Chapter Text
The Star Beagle Adventures
Episode 1: Eye of the Beholder
Scene 21: Vengeance
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Vengeance
General Krank and Captain Rhonda Carter were recuperating in the same room in the U.S.S. Beagle’s medical center. Actually, to call it a room was a bit of a misnomer. It was more of a hallway with 20 beds lined up on one side and an open walkway along the other with doors leading to various medical offices. Each bed could quickly be moved through a doorway in the wall behind it into a number of surgical bays, which could be defined by a number of movable walls. Privacy was not a high priority in the Vulcan Science Academy’s design. Efficiency was.
Carter had been sharing her memories of her late first officer with a silent Krank. “Straiv had served with me longer than anyone else on the Escort. He must have saved my life a dozen times. And I his. And in all that time, I never saw him cry, never saw him laugh, not even smile. Not once. But I got to know his moods pretty well…”
“I do not regret killing your friend!” Krank finally croaked, his back still turned to Carter.
“General, my friend was dead before you and I reached the bridge,” Carter said quietly, passion and anger evident in her voice. “What you killed was the monster that had killed him. If there was anything left of Straiv in that vulcan skull, your mveq gave him mercy by ending it for him. Believe me, I knew him well enough to know that.”
Krank finally, painfully rolled over to look Captain Carter in the eye for the first time since they had both been shot - wounds that neither of them should have recovered from. “You’re happy that I killed him?”
Carter’s face was a study in bitter anger. Her blue eyes blazed. Her voice was still quiet, but venomous. “No! I am not glad you killed that thing! I wanted to kill it myself! You owe me, General. You denied me my vengeance. It is a debt I fully expect you to repay.” Carter had been lying on her left side and had been warned not to lay on her right until the new shoulder ball joint had time to bond to her existing tissue. She had lost nearly half of her hair - long hairs lay strewn on her pillow where they had fallen out. She rolled onto her back and fell silent. The bitter expression remained on her face - she was living with the grief of losing her friend. But she could tell her words had their desired impact from Krank’s breathing.
The klingon general was no longer thinking about his own humiliation. Now he was thinking about hers. And about what honor required him to do about it. It would not be an easy debt to redress.
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