ADMIRALTY HALL, 2273In his frozen hell, the young man barely saw the red lasers billowing through the face plate viewer. A beautiful yet vile and pedophilic woman who, in another life, would have been a Tantalus Five inmate called only 'Lethe', stood watch over her favorite victim's latest sufferings.
"Admiral Bunson--we may begin by your leave."
"Begin. Peter should know better than to keep anything from me."
The techs were hardened bigots, and loyal to the Hall. But even they had to wince as Teresa Bunson began stroking a pair of trousers that might fit a 13-year old boy.
"After all, he couldn't keep *these* from me."
She'd personally cut them off Peter Kirk, the night of his kidnapping. The night of the so-called 'Bacchanalia'. It had been a nightmare that Bacchus himself would have condemned.
And Now It Continued.
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He was dying in the desert.He was dying in the desert, and every hungry skeleton the desert had ever claimed lumbered towards him, to rend and eat his tender flesh.
Beyond him lay the finest oasis ever made, and he had built it himself. Water, friends, women. All awaited him there. But he would never dare enter it.
For if he did, the hungry dead would find that perfect place, and make a ruin of it somehow. So it was that as his feet were nipped at by lipless teeth, the sweet smell of fresh water sometimes brushed by his nostrils, and this was the worst pain of all.
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He was a soldier, held in a horrid POW camp by a savage enemy who interrogated and beat him constantly.
Just beyond his cell door, but only if he opened it, was home. The home he had fought for, and was presumed dead by. The Enemy came through constantly, three identical spies. One lay heavy weights on him. One could disrupt his motor functions with a mere touch.
The third killed others in front of him constantly. People like George Samuels, the CO whose foolish orders had gotten him captured. People like political officer Ellen Aurie, so sure that she knew The Enemy's plans. People like young Marc, only a year in the service.
Beyond him, the soldier smelled fresh apple pie, baked for his father The Reverend Jacob Kirche by his mother, Freeda, the local switchboard operator. He laughed openly when he thought of how many people thought she had an easy job. This got him beaten--again.
All he had to do was open the cell door himself, but this he would never do. He was a soldier, and a soldier would never allow his home to be invaded by The Enemy.
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He hated the school, the private school for boys. The pranks were cruel, the food was horrid, and he was the only one ever kept in or caned. How could such a place still exist in that time, he wondered?
The staff and the other boys used him as a servant, and sometimes as far, far worse. They did things to him as he slept--and it was always so cold.
Over the fence that he could easily climb was a great, grand school that his inheritance had founded. He spied her there, when he looked. She was sweet, wonderful, pleasant, and oh so pretty, even if she herself didn't think so. He could go there, and eventually meet his distant love.
But he was always watched, and if he went over that fence, all the bullies and crazies would surely follow, and they would wreck that other school, in no time flat. It was such a nice place, and he couldn't let that happen.
Wiping away a tear that was immediately laughed at, he prepared his lessons, knowing that the Hateful Miss would summarily declare them inadequate.
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Outside a city that was contained inside his powerful mind, Peter Kirk, The Rock Of Prophecy, saw everyone who had ever fallen victim to Ghidorah's evil.
In the red-and-blue Starfleet uniform of his era was Granpa George.
Winona--his real grandmother--smiled as the wicked Brianna never could.
Behind Surak and Kahless stood Sam and Aurelan, barely forgiven for the wrongs they'd done him in life. They shifted nervously whenever he came around.
There were uncounted trillions more, but Peter Kirk saw only two. A young man with a monkey's tail held up a smiling infant who never realized he had died on Deneva 3.
"Take care of Marc, GK."
In the city was comfort. In the city was joy, and the gratitude of the wandering souls he had given a home. He could enter at any time.
But Admiralty Hall was endlessly corrupt, and Peter knew that this city and its energies might be twisted to serve Ghidorah, or the Hall's rapacious xenophobia, or its petty drives for personal ambition. So he left Marc, who he had called 'his baby' in life, in the capable hands of the city's odd guardian, who in another life and time and reality would have been called Gokou.
Peter Kirk never once entered that wondrous place, during his captivity. For he was a champion. For he was The Rock Of Prophecy, meant to slay The Ancient Destroyer Of Myth.
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2278
For their part, Bunson, Komack, and the others kept right on trying. But Peter Kirk had more defensive delusions than they had cruel devices or tricks. Then, it finally happened.
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He was The Archangel Ebeniel, fallen into Hell while defending Heaven from Morningstar's Rebellion. He could literally step out and reach Heaven once more.
But ThreeSkull, slayer and devourer of foolish Morningstar, told his every demon to watch for this step, so Ebeniel, The Stone of God, waited in icy torment, used when no Hellfire would dare touch him.
*Ho, do I see another descend?*
*You do, Ebeniel. For I am the lost half of your soul, and I am also Ebeniel, and I walk as a woman does.*
*The One has ransomed me? Ransomed me at last?*
*You are so ransomed, and we are to be made one again in his sight, Hosanna. As one will we smite the House Of The Wicked.*
But as they rose out on downy wings, the ship Naglfar, made from the red nails of dead men on that hill of Golgotha, arose to give chase. Ebeniel both frowned upon this, and gestured and spoke as one.
"No more."
That ship and that hill shattered, as the ice finally broke. In her own wings did the Lady Ebeniel cover her other half.
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Saavik threw Bunson's robe around the rescued Peter Kirk. She then activated a one-time emergency signal."Father, I have him."
Beamed to Sarek's waiting shuttle, Saavik was warned away by the Ambassador.
"No. We must not attempt any manner of meld, til we are home. You see, Saavik-kam, the minds of the tortured will go through massive contortions, as it were, to cope with an unacceptable reality. We can only guess at what reserves kept Peter Kirk from going mad, in that vile place."
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Ebeniel flew with Ebeniel, and there he saw the gates of Heaven once more. Long horizontal columns ran to a angular Hall of Angels, and The Throne House Of The One was a vast circular disk, from which The One could see all the vast mysteries of space. Having at last left the Hill Of Red Nails, and with the Heavenly Jerusalem safe within him, Ebeniel read off the holy numbers.
"One. Seven. Aught. One."
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In a world whose reality he would soon begin to alter, Peter Kirk at long last slept the sleep of the just.For his first real test was done.
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