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This was my first story, written after 'my' appearance in Jaeih's story 'Aehallh 02: New Worlds, New Adventures' as the second officer of the Federation destroyer Jugurtha. I thought it was nice of Jaeih not to kill me outright, but I don't know why I had to be injured at all, never mind so brutally. (j/k, Jaeih!)
Anyway, picking up where she left off and continuing 'my' adventures in her Star Trek Universe, this story deals with the aftermath of 'The Jugurtha Betrayal'. While an accurate reflection of my thinking and skills at the time, re-reading it over the subsequent ten years has made me realise how whiny and wishy-washy it all sounds.
As such I've decided not to let it stand as-is and have indulged in a re-write to edit out and smooth over the sections that make me cringe a bit (or a lot) to read now. I have matured as a person and as a writer, so hopefully it will not seem (or even be at all!) as cringeworthy as I regarded it before this re-write.
While this rewritten tale was intended to be the flagship release of Starbase 23's "v2.0" redevelopment, delays in both because of the sheer scale of the work involved has let that down too. I had to find a proper, realistic motivation for my antagonist and so had to go back into the roots of both her and my protagonist's characters – both of which had never been conceived of, never mind written! So, lots of sill-ongoing background character building and even prequel-story writing later, here we are.
Let's hope you find it worth the effort I've put in. I know I do.
Once again I wake up screaming, trying to free myself from the unreasoning terror of my dream.
My mind slowly clears of darkened corridors and bright green energy pulses as I remember where I am. I roll over in my bed and look at the desk chronometer.
The soft red light blinks 0603 at me.
Damnit!
I scrub my hands over my face, pressing hard to ease the pounding in my head.
Every. Bloody. Night!
I drop my hands and swing myself around to put my feet on the floor. Hunched over, I stare at the regulation grey-blue carpet and try to empty my mind of the sickening images that rip me from my sleep night after night.
My right hand starts tightening its grip on my left bicep before I realise I've moved at all. I relax after finally noticing the increasing pressure of my fingers on the biosynthetic skin of my arm, reassured by its presence, its solidity. Shaking it off, I think it a good idea to get ready to face the day. I won't be going back to sleep so I might as well be up and doing something useful.
Cleaning my teeth I stare into the bathroom mirror and wish away the bags under my eyes and the strain lines across my face. I look like I've aged ten years over the last two months. My recurring nightmare ensures I no longer get enough sleep. The result of that is being unable to fully relax my face out of its now-constant pinched expression.
And every morning, my C.O. looks at me in that way: Assessing. Measuring. Comparing. Re-evaluating.
She worries about me.
I'm touched by her concern – how could I not be? She made me her X.O. to keep an eye on me and as a form of occupational therapy, getting me back in the saddle, having me face my fears. She told me as much herself as she was persuading me to sign on with her again.
But I'm also worried. If she is constantly thinking about my mental well-being then she is distracted from her own duties. And if she's worried about my dependability I shouldn't be here. I'm the weak link in the chain, the unknown variable.
Plus, I'm the first officer. I'm the one who is supposed to worry about the crew.
But… it's not like I didn't warn her. She literally had to bully me into taking this spot. Well, perhaps "bully" is a little strong. "Cajoled" and "pestered" are more accurate. I see my reflection smile faintly at the recollection, but it's a memory-reflex thing that doesn't reach my eyes. There's no emotion behind it right now; I'm still to drained from "sleep".
My smile blinks off.
I throw on my gym kit and make my way to the gym two decks below, climbing briskly down the nearest tri-ladder as part of my warm-up rather than wait for a turbolift. A few crewmen acknowledge me with nods as I stride from the centre of Deck 5 to the saucer's rim on the starboard side aft. I nod back, managing a weak smile for them that again does not reach my eyes.
I try to remain approachable, but since my injury I've been reserved and somewhat abrupt. "Distant and irritable" is how I've heard myself described recently. My C.O. again, trying to be helpful. The cajoling was evidently taking too long in bringing "me" back, so she is being a bit more… how shall I put it…
"Blunt".
She's not being horrible or malicious about it, she's just no longer sparing my feelings. I can't say I that blame her, either. I know I'm a colossal pain to deal with now, taking all her compassionate understanding and encouragement and returning a just-short-of-apathetic blankness, but I simply feel as if I have nothing more to give. No more is it "the dream of the stars" for me. I'm happily unhappy in this depression, this… psychological null-zone, "enjoying" the journey I'm on to my emotional zero-energy state. I would now be quite content just to putter away for the rest of my career in that light-duty starbase office job the base psychologist arranged for me as part of my therapy, but my friend the captain is having none of it.
Which is a good thing. Objectively speaking.
Arriving in the gym and getting my usual work-out routine started has the desired effect and it helps wake me up. Or at the very least it empties my head for a short while, gets my blood moving and my metabolism ready for an efficient assimilation of breakfast.
My exercising over I return to my quarters for a shower, again taking the tri-ladder to avoid stinking up a turbolift car. Once there I strip off and luxuriate in the blast of blissfully hot water and allow it to relax my body. As an old ship we're not fitted with the new sonic showers yet – and may never be – and as a small ship without a lot of water tankage excessive showering and the taking of long showers and baths are forbidden. However, R.H.I.P. still holds true and I decadently enjoy my ten minutes under the spray. It's one of the few things left to me that I actively enjoy, taking pleasure from the purely physical sensation of hot water running over my skin.
No thinking or emotions involved.
Unless I start comparing the difference in sensation of hot water impacting on the respective skins of my left and right arms.
Once out and in a fresh uniform I tuck my data slate under my arm and head for the mess hall, again taking the nearest tri-ladder but this time to the deck below and heading to the forward port edge of the saucer. I arrive in short order and secure some black, unsweetened hazelnut-vanilla coffee, a banana, and two slices of buttered toast. Finding a table alone by the four wide rectangular viewports – the mess hall's unofficial "officer's country" – I mechanically make my way through my breakfast.
The physical act of eating it lets me feel the good ache in my muscles – even in my left arm. My physiotherapy was so successful that I barely notice the difference in ability between my real and artifical arms, and even that awareness will likely fade over more time.
It's still really weird and disconcerting not being able to feel anything with my new prosthetic arm. I can sense the slight weight of my uniform top on it and I can tell when someone grabs or taps my arm. I can sense how hot or cold someone's hand is when I shake it and how hard they're squeezing my hand when they do. But I cannot feel the fabric of my uniform, how its texture or material is different from another. I cannot feel how dry or rough that person's skin is. In short, my left arm's tactile sense is gone, all the way from just below my shoulder to my fingertips.
However, even though I can no longer distinguish these things I'm deeply grateful to have an arm there at all, never mind one with a skin sensitive to touch and heat. This is no super-powerful, invulnerable bionic arm, though. No suddenly being able to lift things only a Vulcan could, punching through bulkheads, taking sword-strikes on it and feeing nothing, sticking it into an active EPS power tap and fixing something by hand. This is a highly complex, very delicate piece of state-of-the-art medical technology designed to let an amputee lead their normal, pre-injury active life. It can be damaged in all the same ways an organic limb can be. This is why the pain reflex has also been included, to have its bearer protect their new limb with just as much alacrity as their natural limbs, so that I don't accidentally melt my hand off because I didn't notice it was too hot where I'd rested it. Any pressure or heat exceeding the programmed limits and I get the same pain signals as a real arm would give.
I discovered that when foolishly punching a bulkhead in a rage during one of my psychotherapy sessions.
All in all, I am more than happy with my replacement arm, and I believe I am coming to terms with its deficiencies as compared to my right arm. It's just a damn shame the psychotherapy was nowhere near as effective. It's as if my allegegly healing psyche is adopting the same approach as the doctors took with my arm: all the sensations are there but there's no feeling on top of it. Deadened emotions not allowing myself to feel, so I cannot get hurt again.
However, despite all I feel there – and especially what I don't feel – if my friend the captain just stopped trying and wrote me off as a lost cause, basically just stopped caring, I think it would finish me, cut me off completely. She is currently my one active link to this life.
My other friends are giving me space to come to terms with my injury, presumably allowing me to heal on my own without pressure. They're there if I need them, always welcoming and ready to accept me back into the fold, but not actively pushing me to rejoin them.
They're going for the osmosis approach.
The captain, on the other hand, is a very proactive person and is determined to help me back into making a full reconnection with reality through active engagement. She's not letting me sit out my life.
Even as the emotional cripple I currently am I can recognise the validity and benefits of both approaches, but it seems my friends have the wrong idea. I don't feel any differently with their passive support, such as being on the path back to becoming my normal self; to the contrary it's allowing me to sit in splendid isolation while not reaping any of the consequences of my detachment.
So here I am. This is me. Here lies Lieutenant Andrew Brown, dead but not yet at rest. Drifting through my life in a kind of daze, doing my duties for her. Good deeds must not go unrewarded, after all. So I do as best I can as her reward for caring. To show that I really do appreciate what she is trying to do for me. Even through all this fuzz, I still don't want to disappoint her.
I'm hoping she can actually do it and break me out of my self-imposed hell. This is not any of the hells our mythologies describe for us but the much more tangible hell of simply not enjoying life anymore. I really hope she can, but if I am going to continue putting no effort into it I think she is doomed to failure. The best my own efforts can be described as is "fake it 'til you mean it", but sometimes only the first two words ring true.
Ah, such cheerful thoughts this morning!
I'm not normally this repetitively introspective. It must have been a worse night than is usual for me.
Cheerful or not, these are the thoughts floating disjointedly through my head as I mechanically consume my breakfast. Forcefully shoving them aside with the last bite of toast, I fire up my slate and begin bringing myself up to speed for the morning shift by reviewing the reports logged overnight as well as the latest Fleet updates from Command.
That done and the last of my first morning coffee inhaled, I make my way to the command centre of the ship though this time I deign to use the turbolift. Stepping onto the bridge, I acknowledge the greetings offered to me and collect those final updates. The captain will be here shortly and I want to be ready for any question she asks. I walk over to the environmental engineering station on the left side of the main viewscreen, and literally just stare into space.
The thought amuses me, as it always does, but distantly. No smile reaches my face.
Then the captain arrives on the bridge. The other day-shift personnel having already arrived before me, a new day begins on the good ship Kusanagi.
After looking over everything and seeing all is well, she approaches me with her own data slate.
"Good morning, Lieutenant," she greets me pleasantly.
"Morning, Sir," I reply easily.
Her presence effects a change in my mood. She just has this… appeal about her; I want to be happy for her. She makes me want to make the effort. She makes me forget, which allows the "old" me resurface, making me feel almost normal again.
I suddenly get an impulse to wrap her up in a bear hug and grin stupidly at her.
I've been helluva slow to realise it, but at some point I've developed real feelings for my new captain. I'd fancied her from the moment she was introduced to me as my new Division Chief Officer in the Ship Operations department of our last ship, the Jugurtha. She had never returned that attraction as far as I could discern, but we seemed to just connect in most other ways. Over those four years we became so close as to be almost family. I know what I'm feeling now isn't love – not yet at any rate – but given the chance…
Just remembering that silly impulse of a second ago makes be think that maybe her efforts to "restore" me aren't doomed to failure after all.
Ah well. Time will tell.
Maybe the reason our little group is so close on this new ship is that we've only been here for five days and her crew is still dealing with the deaths of their previous senior staff. We've all made new friends, mainly in our own departments, but we haven't really had the chance to meet the rest of the crew with everyone tied up in last-minute repairs.
The captain goes over the details in her slate and I answer or discuss them on autopilot. I'm busy admiring her form in the back of my mind.
She is almost a full head shorter than I am, and I'm not especially tall. She is not drop-dead gorgeous nor possessing of a classical beauty, but I am drawn to her looks regardless. It is an odd feeling to know that you have seen more beautiful women, but never a more attractive one. That’s not to say that she cracks mirrors, either. You could describe her as "cute", but she hates being called that and does what she can to discourage it. A small-framed, petite woman; slim with long, very dark brown hair – so dark brown it's almost black; a heart-shaped face with small lips; a pale but clear complexion; smiling sea-green eyes; and the cutest nose I have ever seen.
As I said, cute as hell. Utterly adorable. And a force of will within that does no good to go against.
My back-alley musings are brought to a sudden halt when I get that look again.
"Andrew," she asks in a lowered voice, "is your nightmare still keeping you up?"
Damn these baggy eyes of mine, I lament. There's certainly nothing wrong with hers.
I shrug and nod. "Yes, Sir. I would have hoped that after a month and a half it would have gone away, or at least become less intense. All those psychologists said it should, but it seems they don't know their—" I pause for a quick word change. "—bum from their elbows."
The unmodified version is a favourite phrase from my Dad's love of archaic sayings, but only a flicker of a smile passes over her face, the concern still evident in her eyes. I can see that this will be another long day if she presses me for details, so I finally give in.
"Sir, I… I think I may finally be ready to talk to you about it. All of it. But it will take some time… and it'll still be anything but easy for me."
Surprise flashes briefly across her face at my sudden capitulation, what with all her previous entreaties over the course of my recovery having been firmly rebuffed. "Of course, Andrew. I'm sorry too for always pushing it, but I know you need the release and will feel better afterwards. Once the day is done, we'll talk it out."
"Yes sir." I stifle a sigh. "Might I suggest my quarters at 1900?"
I mean that I'll feel more comfortable telling her in familiar surroundings, but I feel my cheeks warming as I realise it could be taken another way. Her eyes widen slightly, then she relaxes and smiles at my blush. Choosing to ignore several obvious jokes, she simply agrees.
Gratefully, I say, "If you don't need me for anything else, I'll leave the bridge and tend to the ship, Captain."
Acknowledging my desire to escape, she nods.
"Carry on, Mr. Brown."
"Aye, Sir."