The Prisoner

[Images 0]

"We Are Prisoners Of Ideas"

 

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

A Joint Log By Images And Scotts

 

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

 

 

 

Victor looked at the security officer across from him. She looked fresh from the academy or at least fresh to this part of town. She interviewed him with politeness, dignity and purpose. She had that look, a look like she actually gave a damn where he’d been for months, even if she’d never met him in his life. It was a look Victor recognized with interest. She cared just because, without a rhyme or reason needed.

 

 

 

Well good luck to her he thought to himself. This station is for the messed up or the soon-to-be messed up. People here in his eyes mostly did their jobs because they knew it was the right thing to do, not because they really wanted to any more. Man, had he looked so hopeful when he’d first come onboard? Had he become so pessimistic ever since? If he remembered right he’d arrived bright-eyed and bushytailed like her and right in the middle of an alien attack to control the station. If it wasn’t a fact that most of the scum on this end of space constantly tried to do that on a regular basis it would be practically comical that his return was now under similar circumstances. Station tom-toms had spread the word pretty quickly, even to him. A burly brawl was coming and this Midshipman…Scotts? was gonna have her first taste of things in the Cardassian sector.

 

 

 

“How would she handle it?” he mused. Victor remembered that he handled his first Aegis experience pretty badly himself. As part of an away team re-capturing the station from a hostile force, the doctor had been begging to get into the action, pulling a brave war-face. However the moment he came face to face with a platoon of well-armed (in that they not only had multiple phasers but multiple limbs) insect-like mutants from God-knows-where, he’d turned to jelly.

 

 

 

Sure he fired an odd shot or two from behind a crate and yes, he got a few lucky hits but inside he was screaming. After the fighting, he then had to jump in as medic to the wounded and perform a post-mortem on one of the creatures. A creature unknown to science that they wanted a report on immediately. It was one hell of a breaking-in that was for sure. The stress nearly killed him.

 

 

 

“What will happen for you midshipman? Will you have to fight hand to hand? Will it be a battle that will mark you for life or will you spend the whole thing sitting in the brig with a guy with enough whine in him to force twenty shrinks to jump out a window at once?” If it was the last scenario, Victor felt a bit guilty, she deserved to be out in the action, not in here, so she could learn how crazy this place could get and how it could hurt you if you weren’t ready.

 

 

 

And there he was getting spooky again. Damn it, why did he talk to himself in inner monologues from a bad detective novel? Normal people didn’t do that. More than likely, he considered, he was just weird and disgruntled to begin with but just didn’t notice it. The nuttyness of this place was just an easy excuse to blame it on.

 

 

 

At first it was the nuttyness that made the job worthwhile for Victor, the rough and tumble, the fight for your life, but now it just made him angry a lot of the time. Would this place never settle down? Would chaos always be in the air? The simple answer was “Yes”. People often compared the Cardassian sector to a land of cowboys on the open plains of space and the federation stations to frontier towns. Well it was close enough. You had your Ferengi Sheriff and her deputies, the Andorian town mayor and his council trying to keep the place running, Drankums was the local cantina and then there were guys like Victor, Mimi and now Lepage, the town docs trying to patch up wounds from all the gunslinging going round. All you needed was a soundtrack on Spanish guitar and John Wayne could walk in without anyone batting an eyelid. A newbie might easily get crushed like a bug in a place like this.

 

 

 

But Victor noticed something else in Scotts’ eyes, toughness perhaps? The look of a professional? Maybe this ‘newbie’ had more to her than what met the eye. Maybe in this bad movie she was gonna be the mysterious stranger with balls of brass.

 

 

 

“Welcome to the Wild West deputy Scotts” he was on the verge of saying, hiding his smile behind a cough as she continued her questioning.

 

 

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

Her first post, her first assignment, her first investigation, her first everything; Laura was fresh out of the Academy. It seemed that Sky Harbor Aegis was a rather. wild place from the blowing up of a cargo ship to a weird doctor claiming he was kidnapped. Laura didn't know if it was just the station or if all Starfleet ships and stations were like this.

 

 

 

Doctor Images seemed like a wild card as someone had said before. So far, the Doctor just whined about this and that. Laura didn't mind, hell, she felt like whining about the Doctor's whining. But that would do no good and would have no point.

 

Laura didn't hear all of what happened between the Commander and the Doctor, but the way it ended up, the Commander didn't like what the Doctor was saying. For most of her time on the station, Laura was not only supposed to baby-sit the Doctor, but investigate his 'kidnapping'. The investigation so far was slow.

 

 

 

Between asking questions and answering them, Laura noticed the Doctor was studying her. Since there was nothing else one could do behind bars, Laura couldn't blame him.

 

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////