Everywhere and Nowhere

Posted on 29 Jul 2015 @ 11:44am by Lieutenant (Sogh) Andreus Romar
Edited on on 29 Jul 2015 @ 11:47am

573 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Episode 09 - Empires
Location: IKS Saalm - Bridge
Timeline: MD 01 - 1040 hours

[ON]

Andreus Romar had always felt it difficult --perhaps nigh-impossible-- to focus on an absence.

As IKS Saalm's duty gunner, Andreus Romar's lean Argelian frame was tucked into a chair at the aft of the battlecruiser's bridge. His while body leaned into the hooded monitor, as he ran his hands over the controls for the tactical console. Although his frame was clad in scaly Cardassian armour, Romar's appearance was somewhat out of place on the Klingon starship, given his bright blond hair and a slash of silver makeup across his eyes. Those sapphire eyes were fixed on the targeting scanner's hooded monitor, but they were also fixed on nothing. There was nothing to see, but the interface's grid references set into a crimson hexagon. There were no physical targets in his sights.

If there had been a starship in his sights, Romar's mind was trained to follow its movements, to anticipate its path of travel, and to search the surrounding void for the unexpected. He hadn't been trained as a gunner per se, but he did have tactical experience all the same. His experience hadn't involved serving on warships, though, which still made Romar uncertain of his place in its hierarchy and community. Romar's experience had come deep in an Obsidian Order bunker on Cardassia Prime, piloting drone vessels to seek and destroy enemies of the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance. In theory, targeting enemies from the bridge of a battlecruiser felt much the same. In practice, life on a defense force battlecruiser wasn't much like serving in the Obsidian Order.

But when there was nothing to target --like at this very moment-- Romar found his eyes trying to look everywhere at once. He was constantly thinking that he saw something. Like the rest of this crew, Romar was meant to be locating a Terran Empire outpost, but said outpost was proving to be evasive. He kept thinking he saw it, saw some sign of it. His eyes chased sensor shadows and chased his imaginings. He tried to look everywhere and nowhere.

It was exhausting.

At the same time, there was a certain delight in serving as a gunner with nobody to shoot. The Queen Regent would be horribly displeased, which meant Romar needed to be wary, but he still felt an intellectual delight all the same. Having nobody to shoot meant every shot he targeted in his mind was a perfect shot. There were no miscalculations, no missed enemies, no friendly fire. Every disruptor shot landed a killing blow, in his mind, without the complications of reality interfering. Unlike some of his nominal peers, Romar felt perfectly at ease with nobody to shoot. He trusted the Universe would provide him with something to shoot, sooner or later. Romar believed it unwise to rage against one's own position in the Universe. He certainly never intended to join the Klingon-Cardassian Defense Force, and yet all of the experiences of his life were preparing him for such service. Given the trajectory of his career through the Defense Force's Intelligence division, Romar had never expected to serve as a gunner on a battlecruiser either. But he trusted if he kept listening, and kept looking, he would be provided some manner of Terran scum to shoot out of the sky. And so he kept looking. Looking at an absence.


[OFF]

Sogh Andreus Romar
Gunner
IKS Saalm

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