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Memories And Conspiracies?

Falling.

 

The ship had been rocked by a torpedo. It wasn’t an extremely damaging hit to Excalibur but they didn’t need to always be to send you hurtling. And that is exactly what had happened to Lieutenant J.G Segami. Even though he’d prepped his stance for the hit, his fingers slipped off the console and he toppled backwards through the air helplessly.

 

As his body obeyed gravity’s will and plummeted to the deck, time suddenlt slowed down. The blaring volume of the red alert klaxons was muted. It felt like he was floating rather than being flung. His eyes in a moment flashed around him and caught another person’s. It was a look of terror.

 

J’Ai.

 

They’d found him lying in a cargo hold with a friend’s corpse on his lap. He seemed distraught but the expression on his face hadn’t been close to what it was now. That was slightly bizarre. When a force of primed killing machines jumps onboard your vessel and slices the entire crew up, leaving markings on the walls in their blood, the average person would be in tatters.

 

Segami knew this for a fact. He had crumbled to pieces when only one person close to him was taken. And it was in this life too.

 

THE PAST – USS SHANGHAI

 

He looks down at her face. She looks so peaceful. Almost as if she’s thinking of a memory that gives her comfort and that any second she’s gonna smile so wide.

 

But she doesn’t. She stays still. The relaxation in her face just the muscles having given way.

 

She’s dead.

 

Atticus, an almost two year younger version than we’re used to, stands over her. He stares hard at that face.

 

Its not real.

 

She can be saved.

 

All he needs to do is will it. If he concentrates as hard as he can on that pale face, she’ll feel his pained heart and she’ll open those bright blue eyes and everything will be okay.

 

She’s just asleep.

 

It will all be okay.

 

He reaches over to her, puts his hands on her cheeks. They’re already cold. No blood going through those veins. He cradles them all the same. Perhaps his warmth will go to her.

 

“Kathleen” He wimpers. “…Kathleen”.

 

His face is manic as he pulls the sheet off further. The man near him thinks about preventing this but realizes it must be done.

 

The sheet is dropped to the floor. She now lies in her entirety. And the image stings right to his heart.

 

Her Starfleet tunic has been cut down the middle, from the top to the bottom, obviously to give the surgeons access to her injuries. Even after the initial cleanup there is still so much blood.

 

The Trill cannot help but just look. Tears are streaming from his eyes and he cannot stop them.

 

The wounds are deep. There are six or seven of them. Someone shoved a knife into her over and over and over and over…

 

He howls and collapses on her and screams to the heavens. The words are barely distinguishable.

 

“Wake up!”

 

The man behind him moves forward and grabs his arm.

 

“Wake up! Don’t do this! Don’t do this to me! Don’t do this to me!”

 

“She’s dead lad.” The man says as he pulls the boy away from the girl. His voice full of sorrow. “She’s dead”

 

But all the Trill can do is repeat her name over and over again as a doctor covers her back up.

 

There is no answer to his cries.

 

USS EXCALIBUR – PRESENT DAY

 

Atticus had loved that girl. She may have been a different species but he hadn’t cared. They were going to get married, have children and love happily ever after. She wasn’t meant to die like that.

 

But she had. It didn’t matter that Atticus had seen it all, done it all eight times before. Death is frightening, not one’s own as much as the death of the people you care about. Times that by ten if you think you’re next. That’s real fear.

 

So why did J’Ai look so much more worse for wear here? And to think about it he seemed more scared as well when he’d been accosted by Atticus back on the away mission. But surely this was a safer situation.

 

Unless back in that cargo hold had had nothing to worry about? That he never was in real danger? That the real fear was being trapped with the “feds” where he might get caughtin the crossfire?

 

That’s when the other shoe dropped.

 

What if J’Ai was supposed to survive the Al-Ucard attack all along? Not only that but what if Excalibur was supposed to welcome him in, supposed to debrief him and supposed to be told all about the ghosts?

 

What if the entire mission was a bigger trap than he’d thought? The purpose being, to bring out the only real thorn in the Scorpiad side.

 

It all made sense.

 

The Ghosts had hidden themselves so well from detection for a long time. So long that they had probably become a nuisance to the Scorpiads who were too busy fighting a war to deal with another front. However if an ‘innocent’ person were to lure an enemy of their enemy close by, a federation ship for instance, the ghosts would immediately step out into the light. They might even send a high ranking delegation of their own onto the federation ship to talk about an alliance. And then…Pow!

 

An Assassination!

 

Atticus would have mentioned this idea if his head hadn’t slammed into a corner the next second and knocked him unconscious.

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