One Peculiar Evening

Posted on 04 Oct 2015 @ 1:23am by Lieutenant (Sogh) Andreus Romar

1,325 words; about a 7 minute read

Circa MD 04 of “Empires”.


[ON]

Fragment of a journal entry by Sogh Andreus Romar, IKS Saalm’s Gunner:

Taking a patrol through the armaments, on this night, I thought I was demonstrating my thoroughness to the Queen Regent, LIrha Saalm. I thought I was demonstrating that I would be prepared —that the IKS Saalm would be prepared — to obliterate every Terran who darkened the cross-hairs of my tactical scanners. (If this crew could ever manage to find the Terrans, that is…) I thought I was proving my loyalty, but now it feels like I’ve proven the opposite.

After my duty shift on the bridge, I began my inspection of the maintenance compartment for the wa’ torpedo launcher tube. While I was conducting a diagnostic procedure on the torpedo casing elevator and the reactant loader, I heard the heavy door to the passageway slice open. I had been enjoying my solitude in the maintenance compartment. Perhaps my intentions were not entirely pure; perhaps I was avoiding the ruckus of the dining hall. My solitude was penetrated a feminine voice —with intonations that favoured sibilant sounds— drawing nearer to me.

“Sogh Romar,” was the only greeting Draia Theroh offered to me. Without looking up from my computer interface slate, I recognized the sound of her. The young Cardassian was one of the tactical systems technicians under my authority. “Following my duty shift yesterday, I reviewed the tactical logs. I sought to learn from my betters,” she said in a sickeningly ingratiating tone. “I read something,” she said, and then her voice dropped to a whisper. She inclined her head to bring her lips close to my left ear, just over my shoulder. “I read something peculiar in the logs.”

“Congratulations,” I said to Draia. The bombast in my tone was plainly disingenuous. “You’ve learned how to read,” I said. My mother, Hamidah, would say that had been classist of me. Perhaps I have changed, but Hamidah doesn’t understand what it’s like beyond the atmosphere of Argelius. I am an officer. Draia is not. That means I am her better. That is the way of the universe —or of this universe at least. Things could have easily been different. Draia was born of a good family, a society family, but all the influence on Cardassia Prime couldn’t keep her from being expelled from three educational institutes. (Or so the rumour goes…) My intelligence suggests Draia enlisted in the Defence Force, because it would give her title and something resembling a reputation of her own. In my Obsidian Order days, I intercepted a communique from Draia’s influential mother, which suggested she hoped Draia might even die in service of the Defence Force, before Draia could cause the family any more trouble. Family is all, after all.

Knowing her place, Draia only responded to my barb with an impassive, “Mmm.” I didn’t watch her, but I could hear her stepping back from me. She said, “The Queen Regent? She values thoroughness, yes?”

I cleared my throat. Maybe it sounded like a quick laugh. “The Queen Regent values victory,” I said.

Dismissively, Draia said, “Honour… Glory… These things are masturbation. We know that victory comes by thorough preparation and careful, detailed execution.” As much as I was presenting an air of calculated disinterest, I listened to Draia’s words. I thought she chose her words terribly carefully for someone who was home-schooled. I had to grant her that. Draia said, “That is how we do back home, yes?”

When had Cardassia Prime become home to me? When had Argelius begun to feel… alien? I can’t say when, but I had to admit that it had. I can’t begin to guess how Draia had known my feelings, but I had to acknowledge that Draia was right. The Klingons, and some of the others in the alliance, were bolstered by their brute strength. They could rely on strength to make up for the failings of honour and glory. The rest of us had to rely on other attributes. All I said was, “Yes.”

Draia had come to stand on the other side of me. With dutiful postures, she took my slate from me and manipulated the interface to continue the diagnostics on my behalf. She handed me another interface slate. “Do you recognize this energy signature?” Draia asked me.

“It’s the radiation leakage from a Terran Empire impulse reactor,” I answered. I didn’t need even three seconds to consider a response. The waveform on the display was incomplete —it was only a scant, partial reading— but I still recognized it instantly. When I had served as a drone pilot, back on Cardassia Prime, I had examined that wave-form numerous times. I had studied that wave-form so thoroughly, I had begun to dream about it. One time, I dreamt the temple, my mother’s temple on Argelius, and been destroyed by a visual representation of that wave form.

“Strange. Peculiar, even,” Draia said in a halting fashion. “I would have thought it unfamiliar to you, yes?”

“And what would make you think that?” I asked her.

“Our targeting scanners detected this energy signature,” Draia explained, “and yet there are no records of a report being submitted, nor of the signature being sent for computer analysis, nor even of further sensor resources being allocated to search for the signature.”

I scoffed at her. “Of course there are no reports,” I said. “If there had been, I would have known about it.

“But you did know about it, you peculiar man,” Draia said, and there was a threat of accusation in her timbre. “See whose identification was registered at the tactical controls on the Bridge. You see?”

As soon as she said it, I swiped my finger across the interface slate. The sensor composite of the wave-form scrolled down quickly to reveal the source of the information at the beginning of the data file. The identification code linked to the gathering of this sensor data was my own. There it was in the logs: my name linked to the detection of Terran Empire technology. But that was an impossibility! I couldn’t have seen that and done nothing. I couldn’t have missed that. I zoomed in to examine the time-stamp of the sensor reading. I blurted out, “This is a crude forgery. I wasn’t even on the bridge then. This was before my shift hand-off. I would have been… in the head? Or I was in my bunk.”

“Ahh,” Draia said in a mockingly hopeful manner. “Perhaps there is one who can verify your location at that time? A lover, perhaps? Or your slave, yes?”

“I live alone,” was all I would say to her.

“How peculiar,” Draia said. “How unfortunate.”

I cleared the interface slate I was holding, and I tossed it aside. Finally, I looked at Draia. I probably glowered at her. “What have you done?” I asked.

“Done? I have done nothing?” Draia said. Somehow, she managed to sound both condescending and shocked by what I had said. And then she sounded only condescending. “…Just as you. Did nothing. When your sensors brushed across the Terrans.”

I was blunt in my response. “Then what are you going to do?” I asked.

“Perhaps. I will do nothing?” Draia responded in a deadly sing-song. “Just as you did nothing.”

“…Perhaps?” I asked for elaboration.

“Perhaps,” Draia said. Her eyes went on the down, and she resumed the diagnostic of the tactical systems. When I continued to stare at her, Draia said, without looking up, “Perhaps there is something you can do to see that I do nothing…?”

“Perhaps,” was all I would commit to.

“You will need to listen closely…” Draia said, “Because it may sound… peculiar.”



[OFF]

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