Troy Parson

::a crumpled note, written in elegant but barely legible cursive, located in a wastebasket somewhere on the ship:: Dear Captain, I’m sure that by the time you read this report, you will already have heard more than enough to inform you of the facts with regards to our recent mission, so, in the interests of saving time for all concerned, I shall omit the history lesson and get straight to what you are most likely to want to know. Firstly: I am sure you have read far more than you would like, by this point, about the consequences of my decision to have Shane attempt to subvert the raider ship’s computer network. I will concede that, in this instance, that decision had largely negative consequences; nonetheless, when I consider the information available at the time, and the other possibilities for how the situation could have developed, I find myself forced, with all due respect, to refuse to make any apology for that decision. To tell the truth, I find myself somewhat amazed at the readiness with which some on this crew (in the interests of propriety, I shall decline to name names) would, when faced with the threat of a large vessel with a history of hostility and plenty of motive for a later betrayal, trust in something as insubstantial, as inherently meaningless, as an agreement to ensure their security. It has been my experience that while the loss of a potential friend could deprive one of a future opportunity, failure to recognize the threat of a potential enemy can easily deprive one of all future opportunities. Thus, I must stand by my decision, even if it was not for the best on this occasion. Secondly: I expect the others will have written at least as scathingly about my decision to shuttle from Capricorn to Verbistul, and, thereafter, to commence hostilities against Verbistul with the aim of commandeering her. Indeed, for the deaths of the four Verbistul crew members who were killed on my orders, I am truly sorry. It was an oversight on my part to allow the Nausicaan to open fire without first checking the power setting of his weapon. Nonetheless, on the whole, I would urge you to judge my decisions in light of the information available to me, namely, that Captain Maxwell had proven himself to be the benefiter, and therefore, in all likelihood, an originator of the mass killings on Capricorn; that said Captain had taken charge of the Capricorn; and that our own QoB was missing, and thus assumed to be destroyed. Under these circumstances, hostilities were surely not only justified, but a much better bet than entrusting our lives to the mercy of Maxwell and/or those of his crew who remained on Verbistul. Had I been in Maxwell’s position, it barely needs saying, you would not have had nearly so many reports to read. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly: ::there are a few lines of heavily scratched-out text here:: Never mind. In fact, it would probably be best if I spared you the tedium of reading this pathetically whiny, defensive, and pretentious excuse for a report altogether, and simply explained to you in person anything that should still require explanation. Since I am now talking to myself, any further formalities should be quite unnecessary, but, as a creature of habit, I find myself forced to conclude, Yours, Dr. Troy Parson

In the tiny bathroom connected to his quarters, Troy examined the wound on his arm. He’d closed it up with the auto-grafter from the medikit that he kept in his quarters for dealing with minor injuries, and while it’d probably hurt for a little while—the graft wasn’t quite as well-aligned with the surrounding tissue as it would have been if the treatment had been done by a professional medic—the bleeding, at least, had stopped. After closing the wound, a shower had been in order, taking advantage of the real water-based shower that he had built for himself to replace the efficient but decidedly unpleasant sonic unit that had been fitted previously. The experience of the shower was exactly as Troy remembered it—the water, always too hot or too cold, running down his skin, the slight smell of dirty smoke from dust, or perhaps something more important, burning off of the heating coil, the blood spiraling down into the drain, mathematically, a fractal in reverse. He’d expected to find his quarters more or less destroyed, his left-behind possessions sold off, stolen, or just stored somewhere else, but in fact, everything was more or less as he had left it: his books, in the cases that took up most of the room’s wall area, secured by bits of rope run across the front of the shelves, having needed only the slightest of straightening to undo the misalignment caused by the ship’s recent movement; his collection of humanoid skulls staring back at him from their mounts, their expressions not having changed at all in reaction to the recent chaos. Even the top-heavy decorative lamp by his bedside was still in place. A quick check revealed that the small wooden box he kept behind a loose wall panel was still there, too. Now that it had been grafted and the blood had been washed off, the wound looked quite small. Looking at it in the mirror, it was hard to reconcile it with the bloody mess that he had been carrying around earlier. By the look of it, it probably wouldn’t even leave a scar. Nothing changes. Troy wasn’t quite sure what happened next. In his memory, it would be recorded as three fixed frames, pictures with all of the “why” lost somewhere in between. One moment he was standing in front of the mirror, examining the scratch on his arm; the next, his fist, clenched hard enough that he could feel his nails cutting into his palm, was heading towards the wall, the muscles on his face feeling the expression of a snarl, a tightness in the back of his neck sending tremors through his body that painted the whole scene in shades of red. And then the third frame: his hand recoiling from the wall, the coldness of the air between his teeth as he bit back a cry of pain, the thought, What did I do that for? Then the scene went back into fluid motion: taking a step back from the wall, clutching the hand that he had just harmed quite severely, the choked cry escaping from his locked-down throat as a low growl, the wall, Klingon, solid, undamaged, mocking him. And then he punched it again, and again, and again, until the pain won out, a quiet part of his mind asking him if he was proud of being able to act as if he felt something that strongly. The wall watched him surrender, unmoved, unblinking. A shot from one of the hypos in his medikit calmed his hand down a little, enough that he could see straight again, but it wasn’t enough. He made his way out of the bathroom, headed straight for the loose wall panel, which he removed, feeling for the wooden box with his better hand, removing the box as well, placing it on the bed. He opened the box: a zip-lock bag of his home-grown tobacco filled most of it, beneath it, a pile of rolling papers and some filters. Next to the zip-lock bag, there was a glass phial filled with orange powder. It had been no accident, leaving the box behind, but a tactical, calculated move, part of a stratagem that had very nearly worked. He’d managed to stay clean for most of his stay on Tranquility, right up to the point where it had become clear that his attempt at making a life for himself there had failed. That point was what sent him to an old, seldom-used QoB safe-house, where a box much like this one, complete with orange powder, was concealed within the mechanism a ratty old reclining chair. It had been pure luck—he had not yet decided whether it should count as good or bad—that the remaining members of the crew had chosen to gather at that very safe-house, and had decided to include him in their scheme du jour. Carefully, with perfectly practiced motions, he set about assembling a smoke for himself, portioning out the tobacco by feel, positioning the filter, adding the orange powder across the top before rolling it up. It was a seemingly inviolable law of the universe that, whatever should befall him, his lighter would still be waiting in his pocket when it was needed, and now he flicked it on, lighting up. He inhaled, the oh-so-familiar taste of the smoke working its way from his throat to his lung to his arteries to every cell in his body, the pain receding, a feeling of near weightlessness coming over him, his thoughts breaking out of their loops and moving forward again, faster and faster. He blinked once, then again, taking stock of his condition and his surroundings. Books, skulls, lamp, smoke, walls, QoB, life. Nothing changes.

Through the scratched eyepieces of the ancient gas mask, Troy surveyed the scene outside the lab. The corridor was littered with unconscious Guardians; Nickles clearly wouldn’t be trying to shoot him again for a while; Redera was out cold as well. Pher and Shane were nowhere to be seen. He hoped that they wouldn’t hold his nearly rendering them unconscious against him, but he had no intention of walking out into the middle of an active fight with weapons involved, and remaining in the lab was simply not an option. He paused for a moment to take a weapon from one of the Guardians, picking it up with his fingertips as if it were a piece of week-old roadkill before dropping it into a coat pocket. Then he made his way through the pile of sleeping bodies, making sure to step on Nickles’ hand in the process. Serves him right for trying to gun down a shipmate. The last time Troy saw Simon, the latter had been headed back towards the bridge, and so that was where Troy went now. There were some things that he had to ask Simon, answers that he had to get, whether or not the process of getting them left Simon in any condition to be turned over to the Guardians. Troy arrived at the door to the bridge, and pressed the button to open it. The door bleeped at him, but remained closed. He pressed the button again, leaving a fingerprint in blood. The wound on his arm where Nickles had shot him was running quite freely, despite a painful and hurried attempt back in the lab at cauterizing it with a portable gas burner. And still the door would not open. Someone must have locked it from the other side. With the slightest of sighs, Troy took a multi-tool from one of his pockets and went to work on the door control panel. He wasn’t sure what he’d do once he succeeded in hotwiring the door, but there was no time to think about that now…