Personal Log: Lagar

[Lagar]

Dream Log, Spock 2 University on Phylos, Stardate 76282.7, Lagar Recording. 27th Instance of the Dream.

I am in the resting space. Radtha, Golra and Met are entwined with me, as our schedules align, and they are of the same understanding.

I am dreaming. It is the same vision, returned for the twenty seventh time.

I see golden tears falling on the wounded worlds of this universe. Our tears, our ships, water the wasteland, but there is resistance. They have their own ways. We persist.

I see us, the way we were meant to be, great and tall and strong. I see us towering over the humanoids, opening their buildings, casting aside their locks and their doors, correcting their mistakes. They will grow with our guidance.

I see our tendrils reaching out to the stars. Green vines grasping planets. Wrapping around them, rooting into entire worlds, piercing the crust, cracking the continents. Some worlds break and crumble like a dry chunk of soil. Some thrive in our hold. All are touched.

I see the hallways of our dead ancestors"¦ I walk among them, small and frail in the midst of their greatness. The heads of their corpses turn down to me, gray eyes looking through me.

I awake.

One of the many Halls of the Dead on Phylos.

[Lagar]

Crewman's Log, Phylosian Starship Peacekeeper, Stardate 76287.3, Lagar Recording.

On this date, we are twenty-seven days into our efforts to clear the Xe'Chorra Minefield. We have returned to our original schedule after several weeks coordinating with the Andorian construction ship Varr. I spent three days aboard the Varr with its Andorian crew, and will record my experiences in my next entry. My wounds will heal sooner than theirs will, I suspect, and their gift of an art piece, odd as it may be, remains near my compost pile.

I write to reflect further on the concept of mines. The Andorians of the Varr, despite their mission to assist us in the removal of the minefield laid by some other race long ago, remain defensive about the use of these tools. Their own race, far in the distant past, used mines in terrestrial wars, and in space as well.

In my view, the mine is antithetical to peace. The mine does not discriminate. I do not believe that it truly sees friend or foe, innocent or invader.

The Andorians of the Varr claim that their race instilled an intelligence in these things. "œThey will only detect true invaders." they say. "œWhen we laid these killers on this space and on these planets, only criminals and trespassers would have come. We never meant for innocents to be harmed."

Most disturbing of their claims was this: "œThese weapons were necessary for peace and freedom."

The Federation itself employed a network of mines. During the Dominion War, their stated goal was to prevent further Dominion incursion into the Alpha and Beta Quadrants. The employment of the minefield prevented what would have been an earlier end to the war, and a likely Dominion victory.

Had I been in command, with the tool of the replicating mines at my disposal, and no other options, would I have given the order? Would I, like the Andorians in the past and the people on Deep Space 9, believe that the weapons were necessary?

Where would Phylos have fallen in the Dominion War? What would be the nature of our Dream under the guidance of a Vorta administrator?

I will think more on this.

The space mines of Xe'Chorra.

[Lagar]

Voice Journal, Phylos, Stardate 76294.9, Lagar Recording.

"I am heading back to the gathering I've been resting in for the last few days. It is a fine collective. My coursework has been challenging, as ever. Spock 2 has been guiding me in my studies to support my efforts to apply to Starfleet. He knows I doubt the Federation. Our melds have shown him this, despite my efforts. Others have doubted, he told me. He suggested that it would be reasonable that if I observed flaws in a thing, I should take effort to improve that thing. His logic is sound.

At the University, today, I observed the building itself during a period of meditation. We Phylosians built Spock 2 University in order to accommodate our teacher's size. It is one of the few new buildings since the great wasting-away of our people that we have bothered to build to the old specifications, with the doors of old and the high windows of light. Once, we were all so majestic. Once, it was not an offworlder alone who was grand, but each of us as a people. I look now at the new housing we have constructed to replace the old, and I see windows at knee-height, and roofs which would barely hold a child"¦ Yet they are for us. They are for me.

I wonder how many generations it will take until we are once again great enough to fly our old ships. They're still there, in the depths. Despite the majority of the collective seeming to believe that they will never be needed for the Dream, not a one has been disassembled. Not a one has been pulled apart, its components reused for some other purpose. They are there, ready for when we can take to the stars as we were meant to."

The Abandoned Starships of Old

[Lagar]

Moment in Time, Stardate 76295.1
[Sickbay "" Andorian Vessel Tumaph]

The Andorian vessel Tumaph.

Lagar aggressively tapped his voder with a tendril, though he was sure the translator was working properly. "Sickbay." he repeated. "No one is torturing you here, we're trying to heal you."

The Klingon currently standing on the other side of the biobed from Lagar was easily 250 pounds of trained muscle, and he still wore his military uniform; the padding of the vest and shoulders added an extra layer of protection to the warrior that made him even more formidable. Despite his injuries, this Klingon was in a ready combat stance, slightly crouched, fanged mouth open wide as if he meant to take a chunk out of Lagar's botanical body if given the chance.

The Phylosian looked sidelong at the Andorian biobed; surely it was tame enough, right? No spinning razor blades, though thumb-screw attachments, no gore-filled bucket to capture spilled blood; it was a flat bed with a large half-circle attachment which contained the additional medical technology needed in serious healthcare situations. Was the Klingon being deliberately obtuse? Had he never been in a healthcare facility before? Lagar moved two steps to the left, his four dark-green legs taking him to a position where he could block the Klingon from attacking Lagar's colleague in the room, an Andorian medical crewman whose only tool of self-defense was a laser scalpel clutched in white-knuckled hands. Hardly enough to give a blood-fueled Klingon even the briefest of pauses... Lagar decided to try to explain further...

"That is a biobed, not a torture table. It has medical equipment built-in, like a bioscanner, special sensors, and tools." The Phylosian moved forward, slowly, toward the biobed in question. He reached out and gently pressed a button on the half-circle component of the bed. A visible scanner beam emitted from the device down toward the currently unoccupied bed, its easy blue light moving up, then down, finding nothing. Lagar was about to tell the Klingon that 'Andorians don't commit torture', then thought better of it. That statement was debatable. He also decided not to mention that the Tumaph's biobeds did include standard surgical tools, as well as physical restraints. Seeing those might change one's mind about seeing the bed as a device of torture.

Instead, he modified his statement to something undeniably true. "Phylosians don't commit torture." he told the Klingon. "I'm a healer. Nothing more."

The Klingon opened his mouth to reply"¦

Note: Re-tooled this post from my ATC and made it a sorta-canon-to-Lagar's-background journal entry for funsies. It occurs during Lagar's 6-month officer exchange with the Andorians before he applied to Starfleet.

[Lagar]

Note: This is a non-canon imagination of the events immediately following the Challenger Season 5 Episode 2 Mission 'Prime Predicament'.

[Noringglan System - Continent of Chaddarkah - Outside Ruins of Omor]

J'jario shut his dual-pupilled eyes against the flash of light that suddenly immersed him, and he heard the cries of his colleagues as the same light captured them. The alien ship's interior faded from view, and as J'jario blocked his face, he saw the walls of the crashed vessel replaced with the open skies of the outside, of the battlefield beyond the fallen, foreign thing. He was alone, somehow, and off the prize which had unexpectedly risen from where it had landed, where it had become a bitter treasure fought over and bled over by both East and West men alike.

The man stumbled where he stood, the shock of the change in location and temperature dropping him to the dirt. His hands were empty, his repeater rifle gone. It had been J'jario's rifle shots that had successfully struck down the two invading aliens on the demerr ship. The one that had stamped and shouted in its horrible, monstrous tongue, he had put a round right into its chest, drilling a hole into it and sending it dropping heavily to the floor of the ship. It had been J'jario who had approached for the executioner's shot, seeing the differences between the two creatures, but not understanding either. Both were mutants, looking up at him with half-lidded, single-pupilled eyes. The one with rounded ears was larger, darker-fleshed, and the other's ears were pointed, its blood... green? Monstrous! Freakish things! Thieves!

As J'jario had wrapped a finger once more about the trigger of the only thing he trusted in the world, he heard a sound, and looked up to see more creatures down the hallway. Some kind of vined plant-thing, like a living rolthega fruit, about floor level around the corner; just above it, a tall alien like the two below J'Jario, with fur above its lip. Those lines of stopping light flashed from their weapons, impossible to dodge as they struck the consciousness from his body.

He had awoken later, still aboard, rousing his struck-dumb comrades for an assault. The aliens could not be prevented from taking this ship, they had to be stopped, but as they were preparing to mount some kind of an attack, a new light had come, different from the lines that had knocked them unconscious, and now J'jario was here. Back out here again, on the battlefield. He lay on his back on the frigid, lifeless soil, eyes up on the uncaring stars above.

"You can do that..." he said to no one, his voice shaking, broken. "You can do that?!" he said louder.

And there went their prize, an alien ship sailing off into the stars, lifted by yet another alien ship, as though it was the metallic hand of the God G'joho stealing it away. All that they had sacrificed to take this ship... He had lost his jedda, and two of his three sons, and his barshto trainer U'Glaing... Friends blown apart by canister launchers on approach to the ship, allies slaughtered in hails of repeater fire, their bodies turned to messes on the radiated ground, all to make the ship theirs and not the enemy's.  J'jario turned his head to the Western camp nearby, hearing the shouts and seeing brief flashes of light as boxes and hunks of stolen metal and materials flashed out of existence, moving just like he had been moved. Taken away, just like had been taken away.

After all the marching and shooting and fighting and death, light had struck him unconscious. Light had sent him back onto the ruined dirt of his country. Light stole the last few vestiges of the prize from space. And now, these creatures who commanded the light were leaving, these demerrs who had screamed and bled and who surely had hearts and minds and a mission.

J'jario's eyes filled with mad tears, and he clawed at his cheeks, leaving streaks of brown from the mud and the blood on his face. "You can do all that..." he whimpered. "You can do those things with your light and your ships..." His heart was pounding, just as it had when he had been seconds away from finishing the demerrs on the ship. "You can stop a man without killing him!" he cried, thinking back to their lines of light. "You can... move things with light! You have ships that-!" J'jario was on his feet, but he didn't remember standing. His voice was shouting up to an empty sky, to stars he now knew held more than the spirits of his ancestors.

"Stop them, then!" he gestured to the East, to their lines and their explosives and their world-scorchers. "You stopped me, stop them! If you can do that, come back, you pasha's! You recklasta's!" The tears streamed, the sacrifices, the losses, the wastes, the deaths. "Make them go away! Take their guns! Take their burners!" Unwanted, his mind showed him a vision of the Eastern Wall boy he had killed just before sunset, a child-soldier barely past his age of shuun, and J'jario had killed him because he wore the Eastern uniform and he was part of the Eastern assault on the fallen ship and his damned Eastern leaders had pressed the damned Eastern button and started this war that had turned their shared world into a waste. The boy had screamed. Called for his umma. And J'jario had killed him.

He felt pain in his knees as he dropped to the dead soil.

"Stop all of it." J'jario said to the skies, his voice quieter.

His final plea fell on un-hearing ears, and as the sun gradually rose, its light illuminated the telltale steam-streak of a world-burner flying, probably the last one the East held in their arsenal. surely aimed at where the crashed ship had landed. It had been launched before the ship had departed, the East figuring that since the West had control of the vessel, there was no choice but to drop their last bomb, prevent the West from exploiting what was aboard.

It didn't matter. It was too close now to escape.

J'jario sayed where he was, knowing that only the alien light could save him. He sighed, shutting his eyes. Even through his closed lids, he saw the white flash...