A Short Respite

[Images 0]

A Short Respite

 

 

When you think it’s wild

Chilly down, chilly down

 

- David Bowie

 

 

 

“Ouch!”

 

 

Victor stood in front of his bathroom mirror, studying the large bump on his head and giving it the occasional poke. He’d got it in the tussle with those strange people who’d wandered into his sickbay, Seiben and Appolo, and it was quite big, blue and nasty. But Victor didn’t feel too bad about it, he’d handled himself pretty well, chasing, disarming and somewhat taking down his attackers. It had been the first time he’d used karate in a while and though the bleeding lip and headbutt to the noggin were proof he was slightly out of practice it had felt quite good to kick arse. However there was a nagging feeling at the back of Victor’s mind, “what if”? If he had been slightly slower to react to the danger presented he could have been badly hurt. Someone must have dropped the ball. Security.

 

 

“Where the hell were you guys?” Victor asked nobody in particular as he healed up his wounds with a tool he’d nicked from sickbay, “Where were you?”.

 

 

He had called for backup the moment trouble had started but ended up in a burly brawl in a turbolift. Things could have gone a lot smoother if he’d had the sharp-shooting Ferengi there beside him. Even Victor had to admit that though Muon was only 4 foot 11 inches tall, she was a pretty badass security officer and would have neutralized the volatile situation quickly. But nobody had come, not until things had got messy, and he was very angry at them for that. He’d never admit it to anyone else but until he had seen the stun setting on the weapon that had been pointed at him, Victor had been so scared. The thought that his normal day starting in the sickbay office would end with him lying dead on one of his own biobeds with a close-range phaser-blast in the gut was so horrible and frightening that it was probably what let him lash out with such force.

 

 

“It wasn’t supposed to be like that”, Victor thought as he aggressively moved the regenerator across his forehead. He was supposed to be comfortable knowing he could rely on the boys in gold to do their job and keep him safe.

 

 

However, he conceded, it was not his job to go chasing after suspicious people on his own. Victor let a look of amusement enter his face when he remembered how in the academy many of his tutors told him to take a security or tactical job, that his total lack of control would lead him into situations just like this. But Victor had disagreed. He knew he was made to be a Doctor. He had to try to save those that were as unrestrained as him and got what was coming to them because of it. The downside to that choice, he sighed as he realized it, would be that yes, one day it was likely he would die through his own cockiness. Blaming any injuries he got along the way to that day on other people’s competence was simply pompous and arrogant and unbecoming of a Starfleet Officer, an Englishman and a gentleman.

 

 

Victor finished cleaning up the cuts and switched off the handheld device, only a little scratch would remain for a couple of days. He then did his collar back up and walked back into his main quarters. Meve had told him to take a short break to get himself together and now he had, he picked up a PADD containing a prepared report and went to the door. Though he had been delayed by this debacle, it was time for the Admiral to know what dark secret he had to tell about another man who was apparently also doomed to die.