Kilaeda - The First Days, Part l
D. Finch
((Day One - Kilaeda’s Home, The Colony))
It happened quickly.
The sky changed into a brilliant but terrifying vision of cloudy emerald streaks that stretched and draped downwards, enveloping the whole colony. It had only been a small colony, so almost everyone that she had known, her neighbours, her family and friends, all came out of their homes to observe what was happening, their faces irradiated by the endless green. All bewitched by the sight, if only for a minute.
Then it emerged through turbid tendrils to the sound of the colony's klaxon blaring in the streets—a hideous, ridged cube. Her mother ushered her younger brothers back inside in a flurry, shouting instructions to her father who had barrelled out past her to see it for himself, bumping Laeda’s arm as he did. She felt the fear bleeding out of him in that moment, haemorrhaging, as she stared into the back of his head, at his matted hair.
It was his fear—so often unseen in a Klingon, especially not her bold and courageous father—that sent chills through her arms, more than the Borg.
Adrenaline fulminated across her body, and she immediately turned to run back inside the house. Her hooded eyes searched for some meaning in the corridor, some hint of what to do next. Looking to her left she saw silhouettes of her little brothers being hurled into jackets and shoes, directed intently by their squinting mother. So she stumbled in that direction first, her breath catching as she gripped onto the doorframe, watching her family prepare to leave.
Kilaeda: It’s them, isn’t it. It’s the Borg.
Her mother didn’t say anything—but the look they exchanged told her everything she needed to know. She had only been young and so the rumours and taunts that had filled her ears from those her age about the cybernetic army that was coming to take all of them away, had melted into her psyche. Her parents had told her that they were safe, that there were starships out there fighting for them, and to focus on her schoolwork instead.
The next hour was a dark blur. They had piled back into the street, hands clasped tightly in hands. It had been difficult to make sense of everything around her, other than the eerie feeling that night had forever replaced day. They all moved quickly, the panting and crying out of others nearby as they did the same, terrified eyes locking with hers as they were each pulled along by their loved ones. The distant ringing of screeches, explosions, and a rhythmic chanting she couldn’t fully make out, quavering any attempt she made to ask her mother where she was leading them.
Later on, hundreds of fingers grabbed and rattled chain link fences surrounding the starship launch site, a sweltering pit it felt she would never escape from. Suffocating and horrible. But they did escape it, a miracle achieved by her mother, and after slipping through a tightly guarded gate, found themselves minutes later onboard the freighter that would become their refuge for some years to come.
Except for her father who had stayed behind to fight.
That was the last she ever saw of him.
((The Third Year - H’bontimi Ship))
Dull whirs undulated in vibrational pockets of the ship as the engine, and therefore the power, trembled under the stress of the attack. She was falling through one of the main corridors, her knees bruised and bleeding with each and every impact, feeling the true weight of the ship as the inertial dampeners punched in and out. A wire snapped out of position, lacerating a Bolian woman in the neck, instantly killing her, and all Laeda could do was push it to the back of her mind, knowing the importance of pressing forwards.
“Keep moving, Laeda!” she heard her mother call out to her from behind, her two brothers now slightly older, at her side as they so often were. Something hard and violent slammed through one of the walls further down the corridor, piercing through it with a shriek, causing all of them to tip sideways into a momentary heap. Emergency shields stuttered into life around its pointed exterior—shamrock veins reaching into them like cybernetic poison.
Once they were back on their feet, they pushed on again, finally coming to the escape pods. One by one, the pods were filled, closing with individual hisses, unplugging from their crevices, only to disappear into the blackness moments later. Her mother was already pushing her brothers inside a pod together, kissing each of them on their foreheads and squeezing their chins as she so often did, as they looked on with affright.
She turned to Laeda next, holding her hand against her cheek with a haunted expression. Eyebrows pressed together. Brown eyes coruscating under the nictitating and failing lights. Her mother had noticed blood on her ear, too, in that moment, and reached for it instinctively.
“Be brave. I love you.”
Those were the words her mother uttered, as she moved her daughter into the pod, confusion percolating in Laeda's mind. When the cylindrical doors swooshed shut, and a glass viewport came between them, the horrible realisation swept through her body. Her hands banged repeatedly against the pane, her screams heavy, the sounds guttural as though squeezing through a wattle of spiked wood.
Kilaeda: Wait…no! No! You have to come with us! You have to, ::she cried, her voice strangulated.:: come with us! Please!
The pod unclamped and blasted out and away from the ship, in a moment that felt like forever. She remained pressed against the edges of the inside of the pod for balance as it sped off towards the nearby planet the miniature screen before her had charted.
Now both her parents…were gone.