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Posted by Lieutenant Ta’lahali Akera Beveres (Counsellor) in Holodeck - Nakuto Looks for a Friendly Face

Posted by Lieutenant Ta’lahali Akera Beveres (Counsellor) in Holodeck - Nakuto Looks for a Friendly Face

“Carraya IV..” The word rolled from her tongue, a sense of deep contemplation coming across her features. Although, Tal could not say she had heard of the planet. She was far more a woman of the mind than a woman of cartography. Although, if the place held a beauty comparable to the Suswa mountain, she held no doubt it was a truly gorgeous planet. And to think, and entire body painted with luscious forests such as these, that was a dream many never found to come true. And yet, that dream held the unfortunate truth of henious atrocities committed against a people who did not so much as deserve most of it.. Any of it.

“A place so gorgeous, and yet harbouring a nasty truth. How unfortunate for you and for then people who found any sense of home in those atrocious camps. Your people never deserved what came of you, with those camps. You were but an infant, with no impact on the tensions of war. Immune and innocent, yet still convicted like the others. Truly, inexplicably unfair.” Tal managed a shake of her head, at a loss for what to say to the information offered to her. “In all optimism, you were lucky to have been born in a place so dazzling and pacific.”

“Unfair?” Kara repeated with a shrug. “Perhaps so, at first. Countless noble warriors were heralded up to Sto-vo-kor at the massacre at Khitomer. For those who survived came the crushing shame that they too had not found a glorious end. But such a weight did not excuse their cowardly submission towards their enemy. My people,” she continued, unable to meet the eyes of her friend and instead choosing to focus on the velvet-green leaves between her fingers, “may have been mere victims at first. But as the years passed they made a choice, to refuse a retaliation, to dismiss the honour that would be served with a successful rebellion. They chose to stay, as captives, as lapdogs to their Romulan overlords. They prized comfort and the false mirage of peace over the glory of victory!”

“What is truly unfair,” Nakuto stated definitively, “was how this single and ongoing act of cowardice was allowed to tarnish the hard-won reputation of my people!”

A deep sigh was released from deep within her chest, the resignation towards a history that would never be forgotten. For while the Klingon Empire had been successful in hiding the secrets of Carraya IV from the world at large, for their own people they dared not to forget the lesson it taught. Death would always be far favourable to surrender.

“There is no doubt to the striking difference between my people and yours. The will to die before being captured and forced to surrender to a power hardly our own, however, remains the one constant between both of our cultures.” She paused, considering the frivolous land before her. It was untouched, unharmed by the poison of the human race and all who have sought to destroy the land in effort to satisfy their nagging greed. “Honour, it is such a tentative subject, widely varying between cultures. To some, it is a staggering beast, or a valiant soldier. To others, it is nothing more than the commonplace scribe, a gentle albeit conspicuous soul.”

“Although, honour is perhaps best received by the Klingon people. Your tumultuous emotions paired with the ferociousness of your strength, creating a sense of honour, a sense of pride within your person and those who are all around you. It is a truly admirable trait amongst the Klingon people, a wonderous idiosyncrasy which dares to set you apart from any other race of warriors. Although, with the vitality of this honour and how it is held within your society, I cannot imagine what pain, what anger must come of her reluctance to seek out their own honour and retaliate against the forces holding them captive in the hands of their grueling captors.”

“It is an admirable trait,” Kara agreed. Then, laying bare with true and unmitigated honesty more of her soul than she had ever dared reveal to another, she added, “But it is also a curse. The need to constantly prove oneself, to maintain the illusion of power and courage and nobility at all times, against sometimes unfathomable odds. It is…difficult. For although we might revel in the play of it, Klingons are not gods. We are imperfect beings. And fear, trepidation, doubt - these are emotions that assail us as equally as they do all other races. The only difference lies in the self-imposed penalty for submitting to them.”

“But it has been a vital lesson for me and one that, with your help, I have attempted to embrace. For here on the Viking, fear is unavoidable. It permeates the very air that we breathe. It is woven into the walls and floors and tables and chairs and every part of this ship as if an essential component of her structure. In order to maintain my sanity, I have had no choice but to acknowledge my own fear, my own terror at this most unique and unnatural world around us. And in doing so, I have had to accept that it makes me no less of a warrior to be truly, primally afraid.”

Reaching to intertwine her finger with one of the many spewing vines that threatened to overflow from the branches of that majestic tree, she smiled at Kara. “This place.. Many people outside of the tribe have dreamed of finding it. They have set bounty on the materials and resources to be forged from this land. Yet all who try, very seldom make it as far as to make use of their desires.” Her thumb brushed against the rippled skin of the vine. “It is one of the few places on the earth, untouched by mankind and its greedy hands. One of the last few truly wild places. Here, creatures many have never seen beyond holographic projections of them, can thrive as if it were still a time where humans were no threat to them.”

“A true paradise, then,” Kara commented, “in every way.”

It had always represented a great and tangled riddle to Kara, how sentient humanoids had grasped the mantle of de facto leaders of the universe, while at the same time often showing scant consideration for those they considered lesser beings. As a warrior, she knew and respected the exhaulted honours of battle, but only when the fight was equal on both sides of the scale. There was no glory to be found in besting an opponent weaker or less prepared than oneself. And yet time and again, the shared history of the four quadrants told of mans domination over all other creatures, no matter how small.

“I sometimes wonder if this universe might find a more perfect harmony were humanoids removed from the equation entirely,” she laughed. “Where beasts of the land and the sea and the air fight only for survival, we seem unique in our adherence to violence for pleasure alone. There is no doubt that our technological advancements have revolutionised existence in every way. And yet, in the core of our being, we remain little more than animals.”

“A world where the wild remains prowling throughout the lands, untouched by the disease of the humanoid hand. It would be a place of truly ethereal nature, where animals could coincide with their lesser and greater parts, working together in collaboration and in endless competition to maintain the endless statsis of this world. It would be fascinating, just to see what this world, and many others would have become, if humanoids were hardly as effective in their destruction as they have been.”

“Although, you are absolutely correct. Deep within the soul and the psyche of every humanoid, is the will to survive, the desire that floods our veins, that savagery and barbarism which keeps us endlessly connected to our animalistic roots.. our necessity to climb the food chain in the continuous pursuit of life, liberty and the irrevocable right of happiness. Violence, peace, cruelty, it all has no matter of pertinence to them, unless it means they will survive. I find it undeniably fascinating, the way in which humanoids are drawn to violence over peace. A congressman would better raise his fist against adversity than his heart, and that seems to be, in many cases, the bane of our existence. And in many others, the beauty of it.”

“Indeed, there is beauty to be found in our talent for battle. But only when it is tempered evenly by purpose. My father used to say that the line between courage and madness was defined only by its position in space and time. When a man wields a sword and strikes down another on the battlefield, we say that he was victorious over his enemy. When he does the same on a quiet, peaceful street, we label him a monster.”

A soft sigh. “I haven’t been home in many years, perhaps more than I would care to admit.” A low chuckle came of words expressing a certain hurt about the truth of her situations. “I suppose one can only hope that something so beautiful as this, can remain that way. Surely eight years cannot change too much..” But even she found that hard to believe.

Her parents, her family, they remained with her people in the United Nations ot Africa, untouched by much of western influence. Many of her relatives still lived in towns at the base of Mount Suswa, embracing the culture of her people, allowing for it to thrive and endlessly survive. She hoped they remained there, giving continuous life to that captivating land. She hoped, somewhere in those jungles, her dear friend was raising his family with Melli’ara, her very own cousin, whom he had fallen head-over-heels for. She scarcely receivers his comms, but they had become rarer by the day. Hope, as naive as it might be, remained in her mind, that all of them were happy and healthy.

Lt. Beveres
CNS

Unmistakeable, the pang of longing that danced fleetingly across the face of Ta’lahali Beveres. It was clear that the young woman had not been home for many years. And that she missed her family and her people intensely. Kara smiled and, reaching out, gently took hold of the other’s shoulder.

A hand, a sense of reality. It grasped her from the melancholy thoughts which plagued her mind, returning her to the depression she had become accustomed to, over years of succumbing to the darkness of her thoughts. It was a hidden battle between the heart of her body and its enemy, her mind. Yet this touch, however simple, however vague, it managed to snap her from that state of mind, tugging her back to the truth of her situation. Standing beside a friend; a woman whose significance in her life grew with each passing moment. Without Kara, she knew she would not have been able to survive much of her first year on the Viking. In her gaze, there was an air of gratitude, an amber wave that tainted her mahogany gaze.

“It is a true dichotomy, is it not,” she laughed, ” how we lust for adventure and exploration while never entirely losing our desire to return home. With a limitless universe stretching out in every direction and the means to traverse it at our very fingertips, still we feel primally connected to that one, singular location that witnessed the moment of our birth.”

“We spend our lives seeking out adventure, constantly searching for ways to demand more from ourselves and from our surroundings. And yet, as you said, we have all of this at our fingertips.. all of this information, all of this knowledge, this opportunity. But how common is it we throw it all away? How common is it we truly take advantage of our opportunities? Although, I suppose your correct, that connection to your birthplace is undeniably the most significant.”

But Kara understood, perhaps more deeply than Tal would ever know. For how else could one explain the contradiction of hating everything that a place represented and yet still dreaming endlessly of returning to its familiar embrace.

“How long has it been since you saw your home, Tal?” she enquired, softly.

Kara Nakuto

“Over five years.”

Tal

“Tell me about your family, Tal,” Kara smiled at her dear friend. “Do they all traverse the stars like you? Or are you unique in the House of Beveres for your tenacity and adventurous spirit?”

Kara Nakuto