“Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,  

Rage, rage against the dying of the light”.

Dylan Thomas, 1947.

Hedwig Thörsen was about to die.

Hunkered down behind the steadily-deteriorating housing of the Hydroponic Re-processor, the young Starfleet Security Ensign was now so effectively pinned by the enfilading weapons fire from the surrounding Vaadwaur Shock – Troopers that were laying down a near – constant barrage, he couldn’t even raise his weapon to return fire.

Little by little Hedwig tried desperately to push his frame into the withering, diminishing cone of safety that the piece of Industrial – agricultural machinery afforded from certain death and tried to think of any last-minute gambit, one final roll of the dice, that might save deliver him from the uncaring embrace of death.

He wasn’t a superstitious man. He was far to young to have developed such a fanciful belief system as to attribute his current predicament to some perceived slight against fate in his apparently all – too – short life.

In his final moments, however, Hedwig Thörsen couldn’t help but reflect on the litany of poor choices, lost opportunities and bad decisions that had led him here to this fatal predicament.

As another searing bolt of Polaron Energy slammed into the Re-processor and Hedwig winced as the smell of melting polymers filled his senses and the machine burned.

He didn’t want to die. He was only 22 years old. This was all so unfair.

It was also highly ironic, as Hedwig had literally lied and cheated his way aboard the USS Hikaru Sulu, chasing some perceived notion of glory and excitement found in the adventure of shipboard duty and conflict.

So terrified of his imminent demise was Hedwig, that the attendant irony of this reversal of fortunes was completely lost upon him. Even if he had had the wherewithal to make the fatal connection to this synchronicity of macabre – happenchance, he wouldn’t likely have found it amusing.

There is nothing funny about death – when that death is plaintively to be your own.

A grenade came skittering across the loading – yard and Hedwig’s eyes widened in horror. Instinctively, the young Ensign lashed out with his left foot and managed to send the explosive device spinning away across the packed and rammed dirt surface, where for a breathtaking moment – it looked as if he had been successful and it was going to pass behind the substantial – looking cargo container that he had not been able to retreat behind, when his impetuousness  had led him to blunder into this ambush.

Just as he began to breathe a sigh of relief, a searing pain lanced through his calf as a bolt of Polaron energy tore through his flesh – instantly cauterizing the blood vessels and cooking his muscle and meat as it slammed through the leg.

But it was the sight of the grenade clattering off the Cargo – container and rebounding back towards him, that occupied the entirety of Hedwig’s last few moments of precious existence.

He gawped at the device. It lay just a few scant meters away, but with his ruined leg and being suppressed by the punishing weapons – fire, it might as well have been light-years away.

Just one more thing that it’d have been easier to pass off as not being his fault.

And look where that had got him?

If you had to chart a course of there to here, to plot on an empirical – graph exactly where Hedwig Thörsen’s life had started to go wrong, where he had gained this unlucky gremlin of misfortune on his shaking – shoulder’s from – you’d have to admit that the situation with Lieutenant Commander Amalda Vanse would pretty much be Ground – Zero.

Cast your mind back, if you can indeed tear it away from poor Hedwig’s untimely snuffing out of youthful promise and instead picture him nearly exactly one year ago, when he had been serving aboard Starbase 72 as a Brig Officer.

Certainly not the most salubrious posting for a young Ensign, just fresh out of Starfleet Academy on his first deployment. Necessary perhaps, after all a Spacedock-class Starbase was an organism in and of itself. A dynamic and sprawling life – form teeming with thousands of souls and it was inevitable that this would also spawned those aberrant types that required incarceration to best isolate them from the collective body Pax – Populai.

Drunk spacers. Rowdy drunks. Randy tourists. Argumentative lovers. Petty thieves. Petty seemed the defining term of imprisonment for the inmates that passed through the Starbase’s Brig and still Hedwig himself seemed the one who couldn’t ever escape.

His career was interned in mediocracy and the life of adventure and daring that had drawn him to service in Starfleet (very much against this libertarian – parents wishes), seemed consigned to a life sentence of insignificant servitude.

Until Hedwig had the ‘fortune’ of catching Lieutenant Commander Amalda Vanse ‘in-flagrante”, locked in a passionate embrace during a triste with another married Officer that she really should have had had better sense than to have been embroiled with in the first place.

And here, Hedwig made the decision that had brought him to this final moment.

Seeing his chance to escape Brig – duty and this torturous existence of banality, Hedwig boldly stepped over the boundary of professionality and duty and in crossing that threshold put personal gain above duty and integrity.

In exchanged for ensuring that the Incident report never again saw the light of day, Hedwig ensured that Lieutenant Commander Vance’s extramarital affair never became common knowledge aboard Starbase 72 (avoiding ruining several careers at once) and in return, for her part Amalda Vanse used her position of Personal – allocations in Starfleet Operations, to ensure that a certain young Ensign received a re-assignment to shipboard duty aboard a prestigious Odyssey – class Heavy Explorer – there to engage and wallow in as much action and adventure as his young heart could desire.

Which was now looking like far, far too much – as the Vaadwaur grenade slowly cooked it’s fuse down to initiation.

Without that one selfish act of hubris, Hedwig Thörsen would still be serving in abject boredom in the Minos Korva system. Although he had no way of knowing if he would have, if fact, been safer aboard the mighty – Starbase (The Blackout had made universal-ignorance democratic at least), but it was soon to be painfully apparent that it would have been a hell of a lot safer than where he found himself now.

The pain of the wound in his calf was also painfully apparent now and tears began to fill Hedwig’s eyes that were not purely the product of self – pity.

When The Blackout had cut off the crew of the USS Hikaru Sulu from the rest of the Galaxy, at least Hedwig had not been alone, as he was now. He was not terrified and in pain. As he was now. He was part of a team and that had always where Hedwig had also been at his best.

Perhaps it was the residual guilt of knowing that he had gained his berth aboard by means arguably dishonorable, possibly even illegal, that had driven him to volunteer for duty with the Hazardous Situation Response Team.

Certainly, duty as part of “The Teams” initially presented Hedwig with the opportunity to immerse himself in the kind of operation where he assumed that adventure and excitement must lead to. If he was being completely honest, there was an element of trying to atone for his past mistakes and prove that he was worthy to wear the uniform, that may have formed part of that decision.

The reality of that decision was looking to be another data point in the infographic of his poor – choices.

Wanting to be in the Hazard Team and actually being a good fit for the Hazard Team proved to be two different things and not always mutually inclusive.

From the outset, it became apparent that Hedwig’s self – evaluation of his worth and worthiness to serve, differed quite wildly from that of the Tactical Training Hologram, Master Chief Isagi Saroga.

To Hedwig’s perspective, sometime after the Dominion War, some vindictive Starfleet Special Operations Officer had scoured the historical database with which to find the most irascible, impatient, obstinate, sarcastic and inscrutable hard-assed NCO sonnofabitch that ever lived, to build the Holomatrix architecture for the Tactical Training Hologram program.

The Master – Chief (he wasn’t even a ‘real’ instructor for pity’s sake – just an amalgam of some dead 23^rd century guy and the ‘book-of-dirty-tricks’) seemed to have made it his ‘life’s – mission’ to find fault in Hedwig’s performance and suitability to serve as a member of the Team and his time in Hazard Team “Iaitō”, the training unit, had been short and humiliating.

Had things been different, then surely Hedwig would have been part of the infiltration team that had deployed to effect the rescue of the surviving Cardassian colonist that the Vaadwaur Commandos that had been stranded by the destruction of their fleet, had corralled in the Warehouse complex as a ‘human – shield’, instead – Hedwig had deployed as part of the USS Hikaru Sulu’s regular force of Starfleet Security Officers that had engaged in the enemy in a more conventional assault.

While Hazard Teams “Ōdachi”, “Naginata” & “Katana” used ultrasonic tunnelling to burrow under the very earth where Hedwig was soon to make his maker, converging unseen and unsuspected to emerge within the Warehouse complex to quietly neutralize the remaining Vaadwaur defenders and secure the hostages, Lieutenant Commander Harry Trench and the Security Division were tasked with drawing the fire of the Commandos and buying Hazard the time they needed to secure their objectives.

‘Cannon Fodder’, Hedwig remembered sourly bemoaning as his squad had readied their Phase – Carbines and prepared to beam down to their tasked insertion point.

Had Hedwig tried harder to apply himself to the Hazard Team doctrine and training, he certainly wouldn’t be pinned down & wounded, waiting for the grenade to write the final sad – sentence of his life.

Had Hedwig not wanted to prove his worth and assuage his bruised pride, he would probably not disobeyed his squad – leader’s standing orders and broke ranks – leaving the relative safety and mutual support that his unit afforded and isolating himself out beyond the point where his comrades could cover or retrieve him without dying themselves.

Another red- flag pinned to the cork-board of Hedwig’s looming demise.

A steady downward trending evident in his decision – making and overall returns.

The housing of the Hydroponic Re-processor was providing only hypothetical cover now as Hedwig squirmed in it’s shadow, bolt after bolt of purple Polaron energy flensing it apart. This fact was now almost entirely academic as Hedwig stared at the grenade – which seemed to fill the entirety of his attention and had become the sole focus in his diminishing universe.

He thought about his Mother, far far away in Norway.

He thought about the light of the Spring morning sun on the glimmering  Fjords of Tromsø, his Father’s strong hands on his own as he taught him to fish for herring.

He thought about how different the trajectory of his life would have been, had he opted to tread the path of honor.

He closed his eyes.

And the Grenade did what grenades do.