For Lieutenant Junior Grade Jason Devron; the realisation that a man he’d first met the day he’d gone to sign up for the Academy was anything but a dedicated hard working Starfleet Officer, came as a body blow. “Why?” Was all he managed to croak out. “He trusted you.”

“He was a fool, a man with a vision like so many others.” Fitzpatrick laughed. “When is the human race going to wake up to the fact we’re better off without alien interference?”

“Is that what this was all about from the beginning?” Jason asked. “You helped stop the attack.” Jason’s mind recalled the events which should have led to him planting a bomb and killing several cadets and training officers; and how the man now pointing a weapon at him had been instrumently in that not happening.

“To gain his trust and rise up the ladder to a place I could have more control and influence.”  Bragged the Captain. “And as much as I would love to tell you more.  It’s time for you to die.  Mister Flint, kill her.”

What followed for some lasted mere seconds, for others much longer.  And for one person it would mean instant dead!

Phoebe was down on her knees in her nightdress, hands still tied in front of here.  A slight chill in the midnight air blew across her face. Closing her eyes, she heard the sound of the Blaster Rifle charging up. The doctor never heard it fire; she just felt the light and the warmth of the sun and place of her dreams. ‘So this was death was it?’ She thought to herself.  The long and empty highway she’d know almost all her life.  Heaven wasn’t anything like she would have expected.  Had she been preparing for this moment all those years?

Jerry Flint was a ‘fix it’ man.  You had a problem he fixed it.  Want someone to disappear, they disappeared; want a building blowing up. He could arrange that to.  Killing in cold blood was second nature.  You could just ask his father, assuming you ever found the body!

However within a split second he’d somehow been transported from midnight in France to Mid-afternoon somewhere on an Arizona highway, and if that hadn’t been a big enough shock; then the articulated lorry bearing down on him certainly was.  When the black early 1970’s model Kenworth truck hit Flint doing just over the statutory speed limit, it broke more than half the bones in his body and sent shattered fragments to cause untold damage to internal organs.  The truck slammed on its breaks, but still seemed to take an age to stop. The man’s body trapped somewhere under the rear axle of the tractor unit by this point.

The driver, with his light brown cowboy hat red check shirt and blue jeans, who could have passed for a forty something Burt Reynolds complete with moustache; turned to the man seated next to him wearing a dark grey collarless business suit. “That is the most barbaric and disgusting thing I have witnessed in decades.” Exclaimed the man wearing the suit. “And completely uncalled for.”

“He was about to kill my daughter.” Replied the driver sternly. “Besides that, she brought him here.”

“But did you have to be so dramatic?  What’s wrong with a heart attack or bolt of lightning?”

“I like to be different.”

“Ok, I’ll give you that” Smiled the man in the suit. “But she has to go back; the Continuum isn’t all that happy as it is.” He clicked his fingers and disappeared in a flash of light. Whisking way the doctor and the now very dead thug; at the same time. “I’m watching you, just remember that.” The voice echoed round the cab.

“Oh, don’t remind me.” The driver groaned.

**********

Suddenly witnessing two people disappear before your very eyes can be rather a distraction; and it was this moment as Fitzpatrick stood stunned for a little too long, that Jason took his chance.  Swinging round he first drove his elbow into the gut of the other man; before seizing the arm holding the phaser in both hands.  With one hand around the wrist and the other half way along the forearm, he forced it down and his knee up to meet it.  Once, twice, three times in quick succession as hard as he could.  A bone cracked the captain yelled and the weapon came free.  At the same time Fitzpatrick swung his other arm; fist making contact with Jason’s chin, sending the young Lieutenant staggering back.  The pair of them stood back sizing each other up; Jason had done wrestling as well as the usually unarmed combat trained at the Academy.  But it was clear the other man still felt his skill where better despite the injury he now suffered. He took a few swings, testing out the younger man’s reflexes and agility; and drawing his attention away from the right leg, which swept his own legs from underneath him.  Jason hit the ground hard the wind knocked from his lungs.  The other captain was upon him in seconds. Raining a succession of hard blows upon the face of Jason with the fist of his good arm. The young man heard and felt his nose break; there was blood on his lips and in his mouth.  With one desperate act he summoned all his strength and lashed out with one blow, striking his assailant right in the ‘Adams apple’.  It was enough to stop the man’s attack in its track and enough time for Jason to fight back.

Devron lost track of the number of times he struck the other man, or the point at which he’d stopped defending himself; that whole part was just a cascade of blurred images.  All he did know was that when he finally collapsed all energy drained from his body; the pair of them looked a compete and blooded mess.

**********

When concusses returned he was being cradled in the lap of the doctor, and she was tending to his many wounds with the emergency medical kit from the shuttle.  He tried to speak, but it was more of a slurred garbled mumble from swollen lips. The doctor just told him to be quiet and that someone was on the way.  With that his eyes closed once more.

A shuttle craft touched down not long after and out stepped the Lieutenant who’d been in Jersey along with one of his security team and a pair of medical staff; who immediate set about treating the two injured men.  When Andrianakis handed the newly arrived officer the Padd, he briefly flicked through some of the files and pages of information stored with in.  As he did so his eyes widened and his jaw sagged.

Contained within was a backup copy of every piece of information and evidence Rear-Admiral Devron had gathered over the past two years.  Everything the Captain had apparently tried to cover up. There were even reports that had been directed to this Padd which he’d never had the opportunity to read, a couple sent after his death.  Several key sections indicated that the Gatehouse Laboratories had been creating a number of deadly nerve agents tailored to target specific alien species; whether any of them had been in the section of their Chicago building when it was destroyed was still unclear.  If they weren’t and someone was storing them elsewhere millions if not billions of lives could still be at risk.

Whatever Fitzpatrick’s ultimate plan was it was clear he knew evidence of his involvement existed and had systematically gone about removing that evidence using both willing Starfleet members and those who were oblivious to his true motives.  Then there was Jerry Flint, the very dubious hired help; how the doctor planned to explain his multiple injuries when she still didn’t understand herself what had actually took place was going to be really interesting.  But that was something to worry about later.