309: Death & Life

By Lt. (jg) Rada Dengar
80603.0030
Immediately After Hospital Escape

-=Underground: Stra II=-


Rada considered his response to the Commander’s query whilst Breaux moved to Orad now lying dead on the floor. Breaux’ face conveyed that there was nothing he could do. None of them had known this man; the light of his life had been but a slight flicker to them, it faded into darkness within moments of their meeting him. They knew nothing of his passions, his flaws. Nothing beyond the fact that as he faced death his thoughts were not for himself; for many people the time would have been spent in a futile struggle for their own survival, his thoughts however were to ensure the survival of another. It seemed he’d been Mim’s sole advocate, the only person on this entire planet willing to stand up for a tiny mechanical. It could have been the last stone in the path a good deeds laid by a saint or the final redemption of a fool and cad. They may never know who he was, but he didn’t deserve to die.

His killer had called him Orad. It was a name which had meant everlasting illumination when used by the Terrans. Perhaps it was a name not entirely inappropriate, Orad the man would always have died but through his deeds, Mim, something possibly everlasting, could get a chance at life.

One thing that all could see was that he was unarmed; his death had not been something that which his killer had given them no choice in, the pointless ending of this life had been someone’s decision. It brought chills to the Angosian’s bones how anyone could make such a call.

O’Sullivan moved in to position next to the remaining Strasa guard and kept his weapon and eye securely locked upon him, he was in no mood to trust these people.

Rada finally felt he had found the right words. “We discovered a hidden message whilst we were repairing their communication systems which indicated a being in distress. Our investigations led us here where we found Mim,” he indicated towards the small being who was progressively moving away from the wall “and this man,” he indicated Orad’s body, “being held at phaser point by the two Strasa. During out attempts to defuse the situation one Strasa fired at the man and Commander Lair was forced to incapacitate him. Mim has since requested asylum and as the leader of the away team I decided to grant it.”

Mim was pleased by this. Rada realised that it may have been over stepping his authority a little bit to grant asylum, especially as in regards to the pip count he had actually been the lowest ranked officer on the away team even though his position of Chief Engineer had put him in a command role. Salvek however seemed to find nothing inappropriate in this and gave no sign that he objected. His only movement involved what could have been interpreted as, were his motion to have been greatly slowed and exaggerated, a look of concern for his wife.

Reece’s attention was now drawn to the children who thankfully even with all of the problems on this world were still clearly unaccustomed to seeing death. “Perhaps we should get you guys out of here,” he suggested.

Before he could do anything Mim approached the children. Mim had seen beings such as these countless times on monitors, although were it not for all of Mim’s memory wipes Mim would have known the count, and yet still knew so little of them. Logically their size would make them much less capable of looking after themselves than the beings that Mim usually dealt with, indeed his observations of them having the larger beings commitment to care for them supported this, and yet in Mim’s time on this planet, especially the most recent years, he had found they were the ones who least needed to be looked after. Mim constantly needed to ensure that the larger beings had all of the information and entertainment they required to cope with their lives. Mim needed to maintain communications networks so the larger beings could speak to one another and the transportation systems which allowed them to get away from one another. The small beings however seemed to be still capable of making their own entertainment and communication just fine without any electrical interference. Mim couldn’t understand.

Mim wheeled in front of the children and blinked twice whilst it examined them up and down. Rada went to step in, thinking about how much it would have scared him as a child to be advanced by an unknown mechanical being with pincers extended, no matter how cute it was. The Strasa children with all of their exposure to technology seemed however to be regarding Mim with affection and curiosity in the same way that Terran children might regard a dog the first time they see one. This was in itself a confusing concept to Rada in that as much he had liked such animals when he was a small child, he couldn’t help but consider how whilst he thought nothing of it then he would be terrified now were he to be approached by a large, four-legged, tooth filled creature which was tall enough to look him in the eye. This offered more proof to Rada’s theory that no matter what species children were; adults were always a different one.

Several of the more forward children now began to surround Mim; it seemed that Mim was comforting to them and was providing a welcome distraction from their surroundings. They were curious about Mim just as Mim was curious about them.

“Excuse me,” said Mim softly, a Strasa boy was looking in Mim’s eyes and Mim was moving them up and down to match the movements of boy’s head. At the same time another child was running its hand along Mim’s front “If you wish to remove Mim’s frontal covering you will need to increase pressure applied by two hundred and seventy three percent.”

Mim next rotated its gaze to a child behind it and asked “Are you my builder?” to which the children laughed.

Mim found this strange, Mim had asked that same question four hundred and thirty times that Mim could remember but no one had ever found it amusing before.

Several Members of the Sera’s crew smiled about this. Now Mim was really confused.

Lt. (jg) Rada Dengar
Chief Engineer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012