The Milli-Cochrane Caper: Conclusion, part 1

Posted on Thu 17th Nov, 2022 @ 8:02am by Commander Paul Graves PsyD & Renato Solis

1,329 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: A Fresh Perspective
Location: Brown Sector M100
Timeline: MD 1, 2145

Kya's plea for assistance came strong over their comms, Edge could hear as well, and no sooner did she yell out "... Is anyone nearby, I need help!" than Renato lost all patience and took Edge by the hand, making direct contact.

In an instant, Edge turned on his heel and motioned them to follow. "Get it out, please!"

The instantaneous change in Edge's demeanor told Paul what had happened. He fell into step beside Renato and went where Edge led them, deeper into section M.

-And Now-

This was truly the worst place on the whole station. Starfleet only allowed it to exist because of the long history here, and the fact that they had slowly shown improvement in many areas as a semi-autonomous state. There was a medic, a constabulary, even postal services and Federation Net access. The greater good was served letting it bring itself up with an invisible hand guiding it upwards. This progress had been paid for with much suffering that went unnoticed, and here, deep in 100M, was where the souls who didn’t want to be found wound up.

Edge, or rather, Vincent William Czeszjevic, who had been called Edge due to his last name, lived here for that very reason, as well. He had made up a mystique, telling others in life it was from his habit of using a knife to settle his differences, but the name followed him like a ghost. Edge was the father of two by his seventeenth year when his family died en route to their corporate colony as employees of CeresCo. His sister, Patricia, had arrived separately with her two kids and suddenly that was his whole family. CeresCo washed them out for low performance and a series of low paying jobs outside of the Federation had lead to crime. Arrested and released over several years between worlds far and wide, Patricia found a home with a boyfriend, but Vincent kept going.

Edge had nothing in life go his way and had detested the people who had let him get here. As a prisoner, he had been given an offer to work for a release program, and escaped with a group of outbound refugees. On the Starbase where he was first scanned, they found nothing and set him aside for further questioning, but Edge vanished. He tried to live in the Starbase undetected but was caught. However, they processed him as a refugee from the group, and he was sent to SB109 officially registered under a repatriation doctrine after the settlement of conflicts.

His time at SB109 was formative. Using skills acquired over a long career, he tapped system resources, had open access to data centers, replicators and used that to create a small network of grateful people who exchanged him money and goods. When the base was abandoned by Starfleet, times had gotten tough and his skills kept his people fed and healthy. For many folks, Edge was a savior, their beacon of hope. For Vincent W Czeszjevic, to be held in any esteem compelled his existence, and gave him meaning.

Selling harder commodities like hack kits, small arms, and drugs had only happened in the later years before Starfleet returned. The people on board were getting desperate, and despite outward appearances, Vincent was a force that kept people in line and controlled the market well enough to keep others in line. There hadn’t been but a handful of deaths over the years in the whole station, but none of them were here.

His sister had come to join him, his niece and nephew here as well, grown adults now. Almost one hundred and eighty souls packed in a space meant for sixty, and Edge was the guy who looked over this small neighborhood. Renato had always come from outside, made a scene, exposed people's secrets and vulnerabilities as a joke because for Ullians, mere proximity was enough to get a read. Renato had come in one night demanding “Clouds”, a vape juice made illegally by bedroom chemists down here. After a simple warning to leave, Renato had shouted that his sister cheated, and was only here because she had been kicked out. Vincent slapped the lout, intending to harm him and shut him up, but the instant contact had, then, made the same connection as just now when Renato grabbed Edge’s hand.

With Ullians, the mere touch of skin facilitates nervous tissue transmissions connecting the two brains. Humans lacked telepathic senses, and so the noise to them was unintelligible vibrations in their skulls. For Renato, it was a book, laid wide open, the pages flipping to tell the tale of a life time. The person interacting with Renato would experience their whole lives in an instant, and with a skill developed over the years against the wishes of Ullian society, Renato could force them to consider all they had done in a very direct way. The effect could be therapeutic, life changing.

Vincent experienced a whole lifetime in an instant, all of his decisions presented to him in medias res. The transformation which had occurred back then after the brief encounter was to empathize with Renato greatly. The unintentional release of his ability, due to being slapped, had no direction, and the heavily inebriated Renato didn’t recall any of it. This time around, both men, as new men in a new time, shared an understanding and insight rivaling those of wed couples or old friends. Vincent saw the events of the previous days, Theo in the brig, and knew there was no deceit in this. Renato had come here to save lives.

"Get it out, please!" Vincent cried. He understood the presence of an apparition would trigger the explosives. He knew the radiation was nasty stuff, saw the very same images from Renato’s brain as he had viewed the reports of Thalaron radiation. Everyone here was doomed, any second, any moment.

Three men ran in unison to the glowing manifold, its case already dismantled, the heat a pleasant summer sun. Time was everything, and there was almost none left. Each man had a task to perform quickly, if they wanted to save themselves ... or anyone else.

"Do you see it?" yelled the first one who touched the manifold.

"I can sense it, through the spiders," another one called. "I don't think ..."

"there's enough time!" screamed the third. "We can't do it!"

An eerie calm settled over the area, as if time had frozen. Up from the manifold, a silvery thin form wavered, holding a shape, but as the eye encountered it, the shape shifted and moved, so no one in the room could keep it in focus. And then, one by one, they began to topple ... everyone in the area simply keeling over where they stood. An eerie sibilant sound, like snakes in one's head, issued from the silvery shape ... it was laughter, of a maniacal inhuman form.

A bat? Some creature resembling one, at least, had been hanging down the outside of a light pole, looking at the scene of confusion, one scaly, clawed foot grasping on. It had the scaly skin of an alligator, but its body form was closer to that of a bat -- no more than a meter from ear-tip to toe-tip, with webs between its elongated fingers that currently looked like a leather cloak folded around its body. It blinked, the lids betraying an underlying nictating membrane as they closed over compound eyes. It made a gesture with its elongated thumb, spread its wings, and flapped ahead a half dozen meters before catching another light fixture to hang upside down and look back at Edge.

Another scaly bat descended from a vertical shaft, and dropped a bulb-shaped object into a small opening near Renato. It broadcast a message, without moving its lips. "Doods, brohs find. Bad mojo. You take." Then it flew to its ... friend? Broh? They both disappeared upward.

 

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