New Moon ctd...

New Moon part 7

The submarine lurched violently, again, and again.
"Isn't there anything on board this boat which actually works?" Bridger's exasperation was plain in his voice.

Lucas, of course, took this as a criticism of his own abilities.
"I'm sorry, captain, but I'm still having difficulty getting into the system reliably. We have engines but no steering and I can’t shut them down or tell you where they’re taking us. I've had to take the entire weapons system off line and I've got everyone who knows how to use a screwdriver busy taking out the chips that connect the life support systems with the on board system so that we can have some reasonable chance of knowing that our air isn't suddenly going to be cut off."
The young man was grey with exhaustion but he was holding up as well as anyone else.
"You’re doing a good job, Lucas," Bridger was exhausted too "but I need to know I’m in command of this boat. At the moment we might as well be inside a tin can being pulled along on a piece of string."

SeaQuest had left Hawaii and was sailing full steam ahead without any course being laid in or any command being given. Communications with the shore were cut off and it was too late now to evacuate, although there were few enough crew members actually on board. The sensors were working erratically and the skeleton crew were having great difficulty telling where exactly they were being taken.

Loni was looking at her station's monitors
"Captain, I have incoming"
"Incoming what?"
She looked anxiously at the screens.
"Sir, I think we have two...people, trying to gain access to the aquatubes."
"That's impossible" Lucas said "we're underwater and miles away from land. Darwin is already on the boat. Who could possibly be trying to swim on board?"
"Security, get down to the moonpool"
There was a long and anxious wait while security went down to see what was going on. Then Brody's voice came clearly over the intercom:
"Sir, you won't believe this, but we have two people on board: Tony Piccolo and Dagwood."

They were both semi conscious
"What happened?"
"It hurts." Dagwood said
"What hurts, Dagwood? Are you wounded?"
"I think he’s OK: they gave him some kind of sedative. He’s been out of it for a while. I thought we could both swim, but they were after us once we got in the water. I had to take us under. We’ve been under a long time. I mean, sir, I got gills. I know Dagwood needs less oxygen than most, but he needs SOME, right?"
"Let’s get you to sick bay, Dag. Tony: are you sure you’re all right?"
"Yessir, just exhausted."

"What do you think?"
Brody, Bridger and Dr Murdoch were gathered in Bridger’s office. Dagwood had been sent to sick bay, Piccolo to his cabin to sleep. They neither of them had any idea where they were or how they had come to be so close to seaQuest.

Bridger was feeling the strain as the situation slipped away from his control: half the crew left behind on shore, seaQuest itself turned into a mobile prison, missing crewmen - missing crewmen mysteriously returning. Much as he wanted to believe Dagwood and Piccolo had simply escaped from whoever had taken them, his antennae were twitching.
"I don’t like it. How did Piccolo know seaQuest was here? Where IS here, for that matter? If he and Dagwood could escape, what happened to Ford and O’Neill and Ortiz? There’s something screwy going on."
"I agree, captain," Dr Murdoch added, "I have got to know Tony and Dagwood reasonably well over the last few months and I don’t recognise their behaviour."
"In what way?"
"I can’t put my finger on it: sorry, I know that sounds hopelessly unscientific. But there’s something not right about the way Piccolo tells his story. And Dagwood is positively evasive which is most unlike him."
"Do you want me to question them?" Brody asked.
"No: whatever happened to them, they’re still our crew, our responsibility, and exhausted as they are it would be just simple cruelty to put them through anything more at present. But keep an eye on them."
Brody grinned. "So as well as a man on Lucas, someone on Dr Murdoch, not to mention more than half my team missing, you now want me to find someone to sit with Piccolo and Dagwood?"

Lucas was asleep in the top bunk. Tony lay still, eyes closed, breathing deeply, reaching out with the wolf sense to confirm that all was still. There was a strange smell: an invader in his territory. The skinny runt who was shadowing his prey was still there, sitting quietly at the table, his guard duties confused but his determination dogged. Brody had told Farnsworth to stick with Lucas till he relieved him himself: he was still there but wasn’t sure what he was guarding. All Piccolo knew was that there was a complication, another enemy between him and his goal. And a slow smile spread across his face. Another enemy was good, another enemy meant blood, and blood was good. He sensed the guard was dozing. Silently he turned down the covers and sat up. Still the guard knew nothing, sat still. Tony snarled and leapt and he and his enemy fell to the floor. The fight was short but intense: Tony was all wolf, and Farnsworth was beyond believing that there was any real threat, his guard down. Tony heard himself howl and felt the crunch of bone under his hand and then his enemy was still.

There was a stab of light. The Wolenczak thing sat up and reached for the intercom.
"Security! It’s Lucas! Tony’s-"
The Wolf leapt on his prey. A backhanded blow to the face sent the boy crashing across the room. He seized it, hauled it to his feet. There was blood on its mouth.
"Tony - it’s me, Lucas."
The Wolf had been warned about this, about the voices, the way they would try to turn him from his goal. He snarled wordlessly, twisted the boy’s arms behind its back, stopped its mouth with his hand. Half lifting, half dragging, he manhandled the Wolenczak thing out of the cabin, down towards the maglev where he needed it to be

"Tony’s what?" demanded Bridger. Brody and two of his men were already on the way, closely followed by the captain. They arrived at Lucas and Tony’s cabin to find it empty apart from Farnsworth who was lying on the ground bleeding from the nose and ears. They pounded down the corridor and there, at the maglev doors, found Tony and Lucas.

Tony turned, holding Lucas between himself and the guns that were trained on him. Lucas’ arms were twisted up behind his back and Tony held a hand over his mouth.
"Let him go."
Tony let out a noise like a growl. "Back off."
"Tony! It’s Lucas. Let him go."
"Back off."
The maglev doors opened and Tony backed inside, dragging the squirming figure of Lucas with him. Lucas kicked backwards but Tony avoided the kick easily, giving Lucas’ arm a vicious twist.
"Tony! What are you doing."
The maglev doors closed.

He was doing the wolf’s work. It squirmed again under his hand and he resisted the urge to break, to kill. The wolf wanted this one, alive. He took his hand from over its mouth and used the other hand that pinioned its arms to push it up hard against the wall, make it be still. He should have brought something to bind it with so he was sure he wouldn’t break it before he could take it to the wolf.

He laughed when he saw its blood on his hand: the temptation was irresistible. He licked his palm and tasted the salt. It still struggled so he banged it again against the wall. Careful, don’t break it, it belongs to the wolf. It was still.

The maglev stopped. He got out, carrying the Wolenczak thing under his arm as it still squirmed and struggled, learning nothing. He hit it again, just enough to keep it under control, not enough to break it before the wolf could see it. He was doing well, doing wolf work.

The other was there too. Now they were pack, they were strong. The other had done his job, won his prize, was ready in the shuttle to go back to the pack, the wolf. He lifted the Wolenczak thing towards the door but it had been shamming and it kicked at him. Surprised, he overbalanced, and it squirmed free. He howled, a wordless cry of anguish - he couldn’t fail, the wolf couldn’t lose his prize - and leapt. But they were there, the other ones, the weak ones who were not of the wolf. One of them leaped on top of the Wolenczak thing, shielded it from him, and the others yelled at him, stupid words, meaningless. He howled, enraged, but they were between him and the prey, and between him and the shuttle. The shuttle left as he knew it would. The wolf wanted the Wolenczak thing, but it needed the other. He was left, abandoned. He was still wolf. He howled again and leapt, ready to sell his life dearly, wanting only to kill.

Brody climbed off of Lucas and helped him to his feet. He had a cut and bruised lip and an impressive black eye but was otherwise unhurt.
"What the hell happened?"
Tony was unconscious on the floor, shot full of enough tranquiliser darts to bring down an elephant. Dagwood, however, was gone.

[end of part 7]

Part 8

"I’m sorry," Lucas said "I guess I was wrong."
Farnsworth was unconscious in sick bay, suffering from a concussion and a broken collarbone as well as a fine collection of superficial bruises and scrapes like the ones that Lucas was wearing. Tony Piccolo was in the next room, restrained, sedated and guarded round the clock. Since his capture he had refused to speak any words at all, confining himself to howling and snarling like an animal until in the end Bridger had persuaded Murdoch, as the only qualified medical personnel left on board, to put him under heavy sedation until they could decide what to do with him.

She was there now, shadowed by Loni Henderson, and looking kindly at Lucas.
"Don’t be so hard on yourself. He did the job he was asked to do, and he’ll be all right in the end - or at least he has as much chance of recovery as any of us on board seaQuest have of surviving whatever’s coming next."
"Maybe so, but I gave him such a hard time about following me around."
"Well make up for it by going easy on me!" Brody suggested.
Lucas managed a grin and then winced as the cut on his mouth stung.
"Believe me, after seeing Tony go berserk like that, I’m grateful to have you at my back. Just don’t go psycho on me too, OK?"
"Deal. Doctor, any idea what caused it yet?"
"I’m a psychologist, not a medical doctor at all. I can deal with a broken bone with the help of a med programme but this kind of thing is way beyond me. It could be some kind of bizarre drug reaction, a psychotic episode brought on by some kind of environmental stress - hell, I don’t know, your guess is as good as mine."
"It’s Danner," Lucas said flatly.
"Lucas, you don’t know that. Danner’s your personal nightmare but that doesn’t mean he’s behind everything bad that happens to you."
"No, Dr Murdoch, Lucas is right."
They all turned towards the door as Bridger joined them.
"We traced what Dagwood was doing while we were all chasing Tony and Lucas. He was breaking into the missile silo. He’s gone off in a shuttle with enough synthium to blow a hole in the world."
Blue moon. Synthium. The explosive that was also the blood in the veins of a psychic like Danner. That was what Clay Marshall had wanted the first time, what his pupil Danner had wanted last time. And Danner was immensely strong as a psychic anyway, without enhancing his psychic abilities with blue moon: he had never so far gained access to any. If Dagwood had, indeed, stolen synthium under Danner’s influence then there was no telling how far Danner’s powers might be enhanced when he finally injected himself with it.

"Captain: you should get up here."
Bridger went back up to the bridge and Lucas and Brody followed.
"What is it?"
"There’s a signal coming through."
"I thought our communications were down."
"They are; but this is coming from nearby. It’s Tim O’Neill."
"O’Neill? Where are you?"
They all recognised Tim’s voice as it came over the monitors.
"I’m sorry, Captain. I’m being held prisoner on board Mariah’s ship. I’m being overheard - I don’t know how long they’ll let me talk to you. I’m supposed to tell you to surrender."
"Surrender? To whom? For what?"
"This is the ship Dr Ketcham built for Mariah, the one that nearly destroyed seaQuest the last time she kidnapped me. They say I have to tell you that if you don’t surrender they plan to sink you and kill everyone on board. If you surrender they say they’ll sink seaQuest but let all the crew evacuate first. Except for Lucas. They say you have to hand Tony back and send Lucas with him. But don’t do it - keep Lucas away from here, he’s going to..."
"Tim? He’s going to what? Who is ‘he’, Tim?"
There was silence over the speakers.

Ortiz held the communications headset he had just snatched from O’Neill’s head. Tim was sitting in the seat behind Mariah on the command deck of her ship, where she had held him the last time she attacked seaQuest, only this time instead of a force field confining him to the chair he was tied down by wrist locks. Ortiz took up his position at the weapons station: Ford was already in position. Danner, however, was somewhere out of O’Neill’s line of sight, behind him, and his flesh crept at the thought. Dagwood, since his return from seaQuest, had taken up position at Danner’s side like a personal bodyguard. For the hundredth time Tim wondered why he was still alive and unchanged and he looked apprehensively at Mariah.

"Let’s do it," she said.
Ford and Ortiz laughed, that wild wolf laugh.
"Commander - Miguel - you can’t do this..."
Well, he had to try. His friends still had to be in there somewhere. But then he remembered the sensation of being a wolf himself and he despaired of ever being able to reach them.
"Mariah, keep your dog quiet if you don’t want my wolves to do it for you."
"Why? I thought you were all powerful? You can’t be afraid he’ll convert your wolves back surely?"
"There’s nothing he can do. Nothing anyone can do to stop me, now. But I agreed not to kill him, not to change him. So I suggest you keep him quiet if you don’t want him to annoy me so much I change my mind."
She got up from her chair and came towards Tim and he flinched back, thinking she was moving to gag him. But instead she put his glasses back onto his face and he saw her clearly for the first time.
"Watch and learn," she said softly, "but if you speak again I _will_ gag you."

"We’re hit!"
"Damage report!"
"Superficial - just a ranging shot."
"What countermeasures do we have?"
"I’ve bypassed the computer so we have weapons but they are all on manual. We’re going to need manpower: someone will have to be down there to target each one individually."
"Brody, get me a crew down there, now."
"Incoming!"
"Evasive manoevres?"
"Nothing sir, still no steering."
"Brace for impact-"

"Yes!"
Ortiz pumped his fist, as if he had just scored a million in his favourite computer game.
"How bad is the damage?"
"They’re hurt but not fatally, just as you wanted."

Mariah had been through this before but then she had been alone and, in the end, that had made the difference. But now things were evened up: seaQuest was missing most of its crew, and the best of them were working with her, not against her. And Ketcham’s virus had crippled seaQuest’s computers before they started. This time she would win.

"All right," Danner said, coming over to where Tim sat, "earn your keep. Speak to them again. Tell them it’s hopeless. Make them believe it. And tell Wolenczak who is after him. Tell him he has to choose: his life for his friends’"

For a moment he thought of saying no, of refusing to speak into the headset. But Ortiz came over and fixed it on him again and he realised there was no point.

"Captain?"
"O’Neill?"
"It’s Danner. He’s here, with Mariah. He’s got Commander Ford, Miguel and Dagwood thinking they’re some kind of wolf pack and he’s the lead wolf. Tony too. He says I’m to tell Lucas to surrender to Danner or everyone dies. Don’t do it, Lucas, he’s mad-"

This time Danner snatched the headset himself.
"Want to hear O’Neill die, Wolenczak? Want to watch seaQuest crack open? Everyone dies, Wolenczak."

"This is Captain Nathan Bridger of the UEO seaQuest. Your information is wrong, Danner. Lucas was on shore when you started up my ship: you missed him."
"That’s a lie, captain. Dagwood saw him."
"Dagwood? Are you there?"
"Dagwood is here."
"Are you sure it was Lucas you saw, Dagwood?"
"Dagwood is sure. Tony had him. He belongs to the wolf."
"Well, Danner, there’s your answer. Dagwood was mistaken: perhaps whatever you’ve done to him has confused him."

O’Neill felt a sudden ridiculous hope: perhaps it was true, perhaps Lucas wasn’t really on board. After all, he had been due on leave in Hawaii too: they’d been planning on spending time together.

"He’s lying," Ford snarled
"There’s an easy enough way to find out."
Ketcham’s voice came, as always, apparently out of the air.
"I still have a couple more little surprises in the seaQuest computer systems. I’ll set them off: and then I’ll tell you whether Wolenczak is there. There’s no-one else on their crew roster who could counteract them. First I’ll cut off their power."
Ford laughed as his screen showed seaQuest plunged into darkness.
"And then their air."

[end of part 8]

Part 9

Dagwood knew how to work the controls. The Wolf had shown him: he was not stupid. He was full of a fierce joy, full of wolf, of power. There was no need to hold back, make himself small. He could fill the space he inhabited, free now of the need to be careful not to hurt, not to break things. Now he was a wolf, and breaking and hurting were good, both.

So he flicked the control which undid the wrist locks and lifted O'Neill out of the chair by his collar and carried him down the corridor in one hand, glad to use his strength in the service of the wolf.

"Dagwood, you're hurting me."
It sounded strangled. Dagwood thought that was funny and sniggered a little. It had its hands on his fingers now, trying to break his grip.
"Look, Dagwood is strong. See?"
"Yes Dagwood but you're choking me."

The wolf had told him not to break it so he let go and it fell down. Dagwood laughed again. It was so funny! So puny and weak. He loved its weakness, its helplessness, the feel of his own strength. It got to its feet and he put his arm around its shoulder and squeezed lovingly. Then he remembered it was a Bad Thing but that was all right, he still had hold of it, he hadn't let it escape and it wasn't broken.

"You have to go now," he told it.
"Where?"
Dagwood remembered where the wolf had told him to take it and what he had told him to do to it and he started to laugh again. It was so funny! He loved being a wolf.
"You'll see" he told Tim gleefully, picking him up by the collar again.

The only good thing about his situation that he could think of - the only one - was that he still had his glasses. But it seemed that Mariah had been serious about him being her price for her part in the enterprise, or else why was he face down on a bed dressed only in some padded but quite immovable wrist and ankle cuffs, and a gag. He speculated briefly on the logistics, the forethought involved, in fitting out a bed on a top secret submarine with padded restraints but decided quickly it wasn't something he wanted to think too deeply about.

Dagwood had thought stripping him and tying him down was extremely funny and he felt a pang of envy at Dagwood's uncomplicated glee at the whole situation. On the whole he would rather, he thought, be living in the same fool's paradise himself. Being aware of what was happening but powerless to change the course of events seemed the worst of all possible worlds.

And then she arrived. He could hear but not see her as she moved around the room. She seemed to be opening drawers, assembling equipment. His mind was full of fantasy fears, free floating horrors ... But her touch, when she came to him, was gentle. ~~~

She had undressed and she climbed onto the bed, straddling his back, and began to massage his shoulders. As in the shower room, it was an impersonal, almost sexless touch, and extraordinarily pleasant. Like an expert physiotherapist she worked hard on the muscles of his neck and upper back, at one point turning his head and crunching his vertebrae back into alignment with the same sickening noise that people make cracking their knuckles. Tim had had physiotherapy in the past, and been to a chiropractor, and this was, he told himself firmly, nothing worse, nothing personal. And, yes, it felt good.

She moved her hands lower and his fists clenched involuntarily and he tried to protest, to say no, but the gag reduced him to a wordless thing in her hands. He felt her reach for whatever she had been searching for in the drawer and his muscles tensed in anticipation of pain.

But what actually happened was that she produced a felt tipped pen and wrote across his arm the words "Do you know how to block a psychic?"

It took a few seconds for his brain to process the question, especially since her wandering hand was now gently stroking the backs of his thighs. But he did, finally, grasp her meaning and shook his head. No: he had tried to learn from Dr Smith how to set up a psychic block but he had been one of her worst students - or, as she put it, openness was his special gift.

Mariah moved the pen over to his other arm and then wrote again. "There are things I need to discuss with you. Ketcham has the place bugged. Danner can read minds." Again he was slow to take in what she meant, distracted by the sensation of the pen moving over his flesh, but he concentrated and nodded his head. She wrote again.
"This is too low tech to be bugged."
He nodded.
"Minds can’t be read while in pain or having sex. Which?"

She undid his wrist. He moved to unbuckle the gag but she slapped his hand away, put the pen in his hand. For the first time he felt a thread of hope. And he found that, yes, whatever the circumstances, he very much did want to have sex with Mariah again.

He took the pen and, on her thigh, wrote the word "sex". She laughed - and then buckled his wrist down again, but to the other side of the bed frame. Then she undid his left wrist and turned him over onto his back before strapping him down again. Then she unfastened his ankles and moved to straddle him comfortably.

He could see her now clearly at last, the multi-coloured patches of her dagger skin gleaming above him and he gave way to the desire he had felt way back when he had first met her, when he had given up seaQuest to become a painter and had hoped to make her his model. She was so beautiful. Yes, this was all too bizarre, too kinky, but he made up his mind to go with it, to relish the experience.

"I want to change sides" she wrote on his chest. He nodded encouragingly, trying not to groan too as she moved tantalisingly above him.
"If I help you, will the UEO give me an amnesty?"
She reached down and he felt her tongue caress his throat, his ears... he could barely breathe, scarcely think, much less write.
"I can’t," he wrote.

She got up from him and he thought, sickeningly, that he had failed and it was all over. But she put on some pounding rock music, very loud, and then came back to him.
"Well," she said audibly, "let’s see if I made a good deal."
Then she lay next to him and began to whisper in his ear.

She wouldn't let him speak, knowing only too well how Ketcham had the entire sub wired for sound, and she wouldn't untie him, knowing that Danner would read him and would expect to read compulsion. But the physical sensation - the bonds, the pen moving sinuously over his flesh - would mask the intellectual content of what they were thinking, saying. And so their strange conversation continued, as he was gradually lined with writing until he looked like a dagger himself. The messages written on his body became blurred and smudged and imprinted on the lines of her own.~~~

Her plan was very simple. If she changed sides, killed Danner, would the UEO give her an amnesty. O'Neill saw her point of view. Daggers had been treated vilely by the UEO but in the revolt which freed them she had wound up the villain: while her comrades won their freedom, she went to jail as a terrorist. And when Ketcham had freed her from jail, offered her what seemed a chance for revenge, she had taken it. She had failed though, and had escaped with her freedom only by exchanging it for O'Neill's life, her hostage and information source.

But what was she to do then? She and Ketcham were wanted terrorists. A life underground had no appeal. She was a soldier. She needed companions, structure, a military organisation. Ketcham's fugitive hacker existence, in the chinks of the information machine, was not for her.

So she would betray Danner and Ketcham and start over. If she was sure she would be set free, that the UEO would wipe the slate clean. In effect, what she was offering was that, if she was treated as a model citizen, she would agree to become one.

The only trouble O'Neill could see with this comfortable theory was (a) he, a lieutenant junior grade, had no authority to bind the UEO to such a deal, assuming they would want to, and (b) the problem she was offering to solve was the very problem she had created herself, by extracting Danner's whereabouts from Tim and then setting Danner free.

He did not attempt to lie to her. All he could offer her was that he would speak for her, that if it was in his power she would go free. But that was the test she had set him, he found: if he had reassured her glibly that all would be well she would have known him for a liar, pleading for his life. In his hesitancy she read truth and when, at last, they lay emptied and still he believed, in truth, that she had changed sides and he dared for the first time to hope that he and his friends would live.

He woke up, without having been conscious of going to sleep. For a moment, his eyes closed, he might have been back in his cabin on seaQuest, where all was well. But as he turned he was obstructed and when he opened his eyes he found his right wrist still encircled by a padded cuff and he sighed. It was too much to hope for that it would all turn out to have been a bad dream.

Apart from the cuff, though, he was unmolested and he used his free hand to work at the buckle until, finally, he was free. He stood up. He found the bathroom and enjoyed himself getting cleaned up in a room he could actually see. Then he explored the limits of his world. The cabin door was locked: not unexpected. Mariah's clothes were there but there was very little else in the room, nothing personal. It was a sad room, almost a cell itself, with no books or photographs or mementoes to make it homely. There was, of course, nothing he could use as a weapon, nor any communication device. It was better than the grey room he'd been kept in before, but it was still a cell. He wondered how long it would be before anyone came for him: and whether there was anything he could do to help his friends, those on seaQuest, or those under the sway of the wolf.

[end of part 9]

SeaQuest was plunged into darkness. Bridger’s voice came calmly out of the gloom with the words "Operation Stonehenge." Lucas had no idea what this meant: but at that moment Jim Brody, who had been standing behind him on guard, wrapped his arms around him and lifted Lucas bodily out of his chair, away from the computer terminal he had been about to reach for. At that moment the emergency lighting cut in.

"Lucas, before you say anything, calm down. This is a trap - for you. Ketcham is trying to prove to Danner that I was lying about you not being on board. So don’t touch the computers, whatever happens."

Lucas tried to shrug off Brody but Brody seemed made of granite.

"So what’s ‘operation Stonehenge’?" he demanded. Bridger refused to be embarassed by the question. "When Danner kidnapped you, from a military point of view he made several tactical errors. His first was taking you off the ship: his mental powers were enough to keep you under his control - and all the rest of us, for a while anyway. But he wasn’t sure he could do it, so he took you off to his hideout where he knew he could do whatever he wanted. But if he’d been just a little bit braver, and had taken you up to the missile silo there and then, he could probably have made you override the security codes and got away with all the synthium we had and there was nothing any of us could have done to stop him. Operation Stonehenge is a scenario we worked out in case someone else managed to get control of you like that, or in case you suddenly went psychotic on us, or were replaced by an android like Commander Ford was - "

"...and we also had a few thoughts about how we could survive without the computer system too." Brody added.

Lucas’ face was a picture as he tried to work out whether he was flattered or insulted by this scenario but in the end simple good sense won out and he grinned.

"So it’s actually "operation Lucas goes psycho"?"

"You said it" Brody grinned back, finally releasing his grip.

"All right people," Bridger announced "We’ve got emergency power. You all know your stations for this scenario: get to it. Brody, Lucas - come with me. Lonnie, Dr Murdoch, you too. It’s time we started to fight back."

This time it was the deck of Mariah’s ship which was thrown into confusion as Ortiz announced "Incoming"

"Incoming what? They aren’t supposed to have power."

"Or air. But they’ve fired torpedoes..."

The bridge rocked at the torpedoes struck.

"Damage?"

"Superficial: their targeting is way off."

"They must be on manual. Retaliation?"

"On my command..."

"Fire!" Danner cut in before Mariah could give the order and Ortiz fired. Ford was busy at his console.

"They fired again..."

"We hit them: their engines are shot."

"Incoming..."

The bridge rocked again.

"Take them out."

"No!"

Mariah looked at Danner. He smiled and said calmly "We stick with the plan. We’ll give them a chance to surrender. If we take them out how will I know Wolenczak is dead? I want him here. I have to see him die. Slowly."

"Think of it as a military problem, a textbook exercise, not as anything personal."

Lucas had been arguing with Bridger for a solid half hour but Bridger was wearing him down.

"The first time we encountered Mariah we fought her to a standstill and then won: but it was a close run thing. This time she has the advantage of having some of our crew on her side thanks to Danner’s mental powers and our computers are trashed thanks to Ketcham’s virus. So theoretically they could win: or at least they could sink SeaQuest. But think of the logistics. We are a UEO sub. We aren’t going to go missing without someone noticing. The UEO will know where we are by now, even if we don’t ourselves. There will be a strike force on its way to see what’s happening before the day is out. If it’s only a matter of time, time is on our side. There are, in the end, only three of them: Danner, Ketcham and Mariah. But the UEO is a huge organisation. There are more troops on the way: and if they are defeated, there will be more after that. And more. And more. Danner and his friends can't defeat the whole world." "But perhaps they don't have to," Dr Murdoch said "because with Danner's mental powers it's possible they could simply convert anyone who goes after them."

"Which is why Lucas is so important."

"That’s just an excuse."

"No, Lucas, it’s not. It’s a matter of logistics. Killing you is not a sensible military objective. It won’t make any difference to the eventual outcome of any battle between SeaQuest and Mariah’s ship. What it will do, is use up their forces. So I want you hidden: I want confusion about your whereabouts, whether you are even on the ship. I want the crew who haven’t seen you to believe you’re still on leave in Hawaii. I want the people who have seen you to believe you’ve gone off in a shuttle, or you’re dead, or whatever. Anyone who is captured and read by Danner ought to have a different story about you. And the more people are searching for you, the fewer people Mariah has available to do anything else. What we need on this ship is to stop doing what they expect, to stop being a military unit - and to become an anarchy."

There were about thirty crew members who had seen Lucas and who didn't have any talent at blocking what they knew. Bridger had them all assembled in the mess hall. "Brody," he said "I want you to take Lucas down to the mess hall and shoot him."

And so it began. Bridger sent most of the crew off singly, with orders to do exactly as they pleased: to try to escape on the shuttles, or to stay and fight, or to hide, or to do whatever pleased them. The hatches were booby trapped: if Danner wanted to make any more converts he would have to come on board, and with any luck he would be blown up if he did.

The half dozen crew who rated highest on their psi scores were gathered together and taken through some practice by a woman from the weapons section who had done some work with Wendy Smith. Their task was to try and contact Wendy telepathically. That was, of course, the most important thing with their communications out: they needed to get a message to the UEO warning them about Danner.

Jane Anderson was one of the people who had joined seaQuest on its last rotation. She was sitting nervously in the mess hall with about 30 other people. She didn't know any of them well yet but she was pretty sure there was serious trouble. The conversation was quiet: no-one was quite sure how they had been selected for this gathering but the orders had been very specific. There was to be no discussion, no speculation, about why they had been brought together. She sipped nervously at a bulb of coffee and waited for something to happen.

The door opened and a skinny kid with blond hair ran into the room yelling "Help me - help me, he's gone crazy!" Another guy, in combat fatigues, ran in behind him. She recognised the guy in fatigues: somebody Brody, something to do with weapons or security perhaps? She remembered he had tried to hit on her her first night on board last week. He raised his weapon and fired. The kid had blood all over his chest and he turned around, perhaps spun around by the impact, and then he fell down.

Other people were on their feet screaming. The kid was dead. Someone picked up his body and carried him out, yelling something about the medlab. It was all turning out to be way too weird. And then Bridger’s orders to split up and fight or run as you saw fit were given out and she decided the world had, definitely, finally gone mad.

Lucas stood up, laughing, covered in the blood they had reconstituted from the supplies in medlab. They had hidden it in plastic bags inside his T shirt ready to be burst when Brody "shot" him.

"Do you really think anyone will buy that?"

"Not for a minute, I expect. But it will be a vivid image in the minds of anyone who saw it and if Danner does get a hold of any of them and reads them, it should sow a few doubts in his mind. But now I’m serious Lucas: Brody, I want you to consider this an order. Lucas, I know you’re a civilian and I can’t give you orders, but please, as a favour, do as I ask. Brody, your orders are to keep Lucas hidden from Danner. Lucas: do as I ask. Keep Danner’s forces busy looking for you instead of fighting. Stay safe. Now go."

[end of part 10]

"What are you doing?"

"I need to check on Piccolo: he’s been out for a long time now and I don’t want to do him any harm. I’m not sure being sedated for this length of time is safe for him."

Henderson was still sticking to Dr Murdoch like a shadow but she wasn’t happy about her charge’s visit to medlab. Tony wasn’t the Tony any of them knew any more. But there were guards and restraints: they ought to be safe enough. Murdoch went over to feel his pulse but jumped back when he opened his eyes.

"Hey doc." He sounded groggy.

"Tony?" He shouldn’t have been able to open his eyes, much less speak, the quantity of sedatives in his system. "Is the kid OK? I didn’t hurt him?"

"Lucas is fine, Tony. How are you feeling?"

"Oh doc - I’ve been to places you wouldn’t believe. It was awesome. He made me think...all kinds of things."

"Try to rest now. You’re full of sedatives: you should be asleep."

"I can’t do that. Just tell me - how are we doing? Did we get the bad guys? Is it over"

"Not yet. No-one got anyone yet. But we should be safe enough here, for now."

"Don’t bullshit me doc. Tell me what’s going on. Henderson: you tell me. Come on. Be a pal. Give me a break. What did he make me do?"

He looked so pathetic: dazed with drugs, guarded and restrained. It wasn’t his fault that Danner had gotten to him.

"Don’t you remember? You and Dagwood came on board pretending you’d escaped and then you tried to kidnap Lucas while Dagwood made off with our supplies of synthium."

"Aw no-"

"What do you remember, Tony? What happened to you before you and Dagwood turned up at the moonpool? Do you know what happened to Ortiz and Ford and O’Neill?"

Tony closed his eyes again and his head lolled to one side. Lonnie went over and put her fingers on his neck, feeling for a pulse. His eyes opened.

"Gotcha." he said.

Danner felt the touch of her fingers on Tony’s neck. It was extraordinary: like iron filings on a magnet, the touch of one mind against another under his control. Tony’s inert body was like an empty vessel he could inhabit at will but with the synthium now flooding his veins his reach felt infinite. All he had been waiting for was contact, the touch of a hand against Tony’s flesh.

He opened "his" eyes, Tony’s eyes, feeling as though he inhabited Piccolo’s body instead of his own, as though he was lying there on seaQuest, and could reach out to Lonnie. He pushed at her mind and felt it fall to his strength. And then he "looked" up at her eyes, through Piccolo’s, and saw the feral flash of wolfbitch in them. She was his, now, as Ortiz and Ford and Piccolo and Dagwood were his, as everyone on seaQuest must become his. The whole world. His.

He pushed at her mind again. Bring the other. She laughed and lashed out, all wolf, dragging the other, unattractive, middle aged woman over to Piccolo, making her touch his hand. Another iron filing to the magnet, another convert to the wolf.

Oh, but this one... not a crew member at all... a counsellor. Wolenczak’s counsellor. Oh, the things in her head, the secrets she knew... He must have her, under his hand, ready for the moment he had Wolenczak there too. He instructed her to go to the shuttle, to come to him. Henderson was busy unstrapping Piccolo’s restraints. Those two could do the wolf work between them, without this one.

"Doc?" The guards on duty had finally noticed something was wrong. Murdoch left the room without a backwards glance.

"Henderson - hey, you’re not supposed to untie him-"

She lashed out and the first man went down. The second reached for his gun but she came towards him seductively, arms outstretched, wiggling her hips.

"Hey, Joe, you know me, right?... I’m no kind of a threat to a big strong man like you..."

He was reaching for his PAL to call the bridge but he couldn’t bring himself to shoot her, an unarmed woman, a colleague... and so she got close enough to put her fingers on his wrist and -

click. The magnet locked on and Danner tried to make another set of iron filings dance to the pattern of the lines of force it set up. Danner felt as though his brain was being wrenched in two as his focus wrenched from Piccolo to Henderson to this new man. But with the synthium flooding his veins his reach was immense and he tried to lock on to the man’s pattern, draw him in, make him a member of the wolfpack. Joe wrenched himself back, out of contact, and Danner howled with frustration. Lonnie echoed the howl, lunging for the man, striking out with the wolfstrength, knocking him back towards the inert body of Piccolo, inhabited by her master. Danner switched his attention back to Piccolo.

Yes. There. Piccolo’s consciousness was crushed out by the drugs in his system so his body was empty, quiescent, ready to by inhabited by Danner and his wolfsense. Danner could reach out from that citadel and invade Lonnie and Dr Murdoch, but he couldn’t leapfrog from body to body, Lonnie to Joe. So she dragged the unfortunate Joe over to Piccolo and Danner used Piccolo’s hand to seize the man in an iron grip while he focused on his pattern, on turning him to wolf. And then it was done. Joe and Lonnie exchanged the feral wolf smiles and finished the task of setting the Piccolo body free. But the strength was beginning to fail him: he needed more synthium, and soon. He sent out one last mental command. Find Wolenczak. And then withdrew his mental energies back to the warmth of his own body, in Mariah’s ship, his sanctuary.

He found he was lying on the bed, the faithful Dagwood standing guard by the door, looking anxious at his master’s apparent weakness.

"It’s all right, Dagwood," he breathed, "I’m here, I’m fine. But I need more synthium."

The effect was extraordinary, the rush was intense. But it didn’t last. Was this the addiction then? Would another dose leave him a grovelling addict? But he needed it, needed the power, the exhileration, the enlargement. With just a little more, just a little, he could accomplish anything. He took out the hypodermic and prepared another dose.

Yes... the fire, the heat... he was there again, enormous, powerful, irresistible. He could, dimly, feel Henderson and the guard begin their search for the Wolenczak prey. The counsellor, he could sense, had found a shuttle, was on her way to him. Piccolo’s body lay inert, unconscious, freed of its guards and restraints and ready for him to inhabit. But that was enough for now. He pulled back, focused. There were other restraints on his power, intolerable, here and now.

"Dagwood" he smiled "I want you to do something for me."

O’Neill was back in the interrogation room, hanging by his wrists from the ceiling chain again, brought back by Dagwood who had frogmarched him from Mariah’s room without a word. There had been no chance of calling on Mariah for help even if he had been confident that she would have helped him. Conscious of Ketcham’s audio surveillance of the ship, Danner had made Dagwood gag him before he moved him. And so he waited, apprehensively, for whatever Danner was going to do with him now.

Danner’s demeanour was different somehow: even more confident if that were possible. It came out as a kind of sinister, mannered jokiness, as if he were auditioning for the role of supervillain in a spy movie. The kind of attitude that suggested he knew he could do anything he wanted and get away with it, and that he had decided to do something really...intolerable. O’Neill concentrated on breathing, in and out, carefully, through his nose, and telling himself firmly that the supervillain in a spy movie always loses in the end.

"I expect you’re curious, Mr O’Neill. After all, is it possible that I’m going to allow Mariah to dictate terms to me? And what better way of demonstrating my independence than putting you down? Well, you are in luck. I happen to be in need of a lab rat at present, and I’m rather unwilling to lose any of my particular pets just at the moment. So who better?"

Danner had a medical bag in his hand. There was a hypo and some other stuff. Concentrate, Tim told himself firmly: breathe. The bad guy always loses.

"You see, Ketcham made me submit to a medical process before he had Mariah rescue me from the rat-hole you seaQuest people left me in. A medical process which involved putting one of these -" he held up a capsule of brown liquid "into my bloodstream."

He looked intently at Tim who met his gaze as confidently as he could.

"Want to see what it does?"

Tim shook his head but Danner only laughed and put one of the capsules on the bench beside him.

"It’s full of these little nano machines. They settle in the bloodstream and lock onto the walls of your arteries and veins."

He broke open the capsule and the brown liquid formed a pool on the bench. He picked up a remote control and adjusted its setting, very carefully. He pointed it at the brown liquid and set it off. Nothing happened for a second, and then it was like a miniature fireworks display as the liquid bubbled and steamed and produced little silver threads that then became larger and looser until the bench was covered with a heap of silver foam.

"Then someone sends a signal at a very very carefully selected frequency, and the nano machines start turning your arteries and veins into bubble and squeak. And then you die."

He picked up another capsule and moved towards Tim. O’Neill shook his head, trying to protest through the gag, trying to kick out to defend himself. It was useless. Danner avoided his feet easily and pushed the hypodermic up against his chained wrist, injected him with the contents of the second capsule.

"So how does this help me, do I hear you ask? I have, shall we say, a certain skill in moving inanimate objects with mental energy. I can see the nanomachines in your cardiovascular system, just as I can see the ones in mine. And I think I can get them out. But can I get them ALL out? That’s the six million dollar question. One will kill you as dead as a million."

He looked hard at Tim and Tim felt the wash of mental energy as Danner did something with his mind - and then his body felt as though it was exploding and he crumpled up in pain. It only lasted a second but when it was over he found he was hanging by his chained wrists and looking down at the floor. He could feel movement on his body as drops of sweat ran down his back, his nose, his chin, and dripped onto the floor. But it wasn’t ordinary sweat; it was a viscous brown liquid, like sweating blood. He realised what was happening: Danner was testing whether he could clear O’Neill’s bloodstream of the contaminants before he tested his own. Whether his guinea pig survived the experiment or not was of no particular interest.

When the sweating had stopped Danner came towards him with the remote, again carefully adjusting the setting. Tim tried a last wordless protest through the gag but it was no use. Danner
pointed the little machine at him and set it off. And Tim waited to die, waited a long second, but felt no pain at all. The pool of liquid on the floor at his feet fizzed and bubbled into silver foam but, apart from the pounding of his heart, Tim felt just the same.

"Congratulations, Mr O’Neill." Danner said, smiling. Brown sweat was running down his face, like blood.

[end of part 11]

He was left there until his arms were aching so that he thought he would never move again and his breathing through the gag was laboured and panicked. He was forgotten: Danner wanted him dead, his friends were engrossed in the pack, and Mariah - well, either Mariah had forgotten him, or she had made her attempt at Danner and it had failed. Tim wondered if he would ever know, or if he would simply be found hanging there when it was all over, a mysterious corpse amongst the wreckage.

When the door opened at last it was not someone coming for him: it was Dagwood again bringing Dr Murdoch: the door shut behind her and she fell to the ground retching. He understood intuitively at once what had happened to her: like him, she must have been taken over by Danner’s mental powers, and like him, she was suffering the strange mercy of being released from the power, the wolfpack, and finding herself diminished to herself alone.

She saw him hanging there and held up a hand in acknowledgement, gasping for breath and obviously unable to do anything for him at present. But slowly the retching stopped and she regained control of her breathing and she stood up and moved behind him. He felt her hands on the back of his head, unbuckling the straps of the loathsome gag.
"Thank you!" he said sincerely when she finally managed to get it off of him. She was looking at the chains which hoisted him.
"There’s a control over on the wall there that raises and lowers it: if you wouldn’t mind?"
She used the control which lowered him to the ground and he sagged to the floor, abused muscles unable to support his standing weight after so long hanging by his wrists. He knelt on the floor for a moment with his bound wrists between his knees, luxuriating in the feeling of having his arms lower than his head at last. Dr Murdoch joined him on the floor and tried to remove the cuffs around his wrists but they defeated her. Dagwood or Danner must have the keys: he was stuck. But at least he could sit down, could breathe, could see. He had been in worse states recently.

Murdoch looked at him quizzically.

"Well that was a rush. Have you ever been a wolf?"

"Oh yes..."

"Want to trade stories?"

He managed a grin.

"I’m a leftover. Danner made everyone else into his wolfpack but Mariah made him reverse it on me. I’m not sure if that was a plus or a minus. Do you know where we are and what’s happening? How’s the SeaQuest doing?"

"It’s not good. Somehow Danner is reaching out to people on board. That’s how he got to me. He persuaded me that I was one of his wolves and wanted to come to him. I stole a shuttle and came here: and then Dagwood marched me here and somewhere down the corridor the wolf sense stopped."

"Did he get Lucas?"

"I’m sorry, Tim, but I’m not going to talk about Lucas with you. I’m not going to say anything more. If you’re really all right you’ll understand - I can’t risk Danner taking any information I give you out of your head. And I have to consider whether you’re really what you seem. It could just be a trick, putting me in here with you. After all, what benefit does Danner get from locking us up together?"

O’Neill thought about what she said. It made sense, of course, but it hurt too. He had been a prisoner here longer than anyone, had been without access to information for so long. It seemed particularly hard that she wouldn’t trust him.

She had been looking again at the chains on his wrists and she suddenly moved her hand and, with a clever twist, managed to unhook the cuffs from the ceiling chain.

"There. I don’t think we can do anything about the handcuffs themselves without the key...unless escapology happens to be one of your hobbies?"

"Afraid not. How about you?"

"Amateur dramatics and cookery. Sorry."

"I don’t suppose you have any samples on you?"

"Food? No. I could do you a couple of scenes from The Pirates of Penzance but I can’t see that it would help our situation much. When did they last feed you?"

"I’m afraid you’ll find their schedule isn’t very regular. Since I’ve been here they’ve fed me exactly, er, four times. Say, Doc, how long _have_ I been here, anyway?"

"People have been talking about you disappearing for, what, two weeks now. Has it been... do you want to talk about it?"

"Maybe later."

There wasn’t, really, anything to say.

There was a part of Danner’s mind that was still rational, that knew he was tired, should rest, eat, sleep. But mostly he was imbued with the sense of invicibility that comes from being close to success in a long-cherished project. Well, that and the drugs, of course.

It was extraordinary, he thought as he injected himself again, emptying the first of the four cannisters of synthium Dagwood had brought him, how much they had all feared synthium addiction, back when he had been working with Clay Marshall on the Blue Moon project. They had all known, theoretically, what synthium could do, and they had all told themselves that of course _they_ would never become addicted, never let it control them. But now he had access to more synthium than any psychic had ever seen before and he understood at last. There was nothing to fear about addiction: it would only hurt him if the synthium ran out, if his supplies were cut off. But there was no fear of that. He had the UEO on the run now: by the time he finished the second cannister he would have control of the seaQuest and its crew. Then they would sail up to UEO headquarters where he would take control of its personnel and, finally, the manufacturing base where synthium was made. His supplies secured, he could then get on with - he giggled, scarcely believing he was seriously thinking it - with taking over the world.

On the bridge, Mariah, for her own reasons, watched Danner carefully. Mariah’s mind was full of Tim, visualising his body, the way he had moved beside her, beneath her, a visual and sensory mantra she was using to fill her mind with chaff so that Danner should not read her deeper purpose. She fully intended to kill him if she could, but to wait until the moment was right. Not only right for killing him: he would have to be distracted somehow if she was going to get the drop on him and his mental powers. But the right moment for her deeper purposes, of re-establishing herself outside of Ketcham’s and Danner’s orbit. She would have to kill him at his moment of victory, when she could be the saviour of the UEO, the seaQuest and everyone on board her. So. Not yet, then. She kept the surface of her mind full of pictures of Tim, in the way you might pass an idle hour listing your favourite movies or putting together a fantasy sports team or supergroup. But it never occured to her to wonder where Tim himself was.

Danner was cradling an empty cannister of the stuff he had sent Dagwood for: Mariah felt nothing but contempt for someone with so little self control he had become an addict in less than a day. He had known what synthium would do for him and to him: it increased his powers but only at the expense of making him its slave.

Then she saw he was looking at her.

"Don’t think too much."

"Why? Have you decided thinking is a crime now?"

"No. But I’ve decided letting you and Ketcham control someone like me would be a crime. A crime against humanity. Face it, Mariah, you GELFs were a mistake, a side stream on the onward flow of history. Ordinary little humans like these wolves of mine are nothing, just cattle, slaves. It will be me, and people like me, who are the next masters of the world. So people like you have no right to tell me what to do."

"I think Dr Ketcham might disagree with you."

"Ah yes. I’ve been meaning to have a word with you about what Dr Ketcham might want."

"Do I detect a certain... air of independence Mr Danner?" Ketcham’s voice came from nowhere.

"I like you, Ketcham. I even like your tame GELF here. You have guts, and no morality, and after all you got me out of that festering hole the UEO left me in. So I don’t plan to kill you. I don’t even plan to kill Mariah. Why, I may even spare Mariah’s tame dog O’Neill, as long as she keeps him out of my way. I’m in a good mood, as it happens, and quite pleased with Mr O’Neill. He helped me out with a little experiment. A very successful experiment."

"And would you like to share the results of this experiment with us?"

"Oh no. I think I’ll let you guess. But don’t mistake me. The balance of power in this relationship has changed for ever and I wouldn’t want you to make a, possibly fatal, error.

"I see. Then I think I can guess what you have done. But Mr Danner you should be very careful. I can be a very good friend - and a very dangerous enemy."

[end of part 12]

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