Stardate 68727.2
Posted on 23 Sep 2018 @ 8:26pm by Lieutenant JG Matthew Plumeri
Edited on 23 Sep 2018 @ 8:29pm
2,145 words; about a 11 minute read
[ON:]
[The Planet Fontalis – A Federation Protectorate]
[In provisional status]
It is night on Fontalis and in the city of Serse. The Federation embassy burns in flames! The fire licks the dark sky. The dead lay in the street. The bodies of Starfleet marines lay alongside dead Fontalan security forces, police, known as “Protectors”. They lie on the ground where they fought alongside the Marines to protect the Federation Embassy. There are bodies of civilians too, regular everyday people and some are in tan trench coats.
The streets surrounding the embassy are deserted. The figure of a lone woman carrying a child in her arms as she darts in and out of shadowed corners and debris is seen.
A gust of hot ashen wind blows. Carried on the hot air is a mostly burned paper. It flutters in the fired breeze, the hot stench of death all around. It lands on the body of a bloodied Marine. His wet, thick red blood causes the paper to stick to his chest. With a growing red patch of blood being absorbed by the burnt paper we read in bold letters the top of a bill put forth that morning; a proposed bill that started it all; all this death and destruction; a shame on the people and the land:
In Senate this the 1709th Session - “A Bill - On the Dissolution of the Crown”
(An Act on the floor of the Fontalan Senate put forth by House Domna, Sen. Gessius Thrax Domna): SB11702.605
===
The paper is now unreadable as the blood has soaked into it. Near the fallen Marine is the body of a young person, still barely alive. He moves to roll over onto his back. He has grotesque wounds. It is well that he will not live much longer.
A father searches frantically for his son. He finds him as an explosion sends shards of glass and duranium out into the streets from the burning embassy. His child lies dying on the ground and he falls to his knees when he sees him. His tan trench coat and Lokomai armband make him want to scream in anger. ~How could this have happened?!~ he asks himself. But the sound stops in his throat.
The boy attempts to speak. His father astonished that he is still alive starts to gather him when the young man groans in pain. He stops and instead bends down to hear what he has to say. With his dying breath his son recites in the ancient tongue that Gessius has resurrected.
He says, “…bellum omnium contra omnes…”. His body goes limp as the young man succumbs to his wounds and dies.
His father’s tears well up in his eyes and as he screams in rage and anguish. Gessius’ voice he hears…ringing…through the streets. It was with those words that the city started to tear itself apart. The man’s voice echoed everywhere it seemed and the people, especially those that were Lokomai cultists, were inflamed to violence. Chaos and consent followed quickly. As if in a madness…. he hears the voice everywhere. Until the voice itself is drowned out.
Even now, the weeping father can see in his mind’s eye the crazed Senator shouting, raving, like a madman surrounded by crazed acolytes before the cameras, in shouts, in screams, in agony…with immolating flames he yells,
Therefore, I move that an immediate and through dissolution of The Crown and the Temple System be enacted into and made the Law of the land. The Kingly line and the state Religion have become the backward spirit of Fontalan civil society, of the sphere of egoism. No more I say! We are our own people! As we cast off the King, so too we cast out the Federation! Mark my words, do not oppose us! For we are bellum omnium contra omnes!
Four words, and a two-thousand-year-old society starts to tear itself apart. Looking out over the city from some high vantage point, there are new fires and new plumes of smoke. The sound of weapons fire and of general chaos.
Simply the largest fleet yards in the Federation, Utopia Planetia encompassed both a planet side facility and the twenty-one orbiting space docks used to build, test and maintain a wide variety of old and new starships.
Everything could be made here and so could everything be unmade here.
Like so many fireflies on a warm summer evening, the lights twinkled below on the surface of Mars. Those thousand upon thousand twinkling lights were plasma torches, electric arc welders and automated worker bees. High above our heads was just one of the massive orbiting dry docks where a Sovereign class starship was being repaired. Starfleet engineers buzzed around the space frame like so many gnats.
Below, was the valley of lights. Surface facilities for repair and maintenance of all sorts of land-based craft used by the Federation. Mechanized Marine unit tanks, ion defensive guns for planet side defense, all manner of landing craft and shuttle craft; literally everything. Why, even underwater vessels were engineered and built here before being shipped to their final customer. Massive automated plants cranked out an almost inexhaustible supply of ships and equipment that the Federation used every day.
Passing through the skeletal frame of an LEV (Landed Extrication Vehicle) were the castle-like towers of the corporate offices of the company that made all of this happen. Universal Spacecraft Systems was where the "magic" happened. Some engineers called it the "Magic Kingdom", others called it the "Purple Palace" a thinly veiled reference to the color of the carpet that dominated most of the inner offices. A steady stream of shuttles buzzed the spaces between the towers. Long straight lines they formed as orderly and single file as ants on Earth. Like spokes on a wheel superfast maglev trains delivered raw materials to the outer processing plants.
Universal Spacecraft Systems had long ago ceased to be merely a vassal of the Federation. In many ways, like a feudal duke and with unequaled baronial powers they frequently called the shots and could raise a project to life or mire it in endless committees so that a design never saw the light of day. In just one of the lower towers we can see windows of the many offices here. And it is to these offices that our attention must needs be directed.
There it is, second one on the left, just below the shuttle pod airlock. There is a waiting room here. There is an alien man, very tall, even though he is seated. He sits alone in the waiting room opposite from a civilian secretary. The male secretary is busy answering calls and the alien man waits patiently. The deep plush purple carpet and the gold ornamentation of the wall support draws one’s attention upward. Along the walls are marketing pictures and design blueprints for some of Starfleet’s most impressive spacecraft. A blueprint for a transporter module is expertly framed on the wall. A promotional picture for the Danube-class runabout shuttle is on another.
"Sorry to keep you waiting. Admiral will see you now", the male secretary stood as he spoke to the tall alien. Except for the purple carpet, the walls were a bright-metallic steel. Cold some might say. The alien man stood to his full height topping out at least nine feet tall (2.7 meters) he towered over the human. A set of oversized doors complete with ornate handles swept silently open. The secretary watched as the alien walked silently across the carpet and into the interior office. The doors closed again silently except for the click of the locking mechanism.
=== 15 MINUTES LATER - INSIDE THE DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR'S OFFICE ===
The tall alien had left moments ago. He walks silently across the carpet and out into the not-so-busy hallway at Universal. The Administrator's hair was neatly kept in a bun on top of her head. Her office was brightly lit but now she had dimmed the lights so that only the glow from the outside illuminates the room. Her desk beeps that an incoming call is awaiting her. She answers the call,
"I've just finished meeting with our associate", she answers. The voice on the other end is that of an older male. His Fontalan accent is apparent.
"Enlighten us if you will" the Fontalan voice says.
The administrator leans back in her chair and we can see her platinum blonde hair glimmer in the faint light. "Let me say it this way. Long ago, Terran map makers sketched dragons on maps as a sign to sailors that they would be entering unknown territory at their own risk" she said.
"Is that a fact?" the male voice replied. There was no emotion in either of their voices. "Go on."
She continued, "Some sailors took this sign quite literally and were afraid to venture on. Still others saw these dragons as a sign of opportunity, a door to places unknown, of virgin territory."
"And what of the…opportunity…now before you? How do you see our proposal?" he asks.
She rises from her chair and steps closer to the window and we can now see her upper torso. Her uniform is that of an Admiral with three pips on her collar. Her face is cold, and a frown is etched into her it. Her eyes are dark, like pools of black that suck light into them and let nothing out. Crossing her arms, she smiles a very fake smile and replies, "Bellum omnium contra omnes. I think it is time that we slay a dragon."
The pale light on her desktop vanishes and the COMM channel is closed. She gazes onto the bustling activity of Utopia Planetia, just outside her window. Events were set in motion now. And a line had been crossed. It didn’t matter how many got hurt or what was destroyed. What mattered now was that the perpetrators must never be caught, they must never be held accountable to anyone for anything. An ancient evil was being sought. And…awakened.
[AVONDALE SHIPYARDS – A PUBLIC COMM BOOTH]
“Personal log, Lieutenant JG Matthew Plumeri, Science Officer. Stardate 68727.2.
I’ll be leaving shortly for my tour aboard the Galileo. I’ve been trying to call home for the past hour and not been able to get through. I don’t know what to do. I’ve got it in my mind to just leave. Not call home for the next three years and not have to deal with all of this...crap. But I know I can’t do that. I won’t do that. Does this mean that for the next three years I am going to be a spectator as I watch my family, my home fall apart? My family; they’ll be OK. They will stick together. But they could lose everything. The home, the land. And what of my home? My planet and my people? Do I go and watch them destroy each other? I am so frustrated! I don’t need this bullshit right now. Not when I ma joining a new ship.
But how am I supposed to look away? How am I supposed to just…turn my back and pretend I don’t know what’s going on back home? What are my alternatives? Just be stressed and feel powerless? How do I keep my sanity and do my job when I know I am going to be wondering, watching and worrying about events a million light years from where I’ll be?
And what if it’s weeks before I can send a message out? There is still so much that I need to do before we launch. And this is the last time I could leave the ship. I feel…awful. And I’m confused. I have to get back to the Galileo before I miss something. I don’t know who to trust. And when the news reaches the crew that my people killed and murdered Starfleet personnel who were only there to help. Will they see me as human or Fontalan? Or will they see me; Matt? I need friends and allies, or I’ll go nuts for three years. Three years…will I have a home to go to in three years?
Computer, end and save personal log.”
[OFF:]
Lieutenant JG Matthew Plumeri
Science Officer – Historian
USS Galileo-A
NCC-80010
RSS Feed
Back to Top