A popular variant of the 'Star Trek' franchise featured the 'Terran Empire', with altered versions of familiar characters set in the 'Mirror Universe'. The 'Enterprise' series established that the Empire existed for many centuries, starting in its 'present' form by the 19th Century. Many authors have done MU stories. I've done several 'Star Trek' ones, but to my knowledge no one has explored what the NCIS might be like in such a world. Therefore I decided I would present the Empire's version of our familiar characters, as viewed from the eyes of one of INCIS' convicted criminals.
Belisarius Productions owns the regular NCIS. No one owns their Mirror Universe counterparts but unfortunately I can't claim them either. I'm not making any money off this, it is for fun.
One Caveat: If you're not familiar with Star Trek's 'Mirror Universe' or the 'Terran Empire', these are not the people you are used to. Thou hast been warned!
Now sit back, pull up a glass and prepare to be shaken - and stirred.
Rated 'R' for Disturbing Imagery and Violence. Deathfic.

INCIS
by JMK758
Prologue

When I can drag my eyes open nothing has changed. I'm in the same ten foot square gunmetal-grey steel cell, surrounded by steel walls, steel deck, steel overhead, steel slab to sleep on - or in my case to lie on like a limp doll while trying to recover. Even the toilet in the corner of the room; angled just enough toward the wall to be really inconvenient - if I were in any condition to use it - is cold grey steel. It's even seat-less, requiring me to perch cautiously in the times I was able to use it. Hours - is it days - without food or water gradually eliminated the need for such 'domestic conveniences'.

I don't know how long it's been, the 400 watt bulb high out of reach never changes. I don't even actually sleep any kind of regular hours; even if I could sleep the beyond-daylight brightness ensures I'll have no rest. The only 'rest' I get is when I'm beaten unconscious; then I'm out until I revive. I do sleep occasionally, when I'm too exhausted to stay awake, but since they wake me for more torture at any odd minute my rest, if you can call it that, is so erratic it might as easily be noon as midnight.

They play games with my mind. While I'm unconscious they shave me so I have less of a way to judge how long I've been here. It could be an hour that I'm here, judging by the smoothness of my face, but I'm in far too much pain for these abuses to have been inflicted in one hour - or even one day - and I remember the reasons for every bruise and laceration. Even the burns from brief exposure to the explosion before I hit the river don't hurt as much as the bruises - and worse - that cover my body.

The only thing they don't do is wash me or change my clothing. My clothes are still the same, except covered with more and more blood. They do wash me though, if being deluged from the doorway with the stream from a fire hose that slams me into steel walls and along steel floor constitutes washing. They've done that twice already, leaving me to drip dry over a small drain in the middle of my cell. I suspect they do it more when they can't stand my stench anymore than for any regard for my well-being. It's no different than leaving me in the same clothes; why waste material on a soon-to-be corpse?

x

Sometime recently, during my last bout of unconsciousness, my left arm was encased in a cast and a sling slung about my neck. I remember the blood only vaguely, the beating less but the pain that comes with seeing my broken left arm is so immediate I'll remember it for as long as I live. An hour? It's funny; I couldn't identify this pain to a broken arm - if it is broken but I'll trust it is, until I saw it. Each beating blends into the next until it becomes hard to remember which injury is from when.

The only real constants in the routine of pain are the questions - the ones I can't answer because I don't know the damn answers - and the ones I won't.

x

The bolt being slammed back in the steel door in the right wall makes me jump. It's amazing I still have that much reflex left, but it's a conditioned response, like Pavlov's dogs. Ring a bell, they start to salivate, ready for a meal; throw that loud bolt and I cringe, and ready myself for agony.

The steel door opens away from me with that grinding that sets my nerves on edge. They know what that sound does to the soul, that's why they haven't oiled those hinges in fifty years. Through that door is blackness, hell as dark as the souls of the men who beat me. It's as black as their uniforms so I never know who is coming in until they do. Amazing how 400 watts can hurt my eyes so much and yet outside it's black as hell. I wonder if I'll ever learn how they do that before I'm beaten to a lump of broken, battered flesh that used to be human.

I have to have something to live for.

x

This time it's a woman who enters. At least I think it's a woman, I think I'm beyond being sure. Black hair frames a friendly white face, the expansion of her uniform top suggests breasts in a woman but I'm not sure what it passes for among the INCIS...

x

How can she manage a friendly smile - or is it the pleasurable anticipation of spending two or three hours beating me to death? Though she's hardly my size - I'd probably top her by nearly a foot if I could stand up - the space black uniform she wears dominates the room, denying the dazzling light far over our heads.

The door slams shut loud enough to make me jump; thunder in a ten square foot steel chamber.

Her shiny black leather uniform gleams in the searing light, covers her from boots to collar and shows only a single break; a gold metal badge in the form of a shield bears the emblem of the Imperial Navy, fronted by the Imperial sigil, an ancient Roman short sword piercing the Earth from pole to pole. That emblem is repeated as a metal badge upon the black cap she wears over equally lightless hair. Her black handled dagger is a claw in the sheath in her left pants leg, an equally black handled gun hangs like the hand of death in the holster at her right hip.

The uniform of an Officer of the Imperial Navy Criminal Inquisition Squadron is intended to strike fear into the innocent and guilty alike. No, strike that; when the INCIS gets hold of you, there are no innocents.

x

There is, of course, barely much use for a Navy, at least not a National one, not since the days when the Empire solidified its hold over most of the planet. The few remaining 'free' places grow fewer and more isolated with appalling rapidity; eventually to fall before a power that can no longer be resisted. For a time some places are left alone, being too small for notice. That is, until the Empire decides they're desirable resources; then they'll fall before irresistible, devastating might, absorbed into the collective power of the Empire. When the navy - formerly navies - of nearly an entire planet come against you, you fall; perhaps almost as fast as I did.

Small, isolated spots in smaller communities or hidden away contain pockets where people can temporarily enjoy a measure of anonymous safety; but countries and territories, being too large to escape notice, could not.

The point of no return was passed long ago, the Empire is supreme throughout the world, and there's no need for a Navy except as a tool of enforcement and subjugation, just like the Imperial Army and the Imperial Air Force and the Imperial...

Its purpose has long ago become obsolete. The Army and Navy, and the former Marines, now little more than Storm Troopers, have changed from defense to control and exist to maintain the 'Pax Imperium', the so-called 'Peace of the Empire'. It's a peace maintained not by a dove, but by the hawk.

But while the military watches the people, who watches the military? Or, as an ancient philosopher I once read observed; 'Qui custodiat ipsos custodies?', 'who watches the watchers?'

The answer is the INCIS. Long ago a device used to maintain justice on the high seas, now it's the arm of enforcement. While the power of the Navy has grown supreme, the power of such arms as INCIS has grown accordingly. Whatever it might have started out as, its job is now to police and enforce the 'Loyalty' of the conscripts under its control.

This woman, today's arm of that power, puts up a display of being very confident by coming in here without guards. But since I can barely raise my arms or move my legs, I'm in no condition to put up a fight, so I guess she's safe.

x

"Well," I say, glad to be able to speak through broken, cracked and parched lips, though my voice rasps, speaking to days without water. They've actually taken it easy on my mouth; can't get answers if I can't talk, but my throat is sandpaper and my voice like nothing I've ever heard. Will I ever hear my normal voice again? Probably not, so I don't waste what I've got by a king for water. "Have they sent me a beautiful woman to ease the pain of my last remaining hours?"

Since they're going to kill me, I've no reason not to be a smart-ass.

"Your previous Inquisitor was too enthusiastic," she glances pointedly at my wrapped arm, "and our Doctor had to fix you up. We need answers far more than we need another corpse."

"Thank you." Did I just say that? Turn off the auto-response circuit, please. "I'd hate to be in bad shape for my execution."

"Oh, there's no guarantee you're going to be executed. As a matter of fact, if you'd just answer our questions you could be free to go."

More likely I'd be free to go to Heaven. I figure I have a 50/50 shot at that, maybe 60/40, at least lately. It's far better odds than of walking out of here.

"Why don't you come over here so we can talk?" she asks with a pleasant snake-to-mongoose smile.

"Why don't you join me?" I tap the metal side of my slab, not particularly anxious to get up. Of course, if I don't cooperate they'll drag me, so why try? "Let's get comfortable."

There is something surreal about flirting with one's executioner, but like I said I've always been a bit of a smart-ass. That hasn't been beaten out of me yet and it's pretty much too late now to try.

"Indulge me," she requests with that maddening smile.

"Why?"

"You said it yourself, I'm a beautiful woman. Why not indulge me?"

Something about that question has a surreal sort of logic to it - or maybe I've just been hit in the head too many times. But if I were feeling normal I would rise for a lady, so I guess it makes a certain distorted sense - in some parallel universe somewhere.

x

Trying not to groan too loudly, I finally manage to struggle to sit up, itself a minor miracle I give myself ten brownie points for. Seeing her smile, wondering if she's planning to eat me for lunch - I'm so battered and dry I'd probably taste terrible - I haul myself off my slab and push up on screaming legs. Taking a step is more a matter of tilting into a controlled fall, and I make it across the room to her in a carefully controlled, lurching stagger.

"There," she says when I get my feet firmly planted, "that wasn't so hard, was it?"

"As Albert Einstein noted before he leveled the Japanese islands, 'everything's relative'."

"Einstein was a patriot."

I have no desire to discuss a half-century old uprising or object lesson. The Japanese thought they'd had a chance to rise up and be men, the Empire kicked them in the balls. Japanese women, the pretty ones, are alive while the Empire considers them useful, and the last two generations of slaves have been bred 'in vitro'.

Japanese men are extinct.

x

"You had some questions?"

"Yes," she confirms pleasantly, "let's start with an easy one." She smiles up at me, assuring me that "You'll find there's no need for unpleasantness with me." Now I recognize the game; 'bad Inquisitor, good Inquisitor'. I'd already spent several sessions (days?) with the bad one. If he was vinegar, then they've sent a Honey with the honey. "What's your name?"

Talk about an easy one; that was talc. "Your partner had that before we started."

"Indulge me," she repeats with that saccharin smile, so I make mine just as sweet.

"I'll tell you mine if you'll tell me yours."

She smiles in sweet anticipation and her hand flashes out before I can flinch, low at my pants.

She grabs me tightly and squeezes!

x

My agonized groan jumps fast to a full shriek as she twists hard, squeezing tightly with all her strength. I don't know how long I scream, amazed I still can. Her vice-like grip lasts an eternity until finally I can't draw another breath to scream anymore.

She lets go and my legs go out from under me. My knees slam down to the steel deck, acquiring yet two more bruises before I fall on my side, clutching myself, gasping hugely, feeling worse than I have in all my life.

I curl protectively, holding myself and just wanting to die so the agony will stop.

"Now," she says with that sickeningly sweet smile as she steps in front of my face, "let's try this again, shall we?" She sounds so much more like a kindergarten teacher than an Inquisitor that a chill runs through me. I remember Miss Katrina, so long ago. She never scared me. This bitch...

"What is your name?"

I still can't speak; the agony is so great I can barely remember how to breathe. But the knowledge of what she'll do to me if I don't answer helps me to force the words out in a barely intelligible groan.

"Tim - Tim - othy - - - Mc - Gee."

I see her foot come up fast, too fast to avoid; I only manage to look away in time to save my jaw and avoid losing any teeth. The heavy boot crashes into my head, knocking me back.

The steel cell spins wildly even after my head stops, but I can't focus on anything but a cloud of black.

"Well, Timothy McGee, my name is Kait Todd..." The voice fades away and I'm sure no one turned off that light...