Captain Oddas Aria: Will it Help?

[Nicholas St Gabriel]

(( Bridge, Deck 1, USS Eagle ))

Oddas: :: barely audible:: what now …

Aria didn't recognize the sound voice coming out of her mouth, soft, hoarse.

Mika: :: in a low voice :: Your crew’s tough but we’re in rough shape, Captain. We need you and so do your daughters.

It had been a dumb question: what now - now she would be expected to move, to get things done, to make things better.  How could she, she looked down at Irina, her wife, Irina, the invincible.  

In a flash her memory was in a simple tent, her family, a Vadek, he was speaking. 

Vadek: Aria, do you promise to protect Irina and her family as they walk in the light of the prophets, shield her from the enemies of the world ...

Oddas: I failed.

Bridge: Response

As if to underscore the point a screech rang out through the ship, breaking her from her reverie.  She looked up in time to see even more pieces of the station shedding, some as large as the ship itself heading toward the Eagle.  She narrowed and hardened her eyes.  She looked to where her wife was laying on the floor.

Oddas: Not again.

Shayne: Response

Aria looked at her dead wife and then stepped over crewman Jones before taking the tactical station.  She could count the times she had fired ship weaponry since the academy on one hand, but at the moment she didn't care.  She loaded a payload for a mix of four tricobalt devices and 4 standard quantum torpedos - there would be no question that these fanatics would never return to a life of piracy.

She could feel her disgust as she selected targets designed to illicit the most damage.  The perversion of belief, her beliefs, telling followers they had to convert others at the point of a sword. 

oO You have to stop them at the point of a sword? Oo

She paused, her finger above the targeting control - it was something she might have said to a certain giant Marine she had come across early in her career, one who had turned to violence at every turn.  As she thought about Hannibal, for whatever reason her mind drifted to Teevin, the man she always thought of as gentle, the man she knew had been deadly during the occupation and had turned to life as a professor afterward.  The night of her wedding one man had told her how he had convinced Teevin to let a small group of Cardassian bandits go, they had appeared to be young soldiers under the sway of a much older Gul.  Teevin had relented to the man's 'wisdom'.  The man's sister had paid the price much later.  Teevin had helped the man find the offenders without so much as a word.

It was possible to right a wrong and still be resort to things you didn't want to do.

She looked down at Irina and Jones.

This was going to be one of those times.

She fired and a series of torpedos streaked out of the ship, their furious path echoing the pain and fury she felt.  She stared as they continued in a mostly straight line until, seemingly at the last moment they veered into their separate paths and hit their own targets, causing violent paths that did not begin to make up for the pain she felt. 

Bridge: Response

TAG, TBC

Captain Oddas Aria
Commanding Officer
USS Eagle,  NCC-74659
ASDB Co-Facilitator / Academy Deputy Commandant / Captains Council
E239305OA0

One man's 'magic' is another man's engineering. -Robert Heinlein

Wiki: https://wiki.starbase118.net/wiki/index.php/Oddas_Aria