Topic: Star Trek: The Andy Chronicles  (Read 34892 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Commander La'ra

  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 2435
  • Gender: Male
Re: Star Trek: The Andy Chronicles
« Reply #20 on: March 25, 2006, 08:52:55 am »
Yeah.  My girlfriend is pretty aggressive too.

Thank the Lord.
"Dialogue from a play, Hamlet to Horatio: 'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' Dialogue from a play written long before men took to the sky. There are more things in heaven and earth, and in the sky, than perhaps can be dreamt of. And somewhere in between heaven, the sky, the earth, lies the Twilight Zone."
                                                                 ---------Rod Serling, The Last Flight

Offline Scottish Andy

  • First Officer of the Good Ship Kusanagi
  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 1086
  • Gender: Male
  • New and improved.
    • Starbase 23
Re: Star Trek: The Andy Chronicles
« Reply #21 on: March 25, 2006, 10:46:33 am »
Wow, great responses. Looks like I hit the nail (male?) on the head on this one, so to speak. I'm glad I took my time and fleshed it out more than the 'joining Starfleet' chronicle, it seems to have made all the difference.

Tus: I'm glad you like me... um, him. *grin* As you may have guessed, Andy is going to be a lot like I was at that stage in my life, with him being just a bit more ballsy that I actually was. Thank The Wendyest I finally got over that!

I'm very pleased the rest of you (so far) liked and possibly identified with him. That's what I was aiming for.
Come visit me at:  www.Starbase23.net

The Senior Service rocks! Rule, Britannia!

The Doctor: "Must be a spatio-temporal hyperlink."
Mickey: "Wot's that?"
The Doctor: "No idea. Just made it up. Didn't want to say 'Magic Door'."
- Doctor Who: The Woman in the Fireplace (S02E04)

2288

Offline Scottish Andy

  • First Officer of the Good Ship Kusanagi
  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 1086
  • Gender: Male
  • New and improved.
    • Starbase 23
Chronicle Five
« Reply #22 on: April 21, 2006, 03:18:16 pm »
Okay, here's the latest one up on www.starbase23.net, just to keep this collection complete. Let me know what you think.



4th August 2267

“All it takes is one grenade and we’re all dead, Lieutenant!”

Damnit Tharn, I know that! I curse mentally before addressing the speaker. “We’ll wait for a lull in their fire or a distraction from the other team, then make a break for it,” I yell over the sound of disruptor and phaser bolts zinging around out ears. Outlining the rest of my evac plan, I point to a female engineer and finish up, “…then you and I will come out last. Clear?”

Serious nods from all around, even as they continue to fire back at the Klingons down the corridor. The bridge crew suddenly appear from the stairwell to Deck One and I slap the Andorian on the back, yelling, “Tharn, go!

One by one my team of five jump and dive and roll away from the protection of our deathtrap position, everything happening at light-speed in slow motion.

Three of them make it before the Klingons react, and it’s only myself and the female engineer whose name I don’t know still to get clear. Tharn and his companions pour withering fire at the Klingons from their new position, but the Klingons fire back regardless.

No more time. Need to go now!

“Ensign, come on!” I yell, throat hoarse. I jump to my feet, dragging her up too and pulling her along.

“Sir!” Tharn yells in slow motion. “Wait!” The sound is attenuated, oddly flat.

Too late. Already moving. Can’t stop now.

I hit the deck and roll to my feet, slightly off-balance after jumping through the holes burned in the turbolift doors. I spread my arms to regain my balance as I start to run.

Pain explodes into my brain as a searing impact spins me around, and I start to topple over.

I’m hit!

I try to reach out to cushion my fall but the pain increases, becoming ever more intense and blotting out almost every thought. My eyes find my wound, expecting to see a horrific gash bleeding freely. I’m more right than I ever knew.

My arm is no longer there.

My arm! I have no arm! Where is it?!?

I’m almost on the deck. This fall has taken minutes to complete. I look back up and the female ensign meets my eyes, her mouth opening, eyes wide and a look of pure agony on her face.

There’s a bloody, ragged hole through her stomach. I see her ribs widen, lungs inhaling one last time for a scream I never hear.

Blackness.
Come visit me at:  www.Starbase23.net

The Senior Service rocks! Rule, Britannia!

The Doctor: "Must be a spatio-temporal hyperlink."
Mickey: "Wot's that?"
The Doctor: "No idea. Just made it up. Didn't want to say 'Magic Door'."
- Doctor Who: The Woman in the Fireplace (S02E04)

2288

Offline trident850

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 2
Re: Star Trek: The Andy Chronicles
« Reply #23 on: April 28, 2006, 08:20:30 am »
Being a combat veteran, this last one makes an impression.  Even after more than 20 years, it never ceases to amaze me the way my impressions of myself and my surroundings changed on a moment to moment basis.  I was wounded 3 times in action, and every one was different, and there is a definite slowing of perception in high strees combat...well done Andy.

Trident

Offline Commander La'ra

  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 2435
  • Gender: Male
Re: Star Trek: The Andy Chronicles
« Reply #24 on: April 28, 2006, 01:39:32 pm »
I can't believe I forgot to post on this one.

Hpwever, Trident did a much better job of commenting than I would've anyway.

So I'll just say 'I like it'.
"Dialogue from a play, Hamlet to Horatio: 'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' Dialogue from a play written long before men took to the sky. There are more things in heaven and earth, and in the sky, than perhaps can be dreamt of. And somewhere in between heaven, the sky, the earth, lies the Twilight Zone."
                                                                 ---------Rod Serling, The Last Flight

Offline Governor Ronjar

  • Lt.
  • *
  • Posts: 830
  • Gender: Male
  • 'None Farther...'
Re: Star Trek: The Andy Chronicles
« Reply #25 on: April 28, 2006, 08:51:17 pm »
You got my attention.
'It's a lot of hard work being a mean bastard...' --Captain Eric Finlander, CO USS Bedford (The Bedford Incident)

'Jaken...are you pretending to be dead?' --Lord Sesshomaru, Inuyasha.

Offline Scottish Andy

  • First Officer of the Good Ship Kusanagi
  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 1086
  • Gender: Male
  • New and improved.
    • Starbase 23
Re: Star Trek: The Andy Chronicles
« Reply #26 on: May 02, 2006, 09:14:08 pm »
Guys, thanks for the comments, it's always good to get feedback, as Jaeih always says..

I'm especially gratified that you, trident, regard it highly enough to comment.
Firstly, I'm glad to see you made it through three injuries and are still alive to tell the tale!
Secondly, I'm glad it was accurate enough that it struck a chord and seemed realistic. I've never been through anything like that so I of course know nothing about how it actually does feel, but I did want to do it justice.

If you have any suggestions, any of you, please lay them on me.

I'll see if I can tear myself away from my ships/shipyards/construction research for long enough to work on another Chronicle.
Come visit me at:  www.Starbase23.net

The Senior Service rocks! Rule, Britannia!

The Doctor: "Must be a spatio-temporal hyperlink."
Mickey: "Wot's that?"
The Doctor: "No idea. Just made it up. Didn't want to say 'Magic Door'."
- Doctor Who: The Woman in the Fireplace (S02E04)

2288

Offline Scottish Andy

  • First Officer of the Good Ship Kusanagi
  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 1086
  • Gender: Male
  • New and improved.
    • Starbase 23
Chronicle Six
« Reply #27 on: August 03, 2006, 07:36:43 pm »
Here's something that came to me after reading my Horatio Hornblower stories. I realised that part of his character makeup has already been written into mine, and I thought I'd develop that in this little ditty. In case you don't quite get where this is developing from, you may want to re-read the latter half of Chapter Six of 'Aftermath'.

If you don't get the Hornblower connection, feel free to comment and ask for an explanation. *smile*

Let me know what you think: what you think I was trying to do with this, how well it worked for you, if it needs something, if there was too much of something.



September 2268

Get up!

The faint voice was a harsh grating in the back of my mind, recalling me to consciousness.

Get up, Damn you!

I ignore it. There's no need to get up. I fell down. I got up before. I've gotten up, oh, easily ten times already. There's no need to get up again.

Pathetic. Haul your useless carcass up off the ground and keep moving! the voice demands in it’s bland mind-tone.

With the scorching sun beating down on my back and my lips already cracked and parched, and nothing around for kilometres, why should I get up? Having already stumbled four kilometres into this barren sandheap searching for help—from the very people we laughingly attempted to rescue—just why the hell should I get up again? It's comfortable here. It doesn't hurt any more.

Contemptible. You disgust me, Brown!

My eyes snap open at that. Could they actually have found me already? Sent the second shuttle when we didn’t arrive at the freighter thirty minutes ago?

"C-Captain?" I croak.

On your feet, Brown!

"Yessir," I slur out, beginning to push myself up off the ground again. I mumble on, "I'm glad you're here, Sir… Glad you found me so soon. Thought I was a goner, out here, so far from the shuttle..."

They must have found the crash site. Shaeffer! Nurse Shaeffer was—is!—in the shuttle. Have they already rescued him back there and followed my tracks?

There is no immediate reply so when I stand up straight, wincing yet again at the many and varied injuries sustained in the crash, I slowly turn and sweep the area with my eyes.

There's nobody there!

"C-Captain?" I croak again, almost plaintively. Louder this time, I ask, "Captain McCafferty? Where are you?"

A profound silence answers me, so heavy I feel its pressure in my ears. I'm being not-so-slowly broiled under a sapphire-blue sky amid the empty desolation of a continent-spanning desert by a pitiless F5-class star that’s seven times as powerful as Sol.

I was so sure I heard her voice!

The sandstorm that caused the crash and plagued the first two kilometres of my trek for help is now long gone, leaving me engulfed in a stark, echoing silence.

"But I heard you…" I croak. It's beyond my current mental capacity, what with my brain being almost literally poached. I must be delirious. But I'm up again, so I might as well keep moving. It should only be another couple of kilometres until I reach the crash site of the freighter whose distress call the Kusanagi answered. Once there I can signal the ship and get help back to Shaeffer.

I trudge on towards my—our—only hope.

I can’t fall down again. Shaeffer needs me.
Come visit me at:  www.Starbase23.net

The Senior Service rocks! Rule, Britannia!

The Doctor: "Must be a spatio-temporal hyperlink."
Mickey: "Wot's that?"
The Doctor: "No idea. Just made it up. Didn't want to say 'Magic Door'."
- Doctor Who: The Woman in the Fireplace (S02E04)

2288

Offline Commander La'ra

  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 2435
  • Gender: Male
Re: Star Trek: The Andy Chronicles
« Reply #28 on: August 09, 2006, 06:51:39 am »
Very cool.  I'm missing the Hornblower connection, though, which may mean it's time for me to reread my little collecton.

I do have a problem with it though:  More than any of your other shorts, this one begs to be written as a full-fledged story.  It's cool on it's own, but I want to see a beginning and end in addition to the middle.
"Dialogue from a play, Hamlet to Horatio: 'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' Dialogue from a play written long before men took to the sky. There are more things in heaven and earth, and in the sky, than perhaps can be dreamt of. And somewhere in between heaven, the sky, the earth, lies the Twilight Zone."
                                                                 ---------Rod Serling, The Last Flight

Offline Scottish Andy

  • First Officer of the Good Ship Kusanagi
  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 1086
  • Gender: Male
  • New and improved.
    • Starbase 23
Re: Star Trek: The Andy Chronicles
« Reply #29 on: August 09, 2006, 10:44:00 am »
Yay! One comment! And it only took 6 days to get it!

Geez, no wonder I left... *goes away and cries in a corner*

Anyway, thanks to Larry for being the first, and whiney rant (and non-too-subtle hint to people I've commented on recently) over, here's my reply.

The Hornblower connection is that Horatio is occasionally pushed forward by a great deal of self-loathing and sel-comtempt. No one else sees him as such, but he always feels himself a coward and is constantly berating and mentally lashing himself for this.

I just gave Andrew an actual inner voice to do this, initially because I wasn't sure how to write one mind having an argument with itself, but now I'm sticking with it because it makes him look kinda skitzo *grin*

As for the Chronicles being expanded into full stories, they will be. These little smippets of Andrew's life will be included into proper full length stories--eventually. That is the plan. However, they are just such good scenes (in my head) that I have to get something out onto the screen now.

This Chronicle is the first of a trilogy dealing with this subject. Look for more soon.

If you actually want to read them, that is. And I'll not know that until you comment on it! Let me know what you think: what you think I was trying to do with this, how well it worked for you, if it needs something, if there was too much of something.
Come visit me at:  www.Starbase23.net

The Senior Service rocks! Rule, Britannia!

The Doctor: "Must be a spatio-temporal hyperlink."
Mickey: "Wot's that?"
The Doctor: "No idea. Just made it up. Didn't want to say 'Magic Door'."
- Doctor Who: The Woman in the Fireplace (S02E04)

2288

Offline Commander La'ra

  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 2435
  • Gender: Male
Re: Star Trek: The Andy Chronicles
« Reply #30 on: August 09, 2006, 05:17:32 pm »
The Hornblower connection is that Horatio is occasionally pushed forward by a great deal of self-loathing and sel-comtempt. No one else sees him as such, but he always feels himself a coward and is constantly berating and mentally lashing himself for this.

Ah, I was looking for something more specific rather than a general character quality.

Quote
I just gave Andrew an actual inner voice to do this, initially because I wasn't sure how to write one mind having an argument with itself, but now I'm sticking with it because it makes him look kinda skitzo *grin*

Next thing you know the voice will be telling him to kill kittens and tear the 'do not remove' tag off mattresses.  I know that's what mine does.*nod*

Quote
As for the Chronicles being expanded into full stories, they will be. These little smippets of Andrew's life will be included into proper full length stories--eventually. That is the plan. However, they are just such good scenes (in my head) that I have to get something out onto the screen now.

If that's the plan, cool.  Just letting you know this last one is the one that hooked me, the one that I wanna see the rest of more than the others.  The other Chronicles seem more self-contained.
"Dialogue from a play, Hamlet to Horatio: 'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' Dialogue from a play written long before men took to the sky. There are more things in heaven and earth, and in the sky, than perhaps can be dreamt of. And somewhere in between heaven, the sky, the earth, lies the Twilight Zone."
                                                                 ---------Rod Serling, The Last Flight

Offline Grim Reaper

  • The 4th Horseman, the Lord of Death
  • Lt.
  • *
  • Posts: 577
  • Gender: Male
  • Beyond the apocalypse
Re: Star Trek: The Andy Chronicles
« Reply #31 on: August 10, 2006, 11:45:14 am »
its a good tiny little piece m8
Snickers@DND: If there is one straight answer in that bent little head of yours, you'd better start spillin' it pretty damn quick, or I'm gonna take a large, blunt object, roughly the size of Kallae AND his hat and shove it lengthwise up a crevice of your being so seldomly cleaned that even the denizens of the nine hells would not touch it with a 10-feet rusty pole

Offline CaptJosh

  • Lt.
  • *
  • Posts: 775
  • Gender: Male
Re: Star Trek: The Andy Chronicles
« Reply #32 on: August 11, 2006, 02:41:59 pm »
Excellent vignette. More insight into Brown's thought processes, there. Keep it up.
CaptJosh

There are only 10 kinds of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.

Offline Governor Ronjar

  • Lt.
  • *
  • Posts: 830
  • Gender: Male
  • 'None Farther...'
Re: Star Trek: The Andy Chronicles
« Reply #33 on: August 11, 2006, 11:56:52 pm »
Actually I did reply to this, but it obviously didn't take...lost in cyber-space I guess.....

Anywho, never saw Hornblower as being the tortured type, but I've only read 2 books... Midshipman HB and Leftenant HB I guess were the titles... They were old, beat up Mt Ida Highschool hand-me-downs....  Still loved 'em tho. Anything about the days of sail!

But I do like the lil bit. Keep 'em comin.
'It's a lot of hard work being a mean bastard...' --Captain Eric Finlander, CO USS Bedford (The Bedford Incident)

'Jaken...are you pretending to be dead?' --Lord Sesshomaru, Inuyasha.

Offline Commander La'ra

  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 2435
  • Gender: Male
Re: Star Trek: The Andy Chronicles
« Reply #34 on: August 13, 2006, 08:52:38 am »
Anywho, never saw Hornblower as being the tortured type, but I've only read 2 books... Midshipman HB and Leftenant HB I guess were the titles... They were old, beat up Mt Ida Highschool hand-me-downs....  Still loved 'em tho. Anything about the days of sail!

Dude, I do HAVE a bunch of those, you know.
"Dialogue from a play, Hamlet to Horatio: 'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' Dialogue from a play written long before men took to the sky. There are more things in heaven and earth, and in the sky, than perhaps can be dreamt of. And somewhere in between heaven, the sky, the earth, lies the Twilight Zone."
                                                                 ---------Rod Serling, The Last Flight

Offline Governor Ronjar

  • Lt.
  • *
  • Posts: 830
  • Gender: Male
  • 'None Farther...'
Re: Star Trek: The Andy Chronicles
« Reply #35 on: August 13, 2006, 10:03:40 pm »
Woot!

Course...I still might 'have' those ones I mentioned....I did steal them after all...
'It's a lot of hard work being a mean bastard...' --Captain Eric Finlander, CO USS Bedford (The Bedford Incident)

'Jaken...are you pretending to be dead?' --Lord Sesshomaru, Inuyasha.

Offline Scottish Andy

  • First Officer of the Good Ship Kusanagi
  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 1086
  • Gender: Male
  • New and improved.
    • Starbase 23
Chronicle... X? - Part I
« Reply #36 on: September 21, 2006, 10:05:26 am »
Hi Guys, its time for another installment, looking into the mnd of the central character of my STU: namely, myself!

This Chronicle is a bit controvertial. My Beta readers liked it on its own merits, but some thought that it definitely wasn't Trek, where as others couldn't believe the character would do what is done here.

Now, I haven't looked at this one in a few weeks (months?), but I want it out there. I'm not sure if it'll actually be included into my "canon", but I want more opinions on it, so comment as loudly and passsionately as you like on it. I'm out for reactions on this one, and on every and any bearing you wish to make a comment or point on.

This short piece is set amost 20 years into my character's future, with no intervening backstory, and I think that is why it is so jarring. You know the Introvert, but you may not know this guy. Anyway, enough with the babbling from me. Here it is, and let me have it.



March 2287

I glare into the hate-filled eyes of my opponent and ruthlessly smash him down for the final time. Kneeling on his back, I twist the arm of my defeated enemy below me and made sure that the crawling slime who sullies everything by his mere regard has no chance to escape while I consider my options.

Commander Andrew Brown, Captain of the Federation starship Drake. The title sounds impressive for someone who’s worked so hard to achieve that goal, but pales in comparison to the power wielded by my opponent, and so I now find myself in a quandary. Jamal had once again managed to come crawling out of the woodwork at the worst possible moment, and now that I myself have thwarted his petty, vicious scheme of inflicting pain and humiliation for his so-called “revenge”, I knew that my own life had just taken a turn for the worse.

Quite possibly the worst turn it could take.

The “man” I’ve just whipped the tar out of is the heir to one of the oldest and most powerful families of the Federation, brought up in such a world of privilege and wealth as to outclass any of the monarchies of Old Earth. Their every whim is tended to by legions of servants, their voice carries immense influence in Federation bureaucracy, and they own their own planet in the spinward side of the Core Sectors—the most protected part of the Federation.
The Al Fadir family has been a trading power for Earth since the development of warp drive over two hundred years ago, and—as in so many cases—the hard work of the first four generations had lead the outlook of the later ones to come to expect such wealth and deference to follow them wherever they went, into whatever field they chose to follow.

Unfortunately, even in the enlightened Federation of the 23rd century such things still happen, though they are fortunately, microscopically rare. However, this is one of those rare times, and I’m in it up to my eyeballs.

People who’d gotten in the way of this family in the past have had their careers wrecked, their lives ruined, and in some instances, had simply vanished.
Oh, whoever had actually done the deed was usually found and convicted, and a patsy was always in place for the motive so that, even though the Al Fadir family had a compelling reason, such was the prestige and power of their name that their protestations of innocence were always—officially—believed. They were also very careful that no link was ever found connecting them to the actual deed, or any part of its implementation or planning.

I’d never encountered such a thing before this event, but on coming up against it for the first time, it sickens me to my core. Only during this incident have I discovered that one of my crewmates on the Cortez had had the misfortune to incur the wrath of Jamal—and I saw that young officer’s life ruined by a charge of industrial espionage: passing Starfleet technological secrets to a rival defence contractor for material gain. At the time, I knew nothing about the Al Fadir family, and I was shocked and disgusted along with the rest of the crew to find such a base individual amongst us, and glad to see them gone and properly punished.

I’ll have to search out the former Ensign Radin and apologise for having believed it. I should have known better, but the evidence was just too strong. I felt personally betrayed by her “betrayal”, and now I find I turned my back—as did we all—on an innocent woman. I have to make it right, however long it takes.
My own shame threatens to overwhelm me, but a wriggle from beneath me brings back my fury at the worm responsible for this. No, it’s more than just fury now, I realise. I hate this bastard. I hate this bastard more than the Klingons who took my arm. Admittedly, that hatred has been dulled by my constant exposure to it, but I can count the beings I’ve actively hated all through my life on one hand.

This slime is now the top of that list.

I’ve defeated him. His scheme to wreck another life has been thwarted—but has it been stopped? I ponder this, feeling the blood trickle down my arm from his knife slash. If I hand him over to the authorities, I have enough evidence to see him jailed, but will he be jailed? Will this even get to trial? Will he wriggle out of this and get off with a slap on the wrists? Scot-free?

I know that even if he does miraculously go to jail, his family will see to it my life is a living hell afterwards. I’ll be taken down much the same way as Radin was, and I’ll be disgraced and reviled before the entire Federation. Because of my own spotty past it’ll be child’s play to set me up with a motive so believable no one will care even as much as I did for Radin at the time.

I cannot go through that, I just can’t! I know I’m not strong enough to bear that burden, and it’ll snap me far more easily than I snapped Jamal’s other arm.

Then your choice is simple. You cannot let him go, my Voice, previously silent, speaks up.

My eyes snap back into focus out of reflex on hearing my captain’s voice, even though I know there’s no one else within ten kilometres of this warehouse. The contemptuous tone it frequently sports is absent this time, but it voices the option I dare not confront.

I shrink from the horror of that suggestion even as I analyse the practicalities of the deed in the current situation.

This warehouse was another of Jamal’s set-ups, trying to bait Lieutenant Kayla Truasima into falling into his clutches for some “revenge”. What is it with these people and their desire to not just control other people, but to dominate and rule them, and—when their petty will is flouted—to utterly crush and humiliate that which would not bend to their desires?

Jamal himself saw to it that there was nobody about. He wasn’t expecting a twenty-five-year Starfleet veteran to show up, armed with the experience of fighting Klingons in hand-to-hand combat. He was expecting some sweet, fresh-faced kid straight from the Academy, trying to prevent her hopes and dreams, and her position in life with her crewmates’ respect and friendship, from being tossed down a disposal chute.

Fortunately, her behaviour on board had become so erratic that I just had to intervene, and the whole sorry story spilled out of her as soon as I confronted her alone.

How I held myself together I still do not know. Had this bastard been there in that room with me I’d have butchered him. I wouldn’t have beaten him. I wouldn’t have vaporised him with a phaser. I would have literally ripped off one of his arms and bludgeoned him to death with it, and revelled in the spray of his blood on my skin.

The haze over my eyes from imagining this horrific scene had cleared just in time to stop Kayla from running from the room, convinced I was disgusted and enraged at her for daring to impugn such a lofty and high-profile name. I thank the Gods for such small mercies. Once I’d managed to control myself and reassure her, I got the full details of what was expected from her and had her follow them to the letter. Her meeting was secret, and she had decided to take a few days leave at a starbase while we were docked for resupply. Coincidentally—and just after being told this—I arranged an in-person meeting with my squadron commander which would necessitate both me and Captain Karen McCafferty boarding the starbase for a full day in a classified environment.

I now owe Karen big for keeping this little diversion a secret, as she is presumably still comforting Kayla on the base even as I took the lieutenant’s place in her privately-rented base flitter. As far as anyone knows, Kayla is off on a lone sight-seeing tour on the daylight side of planet Gamma-231-III, and the commanders of the cruiser Kingfisher and the destroyer Drake are in a secret strategy & tactics conference on Starbase 22.

So now, here I am in a long-deserted mining warehouse far behind the night side terminator, where only three people know where I am—and one of them is lying under me with serious injuries. The flitter’s sensors told me there was no one else around, and that the place didn’t even have its security cameras active. This was just to be a meeting place before he took the terrified girl back to a more secure location—most likely drugged—and he was expecting no trouble. As a result, my contempt for him knows no bounds, thinking himself safe because of his family’s influence even if something did go wrong. He’s inept, a bully, and quite likely Kayla herself could have easily beat the snot out of him if she’d seriously entertained the possibility.

However, even I feel that influence. Jamal is totally in my power right now. What happens as soon as I let him go? I arrest him—at the very least for assaulting a Starfleet officer, as the inept fool flew into a fury and thought he could beat me up with impunity, that my fear at his family’s influence would stop me from fighting back—and throw him in the brig to have him tried immediately at this front-line starbase. Even the warp 20 transmission speed of communications would be too slow for any family influence to make its presence felt before a verdict was given.

But what then? He would have to be shipped to a penal facility, and that was after all appeals. The very fact that it was a hush-hush trial would weigh against it, and quite likely the family’s legions of slick lawyers would get him a reduced sentence, if not sprung completely.

He would then be free to pursue a vendetta against me.

The only way this slime is leaving this warehouse is on the wind, and you know it. Now stop being a weak fool and get it over with!
The contempt is back. McCafferty is making her full presence felt again, and as usual, it goads me into the logical action.

But what happens to me, to my soul? I’m contemplating murder, cold—well, lukewarm—blooded, calculated murder. What happens to my principles, my morals? How can I call myself a power for good if I do this? How can I continue to wear this uniform that I spilled much of my blood and sweat to gain? How will I look myself in the mirror each morning, knowing what I’ve done, knowing I’ve made a lie of my Oath?

How will I live with myself?

The slime beneath me is yelling, cursing me, threatening my career, my life, my family, my friends and my friends’ friends. He’s probably wondering why I’ve not moved in minutes, one way or the other.

He’s trying to intimidate me into letting him go, but I know it’s now the worst thing I could do. All it does is disgust me even further, and with forced nonchalance, I ignore him and twist his arm again. His curses and threats dry up as a shriek of pain escapes his lips.

If it were anyone else, I’d let justice take its course. If I had faith in the system to punish him and protect me, I’d let justice take its course.

If I wasn’t so terrified of the consequences to literally everything and everyone I hold dear if I do, I’d let justice take its course.

I know that if I hand him over to the authorities, from that moment on I will be watching over my shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting on my life to be ruined.

If I don’t, no one else will bear the burden. Kayla will be free. My family, friends, comrades, shipmates—all will be free of the vendetta Jamal will bring down upon me for bringing him so low. He won’t care they had nothing to do with it, had no knowledge of it. All he’ll see is another way to hurt me—and he’ll take it. There is no doubt in my mind.

If I don’t, I alone will have to live with the consequences of this “night”. No one else will ever know. Not even Kayla and Karen, I’ll make sure of that. I must protect them from the ensuing investigation the Al Fadir family will launch into his demise.

My eyes focus sharply again, suddenly aware that the decision has already been made. In the midst of one thought, almost subconsciously, I’ve decided murdering a man—yes, even one such as he—is the only correct choice. I’m not strong enough to bear the consequences of letting him live, so he must die.
If I were to tell them, I’m sure Karen and Kayla would agree—and also be every bit as thankful that they hadn’t done it.

The moralists among us—and the Federation is full of them—would be horrified. “How can you justify taking a life for this? Let ‘The System’ deal with him. ‘The System’ works!” they’d cry.

Normally, they’d be right.

But ‘The System’ is for ordinary mortals like me and them. How well does ‘The System’ work for the few outside of it who can ignore it?

I’d like to see them explain this to Jessica Radin. Her unjustified disgrace ruined her family’s standing on her conservative home planet and pushed them to the bottom of the social pile. The last data updates I saw had them destitute and struggling for survival. I don’t even know if Jessica is still alive. It’s been almost thirteen years.

I must find her.
Come visit me at:  www.Starbase23.net

The Senior Service rocks! Rule, Britannia!

The Doctor: "Must be a spatio-temporal hyperlink."
Mickey: "Wot's that?"
The Doctor: "No idea. Just made it up. Didn't want to say 'Magic Door'."
- Doctor Who: The Woman in the Fireplace (S02E04)

2288

Offline Scottish Andy

  • First Officer of the Good Ship Kusanagi
  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 1086
  • Gender: Male
  • New and improved.
    • Starbase 23
Chronicle... X? - Part II
« Reply #37 on: September 21, 2006, 10:06:01 am »

My mind now firmly made up, I pull the Type-I phaser out of the concealed compartment in my boot and haul Jamal to his feet, facing me. He is stiff and unable to move either arm, and I must have spent five full minutes with my knee in his back and his face pressed into the thermoconcrete while this decision and its consequences whirled through my head.

Should I even attempt to make him understand, or should I just atomise him on the spot? He obviously knows I came here to avenge or protect Kayla, having arrived in her place. It’s not like he’ll learn anything from it, and what would he do with it anyway in the five seconds after that I’d let him live?

His eyes light on the small energy weapon and looks at me, confused. “If you had that, why not just shoot me with it to start with?” he asks belligerently.

Maybe I can impress upon him my reasoning, make him truly see why I’m doing this.

Weak, Brown, very weak. Always wanting to be “understood”. It’ll be your downfall.

My friend the Captain. Right as always, but this time I want to try. I don’t want him to see me as some cold assassin, but an avenger against all the wrongs he’s perpetrated throughout his miserable life.

“Too merciful,” I grate out. “I wanted to hurt you.”

His face again curls up into a sneer. “Ah I see. Furious that your little bitch was spreading for me, that it? Wanted your revenge. I understand.”

His words make a mockery of my intentions and underscore my Voice. “Kayla is a friend, not a lover,” I manage to tell him mildly, though what I want to do is shove that sneer out through the back of his head.

He’s surprised by my mildness, I can see. His dig having apparently missed its mark, he’s now not sure of my motivation. “Then why come in her place?”
He sounds genuinely puzzled. I pity him.

“Because that’s what friends do for each other,” I tell him just as mildly. “Friends share a burden that’s too heavy to bear alone. Friends beat the holy living hell out of cowardly bullies too used to having their own way because Daddy will protect him whenever he gets caught ruining someone else’s life.”
He spits in my face. It’s an effective tactic, what with all the blood in his mouth from split lips and broken teeth.

I smile at him.

I then rip off the arm of his expensive shirt—worth more than I used to make in six months, when we still had money—making sure it’s his broken arm at that, and wipe my face clean with it as he shrieks in agony.

“I’ll make you pay for this, f*cker,” he gasps. “I’ll see to it your career and family and friends all SUFFER FOR WHAT YOU’RE DOING TO ME NOW!!!”
Ah, the shriek of the spoiled brat. Music to my ears.

“No you won’t.”

The mildness of my voice is really starting to get to him. He’s not used to people not being intimidated by what he can do.

“I’m going to give you a chance,” I tell him. “You’re going to leave me alone, and you’re not going to go anywhere near or do anything to affect my family, friends or anything. You want to know why?”

“You can’t talk to me like this! I’ll—”

His indignant protest is cut off by my elbow smashing into his mouth again.

“Forgetting where you are? I’ll do what I damn well please, and you’ll keep your trap shut,” I tell him. Mildly, of course. My hatred and fury is now a hot fusion ball of malicious amusement in the pit of my stomach, and I’m now enjoying what I’m doing. I know it’s a bad sign, but I’m not caring right now.

The hatred in his eyes fades away to almost nothing, replaced by genuine fear as he for the first time takes stock of his current situation.

I’m glad I’m there to see it, to see the arrogance and brutality stripped away to reveal the pitiful, cowardly wretch beneath.

“You’re not going to touch me or mine, because if you do, I’ll kill you.”

The fear in his eyes is vivid now, all the more so for my conversational delivery. Someone once said that it is far more menacing to hear it that way than to scream it. A screamer is trying to intimidate, terrorise—and convince himself as well. Saying it in a low, unthreatening tone, well… That person knows he doesn’t need to intimidate you because he knows he will carry through that threat with no more regard than for swatting a fly.

I see the truth of it now in Jamal’s eyes. He believes me.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I tell him. “You’ll do whatever it takes to get away from me, then barricade yourself away behind hundreds of hired help on your private planet until I personally meet with an ‘unfortunate accident’, or get killed by ‘unstable elements’ on whatever planet I should step on that feels your family’s influence.”

Jamal’s eyes widen and I get clear confirmation of the thoughts by reading them directly from what passes for his soul.

That was his chance. He just blew it.

“Yes, I thought as much. And once I’m out the way, you come back out to play as if nothing ever happened. As if I hadn’t beaten the hell out of you as if you were no more than an actual sack of sh*t. Then you’d go after my family and friends, free from possible retribution, to ‘avenge’ yourself for this ‘insult’ of being handled so roughly.”

I glare at him malevolently and hiss at him, “You know what an ‘insult’ is? An insult is forcing yourself on an impressionable twenty-four-year old girl who was genuinely honoured to meet such an important person as yourself. An insult is using your family’s influence to terrorise that girl into silence so she wouldn’t make it known that you are the disgusting, cowardly, bullying, lying sack of sh*t that everyone knows you to be but doesn’t dare say to your face. An insult,” I roar at him, my left forearm crushing into his windpipe, “is your consciousness’ continued existence in any dimension of being!”

He tries to squirm out of my grip, to push away the elbow choking the life out of him, and I see the stark terror in his eyes. But I already know that the terror is a fleeting thing in his mind to be pushed out again when the immediate danger is passed, as if in an eight-year-old mentality. I know that that he has learned nothing from what I’ve told him, nothing from the pain I inflicted on him, and he’ll go back to being his usual self once he’s sure he’s safe. This really will end up being “an eye for an eye”. He hurt someone I’m responsible for—just one of my officers, one I don’t even really know at all—so I hurt him back. In response he’ll hurt someone I care deeply about.

I know that as soon as he is away from me and protected by Daddy or his minions, that terror will be replaced by a hatred that will grow by the hour and will not be sated until my entire lineage is wiped from existence. 

It really is pre-emptive self-defence. I’m saving myself and my own a huge amount of grief in the very near future by nipping this in the bud now. One stitch in time saves nine later on. For the tree to grow properly, you need to prune a few branches.

Stop stalling and do it!

Ah, Captain, my Captain. Right again. I’m trying to distract myself with anything. I know I have to do it, but I’m trying to draw out the last moment before the loss of my innocence. I’ve killed before, and had the nightmares to prove it, but that was always in self-defence, or kill-or-be-killed situations. My phaser’s stun setting has saved me many a good night’s sleep.

But not this time. I’m about to murder someone, and I have to set my phaser to “prune”.

He sees me do it. He knows what it means.

“Please! I won’t come after you, I promise!” he begs, croaking the words out past my arm. I should have killed him right away, with no chance to protest. In trying to save my conscience, I’ve just given it some heavy artillery all its own to rip into me later with: a pitiful wretch of a man, begging me for his life.

The fact that I know he’s lying, that he’s not sincere, that he’ll recant his promise as soon as he’s safe, will mean nothing to my dreams.

Still pinning him to the square concrete pillar with my arm and ignoring his pitiable blubbering, I snarl in his face, “For the crimes of rape, flagrant and wilful misuse of personal influence, subverting the letter and process of the Law, assaulting multiple Starfleet officers, and various but unspecified acts of coercion, bribery, industrial espionage…” I pause, running out of accusations off the top of my head, but continue “you are sentenced to Death, said sentence to be carried out immediately.”

I push away from him and extend my phaser arm. He doesn’t try to run, just collapses in on himself, crying like baby.

“Please don’t kill me!” he wails.

I fire.

He lights up in an incandescent glow and shrieks before his body is completely disintegrated.

I quickly undress and phaser all my clothes into their component molecules and pad naked back to the base flitter. I hadn’t actually prepared for this, so I’m going to have to scrounge up some fresh clothes before getting out at the base. I raid the mining station dormitories and manage to find a coverall at least three sizes too big for me, but at least they don’t have any traces of his DNA on them.

I don’t bother sanitising the area with a specially-tuned phaser beam. That covers up the evidence, but it leaves traces that point to a cover-up. Within a day or so the traces of the two phaser blasts will be completely dispersed. Besides, if they get this far, it’s going to look like he had a fight and lost it, and was then vaporised. They’re not going to know who he fought with. That was the whole point of all this cloak and dagger.

Dagger! I check my arm and find it has stopped bleeding, but I need to trace around the whole area for blood drops.

I’d better sanitise the place after all. Setting about that task, I realise that I don’t feel any different, but I’m sure that will pass.

If it doesn’t, then I’ll start to feel worried.
Come visit me at:  www.Starbase23.net

The Senior Service rocks! Rule, Britannia!

The Doctor: "Must be a spatio-temporal hyperlink."
Mickey: "Wot's that?"
The Doctor: "No idea. Just made it up. Didn't want to say 'Magic Door'."
- Doctor Who: The Woman in the Fireplace (S02E04)

2288

Offline Governor Ronjar

  • Lt.
  • *
  • Posts: 830
  • Gender: Male
  • 'None Farther...'
Re: Star Trek: The Andy Chronicles
« Reply #38 on: September 21, 2006, 10:04:33 pm »
Oh
Hell
Yeah!


How very Ford and Thomas of you, Andy. I liked that very much.

Ford would have had Thomas beat him down...then said nothing and shot him in the same position and circumstance...

But the melodramatic effect has its merits too. If you're punishing someone...might as well they're mentally tramatized too... ;D

I say it should be in your 'canon'.

--thu guv!
'It's a lot of hard work being a mean bastard...' --Captain Eric Finlander, CO USS Bedford (The Bedford Incident)

'Jaken...are you pretending to be dead?' --Lord Sesshomaru, Inuyasha.

Offline Commander La'ra

  • Lt. Commander
  • *
  • Posts: 2435
  • Gender: Male
Re: Star Trek: The Andy Chronicles
« Reply #39 on: September 22, 2006, 09:36:17 am »
This version's a tad different from the one I read isn't it?
"Dialogue from a play, Hamlet to Horatio: 'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' Dialogue from a play written long before men took to the sky. There are more things in heaven and earth, and in the sky, than perhaps can be dreamt of. And somewhere in between heaven, the sky, the earth, lies the Twilight Zone."
                                                                 ---------Rod Serling, The Last Flight