A Piacere - Orchestra

Posted on Sat Apr 4th, 2020 @ 5:40am by Anthony Cardel
Edited on on Sat Apr 4th, 2020 @ 6:50pm

Mission: Mission 11 - Prospecting
Location: New Laurium
Timeline: Mission Day 01, 0930 hours
1371 words - 2.7 OF Standard Post Measure

||Mission Day 01, 0930 hours
||New Laurium

What remains of a man after a life that has been greedily spent?

Is he still present in the present?

Is he forced to relive the past?

Constantly trying in vain to make the future seem more like the past then his current darkened present. Some men spend their lives too early in their life and find they are unable to move midway through their lives. While others spend little and hoard as much life as possible but eventually, they find that just like water cupped in a hand it slowly but surely slips through their fingers.

His life had been well spent but he had paid for it, a heavy price that seemed to weigh on his mind without end. As a young man he had been able to carry the burden of his scars, holding up the stones of his burdens, screaming at the top of his lungs to keep those massive stones in the air. But as year followed year and more weight was placed on his shoulders, a sacrifice was made for every step that he took.

He had mastered it well and for a time he had balanced the stones, his mind had warned him many times that one misstep, one small loss of control could spell the end of his balancing act, and he remembered laughing at the weak part of his mind that warned him of his "weakness". For every year, for so many years he had triumph over his personal demons, his family and of course the wretched darling of the Federation.

“Starfleet” The word has escaped his lips as a whisper.

Even now, years after his seething anger made his old and low heart thump with heat and fill his vision with crimson spots. He had been so close, so close to the beast, so close that he could smell the fear of death and it filled him with vigor.

Even now it had been so perfect, using his few friends in Starfleet Command to place him aboard Starbase Templar to begin his investigation into its senior command and discredit it. The FAN had given him a wide berth to do his investigation but just like every perfectly laid down plan it had fallen apart.

“When mortals interfere even God’s plans go astray.”

The phrase held meaning to him. He had obtained real evidence of the station security chief insulting and attacking a Klingon Ambassador. It had been solid gold, once the court martial was revealed to the Federation Council it would be the beginning of the end. The FAN would publicly call for greater civilian oversight and control by elected representatives in Starfleet Command and slowly but surely Starfleet would be reborn to serve the purposes of the people and not grandiose Starfleet Admirals.

When the words of war reached his ear, he was unhappy to say the least. Just when the court martial was set to begin a rogue unit element of both Gorn and Tholian military personnel had decided to attack and attempt to destroy Starbase Templar and wipe out any Starfleet or Federation presence in the area.

He had even been injured during the brief conflict. He barely remembered anything about the wounds he received only the sickening sound and feeling when a Gorn boarding party had tried to take the bridge. He had stared mesmerized as the crew fought trying to save the ship from being overtaken.

The blurriness of his vision would sharpen when the image of the ship’s captain Beverly, a beautiful radiant woman with golden hair, and her face cut from marble the very image of perfection even with the sound of death and fighting around the bridge. He remembered looking at the cold fury in Beverly’s eyes; her eyes met him for a fleeting moment, those eyes deep and blue looking for the next target, the next enemy. It rocked him to his core, her eyes changed and she fumbled with her phaser as she tried to aim for something to his right. He looked to his right seeing a massive Gorn snarling with rage. His hands rose up fast, and as he looked on in horror at his own end, he felt the claws dig into his chest ripping apart skin, breaking bone and piercing vulnerable internal organs. He fell to the floor of the bridge, deaf to everything and anyone.

He shuttered involuntarily at the resurgence of the dark and terrible memory, his vision clouded for a moment and he felt a seizing in his chest, a tightness that wrapped its fingers around his throat depriving him on the preciousness of life.

It had been disastrous, not in the sense that the war was lost, the battle was won saving thousands of civilian lives but worst of all the FNN has demanded that he brand the Starfleet Officers of the station as heroes. It had been humiliating for him, months of preparing had been thrown to the side and worst yet they had given him a fucking Pulitzer Prize for his efforts as well.

Everyone raved about the article, requests for interview came in and his modest salary as a “Frontline Reporter” skyrocketed lining his pockets with both latinum and shame.

He eventually left the station for a brief period of time eventually settling on Denobula for a few weeks suffering from what Federation physicians claim PTSD was a direct response of nearly being killed during the Gorn/Tholian Unitarian Alliance-Federation border war. But he had been close to wounding Starfleet and he resolved to himself that he would try something else, something different. The border war was a fluke and could not have been predicted to explode in the middle of a routinely calm piece of Federation border territory.

A brief touch brought him out of his trance.

“We are entering the atmosphere” a Vulcan woman said, placing her soft hands to his forehead in a strange showing of affection.

He had arrived again, another time, on another planet.

Leto Colony had been his perfect mark to fulfill his fantasy of revenge against Starfleet. His plans had gone well and he had been close to achieving a disaster on the colony. He had failed, as he had done before repeating the same twisted plans of revenge that no matter the planning had ended in utter embarrassment. The plan had been aborted because of the Orion Syndicate intervening and unraveling his local criminal enterprise.

“A disaster here, in such a sensitive area near the crumbling Romulan Star Empire would finally turn the public’s attention to what must be done.” It was what he had told himself. But again he had been struck by failure and he couldn't blame a war or a Starfleet officer for his failure. He had dug his vines into the heart of the underworld of Leto Colony, supplanting local crime bosses with himself at the top of an illegal economy. He became enthralled by the experience of power and control. The abuse he inflicted daily on the serfs were not always violence or murder, but those who entered his realm suffered in ways that no citizen on Leto Colony could comprehend.

He had taken in a weak and emotionally stunted partner plying him with gifts and compliments. Anthony never considered him an equal. The young man was merely a tool to exact on others with his own personal craft of seduction. It was never going to last and Adam had sought to do just that. How far or how much the authorities had been told was never discussed; all that was told to him as he rushed into an ancient and dull Romulan transport was one simple phrase by his underling.

"They know."

Several years had passed since that day and he had hopped from planet to planet, system to system. He eventually found a local shuttle company that made monthly trips to his next destination in his careful reintegration into Federation territory.

New Laurium had none of Leto Colony's beauty but it did hold something of value, a cargo and more importantly a ship.

"SS Mary Rose." He said quietly reading from an aged Romulan padd.

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