A Bittersweet...

Posted on Wed Sep 25th, 2013 @ 6:25pm by Vendenje Kamdram

Mission: Picking Up the Pieces
Location: Various - Starbase 332

OOC: Song I listened to as I wrote this, if you are interested; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59g5R8rwqpY

--

"What did you think? Did you think you would just come here and kill me?"

"Yes."

A single light overhead illuminated a lone figure. The figure's long, lank hair was plastered with sweat and grime. Blood rolled freely down the side of the man's head, staining his stubbled face. He was bound, chained to the floor in a kneeling position. His gaze was downcast.

The Cardassian smiled. It was a long, unnatural smile. Neck ridges flared, and granite flesh flushed. Coal-dark eyes shined in the dim light. "Well." Fingers drummed on a gloss-black desk. "It seems this story has come to a bittersweet conclusion."

The Cardassian reached into the drawer of his desk and withdrew a broad, curved knife.

--

There was an urgency to his movements; not from fear, or even anger. The urgency stemmed from an almost electric excitement. It began in his toes; dirty, unkempt things, rotting in a pair of ageing boots. From there it trailed up his lice and flea infested legs, through his torso and shoulders, his arms, his fingers, nails chewed to the nub. It rushed up his spine and through his neck to his head, and there is where it remained.

His movements ceased. He stood in the center of the Promenade of Starbase 332, his brown eyes turning ash-gray as they rolled into the back of his skull. His face, worn and weathered, turned up and stared into... Into nothing.

He convulsed. The twisted movements shocked and people spread away from him, spread away from the spectacle. He began to suck in air and his chest heaved as his spine bent further than it should. The sound of bones cracking and breaking made those that could hear it wince and turn away. Mothers ushered children into their cloaks and skirts, and even the hardiest found it difficult to watch.

A pair of eyes in the crowd watched.

The man doubled over and vomited the meager contents of his stomach. He heaved again, and then retched blood. A moment later and he doubled over into his own body fluids.

The man expired.

The eyes looked away, and vanished into the crowd.

--

"Who was he?" The bartender continued to clean the faux-wooden bar with a dirty rag, something that Kam had always considered to be a stupid endeavor.

The thick-set officer shrugged. "Just some guy," he said. "High as a kite, but on what I don't know."

The bartender grunted. "Crazy," he said.

The officer agreed. "Commander O'Connell is not going to be happy."

Kam, perched at the end of the bar, slid off of his seat, swiping a money-reader against a scanner as he did. He finished his drink and started making his way out of the bar. In his life he'd only ever seen one drug make a man convulse like that. Only one drug that was guaranteed to kill you after so many uses, but that's high was so intense, so powerful, that a person would do anything to get their hands on it.

Venino, he thought. And there was only one dealer that Kam knew of.

Gerun Daev. Orion Syndicate drug-lord, slaver, and all around nice guy.

It felt like the pieces were flooding together.

--

"What is a lifetime? The duration of a person's life? All of their experiences... Hopes, dreams, even their failings and shortcomings... All wrapped up in a neat little dissect-able package. And yours? Kam... We know your secrets.

--

- 2364 - Gallitep Labor Camp, Bajor -

The boy was no more than eight years old. The Cardassian officer couldn't help but grin at the sight of him; bold and afraid, tears streaming down the sides of his face. His hair, the brown of freshly turned earth, was wild and unkempt. In his small boy-hands he held a man's weapon, a disruptor.

The weapon was old, probably scavenged off of a corpse somewhere in the mines or badlands. The Cardassian wasn't even sure if it worked, but even if it did the sight of the boy trying to hold the heavy weapon up was amusing.

The sun was bright, and high overhead. White light beat down on them. Green grass had once grown here, or so the Cardassian - Glinn Ulsho - had been told. Now it was nothing but a ravaged, desiccated wasteland. Old, rotting trees had become worn and weathered, and their twisted arms stretched out like the bones of ancient corpses.

Ulsho had been part of a larger patrol - a patrol, he told himself, that would be looking for him - when he had spied movement and split away. The movement turned out to be the boy. The boy had been in the middle of either burying or uncovering something. At the time Ulsho had been so stunned by his presence that he had lowered his guard. It was just a boy, after all. A small, harmless Bajoran boy...

A small, harmless Bajoran boy that had turned on him and laid him out flat. The boy had moved so swiftly that Ulsho had almost no time to react; a leg swept out and took him off of his feet, and he had further lost his bearing in the loose earth, which sent him tumbling down a small hill. When he had righted himself he found the business end of the boy's weapon pointed straight at him.

"This is idiotic," Ulsho said. "You aren't going to shoot me with that weapon."

"Will so," said the boy, his voice thin and tinny.

"No," Ulsho said, "you won't. And even if you did, it probably doesn't work. If it does work, the patrol I am part of will hear it and come for you." The boy seemed to grasp what Ulsho was saying, and Ulsho let out an inward sigh. He really did not want to test it. He started to pull himself up when he felt something wet running down his forehead.

It took him a moment to realize it was blood. A moment later and he realized that the ringing in his ears was from the sound of the boy's weapon firing. He looked at the child with shock written across his face. "W...why...?" Ulsho never said another word.

The boy had shot him through the skull; the weapon's kick was so powerful it nearly bowled him over. Ulsho's skull exploded, the back of it cracking and breaking open like an egg. Brain, bone, and hair washed across the dead land and Ulsho slumped back, dead.

Vendenje Kamdram had killed his first Cardassian.

--

The memory came unbidden, and he couldn't stop it. He watched the Starfleet Officer's milling around the Promenade as a medical officer took the body away. Why did I think of that? For a brief moment, in the crowd, he thought he saw a Cardassian. He thought he saw Ulsho.

It was not Ulsho.

It was a woman. It was Raela.

It was Ulsho's wife.

--

OOC: Sorry for the weirdness of this log. I wanted to get one out, and I had a lot of different ideas coming at me, so I decided to let it be weird. As I work on new logs I will retouch on all of these various points. I am also up for Joint-Logs with ANYONE who wants. Glad to be part of the sim, and looking forward to writing more, as well as with all of you!

--

Vendenje Kamdram
Freighter Captain