The Fall of Night

Posted on Sat Feb 24th, 2024 @ 3:36pm by Commander Rylen Lyo

471 words; about a 2 minute read

Mission: Home Sweet Home
Location: USS Intrepid: Lyo's Personal Quarters
Timeline: Concurrent with "Get Together on the Dance Floor"

Less than ten minutes after receiving the message from home, the Operations Chief was safely ensconced behind the duranium and tritanium walls of his personal quarters. Perhaps the one place in the universe that he felt was truly his, even if it was space that was allocated to him by Starfleet. Thankfully, there were fewer crew members awake at this hour...because when Rylen was upset, he tended to lose control of his empathic abilities and would project his emotions into others. Not figuratively, but literally; instead of him feeling their emotions, they felt his but magnified significantly. He had elicited a few strange looks on his way from the transporter room, but that was of no consequence to him at the moment.

After all, his life had just fallen apart.

Rylen had immediately known that the message was of high importance; it had been sent through Krios's GovNetwork, the dedicated set of channels reserved for official State Business. Had it been of lower priority, it would have come through the Federation's Civilian ComNet. And the message had borne the Mark of the Rising Sun, the official sigil of the Sovereign Dynasty; this meant that the message had come from inside the Royal Court. His Father, as recently appointed Hand of the First Monarch, was a member of the Royal Court; Rylen secretly hoped that this was merely his Lord Father showing off his new position.

It wasn't.

Rylen sat on his bed, his hands shaking visibly. He did not know if talking with somebody would even help his mental state; he was teetering on the edge of an emotional abyss, and the last thing he wanted to hear was hollow platitudes like 'everything will be okay'. Nonetheless, he felt like he should try.

"Computer," he said weakly, his voice halting. "Is Counselor Roaa aboard?"

"Negative," replied the vast artificial presence referred to colloquially as The Computer. "Other available members of the Counseling staff include..."

"Cancel query. Do these quarters have sonic dampening capabilities?"

"Affirmative."

"Establish a level three sonic dampening field around my personal quarters. Authorization, Lyo one one five three gold."

"Dampening field established."

Knowing that nobody would hear, Rylen Lyo laid back on his bed and screamed as loudly as he could muster. It was an inchoate noise, barely above a whisper but rising in volume quickly to become a deep sobbing wail. Knowing not how else to cope, the Kriosian let his tears come. He turned onto his side and brought his knees to his chest, and wept until his body could take no more and he drifted off into a dreamless slumber.

He would face this demon, that was certain. But that was a task for tomorrow.



Commander Rylen Lyo
Chief Operations Officer/2XO
USS Intrepid

 

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