Posted by Civilian Kara Nakuto (Civilian, Former CO) in Nakuto’s Quarters

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Peter Sigmundsson (Chief Intelligence Officer) in Nakuto’s Quarters

Posted by Civilian Kara Nakuto (Civilian, Former CO) in Nakuto’s Quarters
Snip
Posted by… suppressed (3) by the Post Ghost! 👻

Stepping into the narrow confines of the turbolift beside Sigmundsson, Kara ordered their destination as deck 13. A brief glance was directed up to the man at her side. Was he familiar with the standard layout of a Viking-class starship? Did he note that her destination was not the usual location for a commanding officers quarters? For the second time that day, she found herself silently praying that Ravenfall had not assigned herself the designated Captain’s rooms. Not that the alternative had turned out any better…

“We made a decision to ignore the assigned crew placements under my command,” she decided to head off any questions before they could be asked. “On a ship this large and this empty, it seemed foolish to cram junior officers into double-occupancy rooms when there was so much other space available. Although I know some still preferred the company of a roommate…for safety.”

The half-Klingon shrugged. It had always been her hope that the crew would snatch every small comfort available whenever they could. Gods knew there was little made available to them. Although comfort had not been part of her own reasoning for swapping quarters. But that was a tale not ready to be shared just yet.

“I recall that some of them got quite creative with the limited resources on offer. There was more than one drinking den established on the lower decks and even, I believe, something called a nightclub.” She laughed, the sound reverberating loudly around the small and otherwise silent space.
“And our Security chief at the time replaced her dining area with a steam room. Maj had…”

Maj. Too painful to think of her still. The Betazoid had not yet escaped the void in Nakuto’s own wake. She remained out there. Lost and alone. And suffering.

One brief and singular cry burst forth from her lips, her hand clasping to her forehead as she attempted to wrestle back control. Clearing her throat bought her precious seconds as she once again dared a glance towards the CIO, before rescue came in the form of a digital chime to announce that they had arrived.

Peter stared quietly at the half-Klingon. He recognized that look, the eyes that had seen loss and the sadness that followed. He stayed silent.

The doors parted to reveal a visage of almost complete darkness, a chain of red emergency led’s along the floor the only illumination. Kara stepped out into the gloom and defiantly chose her direction.
“This way.”

Whispers seemed to emanate from the very walls themselves, swelling to a chorus as the pair passed by. Her compulsion to drown them out was immediate.

“You are wise to avoid the holodecks,” she stated, her tone attempting a brevity that fell just out of reach. “There have been several…incidents with safety protocols failing. As for how things were done under me, I am presuming the current command team no longer encourages use of the thunderdome?” She laughed despite their current surroundings. “No. I doubt Starfleet would have looked too favourably on an arena where the Captain encouraged physical combat between her crew. But I found it…useful to build up their strength. To give them something tangible to pour all of their fears and frustrations into. To prepare them for battle.”

Kara Nakuto

“Hah, Thunderdome” He laughed at the notion as he carefully scanned the bulkheads with his eyes as they passed “Back on the Curie I just called it Tactical exercises.” He scratched the back of his head “No as far as I know there’s no Thunderdoming here. Besides, I wouldn’t enter just yet. I’m still trying to calm my instincts down, my muscle memory is still stuck in Instant Kill, if you will” He smiled sadly.

Peter Sigmundsson

Reaching out, Kara placed a hand on the CIO’s shoulder, her eyes connecting with his and silently whispering the message; I know. I understand.

Arriving at her intended destination, Kara came to a stop outside a nondescript, uniform door. So calm it appeared from their haven in the corridor. So…innocent.

“A hair-trigger might actually be a benefit on this ship,” she continued aloud. “To be so alert, so hyper-aware of the urgent need for survival and self-preservation. This might not be where you envisaged ending up, Peter. But make no mistake, it is exactly where you need to be. So take all of your pain, all of your grief and anger and focus it. Wield it as a weapon against these things that torment us.”

The door had been sealed, for the safety of the rest of the ship. Kara exerted great effort to stay her hand from trembling as she reached out and punched in her authorisation code.

Had the new Captain seen fit to revoke her privileges on this ship, wasted no time in terminating her level of access to the Viking’s systems then, in that moment, Kara Nakuto might have rejoiced. But as the small LED glowed green she knew that fate had not been so kind and, with a heavy, metallic groan, the door began to slide open.

Pulling a small knife from her boot, Nakuto once more looked up at the man by her side.
“Clear your mind, Peter,” she ordered. “Do not hand it ammunition so easily. Focus only on your own strength, your own courage. Your own mortality.”
No call to voice it aloud, but once more her brown eyes passed a silent communication; There can be nothing on this ship more terrible than that you have already endured.

Then, taking a deep breath, the half-Klingon steeled herself and stepped through the door…

Kara Nakuto

Although he wasn’t certain what to expect or why she feared it so Peter simply did what he was told. A second to breath was all he needed to steel his mind for whatever was to come. His left hand twitched and out of his sleeve fell a short throwing blade, meanwhile, his put his right hand inside his now unzipped jacket and grabbed ahold of his larger knife in its small holster attached to his chest, half unsheathing it. Despite being back on a Starfleet vessel he still felt more comfortable when fully armed.

He followed his former Commander into the room with squinted eyes and steely heart.

Peter Sigmundsson

The room had been destroyed, Kara Nakuto’s belongings torn and shattered and spilled across the space in a million tiny pieces. The tapestries from Qo’nos that once hung proudly in her ready room were scattered across the floor like shredded paper, her books leaving trails of pages in every direction, the furtuture upended and piled high like a ceremonial pyre, its balancing angles in contravention to every known law of physics. Only one item remained unharmed and it glared down at them from the pinnacle of the unnatural furniture pile - the photograph of Kara with her sister, Mirai, the image framed with the pale wood of Aokigahara.

A heavy stillness hung over the entire room, as if the architects of this chaos were not yet satisfied with their work and were merely resting while calculating their next move. Kara hovered at the doorway for an age, brown eyes wide and darting nervously from one corner to the next as if struggling to take it all in. It was, in truth, no less than she had expected. But no easier for such foreknowledge to be faced with visual confirmation of previously intangible fears.

“Wait,” she attempted to halt Sigmundsson with an outstretched hand as she herself took one tentative step into the room. Nothing. It was as if the entire scene was no more than a painting, a fixed and unchangeable tableaux by some demented and desperate artist.

Peter stopped behind her and raised his left hand, turning his body sideways. He was preparing to both launch his blade then himself if neccecary. He wondered what spooked her so much.

No. Behind the mountain of furniture she could detect a faint suggestion of activity. A scratching - as if something was buried deep within and struggling to break free. Another step took her close to the scene, the half-Klingon peering through the gaps between bed and table and chair while being careful to touch nothing.

A shriek. Nakuto stepped back, her knife raised and ready to strike…as a small, grey figure launched into the air then fell quickly back down onto her shoulder.

“Fek’lhr!” Kara cried out, one hand reaching for the wizened grey parrot and allowing it to settle in her palm. “You survived.”

Turning to Peter, she offered an introduction. “We rescued Fek’lhr, along with several other small animals, from the lower decks. A former medical officer had…” she shrugged at her inability to settle on an appropriate description to encapsulate his horrendous crimes, “…gone rogue and decided to make his own laboratory in an abandoned corridor. These animals were his test subjects.”

His discovery had immediately preceeded the appearance of the portal. And while Nakuto remained convinced that the two events possessed no connection, it did mean that she was currently unaware of the doctor’s whereabouts.
“The last I knew, we had him secured in the brig,” she offered.

Fek’lhr clambered up to rest on her shoulder, its one round and glassy eye fixing on Peter.
“Still here,” it croaked from a syrinx almost decimated by months of shrieking. “They are still here.”

Nakuto cast a nervous glance around the otherwise still room, before returning her gaze to the CIO and questioning silently just what in the name of Gre’thor he made of all this.

Kara Nakuto

Peter looked around the room. He’d lowered his left hand and his right had left his jacket. He was no longer holding a knife in either. Japanese designs and Klingon artefacts, Kara truly hadn’t changed much these past years. He moved carefully to the stacked furniture, looking at it with great intensity “What was it that you feared so much, Ca..” He stopped himself and looked back and smiled sofltly “Kara. What haunts you so?”

Peter Sigmundsson

She did not answer immediately. In fact, as Nakuto moved towards the pyramid of furniture and began frantically digging through it, Peter could have been forgiven for wondering if she had even heard him at all.

Objects and clutter were retrieved, examined and then discarded with abandon until finally the half-Klingon drew out two old, worn desk chairs, pushing one towards Sigmundsson before arranging the other for herself. A final exploration of the pile produced a bottle of bloodwine which she wasted no time in uncorking and draining to almost the halfway mark, before handing the remainder to her companion.

Peter took the bottle and looked at it for a moment before shrugging and taking a sip. He sat down without uttering a single word, only watching his former Commander pace the room. He took another sip, it was only polite to keep up.

As the scorch of fiery liquor blazed a trail along her throat, so too did it ignite her senses, the initial fear that had consumed her when stepping into this room being displaced by a defiant courage. If Fek’lhr spoke the truth regarding the entities and their lingering presence, then they could damn well reveal themselves and do battle face to face, instead of skulking in the shadows like the cowards that they were. But until they did, she would not allow her fear to honour them so boldly.

Lowering herself into the chair, Kara found her attention returning to the CIO, brown eyes studying him intently and for the first time seeing, not only the Starfleet officer, but the living, breathing man beneath. There was no denying his physical appeal, the chestnut hair and rugged stubble accentuating his imposing, muscular build. But what truly captured her interest was the darkness, that indelible stain worn only by those who had stared into the abyss. It was a stain she too was marked with. She found herself briefly wondering on his talent for poetry…

But the current situation required such thoughts be banished from her subconscious and Nakuto drove them away with a roar, the question he had spoken still heavy in the air between them, demanding her attention.

“What haunts me?” she echoed, her eyes scouring the room as if the words to formulate a response could be found amongst the ruined artefacts and broken memories. And once more, Kara Nakuto found herself at the edge of the mountain, the arms of her sister, Mirai, wrapped tightly around her to stop her plummeting over the edge.

“Do you know what it is like to exist between two worlds?” she spoke again at last, her voice unnaturally loud against the pervading silence. “To some I am considered neither human nor Klingon, the dilution of my genetics preventing absolute acceptance by either race. My entire life so far has been dedicated to the battle for belonging. To prove that I was good enough, brave enough, strong enough.”

She got to her feet and began to tread a slow cirle around the two chairs. “When I left the Curie, I knew that my actions would require a suitable punishment. I gave no quarrel to the Federation for my incarceration, nor do I give it now. But upon my release I found myself…lost. For the first time in my life I was devoid of purpose, devoid of a role to perform or a place to belong. I wandered aimlessly in the dark until…”

She shook her head, her body sagging under the weight of the confession lingering on her lips, her eyes refusing to meet his as the shame of so many years formed a tableaux upon her features.

”…I believed that it was the only path remaining open to me. To walk off the edge and into the ignominy of a dishonourable death. My courage had deserted me, my ability to fight too transient to muster. One more second is all it would have taken…then an eternity in Gre’thor known as Kara the coward, Kara the weak.”

Returning to her chair she reached out and once more reclaimed the bloodwine from Peter’s hands, the final drops fortifying her with the ability to raise her head once more and cautiously glance at her former Security Chief.

“That, Peter, is what haunts me. To know that I possess the capacity for such weakness. To know that I am capable of fleeing from battle as easily as I might choose to stand and fight. And the question - which event will it be that finally breaks me? What singular moment from this ongoing tragedy will be the herald that announces my passing with a singular, white feather?”

Kara Nakuto

Peter took a moment to contemplate her words. How many times had he turned from a battle, how many times had he fled from his life? It seems he hadn’t realised how very alike they were. For a moment he considered what he knew about her, about her life all written dispassionately by an Intelligence Analyst on Earth. He crossed his legs and smiled kindly “I think you misunderstood that moment” He leaned back in his chair “That wasn’t when you were moments from falling off the edge, that was the moment you found true strength. I’ve been to that edge so many times so believe me when I say I know the strength required to back away from it.” He looked down for a moment “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” He looked back at Kara “Don’t mistake loss of confidence for cowardice.”

Peter Sigmundsson