You heartless bastard!
Just kidding. You're right of course. They would.
Now that the Commander has read...
...that which I have warned now comes to pass...
CH. 5 [pt. 2]
Waves lapped up over Ford’s shoulders as he held Anya’s lithe frame to his chest and kissed her. She writhed seductively and playfully in his grasp as the cool waves caressed them. She had indeed coaxed him out into the water for a ‘swim’. But she hadn’t lied about the bikini. It hadn’t been meant for swimming…
It lay in two pieces on the beach beyond.
The two enjoyed themselves as the young might. Ford had again forgotten his age. In this woman’s arms, he felt twenty again. He thought of the uniform he’d worn in those years. Would Anya have liked him in the old, yellow tunic with the big floppy turtleneck? Hell, she hadn’t even seen him in his current uniform. He’d have to remedy that before he left.
The waves rose a bit higher in the next wash, coming up to their mouths as they kissed. Anya’s tongue tasted like the Cotton Candy wine they’d enjoyed. He pulled her back every time the water tried to take her from him. He loved the press of her body to his. Feeling her breasts on his chest, the supple curve of her belly on his. He pressed his manhood close whenever she presented him the opportunity. She responded by bucking against him a little. Each time she used more and more pressure. He wanted her.
Anya’s legs wrapped around him and she slid over him in the jostling waters. Sweet heaven flooded his senses as their lovemaking took shape. He let her have total control and was more than content to just stand and hold her. Her hips worked slowly, smoothly. She looked into his eyes and he could barely see her even as close as she was. The white sands of the beach showed quite well in the clouding night, but visibility of everything else had faded away since their arrival. But the twinkle of the dying light was easy to detect in her wide, luscious eyes.
Anya’s motions became faster and more rhythmic as her energy mounted and built. He held her butt, enjoying the contours of her muscle, her smooth skin. Her arms encircled his shoulders, clinging to him as she became more desperate with her plunges. He bucked his own hips to add to the foray of hot sensation. His lips found hers, soft and swollen feeling as he kissed her.
At last she spent herself. Her nails bit into flesh and tore as she looked heavenward with her last, shuddering gasp of pleasure. Then she sagged in his arms. He wasn’t sure how long he’d lasted. But he’d remained at attention during the entire march.
Anya pulled free of him and let the water take her away. Her hands traced down his arm to his hand and she pulled him with her. Chevy followed, breathing heavily but ready for more. He’d always had a decent amount of sexual stamina. This girl really knew how to use it. She led him back onto the beach and lowered herself onto the long, white blanket they’d put there.
Chevis remained standing. He found himself looking off to the east. What had drawn his attention? He had the amorous desires of a beautiful, young and totally nude woman right here before him and now he found himself looking off at nothing as though he’d expected to see something. A smell came to him. It overrode the scent of the sea and of their bodies. He knew the smell. The stink of oil and hydraulics. The burnt scent of old machinery. Well used chains.
Jarn.
Had that been what had drawn his attention? Had he sensed something? Was there something out there in the dark looking back at him? He strained to focus in the black gloom. He knew that the area dead center in most humans’ vision was weakest when used at night. He tried to look just a bit off from the middle of where he thought he’d seen something. Anya was questioning him. He could not even hear her now. He tried to pull the image of what he sought out of the night.
And there it was!
A tall, muscled silhouette was finally framed amidst the white sands as they stretched off into infinity. A male, bearing something in his right hand. Ford dove for his shorts at the end of the blanket. He had his palm phaser up in a blur of motion and aimed. He couldn’t see…
“What’s wrong, Chevy?” He could finally hear Anya say. Ford didn’t respond. He couldn’t. His mind was fixated on the being that’d caused him all his pain. The man who’d broken his soul… The man who’d come to ruin his few moments of happiness here by taking him back to Kovarn! His phaser aimed for that spot in the blackness. Anya couldn’t see the weapon. She was pressing closer. Her hand found the small of his back, his shoulder.
“You’re shaking!”
Ford squeezed his eyes shut, then forced them open. It worsened his vision. He couldn’t see Jarn. But he heard that gravelly chuckle. Chevis pressed the thumb trigger. The iridescent beam lanced out into the night, banishing the dark in a brilliant pulse of light that shot down the length of the beach. He’d missed Jarn! He’d waited too long!
“You brought a phaser!” Anya was pushing away from him now, frightened and rightfully so. Ford focussed his mind’s eye on what he’d seen while the beam fired. Jarn had been high-tailing it up the slope of the grassy knoll headed toward the condo. Ford surged up from the blanket to follow.
“Where are you going? What’s going on!”
Ford broke the middle toe of his right foot as he charged up the rocky hill in chase of his quarry. He could see the bastard now. Jarn had turned back to taunt him from afar, and was surprised to see his enemy in such close pursuit. This was as close as Ford had been to the villain since the Over Warden ordered him to be placed in the delicate embrace of the Klingon mind-sifter. Chevy could feel the penetration of those needle-points. Feel the electro-stimulators and the clasp of the neural recorder. His flesh would bear the marks till the end of his life. His soul would bear them forever.
The commodore topped the hill, his bare feet crashing down onto the paved blacktop heading away from his condo. Jarn’s gravel-voice taunted back. Why wasn’t the Ya’wenn shooting? He had a weapon. He’d started with all the advantages. Ford raised his palm unit when he believed himself close enough to take the shot. He halted, firing.
That blazing crimson, reflections of the fires of hell, shot out across the landscape of the hill and the crisscrossing bodies of trees. Ford’s surroundings were twisted into a visceral image of the macabre. They flash burned into his retina. His eyes watered. Now he was blinded again.
Jarn laughed.
Where was he now? The phaser hadn’t got him…
“Chevy, what are you shooting at? I can’t see!”
“Get down, Anya!”
“You can’t get me, Captain!”
“f*ck you Jarn!”
“Jarn! Who’s Jarn?”
“Get down, I said!”
The scuff of heavy boots came from the left. Ford turned, phaser fanning but silent. He didn’t have a target. Petty Officer Jonsted always trained Fleet enlisted to fire only when you had a clear target. Anya was near. She hadn’t ate the dirt yet…
“That the best you got, human?”
“I’ll show you what you got comin’, Jarn!”
Ford blazed out another blast. He’d gotten a glimpse of his target. Jarn was trying to circle around behind him now. He had to be close. The beam hit something. He’d gotten the fiery after image of something the general size and shape of a human torso.
Jarn laughed out loud at his shot.
“Wrong target, Captain!”
“Anya, where are you?”
“Dead, Captain!”
“Bullsh*t!”
“I’m right behind you!”
Ford focussed on the very solid, very real silhouette that had indeed been behind him. He leveled his phaser on Jarn, thumb pressing down on the trigger. Jarn’s hands came up in innocent self-defense.
“Yeah, it’s not me, Commodore!”
Chevis hesitated. He bore down on the initiator. The phaser was humming in his hands as the pre-fire chamber heated. Who was this? Jarn? Too short. But his night vision was gone, how could he know! He pressed the palm phaser into the target’s belly, grabbing soft flesh in his right hand. His eyes, could one actually see them, were ablaze in heated anger and fear and hatred!
Whose voice had that been?
“Who are you!”
Anya gasped at the hot touch of the phaser emitter stabbing into her stomach. She recoiled from Chevy’s touch, but managed not to convince him she was about to attack. Her hands touched his, traveled to his naked chest, his face. She felt the tears streaming down his face. “It’s me, Chevy!” She cried back to him.
Was this really Anya? Could he believe his senses now, or had they been lying earlier. What was real now? How much of what he’d seen and remembered was real or phantasm?
What could he do?
“Who’s Jarn?” Anya pleaded with him. Ford’s hand on her shoulder could feel the trembling that consumed her body. She was cold and shaking. He drew her close to him, feeling her press into him. He smelled that sweet cherry blossom scent that came from her hair, even when they finished making love.
This was Anya. Had Jarn even been here?
“Jarn was the man who captured me…”
Ford’s feelings reeled in on themselves. He shouldn’t have pursued any kind of relationship with this woman given what he’d gone through. He’d just damn near killed her! How would he have atoned for that? He wouldn’t have been able to live with killing her. He couldn’t have killed her! But he almost had!
“What did he do to you?” She asked.
“He…hurt me! Tortured me for days, asking me questions…” There was no way to hide the pleading for help in his own voice. He needed Anya more than ever right now. Her hands tightened around his waist. She looked up into the tiny twinkles of light reflecting in his eyes. “He hooked me up to a god damned mind-sifter! He tore everything from me! I couldn’t stop him!”
“You need help, Chevy.” She told him, her voice still shaken as she shivered in the wind as the seawater dried on her cool flesh. The phaser unit fell to the ground and he hugged her close. “You need help.”
“I know! The one person I hoped would help me ran away!”
“You need to help yourself then, Commodore.” She told him. Of course, he realized, she would want nothing further to do with him… “You need to settle the score. Provide your own help.”
“What?”
“You’ll know what to do. If you let him beat you, then he wins more than you realize. You have to turn this around or you’ll live with this pain for the rest of your life!”
Ford felt a sudden and curative calm settle on him like an electric blanket. What the hell was she saying? Ford looked down at Anya as a light from above played about over her angelic face. She smiled back at him in sad understanding. She was dripping and naked and beautiful…and so right… Her wide, shining eyes blinked in the growing light as the sound of the hover vehicle descended on them.
Ford could not help but look up at the approaching security force car as it dropped in ten-meter plunges to close in on him. They’d come to investigate the disturbance… He looked back down to Anya…
…to find that in the time it had taken to look skyward, she had evaporated. His thick, hairy arms enclosed around nothing. Ford jerked his head left and right. How had she gotten out of his embrace? He hadn’t felt a thing. His arms felt just as they had…
As though…
…he’d never held anything at all.
“Sir!” Came a machine amplified voice from the security car dangling above him. The spotlight was so close he was beginning to sweat under its downpour. He realized also that he was standing in the middle of a blacktop two-lane totally naked. He covered his eyes as he looked up into the open side door of the car.
“Sir! Are you injured?”
“No…” Ford replied in confusion, breaking his eyes away as he searched about for Anya. He grimaced as his eyes strained to refocus from the bright to the dark. “No, I’m fine!”
“We’re investigating a phaser discharge from this area!” The security guard continued. Ford circled, disoriented. Where had she gone?
“Yeah…” Ford shouted back at him. “I fired my phaser!”
“Why were you shooting?”
The car was coming down now. The light illuminated the entire area, but showed Ford nothing. His mind swirled. The security man unstrapped from his seat and slowly slid out of his car to the ground. He had a pistol held low and at the ready. Ford no longer cared. He looked back and forth in a jerky manner. She was gone.
“Why were you discharging your phaser, sir?” Came the authoritative tone. Ford finally looked back to the man, silhouetted in black by the light at his back. Ford put his hand back up to block out the light. The pain in his head soared.
“I thought I was shooting at someone… I thought I hit her.”
“Her who, sir?” Now there was genuine concern in the officer’s voice.
“Anya! Where’s Anya?”
“Anya who, sir? Was there a woman here with you?” At a waving hand signal, the officer sent more men out with probing tricorders, looking for foul play. They fanned out over the area and closed in on a single point near the south area of the road, near a copse of trees.
“Anya… I don’t think she had a last name!”
Another security man stepped in close and ran a scanner over Ford. He leaned in close to the senior officer to whisper to him. The man shook his helmeted head. He holstered his particle weapon.
“Sir, have you been drinking tonight?”
“I’ve had a few.”
“More than a few, sir. You’re level is one-point-three. You’re wasted.”
“Where’s Anya?”
A shout came from the scanning party on the other side of the hover car.
“Sir! Nothing was hit by the discharge but an oak tree. Burnt it half to the ground! The other two discharges I read show no impact zone.”
This seemed to satisfy the man in charge. One of his subordinates closed in, bending to pick up the dropped palm phaser from the rough pavement. The officers were beginning to chortle and heckle. Ford was beyond any outburst of pride at being made light of. He was still too confused about the disappearance of Anya, beautiful Anya.
Soon he was sedated and ushered into the security car. He took a little trip downtown, to spend the night in a cozy little cell.
***
