Walking Shadow - 21104.01

By Jane Fields

Commander Jane Fields sat on a high stool at the bar, her slightly upturned top lip indicating personal distaste for the surroundings. It wasn't quite a scowl she wore. In fact it was quite an attractive expression, something she was only dimly aware of. The barman for one was immediately drawn to the lone 30-something female with dark blonde hair wearing command crimson.

She ordered a real Scotch whisky with a jug of water, adding only the tiniest drop to dilute the liquor when it arrived. Holding up the glass to the light, her cobalt blue eyes observed the small cloud of water as it swirled within the oily texture of the amber liquid.

“Drop of the strong stuff, eh?” the barman asked, rhetorically.

The woman sighed, she didn't raise her eyes to the ceiling but didn't need to, the disdain was obvious.

Sipping the drink she took a moment to savour the flavours, rolling the liquid around her mouth before swallowing. Only after several seconds did she respond.

“Evidently.”

She took another drink refusing to make eye contact.

The barman nodded sagely, taking down a glass from the shelf he began rubbing it with a grubby bar cloth in a quite unnecessary pretence at polishing.

“I see... you're the kind of hard-boiled silent type, eh?” he persisted.

She now directed her vivid blue eyes at the man. He was of fairly average build, mid- to late 30s, with thick dark chestnut hair in a fashionable cut. After a glance up and down, she decided that he was actually quite attractive. Not that her demeanour in any way betrayed this.

“I see you're paid by the word, eh?” she replied pithily.

The man smirked a lopsided grin:

“You know, it's customary for lone strangers who sit at the bar and order whisky to tell the barkeep their woes.”

“And if I don't have any woes?”

He shrugged and continued smearing the glass with the cloth.

“How about your life story?”

“Oh you must have a long shift tonight...” she knocked back the drink in one go and beamed. “Another of your finest, please barman!”

Three whiskies later and the normally taciturn woman had started to talk.

~ Fields' Story ~

I don't talk about myself. I hate talking. Unless it's some killer aphorism or cutting putdown. I'm famous for it. I have even heard it said that I can vaporise a man's libido the second after he makes his opening pitch. I am unique. I have been told by several men that I'm not like other women; it wasn't meant as a compliment.

It's not that I don't like people, that I don't like men. I do. Both, especially the latter. Men are straightforward, uncomplicated. You always know where you stand with men, especially as a woman. Sex? Yes. Though I can live without it, and there have been times in my life when I have.

I am not an unattractive woman, I know. And perhaps men like a woman who appears to show no interest in them whatsoever. I can't say exactly. But I guess I've always taken men for granted. Perhaps that will change as the years accumulate.

I suppose I was always like this, hard-nosed. I think maybe I was born like it. But I can't remember that moment in time, so I'm prepared to concede it developed later. I don't remember that much of my childhood, I choose not to. I chose not to remember it at an early age!

If I try not to think about the past, then I think about the future even less. Maybe you think it's strange not to think of the future, of where I'm going. You may think I lack ambition or that I'm lying or misguided. None of this is true. I've never lied. Never been a liar - I suppose that is different from lying. I know that I can go anywhere I choose. I am capable of achieving anything. And that is as much as I need to know about the future.

I expect you believe that as a woman I must have some natural urges to settle down and procreate. I have no maternal instincts. I take after my mother in that respect. She died when I was 7. I never really knew her. She appeared not to want to know me. My father? He died later; 10 years later. That was not a surprise. The surprise was that he lived so long. The manner of his death was similarly predictable. His murder.

Murder... I see this has gained your attention. Well, murder is commonplace enough, is it not? Especially in a place like this. It was in a place like this that it happened. He ended his pitiful existence on the floor of a bar with an Orion's knife sticking out of his back. It happened on Evuna IV. The main spaceport on the northern landmass. I've never been back. I was 17. I never did like the cold of that place. It's a shithole to be honest. We only ever went there for the dilithium.

Maybe I'm biased. But I was brought up on Earth in Northern England. It's also cold, and wet. And grey, or maybe it's just that any memories are in monochrome. Colourless. Like a dream.

I was on the ship at the time it happened, my father's ship. If you can call it a ship. The freighter Acavus. The name means snail. Oh yes. The crew, a motley one, consisted of two others. Gavon the chief cook and bottle washer, as they used to say, jack of all trades. Actually he was a sometime engineer at Utopia Planetia shipyards in his younger days. The man had a sharp brain when it wasn't dulled by wacky baccy, which most of the time it was. The crew complement was made up of Tarn a Klingon hybrid. Built like a massive oak tree, reserved, quiet, unsurprising.

When it happened I was alone on the ship, we having landed on the surface some hours earlier, everyone else was ashore to indulge in their usual favoured proclivities; for my father this was alcohol. In the days before the advent of synthehol people had no choice but to suffer the harmful effects of ethanol, but my father... the fact that he chose such a drug really tells you everything you need to know about how single-mindedly self-destructive he was.

I should mention that I left Earth in my early teens. I had lived with my grandmother since shortly after birth. My parents were never together for any substantial period of time. I'm a bastard. Well grandmother had packed me off to boarding school in England. Or tried to. I absconded. Once, twice, fifty times. I don't know how many. Never spent a night there. In fact I nearly razed the place to the ground on the final occasion. That's another story.

The upshot was that my grandmother couldn't do anything with me and in desperation my father was called for. He was forced to take me with him to live on the Acavus. And so I accompanied my father and his crew of two misfits in their un-gainful employment as traders. It meant freedom to do pretty much what I wanted. But that novelty wears off. I soon found myself parenting my parent, roles reversed. In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king after all. Perhaps that explains a lot. My father was a weak man. He never meant me any harm. He was just feckless. He couldn't help it.

So, I was on the ship alone at the spaceport on Evuna IV, the frozen popsicle planet. There was a comm from the Port Authorities. I remember what I was doing at the time. I was trying to replicate Sunday lunch, traditional English fare - roast meat and two veg. And the replicator wasn't working properly, as usual, and I had the tools out trying to fix it.

Yes it was a Sunday. Isn't it always a Sunday?! And so occupied, I was interrupted by a call to report to the local bar. What have they done now? I thought. It was quite usual this, to get such calls about my father, or Gavon having run-up gambling debts, or Tarn getting into a fight. So off I went, suitably prim and superior, ready to wring my hands and scowl and make sarcastic, cutting remarks. There's nothing quite like an indignant teenage girl is there?

Well, I went to the bar. As I traipsed through the shabby, freezing port at twilight towards the glowing lights of the low building, I could see something was happening, something significant. It was evident in the way people were moving; scurrying to and forth, either away from the location with their heads shaking reprovingly having suffered their surfeit of drama, or towards the action, whispering, wide-eyed and with whetted curiosity.

When I arrived at the entrance, Gavon was outside the door. He blocked my way.

“Let me in!” I demanded.

He shook his grey head.

“Let me in! Gavon!”

He didn't budge. He continued to shake his head, his goatee grey beard and thin face grimly set, avoiding eye-contact.

I knew then.

“GAVON!”

The two of us were locked in a physical tussle now. Other people arrived. There was a crowd.

“Let me... in!” The words from my lips began to falter, becoming dry and brittle, sticking in my throat.

It can't be. I thought. That was the only time I cried.

And they would not let me in.

They didn't want me to see. Strange how only now someone considered I might need protecting from something; that I might need to be shielded from the harsh reality of death, though the harsh reality of daily life was perfectly acceptable.

And so the scene of my father's death I have only seen in my mind's eye. To this day I imagine it. The bar, the plain layout of the room and its functional cold steel furniture; the characters, louche men and loose women, a mix of species, Andorian migrants with their antennae twitching frantically, the locals muttering about how the humans were always trouble and pronouncing that they should ban the Orions from the place if only they didn't control everything and everyone through the Syndicate and no-one will stand up to them...

Someone did stand up to them. Me.

I imagine the blood, a deep crimson pool spreading beneath a limp and lifeless body. I imagine the Klingon hybrid Tarn, massive, snarling, atop of the green assassin, beating, pummelling retribution, the many hands of bystanders grabbing at his bulk, pulling him away. The knife... the knife is the most problematic...

Sometimes it has been large with an elaborate, ornate handle in tarnished gold colour. I think I might have seen it in some old holovid - it might be a sacrificial knife of some sort, and it must have been plunged by the assailant in an expansive ceremonial arc. Then again, it is a thin stiletto blade, an assassin's knife, thrust with art and silent skill in just the right place to cause instant death. It has also been a flick-knife, cheap, small, plastic and jabbed into a vital organ in a lucky shot. Variably it has been a Klingon blade, sturdy, sharp, silver-coloured and viciously barbed, swung with excessive violence and savagery.

What provoked it, you ask? Perhaps there was an exchange of words. An altercation. Perhaps the green brute didn't like the look of the human propping up the bar and laying it on thick with the females. It doesn't really matter what caused it.

I remember afterwards there was a terrible storm. It began to blow gently at first, stirring the litter and detritus of the spaceport in whirlwind circles and causing the tarpaulin covering cargo and crates to lift at the edges. But the wind gathered strength until anything not tied down flapped, rattled and moved about with increasing noise and ferocity. Within a couple of hours there was a blizzard. People hurried away, their necks sinking further into their warm coats as they scurried for shelter, rapidly retreating as if fearing the wrath of an ancient god awakened by the spilling of blood. And very suddenly it was quiet and devoid of life. It was Sunday.

The murderer, the Orion, was apprehended (Tarn having been prevented by bystanders from pulverising his face). The assailant was taken into custody by the local authorities but he quickly escaped. At least that was the official story, there are some who believe there was more to it, that the Syndicate called in favours. But, in any case, I can tell you he never did leave Evuna IV...

Strangest thing, absent-mindedly I had carried with me from the ship to the bar a tool, a laser welder. I had been using it to repair the faulty replicator earlier. I had it in my hand. Hadn't even noticed it. They emit a very powerful laser beam adjustable in intensity, useful for all manner of jobs. I was quite handy with one back then. That wreck of a freighter was constantly in need of repair and we all had to chip in. I suppose it's a wonder I didn't become an Engineer when I later joined Star Fleet. But I joined Security. You see, perhaps I was too good with a laser welder...

What happened to the Acavus after my father's death? I took over the family business. For 5 years in fact, and you cannot imagine what a hard bitch I was... ah well, maybe you can! That pitiful existence lasted until one dubious trade too many at Jovan-1, some Ferengi slipped me a cargo of rather deadly, poisoned Romulan dilithium, and I ran into a Star Fleet vessel captained by a certain Vulcan. It is why I'm here today in this uniform and that, really, is another story.

~

Commander Jane Fields finished her whisky and looked at the barman, examining his response to her tale. The man had a pensive, frowning expression. He had stopped polishing his glass with the dirty cloth.

She pursed her lips. It was time to go.

“Thanks for the whisky.” she said casually tossing payment credits onto the bar.

Fields smiled a wry twisted smile as she mused over the peculiar mood she must be in to talk about herself and her past. She had not thought about these things in years. Perhaps there were things that even she needed to get off her chest. Odd that it was so much easier to do this with a stranger. But then the advantage was that she could get up, walk away and never be seen again.

And with the briefest of farewells to her bemused barman listener that is just what she did...