<USS Cervantes> 22. And the Moral of the Story Is?

<<With apologies to Machia, for not being able to consult him about this first>>

22. And the Moral of the Story Is?

Chase Mallory
Saskia Lar

Lar, Mallory, and Machia pulled their robes even more tightly around their bodies as they stole out of the temple chamber. As they cleared the doorway, Lar held out an arm to hold the other two men back. She glanced around to make sure that those in pursuit were not being pursued themselves. Satisfied, all three fell into the shadows, becoming ghostly, ominous echoes among the dazzling colors of the temple streets.

Suddenly, there came a cry from beyond. Lar?s head snapped up as Mallory moved in front of her, straining to hear. Within moments, the robes of the missing Ss?lytha?a danced into view from around a corner. It didn?t take any of them very long to catch a glimpse of another, smaller figure that seemed to be encased in the larger?s grasp. They watched as the two struggled, the smaller creature mewing in an anxious, terrified tone. Suddenly, the smaller figure managed to thrust itself into the light. It was a Khefiraan child, emaciated, fur matted with mud and sand and already too many years of crawling time. A greenish-gray claw reached out and sunk itself into the child?s shoulder. The cat cried out in pain, but was soon silenced as the Ss?lytha?a dragged it out of view, claws over its mouth. Machia hurried forward, Mallory and Lar close behind, wishing not only for godspeed, but the Khefiraan?s silent cat feet.

The trio trailed at a distance, taking the road most shadowy through the main streets of the now alive districts. These streets were akin to those in an Arabian or Mediterranean city. People teemed everywhere, and the scents of fresh meat, even at this later hour, permeated and mingled in the bazaar. Merchants cried their wares while the elite rode by in carriages, every once and a while doling out money to the peasants who dared to approach the doors. The streets were aglow with the dancing flames of street lamps
and awash in the chatter of a tongue so foreign and guttural that it was incomprehensible to the Universal Translator. Mallory passed a crowd of people standing in a semi-circle around a flute player. He played a haunting melody while a creature by his feet writhed and gyrated in dance. People tossed coins; others sang. This was what life was like for these people, Mallory thought, just like everyone else everywhere else.

As the trio of cloaked Federation officers crossed the marketplace and into the quieter residential streets to follow the Ss'lytha'a, Chase took note of the sky. He found more people standing on the rooftops of their homes pointing to the sky and chattering excitedly. The colors, the luminance high above was brilliant, just like the Aurora Borealis back on Earth, but this Borealis covered the entire night sky. The electromagnetic radiation created tidal ripples of light, violet washing into green dribbling into orange. Saskia forcibly pulled him along before he realized that he had stopped, just like those people on the rooftops, to admire the sheer supernature of this phenomenon.

Machia waved them into a dark alley, single file, Lar and Mallory taking the rear. Mallory could barely see the other two and relied on the sounds of Saskia's shoes clicking against the stone. Once they finally exited, it was like stepping into a decrepit wonderland. Where they had come from were homely neighborhoods adjacent to a lively, unruly bazaar, but these streets were empty, just like they had found them whilst excavating the site. These streets were filled with hunched, cloaked figures, people who did not want to be seen, perhaps out of shame due to the squalor.

"This way," Machia said. They followed Darius into the alley. It let out into a large square. Machia put his back to the wall and peered around the corner. His arm went up abruptly, elbow crooked, palm up. Lar and Mallory stopped.

"What's up?" Mallory whispered.

"He's giving the Khefiraan boy leaves. The boy is eating."

"So the bastard was just feeding the kid."

"Wait. He's got something else. A needle."

The three were silent for a moment. Machia's transfixed head still poked around the corner. Lar hoarsely whispered. "The ritual. He's trying to perform the ritual."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Mallory said in a dry voice.

"That means he's going to turn the Khefiraan into a statue."

"This is a bad thing right?" Machia and Lar seemed too spellbound to answer. Mallory drew his phaser. "I don't know about you people, but where I come from there's a law that says if you don't help someone in trouble, you go to jail for it and I'm guessing turning that little cat thing into a doorstop isn't a good thing. Who's gonna cover me?"

"We can't interfere," Saskia said. In the dancing light from the sky, Mallory could just make out her exhausted, irritated eyes. It certainly looked like she didn't want to put up with any shit today. But whatever. Neither did he.

"I get it already." Without another word exchanged to her, he jumped out. "Hey!" Chase fired a phaser pulse at the edifice near the cloaked Ss'lytha'a. The Ss'lyth'a dodged the shot; flicking right out of view and back, faster than perception. The hooded figure lunged at Mallory at point blank. Chase fired again; the phaser slapped from his hand. "Grab the kid!"

"Dammit!" Saskia and Machia grabbed their weapons at the ready. "Go ahead and get us killed, why don't you?" she hissed, doing a rather good imitation of the Ss'lytha'a as she took cover against the side of a building.

The Ss'lytha'a poked at Mallory with the syringe, missing. Upon the final dodge away from the needle, Mallory crushed his fist into the lizard's hand, shattering the glass and the liquid inside. The Ss'lytha'a took the opportunity and planted a paw right into
Mallory's face.

Chase could see a stream of his own blood spray over the hooded figure. Gritting his teeth, he lunged at the Ss'lytha'a, nabbed the wrist to the alien's flying, open-talon palm, slipped sideways, and twisted the arm counterclockwise till he could hear the bone
crack distinctly in five different places. He received a foot to the back for that one but held on. The kick swung Mallory face to face with another talon-armed slap. Chase spit blood on him; fuck the rules of engagement, as he didn't have sharp fingernails anyway. Still grasping the Ss'lytha'a, Mallory reached in and gave it a deep kick in the stomach. One. Two. Three. Then a roundhouse to the head.

Only air.

"Behind you!" It was Darius or Saskia or someone. Mallory motioned to turn, but three talons dug into his side. Mallory screamed and writhed like a puppet trying to escape his puppeteer. A phaser blast hummed through the night air, and the talons gripped
harder - a death squeeze. Mallory windmilled his elbows, slapping the figure again and again in rapid succession. Finally free, he swiped at it with alien's foot knocking him down. Darius had fired the shot; he stood over the Ss'lytha'a. Lar had the Khefiraan boy in her hands.

"You're fuckin' crazy," Darius began. He shook his head. "Fuckin' crazy..."

Mallory stumbled over to the two and the crying cat-alien-thing. He planted his foot right into the Ss'lytha'a's neck and pivoted his heel. The thing gurgled and gasped. The talons tried to grip Mallory's leg, but Chase only pressed harder. It gave up and clawed
half-heartedly at Mallory's foot with it's good arm trying to free it's air passage. The other arm was bent into a zig-zag. "That's how you play the game on the street," Chase calmly told his fellow officers through his quick breaths. "So," Mallory said to the Ss'lytha'a. "You wanna tell me what you're up too?" Mallory held the side where the talons had dug into and winced. "Fuck, Iynx isn't gonna like this one bit!" He collapsed, falling on his ass and staring at the downed Ss'lytha'a fighter.

Saskia passed the weeping child over to Machia, and came to stand over Mallory's head. He had never thought of her as a particularly looming presence--in fact that damn by-the-book nature of hers was the exact opposite of intimidating--but for the moment, he found that he would have much rather been in sickbay under Tryn's peeved eye. "Look," she said, "It doesn't really bother me all that much if you want to go off and pull some stunt like that again. I just wouldn't mind if I could be left out of it, for a change." The light in her eyes quietly dimmed, and she appeared momentarily lost in thought. She looked back at Machia. "We've done all we can do here," she said, nodding at the child. "Let's go back. He should see a medic, anyway." She stared sideways at Chase, although her eyes were not the slits they had been a moment before.

"What about the kid? And the bastard?" Mallory was staring at the scrawny Khefiraan boy. "Just gonna let that kid go back out there and let other guys shove needles into him?"

"We've done all we can do," Saskia repeated. "We certainly weren't able to prevent the deaths of every other Khefiraan citizen, and we're probably not going to be able to start now. Sometimes, you have to let nature take its course."

This irritated Mallory. He couldn't fathom that she truly believed in any of that bullshit she was spouting. "What a waste of time. At least I got some exercise." He closed his bloody hand into a fist and stretched it all the way open."

Lar and Machia shared a look. "Go on, now," Machia said gently to the boy. "We have to go back to our friends."

The three left the boy, decrepit and alone, in the square.





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