For Duty or Honor: A Big, Green Space Cowboy

Posted on 26 Sep 2014 @ 9:30am by Ensign Karrak

969 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: M12: For Duty or Honor
Location: USS Bradbury

The Gorn looked out at the great field in the holodeck. He was riding a horse, wearing a cowboy hat and six-guns, and leading a cattle drive. He was following in the footsteps of his idol, the warrior J'nn Wayne. Nobody had the heart to tell him, or didn't dare tell him that John Wayne was only an actor, and didn't really do all those brave deeds.

It had been a long way for him to get there and he was musing on his journey. He had often looked homeward at that distant star where his homeworld circled. Did they remember him? Did his betrothed, the lovely Z'larki, remember him? They didn't part on the best of terms, though they were still young. At 50 is a very young age for a Gorn.

Curse that day when he was brought out of the rookery by his parents, and that bird, the tra'nark, flew overhead, the shadow fell over him and that feather, the one he still wore on his uniform, fluttered down to his grasping hands.

The feather that marked him as somebody special, the Tra'nark zo-Lazath, the child of destiny who was to be in the center of great changes for the Gorn that could only be good. They expected greatness of him. He had not wanted to be thrust into that kind of spotlight, but he was, and the expectations on him because of that, and of his lineage, that of the hero of the age, Commander S'alath, who had repulsed invaders on several worlds, but especially that disastrous foray at Gornath, who the Federation settlers called Cestus III.

That was a mistake, based on a misunderstanding. A report had come to his grandfather of a Romulan incursion in their space, and he was to deal with it at once, show no mercy. They had been at war with the Romulans for very long, and the settlers, as well as the young Federation, that the Gorn had but rumors of, had been caught in the crossfire.

They fled back to their home, and were pursued by a ship that was of unknown configuration, until they crossed the borders of Metron space, and they were both caught. Forced into single combat with the human captain, which ended in an unexpected way.

Karrak had found that the battle was still a training exercise for Starfleet, though how it ended after the makeshift cannon that Captain Kirk had made went off was sealed by Starfleet Command. He was the only one other than a few high admirals who knew how it ended, how Kirk had spared him, sparing the lives of everybody on board, though if he had been killed it was the other ship, the Enterprise, that would have been destroyed as a danger to the universe.

Through subspace communications, Gornath had been ceded to the Gorn, and little contact had been between the two space nations until that time Picard had been summoned to their homeworld to deliver a declaration of war by Leader Keeyah. (OOC:See the TNG novel Requiem.)

That also had an unexpected outcome, as it began the long hard path of negotiations by two peoples who didn't trust each other. The Gorn didn't see them as invaders anymore, but as troublemakers. If there was any trouble to be got into, in they went like wayward hatchlings. First the Klingons, then the Romulans, then them, then the Borg, the list was endless for this insane people called the Federation. They didn't know how to leave well enough alone.

But that was ancient history. Karrak had cracked under all that relentless pressure to be the great one that all his world expected him to be. He didn't want to be any kind of messiah or child of destiny, he just wanted a normal life. So he stowed away on a merchant ship, leaving his homeworld.

But in fleeing from his destiny, he only fulfilled it in a long series of events. He ended up on Earth, the first Gorn they had seen since those fateful days, and was taken under the wing of Starfleet. He had learned a lot from these strange humans, so frail and weak looking, but stronger inside than he figured, the humans with the odd customs, like this yearly festival in wintertime when they killed a tree, decorated it, then sang to it about a horned animal with a glowing red nose.

He had been trained at the Academy, getting used to the humans, Vulcans, and others there. He had a Klingon roommate that he got along with famously, and finally graduated with honors. He had during these years had a spiritual awakening that had him accepting his destiny. He was to be the link to establishing relations with the Gorn, who had been so reclusive for so long.

He had been told by the commandant that he was born for greatness, and if he wasn't at command grade within twenty years, he would send a troupe of surly Nausicans to beat him up. He had been assigned to a ship called the Achilles, a ship he found to his delight was commanded by a Klingon.

The newly dubbed Ensign Karrak looked at the distant mountains as he was with the other cowboys. He then got a call on his commbadge, "Report to the ready room at once, Ensign Karrak."

"Acknowledge, ssir." said Karrak. "Karrak out."

"Computer end program and ssave." he said, as he leaped off the horse. He had to go to his quarters to put away the cowboy hat and the pair of Colt .45's, then moved to report to the Captain. He could move fast when he had to, but didn't like it, like the Terran alligator, he was normally sluggish, but when motivated could move with astonishing speed.

 

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