Trigger

Posted on 21 Jul 2012 @ 10:37am by Commander Andreus Kohl
Edited on 28 Jul 2012 @ 10:18am

1,422 words; about a 7 minute read

Timeline: Four months before Andreus Kohl's transfer to USS Galileo
Location: Bactricia - Starfleet Medical Base Camp, Personal Quarters

[ON]

Andreus Kohl's Personal Log, supplemental entry:

Sorry. There was a code blue in the infirmary. Sorry, where was I?

My boot connected with the maintenance hatch, and the jammed thing only opened another handful of centimetres. I kicked it twice more until I guessed there was enough of an opening to wriggle my way out of the maintenance shaft. As I squeezed my way out, I left some of my body's blood smeared on the hatch. As soon as I was standing upright, my head started spinning with dizzy nausea. Probably from the blood loss. I backed against the wall and I got my breathing under control and then I heard it. I heard boots. I heard heavy, clomping marching. It was far more conspicuous a sound than the Starfleet away team would be making. I knew it had to be the Tzenkethi.

I crouched down low. I saw the Tzenkethi before they saw me. Behind me, the Rhaandarite Lieutenant was still struggling to squeeze his massive frame through the jammed hatchway. That left me alone, and faced with aggressive intruders. I raised my left arm. In my grasp, I was squeezing too tightly onto a type-two phaser. At the security briefing this morning, the Lieutenant had told us that Tzenkethi armour can absorb phaser energy. Phasers had to be set to the disruption levels if they were going to be any use at all. Disintegrating the armour was the only way to get a shot in, but a phaser beam never stopped at just the armour. I increased the setting on my phaser, and I secured my left wrist with my right hand. I aimed the emitter crystal at the centre mass of the lead Tzenkethi.

I remember...

I remember, when I was a child, the Ferengi had a different mystique about them. They were pirates and raiders. It seemed like a week wouldn't go by without the Federation New Service speaking about a Federation colony or facility being plundered by the Ferengi. This was before the Borg, before the Dominion War. The Federation security presence on Argelius II was practically non-existent. Really though, it was laughable by today's standards. We felt safe back then. Any conflicts with the Cardassians were happening over in another quadrant. We felt safe. We knew peace. But the Ferengi had started to change that.

I remember, maybe when I was six, I remember watching my father cry in front of his LCARS terminal. I remember, I asked him why his face was streaked with tears. I asked him why he was crying for pirates. That question, my question, it made my father pause. It was a dragged out, pregnant pause, and I distinctly remember seeing a flicker of pity or disgust in his eyes. My father waited until he trapped me into eye-contact, and then he answered with, "All life is sacred."

I suppose that's why Starfleet had landed on Bactricia in the first place. Every few decades, the Tzenkethi would invade the planet for a time, and then they would be expelled. The last time, the Bactricians negotiated protectorate status from the Federation. My father was involved in those negotiations, if I remember correctly. This time, when the Tzenkethi came to occupy Bactricia again, Starfleet set up base camps to facilitate the expulsion of the Tzenkethi again. I was assigned to Starfleet Medical's team on Bactricia, providing feeding and vaccination programs to the natives, and patching up the Starfleet officers who were injured in the conflicts.

The other day, a small army of Tzenkethi invaded a Bactrician hospital, because they believed the Bactrician rebels were constructing weapons in the hospital. I was assigned to join the Starfleet away team that was sent into the hospital to evacuate the patients, and the newly wounded. That's how I came to be crouched on the floor, brandishing a phaser --a phaser set to vaporize-- at an armoured Tzenkethi. The actual act of aiming a phaser at a being didn't feel nearly as powerful as I imagined it would.

Mostly, I felt terrified, and I felt nauseated. I suspect I came by the fear honestly, but that the nausea was due to my ever-increasing blood loss. Or maybe, I wanted to believe the nausea was simply a physiological response. I wanted the nausea to be an illness. Because if the nausea was due to blood loss, that meant I wasn't sickened by the subsuming of my personal values in favour of doing my duty. My duty. The Tzenkethi were marching down the passageway; they had been shooting and stabbing Starfleet officers on sight. They believed we were providing the Bactiricans with the materials for their weapons. I steadied my grip on the phaser, and I adjusted the level setting on the phaser again. Two low a stun or thermal effects wouldn't even scratch the Tzenkethi, but two high a disruption setting would vaporize a hole right through one.

I locked eyes with the Tzenkethi who was targeted by my phaser. He saw me. I tightened my grip on the type-two's handle. My thumb hovered over the trigger. There was no more time for second guessing. I made my choice. My brain sent impulses along my central nervous system. I didn't press the trigger. My phaser didn't fire.

I ducked back into the corridor alcove, and I grit out a lie about my phaser's emitter crystal being cracked. The phaser fell from my left hand, and I watched it drop. I stared at my left hand; I glared at my left hand. The Rhaandarite lieutenant and a Vulcan ensign barreled into the passageway, and they fired their own phasers at the Tzenkethi. I tried to reach for the phaser on the floor, but it felt like the floor had become rubbery and was stretching far, far beneath me. The world went black around the edges. I witnessed the other two officers falling dead from disruptor blasts before I lost consciousness from the blood loss.

I woke up the base camp's infirmary. I guess the Tzenkethi left me for dead. Doctor Sefton approached me while I stared at my left hand curiously. I balled it into a fist, opened it wide, wiggled my fingers in order, and then went through the same exercise again. Doctor Sefton asked me if I was experiencing any discomfort. She rested a hand on my shoulder, squeezed it lightly.

I told her there was no pain, but that the back of my left hand felt numb, and my thumb was weak. She studied my hand, asking me about my range of motion. I described what I was managing now, but then I swallowed hard. I confessed to her that I hadn't been physically able to thumb the trigger on my phaser. My left thumb was practically immobilized. I tried to press the trigger, but my hand wouldn't move. I'm sure I sounded distraught, but I couldn't work out if I was more ashamed of failing in my duty as an officer, or ashamed of my decision to blast a beam of destructive force through a living being.

Doctor Sefton focused on the science. She looked up from her tricorder, and she diagnosed me with radial nerve dysfunction. That's why my thumb wouldn't work. She told me about how, when I was unconscious, she removed shards of polyduranide sheeting from the left side of my torso and from my left arm. She told me the shards looked like they came from a ruptured EPS conduit. The trauma had caused mononeuropathy, but she could treat it fully.

I asked Doctor Sefton if she had saved the polyduranide shrapnel, and she squinted at me. She supposed they may not have been recycled into raw matter storage yet. It had been a busy afternoon.

I told her I wanted to keep the shrapnel she dug out of my arm. I sat there on the biobed patiently, ready to receive any treatment that was necessary. I was prepared to accept any about of time resting, and any length of time on lighter duties. Whatever was required to return control of my body to my own self, I would do it. Perhaps it was fate that took the decision away from me, the universe speaking to me through me. I told Doctor Sefton I wanted to keep that bit of shrapnel.

End log.

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