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"Broken Loyalties" by Lady Rainbow
Rating: PG-13 Japanese: Giri is a pretty complicated concept. It literally translates to “duty”, duty to a samurai lord, to a commanding officer, to your family. It can also be understood as “loyalty” as well. Sometimes, a person might have to do uncomfortable things to fulfill their giri. Travis comes face-to-face with Tanaka. And there’s a big hint to Oneko’s origin in this chapter. Eleven “In here,” whispered Kaimaru. He gestured to the end of the hall, where he slid open a shoji door. “All these rooms are interconnected. This is the quickest way to Captain Archer and the others.” Travis nodded. “Bernhard, I want you to secure this area of the fortress. I don’t want anyone sneaking up behind us. Take Sergeant Kamper and Corporals Chang and Romero with you. Captain McKenzie, Corporal Money, Doctor Phlox, with me.” “Aye, sir,” said Bernhard, though he didn’t look happy leaving Travis to his own devices. Travis thought he saw Fiona give Bernhard a look of reassurance, but Travis studiously ignored it. Kaimaru and Travis took the lead, with Fiona, Doctor Phlox, two of Kaimura’s guards and Corporal Janet Money taking the rear. They passed through a series of inner rooms, then slid down narrow passageways. Travis was glad they had Kaimaru with them, otherwise he’d have been utterly lost. Finally, they came to a room with no shoji door, but an open forcefield. The two guards on duty snapped into action at the sight of Kaimaru, who gestured his own guards to counter them. “Travis!” shouted a familiar voice. Travis smiled at the sight of Commander Trip Tucker on the other side of the forcefield. “You guys all right?” Travis hollered back. “Yeah, but Tanaka came here and took Hoshi and Malcolm with her,” Trip answered, his voice taut with worry. “I think she wanted to make sure she had some leverage with Admiral Reed.” “Damn. Fiona?” “I heard,” McKenzie said. She nodded at Money and said, “We’ve got to get that forcefield down.” Trip gestured with his hands. “See that panel directly across from you, Fiona?” “Yeah? I take it that’s the control mechanism?” “Yeah,” Trip confirmed, “but it’s booby-trapped. Anyone messin’ with it will blow this entire part of the fortress sky-high. I can try to talk one of you through the process—“ McKenzie’s face fell as she protested, “I’m not an engineer, Commander.” Travis shook his head. “Let me do it. Tell me what to do, Trip.” “Okay.” Trip chewed on his lower lip for a moment, then looked over his shoulder. Travis saw Captain Archer sitting at the far side of the cell, holding his right wrist, which appeared to be broken. Subcommander T’Pol knelt next to him and pressed a cold compress on a bruise on Archer’s head. Jon hissed in pain, but T’Pol didn’t let up on the pressure. “He decided to make his opinion known to Tanaka,” T’Pol explained in a dry tone. Archer rolled his eyes in exasperation, but Travis saw a bit of embarrassed chagrin there. Trip cleared his throat and redirected Travis’s attention back to the task at hand. “Now, you gotta unlatch the cover in this precise order, Travis: upper left, lower right, lower left, upper right, then tap it in the middle twice. It should just fall away like well-done meat off a bone.” Travis did as he directed, and the cover slid off in one perfect piece. “Okay, I see a bundle of wires and sensors—“ Slowly, Trip gave him the instructions to disable the alarms, then the locking mechanisms. Travis held his breath the entire time, hoping against hope that some hidden bomb wouldn’t go off and blow them all to kingdom come. Trip continued in a calm, reassuring voice, as if he was showing Travis how to bake the perfect pecan pie. Finally, Travis was able to divert the energy through the relays so when he deactivated the forcefield, the backlash wouldn’t snap back and fry everyone in the hall. “Hurry, Travis. They’re starting to pile up over here,” Fiona called over her shoulder. Money aimed her automatic scoping laser rifle over her shoulder and squeezed off a few shots that took Tanaka’s guards by surprise. “I’m going as fast as I can,” he reassured her. Then he glanced at Trip, who nodded slowly. “All right, it’s all rerouted.” “Now, there should be three levers on the far right, near the edge of the wall. They’re touch sensitive, so you gotta do this just right. Start with the one on the left and slide it down halfway.” Travis slid it down to precisely the halfway mark. “Okay.” “Then do the same to the right, and then the middle. When you hear all three lock, pull all three down the rest of the way at the same time. That should kill the forcefield.” “Here goes.” Travis slid the right-hand lever, then the middle, then heard all three click into place. He took a deep breath, touched all three, then pulled them down simultaneously. To his relief, the forcefield crackled once, then faded. “Hallelujah!” Trip shouted enthusiastically. He turned and assisted T’Pol, who was half-dragging an injured Archer. Trip gently supported the captain’s weak right side as they stepped over the threshhold of the cell. “Doctor Phlox?” Travis said, but Phlox was already at the captain’s side, running his medical scanner over Archer’s wrist. “A hairline fracture of the right arm and a dislocated wrist,” Phlox replied, with the faintest shade of disapproval in his voice. “I’m also reading some bruised ribs and a pulled calf muscle. We need to get him to Enterprise.” Travis nodded and called to Corporal Money. “Janet, accompany the captain, Subcommander T’Pol and Commander Tucker to the beam-out point. Take some of of Kaimaru’s men with you.” “Yes, sir.” Money gestured them forward. Trip said some encouraging words to both Archer and T’Pol, then looked over at Travis. “Request permission to join your strike team. I owe Malcolm a couple of debts.” Archer’s face fell, but Travis only nodded. “Granted, Commander. We might need your engineering expertise.” “Or I might need to talk you through another rewirin’,” Trip teased. He glanced at Archer. “It’ll be all right, Jon. I gotta do this.” Archer only said, “Get them back, Trip. Both of them.” Then T’Pol and Money helped him out, followed by Phlox and Kaimaru’s guards. Travis felt the tension between the captain and the chief engineer and thought, What's going on between those two? Did they get into an argument or something? The captain seems pretty pissed at Trip for something... I’ll ask Trip later, when it things die down. If I remember. “Where now?” he asked McKenzie, who had her scanner out. “I’m reading Lieutenant Sato’s biosigns two floors up, but I can’t seem to lock onto Lieutenant Commander Reed’s.” She anticipated Travis’s question with, “He’s still here, but I can’t pinpoint his location.” “All right, let’s get Hoshi first.” He glanced at Kaimaru, who pounded up next to Travis. The guard wore a grim expression; Travis tried to ignore the wide, muddy stains on Kaimaru’s kimono. “Kaimaru-san, we’re heading upstairs. That’s where they’re holding Sato-san.” Kaimaru scowled and replied, “The Archives are on that floor, Travis-sama. I would assume they’re using her talents for some evil purpose.” He indicated a dead-end wall at the end of the hall. “Help me with this.” “That’s a wall,” Travis said, but followed Kaimaru anyway. The guard gave Travis a wicked grin and answered, “No ordinary wall, Travis-sama.” He gestured for Travis to grab the seam of the wall, right where it met the other wall at a right angle. Kaimura did likewise at Travis’s feet and together, they pulled the wall aside. It revealed a wooden spiral staircase leading upwards. “Secret passage,” Trip commented. Travis nodded. “Everybody up.” There was a single hallway leading to a pair of ornamental double doors, much like the ones in Tanaka’s Inner Sanctum, where they’d had the tea ceremony. The hinges were made of heavy brass fittings, the doorknob of clear quartz. A simple plaque identified the room in Japanese and English: Archives, Tanaka Enterprises. “Tanaka always kept a hard copy of every meeting she conducted,” Kaimura commented. “That way, she always had concrete proof. She had her own special scribes to do that work. My sister had been one of them.” Travis noticed that Kaimura had left the honorific -sama off Tanaka’s name and he’d referred to his sister in the past tense. Travis didn’t have to turn around to feel the sympathetic look Trip was giving him. “So you think she’s pressed Hoshi into that service.” “Probably, considering her skills.” Kaimura opened a panel at the side of the double doors to reveal a touchplate. “Stand aside, Travis-sama. I will open this door for you—“ Suddenly, there was a horrible yowl that echoed in the corridor. Travis reacted by instinct, throwing his larger frame onto Kaimura, knocking him clear of the touchplate. “Get down!” Travis screamed. The touchplate exploded. An eternity later, Travis opened his eyes to darkness. His head rang like fifty alert klaxons going off at once. He found that he couldn’t move his arms or his legs, for they were tied to the chair he was slumped in. As his brain became more awake, he realized there was fabric tied around his eyes, a blindfold. “Let him see,” said a soft voice somewhere above him. He recognized it immediately: Tanaka. The blindfold was gently removed and he blinked in the brilliant sunlight. He turned his head painfully to one side to find himself alone in the room, aside from two of Tanaka’s guards standing at attention at the door. A gentle hand took hold of his jaw and directed his view forward into Tanaka’s cruelly beautiful face. “You never struck me as one to seek revenge, Mayweather-san,” she said. “I underestimated your toughness, although I should have known better. You have been under the tutelage of Lieutenant Commander Reed.” Travis thought, She doesn’t know that I know that Paul is alive. He felt a rush of relief, but said nothing. Tanaka only gazed at him. “Interesting that you decided to save Hoshi-chan first, and not your superior officer,” she purred. “Why is that? Do you have feelings for her?” Go to hell, Tanaka. She was teasing him, goading him, but he still said nothing. Hoshi was a friend, a fellow Starfleet officer. He was not going to give her the satisfaction of seeing him squirm. She chuckled, as if she had read his thoughts. “Suffice it to say that Hoshi-chan is alive and well, and will stay that way as long as she does what I require of her. By now—“ she paused dramatically, “—I assume that both Reed-san and Myu-rer-san are both dead, as well as the soldiers they brought with them. They walked directly into a trap. Do you really believe that an old man like Admiral Reed would be able to best me at my own game? I think not.” Tanaka inclined her head and scrutinized him carefully. “Both you and Tukuru-san will be excellent bargaining chips for me when I talk to Admiral Forrest again. I have proof that Enterprise has tried to attack my person and my property without provocation...I am looking forward to seeing how Jonathan Archer and Stuart Reed try to explain their way out of this debacle.” Travis still said nothing, even as his heart sank. Her confident tone put a dent in his normally sunny optimism. Tanaka kept her voice seductively low, as if she felt his mood. “But you can save yourself and your precious Starfleet career, Travis-chan. All you have to say is that you were only following orders, and that you had no choice, as a Starfleet officer. That you knew this attack was morally wrong, but you had to come anyway. We have a word for this, Travis-chan, for duty and obedience. “We call it giri. The loyalty to one’s lord or lady, the duty to one’s general, the bonds of family, even unto death. I know you are a sensible man, Travis-chan. You know where your giri, your loyalty and duty, really lies. It lies with the truth.” He finally managed to echo the word through dry, cracked lips. “Truth?” “We make our own truth, we see what we want to see, and so becomes our reality. So now, it is up to you, Travis-chan. It is up to you to make your own truth.” Tanaka finally let go of his jaw, and he sagged back. “I will leave you to think about my proposal and reassess your giri. What you decide will dictate the fate of many worlds.” He heard her glide across the wooden floor. “Let us leave him. He isn’t going anywhere,” she told her guards. There was the sound of a rice paper shoji closing, then he was alone, to contemplate his dilemma in silence. We make our own truth, we see what we want to see, and so becomes our reality. Travis was never one for deep philosophies; that was more Phlox’s department. But he understood what Tanaka was asking him to do: lie to save himself or tell the truth and destroy Starfleet’s reputation in the Colonies. Damn. Talk about a rock and a hard place. If Oneko hadn’t saved me and Kaimura from that booby-trap—A quiet meow interrupted his thoughts. Wait a minute. Oneko? Travis suddenly had a burst of insight. Isn’t it amazing how she’s always where she’s needed when I need her? And she’s protecting those that I care about. Paul, Bernhard, Hoshi...is that why she’s only visible to certain people? He shivered. Now he was thinking about Hoshi’s words in the garden: Kami, guardian spirits. Superstition, his rational mind said. Um, really? Then how do you explain it, was his next thought. Travis swallowed hard, then whispered hoarsely, “Oneko?” The cat responded by placing her claws on the ropes binding his wrists. With a slow precision that rivaled any surgeon, she sliced through them without touching his skin. In moments, his hands and arms were free. He quickly untied the ropes at his legs and ankles. “Okay, one meow for yes, two for no. Are Bernhard and Malcolm still alive?” Oneko gazed at him, then blinked her huge green eyes. “Meow,” she replied. Travis nearly fainted in relief. “Do you know where Hoshi and Trip are being held?” “Meow.” “Can you take me to them?” “Meow.” “Can we do something to stop Tanaka’s plans?” “Meow.” Travis grinned. “Good enough for me. Lead the way, Oneko.” The cat walked over to the wall and scratched at it. Travis grabbed hold of the edge at the corner and pulled, revealing another passageway. He was hard-put to keep up with the cat as she scampered into the darkness. |
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