Star Trek - [Mirror Universe 003]

by Shards

  He landed on his back in a greasy puddle, and all of the air was knocked from his lungs. Like a landed fish, he writhed while his body forced him to draw empty, futile gasps.

  Nechayev emerged from behind the corner and pounced on him. She stuck a disruptor in his face as she yanked off the mask of his stealth suit, disabling its cloak. "Memory Omega," she said as Barclay shimmered into view.

  "General N-Nechayev," Barclay said, barely able to breathe.

  At first, she looked dumbfounded. Then her expression lit up with recognition. She smirked with scorn. "I know you," she said, never once shifting the aim of her weapon. "You're that stuttering twit who works with K'Ehleyr!" She touched her index finger to her temple, then snapped her fingers. "Broccoli!"

  "B-B-Barclay," he protested meekly, trying to sit up.

  She pressed the disruptor's muzzle against his nose. "That's what I said."

  In his ear, Barclay heard K'Ehleyr say, "Keep her talking, Reg, I'm heading for the west hatch."

  Nechayev eased herself back to her feet, keeping her weapon aimed at his face the entire time. "Tell you what, Broccoli. I need to go now. As long as you don't do something stupid, like get in my way, I'll let you live."

  She inched past him, disruptor steady and on target, and moved toward the north hatch. Barclay recalled that the landing pad was at that end of the pipe maze. "General," he said, "I d-d-don't understand. We're here to r-rescue you."

  She paused. "I was doing just fine without you." Evidently taking the bait, she lowered her weapon a few degrees.

  "Well, if you're trying to reach the landing p-p-pad, don't take the n-north hatch. It's boobytrapped."

  She turned her head to glance at the distant portal.

  He drew his disruptor in half a blink.

  She snapped hers back on target for his head.

  Then she smiled. "Who do you think you're fooling, Broccoli?" She backed quickly down the passageway.

  Barclay followed her, holding his disruptor level and maintaining his range and angle of fire. "Stop, General."

  "Or what? You'll shoot me?" She shook her head and sneered as she continued backstepping.

  "I'll d-d-do what I have to."

  She was halfway to the north hatch. "No, you won't. You're no field agent, just a glorified button-pusher."

  "D-d-don't make me shoot you," he said.

  "Don't make me laugh. You've never pulled a trigger in your life." She was at the steps to the hatch. "I know your kind, Broccoli. You're a coward and a pacifist." Carefully, she climbed the few steps behind her. "Not that it's your fault-that's just what Memory Omega raised you to be: weak." From the top step, she added, "That's why it's going to lose."

  Reaching blindly behind her, she found the hatch controls with her free hand. With a press of her thumb, the hatch unlocked and slid open behind her, filling the passageway with the whine of engine noise and the susurrus of the storm.

  Barclay knew that if Nechayev reached the landing pad and made it into one of the Klingons' fueled and ready patrol shuttles, there would be almost no hope of catching her again before she inflicted irreparable harm on the movement.

  She backed up to the hatch's threshold. "See ya, Broccoli."

  His voice was as steady as his aim. "I can't let you leave."

  Nechayev lowered her weapon and gave him a small shake of her head and a pitying smirk. "You don't have the balls to stop me." She turned and stepped through the hatchway.

  He pulled the trigger.

  The crimson pulse slammed into Nechayev's upper back and left a massive, circular scorch mark that burned through her clothes and deep into her flesh.

  She staggered forward, dropped her disruptor, and fought to keep pulling herself up the stairs to the landing pad.

  Barclay felt nauseated and dizzy as he took aim a second time. He'd never been a violent man, and certainly not a killer.

  He fired again.

  His second pulse struck the back of Nechayev's head and blasted away her coif of silver-blond hair, as well as her face and the top of her skull. Smoking and limp, her body pitched forward on the stairs, then tumbled back through the hatchway in a charred, lifeless heap.

  Several seconds passed. Barclay no longer heard the noise from the landing pad or the surges of the storm; his ears were full of his pounding heartbeat and labored breathing. Something vile and hot forced its way up his esophagus. He holstered his disruptor just in time to fall to his knees and vomit a watery spew of acid on the muddy ground under his gloved hands.

  He coughed and spat for a minute afterward, trying to expel the taste from his mouth. As he picked himself up and retrieved his mask, he saw a tall feminine form shimmer into view before him. K'Ehleyr peeled off her own mask and pressed a reassuring hand to Barclay's shoulder. "You all right?"

  "Yeah," he said, sleeving sour flecks of spittle from his mouth and chin. "Fine."

  She nodded toward Nechayev's body. "Looks like you didn't need me, after all." Lifting an eyebrow, she asked, "Still have the master transceiver?"

  He patted a side pocket of his stealth suit. "Right here."

  "Then we should get back to the ship," she said. "What's our exit strategy?"

  "The armory and this fuel network are full of spiders."

  K'Ehleyr grinned and put her mask back on. "Sounds like a plan." As she started to fade away, Barclay cast a final, regretful glance down the passageway at Nechayev. "Don't look so glum, Reg," said the now-invisible K'Ehleyr. "You just saved Spock's movement and the Terran revolution. You're a hero."

  "I guess so," Barclay said, pulling his own mask back down over his face. On some level, he knew that what K'Ehleyr said was true, but it didn't make him feel any better about having taken a life or having shot a woman in the back.

  He powered up his stealth suit. His HUD confirmed that he was once again transparent. He sighed and walked toward the south hatch. "Let's get the hell outta here."

  The Solomon was two hours and half a light-year from the still-burning Klingon base, but Barclay's guilty feelings continued to weigh on his conscience. Though the tiny Memory Omega scout ship was cloaked from Alliance sensors, Barclay found nowhere to hide from his memory of pulling the trigger and watching Alynna Nechayev die in a flash of light and heat.

  K'Ehleyr occupied the Solomon's pilot's seat. She was relaxed behind the flight controls, guiding the ship toward its rendezvous with other Memory Omega teams at the movement's backup headquarters. She and Barclay had doffed their stealth suits and changed back into regular clothes as soon as the Solomon broke orbit, giving their quiet journey the ambience of a routine jaunt.

  Barclay had been trying, with little success, to distract himself by studying the master quantum transceiver. Liberated from its disguise, it resembled little more than a plain metal cylinder, roughly equal in size to his middle finger.

  "Amazing, isn't it?" he said, holding it up to the overhead light. "Thousands of quantum particles, vibrating in perfect harmony across unbreakable transdimensional strings with their sympathetic-twin partners, all over the galaxy."

  "I should've known you'd see nothing but a fancy gizmo," K'Ehleyr teased with a grin.

  He tucked the MQT back into a protective case. "I know it's more than just a gadget," he said. "It's the gadget."

  "You still don't get it." Looking over her shoulder, she added, "That's not just the key to the revolution you're holding. It is the revolution."

  Chastened, he contemplated how close they had come to letting everything slip away. A century of sacrifices and secrets had nearly been lost because of one woman's broken faith in the future. He rested his hand on the transceiver's case and permitted himself a moment of hopeful anticipation.

  "We're going to live to see it, aren't we?" he asked.

  K'Ehleyr grinned and kept her eyes on the streaks of stars outside the Solomon. "That's the plan, Reg. That's the plan."