AN: Brainstorming the next chapter is taking longer than usual, so here's something to fill the time in between.
I was seven when I woke up in chains, starving and beaten near to death. It was only through the benevolence of a fellow slave – an Andorian by the name of Th'Ryn – that I would live another day. He spared me his meager rations, and for that, I would forever be in his debt.
It seemed so far away, yet at the same time, like yesterday that I was Marine Master Sergeant, a couple weeks from retirement. Once upon a time, a young dumb Sergeant Buckley considered leaving the marines to got to college, perhaps for a Occupational Safety and Health degree, like his old man suggested… Of course, a certain event in September '01 occurred (or at least, I think that was the month and year. My memory tended to get fuzzy down here), and in a fit of dumb patriotism, he reenlisted for active duty. And the rest was history...
Or, at least, that was how it was supposed to be. Yet, here I was, a little kid in the deep dark dilithium mines on the slave colony of Thauthan V, with nothing but memories of a more just world. Where I had a name other than "targshit brat"... Where the Klingons and Cardassians were just silly fiction, relegated to fantasies behind the small screen…
But Dear Lord, they were more than real here…
The Klingon-Cardassian Alliance, as I had come to learn over the years, had filled in the power vacuum left behind by the collapsing Terran Empire. While they promised rights to certain species, It wasn't a liberation by any means, more a change of management.
For the Alpha Quadrant, it was the same shit under different masters. And for the Terrans, like me – we had it the worst. The Empire's cruelty had left a galaxy's worth of sapients looking for revenge. Once the masters, we were now the untouchables, left to die under conditions that would have made a gulag prisoner shake their head in pity.
One day – I promised to myself – one day, we will all be free…
As my frostbitten hands sifted through the rock, the whip on my back urging me to hurry up from the already impossible pace, I bid my time… The faint spark of hope in my chest kept me warm in even the coldest of nights.
On my 14th birthday, a miracle had happened: an unnamed Vulcan slave had sabotaged the EPS conduits at the main power plant, sacrificing his life in the process. The resulting EMP knocked out power to the entire colony and fried the triggers for the explosive implants in the back of every slave's neck.
Now or never.
"LIBERTY OR DEATH!" I strained my voice screaming out into the dark caves.
The Klingon tried to raise his disruptor rifle, but a few nearby slaves had tackled him to the ground. Pulling out my shiv with my three fingered hand, I leaped on top and plunged it into the neck of my longtime torturer, reveling as pink blood sprayed everywhere over the frozen ground.
When the day was over, I clutched tight to my chest the only remaining memory of my father, and my only comfort in this new world, a leather-bound bible. I was now certain of my new mission… Of the new purpose which my blood boils for:
No more masters.
No more tyrants.
No more lords but THE Lord.
Amen.
"–Ethan Buckley of the John Brown Brigade, I am offering you one last chance to surrender." I glared through the view screen, down at the gray skies of Terra below, "Please, for the love of all that is good and holy – Take it!"
In the ashes of my decapitation of the Klingons and Cardassians, a new so-called "Emperor" had risen up and declared the Terran Empire reborn. Instead of joining in brotherhood with the free peoples of the galaxy, united and equal under Christ our Savior, they instead chose the destructive degeneracy and evil of the Babylonians…
Lord help me, they never learn…
"To you? A religious kook who consorts with subhuman filth? The savior of those mindless beasts who don't know their place!?" The obese "Emperor" snarled, face redder than the wine he frequently imbibed, "The Terran people deserve better than you! You are not worth the dirt under my boot!"
Taking a deep breath, I looked at him straight in the eye, "Then… may God forgive me as I cleanse this guilty land…" The transmission was cut.
I turned and faced my oldest friend, my second-in-command, and one who I call my brother, if not by blood, then by faith, and muttered, "The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar…"
Th'Ryn looked back, shedding a tear, for he knew what I had to do, "…Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven."
I grasped the cross around my neck so tightly that blood dribbled down my palm, "Ready the Genesis device. Prepare to fire on my command."
Damnation or not, the line shall be drawn here, and no further.