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Enalia's Nightmare 18+

Posted on Tue May 5th, 2020 @ 11:11am by Captain Enalia Telvan & Lieutenant Commander Mnhei'sahe Dox
Edited on on Tue May 19th, 2020 @ 12:36pm

Mission: Return to the Core
Location: USS Hera
Timeline: 2397

After the recent meetings, of which Enalia still disliked, but saw the need for in this case rather than sending out a mass message, the Captain of the USS Hera was feeling particularly under the weather so rather than taking the stress home, she decided to try and unwind in the ship's lounge for a few minutes first. Ever since they'd found themselves in this unusual layer of space, she'd felt a pressure in her mind. It was almost like a whisper. She'd heard tales of a poorly matched symbiont driving hosts insane with voices in their heads, but she was fairly certain this was far from that. It felt... Darker... More sinister...

As she sat at the bar and the barkeep poured her usual, she turned around to look out over the large bay windows. Thankfully, the staff had overlaid them with holographics depicting scenes people had requested of home. Right now you could look out over the night time cityscape of New New Seattle from the vantage of one of the floating cafes. As Enalia reached for her drink, she shook her head as she thought over the fondness of reusing names Humans had. For a moment she mused over their history that even in Roman days, if twins or triplets were born, they'd name the first something like Maria, then the second Not Maria, then the third Definitely Not Maria or Not Not Maria.

Humans were odd like that, but she had to admit that they had a way of working their way into your third ventricle. She wouldn't be where she was today if not for a great number of them giving her support, strength, and courage.

Then as she brought her glass to her lips, the pressure in her head pounded into her like a Mugatu on a drum. As her eyes went glassy and her drink fell from her fingers, she collapsed onto the Ten Forward bar as if in slow motion, as the world around her began to go black. The last thing she saw was the bartender and several crewmembers beginning to flock over her, shouting words she could no longer hear.

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When Enalia's eyes opened, she was no longer aboard the Hera. She was sure that she remembered being there, in the conference room of her Starship. She remembered her crew and talking with her friends and feeling… something. Something she couldn’t remember that felt wrong. But as she tried to remember, the thoughts began to fade from her mind like gossamyr wisps. Shaking off the sensation, she knew she was aboard her father's sleek, fast Trill Gravity class Corsair ship, the Third Star, cutting through the warp lanes. Feeling now as if she had never been elsewhere, she was in the Second's seat with her father to her left on the raised dias and his Second standing over her shoulder giving her a lesson on the seat's control systems.

Looking up, he was exactly the man she remembered, though from her position he seemed so much larger. He was a handsome man with a rugged air about him as he sat in the command chair, leaning slightly to the side. There was a crooked, rakish smirk on his weathered, sun-stained face. Lost in the moment, Enalia stared at the face that was so familiar to her and yet somehow seemed a lifetime away as she squeezed what she was holding on to. What her mother had given her. In her right hand was a brass tuning fork and in the back of her mind she thought she could hear voices... Whispers...

She glanced around, trying to figure out where they were coming from, but couldn't. She could almost swear they were saying things like 'she can't change anything, she won't, she doesn't want to' and worse.

Then her heart twisted in her chest and her blood froze as she realized that this was the exact moment right before...

Right before her kidnapping…

The ship shuddered and the hull groaned sickeningly as if something had reached out and plucked it from warp forcefully. Looking back, it was fairly obvious that this was orchestrated by her mother, but living in the moment, her mind raced with panic as memories eluded her grasp. She could remember this moment, but she was trapped within it and couldn’t act on those memories. As they reverted to real space, the sight of a large Syndicate cruiser and half a dozen smaller ships made her heart sink just like it did that day. By the sound of the grapplers, it was again, too late.

Her father and his crew were working furiously to try and escape, but it was already too late. With a few well placed shots, the small corsair ship's shields were gone and Baro and his crew had beamed aboard, firing disruptor bolts straight through most of them with little hassle.

As the shimmering beams coallessed, her father reached over, with fear in his eyes as she grabbed Enalia by her shoulders and shoved her under the console. “Do not make a SOUND, dear heart. No matter what you see, do not make a sound.” In all of her young life, she had never seen that kind of fear in her father’s eyes. It was fear, not for himself, but for her as she silently nodded back at him.

Baro was a giant of an Orion, standing two meters tall and half that wide. He alone looked like a wall on the bridge of the tiny ship and with five other Orion men now aboard, the space was a bit cramped. From where she hid, Enalia couldn’t see what happened, but she could hear everything. She heard her father lunge at the mountain of a man only to be beaten back. She heard brutish fists make hard, wet sounds against her father’s body as it fell to the deck behind the console where, finally, she could see him. Then she saw Baro’s boot.

Still, as Baro stood over Enalia's father, one boot on his abdomen, his voice echoed in her mind. From his mouth came the words she had heard in her mind every night for years since this all happened and she was frozen, hearing them again for the first time. "So sorry, mate. It's just good business, ye' see." And then he pulled the trigger in that old Warmonger 392 disruptor, the whole thing moving as if in slow motion.

It wasn't a normal disruptor. It didn't use pure energy. Baro wasn't a kind man like that. He preferred his victims to bleed out. And Enalia's father, Havren Artan, took a full six seconds to bleed out through the gaping hole in his chest as he reached out and struggled to say something to his daughter, who only a meter away had been stuffed under a console to try and hide her.

The sound was sickening and seemed to fill her ears like the loudest sound ever as she could hear his shallow, rapid breaths begin to gurgle as his lungs filled with blood. There was a light, squeaking rasp as his quick breaths began to slow, the pauses between each getting longer each time, until they stopped.

As the life faded from his eyes and he lay still, the tears ran down Enalia's 15 year old face, the brass tuning fork still tightly clutched in her trembling right hand. She could hear the laughter of Baro and his crew as they kicked at the corpses of her father and his crew. As they spat upon them. As Baro kicked at the command chair that was too small for him.

The men were saying things now. Cruel things that would boil her blood if she could still hear them, but their voices seemed distant and drowned out now. The whispers in her head were back. Those she could hear clearly and a darkness was eating at the edge of her vision.

They were telling her to kill.

And so something in her snapped.

She rolled out of hiding and with a fluid motion, stabbed the first of the five in the neck with the tuning fork. With a tug, she pulled it free as a thin jet of blood sprayed across her face, feeling warm on her angry cheeks as she flipped over the helm to bury it into the eye socket of another of Baro's men.

The burly pirate let out a shrill scream as he lurched back, blood gushing out between his fingers as he clutched the hole where he once had an eye as Enalia screamed out all of her pain and anguish at them. But, before she could get any further, something hit her hard and she was thrown against the wall hard enough to shatter bone in most people. She knew because her mother had broken hers so she knew how much force it took. She was a bit augmented though so she could take more than that, but the impact was still more than enough to force the wind from her lungs as she let out a wheezing gasp. She shakily got to her feet, only to be met by another blow from Baro's boot, slamming her into the wall even harder. This time her bones really did break.

The sickening crunch rang in her ears as she clenched her jaw and ground her teeth, forcing herself not to scream. Be silent in pain. CHILDREN scream, Enalia. The voice of her mother echoed in the back of her mind. You are not a CHILD. You are my daughter. You are the heir to my crown, and if I ever hear a scream leak from those pretty little lips again, you will learn entirely new reasons to scream.

Not only did they kill her father and his crew, but they'd kill her as well. And even then, all she could think about was how her mother would judge her for her failures.

But they didn't. They hadn't. The giant of a man picked her up by the hair with one meaty fist and grinned that toothy grin of his at her. "And you're the other piece of good business. Hopefully you'll fetch a price worth the cost of two of my best men, ya filthy whore."

With the green transport sparkles and being thrown into a cage, Enalia faded back and forth between consciousness and awake just like she did back then so she was beginning to wonder if this was actually her remembering the past or if it was a dream. One thing she knew for certain was that the pain was all too real as she faded in and out of awareness, time seeming to no longer make any sense to her.

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It had felt like days, but she couldn’t be sure. Sometimes it felt like some kind of horrible montage of pain and torment as the most minimal of medical care set her broken bones and ensured she would live. Sometimes each moment of isolation felt like an eternity onto itself as she sat inside the tiny cage.

But she remembered the hands. The filthy hands of Boro’s crew that ripped the clothes from her body and locked a collar tight around her neck, like a common beast. She remembered every set of hands, and the faces that belonged to them. As she sat in the cold, trapped in her memory, she couldn’t remember what happened. She could take no comfort in knowing how many of those faces would die looking at her eventually.

At the end of the last day, Boro came to her again, and pulled her out of the cage by the leash on her neck and glared at her. He spoke, but she couldn’t remember hearing the words. Her mind was a muddle of pain and anger as she was beamed away. But not to freedom. She was beamed to an even worse prison.


Staniding now on the bridge of her Mother’s ship, she felt the eyes of everyone on the bridge staring at her. At her failure. With her mother's disapproving glare staring down at her beaten and battered nude body, she once more heard words she'd again never forget.

Shaking her head with disgust, Arenara Artan spoke, but there was no mother’s love in her empty, cold voice. "You beast. You even lost the tuning fork I so graciously gave you. So utterly useless. You can thank your younger sister for your rescue. She's not nearly as incompetent."

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With a start, her eyes snapped open again. With a heavy sigh, she found herself in her own bed aboard the USS Hera, the same darkness of the void she remembered they were trapped in just outside the windows. She thought about calling for the lights to come on or to feel to see if she was alone in bed, but she just laid there looking up for a long moment.

Without even thinking about it, she climbed out of bed and headed to the refresher, grabbing a uniform on the way. It was odd, but she didn't see any signs of Maica or Moira. She could hear the sounds of that new Aiva One in the kitchen preparing breakfast, but that was it. As she made her way across the room, she began putting her uniform on, slowly, but she didn’t speak. Didn’t call out for her loving wife. As she closed the flap of her crimson tunic and affixed her Starfleet badge to her breast, a strange feeling began to set in as fear began to ear at the back of her mind.

Then she realized why, when she was staring into the bathroom mirror, preening herself. The eyes that stared back weren't hers. Not really. They looked like hers, but they were clearly her mothers. The way she arched her brows, even on Enalia's own face, was distinctive. The face then leaned in towards the mirror, that distinctive, sadistic grin widening.

"You're still in there, aren't you, Enalia? I can feel you, you know." She tapped the side of her temple lightly. "Up here... and in the symbiont. It's odd... I gave you this perfect body and mind and you were such a disappointment. But now that I have it, I feel so much more free."

Watching from behind her own eyes, Enalia tried to scream, but there was no sound. She tried to hold up her own hands or do ANYTHING, but all she could do was watch her own body finish getting ready in the mirror, moving out of her control.

“Perhaps I can even correct the mistakes of this foolish little life you’ve made for yourself. After all, my ship has so much more memory now without that abomination you had the audacity to call a wife taking up space in it.” The grin widening, Enalia headed out of the refresher, now dressed and ready for the day, sword on her hip and a disruptor at her back where she'd normally have her phased pistol her father gave her. Without a word, she headed out of her quarters and towards the turbolift, heading towards the bridge.

The trip seemed to last an eternity as Enalia tried to call out for help. She had erased Maica? Where was Moira? How had this happened? Her mind raced as the turbolift climbed the short trip from deck 8 to deck 1 as she tried to work it out. It was impossible. It couldn’t be true. Rita Paris had killed Arenara and saved her from this horrifying fate.

Within moments, she was leaving the turbolift and surveying the command crew, unblinkingly licking her lips.

"Computer, bridge emergency lockdown, authorization Enalia foxtrot niner niner alpha lem gamma delta." As the bridge locked down, the Trill woman crossed over to where Rita stood up in confusion and pressed herself close to the buxom first officer, whispering in her ear. "How do you work this thing again?" Suddenly, there was a shrill cry as the point blank blast of Rita's own phaser straight to her gut disintegrated her. “There. No more endless, sanctimonious speeches.

With almost practiced ease, Enalia turned the weapon on Sonak, barely missing and slicing a huge gash in the console behind him. There was no time to think though, as now she had to draw her sword and defend from Dox, who had rounded on her with a pair of Caitian assassin's swords. Dox was fast and skilled, but Arenara outstripped even Enalia’s teachings as she took advantage of the young pilot’s confusion and hesitation. With a quick flick the Rihannsu woman's head was soaring through the air, the body splattering across the helm controls. With a couple more shots she was able to blow up an EPS conduit and burn Petty Officer S’Rina Wil’I’Ams alive as she crossed to the engineering station and dropped the phaser behind it set to overload. The resulting explosion brought Chief Engineer Thex out of hiding and right to the tip of her sword, which plunged straight through the blue Andorian's heart.

From behind her own eyes, Enalia Telvan could only watch helplessly as her own BODY systematically killed those closest to her. At her own feet, puddles of blood, red, green and blue, mixed on her boots as the woman trapped withing couldn’t even weep for her lost family. Lost at her own hands.

By now, however, her miss on the Kolinahr master was repaying dividends and she found the tip of an An Woon protruding from her belly.

With blood trickling from her lips and darkness creeping in, she could hear herself speaking. "Well, Enalia, that went well. Let's see if we can do a little better next time."

Then with a start, she woke up in her own bed again. And again, she quietly got up and made her way across the room and began to get dressed as if nothing had happened. And as she tried to scream again, she realized Arenara was indeed still in control and she was about to watch herself kill her own people over and over again. As her heart sank, she could hear her own laughter in her ears even as she strapped on her sword and several more weapons this time.

“Oh, my poor, pathetic daughter. You will finally fulfill your usefulness to me. One way or another.”

 

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