June Challenge: "Don’t Make Me Go Jack Bauer on You!"

[Enterprise1981]

Scenes to be featured in a future narrative. Any similarities to the names of actors and characters in Hidden Frontier is purely coincidental.

Mandel Morrison and a human female deputy escorted Ziminske Aris to the ready room. At the request of Doctor Aurellan Markalis, Zimminske was placed under arrest after revealing having been involved in the creation of a virus designed to eradicate the Founders. Limis Vircona was waiting for them. She put a hand out to request that Ziminske be seated. According to Markalis’s report, which Limis was in the process of reading, Ziminske was actually a human surgically altered to appear Bajoran. “I’d like a few minutes alone with the Commander,” she ordered the security officers.

Ziminske sat down on across from the desk grinning smugly, and then Morrison and the deputy left.

Limis waited for the officers to leave and then shot a grin of contempt at Ziminske. “Commander Ziminske,” she said coldly. “Or as my chief medical officer is now telling me, Huberstock. I was beginning to think Section 31 had a few redeeming qualities. But this just disturbs me more than an Obsidian Order interrogation. The Founders may be our enemies, yet that does not justify genocide.”

“Where is that bitch anyway?” Huberstock demanded. “I have the right to face my accuser.”

“How dare you!” Limis scowled. She stood and slugged Huberstock in the left eye. She then slammed Huberstock’s head on the table while clutching the back of her neck. “How dare you invoke civil liberties when your people trample on the principles the Federation stands for. As I see it, the only bitch within a parsec of this room is you. Who else is involved, ‘doctor’?”

Limis let go of Huberstock to allow her to talk. Huberstock sat upright while coughing. “You won’t be able to prove a thing, Captain,” she taunted.

“Maybe not in court of law, but I will get a full confession out of you,” Limis replied. She then picked up an exacto knife from the table with her right hand and grabbed Huberstock by the neck with her left. “Now let’s see how real these ridges are,” she hissed, holding the tip of the knife to Huberstock’s nose. “Who is also involved in creating the virus?”

Huberstock began twitching, almost to the point of convulsing. “Burn in hell,” she spat.

“What do you know about hell, ‘Ziminske’? If that was your real name, you would know.”

Limis threw the knife aside and then shoved Huberstock to the deck. Limis grabbed Huberstock by the collar to force her upward and shove her back in the chair. “I want names!” the captain demanded, clasping a lock of the other woman’s hair.” Who else is involved?!”

Huberstock just spat in Limis’s face.

Limis punched Huberstock in the right eye. “Guards!” she called, brushing the saliva from the bridge of her nose.
Morrison and the deputy entered. One look at Huberstock, and they could deduce that Limis caused the two black eyes. “What did you do to her?” Morrison asked of his captain.

“That doesn’t concern you,” Limis calmly replied. “Escort her to sickbay to have those fake ridges removed.”

Morrison obliged, grabbing Huberstock by the left arm and walking her out of the ready room through a side door.

Limis leaned on the desk letting out a loud sigh. All she could do now was wonder silently how many people who represented the Federation, yet would resort to the atrocious methods of the enemy. Throughout her life, she had desires to kill every Cardassian she could, yet never envisioned this level of mass murder.

 

[Enterprise1981]

Hours later, Huberstock awakened in the sickbay’s primary surgical alcove. As she touching to bridge of her nose to find out that the ridges were removed, she looked around the darkened facility to see only two security guards standing at the door to the primary intensive care unit. She shot a flirting grin at the youthful-looking Asian man on the right. A shadow crept in the room from the CMO’s office. She quickly lay down and closed her eyes.

Markalis walked over to the main diagnostic console and entered a code that would allow her to step through a momentary hole in the forcefield keeping Huberstock confined. Once on the other side of the forcefield, Markalis picked up a tricorder from the instrument tray to check for any other injuries the captain may have inflicted on the prisoner. Huberstock’s eyes shot open and she grabbed the doctor’s neck with her right hand. She ascended from the biobed and took an empty hypospray off the instrument tray. Ensign Calliope Morales and the male security guard walked towards the surgical alcove, phaser rifles at the ready.

“Back off, back off!” Huberstock shrieked, training the hypospray on the side of Markalis’s neck. “Or she dies!”

Morales, figuring she couldn’t afford to call Huberstock’s bluff not having advanced medical knowledge, lowered her rifle and ordered the male guard to do the same.

Huberstock pushed Markalis through a hole in the forcefield, allowing herself through as well. She then led her hostage through a side door leading to secondary surgical facilities.



Huberstock led Markalis into a darkened cargo bay, making sure to lock the cargo bay door once it closed. She set Markalis free and marched towards the transporter console to enter an override code. The rest of the panel remained dark. She circled around the console and pulled off an access panel. Pointing the phaser in her hand at Markalis, she took a second holstered phaser and placed it in the open panel, hoping to use it as a secondary power source. The console panel then lit up.

“Where do you hope to go?” Markalis asked. “Your colleagues abandoned you after you got captured.”

“That does not concern you,” Huberstock answered, focusing on the transporter console.

“You don’t have to run. You can turn yourself in, reveal your co-conspirators.”

“I will not sell out my colleagues even if they did abandon me,” Huberstock hissed, storming towards her hostage. “Besides, we’re talking about the Founders of the Dominion, you naïve girl. They would not think twice about using biological warfare. They made the rules of this game. I’m just following them.”

“That’s a cowardly justification for genocide. Eradicating a whole race makes us the enemy we seek to destroy.”

Huberstock moved her phaser to her left hand and slapped Markalis with her right. “Don’t you use that tone with me, little girl. I am fighting for the Federation’s survival. Can you say the same?”

Before either could speak, the few lights illuminating the cargo bay blinked out. The transporter console also went dark. Markalis used the moment of confusion to lunge at her captor. Huberstock fell backwards onto the deck. Her phaser flew out of her hand. Markalis held down Huberstock’s wrists. But Huberstock was then able force her arm upwards and land a punch square in Markalis’s jaw. She stood upright to fetch her phaser, but Markalis lunged upwards, pulling at Huberstock’s ponytail. Huberstock elbowed her in the stomach. Huberstock broke free and whisked the phaser off the floor.

Markalis knew this feeling before. When the Dominion seized the ship, the Jem’Hadar First had ordered her execution. And the guard holding the gun her head would have ended her life then and there had her fellow hostage not intervened. But as Huberstock was pointing a phaser at her, Markalis was certain no one would come to save her life at the last second this time and was resigned to her fate. She squinted when she heard a phaser rifle discharge. Upon opening her eyes, she saw herself still in the cargo bay, more shocked than relieved that she was not dead. Huberstock was down on her back reacting painfully to taking a phaser blast.

Without thinking, Markalis ran towards her former captor to pick up the wayward phaser. Limis, who had entered the cargo bay with two security officers during the melee, emerged from behind a set of cargo containers, slowly creeping towards the incapacitated escapee. Markalis kept the phaser that nearly ended her life trained on Huberstock, but with it now on stun.

Huberstock started to sit up once Limis cast a shadow over her. Limis fired again at Huberstock. Huberstock fell backwards, her face now in a frozen gasp. Markalis, however found no solace in the sudden shift in fortune. “She backed down, Limis,” the doctor gasped in horror.

“It seemed the right thing to do,” Limis stated coldly. “She knew her life was over the second she was arrested. I gave her what she wanted.”

Markalis just stared silently into Huberstock’s lifeless eyes. She had come to see the captain as a warm and caring person when she chose to be, almost like a second mother. Hearing now that Limis could have such cavalier attitude towards taking a life left her feeling more disturbed than her own brush with death.