A Tortuous Affair [18+]

Posted on 14 Aug 2012 @ 11:44am by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Captain (HoD) K'nara of the House of Torath (KIA) & General ('aj) D'Grath Son Of N'Vor (KIA)

3,317 words; about a 17 minute read

Mission: Episode 01 - Project Sienna
Location: IKS Na'vi - Interrogation Room
Timeline: MD09 - 2100 hrs

[ON]

K'Nara had a room converted for her purposes. It was bare, a cold metal floor illuminated by extremely bright lights. The only furniture was a operating table in the very centre of the room. On the walls were various cruel looking instruments. Some little more than clubs, others looking like intricate medical equipment. Her time was precious, the captain waited only a few seconds before the prisoner was brought in. Waiting a few seconds more K'Nara walked to where she dangled between the two hulking guards. She whipped the cloth sack from her head and asked with a smile, "Are you ready to tell me yet?" Making sure she could see the entire room. The idea of what some of these objects could do might be enough, then again all of them hurt far more than they looked, it might come to that.

Lirha hung suspended in mid-air by the Klingon guards, their large and strong hands holding her up by her arms. She glanced around the room with wide eyes, taking note of what appeared to be some type of surgical platform in the center of room, as well as various torturesque devices displayed on the barren walls. Her heart sunk as she realized what would soon be happening to her.

The Orion heard K'Nara's question, yet declined to answer, instead choosing to stare coldly at the Klingon woman. "You should know by now that I won't tell you anything." she said simply, then turned her eyes towards the ground.

Flicking her hand towards the table K'Nara moved aside, "I think the Borg put it simply, resistance is futile?" She watched as the two men strapped the captain into place, they then retreated from the room. K'Nara took a hypospray from the wall, loading it with a smile. Holding it in her left hand she approached, reaching out with her right she tore off the sleeve of the captains jacket, then the tunic in turn. Just below the elbow she pressed the hypospray, injecting a dark blue fluid into the green skinned woman.

Lirha struggled at first against her restraints, then finally gave up as she realized there was probably no chance she would be able to break them and escape. Klingons were quite adept at interrogation, and she doubted that a standard Orion woman would have the strength to break free from a well-constructed torture device. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched K'Nara retrieve a hypospray and then rip her uniform sleeve off. Lirha felt the needle inject into her forearm and a hot, burning sensation began to flow through her veins and skin before slowly subsiding. "What did you just give me?" she demanded.

"Something for the pain," The smile was wicked now, showing carefully sharpened teeth. What she said was true, in a way. It a rather exotic compound, designed to greatly increase the sensitivity of the nerve endings of most lifeforms. The amount of neurotransmitters carrying the signals of pain to the brain would be also increased. This meant that K'Nara had to do far less work for her results. Placing the hypospray back on the wall she returned and stood for several seconds wait.

As the seconds passed, Lirha grew increasingly uncomfortable at the strange sensation now flooding her body. She could feel...everything. Intensely. Each breath made her feel her lungs painfully pressing against her ribs; every blink of her eyes caused her to tear up; every muscle in her body seemed to be overly sensitive.

Without warning K'Nara lashed out with an armoured fist that hammered into Lirha's abdomen. Even through the bolts on her glove she could feel the organs beneath move aside. It was simple but it was a matter of escalation, each step being worse until the answers she wanted were found.

A loud gasp escaped the Orion's lips as the wind was knocked out of her, and K'Nara's fist forcefully sank deep into her belly. The pain was incredible and she could feel her insides being smashed together. Lirha tried to cry out except there was no air left in her lungs. She gasped even more, and a fit of involuntary coughing from her diaphragm suddenly ensued. She squeezed her eyes shut as hard as she could in an attempt to block out the pain as she struggled to breathe.

Retracting her arm K'Nara flexed her fingers, two of her knuckles popping. The promise of violence awakened something deep inside her, even if her desire for it was less pronounced than most of her kind. Casting her eyes along the walls she tried to consider what would be the device that would given the results required. The creature on the table was too fragile for her to just beat the answers out of. There were only a few questions left to answer now. The command codes for the ship carrying Sienna would have been changed by now, as would just about all the codes this woman had. That was lost, there were other sources of information for Sienna itself. Things had changed, it was now a matter of that ship, the Federation at large and punishment. Her voice was a growl, "What is the communication encryption for this sector? What is the nearest Federation ship? Each answer you give, one less torture I use," Time had allowed the galaxy to develop so many ways to harm another creature, so many choices. Selecting one that looked rather similar to a motorised corkscrew K'Nara returned.

The Federation captain heard the demand for information yet remained silent. The pain in her belly was still so profound that she probably couldn't have spoken even if she wanted to. Her eyes slowly opened and she focused on the strange device now in K'Nara's hand. It looked terrifying, and she felt a shiver of fear run through her. "I won't tell you anything. I'm a Starfleet officer, not a simple merchant." she whispered bravely, then looked away and stared up coldly at the ceiling. Whatever was going to be done to her, she didn't want to watch.

"Everyone has a price," The motor of the machine was quiet, the head rotating slowly. Without a flicker of emotion K'Nara pointed it at Lirha's thigh, "How much is up to you." It didn't take much force to break the uniform, or skin. A spurt of gold followed by chunks of muscle and fat, torn from where they belonged they oozed outwards. It only stopped when the tip reached bone, already staining uniform and dripping onto the floor. Withdrawing the screw the Klingon inspected the half inch hole, "Is it higher?"

This time, Lirha screamed. She didn't know for how long but it felt like an eternity, and her voice was drowned out of her own ears by the incredible agony of the machine shredding her leg. Her vision turned bright red as the device made contact with her femur, then was pulled from her thigh. Trembling uncontrollably, tears streamed down her face as she tried to draw a breath. "I-I..." she tried to speak, "W-won't tell you...any-anything." she managed in between gasps of pain.

"The pain ends the moment you do, you will break," Shouldering the device K'Nara's left fist flew out this time, cracking across the woman's cheek. Willpower was finite, pain wasn't. Pain drove people insane, pain forced the brain to protect itself, the way to do that was clear. Selecting the left shoulder as her next target K'Nara stepped closer, "Do you have a family? Would they want to see you like this?" Placing the tip against its target before pushing.

Lirha's head snapped to the side as she was punched, and though it was painful, was nowhere near as bad as the drill that had just dug into her leg. Her skin burned from the hit, and she tried her best to ignore K'Nara's taunts. The mention of her family made it hard, and Lirha immediately thought of her little sister, Nesh. Before she could think any further, the torture device was pressed against her shoulder and began to tear open her flesh, spraying the side of her face with blood as the drill tore through the ligaments and tendons in her shoulder and burrowed into the bones of the joint. She screamed again, loudly and in agony, thrashing about against her restraints in a futile attempt to escape.

"If the Federation has Sienna, there will be no option but for war. The Empire will not lose, chances are your family will die," Specks of golden blood smattered on K'Nara's armour. The tool she had picked was effective at causing pain but was quite messy, that might be part of the point though.

Quick and jagged breaths could be heard from the Orion as she tried to regain her composure. "No...o-only...you...w-want war." she managed to whisper with a weak voice. A sheen of blood-mixed sweat now dripped down the side of her face and neck.

"There will always be wars a few boarder systems, or the entire quadrant in chaos?" Poking the bloody tip into the Orions cheek K'Nara asked, "Where is the closest Federation base?"

Lirha remained silent and stared back up at the ceiling. She would reveal nothing to the woman, and was rather surprised that Klingon intelligence was so lacking in the sector.

It didn't matter if the information she got they already knew, once it started coming it wouldn't stop. What she was doing wasn't working, it was time to switch to something else but first she couldn't have her prisoner bleeding to death. Taking the bloody implement back to the wall. Next to it was a cylinder with a short snout that rounded off at the end. With that in hand K'Nara flicked it on and returned, a hissing sound reverberating around the room. Without saying anything else she waved her hand near the end. It produced so much heat that the air around it shimmered, sometimes sparking into flame. Like a knife she plunged it into the hole in the woman's leg, fat crackling and bone scorching.

In stark contrast to the mechanical drill which was previously tearing through her leg, the cauterizing tool produced a different, even more intense pain which suddenly shot through her leg, making it feel as if it were on fire. "Gaaahhhh!" Lirha cried out, pulling her head up to look down for the first time at her bloody leg. The disgusting smell of her own burnt flesh began to seep into her nostrils, and an intense wave of nausea began to overwhelm her.

Moving towards the other wound K'Nara hefted the device in her hand, "I can do the other one with a dermal regenerator, if you can tell me who your commanding officer is." It was minor, it didn't matter even the slightest, was the pain for not saying worth it?

The Federation captain would have much preferred a dermal regenerator to the savage tool which K'Nara was currently using, but she knew that it was simply a ruse to get her to break and start talking. A taunting yet anguished smile spread across her lips for the first time as she responded to the Klingon's demand. "Saalm...Lirha. Ca-captain, USS Galileo." she said, then paused to draw a breath, "FN-636-1660..."

Again the fist flew out, smashing with full weight into the exposed white lumps of calcium. The crunch made the Klingons eyes widen, withdrawing her fist with a few cuts of her own, eyeing the mess she left behind. With a stronger look of disdain than before K'Nara ran the super heated rod along the skin of the exposed left arm, stabbing it into the tendons of the hand.

The punch to the face again snapped the captain's head, and she felt a warm and coppery taste in her mouth, followed by a chunk of something hard. She coughed and spit up a bloody tooth onto the side of the table, then spit more gold blood from her mouth.

Finally she moved to that final wound, making sure to hold the rod in much longer than before. If this woman had to be broken, her mind and body shattered then she would do just that, as quickly as possible.

Lirha let out a series of painful cries, these ones more of an anguished whimper since she didn't have the energy to keep yelling. Her voice was already coarse and she was becoming delirious from the constant barrage of torture. Her chest rose and fell as she took short and raspy breaths in an attempt to keep from passing out. Her eyes closed and her head weakly lolled to the side.

Taking note of the woman's reaction K'Nara place the tool back on the wall, it still hissed as it cooled down. This time she returned with the hypospray again, injecting a batch of stimulants into her subject. It wouldn't do for her to pass out, there wasn't time. Pacing back to the wall again she took the sub-dermal separator, a large block rectangle with two sets of mandibles. Tearing at uniform again the Klingon exposed the woman's abdomen, clamping the device down, drawing a little blood. Looking up to Lirha's head K'Nara frowed, "I warn you, this cuts nanometres above the nerve endings on the most sensitive part of your skin, you have nothing to say?"

A sudden rush of stimulants forced Lirha wide awake again, and her head swam as the drugs pumped through her veins. She winced as she felt her shirt being ripped open, followed by a strange device clamping onto her green skin. "Nothing to say...to you." she replied, a sudden rush of adrenaline giving her an angry willpower. She struggled again against her restraints.

"You have plenty to say, you will tell me all of it," Sliding a panel on the device she took a step back, heading for the hypo spray again. At first the device did nothing, then tiny tendrils started to slip downwards, poking the skin slipping into pores with discomfort rather than pain. Then they started to slip sideways, tearing the layers of skin apart right where the nerves were at their most sensitive. Needle think tracks of these tendrils started to spread across the surface, spreading further and further, keeping the nerves it met firing with tiny vibrations.

"You are too crude to get me to speak." Lirha quipped back apprehensively. The new device felt strange at first, then blossomed into another round of extreme pain as strange spider-like tendrils exacted their will upon Lirha's exposed belly. She gritted her teeth as best she could but felt tears well up in her eyes as she tried to unsuccessfully choke back another scream. Her panicked voice echoed loudly across the walls as she cried out.

The cold eyes remained the same, K'Nara was reaching for the hypospray when her communicator beeped. It was now that her eyes flared, angrily. Without a second glance at the screaming woman she walked to the door, stepping out she motioned to the guard to watch the inside. Her tone was more cautious, aware of who she was talking to, "General, I am not finished with.."

"Enough Captain....I've been watching your methods from my quarters and suffice to say, our visitor will be long dead before you get anything out of her...."

For a moment, the comm channel closed, as if the General had been cut off mid sentence, before the doors to the interrogation chamber snapped open, and the unmistakeable figure of D'Grath stepped into the room.

"Besides....a dead Starfleet captain is...of no use to anyone. I trust our Orion friend here has so far resisted your methods? Impressive I must admit...I didn't realise the green skinned cowards had the mental strength to resist torture....especially the women....."

The momentary pause in torment allowed Lirha to collect her thoughts, and she rolled her head over to look at the new person who had entered the room. Her eyes fell on a new grayish-haired Klingon, his intricate armor and battle decorations revealing that he was of a higher rank than the savage woman who had just been torturing her. D'Grath, she thought silently to herself. His voice was familiar from the transmission at Starbase 152 demanding the surrender of Galileo and Sienna. And his taunt against her species infuriated her. "Speak for yourself. Only a coward tortures a defenseless being." she jabbed back at him in a weak voice.

"Save your strength Orion....just because I have instructed my subordinate to keep you alive doesn't mean I won't kill you myself."

Walking further into the room, D'Grath allowed what little light there was around the torture table to glint off of his armour as he examined what was left of his hostage. K'Nara was a competent warrior, but she lacked the finesse of decades spent training and practising the art form.

"Orion women are known across the galaxy for their ability to entice men and expose their...softer sides...but Klingons are known as warriors...honourable and powerful....I have the advantage here...not you."

Looking around at the collection of implements on the table, D'Grath knew each of them by name, their form, function, their effectiveness, they were all numbers to him now, all old friends that he knew as well as he knew his own subordinates.
Reaching to the table, he picked up a rather large looking instrument, a T-shaped metallic shaft with a long pointed tip, examining it as he did so, turning it from side to side in his hand as he looked down at the Orion in front of him.

"I give you one last chance to surrender the location and transponder codes of your vessel...if you do not...then your Lieutenant Coleman...who sends her regards by the way....will die here....and you....will follow shortly afterwards."

Chucking to himself for a moment, or at least, as closely as a Klingon could do, the General thought back to the El Aurian he had left hanging only a short while ago, and the final stage of her interrogation - her execution - that he had planned.

"This device contains a neurolytic pathogen....a little something I picked up from the remnants of the Obsidian Order...it's function is to break down the synapses in the brain of it's victims....for a while..it leaves them extremely susceptible to suggestion...to answering questions....that is...before the level of neural damage reduces them to nothing more than a husk....a shell to be discarded. I ask you again....give me what I want....and I will forego this stage of your...questioning."

Lirha had not endured so much pain till this point simply to break as soon as another interrogator entered the room and tried to intimidate her. She smirked at him briefly before turning her head and eyes defiantly back towards the ceiling, revealing her decision to remain silent. At least a cocktail of drugs wouldn't be as painful...

"Very well...I am sorry for this Captain...but the good of the Empire demands it...."

Grabbing the Orion woman's head and pushing it to the side, D'Grath inserted the substantial needle directly into her neck, aiming for her spine in order to allow the pathogen direct access to her brain stem and the tissue beyond, depressing the plunger as he did so, and beginning the process.

"In a few moments....you will tell us everything we need to know...."

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

CMDR Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

General D'Grath
Head of Klingon Intelligence
NPC'd by Holliday

Captain K'Nara of the House of Torath
Commanding Officer
IKS Na'vi
NPC'd by Kiri Cho

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