Posted by Captain Zachariah Cobb (Commanding Officer) in Holodeck - A Captain, a Counselor and a Campfire

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Cobb drained the mug of chocolate then turned his attention to the s’more in his hand. Filling the now empty cup half full with kahlua, he used the creamy liquor as a dipping sauce for the already messy treat as he hurriedly crammed it into his mouth before it could disintegrate down his beard. Such a simple, innocent pleasure that, for a brief moment, he considered abandoning this torment of honest conversation entirely. But they had travelled too far now along this road. To retreat was no longer an option either of them had the luxury to consider.

“What happened on your first mission?” he dared to ask next.

• Captain Zachariah Cobb

Casela paused noticeably at the question. After the torment of sickbay, the unwitting torture Fey had put her through, she was still too raw. And even without that, that particular set of memories were always too hard. “That is a conversation for someone else. I don’t think…I know I am not prepared to delve down that well to Hell tonight.” She moved back to the kettle, still filled with hot water and she poured another cup for herself and offered one to Cobb. She could drink HotChocolate every day, the way some drank coffee or others drank alcohol. Sitting half crossed legged, with one knee drawn up, and her arms wrapped around it, she stared into the flames, seeming to consider some decision. “There were three of us, all fresh operatives. We thought we were invincible. IT was easy enough, we were simply to integrate into the colony and listen and report back. But we were discovered, the other two, Shane and Hollis, died.” There is a long pause. So much is noticeably not said or told. “When I returned I was told it was my fault that I had screwed up. I had been careless and got my team killed.” She picks the knife up again flipping it and catching it over and over.

Cobb remained silent as Casela talked, his eyes shifting repeatedly from her own and down to the knife between her fingers and then back. Loss. Betrayal. Blame. It was a tale as old as time, a wound as deep as a canyon. In that moment he felt he knew everything and yet nothing at all about Lieutenant Casela Synthi-er. They were cut from the same cloth but fashioned into garments so different as to not even be of the same class. But grief always cut the same, inside, no matter how one chose to wear it on the out.

“I know now, and I did then I guess, that it was all lies. The intel we were given was bad, and the section knew it. Sent us anyway. My second mission, I was sent with another team of green faced operatives, eager to save the world from itself. I left them, locked in the shuttle,” she chuckles slightly, “so I could determine if the intel was correct or not. The person we were there to retrieve was there, but more heavily guarded than reported. We did manage to get him out, with no loss to ourselves.”

“I sent the team back. I stayed. On the way back to the shuttle I interrogated the weasel for anything he could tell me. The team didn’t like it, just wanted to go, but something was wrong there. He was keeping children from their parents to ensure their cooperation with his illegal trade agreements. Children whose parents didn’t survive were thrown into a mine to fend for themselves. It was abandoned and most of the children died within days. Back then I had no qualms with using my telepathy as a weapon, Mentally I was broken and I was unable to see the monster I was becoming. I made each and every one of those compliant with the scheme beg me for their own mothers before I killed them.”

Dark night gave perfect camouflage to his expression and for that Cobb was thankful. But still, for a fraction of a second, the firelight was refracted across his cheek by a single, crystalline tear.

She whispers a command and then a small object is transported into her hand. It’s a small, now brittle stick, wrapped in a dirty strip of cloth. “The children went home to their parents. I stayed with the orphans, until I found them new homes. The mine was dark, no lamps, dirty, and dry, no water. The last child I Fond, Alyssa, this was her doll. Her real one was taken from her when they threw her into the mine.” Zachariah, if he had ever been in her office, would recognize it from the small self she kept away from prying hands. The shelf with the handful of small uninteresting objects, and he would begin to understand what they really were.

He attempted to speak but found silence the dam restraining torrential emotions, each word collapsing his meager defences as they launched like torpedoes from his tongue.
“You did the right thing. I truly believe that. For whatever it may be worth.”

She turned her gaze on him, “And what about you?”
Lt. Synthi-er, CNS

“Me?”

He had not been expecting the spotlight on his own shoulders and for a moment he stayed his tongue. How much to reveal without casting her from his side? How much to lay on her without entombing he completely in the rubble of his past?

The formalities of chocolate now dispensed with, Cobb placed his mug to one side and commenced drinking directly from the bottle, long sips providing not only sustenance but also an excuse to delay his tale. Only when the first promises of fog began to tease at the edge of his subconscious, when the liquor convinced him he was safe to reminisce, did Zachariah Cobb begin to talk.

Casela watched him begin to nurse the bottle of Kaluah and she felt immensly guilty. She had asked the question because she simply needed to be able to stop, for a moment. To try and slow the torrent. Now opened, it would hours before it stopped, but she needed to breath, and she needed to lock up the memories of that very first mission. But now her own discomfort was of so little importance to the torrent she had just opened on Zachariah without meaning to.

“When the war broke out I was stationed near the Badlands,” he began. “I’d carved out something of a reputation for myself as a station engineer. And a damned good one at that,” he laughed and for a brief moment looked almost proud at the recollection. “When the Dominion attacked it was all hands to the pumps and, as our losses increased and the pool of commanders diminished, I was given my own ship to drive into the heart of the fight.”

Pause. Drink. Repeat.

“She was called the Albatross and by the gods did a ship ever live up to its name. Bloody rusting pile of junk, pulled out of retirement when the desire to protect our remaining flagships was at its most urgent. But she was fully stocked for battle and carried the finest bloody crew I’ve ever had the honour to meet. We were fearless, in those early days. How does the saying go? Young, dumb and full of…” He shook his head. “But we earned the rights to our swagger. Two Cardassian vessels to our name by the end of the first battle. A bloody Jem’Hadar cruiser in our second. We landed back on that station after every skirmish to a true heroes welcome. Wine, women and song aplenty. War was never meant to be that much fun!”

Casela had seen, first hand, the torment the Jem’Hadar caused, without thought. Simply mindless…demons. Worse than monsters, things that, to her 14 year old self, had seen as coming from the depths of Dante’s deepest ring of hell. And there was a part of her that cheered and wanted to welcome home any hero that took out a Jem’Hadar battle cruiser.

Cobb winced visibly, the memory of this prelude like a Cardassian fist to the face.

“Then they came. The Breen.”

Casela simply nodded her understanding. She’d not faced the Breen in all out combat, but she’d heard the stories, and she’d watched them from afar on a couple of assignments.

He rose from his chair, the temptation to flee sudden and overwhelming. The desire to seek permanent retreat in those blood-red flames even more so. Instead, he began to pace a slow circle, as if daring himself to wind closer with each uneasy step.

“We had no idea what had hit us. One minute we were casting out torpedoes like candy at a parade. The next we were dead in the water. No lighting. No power. No defences. A Keldon class slammed three Cardassian warheads into our port side. And before I could even blink I’d lost a hundred crew. There are no words to describe that feeling, of categorical, inexorable impotence. Me, pinned to my bloody useless chair, fists pounding against bloody useless controls. At my left my Second screaming for assistance and I can’t do a single damned thing to reach him. The last thing he said to me, this man whom I’d served alongside of for the best part of three years, was to tell his girl that he loved her and his mother that he missed her. And then he died, right there, on that flesh-pink carpet. Gods, I couldn’t even reach him to close his eyes!”

• Captain Zachariah Cobb

Casela watched as he paced, slightly closer to the fire with each pass. She knew the feeling. There was a part of her that had sat before a fire, like this one, many times and was convinced that the flames would not hurt nearly as much as the wounds she was left with. From his pacing and eager glances at the flames she knew Zachariah was convinced of the same. She could feel the frustration, the rage against fate, the helplessness of that moment radiating in waves from Cobb. There wasn’t anything she could say or do to make it better so she stayed silent, simply there, by his side, while he paced.

“Did you know, there is a weak spot in Cardassian armor? About a hand span below that strange protrusion on the top of the chest piece. If you slam a blade in at an angle, from the right side, it will go all the way through, directly to the heart, and kill them instantly? I found that out totally by accident on Mohtab 7. Sleezy thing was following a young man who had just spent a weeks wages to get fresh food for his family, with the intent of stealing it for himself. Some poor pitiful old woman,” and here she points to herself, “tripped right into that proud Cardassian soldier. In the confusion, he lost sight of the young man. Apparently beating an old woman was just as much fun as stealing food from a child.” She shrugs, “I was there to obtain supplies. Lucky for me he followed me down a dark alley. No one there would have protected an old woman, kind to her, but protect?” she shrugs again, “That put their life at risk. His mistake was following me down that alley. From there I didn’t have to keep pretending. It’s amazing how people so willingly see what they expect to see and never question.” That was why ‘Casela’ was the way she was. People saw a file and expected it, and NO ONE gave serious thought or concern for a hot headed, disrespectful, moppet.
Lt. Synthi-er, CNS