Drowning Sorrows

Posted on 26 Mar 2017 @ 12:58pm by Ensign Miraj Derani

2,245 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Episode 14 - Statecraft
Location: Kreanus Colony store rooms
Timeline: Rogue MD01 0045 - Back Post

[on]

Miraj couldn't sleep. It had been four days since they'd brought the Galileans to Kreanus, and she still hadn't been given permission to take a ship back to the crash site. She could guess why. To get there in any reasonable time, they'd need to give her a warp capable ship. And a warp capable ship could escape and blow their plans to hell.

She found herself wondering aimlessly up and down the corridors of the area the colony had set aside for them, not sure where she was going, too busy trying not to cry.

Abbey took another gulp from the bottle she had stolen, the bruises had mostly faded and the doctor did a number on all the cuts and scratches, so well that they were just mere memories but the pain was still there. To her left on the floor lay two empty ones bone dry and entire crate still unopened, luckily she could already tell she was drunk. The drink was something between rum and vodka with possibly some hydroponic orange squash to take away the bitterness after all that's why she was drinking right? Since her capture she had been Tortured, abused both mentally and physically. No body was going to miss a runaway Starfleet officer especially one from the mirror universe, she expected it multiplied the Pirates anger than anything but overall they had finished with her, she was used property now.

Finishing her third bottle she was about to pick up the fourth when someone walked around the corner, pink haired and looked as bad as she felt. "You look like shit" abbey stated.

Miraj vaguely recognised the woman, one of the security detail. She'd been in the other cell, and then Miraj had got so caught up in trying to find anyone who hadn't been in the infirmary for the first 48 hours she'd forgotten all about the ones who had been. She looked at the pale face, the bruised features. "I think you could give me a race in that area. You got some personal time with those Klingons as well?"

She nodded "Perhaps a little bit to much, but it all turned out ok didnt it?" She looked around as if to notice where they were for the first time "Ah shit, no we're still here at there mercy" She took another swig of her drink "Are you going to stand there and ruin my view or join me?" She said pointing to the massive shuttle bay.

"Hell yes." Miraj eyed the bottle. If she couldn't justify drinking now, she never would be able to. "I need grog." she thought about it. "No. I need to be three sheets to the wind."

Abbey looked at the bright pink haired girl and tapped the top of the crate with her hand "I'm not sure what three sheets to the wind means but it sounds good"

"Drunk as anything," Miraj translated and pulled out a bottle of her own. "Where did you find this. The last time I needed a drink I got given this horrible homebrewed spirit that smelt of disinfectant." She slipped down the wall next to Abbey, pulled the cork out with her teeth and spat it out. "I'm Miraj, formerly Chief Pilot of the Galileo."

"You drink well" She teased, "For a pilot." Abbey tipped her glass to the pink haired woman. "I thought I remembered you from somewhere, though its hard to forget someone with bright pink hair. Is it dyed?"

"No, natural. My mother's genes." She took a swig from the bottle. She recognised the sweetness that lay under the burn. "Ahh, grog." She let the sweet sticky drink go down, and said. "How are you doing? Seems like all of security took a beating. Those that survived that is." She hadn't seen Amarani, or Rayze, since the destruction of Galileo

She shrugged "I wasn't assigned to Galileo at the time, starfleet think i'm a security risk" She pulled back her hair and showed the Terran Empire Tattoo off, "So naturally they ship me off to another ship and put a phaser in my hand. First chance I got, stole a shuttle and ended up here. Justice really" She mused finishing the bottle.

"Wow, you turned pirate," Miraj sounded a little awed. Then she looked at Abbey "Why would you be a security risk?" She hadn't recognised the tattoo.

Abbey frowned before exaggerating the tattoo again "Hellooo, Terran Empire, or you guys call The Mirror Universe! Some people think I'm a spy or an assassin! Most are just scared of me because they don't know what I'm capable off"

"Oh wow." Miraj had never met anyone from the Mirror Universe. Even though she knew that the crew of Galileo had been there before she joined, "That's awesome. Why would they be scared? People there are just people? right? Its a different culture that's all, discovering different cultures is kind of what Starfleet does."

"Thats why it scares them" She admitted, "We are exactly like you except we chose the path of destruction, instead of peace we chose war. People like you" She said using the top of her bottle as a pointer "Were used as slaves, just like this place. Infact this is the most homely i've felt since coming to this universe."

"People like me?" Miraj frowned, the soft flares of her orbital arches drawing together.

"Wel I suppose you'd make a good captains assistant, You're pretty and clearly not human. Then again" she shrugged "All I'm saying is where I'm from we look at people in a different way, we woman" she said pointing back and fourth "were just a commodity, I worked my ass off and killed to get to where I was"

Miraj had read enough pirate stories to understand a world where a woman had to be truly extraordinary to be successful as anything other than a child making machine. "That's barbaric." She took a swing, of drink. "Not the killing I mean, yes obviously that's barbaric, but I mean how they treat women. Its dumb. and prehistoric. How did you get out?"

"I...I did something no one should ever have to do" she admitted "I'd rather not talk about it" she said taking another swig of her drink. "This stuff sucks"

Miraj shook her head. "I like rum. Rum, is good." she took another gulp of her own. "Its a shame. It sounds like an awesome story." she drunk some more. "If ever I needed a good story, its now."

She shrugged "It really isn't an awesome story, believe me but maybe after a few more of these I'll spill the beans as long as you wont share it with anyone"

"Not a word." Miraj promised, "Drink up." She necked a good three fingers more, gave the bottle a shake and downed the last couple of drops. "I need some more."

Abbey smiled reaching for the crate and opened another bottle "We're going to have to steal some more bottles at this rate" she finished the bottle and picked another for herself.

Miraj helped herself to another bottle and pulled the cork out with her teeth and spat it across the floor. "So how did you get here? From the Mirror Universe I mean?"

"I escaped" She said between sips of her drink "I did something that would have certainly meant life imprisonment or worst death" She took an extra long sswg of her drink "I killed myself... well obviously not myself but the other Abbey" She sighed not making eye contact with pink haired woman.

"Your self here?" Miraj looked horrified. "You murdered her?"

"She was tied down on an operating table, they had taken some of her fingers and she was still bleeding from her phaser injury. Yet she still didn't speak. I was told to go in and extract the information out of her but when I went in I saw an exact reflection of myself. They were never going to let her live so I took a knife and slit her throat, it was merciful and quicker than what the commander would have ordered. She would have been raped and beaten even more and only kept alive until she was no good" Abbey explained all the while swigging her drink.

Miraj put her hand over her mouth in horror. It was a terrifing story. The other woman wasn't wrong when she said the Mirror Universe was an evil place. "And then what happened?" her question was a little breathless, eager to know what happened next. "Didn't they know you'd switched places?"

"Not at first" She finished off her bottle and opened another before continuing. "I dispatched the two guards and boarded the Galileo that's when I found myself with one of your crew members. We were arguing and a security officer interrupted us. He was the shot now ask question later kinda guy and I killed him too." She stopped "I regret doing it but at the time I was scared and still in the empire your people hated us"

Miraj took a long swallow. This woman was force of nature. Like something out of a novel set in more violent times. Wild and dangerous and fascinating. Like Luke had been. The thought of him, now cold amongst the gestating stars of the nebula, if he hadn't been blown to atoms, brought tears to her eyes and she scrubbed them away quickly. "So," she sniffed a bit. "Didn't the crew of Galileo figure out who you were?"

"Yes very quickly, the former Abbey was apparently rather sweet and innocent Luke certainly knew the difference which is why I was sent away. Of course no one knows about what happened and how I managed to escape the MU Galileo." She said "I Do wish it had happened differently"

Miraj sat up. "You knew Luke?" Did she know he was dead?"

She shook her had "I didn't know Luke not until I was told he was Abbeys father. my version died." She said simply. "Luke knows she's dead now obviously but doesn't know how, just that she died and I saw it happen" Abbey admitted.

"Wow." Miraj took a swig from the bottle., le it burn down her throat. "So he's your father? biologically?" she was sure that wasn't right, the drink was making her understanding fuzzy. Then she remembered what he's said that day in the shuttle bay. "You're that Abby?" She was getting a bit drunk now. It made sense, but it didn't make sense.

She nodded to all of it "Im that abbey and he is biologically my father" With that said she finished her other bottle, the world spinning around her. "So... I'm a monster right"

Miraj looked at the battered, bruised woman with sympathy. Luke had thought something similar about himself, she was sure, given how concerned he'd been over letting her see him fighting, savage and barehanded. "You remind me of him, and I didn't think he was a monster." A fat tear beaded up on her lower lid, wobbled for a moment before rolling down her dirty face. "I think I loved him. Or was about to. We hadn't know each other long, but...I hoped."

Abbeys ears pricked up and she smiled "You loved him? but not anymore, did he know?" She asked "If he did then hes a fool for letting you go"

More tears started to crowd along her eyeline then throw themselves down Miraj's cheeks. "He didn't let go. He died when they took the ship. I hope he knew." She took a mouthful of drink, found comfort in the sweet intoxicating liquid. Tipping her head made it spin, and she necked some more, hoping to spin away the pain. "But I didn't say anything. I mean, we hadn't even... you know. But I hope he realised. I've never met anyone like him."

"I didn't know he had died, I guess we both have lost a great man in our life's" she said raising her glass "next time if you ever se him again in this life or the next in Valhalla tell him how you feel and never let go!"

It was unlikely to happen. She knew from the pirate novels she read that Valhalla was an earth afterlife for scary warrior types, like the Klingons' Sto-vo-kor. Scary warrior was the opposite of Miraj, even if there was an afterlife. "I don't think there's even a body to recover." Miraj took a steadying sip. "But if there is, I will."

"As long as he died with a weapon in his hand then a Valkyrie would have taken his soul to the great hall, and if he was half the man people say he as then he is dining with Odin right now" abbey said proudly as if Luke truley was his dad. She had one stable thing in her life and that wa Odin, Thor and the other gods she believed in.

"That he definitely did. Repelling boarders." Miraj hadn't been there, but she'd heard Lirha's orders, and knew from the others the running battle below decks. She held out the neck of her bottle to Abbey "To a warrior. And a good man. Not a monster."

"And my father" she said raising her bottle to the woman's.

[OFF]

Ensign Abbey St James
Security officer
USS Galileo

Ensign Miraj Derani
Chief Flight COntrol Officer
USS Galileo

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