MSPNPC Da’al Ypartin — Fall from grace
jkpbem
(( Detention Facility No. 1 — Vman, Da’al Capital City ))
With the flash of the force field, Ypartin was once again contained within his cell. He turned round and placed his shackled hands through the small opening in the force field, not looking at the guard in the eye. It wouldn’t have mattered if he had; no one had said a word to him in days anyway. Ignoring the prisoner was a tactic, and it worked. It had been only days since everything had come crashing down around him, and he was already being treated like a former person, unworthy even of acknowledgment.
His hands unshackled, Ypartin sat on the cot of his windowless cell, somewhere deep in the bowels of Vman’s central detention facility. He knew the types of people who were incarcerated here. He had put a few of them away himself. They were those criminals who embodied the antithesis of Da’al values and principles. Those whose actions were so intolerable that they weren’t even fit to be rehabilitated; the only thing to do with them was lock them away forever. The fact that he was now imprisoned here was a humiliation.
But it was a humiliation that had already followed a thousand others, and which would undoubtedly precede a thousand more. Arrest, detention, interrogation, eventually trial, verdict, sentencing, and finally consignment to history. Each of them would come with its own unique brand of shame.
But at the moment, there was little he could do other than contemplate his existence. And contemplate how everything had gone so terribly, inconceivably wrong. It was easy now to see where he had erred.
Zeneth.
Everything had gone perfectly until Zeneth contacted the Federation. Their arrival had upset the delicate balance of things, and Ypartin has never really regained control of the situation after that. If he were smart, he’d not have waited so long to railroad Zeneth out of the military and out of the government. If he were smart, he would have done it months, years earlier.
But there was no way to have known years ago who he would become. No one told him how the ever-shifting alliances and factional manoeuvrings would change him, disconnect him from the people he governed, and make him cynical. The pressures of the job made him forget that he was just the temporary steward of a timeless position, one whose integrity and stability must be preserved. His actions violated the trust between the government and the governed, and whoever succeeded him would have the unenviable task of restoring it.
Zeneth had been his friend, and he had betrayed her. He’d tried to have her arrested and branded a traitor, forced to undergo rehabilitation, ruined her career and disgraced her family. He’d done that to his friend, and at the time, he hadn’t thought twice about it. Living with that knowledge was far worse than any indignity he’d experienced in the past few days.
It wasn’t Zeneth who was responsible. It was he. The moment Ypartin began considering ways to unconstitutionally expand and extend his authority, he made the choice of ignoring his conscience. With the skill of a politician, he explained and reasoned and excused his way out of the indefensible act, reframing it instead as a patriotic duty. That was his mistake.
And he would pay for it. One of the consequences of the Da’al principle of neutrality was that they had no friendly neighbors who might accept him as a political refugee. No, he would be forced to remain on the planet and endure whatever hell the new government saw fit to subject him to. If he was lucky, he might have another 70 or 80 years to contemplate his existence.
MSPNPC Ypartin
Da’al Prime Minister (deposed)
simmed by
Ensign Yogan Yalu
Helm Officer
USS Resolution NCC-78145
Justin
D238804DS0
As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others, those who have lost the right to speak.
— Mahmoud Darwish