Bravo Fleet
“The healthy man does not torture others –
generally, it is the tortured who turn into torturers.”Carl Jung
A thin stream of dark blood drooled in an elongated rivulet from Samantha Hyland’s bruised lips as her ‘other’ took a step back, massaging her gloved fist, and Dr Rebecca Albany tutted to herself as she tried to run her scan.
“Och! She’s unconscious again.” The Mirror Universe’s version of the Albion’s Chief Medical Officer remonstrated with distain (but not much compassion) as she grasped the woman’s blonde hair and raised her battered face up from her chest.
“Can you no just refrain from beating the prisoner to cludgie, just for one wee moment before Ah’m able to get a baseline of her vitals, Captain?” The red – haired doctor muttered peevishly as she attempted to do her work.
Breathing hard from her exertions, the commander of the Terran Empire Starfleet vessel shook the numbness from her knuckles, a crease of consternation marring her fine features (spattering the deck with a fine spray of blood) as Captain Hyland frowned and countered.
“Is this absolutely necessary Doctor?” The darker – manifestation of Sam Hyland grumbled irascibly, unhappy that her ‘interrogation’ had to be paused for such irritating considerations – such as not killing her prisoner too early.
Dr Albany rolled her eyes theatrically and looked over her shoulder at her CO.
“Oh! Ah don’t know, now. You didn’t seem to mind my ministrations when it allowed you to keep Captain Carrington on the edge for days on end, did you not then Ma’am?” The Doctor asked with a coy tilt of her auburn eyebrow.
Hyland spat contemptuously on the deck and retied her long, blonde hair back into a ponytail – smoothing back the errant hairs that had strayed as she physically beat her other self. She had often found that the satisfying expedient of the application of brute force was quite efficient at softening up a victim, before commencing a session with the Agonizer.
Not that beating the victim really added to the efficacy of the torture process. The Agonizer itself was the perfect instrument of agony, in that regard it needed no additional extraneous help and had no equal.
No, rather – Samantha just enjoyed making her victim more thoroughly miserable before the main event and (if she was being really honest here) it helped her exorcise some of the more frustrating emotions that was the natural by-product of the responsibilities of holding command.
“Well, don’t be all day about it then!” She ordered tersely and with a lack of patience. “And for God’s sake, wake her up again dammit! What’s the point of all this, if she’s not awake to experience the fear?” Hyland tutted and picked up a towel to wipe away the sheen of sweat from her exertions.
Dr Albany shrugged and let Sam’s head drop back down on her chest, from where she hung manacled to the Agonizer – suspended painfully by her arms over the sluice – slotted floor of the Interrogation room.
“Ach well! You’re the Captain, Captain.” The black clad Scotswoman shrugged sarcastically as she prepared a hypospray of stimulant from her kit and released it into the captive Captain Hyland’s neck. “Ah just went to medical school for eight bloody years, so what would Ah know, eh?”
The injection did its work with speed and alacrity and slowly Sam’s bruised eyes opened, and she stared blearily around, as far as the restrictive head – restraints would allow.
“Morning there, Sunshine.” Dr Albany nodded without much evident humor. “Up and about then, Ah see?”
“Rebecca?” Sam managed to frown.
Here was the woman that she had taken breakfast with nearly every morning when she had served as XO aboard the USS Albion (and who had enthusiastically and utterly failed to sell the joys of “Porridge” as food to Sam), but there was none of her Dr Albany’s ready and robust Scot’s humor here – only the callous indifference of a physician going through the motions with a carefully studied remove.
“Aye, she’s awake alright.” The doctor grunted and continued to run the probe of the medical tricorder slowly up and down the prisoner’s body.
Her role here was closer to butcher than care – giver really. Just keep the captain’s little pets alive long enough for the mad – bitch to traumatize and torture them enough, before their hearts gave out, and then see what else she could do to revive them – so the nightmare of human (or more often-than-not, alien) suffering could be prolonged near – indefinitely.
It had formed the basis for several well-regarded medical papers that Rebecca had published, so she was content enough with her role, as uncomfortable as it may be.
A gentle beeping from the Tricorder gave the Doctor pause and she frowned and re – ran the probe back down Samantha’s left leg.
“Well now!” Dr Albany breathed with genuine interest in her voice. “Now THAT’s something that Y’no – see every day!”
The MU Captain Hyland threw down her towel and stalked over to where her doppelgänger hung, suspended from the exquisite instrument of torture that was the Agonizer. Impatient to start playing.
“What now?” Her voice dripped with impatience.
“H’mmm – Ah’m no quite ken myself.” Rebecca wondered aloud in her thick Glaswegian brogue, trying to equate the readings from the device.
She keyed a function, and the Tricorder linked to the Ship’s computer and activated the Holo-emitter in the room – which suddenly conjured up a glowing, anatomical representation of Sam’s inner body, viscera, organs, enveloping musculature and skeletal structure, in high detail.
“Now, Ah’m no expert but….”
The doctor manipulated the hologram, and it expanded in mid – air. Diving and delving through the illusion of Sam’s left leg from Hip to Heel. She highlighted a hair – thin, wandering line, illuminated in pictographic red in the representation, and pointed her finger to it.
“THAT is certainly not organic and should’ne be there.” The Doctor finished her observation with a frown.
Sadistic thoughts put aside for the moment; the Captain of the ISS Albion crowded in to peer at the medical hologram.
“What is it, Doctor?”
Despite the pain racking her body and the persistent ache from being hung in a stress position, the Sam Hyland from the USS Valley Forge was similarly intrigued and horrified at this discovery.
Dr Albany intently ran some more finessed scans via the link to the medical database aboard and her eyes showed real interest for the first time that day.
“The scans indicate that it’s some sort of crystalline substrate that appears to have attached itself to the nerve ganglions.” Rebecca murmured. “It appears to autonomously be drawing power from her body’s natural bio – electric impulses and sustaining a micron-scale energetic resonance. Ah’ve no seen anything quite like it.” The physician breathed in wonder.
Captain Hyland frown suspiciously.
“A bio – weapon of some kind?”
The Doctor continued to study the holo and scrolling data with rapt fascination. When she replied her voice was lost in distant contemplation.
“No…no…not a weapon.” She shook her auburn hair absent-mindedly. “It has more the characteristics of….an antennae maybe? It exhibits the morphology of something that has grown naturally in her body, incrementally, over time – rather than having the hallmarks of deliberate implantation.”
From where she hung enveloped and restricted by the Agonizer, Sam’s heart thudded deep in her chest as the implications became more immediate and personally evident to herself.
The Crystal Entity **
Long ago, when she had ridden up into space – suffocating slowly on the back of a slumbering – God, an infinitesimal shard of the decamillennial – old traveler of the deep cosmos must have somehow accreted a seed of itself into her heel (she hadn’t had the luxury of an EVA suit) – a living vein of crystal that had insinuated itself through her body over time.
Turning her into an Antenna of the Gods.
The rush of realization and emotion were sudden and absolute. Where Sam had be plagued by waking nightmares and hallucinations of her father (who had been overcome and subsumed to join with the Crystal – Entity), replete with gnomish but cryptic prophetic warnings and softly – glowing blue crystal eyes – Sam had logically assumed these to be particularly vivid manifestations of post – traumatic stress and had countered these apparent visitations with counselling and medication.
But the visions had been real.
The Crystal Entity had violated her, growing slowly and imperceptibly within her. Linking her consciousness to its own over unthinkable cosmic distances as it rejoined the comet – streaked flanks of its parent body – as the ancient starborn traveler ploughed its exorable course through the constellations of the distant Gamma Quadrant.
Tears formed, unbidden, in Samantha’s eyes.
Not of the pain of torture, but from the far deeper wound of realization that her father (existentially speaking), or at least some part that used to be the gifted Exo – Archaeologist Dr Jonas Hyland, was still alive somehow and somewhere. The stark realization, when juxtaposed with her present plight, only served to make her feel even more isolated and alone.
“You said it’s an antenna?” Sam’s sadistic MU – counterpart mused with a thoughtful look on her smooth, killer’s – face.
“Och, oh aye it is. In a manner of speaking, although your guess as to what or whom it’s supposed to be speaking to is as good as mine, y’Ken?” Dr Albany spread her hands wide, admitting defeat.
“And is it transmitting or receiving anything?”
“Ah…no….it it doesn’t appear so, as far as Ah can tell, Captain.”
“And you’re saying that it’s fused to her nervous system?” Captain Hyland turned to regard her captive Federation counterpart with a look of abject & cold calculation.
“Aye then it is – welded to her nerve ganglia and at an subatomic – level, it would seem.”’ Rebecca confirmed reasonably.
A terrifyingly feral smile split the Terran Empire officer’s features, and she nodded.
“Doctor, if we were to calibrate the output buffers of the Agonizer to synchronize with the resonance harmonics of the crystal substrate that is running through her body…. what would you say that the physiological net – effects would be?”
The Doctor frowned as she considered the question, trying to balance the equation and implications from a professional standpoint.
“Well, Captain, rightly Ah dinnae ken, but if Ah had to take punt …..”Dr Albany blew out her cheeks and gave the captive Samantha an apologetic look.
“The Agonizer works by directly stimulating the Somatosensory Cortex – the region of the brain that processes the sensory aspects of pain. By direct stimulation of the crystalline lattice that is running through this lassies leg, theoretically it would overload the signals to the Limbic System. In short it would ‘hotwire’ the amygdala and hippocampus, that involve emotional and affective aspects of pain.”
“With emphasis on the words ‘hot’ & ‘wire’.”
The Doctor winced, shuddering at the implications of how this would increase the agony meted – out by the Agonizer to a degree almost unimaginable.
She was just glad that it wouldn’t be happening to her.
“Really.” The MU – version of Samantha purred with awful relish and then commanded.
“Very good Doctor.” She folded her arms, experiencing the sudden flush of an almost sexual – thrill of excitement at the prospect of inflicting such an elegant tsunami of pain and agony on ‘herself’, all whilst being able to enjoy the voyeuristic spectacle from a safe masochistic – remove.
“You can make the necessary adjustments and, when you are satisfied that the process is controllable, you may leave us. I will contact you if we require further ……. intervention.”
Dr Rebecca Albany, like most of the crew of the ISS Albion, lived in abject fear of the Captain. A despot that had clawed her bloody way up the ‘Jacob’s – Ladder’ of promotion by virtue of murder and betrayal, was not one that the good – doctor considered it in the best interests of her own health and self – preservation to disobey or provoke.
“Aye well, whit’s fur ye’ll no go past ye, Hen.”” She smiled apologetically to the captive Samantha, “Something tells me that you’ll be begging for death long beyond the end. Well, It’s a sair ficht for half a loaf. Good luck to ye, Ah’ll be away then Lassie!”
With that she made the requested adjustments to the instrument of torture, adjusting its awful harmonics until it matched those of the strange crystalline thread that she had discovered growing within the unfortunate wretch and then quickly made her departure from the Interrogation room – single-mindedly intent of the half – bottle of Single – malt in her quarters and the brief, but blessed release from sobriety, responsibility and regret that it offered.
Straightening her severe black uniform, Captain Samantha Hyland planted her bootheels squarely on the deck and regarded the captive Captain Samantha Hyland where she hung in abject defeat.
“Alone with ourselves at last Samantha.” A cold smile hung upon her impassive features. “Just us two – girls. Fancy that?”
Sam stared at her torturer, a sick pit of terror and apprehension welling in her gut that she was determined not to let show in her face – although she had little hope in defiance and could see no realistic ploy or gambit that would not eventually see her break under interrogation and tell this awful, twisted version of herself – whatever secrets she desired to know.
“I can honestly say that this is going to hurt you, a helluva lot more than it’s going to hurt me!”
The black – clad Hyland smiled breezily as she held up the controller to the Agonizer and adjusted the settings.
“Let’s start out with something more ‘pedestrian’ and work up from there shall we?”
She threw the switch.
And the Universe of Pain sang its terrible song.