Work Text:
The security officer shows her to her new quarters, explaining gruffly but patiently how one controls the lights and adjusts the temperature. It is all shockingly new and at the same time, exactly what she'd expect from the fanciful fiction she used to consume as a child: stories of the far future, when Malcorians would explore strange new worlds, empty and alone. Of course there's an instant food replicator, a waste-free recycling unit, a sonic cubicle for cleaning one's body. On the desk there is a small terminal that Mirasta is free to use, which provides access to a near-infinite array of educational archives from many different species.
"We should be leaving the system shortly," he tells her, just before he departs.
"The system," she echoes, not understanding, and then "Oh, of course. Yes." He means the solar system. "Thank you, Commander."
He offers her a short nod of respect and departs. And she is alone.
Alone. Now, that is an understatement, isn't it? Mirasta is the only Malcorian aboard this ship, among aliens of every shade and shape: red-blooded, blue-skinned, even a yellow-eyed artificial life-form. There will be so much that's new. She has so much to learn.
But first... her goodbyes. She looks out of the window at a small brown and blue globe containing everything she's ever known. Receding in the darkness, it is getting further away with every moment.
Goodbye to closed-minded fools, goodbye to the cruelty and paranoia of powerful men. She had not been surprised by Minister Krola's reflexive aggression, nor the cowardly obedience of the physician Nilrem who enabled him.
And goodbye to the best of Malcoria, too. Goodbye to Berel, the doctor who had stood against Krola and refused to allow him to interrogate Riker. How strange life is... Mirasta met the man once, for barely an hour, but of all her people in all the world, Doctor Berel is the one that she truly wishes she could have said farewell to in person. She hopes that somehow, he knows that he saved Riker's life. Doctor Crusher had said even another half an hour of interrogation might have been fatal.
She's been a bit arrogant herself, really. Even as lonely and alone as she has been, what a presumption: to think she was the only person on Malcor who would be open-minded enough to handle the idea of these strange visitors! Berel had looked at the man lying on the gurney in his hospital and seen not a Malcorian or a human, but simply a thinking and feeling being. Deserving of the same rights as any other patient; the same grace and mercy as any wounded stranger.
Mirasta laughs softly to herself. She can see now that in her attempt to hide the truth from Chancellor Durken, she had embodied some of Krola's arrogance. He would have sacrificed his life in order to force his own paranoid beliefs into reality. Only I can see the truth, only I can choose our future— She had thought the same.
And she's sacrificed her own life, now, in a very real way. Ah, but if the world were full of only people like Krola, she never could have left it. She would have considered it her duty to stay and fight, for the very soul of Malcor. For her dreams. But there are people like Doctor Berel, too. Oh, she wishes she could only thank him, somehow! He reminded her that she is not alone. That in reality, she never was. The planetarium was dark and silent, but there were always people all around her, the whole time. All of them together, looking up at the stars, sharing that same dream. There is hope for Malcor. There always was. And so Mirasta did not let herself be drawn back down to the ground. She snapped her own tether, and now she is— free.
It strikes her with a thump in her heart that she is further from her home planet than any Malcorian before her has ever been. And the ship has not even really begun to accelerate, not yet. Mirasta takes a shuddering breath and steps forward to press her hand to the cool material of the window.
What will warp speed look like?