Devastation

Posted on Sat 21st Sep, 2019 @ 2:40am by Lieutenant Damion Ildaran
Edited on on Sat 21st Sep, 2019 @ 2:41am

1,178 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: A Diplomatic Affair
Location: Zelda Alegari's Apartment
Timeline: MD-3, 1830 hours

Zelda Alegari loved plants.

That information had bothered Damion ever since he'd learned it earlier in the day. Zelda Alegari loved plants--and how long had she been kept in Security while he and his department had run their background checks, dug as deeply into her tenuous history as they could dig--which hadn't been much, despite the wealth of advanced technology at their disposal. How the hell had they missed the fact that she had earned a degree in botany?

Simple. Wherever she'd earned the degree hadn't been on a Federation world--or at least, not one tied into the Federation's information databases. There were, after all, numerous non-Federation Class-M planets with universities out there, and space was large.

Zelda's love of plants had been a jarring shock to Damion's customary existence. On his homeworld of Turkana IV, plants were survival. They were food, textiles, atmosphere cleaners. They were life itself. His people might kill someone they caught who belonged to a rape gang. But someone caught sabotaging the hydroponics gardens or their lighting? It was not to be contemplated. Neither faction's members would harm the other's food source, even remotely. It was the one agreed-upon taboo that no one would cross.

Zelda had been in Security for a good three weeks. Three weeks, with no water or care given to her plants. Damion shuddered.

As the lead intelligence officer working the investigation into her activities, Damion had access to Zelda's apartment. He'd never gone into it, as he'd had no reason to and didn't care to invade her privacy. The criminal investigation technicians had gone over it thoroughly and had even mentioned in passing that she owned plants. Nothing in Zelda's apartment had provided any leads to the Aenar or to where her ring had originated. Even her computer searches were innocuous--though she was meticulous about regularly deleting her browser history.

That suggested she might be up to something--but what?

Damion sighed, shook his head, and changed into a Durant Repair Services uniform. That would arouse less suspicion than the sight of a Starfleet intelligence officer entering the empty apartment. Because he had to go down there and see for himself how bad the damage was and if any of her plants could be saved.

He left his quarters and rode the tram down-station. His override code allowed smooth entrance into the home Zelda had cultivated ... that was the only word for it. Everywhere the eye looked there were plants. Not all of them were healthy and living after the period of neglect. As Damion walked in, the door slid shut behind him, and he stood still, numb with shock, to survey the damage.

The sight staggered him. Most of the plants were not grown for food, but still, the way he had been raised had left a deep impression on him. This was sacrilege. The lost oxygen production alone was enough to kill over. He could not just leave Zelda Alegari's plants in this condition.

There had once been a philodendron flowing across a low table in front of the sofa. Tendrils of curled leaves and shriveled stems showed how extensive and full it had been, but it was dry and lifeless now. There were others on tables and shelves in the room, less flowing, but it was obvious they'd once been bushy examples of the plant. A large split-leaf to the right of the door had done better, but it, too, was probably beyond saving now.

Succulents, both the tall, thin variety and the short leafy variety, were still alive, but the leaves appeared flat and empty, like balloons which had lost most of their air. The jade plant near the food preparation area on the left had done better, but the leaves were no longer shiny, and they looked flat, too. The dining table also had a plant centerpiece, impossible to identify now. Walking over to look more closely, he decided it might have been a Bajoran plant with variegated leaves. Most of her plants had been Earth varieties, but he wasn't an expert on succulents, so they could have been from anywhere.

He walked deeper into the apartment, standing in the bedroom door to his right. Here, too, there was devastation. What had once been an herb garden was shriveled leaves, most fallen down on the bookshelves they were scattered along. The waste made Damion groan aloud. He took out his PADD and began making notes in a swift scrawl of what herbs he would need to replace.

Next to the left side of the bed, neatly made, he noted, a fuzzy brown support pole over a meter and a half tall had once given direction to a climbing vine. It wasn't clear to him what it had been, but it was obviously dead now. Moving farther into the room, he noted glass shelves across one wall of the 'fresher and it was also a wasteland. Tomato plants, a variety of small peppers, and two squash plants, he thought, had fruit shriveled on the vine and leaves on the floor. He took careful images of each. In a long, narrow clear glass hanging planter, liquid growth medium had all but dried up, leaving mysterious lumps of root plants in their final throes of death. He would have to set aside an evening or two to clean this and see what, if anything, he should replace. It wouldn't be advisable to replace vegetables until he had some idea of when Zelda would be released from custody.

Backing up, the intelligence officer noted, for the first time, the signs that CIs had been there. Smears of powder and black marks marred the otherwise clean surfaces around him. In the closet, where there were no plants, there were also no shoes or hanging clothing. No computer or other electronic devices were evident, though there was evidence of where they had sat. Picture frames hung at angles, and a few were on the floor, with their backs ripped off. What remained showed Zelda had a penchant for light, airy abstracts and blue-green-purple colors.

He had thought the investigators would have straightened things up more before leaving. Granted, in a crime scene, the disarray that a CSI team usually left behind would be nothing compared to the damage a room would already have sustained from the crime. Here, though, no disarray had occurred except for what the team had caused. That didn't sit terribly well with Damion.

Am I getting too emotionally involved in this case? he asked himself. Perhaps he should discuss that with the counselor--or with Elizabeth. Still, the disruption to Zelda's life didn't sit right with him. Yes, there were dodgy things about her, but he didn't feel she was entirely a hardened criminal; he'd spent time with people like that. Even Morrigan, hard-nosed as she was, he suspected had her limits. She wouldn't kill a child without remorse.

I'll discuss it with Graves or Elizabeth Damion decided. For now, I'll clean up this mess.

 

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