Oath, What Oath

Posted on Tue Oct 10th, 2023 @ 3:23pm by Cadet Senior Grade Toareth Darqa

1,416 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: **ARCHIVED** 1 - Cruising through the galaxy
Location: Random Outpost
Timeline: 20± Years Ago

Previously on Stardancer...in Venting...Toareth and Naltar were speaking in his quarters.

"Pirates. I..." and she looked up at Naltar briefly. Her empathic abilities could tell he was genuinely concerned, that he cared, that he could be trusted. "I...have had some experience dealing with pirates. Warlords, tyrants, whatever you want to call them. I've..." she breathed. "I know what it means to be under their thumb."

And Now...

Approximately 20 years ago, give or take, in the farthest reaches of Romulan space near a remote and seldom visited border with the fringes of Federation space, amongst the clouds of peaceful nebulae near a star governing a system of several planets, one of them M-Class, and a tylium-rich asteroid belt, stood an outpost.

On the average day, the outpost was bustling with life, commerce, trade, governorship and discipline. More like slave life, illegal commerce, arms trade, tyrannical governorship and discipline with a whip.

But this was no average day. This was a day of vengeance.

There was a man, a human. His name was Kadan. At least that was the name he gave himself. He was the son of a man who was wanted on every single planet of the Federation for capital offenses. Kadan was also the son of a woman who lied and cheated and scammed and stole and trafficked and extorted her way to fortune. That man’s and that woman’s hate for order and civility produced the man known as Kadan.

Kadan, despite his exploits and his savagery, laid helpless at a pair of feet. His eyes welled with tears. His nose streamed with mucus mixed with blood. His breathing was labored. Trying to speak only lead to coughing and cringing at the resulting sensation of someone scraping a coarse sheet of sandpaper up the inside of the throat. Fluids slowly seeped from every orifice of his body. All his pores popped with sweat. He felt as though swimming in his own sweat. More like drowning as his limbs failed him.

Kadan had his fingers pitifully wrapped around the hilt of a blade. Neither one of the pair of feet by his side seemed to want to kick that blade away. He could not even lift his hand away from his chest. The man was defenseless. He was also offenseless.

Everyone, every…single…person, man, woman, pirate, slave, innocent bystander alike, aboard the outpost was laid out thus, completely debilitated from a weaponized, very nasty and very effective strain of the Romulan Nhaidh Flu. Death was certain if not treated inside six hours of patient debilitation. That was how the virus was designed to work; infirm everyone while the perpetrators did their thing.

The perpetrator, this time, was a woman named Toareth Darqa. She was the owner of the pair of feet standing beside Kadan. She knelt down to him. Those reddish eyes of hers beamed victorious over him; looked him over. This was the most still she had seen the man aside from the times he made her sleep with him.

“You…” cough, “you…did thishhhaaakhaaach…” and Kadan was reduced to coughing while also trying to call out in pain. His lungs needed air but his throat was of fire.

“Yes,” Toareth said. “I did this.”

“The…” then, “…vir…haaakhaa…virus…sla…ave…”

“Oh they are not slaves anymore,” Toareth said as she looked back at another laid out and coughing thus. It was a human woman, dressed in tatters, covered in bruises, worked nearly to death. “And very soon,” Toareth pulled a hypospray from her pocket, “they will not be sick anymore. I am just making sure debilitation set in first. That you and none of your cronies can move.” She smiled at him. “And I wanted you to know who it was that did this; took look you in the face.”

“You…are…haaakhaaakhaaa…a…doc…khaaa.”

“Doctor? Yes I am.”

“…ou…heal…”

“I harm when I need. And this time I needed. I harm as a means to an end. This time, it is the end of you.” She said that with a stiff finger poking him in the forehead.

“Hi…hipp…haaakhaaach…hippoc…”

“Hippocratic Oath you mean?” Toareth sat on the floor beside him, gave him her full attention. “You humans think you are so high and mighty. So high and mighty that you think that me,” she laughed and placed a palm against her chest, “an El-Aurian, from a planet tens of thousands of light years away, decades away in your fastest ships, has heard of an oath developed by another human who died over 2 millennia in your past.” Toareth just watched as those helpless eyes swim about, flitting back and forth between her eyes. “I do heal, yes. I also save. I save from debilitating diseases like you, Kadan.”

Toareth got up and went to the bruised and battered woman, hit her with the hypospray then went to a more able bodied man whom she knew was normally in good health and hit him with it as well. “Take this,” she put the hypospray into his hand. She pulled a second hypospray from her pocket. “And this. You are going to be fine. It will take about two hours for you to feel right as rain as you say, but you will be able to move inside 90 seconds. It will not be comfortable but I need you to get up and hit everyone with this hypospray. Give this second one to someone else so they can do the same. Do not, hit any pirates with this and no one who has ever treated us disrespectfully. Do you understand?”

The man coughed and squirmed but managed to nod his head in several nervous twitches. Toareth went back to Kadan.

“As you can tell, I already hit myself with the vaccine. Getting access to the Life Support system was easy. Your goons have been getting lax as of late.” She finally kicked at the blade in his pitiful hand and sent it off to the side. Kicking him was akin to kicking a wet, slimy and moldy sponge. She grimaced at the sight and the resulting flatulence. “Goodbye, Kadan.”

“You…bit…aaakhaach. You…kill…”

“I killed no one. Look,” and she pointed to the man and the battered woman who were both moving about; the man was getting up. “And I am all out of hyposprays. I cannot save anyone else, but look at them. They are saving themselves.”

The man went to another downed, former, slave and hit him with the hypospray then pressed on.

“You may think I want to kill you, Kadan.” She reconnected her eyes with his. “And I do. I really do. But I won’t. Instead I am going to leave it up to them whether you live or die. You have…oh about…5 and a half hours before death takes you. Maybe they will kill you, maybe they will watch you die, maybe they will save you though I cannot begin to fathom why anyone would want you to live a second longer. Your reign is done Kadan. Enjoy the time you have left.”

With that, Toareth turned and started away. She stepped over the squirming bodies of others who were hit with the medication. They were regaining limb functionality. She even stepped over other pirates and arms traders. One was holding a phase rifle. He was spread out about the floor but his hand was on the rifle nonetheless; fingers inches from the button to fire. But even moving one inch was an order too tall to tackle. Toareth paid him no mind and stepped onward.

As the freed people were moving about and seeing to their own, Toareth started up a random runabout and departed.

Later

“Kadan. Kadan.” Eyes flashed open and light flooded into his vision. That voice was familiar. Something pressed against his neck and the saving solution of a hypospray entered his system. His eyes acclimated to the light and he made out a slave, no…one of his own men who took on the guise of a slave so he would have eyes and ears among the vermin under his whip. “Say nothing. I must move on, lest they will suspect. Stay here, stay still, act dead or dying. Give me a little time to figure out how to get you out of here.”

 

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