Artinus Serinus - Metamorphic

[Piweh]

Author’s note: The following tale involves depictions of violence and themes of enslavement, cruel and unusual punishment including solitary confinement, forced paralyzation, and forced feeding. As well as the emotional, and mental distress rendered on the victims of such. Reader’s discretion is advised.

 

“The time is now 1630,” the station’s computer told the Brikarian man who sat in the custom chair of his quarters still studying for his first day officially back in Starfleet, already dressed in a freshly replicated black and gold uniform with a new hollow pip on his collar. His recommision had come with a promotion for his constant resistance and his part in their liberation by the current Arrow crew.

Lieutenant Commander S’dor Grumm had a heavy burden on him that even his massive stony shoulders could not bear. Everything he had lived through, and relived, again, and again, and again. The mutiny he didn’t stop (not that he didn’t try [not that he couldn’t have tried harder]), the boarding, their capture by Sheliak, and the mining camp that they had been taken to for forced labor and everything that happened there.

 The towering Brik’ar, even by his own race’s standards, had grown accustomed to Deep Space Thirty Three in the last couple of months, where the biggest external inconvenience he had to deal with was doorways. He loved the tall and wide walkways of the promenade the most, they gave him the socialization and freedom of movement that his captors had denied him for so long. It pleased the behemoth of a rock man to know that he would pass through it on his way to the Engineering Department. Grumm would be second in Command of the department until the departure of the current department chief  in a couple of months.

 

He had wanted to get back in as soon as he was able to, but the eccentric, utterly annoying, yet helpful, Ferengi shrink, Doctor Gott; had advised him to take his time. Following Gott’s advice he had taken time to explore the station and make contacts and friends. To decompress, reflect, and adapt to and try to fully appreciate his change of fortune. Only after he had done so had they agreed that he was ready.

 

 It hadn’t been easy, solitary confinement was considered by many galactic powers and their treaties to be a form of torture in itself. The form he had been subjected to could be considered especially egregious. His own actions hadn’t earned it per say, but had certainly necessitated it in the eyes of the slave masters. Grumm was no man’s slave, and it had taken some time before his captors had figured out a way to remotely disable his gravity harness. From the labyrinthine tunnels, with his childhood pet “Yip” by his side, he had waged a one man guerilla war against the masters, the blessing of his race, to be immune to energy weapons, used in great effect to make many former Sheliak into lifeless puddles of goo most often by his massive fists.

But then they finally tamed him, in body, if not spirit. With his body now fully at the mercy of the artificial gravity they had installed, the Sheliak took the proud man and put him a special holding cell in the headquarters building.

 

He was happy to be on a station, and he would have absolutely turned down a ship assignment after everything he had been through. Still, the Sheliak lurked not far away, as Thirty Three was the gateway to the Alpha Isles, The Federation’s diplomatic outpost in the particular frontier.

Their captors had been considered “Rogue elements,” by at least one faction that considered itself the legitimate successor to the “Corporate”. Grumm however wasn’t too sure he trusted that narrative, but there hadn’t been much time to investigate during the escape. What little Arriana and himself had learned was disturbing. The Sheliak had some rather in-depth intelligence on each of them, as if they had a spy on the ship, or recording devices, something. More disturbing yet, were the hideous trophies they had kept alongside their filing cabinets. He’d never forget the holograms of dead officers displayed next to the uniforms they were wearing when they had died.

 

Dumped on his belly, and unable to move, the Sheliak had fed him through a throat tube, why they had done so had been beyond his comprehension. Had his life been worth more inherently to them because he was also silicon based? Did they think that he was at least worth more of a ransom? He’d only learn later from Arianna Sokova that they had heavily drugged him a few times and tried to make him work in that state. Yet, even in such a debilitated state he had resisted, and their slave drivers had finally stripped him of his harness completely. Sokova had reckoned that it had been at least two years since they had last tried that, by the time they escaped. Why they had continued to let him live afterward, he never did puzzle out.

 

Saying goodbye to Yip, (whom he had named at a very young age) with many longs pets, as if trying to make up for lost time and affection; the Brikar rose to his feet and started out into the corridors.   Ducking, per usual, beneath the door he exited his quarters and began his lumbering trek to his new duty station. His mind intrusively reminded him still.

 

He lied there sedentary, in darkness save the illumination of small crack under his door.  When he had first been detained this way, he nourished himself with plans of escape and dreams of life away from the small cell. Unable to move, to will himself to move, he had never been able to see these through. Days, months, perhaps years passed, all meaningless to a man who heard nothing except the voices of his guards; who saw no one but whichever guard would occasionally be tasked in changing his nutrient bag.

 

Passing through the promenade with its freedom, open air, and swarms of life and beauty, he gazed longingly at the domed arboretum in the middle, which he did not have time to visit until after his shift. The bright foliage of the trees, the fragrances of a dozen world’s flowers, offered such a contrast to all the things that had brought him such sorrow.

 

 As the flame of hope in his holding cell died,  Grumm’s thoughts boiled with igneous rage. Seeing as he couldn’t well get his freedom; he would fantasize about his revenge. His thoughts grew exceedingly dark; twisted and warped scenarios played out in his mind. It was cathartic. It was exhausting. It could never last.

    

The line for coffee was surprisingly short, and fortunately so, seeing as Grumm needed a little pick-me-up after the assault of memories. He’d want to be on top of it, after so long, with so many new technologies he had had to learn.

 

Unable to sustain the darkness forever, S’dor retreated into his own mind. He relived his core memories. When his parents gifted him Yip on his birthday, childhood friends, an awkward adolescent dance with his first love, mandatory military service, his stint at Damous Technical School on Tellar Prime studying electrical engineering, his civilian ship repair job near his home, the one near his alma mater, the Academy, the ships leading up to the Arrow, everything that followed: the mutiny, their capture, his rebellion. He relived it all, repeatedly, no other form of escapism available to him, experiencing more lifetimes than most; though he was still young by Brikar standards.

 

 The coffee spurred him on, much in the way that finding that he no longer felt the full pull of gravity had. He remembered how his disused muscles, atrophied, yet still strong, were once again at his command, and pushing himself up to kneel, and then stand. Something had stirred their guards, and someone else had been deposited in the cell next door. Unbeknownst to him, and perhaps at the time herself, Adrianna Sokova has somehow managed to reengage the field that his anti-grav harness gave off enough to give him freedom of movement. How exactly it did so between a thick wall, was anyone’s guess, as a trained engineer he theorized that it had to do with the properties of the building materials. Nevertheless, struggling with his own weight and weakened legs, he had freed himself and ambushed those interrogating his fellow officer making quick and gooey blobs out of them all.

Like donning his anti-grav harness again, the caffeine spurred the once and future assistant section chief on toward a new life. He took long strides toward the turbolift that would deliver him to his new post. The remaining length between Grumm and the lift was about as the length from Sokova’s cell to the intersection across from it had been. It had been from that intersection that the patrol had streamed out and tried to ambush them. Arianna seemed to wield her acquired Sheliak disruptor like she had lost no time at all, S’dor might have got a lucky shot in himself.  As they approached said intersection, post firefight, they had had their argument. The Security Officer would have liked to escape right away, but he successfully guilted her into joining him in attempting to free the others.

 

He stepped into the turbolift and he mulled over the events that followed, as he was whisked away toward his duty post. It was shortly after that when they found the achieves with the unsettling files, and more unsettling trophies. Trapped from further ingress by a force field, the Engineer smashed a holoemitter and quickly assembled a device to short out the field. After that traumatic encounter, it was harder to recall. There was another corridor, doors, more dead Sheliak, Ferengis, a few control rooms, and the modern crew of the Arrow.    

 

Lieutenant Commander S’dor Grumm stood outside the final barrier, both literal and figurative. Ducking his form low, he stepped forward into the next frontier.