From: Katrina L. Browne (kbrowne_at_wellesley.edu)
Date: Thu Aug 30 2007 - 01:46:43 PDT
-=(^)=- “Without a Voice” Con’t From: “Introducing K'mtok” -=(^)=- Location: GS-2 Stardate: 2.70829.1627 Scene: Detention Center Delta Detention Center Delta was nothing much when compared to its larger sister. Even though it was perhaps only three or four rooms normally almost never used, Lieutenant (jg) Israwl Owh’thewn enjoyed the solitude. He had a staff of three and they had all learned to pretty much keep to themselves. It was rumored that under a former Chief of Security it was common practice to send some of the more antisocial or deeply introverted department personnel to do their duty shifts here. The Efrosian officer, considered golden-hued out of kindness, didn’t mind the exile too much. It gave him an opportunity to catch up on his writing, something that had been impossible when he had served as an assistant Sec/Tac in his department’s nerve center. Israwl lounged behind his moderate sized desk and twirled his stylus, thinking of the next line to “pen”. His verse seemed a little scrawny. It had opened discussing the Uren’moqk, the time of youth. But very few things on Efros evoked youth. In fact the first two syllables of the name meant “short” or “fleeting” in the junior officer’s tongue. It seemed that almost immediately a healthy, whispish beard grew in, ending that short development stage. It had been a challenge for the past seven centuries to capture the concept of Uren’moqk, ever since youth had progressively cut itself down from decades to mere years. That challenge captured Israwl’s imagination, but it didn’t mean he produced prolific amounts of verse when he tried to conquer it. He gave the stylus another languid twirl. The image of Efros the Diminutive (Efros’Urentiq) came to his mind. It was one of three moons that orbited his home planet. The satellite would cast a vibrant shade of pink light as it followed its orbital path caused by the light of the system’s sun passing through large deposits of titanium and manganese laced quartz. It was radiant, like the piercing blue eyes of Efrosian children before they dull from the harmful solar radiation their home sun emits. Most importantly, the “Diminutive” lunar body was the smallest and closest orbiting moon around his world. The pink satellite whipped through the sky passing into and out of view far faster than the other plainer solar bodies. In other words, it was an ideal metaphor, and one hereto then unused when discussing the short time of childhood. The luminescent body was often written about in lyrical works dedicated to romance because of the lovely rippling colors it could cast across the indigo sky when full. Those ripples were said to evoke partners dancing. That analogy was probably due in no small part to the fact that most Efrosians choose to meet their first lovers during this exotic celestial display that had remained a popular tourist attraction for the past fourteen generations. But somehow Efros’Urentiq seemed a more apt analogy for Uren’moqk. Israwl began to jot down a few lines that would be discovered twenty years after his death. Immortal lines: they would live as iconic examples of the best that Efrosian poets could produce, both on his homeworld and through out two quadrants. But history did not record this day as the one that exo-literary scholars fawned over. “Lieutenant, these are the two from Engineering,” Petty Officer Daniels said, intruding upon his superior’s thoughts. The head of D.C.-Delta looked up slightly startled. He had had it…but for the moment it was gone. “Oh, Daniels…Sorry, what did you say?” the Efrosian asked absentmindedly, gripping a tendril of his long white beard that had begun to tickle him slightly with his sudden movement. Crewman Winters spoke up, “Sir, we got a call from Engineering a little while ago. These two were causing a disturbance. Daniels and I went to break it up, but the aCEO asked us to give them a cooling off period.” Petty Officer Daniels was the second ranking team member at the Delta sight, but Crewman Winters had a natural leadership style that had been overlooked thus far. She had a tendency to deal with many aspects of the center that her superiors were too consumed to partake in. Daniels did his job admirably but he lacked the ability to be authoritative. And it was a sense of self possession that was most needed amongst the little outpost’s leaders. Yet, Crewman Winters was also in a bit of a bind. Serving here duty shifts was like being proverbially sent to Alaska, Siberia, or Pluto. Some who are even less charitable might consider it to be similar to a station on Andoria, but most are wise enough to mention that fact around Andorians. While there was a leadership vacuum that allowed her skills to show through, those same feckless duty officers were unlikely to see the value of contributions. “Oh…right. Umm…the brig is open,” Lieutenant Owh’thewn said, looking back down at his P.A.D.D. Daniels nodded his affirmative before beginning to direct the two angry technicians to an overnight stay in the brig. Yet Crewman Felicia Winters frowned. “Isn’t this second call we’ve received during the last two duty shifts concerning disturbances in engineering?” “I suppose so,” Israwl noted inattentively while he tried to focus again on his writing. “But sir, that’s a little odd. We usually get one of these calls ever two months, not once a day,” Felicia persisted. In her gut, she had a feeling that something was amiss when she stood in the cavernous module, being headed by a cadet she had never seen before. Israwl thought for a moment, though most of his attention was on the pink moon with white cracks orbiting his childhood home, “Its nothing; I’m sure.” Crewman Wisniewski listened to the conversation the two guards were having. Since leaving engineer, his temper had not much improved. And yet, at the same time his mind seemed a little clearer. The fog wasn’t gone, but at least it was beginning to roll out. The conversation between the fellow Crewman and her boss reminded him of something that had also seemed a little off. “You know what, I think Petty Officer Stover didn’t report for duty today. Something about a bar brawl,” Salvatore mentioned. Crewman Holt nodded, “I heard that too. The funny thing is I’ve knocked back a few with Matt on more than a couple of occasions. He’s really chill. I can’t see him fighting with some third rate drunk.” “Stop taking credit for everything I say,” Salvatore hissed. Crewman Wisniewski’s fellow specialist on power glared back at him, “That’s rich. This from a man who *steals* workstations.” Felicia spoke up loudly enough to be heard over the two yelling morons. “It’s the governments workstations and no one stole anyone else idea. I’m have tempted to put the two of you in the same cell to see if you’d shred one another like fighting Beta’s.” The two’s bickering subsided as they were confronted with a voice louder than their own. “Good,” she said half-triumphantly, a little ashamed that she had just had to break up another brewing fight with childish shouting. “That’s the third incident involving an engineer in *less* that two days,” she pointed out, trying to get Lieutenant Owh’thewn to acknowledge that the situation discovered an actual look into. The junior officer twirled his stylus before making his official pronouncement: “Stress.” -=(^)=- Scene: Sickbay But problems were awaking elsewhere. Nurse Odan cracked his spotted neck as he tapped on the display monitoring one of their more sensitive patients. Not to mention one of the more controversial the infirmary had ever taken in. The Hippocratic Oath was clear on the philosophical questions related to treating an enemy; in fact it was downright demanding. But Odan still had to suppress a tingle from running down his spine whenever he came in to check this patient’s vitals. His grandmother had died during the War, fighting their kind. Every generation thought its war was the War, yet the Dominion conflicts had been some of the first to actually justify that title on a galactic scale. Obelisks to peace scrawled upon with names of those who could no longer read or care about such memorials, littered more than a handful of worlds. If those who had passed could witness them, they might have seen a certain irony in their form, as the Obelisk was the predominant feature of one of their enemies’ architecture. The wound was also more recent, if not as close: a second cousin had been lost during a recent outbreak of violence with the Dominion. Though Petty Officer Odan had not been deeply acquainted with that branch of his family tree, the whole clan mourned the loss doubly: Lieutenant Commander Areln Prex had suffered sever abdominal injuries. It was almost like a curse had been laid at the Odan door when the Trill doctors of the Symbiosis Commission pronounced Prex as unsalvageable. She had fought to keep breathing for another day and another day…all to check the unpreventable dishonor of burial with her symbiotic surname. Pelal noted that everything about his patient seemed normal. He then examined the changeling’s chart for a moment. A standard dose of tri-ox compound three times a day had been noted for all of the power surge’s other hypoxia victims, but they had been improve a lot more quickly that him. Most had even already left Sickbay, but Mr. No Name, as the staff had taken to calling him because they were uncomfortable with giving him the standard designation for anonymous casualties as it seemed too benign, still had yet to rouse himself from unconsciousness. Petty Officer Odan stepped through the partition that Doctor Gorman had demanded be installed after his confrontation with the Security Department. He had gotten sick of bumping into the two guards, but there was also an important ethical question that he felt privacy screening at alleviated partially. “How are you today Mr. No Name?” the Trill nurse asked as he tapped a hypospray to the “neck” of the changeling. Pelal then turned to leave and get on with his other duties. The changeling opened a single brown eye. The former Starfleet types still hadn’t figured out just whose identity he had acquired. They weren’t likely to. He had done the deed on a poorly guarded dilithium freighter and had disposed the unlucky man’s corpse with a minor plasma reroute. “Mr. No Name” had been watching and waiting for a day and a half now. The shape shifter had regulated his metabolism to keep the medical personnel from realizing that he was no longer unconscious. It helped that they hadn’t cared when his body had involuntarily turned to goo. Upon returning to his previously held shape, they had simply assumed that it was autonomic. A doctor had taken one look and wrote the vital fluctuation away. That had been a mistake. With quick fluidity “Mr. No Name” acted, a golden tendril reached out and muffled Nurse Odan’s mouth while a second wound around his neck. A crushing force spread over Pelal’s trachea as he tried to suck in air that would not come while attempting to call out to guards that also would not. Spots sprung along “Mr. No Name’s” body and he whispered to his still awake victim, “Mr. Any Name would have been more appropriate.” For a moment two identical Petty Officers stood, one grasping the sagging form of the other with a strength superior to that of the original identity owner’s body. Before alarms could sound, the changeling placed the unconscious nurse in the biobed, and hoped the sensors weren’t paying too much attention. It was a ruse that wouldn’t last long. Sooner or later someone would discover Pelal, but by then he’d be gone, evaporated into the hive of a couple hundred thousand souls. The new Odan walked through the partition and hit a few keys to reactivate the force field that had once locked him in. It had been a mistake for his captor to not reinitialize it after he had passed into the treatment space. A human wearing a deep yellow nodded, “Awake yet?” “Nope. I’m on break for a little bit. Should I bring you back anything when I return?” he had heard the pleasantries that had passed between his nurse and his guards. It might be construed as something a miss if he hadn’t affected that friendly air. The guard smiled warmly. “My wife got me set up this morning,” the security specialist said as he tapped a silver cylinder with his black booted foot. “Thank you though.” “Thought I’d ask,” Mr. Any Name said with a shrug before heading for the closest exit. In the daze of treatment and the stretched out boredom of his “stakeout”, the new Pelal had heard a rumor about elections for the station’s government. It was the sort of situation he had been sent here to affect and it was time to see just where the fun was to be had. -=(^)=- NRPG: He’s loose and has a loosely defined mission. Jerome: I hope this is in the direction of what you were looking for based on our talk. Shawn: I hope I haven’t stepped too much on your toes concerning the Vulcan subplot. I figure Crewman Winters is curious, but she’s also unlikely to be listened to (due to an ineffective boss)…Hmm…sounds like another young Starfleet type. Anyways, she’s there for you to use more if you want to develop the conflict problems more. But I won’t let her force anything to a head; that is obviously your fun to be had. Perhaps a JP sometime though. -=(^)=- Katrina Browne kbrowne [at] Wellesley [dot] edu Lieutenant Eishnala sh’Kor Chief of Security GS-2 From HyperNews_at_youth.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Feb 17 2008 - 03:10:18 PST