Stars, Like Flashlights
Posted on Mon 30th May, 2022 @ 8:32am by Commander Paul Graves PsyD & Lieutenant Damion Ildaran
1,766 words; about a 9 minute read
Mission:
The Hunted
Location: Counseling Holosuite, Deck 83
Timeline: MD-2, 1400 hours
OOC: Trigger warnings for phobia and the trauma that caused it.
Damion Ildaran stood outside the Counseling holo-suite with Commander Graves and began the breathing exercises that Graves had taught him over the past several weeks. Today's holo-simulation was to be a space walk--just a space walk, without him trying to do anything constructive during it. Previously, they had gone to an observation gallery to look out at the stars. Damion had expected that to be bad, but it wasn't. He'd known he was safely inside a sturdy, well-lit, clean starbase, with decks, bulkheads, and ceilings all around him. The idea of moving, even in simulation, through black, star-speckled space with no barrier between himself and it caused perspiration to bead Damion's forehead. Stars were terrifying. A simple twist of the imagination, and they looked just like--
He refused to finish that thought. Breathe in, Damion told himself as he pressed his chest wall outward with his diaphragm and then held the breath. Now breathe out. Next, he began to tighten and release his muscles, beginning with his toes and working his way upward.
"Are you ready?" Graves asked.
Betazoids and their bloody empathy, Damion thought, annoyed. "I will never be 'ready,'" he muttered.
"Yes, you will. You've made excellent progress, Lieutenant. Already, you're much calmer than you were when you first listed your fears to me."
I am? Damion thought. He hadn't noticed any particular improvement. Finally, he took a deep breath and let it out. "Let's do this."
Graves nodded and stepped forward. The holo-suite door slid open with a hiss to admit them and then closed with a soft click to indicate that it was locked for privacy.
"Computer, run program Graves-000927926-EVA Suit," the Counselor said.
A standard-issue space suit materialized around Damion. To his amusement it lacked the internal hookups. Instead of weighing what it would in normal gravity, it seemed to weigh nothing, as it would during a space walk. Only the magnetic soles of his boots lent any vague sense of weight.
"Too bad it can't feel this comfortable when I'll really have to wear it," Damion said. "I'm ready for the next bit, sir."
Graves nodded. "Computer, run program Graves-000927926 spacewalk-1."
Damion sucked in his breath. What a moment before had been a small, black-walled room outlined all over with a white grid pattern was now the patchwork, mismatched outer hull of a drifter colony floating in space. There was no nearby star; the thing sat in the middle of nowhere. To see required helmet-mounted lighting or else the occasional spotlight from some part of the ships comprising Oblivion. Every time he saw the beam of light his helmet emitted shining against the gray hull of the ship they stood on, Damion's stomach roiled.
Inhale. Hold your breath. Count to 10. Exhale. I don't care if this is a holodeck; I am NOT going to be sick in my suit! Inhale. Count to 10. Exhale. Damion repeated the mantra to himself over and over as he kept his gaze glued to the hull at his feet.
They stood on part of a Klingon battlecruiser that had seen better days. The entire port nacelle had been sheered off by a beam weapon, and the resulting hole was patched with what looked like a lick and a promise of Cardassian hull plating. Damion doubted the thing would be spaceworthy at warp. Black space and stars intruded on the edge of his vision, and Damion forced his gaze back to the hull again as bile rose in his throat and subsided, only to rise again.
"Shall we have a look around?" Graves suggested.
"We're on the hull a K't'inga-class battlecruiser docked to a drifter colony," Damion said in a strangled-sounding voice. "There's not much place to go except to walk around the flat part of the primary hull and the docking port, or take the stupid-long walk to the nacelles. Do you have a preference?"
"The nacelles--or what's left of them," Graves said.
Damion swallowed bile and sighed. "I should have known that's what you'd choose." They set off, but there was no real way to avoid looking at space as they walked--as Damion was certain Graves had intended. The long, thin neck connecting the Klingon ship's command hull to its propulsion hull was larger in diameter than it looked but not large enough.
The counselor gave him a sideways look. "You're feeling extremely stressed to me, Lieutenant. Remember, you or I can stop this at any time."
Damion ignored Graves. The stars look like flashlights, he thought dully, naming his fear for perhaps the first time ever. He went cold inside the holographic spacesuit but walked forward, anyway. Jorn didn't get a reprieve. I don't get one, either.
Outer space vanished, replaced by darkness and a feeling of close, musty air and the weight of earth and concrete all around him. He wasn't on the hull of a ship anymore; he was deep inside the tunnels of Turkana City, and the only lights to be seen were the flashlights coming toward him and his friends, who had turned all of theirs off. The grown-ups who held the flashlights were invisible in the darkness behind the glare.
"Jorn! Get down!" Rona hissed in a loud whisper close to Damion's ear, as she seized Jorn by the shoulder and yanked him toward the ground.
The ringleader of their little quartet scowled at the other three children, who crouched low into a crack in the tunnel, formed by a fault line. The two boys and one girl rubbed dirt into their faces and tried to make themselves as small and invisible as possible against the concrete. Jorn glared at the three.
"I'm not afraid of them," he declared.
"Well, you should be! They're bigger than we are," Rona whispered back. "There's six of them and four of us. Who do you think's gonna win a fight?"
"Are they Alliance?" Aric asked in a small voice. "If they're Coalition, their proximity detectors--"
"Would kill them and us," Damion muttered almost inaudibly. "All of you, be quiet. Sound carries in here."
"We can't stay here," Jorn hissed, his voice harsh with impatience. "They'll just walk up to us and take our technic! We'll be easy pickings--"
"Too late, now," Rona whispered as a beam of light found them. "So now we're easy pickings. What do you want to do, then, Mr. 'I Know Where There's Good Technic Hidden in the Tunnels?'"
Jorn glared at the approaching gang members. "We gotta go."
"Yes." Rona rolled her eyes at Jorn's back and carefully climbed out of the fault, wiping dirt off her gray trousers.
"Finally. Come on, Aric," Damion muttered. "Leave your backpack here; it'll just weigh you down." He shouldered out of his own backpack but thrust a few smaller items into his pockets.
"No! Mom'll yell at me if I leave it here!" Arick whispered. But he dumped the contents of his pack into the cement crevice before putting it back on.
Jorn frowned at all of Aric's and Damion's abandoned bits of technic, rusted and broken though they were. "It's not fair that they'll get our stuff. We found it first."
"Doesn't matter now," Rona said. She'd collected only a couple of pieces that were small enough for her to stuff into pockets. "You'd better dump yours, too. Let's go."
The men with the flashlights were much closer now. Damion exchanged a worried glance with Rona. He could just make out their thin, rangy bodies as they walked. They might look half-starved, but what little flesh they had was all muscle. They probably hunted or fished on the surface.
"Hey, look! It's four little rug-rats! Get 'em, boys! Walkin' joy dust, every one of 'em!"
"They wanna sell us for joy dust? Come on!" Rona ordered and grasped Aric's hand.
"You go first; we'll come behind you," Damion said.
"On it," Rona agreed. The moment Aric's feet were on the tunnel floor, she took off running and pulled Aric along with her.
Damion climbed out of the crevice as well and held a hand out to Jorn. "Why are you bringing that stuff? Leave it!" he whispered and tried to pull a backpack strap off Jorn's shoulder.
Jorn slapped his hand away and levered himself out of the crevice. "It's mine."
There was no time to argue, only time to run. "Whatever," Damion retorted as he scrambled to his feet.
The pair of them raced back the way they'd come, after Rona and Aric. Damion's pulse beat in his chest like a drum being played too fast, and his throat burned with every breath. Ahead of them, Damion could see the shadows their bodies cast in the beams of the gang members' flashes. Soon, footsteps thudded on the concrete close behind them--too many footsteps--and hard breathing.
Damion heard a yelp behind him as he ran. "Noo!" It was Jorn's voice.
"Got me one!"
It was Damion's worst nightmare come to life. He didn't know exactly what the gangs did or what it meant to be sold for joy dust, but every grown-up who'd ever talked to him about the gangs had told him that it was a fate worse than death to be captured by one. Maybe the man would let Jorn go if he hit him with something.
Damion dug a piece of technic from his front pocket and turned to throw it, but the glare of their flashes made his eyes water, and his throw went wide.
And the pause to throw slowed him.
"Damion, come on!" Rona shouted.
Sweat poured down his face. He could hear Jorn screaming through the hand that was pressed over his mouth, and the man's laughter as Jorn kicked and scratched at him. Damion threw one more chunk of something. It clattered onto the cement somewhere and echoed with the sound of failure.
"Damion, RUN!"
More than anything else, it was the terror in Rona's voice that moved him, that gave him a sudden burst of energy to turn and race toward her and Aric. He didn't look back at Jorn or the man who had him. He didn't want to know, and he didn't want to see those flashlights ever again.
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