When In Rome Pt 2 & Finale

Posted on Wed Sep 27, 2023 @ 7:12pm by Commander Amia Telamon M.D. & Lieutenant Commander River Morgan

3,791 words; about a 19 minute read

Mission: Si vis pacem, para bellum
Location: On Pangea & In a Cardassian Shuttle
Timeline: Over The Past Couple of Weeks

Amia woke being shaken and was immediately repelled by sour breath close to her mouth and nose as she came round. “I want what your ….. friend...” the mouth distorted in what must have been a leer of some kind. “.... gives to Glinn…… “ His Federation Standard was a trouble to him and he seemed to have to think between each word.

“wha…. “ Amia spluttered, trying not to breathe in any more than she had to.

“You the same... human......You....…… buy..........favourite to be?” he struggled a bit more with that last whole sentence and so shook her again, clearly getting frustrated with her lack of understanding.

A loud complaint came from the doorway where another guard standing there who seemed angry, began arguing with the one who was here inside the cell. Amia couldn't speak Cardassian, other than just the odd word or phrase she'd picked up from constantly hearing them talk around her since the station had been over-run ~wow how long ago had that been?~ her mind wondered, hardly able to be certain of the time passing, especially in this detention building.

The first guard replied to his fellow guard with a snappy tone, continuing to shake Amia as if he thought he could get whatever it was that he wanted out of her forcibly by shaking it free. “Buy favourite?” she repeated groggily. ~with what?~ her mind was very sluggish and she was concentrating hard on trying to understand what the two guards might be saying to each other.

The second guard appeared to be reproaching the first and whatever he was saying Amia could pick out very little other than “ the Glinn" and "this as well?" finishing with something about "not clever" and "danger".

Another exchange went between the two, with the first asking if "she had two" - Amia had no idea what sort of direction this was taking but she wasn't liking any of the angry exchanges nor the two men's bickering as they both appeared to be getting increasingly aggravated and she had a distinct feeling that this was unlikely to bode well for herself.

The next part of the exchange included the first guard saying something insulting about the other and the phrase " Me and Farzet” ~what or who was a Farzet?~ the question asked itself but it seemed to be important because then, the other seemed to say something like "Glinn Farzet" and "not happy" with another tirade of angry words.

~Ah! So,Farzet had to be a Glinn - a Lieutenant~ Amia was working some words out now, but she couldn't understand why this Glinn was not going to be happy? Was one guard threatening to kill the other so he could present Glinn Farzet with something? Perhaps that 'something' would be her... or her dead body? It was SO confusing and she was struggling to understand what they were saying, let alone what was actually going on. She tried so hard to work out what the whole situation could possibly mean.

Then more angry words and clearly these two did not agree on this plan, whatever it was. Finally the two guards were facing up to each other and the first one was saying something like "here" and "say it". From the clues of him pointing aggressively to his own face and at the chest of the other guard, he was spitting out his words at his opponent and it was clear to Amia that this was coming to blows any minute now.

Amia screamed out in pain as one of the two combatants landed across her leg, jarring the damaged hip. She passed out with the pain and when she woke again, there was a more pristinely uniformed officer in her cell, shouting and waving his arms in gesticulations and she was afraid at first, that might also turn violent. But she needn't have worried. Things were much more under control since she had lost consciousness. Two other guards had arrived and were hauling the first two up from the heaps they were tangled into, still scuffling although weakly now.

“Thank you” Amia breathed, her voice raspy and raw. She looked up at the uniformed officer. ~Is this the Glinn I was hearing about?~ she wondered.

“You seem a bit of a mess…. “ Farzet stated the obvious. “I am sorry that my….. interrogators have been a bit too enthusiastic in their failed attempts to get …… well, let’s face it -nothing at all - out of you.” He said as if he were discussing the weather.

“It m..might’ve h..elped if any..one had been c..clear…about w..what they w..wanted to know….” Amia strugged to reply.

Farzet rolled his eyes. “I knew I should have supervised” he tutted. “I just don’t like having to get rough with females… unless it’s in a more… intimate… situation” he said, looking at her with an unpleasant twist of his mouth as he emphasised the word ‘intimate’. It was hard for Amia to tell if he was trying to smile, leer or be humorous but the grimace that seemed to be the end result made her shudder involuntarily.

“W…what in… informa..tion did y..you t..hink I hhad tto give y..you? I’mm a d..doctor “ she finished the question with great difficulty, her desiccated throat and lips protesting at each tiny movement she had to make to speak.

“I think you have rank, doctor, and I believe you wouldn’t have attained that without some useful sources – political or regarding your Starfleet – and if not then some codes, or passwords?” he explained.

“f..for wwhwhat?” she struggled to ask. “Th…the mmmmedicine Cccccupboard?” She tried to swallow but couldn't get the moisture she needed. She wondered when the last time had been that she'd been offered any drink of any kind. There were memories of water having been offered and then tipped to the side of her so she couldn't get to it and rough laughter at her distress. She also remembered the threats that she would die slowly of thirst if she still didn't comply and give up her codes. She filled with the frustration and desperation all over again.

“For the Computer to get some useful records out?” Glinn Farzet suggested with infuriating calm.

“you wwwant Mmmed rrecs?” she asked, sounding as disbelieving as anyone could when they could hardly talk.

“I’ll get you some water” he said, standing up and gesturing to the nearest guard who was just standing around, listening.

The guard went off to get water and when he returned with it, the Glinn guided the cup to Amia’s damaged mouth with surprising gentleness. ~why was he holding the cup to her lips himself? Wasn’t he too senior for such tasks?~ she was too grateful for the soothing liquid on her parched lips and dry throat to even try to ask.

He stopped her from gulping down too quickly and tilted the cup lip back a little until she swallowed away the liquid in her mouth. Then he tilted it again and let her have some more, setting the cup aside and dabbing his fingertips into the water, transferring some onto her dry lips and smoothing it across to cover all of the area of them softly and with what almost felt like a caress, or might have if it hadn't hurt so much in contact with the split skin and exposed flesh of her lips. Amia decided she was hallucinating and just took it.

A few moments later he looked deeply into her eyes and smiled at her. He offered more water which she took eagerly - not knowing when this would change back to how it had been before and making the most of what was here now.

Farzet leaned closer to her but he accidentally nudged against her leg and she cried out as the damaged hip tried to flex across. He jumped back, startled. "What happened?" he asked seeming genuinely concerned. It was all incredibly surreal to Amia. "Your thugs. Wanting codes" she stated - this time it was her turn to be matter of fact about it even though she was still breathing heavily from the fractured pelvic pain.

He stood up and made commands to the guard at the door who in turn went out and came back with another guard, a female this time, and a gurney which they laid down and, once the Glinn had released Amia's electro-shackles from her wrists and ankles, helped her gently roll onto the good side and onto the board for lifting her across onto the gurney which they then set to hover and it rose to a height they could guide out and along the corridors.

When they arrived in a high ceilinged, brightly illuminated sterile room, Amia was turned around and lowered onto what looked like a primitive bio-bed. Amia knew that the Cardassians had medical advancement similar to the Federation's own and these old type beds weren't up to standard, but then perhaps in such a remote and under-rated facility as this cobbled together camp on Pangea's rugged surface, deep in the jungle vegetation region where they had been captured, perhaps this was all they were allocated?

The Glinn seemed to be in charge, judging by how the others all jumped to do his bidding without argument so a facility that didn't warrant a higher ranked officer to run it, might not be of sufficient importance for top level equipment. It seemed to make sense, unlike anything else that had happened to her today so Amia accepted that with a 'could be worse' attitude.

The woman that Amia had mistaken for a female guard, seemed now to be some kind of medic and she did what she could with a Medcorder, examining Amia's pelvis with scans and shaking her head.

The Cardassian woman showed the medcorder to Amia and began to try to explain, in very good Federation Standard, what it all meant and which lights meant what. Amia smiled but the action split her still cracked lips and she gasped in pain, blood running down her chin. The water Farzet had given her had been a very great help but it was too little too late to stop her lips from still having deep dry gulches in them - one of which gave under the movement of the smile which Amia stopped at once, but had to wait for the bleeding to stop for some few minutes.

In the doorway, the Glinn's green tinted complexion seemed to turn a tone of sickly sage colour and he had to leave the room with some barked instructions. ~Wow, yes, he really doesn't like red blood!~ Amia thought, licking her bloodied lower lip, she tried again to speak, this time to the doctor. "I k..now how to wor..k it" she said, more blood releasing from her lip as the movement of her speaking aggravated the cracks. "....b..but thank you though" Her tongue was beginning to work better now and the thick blood was moving around her mouth causing her to swallow but oiling her throat as it went down. ~Surprising!~ the medical part of her brain remarked before she moved her attention back to the medcorder and took a look at the scans.

It wasn't just her pelvis that was broken but several ribs, her left collar bone and her left cheek bone were all showing up as fractured or worse. Further than that, even though Amia hadn't been aware of all the damage she'd suffered, due to the overwhelming majority of pain and general malaise, there were readings of liver and kidney imbalances. Suddenly the former CMO of DS5 was beginning to realise more fully what a bad way she was in.

The female Cardassian doctor had got the same information from the medcorder and was now talking quickly and urgently to the Glinn who had returned to hear what she was reporting. Amia was dosed by the female doctor and whatever was in the hypospray very quickly took her away from all this and into a state of oblivion.

* * * * * * * *
Finale:
* * * * * * * *

In due course, Glinn Farzet returned to speak to River and asked her to come with him. Having no idea what had been happening to Amia, River thought Farzet just wanted another little illicit session in his office but she was surprised when he took her to a battered shuttle and put her inside where she found an unconscious Amia on a med-stretcher beside her as it took off with no explanation whatsoever. River had no medcorder but she knew enough to be able to tell that Amia was a mess. She did what she could but without her med-kit there was very little. Approaching the pilot of the shuttle, she tried to ask where they were going but the Cardassian didn't seem to speak Federation Standard and what little Cardassian River had picked up was hardly appropriate or useful.

Desperate and fired by her outrage at what had happened to her friend and boss Amia, ideas flashed through River's head.

~Where were they being taken? What worse was in store? How much more harm could Amia take? What was likely to happen to River herself now her little 'arrangement' with Farzet was elsewhere, back on the planet's surface? Was she going to have to start all that again? It was all just too monstrous! She wasn't having this any more......... NO MORE!~ River stopped milling it over angrily and picked up something, anything, the heavier the better and more fool these idiots that they hadn't secured her. She had cuffs over her wrists but nothing tied her feet any more.

Tugging instinctively at the cuffs, with no realistic hope of it doing anything, but just doing it anyway, River was grateful to find that Farzet had left one of them loosely closed, so loosely that it came free. "Bless you" she thought, thinking of him kindly for the first and last time, she grabbed the piece of engineering metal from the under the base of the stretcher that Amia was on. She moved stealthily forward and took a ferocious swing at the back of the head of the chattering co-pilot who had been paying no attention to the passengers at all, knocking him unconscious and cracking his forehead forward against the console in front of him in one sweep.

The pilot immediately reacted, raising his arm to shield himself assuming she was going to try to continue the strike around but having lost her momentum as the co-pilot absorbed the blow she'd delivered him, River found herself tumbling forward and almost into the Pilot's lap. With his arm raised to the side of his head, he had left his phaser undefended at his hip and instinctively, River grabbed it and pulled herself backwards to try to stand up to aim it at him but his arm came down hard and knocked her back even further.

It wasn't going to be possible for the pilot to come back to get her without setting some kind of autopilot first and as he was struggling to do that, spinning his head back and forth to try to watch her and look at the console at the same time. It was during one of those twists of his head that River managed to get upright again. She pointed the phaser at him but it was Cardassian and she only had a vague and unclear idea of how to make it fire as it was quite different to the Federation ones.

He, having managed at last to get the autopilot on, got out of his seat and lurched angrily back towards her, grabbing the phaser as he threw his large body at her. Going down in a painful crumple of bones, River tried not to let go of the phaser and then it went off. It hurt. Was she dying?

No, the Cardassian Shuttle Pilot slumped and despite what were clearly burns on her hands and thighs, River's heart was still beating. Double time, but still beating. Pulling herself out from under the dead pilot which took a lot of effort, pain and time, she finally got to the controls and fortunately, when she had been promoted to Lt. Cmdr, River had sat the "Bridge Exam" which had included some basic flying so she sat down in the pilot's seat and tried to work out how to get it to land.

It was impossible. The technology wasn't within a universe of what she'd learned to use but with the autopilot on, it continued up towards DS5 by itself. Wondering how to get permission to land a ship that she wasn't supposed to be piloting, onto a Starbase that she assumed was still occupied by her enemies, River wasn't too sure what would turn out at the end of this, but she sent out a message on the empty console before her, realising that her attempts to 'steer' the shuttle she was veering all over the place.

Trying to work out how to send some kind of signal/communication before the shuttle inevitably crashed sooner of later, River looked out of the cockpit and realised she was flying over a headland and a cove with a beach and ..... were those caves? Before she could get a clear focus the unthinkable happened and a Klingon Vessel passed overhead, making an announcement to the people below.

~People, on the beach... what could possibly be going on?~ She looked up and then down again, and realising she couldn't crash land on that beach full of people, she tried to see a piece of land.....higher up..... further back along the headland..... it was a struggle to turn the Cardassian shuttle and she was terrified that any minute the Klingons would shoot her down as an enemy. Desperate to find something to use to identify herself, she pushed, pulled and manhandled every lever, switch and LCARS panel she could touch. Nothing seemed to happen at first but in the meantime she finally managed to get the speaker working, with no idea at all how, nor what she had pushed of pulled to make it begin working, but the message coming in was clear.

Captain LoQath of the Klingon Bird of Prey Yor'Cha was sending a message in Federation Standard. ~Thank the Spirits!! Now how to reply?~

Managing her way back around to the headland, River tried to get the shuttle to the land behind the cliffs but it wasn't high enough when she finally got it awkwardly around the full circle that she needed to wrestle from it. Barely above the ground as she passed over the top of the nearest cliff, the shuttle almost seemed to land itself, by dragging into the rock, seagrass and small trees at the front edge of it. Cushioned as if planned that way, the Shuttle stalled to a halt with it's low-hanging rear end dug into the rocky soil. The front, which stood prouder than the back, hit down quite hard as a result and a fire broke out at the front, under the console.

River ran to the rear and tried to hammer on the door to escape. Amia was close by, still out cold on her stretcher and the smoke was building up inside the shuttle. Expecting to die here, either from smoke inhalation, or from the flames of the fire as it spread, or perhaps at the phasers of the Klingons, naturally mistaking the occupants for Cardassians, her burns, broken bones and exhaustion from battling with a Cardassian man twice her size and grappling for a phaser in a life and death struggle, all added to the smoke seeping into her lungs and it finally all became too much for the embattled ACMO.

So, lying across her unconscious CMO and friend, River's last act as she too slipped into unconsciousness, was to put her tunic over both of their heads and faces in a last desperate act of pre-emptive 'first aid' hoping to protect them both as best as she could, darkness closing in on her like black clouds of thick smoke....

* * * * * * * *

River woke up in the Klingon equivalent of a Sickbay and, asking immediately for her friend, was told that Amia was still unconscious but that the two of them would be transferred to DS5 as soon as it was safe to do so. Before that could actually happen and in the meantime, the two were transferred to a Starfleet Vessel to await this, where the CMO on board made a decision to send them both directly back to the safe care of SB380 for stabilisation - especially for Amia - as she was too critical to wait around for a safe place to open up at the besieged, battle filled Station nearest to them, the DS5 that they had called home for many years now until the Cardassians had invaded. Onward transport was decided on as essential so the Federation Starbase SB380 had been chosen for their extensive and specialist intensive care.

River was deemed well enough to remain on the Starbase for medical care and recouperation but it was decided by the next group of doctors there, that Amia should be put into a medically induced coma and returned to Earth, which was done.

River refused to let Amia be sent on alone and became so disruptive, risking her own recovery and health with her protests and strenuous efforts to make them allow her to accompany Amia, that it was considered something that needed to be allowed and so, after a tediously long journey - organised in manageable stages - they finally arrived back on Earth and were both admitted to the same Zephran Cochran Memorial Medical Hospital, in New LA, where they both had trained as young junior doctors.

It seemed fitting and there, Amia was carefully awoken and nursed back to health. This allowed River to finally relax and, when she was discharged herself, she took quarters nearby so she could continue to keep up constant visits.

Theirs had become a tale of trauma-bonding between two very different women who had been colleagues and good friends before their ordeals.

In time, each recovered and lived out their lives in constant and affectionate contact with one another but making fully understandable joint and yet separate decisions over time, that they neither would return to either Pangea or DS5, closing doors on those dark chapters of their lives.




A final JP between:

Commander Amia Telamon
CMO - DS5

and

Lt Cmdr River Morgan
ACMO - DS5
(NPC - Jools)

 

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