Takeshi's Trials

Posted on Mon Mar 30th, 2020 @ 1:13am by Lieutenant Takeshi Nakazato 'Zack'

580 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Demons in the Dark
Location: Tactical Information Center

After Takeshi's abrupt arrival, he offered to make up for his surprise drop in by volunteering to help clean things up in the ship's Tactical Information Center.

As he worked, he heard someone enter the room.

"Well, well... The biggest murderer in Starfleet has a new job. In charge of small craft similar to those that took all those lives..."

Takeshi turned around. It was a Starfleet officer with long hair wearing Admiral insignia. Takeshi immediately found this suspicious, as Taiga was the highest ranked officer on the ship, and she was a lowly captain.

"Who the hell are you?" He asked. "And what are you doing on my ship?"

"Quite frankly, I'm surprised you didn't recognize me, Commander Nakazato." The Admiral responded. "But I guess, for a mass murderer like you, my face is easy to lose amongst your victims."

"I'm not a murderer!" Takeshi lashed out.

"Oh, really?" The Admiral responded. "Then why did you kill me?"

The Admiral snapped his fingers, and suddenly, he and Takeshi were surrounded by fire and devastation.

"What trickery is this?" Takeshi demanded.

"You should know this place." The Admiral said, brushing off Takeshi's question. "It was here that my life was taken. In fact, I was standing right over there, overseeing the evacuation."

The Admiral pointed to a spot engulfed in fire.

"Until an overloaded shuttle crashed seconds after takeoff, right into those storage tanks full of highly flammable fuel." The Admiral explained, pointing to the remains of several large tanks. "The fire spread rapidly, engulfing the entire evacuation site."

"I didn't willfully overload those shuttles!" Takeshi defended. "I was under orders to overload them to speed up the evacuation!"

"Ah, yes, falling back under orders as your excuse." The Admiral said. "No such order was ever given, the investigation debunked your sorry excuse! You were overloading shuttles to feed your ego, and when you failed, you fell back on a fictional order. And your ego took not only my life, but the lives of all these lovely folks as well..."

As if on cue, people began emerging from the fires.

"You killed us..." They moaned.

Some emerged from the flames on fire, screaming bloody murder:

"You killed us!"

"You killed us." The Admiral said calmly. "All of us. You are a mass murderer, Nakazato, and what does Starfleet do? They give you a slap on the wrist and let you continue to fly when they should have stripped you of your rank and dishonorably discharged you!"

"Sounds to me like your grievance is with Starfleet, and not me, Admiral." Takeshi stated.

"Perhaps you deny involvement, because you never knew us;" The Admiral said.

"Any of us!" The crowd now encircling Takeshi chanted.

"And you didn't feel the pain, and suffering of our final moments, as our skin fried, and our insides cooked!" The Admiral said, flames now appearing on his uniform. "Perhaps if you felt our pain, you'll admit it!"

The Admiral snapped his fingers again as his hand went up in flames.

Suddenly, Takeshi was on fire, burning. He was immediately on the ground rolling over and trying desperately to put the flames out, but to no avail. Takeshi then lost feeling, and rolled in front of the Admiral's fleet.

"... Help... Me..." Takeshi gasped.

The Admiral's charred face stared down at him, unsympathetically.

"This is where murderers like you deserve to burn." The Admiral growled as the darkness closed in.

Posting by

Lieutenant Takeshi Nakazato
Air Boss
Second Officer

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