A run interupted...

Posted on Wed Jun 3rd, 2020 @ 9:25am by Lieutenant JG Saffiya Hadat

ON:

The heated black sand was coarse beneath Saffiya’s bare feet as she ran along the sweeping deserted bay. A few gossamer thin clouds drifted across the night sky while twin moons, one with a near-purplish hue, hung low above distant shadow haunted hills.

Azure waves swept the bay, the otherwise dark water glimmering with countless fluorescent micro-organisms. Her grey eyes looked across the bay and the lapping oceans beyond. So much water! Her father would never have believe that such an expanse existed. The only vista of her home world was the endless ocean of sand of the endless expanse of the Visabegh Flats or the Whispering Sea. As a child her uncle had woken her one morning to show her glistening droplets of dew on the sand before the moisture had evaporated, vanishing like djinn in the first rays of the morning sun.

‘Personal Log, Saffiya Hadat’ she muttered to the incorporeal ever-present ship’s computer.
‘Computer add the current time and star date to the Log records’ she stated as she stopped running, a thin sheen of sweat across her naked arms. She paused to look back along the beach where the waves wiped away any evidence of her presence she tried to clear her thoughts.

‘Saffiya Hadat personal log, Mission Advisor and XO USS Pennsylvania’ she repeated herself. She wondered where the Penn would take her. Off to the expanse of the Delta Quadrant. ‘I have reviewed numerous mission posts and selected records of USS Voyager trying to get some handle on the Delta Quadrant. The prospects are… daunting to say the least… Pause Log’.

Saffiya realised she was meandering, the Personal Log just a monologue of the obvious. Behind the scenes she had called in some favours, given promises she probably couldn’t keep just to get aboard the Penn when she had had confirmation that the illustrious ship was due to explore the Delta Quadrant.

‘Igider’ she muttered out loud. A word. A name. A person.

Her brother lost in the Delta Quadrant aboard the USS Belisarius. MIA the anonymous report had stated. “Missing In Action” so that Igider had become just another annotation on the Roll of Honour on a wall in San Francisco. Yet, if she closed her eyes, she couldn’t even envisage his face. As if even his memory had faded like some corrupted tri-d image.
She shrugged her broad shoulders and saved the Personal Log for later.
‘Computer end program’ Saffiya muttered and, slowly, the sweeping bay faded from view to reveal the dark walls of the Penn’s Holodeck III. She looked at the doorway that led to the ship’s corridor and all that implied.

END.