Post-Script to Aftermath.
Posted on Fri Jan 6, 2012 @ 9:11pm by
916 words; about a 5 minute read
(( Essentially concurrent with the "Aftermath" post. ))
They were on us before I saw them. I don't know if they have a way of disrupting our tricorders on an individual level the way they apparently can with starships, but there you go. I was scanning for them and somehow they jumped me anyway.
Sitting on the edge of her bed, Athena stared for a moment at the PADD on the floor, recording her report for Captain Janeway.
I would call it "par for the course," lately, with me, but I guess that would be editorializing? All the same...
She paused, shook her head. "Computer, delete last two sentences."
'Compliance.'
Clawing her hand through her rapidly more and more unkempt hair, Athena took a deep, shuddery breath.
Regardless of the method of their surprise, the Kazon were on us in numbers and we were pinned down in a hallway, Commander Chakotay and myself, accompanied by the aforementioned freighter crew, seeking shelter behind bulkheads. We returned fire as best as we could.
Commander Chakotay was-- whatever your mental image is when you think of the phrase "grace under pressure," that was him. Unflappable, implacable. He squeezed off shots, striking up a rapport with the freighter crewmembers so that they'd get his back... they acquitted themselves really well. He was a machine and he was an animal.
He was The Quarterback.
I myself was frozen to the spot, collapsing under the same pressure under which he was so graceful.
He said... something to me. I forget what. But it was exactly what I needed to hear, and it got me into the fight.
I managed to hit one of them. Don't ask me how.
(He died, screaming, that Kazon did. I'll remember that my whole life.)
And-- Chakotay-- he looked surprised. I don't know what surprised him-- that I managed to one-shot a tango? I don't know. But because I did something that surprised him, he wasn't looking when they threw a bomb. And I tried to warn him, but I said--
I said things in the wrong order.
I said: "Commander! Grenade!"
When I should have said: "Grenade!" first.
And it went off and he went down hard. Like, I thought he was dead and I was alone down hard.
She smiled faintly, agonizedly.
So, yeah. I should probably be... be brought up on whatever, for that. Disciplinary-- yeah.
She looked away, at that. Like she couldn't look The Captain in the eye, even though she wasn't even in the room.
He went down and I-- froze again.
It took me a moment or two, but I-- I retrieved my courage, and I-- I retrieved Commander Chakotay's phaser and, setting it to overload... gave the Kazons a taste of their own medicine.
(There's something else I'll never forget.)
I regret to inform that I did not perform-- a-- I don't even know the word. "Headcount." Of the Kazons. I don't know how many actually died or ran away or what. I set off a bomb that felt like it could break a world in half and I smelled their flesh burnt to a nadion crisp.
--I know a little bit of First Aid. But not as much as some people. So I gave Commander Chakotay a quick tricorder scan and sent him back to the freighter bridge with the crew-- I figured that was a defensible position and safer than leaving The Commander where he was or bringing him with me --and proceeded on, attempting to meet up-- uh, rendezvous-- with the crewmembers that had been pinned down...
She paused. And struggled to gather her thoughts.
Here's where it gets weird, Captain. If you'll pardon my, uh, parlance.
Because-- you remember Ensign Seska went off to try and flank the Kazon? --after I walked a ways, I thought I heard her talking to someone. They sounded male, I guess. But when I 'rounded the corner to find her, she was by herself.
I asked her if she'd been talking to someone, and she said "no," and she looked at me like I'd sprouted two heads and one of them was Ferengi.
Probably I was shell-shocked. Because nothing seemed to make sense to me. She said that the Kazon had forgotten something, and come back for it, gotten it and gone...
But I thought that the freighter crew hadn't... hadn't had anything left to their names, which was why we had to bail them out?
Seska said that obviously the crew were conning us. And I guess they must have been.
Because shipping water... shipping water didn't seem like...
She paused.
...shipping water didn't seem like that big of a deal.
Except. Except isn't water like worth its weight in latinum, out here?
Her eyes hollow and deep, she stared to nowhere for a moment.
And then shook her head, trying to free herself from her reverie.
...I submit this report with the full knowledge of the ramifications it might have for my career. I don't want to try and seem like I'm pasting my shortcomings onto a fellow Ensign.
I'm glad Commander Chakotay's okay. Please give him my regards and my apologies.
She tilted her head back, and closed her eyes.
And murmured: "End report. Send."
'Compliance.'
And she sat there, listening to the hum of the deckplates, for quite awhile.
RSS Feed