Post Mortem

[Noella St. James]

Noella walked over to where she saw the increasingly large gathering of Ryders and Leis. Smoothing out her black dress and taking a deep breath, she made her way to them. A part of her wanted to just have Kaikoa and his wife arrested, Rumiko Lei held and finish the job Bartyn started. But she played it cool, the main plan was complete. Julie Lei was dead and she had won. In her reality Julie Lei had publically humiliated her and if it wasn't for her finding Bartyn on one of his missions and got a ride here, she would still have been Julie Lei's 'pet telepath'. Much to her surprise, Julie had screwed with this reality's Noella even worse, but somehow she landed on her feet and wasn't under Lei's thumb. Still divorced, still had one of her children ripped from her womb that Julie raised as her own. Of course, in her timeline and reality, Julie had taken all three of her embryos and raised Jack, Eric and Ally as her own, leaving her a sterile husk. In this one, that transporter accident only created Nancy and gave her Eric, while she had Ally and Julie stole Jack.

"Oh I entirely agree, Jon is a real catch." Noella said with a wink. "Emperor Lei, on behalf of the Alliance and myself, my condolences on your mother."

"Thank you Secretary St. James. Although I suspect we both had a love hate relationship with her, eh?" Kai said with a slight cock of his head.

"Indeed, but we had grown past that." Noella said, the memories she took from her counterpart did confirm it and she didn't quite lie, but part of her wretched at the thought of Noella and Julie even being in the same room without wanting to scratch her eyes out... "Age and maturity and all that."

"Quite." Kai said and glanced at his wife who had returned from talking to an old friend. "I think my dear wife Lucy rather misses some of her old friends here."

"Only a few." Lucy replied and ran a hand through her hair. "I wanted to thank you Noella for removing me from the 'traitor' list. I never did anything to harm Alliance members, only helped them medically and did what I could to keep them safe under the Geneva Convention, which the Imperium all but threw out, which is now in effect again. I'm still resisting being called an Empress or Queen or Consort or whatever my title is, I'm still Dr. Lucy Lineas at heart."

"At least you didn't have to change your monogram." Noella mused.

"Very true. My LL remains intact." Lucy giggled lightly. "I also wanted to thank you Nick for returning some of my effects."

"You were there most of the time I grew up, hell you even picked up 'Ella and me up from the banquet hall when we were drunk off our ass on that Romulan cocktail that someone made us. Kinda owe you a lot actually." Nick said with a smile.

"No ill will at all." Noella said and gave Nick a side eye. How the hell did her counterpart not get him back after the divorce? She had everything he would have wanted. Instead he marries this skinny little blonde thing younger than their daughter. "In any case, I have a few others to meet with before the service begins. Tess invited a few other dignitaries and if I don't at least say 'hi' they'll think I'm snubbing them or something."

"The woes of political life." Jon agreed.

Noella lied about meeting people, instead she ducked out a back door and went down the alley a half block to a shuttle that was parked.

"Hey... told you not to contact me." Bartyn said with an annoyed expression.

"Oh shut up and take me." Noella reached behind her neck and unclasped her dress and kicked it off. "You kill Julie and you didn't at least come over." she unclasped her bra and slid off her panties. "You got twenty minutes."

"More than enough time." Bartyn said with a smirk as he removed his over coat and unfastened his belt.

"Oh I want to be a little late, you're not getting off that easily." Noella said and laughed as she looked over at the bag that still had Julie Lei's head inside. "Open the bag, I want the bitch to watch."

"You are a twisted little thing aren't you?" Bartyn said as he pushed her hands onto a deactivated console and pulled her hair over her shoulder and kissed the back of her neck. "I love it." he nibbled her ear and used his foot to spread her legs. "Too bad this is the last time... I doubt K'n'zy would let me keep you."

'Like I care what she thinks." Noella said and grinned as she felt his hands grasp her hips.

Twenty Five minutes later --

Noella spritzed herself with some perfume from her hand bag and fixed her hair. "I'll try to keep them distracted from looking for you, give them some false locations."

"What about your counterpart?" Barytn said as he pulled his over coat back on.

"Well, you can always take her back to your K'n'zy, she's not nearly as telepathic as I am, I think she didn't get that particular gift or she suppressed it so well she doesn't use it. I'm enjoying the life she has... and the wardrobe." Noella blew him a kiss. "Was fun, but I think this should be the last time. Unless you want to use my counterpart, like I care what happens to her."

Walking out of the shuttle, she briskly walked back to the memorial and walked in just as the opening was starting. No one had really missed her and at least now she was satisfied, she could maintain her counterpart's cool and almost chaste persona easier. Still, if only they knew that Bartyn was only a half block away...

[Rebecca Talon]

Rebecca leaned into Nick and whispered. "Tell me that I'm not the only one. There's a disturbance in the ijulna. It's close too. She hesitated... yes... it WAS close, but there's something else too."

[Nick Ryder]

"I feel it too." Nick whispered. "Better not be another attack, we cannot do with that. Not here and now." he looked around and motioned for Alice to come over to him, putting his finger to his lips he pulled out his communicator and tapped out a quick message. "B senses something, me 2, checking it out, don't alarm anyone. Tell them Gale's sitter had a question. Luv U." he saw her nod her head in reply and a quick message came back. "B Careful."

Nick gave a thumb's up and motioned to Becca to follow him. "I hope you're packing. Because all I have is my own power, weapons were checked at the door. Figures, now they'd restrict buffer bands."

[Rebecca Talon]

"I have my kliden. Let's just say the idiot at the door wasn't too hard to fool." Her fingers felt the reassuring presence of the weapon. "And the ijulna can be an effective weapon as well, if applied properly."

She glanced around reaching out with the ijulna trying to sense something. "There's only two people that I know that could hide themselves like this, and that's both our counterparts. I think the first one was Bartym."

[Nick Ryder]

"Still think we shouldn't kill him?" Nick gave her a look. "I suppose the others did make a few good points..."

[Rebecca Talon]

She let out a heavy sighed, "I can't think any other way Nick. If I give into that who is to say that I won't become like Bellatrix, or Dominus? It's too easy to justify violence when you are doing good, but it becomes a slippery slope, and the last thing we need is another kliden weilding muderess."

[Nick Ryder]

"Still, enemy combatant rules apply, if he's endangering an innocent and we have a shot... then it's not cold blood, it's not murder. But the man needs to answer for his crimes and I have no problem shoving him into the deep dark hole we originally made for Julie and Tiberius back in the day." Nick replied as he flexed his hand and manifested a small fireball and reabsorbed it. "He's just parked..." he said as he closed his eyes and reached out. "Doing what I have no idea..."

[Rebecca Talon]

"Passion... no lust," she replied reaching out with the ijulna. She made a disgusted face but relaxed, "He's having sex!"

[Nick Ryder]

"Oh... oh c'mon..." Nick felt it too. "Okay, hang back... let them finish, then when he's still distracted afterwards, we hit him. I've worked with our Clint long enough to know that when he's had a 'nooner' with the wife, he's super easy to take down when sparring." he tapped his watch and set a coordinate. "I've got a suit coming in five minutes... let's see if he's as considerate as Cross or as much of an asshole as I think this one is and he won't stick around for a little post coital convo or cuddle." no sooner than he said that, Noella walked out of the back, looking no worse the wear, although walking a bit shaky. He gave Becca a look. "Miki... scan the area, any other Ajem'dasis?"

"None." She replied via the comm built into his earpiece. "He is alone and getting dressed, entirely distracted."

[Rebecca Talon]

"You men. How is it that we can have like five organisms in a row, get up take care of kids, clean the house and cook you dinner, and you have one and you're completely useless for the rest of the day?"