STF

New beginnings - Holodeck 2

Posted March 7, 2019, 6:58 a.m. by Lieutenant Commander Stark Nightstalker (Chief Intelligence Officer) (Ian Kerby)

Posted by Lieutenant Julien Smith (Doctor) in New beginnings - Holodeck 2

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Stark Nightstalker (Chief Intelligence Officer) in New beginnings - Holodeck 2

Posted by Lieutenant Julien Smith (Doctor) in New beginnings - Holodeck 2
snip
The second Klingon was effectively blocked, Stark was down but far from out. A caitian on it’s back has many options and one that had studied capoeira extensively has even more. Stark scissored his legs flicked his spine into a half moon and launched off the floor spinning around Julien’s locked arm using the two bodies as momentum he aimed one mekleth for the Klingon’s throat and the other for the shoulder. Sailing up and over the black streak attempted to take the throat and use the other blade to launch through the air feet first at the oncoming Klingon behind it’s fellow.

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Both blades met their mark swiftly and unerringly and the approaching Klingon stumbled and fell, clutching the blade sticking out of his chest. HIs momentum made him slide over the sandy floor directly before their feet as Julien stood up straight again. In the ensuing calm, Julien gave Stark an appreciative look full, his mismatched green eyes were sparkling.

“This is fun!” he said, as they heard the next pair of footsteps. Twenty minutes or so later, the program beeped, ending the level. They were both pretty drenched in Klingon blood and had left a trail of dead bodies between the spikey boulders, severed limbs and other gruesome sights that didn’t seem to register to Julien at all.

Julien pulled out a swath of fabric and started cleaning his blade. It was a holographic blade, but Stark got the distinct feeling he was watching an almost unconscious ritual. There was a satisfied almost happy gleam in Julien’s eyes as he was wiping his blade, sweat geaming on the left half of his face.
As Julien realised that this was not his real blade and that the sequence of this level was over, he quickly chucked the fabric away and made the Batleth disappear, focusing on Stark.
They had danced gracefully, well mostly Stark had, he he had just done his thing, but they were such different fighters with such different strengths that they were a perfect team. Stark had exactly what Julien was missing, and that in abundance.

“This was a great workout, I think we would do well in a real fight.” he said to Stark.

  • Julien Smith

“Indeed” Stark said his dark eyes afire with a predators instincts. He took a deep breath to lower his adrenalin to manageable levels for speech stretching for battle mode into relaxation mode fluidly as only a Caitian could. “It would be worth working on some set pieces for certain situations, I admit to being excited about some of the manoeuvres we could achieve as a team harnessing our different skills”.

Julien nodded. “Yes, I’m all for it, there are quite a few possibilities. For example you could jump up via my right hand onto my right shoulder and pounce from there.” he held out his right hand at the height of his hip and made an upwards motion.

After a moment of surveying the wreckage around them with appreciation he looked up and asked “Do you mind if I ask a personal question?”

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Julien nodded. “Sure, ask me anything, you’re one of the very few people I can actually talk openly with.” he said.

  • Julien

“You seemed to enjoy this carnage as much as I did, I was curious if it was personal feelings towards Klingons that was the reason or perhaps something more general?” Stark looked the man in the eye, “I ask only as I want to understand your feelings and motivations more, much as you need to know more about mine”

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Julien nodded, having expected that question. “Long story short, I started out as a doctor in Starfleet, I swore the hypocratic oath. I only got involved into that black ops because thanks to my android half I was strong enough and because they had my older foster brother and I wanted to free him. There was a point in all that fighting when I intentionally kept killing instead of healing and it broke me in two. Half healer, half killer, just like my body is half human, half android. It’s irreversible and I’ve learned to live with both and find a balance. “
It was quite amazing that although he had learned to talk about it without much emotion showing, it still hurt like hell, Julien reflected silently, while seeing the vacant look of his brother’s eyes in his mind when he had finally found Damien in the Klingon main camp’s torture room.

“Ironically I don’t think I’ve ever would have become a Captain had I remained ‘only’ a fully human doctor. So yes, that dark half enjoys it and yes, I do have a special hatred for Klingons due to my months on that godforsaken colony and due to what they had done to my brother… but I’m trying to move past that.” he said.

  • Julien

Stark sighed, “You won’t” he said his own eyes showing his understanding, “You may lessen it, channel it, use it, force it to create good outcomes rather than darker ones, but you became a killer for a reason and just as your love for your brother will never dim neither will the reason you became a killer” He looked up and his eyes burned with intense fury, something he did not show often outside of battle, “The question we must ask is if we love killing, or love killing for a purpose, the path is chosen but we choose how we walk it”.

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Julien’s mismatched green eyes held the gaze of those pitch black unfathomable eyes as he nodded slowly once. On some level he had known from the first moment to whom exactly he had been talking, now he was sure. It was a moment of recognition between two warriors who knew, with every fiber of their being, that the dark side would never truly go away.

Yes, once upon a time in the past it felt good to revel in it, so very seductive in its sheer power, that feeling of liberation when you accepted the darkness in your soul as part of your being, the experience of the huge boost of strength and power over others that it gave you, that feeling of being almost invicible…
Just as strong and intense as the fall and the pain afterwards, when the blood-red consequences of your actions had turned into a dire, apalling reality and you saw before you the pain and suffering you had caused while on your power trip.

The long and hard fight to fight the dark impulses down after that… something he would have never managed without La’kia…

But Stark’s words sounded so right and true in Julien’s mind that his heart picked up a few paces in his chest.
‘You may lessen it, channel it, use it, force it to create good outcomes rather than darker ones’, but it was still part of him and would never go away. He looked back over the last 6 years and knew that that had been exactly what he had done.

“You know, nobody, not even Riley.. my counselor… has ever managed to explain it all in just one sentence.” but then Riley had never hurt a soul, Julien realised.

“For a purpose… always for a purpose. But the truth is… ” he took another deep breath, seeing scenes in front of his eye as he killed Klingons and a part of him… enjoyed it, enjoyed the look of fear appearing in their eyes as they inevitably realised at one point that he was a lot harder to fight than a normal human, the moment their vain superiority crumbled to dust before him…

“The truth is if I have nobody in my life for whom to force the good outcomes for…” La’kia, his crew, his children… Marishka…
it was hard now to keep looking into Stark’s eyes, but he did.

”…I probably would stop taking that harder path and just choose the easy route.” he admitted. And he found that it was an incredibly freeing feeling. Never before had he admitted that darkest of truths inside him to anybody and only now did he fully realise this truth, as he spoke it out loud for the first time. It felt extremely liberating.

  • Julien

Stark let the words hang in the air until they took shape between them linking both for the fight they knew was coming in the near future. “If you truly believe that you have no one to force the good outcomes for, then you are hiding from your past with our Captain simply because she is now married and you feel it’s inappropriate to use her as a method to bend your will. Don’t hide from that aspect of your past, embrace it as something that can now become selfless because it wants for nothing in return. Lean on your need to keep her safe for a while, as I once did. Whilst you are at it you will likely find, as I did also with Laraan, that eventually you can force the outcomes for yourself because you catch a glimpse through their eyes of what they see, a hero not a villain, and from there pour yourself daily into that mould.”

Stark sighed “You and I will likely never find peace in this life, but purpose and fulfilment in protecting others will create in us as near as we can get until death takes us”.

Stark Nightstalker CIO

And there it was. The answer. The a answer to why he had always, ever since he had been broken, looked for somebody to love, to take care of, to protect. Somebody to belong to him and him alone, for whom he could feel fully responsible. The answer why La’kia, the tiny sprite of a woman, so vulnerable, had drawn him out of his personal abyss 6 years ago.

Slowly he nodded. “Maybe. But I haven’t quite given up on it. When I held my newly born children in my hands I suddenly felt different.” he sighed. “Maybe peace is wanting too much, I’d settle for some plain simple hapiness.” he said.

He decided right then and there not to fall again for a woman who triggered his protective insticts first, like La’kia had. He didn’t want to love a woman and always silently wonder how much of it was really love and how much was just his pattern triggering the right response. Then something else registered in his brain.

“Laraan the head counselor? Shalahn’s sister?” he asked.

  • Julien

“Yes” Stark said simply, “I was dragged kicking and screaming to her for a psych assessment and suddenly half way through it I found a soul mate and was then catapulted into a brave new world whereby I thought I was protecting her and making the universe a better place for her, only to discover that she was in fact protecting me and making my universe a better place”.

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Julien looked surprised. “I can only imagine. Her sister served on my ship for some time, as a civilian nurse. She was curious about… us. Starfleet. Her channel is telepathy and through it she shared with some of my crew some experiences from her life on Heel. What is Laraan’s channel, I forogt?” he asked.

  • Julien

“She channels energy” Stark said without preamble, “One touch and you feel like you’ve had a good night’s sleep. As super powers go, it’s extremely useful and very self sacrificial which is the only part that worries me”.

Julien’s eyebrows rose. “That’s a great channel.”

He continued “You know, I’m struggling to remember if she ever mentioned her sister in Starfleet, please don’t tell her that she probably did but I simply can’t remember. What’s her sister like?”

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Julien shrugged. “Sky blue frillings on slightly tanned skin. I never got to know her any closer, she stood out as an alien, even among my crew. Only my CE got to know her closer, he’s an EL-Aurian. I guess when you are of a long lived species…” he looked up again apruptly into Stark’s eyes and his face fell.

“Oh damn.” he said, realising that Laraan would outlive Stark by about two or three centuries.

  • Julien

“Yes” Stark said quietly, “I am but a bright candle that will be quickly snuffed out, however we both went into this knowing that. Laraan’s mother has accepted me which is a very big weight off my mind and her “sort of ex” didn’t kill me on sight so I’m counting that as a win as well”. Stark grinned a bit at the memory of the taciturn Heleen Kamdaar and then brought himself to the present. “It can’t be easy being separated from your family Julien, I’m only just getting used to being married but I know I ache when we’re not together.”

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Julien gave a soft smile at Stark’s grin, although he still thought that Stark had gotten himself into more heartbreak than he could imagine, especially if that was his first love.
At his last sentence Julien’s smile died and he felt the ever present ache in his chest more acutely again. He averted his eyes and gave a nod.
“Families, Stark. My crew was just as much family to me as my biological one, after a decade of serving together. My senior staff knew me better than I know myself.” he said, then took a deep breath, forcing down the emotions apruptly and asserting control again by brute force.

As he looked back up into Stark’s eyes, all the emotion was gone, back was the amiable doctor and his cover, with a charming smile, using a move that Stark would recognise from Ghubari. Apparently an essential feature as a Captain, for the better of the crew, when you had no time for your own emotions.

Be that as it may, we should still talk about business. What, if I may ask, was the last status in the investigation into Mr. Pierce?” Julien asked.

  • Julien Smith

“Your best bet there is to talk to the Captain, we lost price to the Conclave when they rammed us and beamed him out. He hadn’t told us much but there is a definite connection to the Captain’s past and that’s something you may know more about than I do”.

Julien nodded. Yes Ghubi had told him the story on that fateful night at the pub, the time when she was a sec JO.

Stark didn’t like to admit that the man had got away clean and after the murder of one of the crew and it showed plainly on his face and the drop of blood that fell from his clenched paw as he deliberately sank his claws into his own flesh to contain the anger he felt.

Stark Nightstalker CIO

Julien was very attentive and did notice Stark’s reaction, immediatelly understanding it. Marius would have felt exactly the same.

“I see all three of us have serious beef with the Conclave. I will talk with her about it for sure, we need to be on the same page in order to know where we go next. And if there is a Conclave operative on the ship…” he looked up into Stark’s black eyes and gave his words extra force “…I will find him or her.”

  • Julien Smith

“We” Stark’s voice was just as emphatic, “This is personal, family, and I believe that my purpose in life has shifted to include the absolute destruction, disintegration and demolition of everything associated with the Conclave. Extreme prejudice is my starting point”. His eyes could have bored holes in neutronium but he brought himself under control. “That said they’re aware of me and my methods so I intend to be uncharacteristically visible and perhaps a little clumsy at times, so when they come for me I’m expecting that’s you’ll clothesline them from the shadows”.

Stark Nightstalker CIO


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