Lockjaw

Posted on Mon 31st Aug, 2026 @ 11:03am by Commander Damion Ildaran & Commander Anslo Tol & Rautha

2,434 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: [MAIN] Learning to Fly
Location: Trill Seeker Ship "Pallon"- Triangle
Timeline: One Day After, and two weeks post explosion at SB109

Previously... https://sb109.harperhold.com/index.php/sim/viewpost/2439

{Trill Seeker Ship "Pallon"- Triangle}

Rizhkyn was well past hate, and deep into the weeds on loathing. Anslo had been on Starbase 109, and then vanished without a trace. Rizhkyn had smelled the deception Starfleet tried to pull before, when they hid Anslo. He was beyond certain Anslo was on that station, but in a containment of some sorts preventing the signal from escaping. Their recovery of Anslo from H'tek had used a nanite cloud to pacify their Klingon attackers, but it had also served the purpose of marking everyone involved. Klingons had immediate anaphylaxis, but Trill became a signal flare on a clear night.

He was alone on the Pallon. Rautha had split up to do their own search, but with the explosion of the Starbase there was chaos and almost a half million people scattering. A part of his soul screamed out in frustration trying to track everyone and failing. The nanites Anslo breathed in should sync to any computer and ping a location, but going on two weeks of silence Rizhkyn knew Anslo had somehow disabled them.

As two more long days passed, he made sure to keep fit by working out, quizzing himself in topics of study. When the board made a series of alerts, his pulse quickened, and he ran to the panel.

"Found you." He spoke only to himself, and perhaps to his ambition to finally catch this elusive problem.

Rautha wanted to know too, it was only fair. Rizhkyn sent the coordinates to him and set course.

{In Orbit of Nepenthe}

Rautha was residing in an older model Starfleet runabout. It was in a steady orbit of the planet SB109 was orbiting as it was being worked on. Rautha had split from Ryzhkyn once they saw Anslo's trail going cold. Both had surmised that Anslo's escape had been a ruse and, while Ryzhkyn kept up the search, Rautha would head back to 109 and monitor traffic, waiting for any sign of Anslo Tol. Ships came and ships went and, though Rautha's scanning abilities were limited, he remained ever vigilant.

While the runabout hummed away its inner working, Rautha laid, shirtless upon his bunk. Upon his chest laid two daggers made from the teeth of the Trill sabrebeast. His eyes were open and locked upon some point on the ceiling. His lips did not move but he was deep in meditation. His bald head showed that a Trill's spots did venture up both sides of their heads to meet at a point at the top of the head, then ventured straight down the back of the neck.

Blinking once upon the report that a signal had come in, Rautha grabbed his daggers, spun them around in his hands and sheathed them in their respective sheathes on his belt. Rautha ran a hand across a scar across his abdomen while mouthing something cryptic. He sat up and reached for his monk's tunic.

"Remember those earlier days after you had received the light," he quoted to himself. Rautha continued with, "when you endured in a great conflict full of suffering." He skipped to the end. "Do not throw away your confidence for it will be richly rewarded."

He donned his tunic, fixing it with a roped belt. Rautha ensured his daggers were easy to get to. He even retrieved them once with lightning speed, then slipped them back. "Brother Tol, we are going home." He was seated in the pilot's seat, looking at the readout. He did not blink, did not nod, he made no indication that he was ready to go, to face whatever lied ahead; only because he was always ready.

Rautha set a course.

{IBEX}

-One Day ago... (+-) (2 weeks since explosion)

The IBEX had begun its campaign to root out the Second Sons once and for all. The time for Anslo to play his part had arrived, a mission to contact the smuggler who could broker their way to Partha's ship, the "Vaq'Bach." Anslo's cooperation and verified data had gone a long way to putting him on the right path to proving his worth. Rejoining Starfleet was his goal as unlikely as it was; the path lay before him.

He stood in the mission control deck, watching the holographic dome display myriad information relays and visuals to prepare him for this.

Yuma Mokkai AKA "Makoto" was usually their agent, but this plan called for Anslo. She stood next to him, quizzing him to be sure he knew the details well. He did, and not for the first time Makoto wondered what advantages a symbiont could offer. It had taken her hours to prepare for missions like this, Anslo did it at a glance.

She spoke with him as a handler to an asset, "Anslo, speak to the Captain once you are ready. I may have decided to trust you, but you also need to make him trust you. This mission is a chance for you to run, but I feel that's not your goal anymore."

The Trill nodded solemnly, "Swiftly and Silently. I'll come back with the goods I swear." Anslo leaned in to turn off the display, and the walls of the bridge raised from the floor and resumed their bridge like enclosure forms. He took his leave with a gentle hand on her shoulder before asking, "Reggie, where is the Captain?"

Reggie's face appeared, but only on monitor. His actual form was an EMH model I repurposed to their needs, but lately he had resorted only to readouts and displays.

Captain Ildaran is in the firing range, Reggie reported.

Makoto told him to go, Anslo was too naive to realize but Tol knew when the charm was being applied versus genuinely felt. His eyes hardened at the realization she had played him so well.

"So I guess I'll go see him them..."

With her visage lowered, she only glanced over her cold shoulder to say, "Best be off then."

(Firing Range, IBEX)

Damion ducked and scrambled behind a pile of crates in a dirty alley in the holographic firing range. He squeezed off four rounds at the holographic targets that were firing at him. He took out three of them but only hit the fourth with a non-fatal wound and had to fire again.

Captain, said Reggie's voice from a wall panel.

"Computer, pause program," Damion said. Streaks of phaser fire hung frozen in mid-air as Damion stood. "What is it, Reggie?" he asked.

The holograms face face was pixelated, though the screen was in full resolution, "Captain, Makoto has prepped the asset. He is en route to you for final debrief before he departs."

"Thanks for letting me know, Reggie," Damion said. "How are the diagnostics on you coming along?"

Reggie looked angry for a split second, inexplicably, "Not well. I have an unknown error compounding in my code. I have isolated it into the affected portions of my memory circuits and rerouted accordingly but this has left me fractured. If I cannot repair myself, we will need a specialist."

Damion imagined something like that happening to Elizabeth and stifled a shudder. "If I were you, I'd be angry, too. If you have any recommendations for a specialist you'd like to examine you, tell me, and I'll make the request, Reggie."

For photons and force fields to look the way he did truly was remarkable. The hologram was sweating, and a keen telepath could detect the essence of emotion if they listened. Reggie shook his head to tell Damion, "HOME will decide my fate, if there is a specialist in our... network, they will dispatch accordingly. I must... trust..."

Reggie stared blankly at the screen and then it cut to black.

They would only dispatch a specialist if he reported a need, Damion thought. He almost headed into the White Room immediately to use the TaBB but remembered that Anslo was on his way to the firing range. He waited.

Moments passed, before Anslo entered. The oppressive weight of a confinement beam could be felt at a distance, the man was under lock and key no matter where he went. With the level of holographic field precision this ship had, any room could become anything. A cell for Anslo was always an instant away. He was free to walk about the ship like a pheasant is free to fly into open skies.

"Sir, I was requested to come here?"

"Anslo--It's good to see you," Damion said. "Let's go to my quarters and talk over this mission before you leave," he said. "Computer, record marksmanship score, send it to my inbox, and end program."

The dirty alleyway disappeared, to be replaced by a cube-shaped room, three meters on each side. They were already on Deck 3, so Damion walked with Anslo down a corridor or two, then turned right and stopped at a door. The door scanned his retinas and opened.

Damion kept his quarters pretty sparse. A blue crocheted blanket covered his bed, and a gray, hand-knitted sweater hung over the back of his desk chair. Most of his hydroponics set-up he'd given to Kya Adtanis to grow food for people in the Garden District. The only plants he'd kept were his strawberries and basil, and they now grew in the Mess Hall. In his ship quarters, he kept his bed behind a sliding panel that was pulled closed. There were no windows to the outside, only viewscreens. Since the IBEX now orbited a planet, the viewscreens showed it rotating slowly below them. The main living area of his quarters contained a desk that could fold up into the wall if needed, along with shelving. A sofa, armchair, and coffee table completed the publicly visible furniture, and a replicator was set into one wall.

"Have a seat," Damion invited. "Do you want anything to drink?"

"Why thank you, but I must decline. I am ill at ease and attempting to let my stomach settle. Makoto directed me to speak with you before we embark on our mission?"

Anslo sat at the edge of the chair, as though ready to bolt. Given his history one could assume he was always ready to run, never relaxed. The man was gaunt but clearly wiry and strong, his shaved head, scars along the arms and face made the sharp features hawkish.

How, Damion wondered, had he ever impersonated this guy? "I'm going to have some tea, if you don't mind. I'm pretty thirsty." He went to the replicator. "Iced basil tea, lightly sweetened with beet sugar. Make me a pitcher and a filled pint glass, please." He took the pint glass and pitcher and set them on the coffee table. "If you change your mind, let me know," he told Anslo and then took a long swallow of tea.

"All right. The first thing I want to say is, welcome to the IBEX, and thank you for undertaking this mission, Anslo. I hope, in time, you'll feel more comfortable around us, but I know you've been a long time in the cold, and I'm sure trust doesn't come easily to you, especially considering we essentially kidnapped you from the ship you were being sent to." He looked directly at Anslo. "That was on my orders, and it was pretty high-handed of me, to be honest. I just felt like we could offer you a better, or at least a more interesting, life than it seemed that you were going to get, otherwise. Since I'd met you, I liked you, and I wanted to work with you. The kind of skills you have don't necessarily work well in civilian life unless you plan to run a mixed martial arts dojo."

Rather quickly Anslo replied, the words ready long in advance, "I got those skills running from madmen who would have tried to gut me, and a Starfleet who didn't protect me. Before I was joined, against my will mind you, I wanted to be a doctor. I was in field medicine classes in Generalized Infantry sir, but those days are 20 years past. I don't know how my file reads, but I've survived. I'm here because I wasn't going to let all of you die because of this madman I enabled. I could have kept running..." in a sudden way, Anslo fell silent, with his eyes glazed.

Anslo was clearly in "act/react, say what you need defensively" mode. He visibly went from stiff to rigid in a moment, the eyes focusing sharply, somehow different. The creature known as Anslo, born of a life of running, was ready to do it again, measuring angles, but the feel of the confinement beam was always there. Moving too fast would just hit the field. He was trapped and panicking, it was only natural given the consequences of being caught. Tol rarely spoke, the Symbiont wasn't awake in such ways to form speech, but rather, impressed specific imagery, and evoked feelings to communicate. Anslo had exhausted the means of the mundane, and the other truth must be told.

Tol spoke through Anslo, "There is no crime. To run from such a fate is our duty as living souls. We are not captive to one another."

"Agreed," Damion said. To his eyes, Anslo needed a soak in a hot bath for an hour, followed by a full-body massage from someone he absolutely trusted, followed by a huge mug of chamomile tea, and then bed--for starters. "Do you really feel ready for this?" he asked. "We can delay it some if you need."

Anslo gave a gallows grin, unaware of Tol's intoning reply. "I'll have time to rest on the way to Partha's moon. The shuttle is going to go into ultra conservancy to avoid detection, and I'll be in suspended stasis. I won't stop looking over my shoulder until they are in prison or dead. Going on the mission is the only thing giving me peace of mind."

"Rest is not my concern with you, so much as your fear is," Damion said. "It oozes from every pore of your being. It makes you noticeable when a field agent's job is to not be noticed. If I had my preference, I would not send you out on this yet." He sighed. "But if not catching these guys is what's making you so fearful, maybe removing them from the picture is the best thing--and I certainly want them disabled enough to never pose a threat to 109 again as soon as possible. So let's go see what Makoto has planned."

 

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