an unnatural line, wrist and elbows curving slightly up. He flexed the massive hand before Kirk's face, letting the talons extend to point a hair away from his exposed eye. Jim couldn't flinch away, watching as the point filled his sight. The talon retracted into a sheath of skin and Kiri'eee displayed his entire set of impressive fangs in an expression that resembled a smile if one was oblivious to the overt threat. Kirk wasn't.
“What do you mean dammit? How did your people know where we were?”
His head was spinning, struggling to reconcile this story with the rest of this clusterfuck of a mission. If this alien was telling the truth it meant he'd been set up. But for what purpose? By who? He knew he had few friends in the higher ranks of the Federation and among the Admiralty, Pike had even warned him that most considered his promotion a slap in the face to the more experienced and, in their minds, capable Captains though they agreed it was politic to give the flagship to the Hero of the Narada Incident. There were easier ways to get him killed than sending him on a suicide mission to a planet of illegally genetically modified aliens with a hate on for the Federation and Starfleet by association.
Illegally genetically modified aliens. With a grudge. Oh shit.
“You have to let me go.”
“Why would I do that, James T Kirk? So you can run back to your ship and finish the job from ten years ago? How many more dogs will I have to kill before the Federation leaves us alone?”
The reminder of his dead men, dead boys, dead friends wouldn't help him here. He pushed it away. He needed more than rage to make his point.
“Listen. Please, listen.” He spoke quickly Pleading passionately while immobilized and supine wasn't ideal, but he had to try. There was no new pain delivered and Kiri'eee had moved out of his immediate view. Kirk fought to reach him.
“If what you're saying is true than we're both being used. You're supposed to kill me. My First Officer, the Vulcan that escaped witnessed the effects of the general massacre of the security force and was present for my recapture. If I end up dead after this he will be forced to conclude that this planet is hostile to Starfleet and the rest of the crew will back him. There is nothing that will stop my crew from executing General Order 24 and destroying your entire civilization. This far out, this level of affront, there probably won't even be an investigation.”
“Please, let me go back to my ship. I will personally petition for your entry into the Federation, after which you will be protected. As a member you will not be relegated to a dark footnote in somebody's sick history. Your people will be able to thrive and grow.”
He felt the unmistakeable prick of a hypo at his neck and ignored it, gritting his word out desperately.
“You're supposed to kill me. My crew is supposed to destroy you. We can't let this happen, we can't kill each other and let this whole mess be swept under the rug as an incident during an away mission.”
“Let me get back to my ship and I swear to you by my name, this can be stopped. Nobody else has to die. I can help you.”
The Nixaanite positioned himself to hover over him again. Solemn lines at odds with the fevered brightness of grass green eyes, he poured a trickle of sharp cold water down Jim's throat and watched him choke it down, drowning out the desperate questions even as he could feel the creeping wrongness spread through his veins.
“You have other things to worry about now, Kirk. I have given you something. A gift, like the one your Federation gave me. Perhaps you will not go insane when you begin to change. Perhaps you will. Either way, it is fitting that you should come to understand intimately what your Federation is capable of.”
“It will take some time for you to change. The compound has never been tested on a human.”
Jim felt the panic rising and fought to contain it. His eyes flickered desperately, following the path of the electrode fixing over his heart with exacting precision. Kiri'eee smiled at him sadly.
“I regret that it was you who came, James T Kirk of the Enterprise. You seem to be a decent man.”
He flinched back against the barbs when the hand came up again. The speculum was removed from his eyes and he blinked furiously.
“Please.” His voice was choked and shaking. “Please, don't do this.”
“It is too late Kirk. It is done.”
He heard the click of a switch being thrown and screamed.
The broken brutal animal cries burst past his split lips, echoing wails of fear and pain haunting over the current of electricity attacking his spine. The sections of his brain still alert were mentally cataloguing the effects until the grey fog of oblivion began to creep over his sight. Either the table was spinning again or he was caught up in traumatized vertigo but, in the last sweeping moment of clarity before his consciousness ceded the battle, he could have sworn he saw the flash of human teeth in a satisfied smile follow him into darkness and a whisper sounding against his ear.
“If you survive, you will be welcome here.”
End Notes
This is all your fault. Every last bit of it. This section didn't even exist until I was a few paragraphs away from my next post and I got a review praising my world building and hoping my alien gimmick had a point because they were really digging it.
Enter the Holy Grail Plot Bunny of DOOM that completely invalidated the very first scene I'd written for this story and had me scrambling to play catch up this week to get this thing back on track. *facepalm* (If I can't use it here, I'm totally posting it as a one shot. HA! XD)
All I wanted was a new way for Kirk to get hit and a new world to hit him on. Was that too much to ask? This was supposed to be a romantic story, uh, at some point along the way.
To everyone that has commented with excellent questions that are forcing me to be a more responsible writer, your support and interest have been invaluable~! Thank you for needling me out of lazy!author mode. This thing just broke 10 000 words (a personal landmark!) and has morphed from a simple five and one prompt to an epic space!horror/drama/thriller. I'm still going to try to fit the prompt in, I just have to depart from trying to fit one in every chapter because really, six chapters just ain't gonna cut it anymore.
Many many thanks also go to my hetero life mate / non sexual life partner for stepping up and helping me smooth out the kinks in this section. It's partly his fault anyways, he's the one who lent me all three seasons of TOS after I saw the new movie. Actions have consequences, hippie. Remember that.
And to my darling war hammer of truth, I hope that you are still enthralled despite the rather sharp left turn this one has taken.
Master Post here
Previous
Next