A Series of Misunderstandings
Posted on July 10th, 2007 by Douglas McKnight and Tharr Shelev

Douglas McKnight and Tharr Shelev

Shelev watched the marines approach from down the hall. If he smoked, he’d be doing it. Smoking interrogators work better than nonsmokers, but the Andorian can’t hold a drink let alone a rolled up paper of nicotine. Sadly, McKnight had never picked up the habit either, and only the senior officers could seem to get away with blatantly breaking the rules about recreational drug use while on duty, so alas, the none of the other marines would be any help either, and there could therefore be no homage this day to the great torture scene from “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”, but nevertheless, McKnight was confident that the group of four that he now led down to the cell block where their “guest” had been kept of late would do credit to their role of standing there and looking intimidating.

“Alright,” started off the bespectacled XO. “The last one ended in roughing the guy up. I don’t want to go that route again if I don’t have to, as gratifying as it was. So just make your sidearms clearly visible and let me talk to the git.” Shelev punched the door open, and with the satisfying sound of heavy machinery, the brig admitted the six of them.

What manner of enemy was this Federation? Very well, he had failed, been captured in his attempt to extradite the decidedly unwilling architects of the crime that had set fire to the long simply smoldering dread of this enemy’s inevitable coming. Death was a given, of course, but fool that he was, he had at least dared hope the dogs would make it quick. The days on end that had passed since then, while they did no more than feed him reliably three times a day and leave him to sit there were not his idea of quick. Could it truly have taken them this long to decide upon which form of torture by which he would be sent to meet the 12 gods would delight them most? Or was it more insidious still; perhaps they derived some perverse pleasure from allowing him to wallow in his anguish as his imagination conjured up endless variations of his impending grizzly end before they deigned to surprise him? Well, come what may, he would promise himself at least this much. He was Machen Bren, and he would at the least show what sort of men that great star-faring race had produced better than the jackals who had sent him here to die as a token effort to be dealt with before the King had his splendid war. Rising to his feet, he met the blue one leading the group with an impassioned, if utterly artificial boldness.

“Well, you’ve remembered where you left me then. What shall it be? Hurled into the warp core? Airlocked? Drawn and quartered? What measures shall you take?”

“I’ll take you out for a drink if you just tell me everything we want to know about the Machen Bren empire and then some. But since that isn-”

“Wait, seriously? You just want me to TALK? And then you won’t kill me in some horribly graphic fashion? Fine! Get a pen.”

The blue one stopped and visually deflated. “You know I had an act ready. I have a reputation to protect, too. Are you sure you don’t want us to torture you first? Some sort of weird pride thing? Because we’ve got everything and there’s no cameras here…”

“No, really! I appreciate the consideration, but pride dissapeared somewhere around the third day sitting in here. What’s more, being sent on a blatant suicide mission does not speak well of my future in the King’s Navy. So at this point, I’m perfectly willing…no, I’m eager to sell whatever I might have left to bargain with if it will go toward improving my situation here. What state secrets would you care to hear first? Granted, they don’t tell me anything all that important…but that’s a mere technicality! What intelligence would you most impress your paymasters with?”

“Tell me your name, rank, but I don’t care about your serial number. Or else I’m going to start calling you Frank and that’s a fate worse than death.”

“I am Ariston, son of Acastus, Subadar in the Royal Fleet.”

“OK, Ariston, son of Acustus.” The man in blue pulled a chair from the corner and sat down on it. “I’m Shelev, as you’re well aware since you kidnapped me, this is Major Doug McKnight and four of our top guards. So if this is an act, killing me will be tough. Anyway, I’m here to find out everything you know. Hopefully you’re telling the truth. So let’s start at the top – who’s in charge where you’re from?”

At that, the cooperative prisoner suddenly grew hesitant. However, as would shortly become apparent, this owed not to any desire to renege on the newly struck agreement, so much out of a sense of confusion as to how to proceed.

“Officially, of course, the answer is King Argelev IV. In reality…the question is somewhat more complicated than that.”

“He’s got less than loyal lieutenants?”

“Of course not. The royal house is perfectly unified, at least so far as I know. It is merely that with regards to the Machen Bren Star Kingdom as a whole, the king’s rule is somewhat…nominal. The bulk of our vast territory is technically split up into a number of smaller domains, ruled over by the local System Lords. All of them claim fealty to the royal line, of course, but it’s frankly no secret that just like the individual power of these lords, the sincerity of their claims to loyalty vary a bit. And of course, there are the others in alliance with the king…the outsiders.”

“Typical feudal nonsense then- wait, outsiders? As in, not Machen Bren?”

“No. They call themselves the Orion. They appeared in our space decades before I was even born, bearing both gifts, and dire warnings of a ruthlessly expansionist power they had fled. It was not long before they had attained the friendship of the king; the power of their fleet has served to bolster the authority of the monarchy ever since.”

“Orions… what color is their skin?”

Shelev was testing – they both knew the answer.

“Their skin? Green. Their women…well, I imagine what is said of their women also varies a good deal depending on whose house they are discussed in.”

“Ok, now I know we’re on the same page.” Shelev broke a godsawful smirking grin that must have made Ariston want to punch him. “Who is it the Orions were running from?”

“I suspect you know who they were running from. The Federation, they called this enemy. A vast power built upon hypocrisies. Claiming to embrace diversity, but dominated by a single people, hailing from a distant world called Earth, who spread across the stars like a plague. Cowards, they explained. Their fleet vast, their weapons terrible, but still they preferred to take what they wanted through talk and guile. To allow this power within your borders was to awake one day to realize you had sold all you held dear, the very souls of your civilization, and not even realized it, all without a fight. And lastly, we were assured, though the day may yet be distant, they WOULD one day appear upon our doorsteps, and a dark day that would be if we were not prepared to send them scampering bloodied back to their own worlds.”

Shelev appeared to think about this revelation of his own faction. “How many days did you spend thinking that up?”

“I can tell you with complete honesty that it required no creativity on my part. Perhaps the story is not equally believed in all parts of our kingdom, but at least within the king’s own sphere of influence, all Machen Bren have been taught to dread your coming, if only as an effective tool for recruitment into the royal legions.”

Shelev pushed up the mechanism perched upon his nose. “Ok. Doug! Go get the Admiral, tell him he’s a bloodthirsty snake tongued scoundrel who wishes to rape and pillage the Machen Bren Star Empire. Also, he is enslaving everyone. In the meantime… can I offer you a drink, Mr. Ariston? Provided you don’t drink tea; we have some strong stuff around here.”

The prisoner finally released a long, relieved sigh, even as this Doug McKnight exited to convey the message.

“Gods, please.”