Death of a Viper

Posted on Mon Jun 6th, 2022 @ 3:46pm by Lieutenant Commander P’rel M.D & [DECEASED] Gil Silnan Tolbarr & Commander N'Garzi Zora & Lieutenant Commander Finnley Keating VII

Mission: Ares Ascending
Location: Rondac Planetary Installation
Timeline: After orbital battle.
2396 words - 4.8 OF Standard Post Measure

P'rel's eyes widened suddenly as the blade sunk into her. Time slowed as she tried to diagnose the damage from the blade, but her concentration was interrupted when the searing pain broke her suppression and she screamed in pain. Looking at the twisted cruelty of the Cardassian, his evil face contorted into a pleased and wicked smile as dangerous as those sadistic eyes. She felt every shred of control melt away into the pain in her side. The wounded Vulcan looked away momentarily, to see a barely functional Keating aiding a blood soaked, mutilated and beaten Silnan. Snapping her head back around she was transfixed on those evil eyes. Everything broke inside her, every shred of control every final desperate technique of discipline, and rage bubbled through her into a primal scream as her thumbs found those damned eyes and she began to push. Harder. Harder. Harder still...

Her primal scream only subsided as the felt the telltale pressure give way beneath her thumbs, and the Cardassian's own screams took over. In a fluid movement, she let go of him and kicked him back into the wall as she stepped back, drawing her own phaser and thumbing to one of the presets; it was the survival mode for heating rocks in caves to generate heat and light if stranded. A harsh wide beam that would sizzle rocks and melt flesh.

The Cardassian hit the wall hard and for the second time felt the back of his head crack against the cold hard bulkhead of the room, but that was the least of his problems. He sunk to the floor, his legs giving way as adrenaline coursed through his broken body, but no amount of adrenaline was going to help him now. His eyes were on fire, his legs were thrashing around completely involuntarily of his control. He wanted the pain to stop, he wanted his soldiers to burst through the door, kill the Starfleet officers, and save his eyes, he wouldn't even mind if it was Gul Krem who came now, please come. He came to the realisation that no one was coming to save him, he was alone and he was going to die.

Holding the handle of the knife still embedded in her side, as if doing so somehow steadied her aim, P'rel levelled the phaser and prepared to fire as the personified evil before her gripped and clawed desperately at his face, liquid debris slowly flowing from bloodied eye sockets. As she pressed the firing stud, a wide cone of sparking phaser fire burst from the emitter and landed on the Cardassian like a sudden and persistent blast of wind. It was as if that wind was so strong, and so hot, that it had scorched the wicked things skin and flesh away, leaving a writhing and horrifically burned creature writing on the floor.

Just when he made his semi peace with that fact, he heard the sound of a phaser and then his skin was on fire. Every exposed inch was crackling and boiling again and again. The worst was the smell, he could smell his own fresh cooking. He wanted his nose to burn off so he didn't have to endure the smell anymore, he wanted his ears to burn off so he didn't have to hear the sizzling of his own skin, he wanted his heart to fail so he didn't have to feel it hammering in his chest; he wanted to die!

P'rel watched the wicked thing writhe on the floor, as skeletal hands rose in a futile effort to protect it's burning face, with more scorched and cracking bone being revealed until she released the firing stud and ceased the beam. Barely recognisable as a person - if it ever truly could have qualified as such - there was enough left of him functioning, for him to scream the most satisfying scream...

"AAaahhhhh!" His screams echoed in the hollow room. "End this. Please" He begged with every ounce of strength he could muster.

Silnan watched through one barely opening eye as his torturer's face and hands were blasted away before their eyes. With Keating helping him to move, he instinctively squeezed her arm in a tight grip, holding on from the sheer shock of the mess of a man writhing on the floor begging for death. It was fitting, at least, that this cruel man should meet such a desperate and merciless end. "Don't" he painfully breathed to Keating, wanting instead to watch this pitiful thing die horribly.

The sickening guilt Finn had felt before, returned as she watched the Vulcan's phaser eat away at the Cardassian's flesh. He truly deserved to die after what he had done to Tolbarr, but had he deserved this? Finn set Tolbarr against a wall and stumbled towards the rifle that P'rel had dropped earlier. Ezar's screams echoed through the corridor and she wondered what would make her more of a monster. To kill him now? Or to let him die in agony? Killing him might be a mercy. It was what Tolbarr had asked for, yet she had denied his request because she had hoped they would find a way out. Ezar didn't deserve hope, he didn't deserve a way out.

Finn picked up the rifle, almost struggling to raise it as she fought the nauseous scent of melting skin that penetrated the air and set it to kill. She looked once more at the half corpse writhing in front of her before pulling the trigger. In truth, she had never killed a person before and somehow she thought it would be...different. Something more than just a single pull followed by a lifeless body. She tore her gaze aware and looked at P'rel. "We don't have time for this, we need to get out."

As Keating slung the rifle and made moves back towards him to help him up, Sinan yanked his body away from her. Looking hatefully at the horrid woman, he fought to bring in searing breaths of anger. "Don't. Touch. Me" he panted, each word more of a struggle to get out than the last. First she put him up as bait in a sick game of brinksmanship with that butcher, then when the time came she didn't even have the decency to let him die in pain. Clearly the Starfleet engineer felt more affinity to that horrid creature than for her own colleague.

Finn's face fell and she held up her hands in surrender. She only wanted to help, but she couldn't blame him. "I'm sorry," she whispered once again to the Cardassian.

Looking around to Keating, P'rel winced at the blade still stuck in her side. Fortunately she had felt it hit bone, so it was likely that the deflection had avoided anything major; even so, a concerning level of green blood was oozing from the wound. "I think Captain Kane would consider there to be little difference between a revenge killing and mercy killing, wouldn't you?" she asked. More aware now of the pain from the knife, she hobbled over to a small desk of sorts and propped herself against it. Turning the grip of the phaser away from her and offering it to Keating, she beckoned for the engineer to come over; "Assist me" she instructed, preparing to pull the knife out so that Keating could cauterise the wound.

"I won't say anything if you won't," Finn gave a lifeless shrug and took the phaser from P'rel. She adjusted it to a low setting suitable for sealing a wound and pointed it at the Vulcan's side. "Ready?"

Perhaps she could find something to respect in the engineer after all P'rel mused, taking a moment to look at the limp smoking mess propped against a wall, the phaser discharge still slowly burning away at flesh and bone - "agreed" she responded. Steeling herself ready for the pain, P'rel nodded once, took a deep breath and pulled the blade from her - feeling the edge grind against a hip plate it left with a grim sucking and popping noise. She gasped with the sudden sharpness of the pain as it snapped at her like a bullwhip and as the hot phaser beam seared her flesh together she gripped the desk so hard that it just began to buckle under her still bloody fingers. She caught sight of a water job on a small table on the far side of the room and wished she'd noticed it earlier, to have been able to at least flush the wound. Three distinct rumbles distantly sounded, and P'rel wondered if debris from the station was now penetrating the atmosphere or if some of it had actually hit the ground. "Evidently we really don't have time for this Lieutenant" winced P'rel, taking a ginger step onto the bad hip. The leg didn't collapse and the pain was at least manageable; looking at the security interface on the small desk she had been propped on, she asked Keating "Do you believe you can access a schematic from this terminal? Or even a site to site transport to a shuttle of some kind?". She looked at Silnan, utterly broken and barely awake; "I doubt we have time for a medical bay..." she grimly concluded aloud. Another rumble, louder this time and accompanied by a minor tremor, cemented that unfortunate view.

"We'll see," Finn replied as she instinctively pulled both of her hands up to the console. As if her soul wasn't crushed enough, another piece of it broke as she realized there was a new stream of blood on the screen. One that originated from her left hand that now only housed three fingers. All of the anger she had felt returned to the surface and for a moment, Finn wished she hadn't killed Ezar. She wanted to scream or cry. How was she supposed to work with one hand? Though now wasn't the time to complain, so Finn gingerly put the damaged hand back by her side and wiped the blood from the screen.

"Looks like there's an exit here," Finn pointed towards a spot halfway across the facility from where they were. "A few kilometers from that is some sort of power station. We might be able to find something useful there. Transporter or a communications grid we can tap into."

Turning on her good leg she looked at the screen as well; "Or a command node of some kind? Somewhat could cause a containment or cascade failure in the power generation systems...?" P'rel enquired. If they could get off Rondac and back the Athena, that would be ideal - but she would settle for blowing this place off the face of the planet and finishing whatever the falling debris didn't do. Another small tremor accompanied a distant rumble, both still minor but more intense than before.

"It's certainly a possibility. We'll know more when we get there," Finn said with no real emotion in her voice. She felt dead inside, but the thought of blowing the place up did spark the smallest bit of joy deep down.

P'rel took the blade and cut a strip from the arm of her uniform, looking at Keating's severed fingers. Without asking she took hold of the younger woman's wrist and inspected the damage. "The wound is clean and straight..." she began tightly binding the finger stubs together, using the remaining fingers as a better support, "...prosthetic surgery will be straight forward...".

Finn nodded. She wasn't sure what else to do or how to respond. The thought of surgery alone was terrifying and besides that, she wasn't sure she deserved to be fixed. Once P'rel was done, Finn walked over to Tolbarr. "I know you hate me and I don't blame you, but we don't have a lot of time. Let me help you. Just until we make it back to the ship. Then you'll never have to see me again, I swear. We can make it out of here alive, but you can't make it on your own."

Struggling to raise his head to look at Keating, his only working eye instead found P'rel who returned his gaze with an almost permissive nod. Grunting a strained approval, he forced his arms to open a little so that both women could help him up.

Taking the arm without it's hand, P'rel moved with Keating to hoist Silnan up onto his feet. From the sheer dead weight of the man, she could tell even beyond just the visual diagnosis that he was in a very bad way; there was virtually no strength left in him. The idea of getting to the power matrix, potentially through enemy fire, was not an encouraging prospect. The evacuation alarm continued to sound, and P'rel calculated their odds of survival at no better than 19.47%, though opted not to share the grim prediction. As the trio took their first steps into the thankfully deserted corridor, the marginally more senior Vulcan officer looked past Silnan's slumped head to look at Keating directly; "Our priority is to ensure the destruction of this facility, all other concerns are irrelevant. Agreed?" she stated, rather than asked. The chance of leaving this place alive were slim anyway, and their three lives would be a minute sacrifice if it could mean causing some kind of catastrophic failure or meltdown which would rid the quadrant of this threat. The irony was not lost on her, that the last time she was here was also a supposed one-way trip.

"Agreed," Finn replied plainly before looking at Tolbarr. She had said they could make it out alive, but in truth, she wasn't sure. The only thing that she was sure of was that she would do anything she could to keep the other two alive, even if it meant staying behind alone to blow up the facility. They deserved that much at least.

Wincing slightly with the pain in her side testing her suppression mechanisms, P'rel began to move forward in time with Keating's steps. Silnan had slumped completely, seemingly having succumbed to the sheer level of pain in being moved. Keating wasn't many orders of magnitude better off, and with herself badly wounded from the knife as well, the three set off on what was more than probably going to be their final task.