Confessions & Histories

Posted on Tue Nov 6th, 2018 @ 8:37pm by Reessem Nubohn KIA (*)

Mission: Mission 8 - Shattered
Location: Shuttle bay SS Mary Rose, aboard the shuttle craft Forlorn Hope
Timeline: MD 2 16:00
2778 words - 5.6 OF Standard Post Measure

You ARE a bastard. Hump thought to himself as he checked in on Reesseem's sleeping form. He covered her with of all things, an old Gorn long coat that he'd found in this Frankenstein of a shuttle, that someone had aptly named Forlorn Hope. It had obviously been someone’s home at some point. Whoever they were, they had been kind enough to have removed most of their belongings. The engines appeared to be in good shape, though Hump couldn't see her doing any more than warp four, maybe five if you got out and pushed really hard.

Hump sighed as he powered down the ship, unconsciously he touched the woven cuff on his wrist:

“Like you, dada, like you!” little Reessem had squealed in joy as she came running into the kitchen with his beard trimmers, after giving herself to what amounted to a crewcut.

His wife, Séraphine, cried at the loss of her little girl’s long locks. Her own hair, long and silky black, had extended past the small of her back. She had tried to mould her daughter's hair in the same fashion, despite the stubbornly wavy hair Reesseem had inherited from her father. As for Hump, himself, all he could do was just laugh and laugh, which only succeeded in making Séraphine more miserable. He remembered the look of actual anger on her face as she ineffectively hit him over and over again, slapping his arm.

“No! No! No!” she yelled, “How can you find this funny? She looks like a little boy! Arnaud and Nadine will be over any minute!” she wailed, “Everything’s ruined and it's all your fault!” she added accusingly as she marched into the bedroom of their small apartment slamming the door. Leaving Hump alone in the kitchen with a very small girl whose lower lip was quivering.

Things were always being ruined, and they were always Hump's fault. He just shook his head, knowing he'd need to smooth things over with his high strung wife. But he had another girl to take care of. Picking up his daughter he gave her a reassuring kiss. “It looks good there Peanut, but come let dad even that out.”

It took some doing but made his daughter's work into something presentable. So when Arnaud and Nadine Nubohn, Hump's employers and ‘adoptive’ parents, arrived later that afternoon, Reesseem finally found herself being compared to Audrey Hepburn as the two smothered her with hugs and kisses.

The bracelet, Hump's touchstone, was woven by those same locks of hair Reesseem left on the floor that day. He had told his daughter that he made it so she'd never be far away from him. But also made her promise to never cut her own hair again.

Hearing some movement behind him, he glanced up at the windscreen and saw his now grown up daughter's reflection. “I suppose you need some answers.”

The woman had been watching a few moments as she groggily woke up and tried to move. She glanced down and noticed her hands were tied up. What the hell was going on? It was silly, one second the ship had been settled again and the next they were who knows where and then now she was kidnapped from her kidnapped ship. "Yes, I really do?" She had literally no idea what

“Fate is a funny thing. Paths cross. People who should be worlds apart somehow find each other.” Hump replied with a faraway look in his eyes, “There was a paper I read once, this physicist talked about quantum entanglement drawing bodies together. I don't know how to explain it. Maybe the universe just has a sadistic sense of humor.” He added looking at Reesseem with a sad smile.

“I saw the personnel records from this ship and I saw your name and face.” He explained looking slightly confused, “I had to come over here and find you. Make sure it was you as impossible as it seemed.” he added pointing to the medical tricorder. Then looking at his daughter, he blinked. “I knew your father. Owed him my life, in many ways. I couldn't keep the man you knew alive, but maybe I can keep you breathing .”

The young woman shook her head. How was it possible for this man to know her father? Hadn't he said that they were in another universe? "That is impossible." The woman said about him knowing her father. Her father had been an awesome man with no connection to Starfleet or anything strange.

His attention returned to the controls, "Now, we're still in The Rose's shuttlebay, the sweeping detail didn't even think this hunk of junk could fly. That's my 'rainy day' fund." he added pointing to a case in the corner, "There's enough there to set you up in a new life, wherever you want." Turning back towards Reesseem, his look was deadly serious, "The Empire doesn't like complications, and you and your crew make things VERY complicated." Handing Reessem a communicator, he continued. "I'll contact you when I can give you a hole in our sensor grid. Forget your friends. They're already dead. Run and save yourself." Hump hated himself for doing this. He wondered if she'd run. Sera would have jumped ship in a heartbeat, but did his daughter have enough heart? And if she did what the hell was he going to do then?

Reessem shook her head as she slowly stood up and nearly fell backwards from whatever was in the sedative that had been given to her. "I am not abandoning my ship, my crew or my friends." She said simply. "You need to start explaining some stuff. Empire? All this strange technology?" She wanted answers. "And how the hell do you know my father?"

Hump quickly stood up at grabbed Reesseem in his arms to steady her. It was all he could do not to hug her as her words choked him with joy. “Let’s settle you down here.” He said lowering her into the copilot’s seat, “I'll try and explain best I can.”

Hump shook his head, knowing the only way out was to go through, “Well Peanut, you’re well and good through the looking glass here. Though in your case it's back through the looking glass, I suppose.” This earned Hump a look of suspicious disbelief, “Thank-you, I've been waiting for that look from at least one of you. For Christ's sake, you'd think we said ‘We've taken you to TGI Fridays’ for all the blasé reactions we’ve been getting.” He ranted as he picked up the tricorder, and went through the multiverse, the Empire, crossovers. And finally all the quantum resonance whatnot and how that related to her directly. Overall, the fact that Hump just explained that everything she thought she knew about where she came from was a lie, she took it rather well.

"And how did i end up in the wrong universe?" She demanded looking at him in disbelief and like he had two heads. This was like some crazy nightmare. Maybe she was still knocked out and this was her minds way of making sense of things.

“Now I don't know how Hamish convinced your parents to take you in, but judging by the love you feel for your dad, they did a better than average job. As to why he chose them, I think it was so you'd grow up in a home as close to the one you should have had.”

“As to how you ended up with Hamish. You were kidnapped, stolen right out of your stepfather’s house. Your father and I were ‘away’ when it happened.” Hump explained euphemistically, not wanting to explain how he'd been packed up and shipped off as an indenture, by his ex-wife and her new husband to some half-assed colony on the rim, “By the time we made it back to Earth, it was over. You had been used as a bargaining chip of some sort. Your stepfather was a high ranking member of Parliament. Things looked like they went sideways, and that you were killed.”

“If your father knew you were alive he would have never stopped looking for you.” Hump said, almost pleading with Reesseem, desperate for her to understand, “Instead, thinking he failed you, he went looking for those who took you, I went with him. Hell, I think I egged him on. I never let him grieve not as long as we could find someone else, find the reason why.” By this point Hump was just staring at something very far away, reliving each step he took in becoming a monster, “In the end, it came down to corruption and ‘palace intrigue.’

“You see a little bastard stepchild didn't fit in with the picture you stepfather wanted to portray as a fine upstanding, moral family unit. But being a tragic victim of a horrible crime? That he could work with. I think finding out that your mother was part of it. That's what finally destroyed the kind loving man your father was. Anyway, he didn't survive your mother becoming a widow. I guess I kept this to remember him, to remember you. I changed your diapers more than once there peanut.”

Reessem stood up slowly holding on the seat for support. None of this was making sense - her parents weren't her parents, her universe wasn't her universe and worst of all this man was acting like she didn't know who he really was. She wasn't a pawn in someone's game, she wanted to find her friends and fix whatever this mess was. "My family might not be my biological family but they raised me in a loving home far from whatever craziness this Hamish or who ever he is brought me into." She hissed and slowly used the wall to try and walk towards the exit.

“Sit down before you fall down,” Hump ordered, taking Reesseem firmly by her shoulders. “You start walking around in the condition you're in you'll be black bagged and talking to an inquisitor within the hour.” By the way, his daughter looked at him, he half expected her to spit in his face. Good he thought, She might actually be strong enough to survive this. Pushing her back in the seat, Hump crossed his arms as his features darkening, “You will listen to me, now. You asked for the `whys,’ ‘whats' and ‘how’s and I gave them to you. Just because you don't like them, don't go stalking away like a spoiled overprivileged brat.”

“You say you grew up in a loving home, great that would have meant the world to your father. He would have hugged your parents and kissed their feet for doing right by you.” Hump scowled, “I'm not here to love you. I'm not here to have you betray the only family you ever known for a man you never knew. I'm here to keep a good man's daughter alive as long as possible, that's all. Got it?”

Hump didn't wait for her to answer as he dug something out of his pocket and pitched it at her. “You are now Ensign Regina Newel of the ISS Gaman. Congratulations.” Reesseem picked up the ID and saw the picture from her personnel on it, “The real Ms. Newel died on the Gaman several months ago according to the logs, but some enterprising file clerk’s kept her alive in the bureaucratic sense, probably to collect her pay and meal rations. Either way, her security clearance was still good.” Hump then picked up another bag, reaching in he tossed Reesseem a PaDD, “Here are your orders and authorizations for Prisoner transfer. They're vague enough to let you walk around the Rose and Fenrir easily enough. Hell, you could even have a few of your crewman in tow, if you so desired. If you want to try for Gamon, they won't hold up to close scrutiny.” Finally, he tossed her the bag itself, “That's an Ensign uniform, better than a personal cloak. Most everyone won't want to talk to you or even acknowledge you. They'll assume someone gave you some stupid assignment beneath the dignity of a real officer.”

"Not overly." The Secretary said with all the attitude of a teenager she could muster as she looked at all the information. Newel was a yeoman of some description from the file but the young woman realised that this was a perfect opportunity to find and free her friends. "Perfect... I can figure out what they want in the grotto. Your friends will regret coming on this ship." She said taking off her beaten jacket to slip on the uniform.

Hump stared at his daughter in horror. “NO! NO! NO!” he yelled, punching the bulkhead for emphasis, "Are you out of your MIND? Make us regret?" He growled, "Little girl, let me explain something. You have a crew of less than one hundred, that right now are spread between two warships, TWO WARSHIPS. Filled with over fifteen hundred souls with no concept of your universe’s restraint or morality.” Hump was almost panicking, not believing what he'd done,

“This morning I pinned some poor bastard to a wall with this knife,” he said indicating the sharpened blade at his hip,” because I thought he was trying to kill me. I had an actual knife fight with someone who has the word ‘assassin’ in their job description, which felt a little disturbingly like foreplay and had crushed another man’s hand for doing his job so I wouldn't have to kill anyone who saw that as a sign of weakness. My boss, Captain Reuben Gregnol, is called the Butcher of Betazed because he burnt the whole planet down to get some spoon heads. These are the types people you're hoping to teach a lesson to?”

"Then the butcher is going to be outsmarted by a little girl returning home. Now I think I understand why this Hamish took me away from all of this." The woman stared back at him for a second in her own horror not sure what to do or why he had reacted the way he had when it clicked.

Hump saw the realization on his daughter's face, sadly he nodded and gripped her shoulders again. “Yes Daughter of mine, It’s true,” he said looking into the depths of Reesseem's eyes, “As much as I wish it wasn't, for your sake. But listen to me. You won’t be able to do what you have to do. You're not this twisted violent thing.” He added glancing down at himself.

Recessed did something completely out of character and grabbed the knife from his belt in her own hand and stabbed forward with a rage that she didn't know she had connected with his hand. "Daughter like father then daddy." She said softly as she grabbed up the clothes and made her escape before he had time to react more than cry out at his hand bleeding.

Hump tried chasing after her but quickly lost her in the labyrinth of corridors. She was quick and determined, he admitted to himself as he tapped the dermal switch in the back of his ear. He was rewarded by a grainy shaky image of a corridor Reesseem was running down, along with some basic biometric data, that the patch projected right into his visual cortex. Ok Reessem, we'll play it your way for now.
She was running on adrenaline and anger now. Maybe she'd come to her senses. Probably not. Hump thought now he wouldn't. Still, she’d need help, she'd hate getting it from him but HHumpwas determined that it would be a long hate, well into her old age, if he had anything to say about it. Shaking his head, his he smiled turning off the feed, Heart of a Lion

Back at the shuttle as he wrapped up his hand, he reflected on his death, as he tended to do. Now it seemed to be fairly imminent, after what he'd done. Most likely it would be after an extended stay in an agonizer booth. To his surprise he didn’t have the longing he usually felt, Instead he found himself scared at this prospect. Guess I found someone to live for. he thought taking the dermal regenerate out of the shuttle's medkit

OFF::

Humphery Van Weyden
Executive Officer
ISS Fenrir

Reessem Nubohn
Secretary
SS Mary Rose
(PNPC Gregnol)