“There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But I tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow.”

Ernest Hemmingway – For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)

 

The green – girl laid her hand on the casket and wept.

All throughout the cargo – bay, the ambient lighting had been reduced with only a single, signal – light trained upon the single torpedo – casing, reverently draped with the rich – blue flag of the United Federation of Planets, as it stood its lonely vigil for its ill-fated occupant.

Permitted some miniscule portion of privacy aboard the ship of thousands of souls, Crewman (First Class) Rhovel Senni, stood alone with the remains of her former lover and tried to say her goodbyes.

Soon the lights would raise, and the honor guard would assemble, there to perform the solemn and serious duty of the flag – folding.

Soon the mournful swirl of the piper would echo from those bare walls as they sounded the “Balmoral” and ushered her beloved out into the cold embrace of the void.

Tears ran softly down the Orion – girls’ cheeks, catching the light from above and she whispered.

“Farewell Hedwig. Goodbye my love.”

Rhovel had met Hedwig when she first came aboard ship, whilst it was docked at Starbase 72 to take on a new crew compliment, an event that felt like years ago, but comparatively had only been 6 months in reality.

Standing there in the Shuttle-bay assisting the Operations officer with the onboarding process, his broad shoulders and striking pale – grey Nordic – eyes, Ensign Hedwig Thörsen made an immediate impression on Rhovel.

It was his smile that had done it, the grieving Orion crewman reflected sadly as her slim green fingers traced the lines of the casket.

Like his eyes, Hedwig Thörsen had a beautiful smile. At turns bright and earnest, but sometimes reluctant and mournful, like the young Scandinavian officer was harboring some great regret – holding it secret close inside and reluctant to share his pain with the world.

It was that inner turmoil that attracted her to Hedwig. Rhovel’s mother had always chided her, saying that her daughter had a thing for strays and hopeless cases. True, as a child she had always had an affinity for broken things, the Councilor assured her that this was a perfectly natural reaction for one that had lost a parent at a young age, such as she.

Rhovel looked down at the casket and her heart beat painfully in her chest.

She had been informed gently by Dr Allal that Hedwig had fallen in action during the battle to liberate the Cardassian colony of New Providence, perishing due to the effects of a grenade.

It was to be a closed casket funeral. She had been assured that it was all for the best.

Wiping the tears from her red – rimmed eyes, Rhovel tried to push those terrible mental images from her mind and bid herself to focus instead on Hedwig’s melancholy smile and better times they had shared in the short time they had been permitted together.

They seemed to have gravitated together at various social gatherings, through six – degrees of separation through mutual friends, removed. It was awkward at first, with neither Human nor Orion seeming to find much commonality between them. Rhovel remembered returning regretfully to her quarters more than once and railing against her pillows – berating herself for being such a coward and not being able to tell him how she really felt about him.

This pathetic, unrequited state of affairs persisted until that glorious moment on ‘The Electric Mile’, whilst the promenade had been holographically transformed into the boisterous Tellarite festival of ‘Jamkaran’, eating Sweet – radish pie with Sour – gravy and enthusiastically joining in (on opposing debate teams) with the popular Tellarite pastime of “Collective – Arguing”.

Whether it was the alcohol or the force of his arguments (about quite what subject, she couldn’t honestly recall anymore), Rhovel was instantly struck by the strength of Hedwig’s commitment and the depth of his earnestness.

Here was a man that truly believed in things. A man of deep conviction.

In that moment, surrounded by good friends in the throes of revelry and enjoyment, Rhovel Senni saw that sadness, that mournful undercurrent behind his bright grey – eyes, flowing deep behind the mask he presented to the world and in that moment, she knew that she truly loved him.

One thing led to another (as these things surely do with those that are young and in love) and Rhovel found herself ensconced in his strong, sure embrace – after a glorious and torrid night of lovemaking and she gently tried to ply back that curtain that Hedwig threw up to hide what was inside of himself, from the rest of the world.

It did not go well.

For as much as she adored him, Hedwig Thörsen clung so avidly to his pain and his inner – secret, that Rhovel was perplexed to find herself first frustrated, then gradually becoming actually jealous of it and the hold it exerted over him.

In evading her concerns so, this proved just to highlight other aspects of her lover that had escaped her attention, blinded was she was by the coronis of new love.

Whilst Hedwig was sensitive and a kind lover, the tall Norwegian could also be self – centered and distant at times – although she knew that he did not intend to be – sometimes this casual indifference and refusal to connect with her on a deeper, more emotive – level left her hurt and confused.

Undeniably honorable and brave to the point of foolhardy, Rhovel sometimes worried that her lover’s self – image was on occasion at odds with his self – actuality. It seemed to her that Hedwig was somehow trying to prove himself against some imagined fallibility and he took on more and more ambitious challenges to try and prove something to himself and the world.

But what that was, he would not say.

Chief of these follies, to her mind, was Hedwigs decision to try out for service with the Hazard Teams. Despite the perfectly understandable concerns that she had for his personal safety (service with ‘The Teams’ carried the obvious risks attendant with special forces deployments), she felt that this latest travail that Hedwig had set himself might be beyond the bounds of even his own capability and ambition.

Unfortunately for them both, Rhovel’s prediction turned out to be true. Hedwig struggled with the pace and demands of the training, complaining to her on more than one occasion that he felt that Master Chief Saroga was unfairly singling him out for infractions and using him as an abject lesson to the other Hazard trainees of what not to do.

When she told him that she thought that he was being ridiculous and that the TTH just wasn’t programmed that way, he did not take it well and wouldn’t speak to her for three days straight.

This strain upon their burgeoning relationship could still be detected when she last saw him, planting a tentative kiss upon his cheek as she stood on tiptoes to plant it and she squeezed his hand and told him to be careful.

Hedwig was being deployed as part of the regular forces being directed to engage the stranded Vaadwaur ground-forces down on New Providence. Serving as a regular ‘foot-solider’ alongside elements drawn from the USS Hikaru Sulu’s Security Division to draw the entrenched enemy’s attention and fire – whilst the Hazard Teams went in and took on the more daring task of rescuing the hostages by covert means.

She could see in his distant grey – eyes and feel it in the tenseness of his body, that Hedwig felt that he should be going in with them. That he felt like a failure. Rhovel saw in those sad grey – eyes the sorrowful, broken-thing that dwelt inside and knew in that moment that she might never be the one to fix it.

She still remembered that wavering, brave smile on his beautiful face, as he hefted his Phase – Carbine and made to mount up with his fireteam and suddenly she was so dreadfully affeered that Hedwig would somehow not heed her advice and try to do something stupid and heroic in order to salve his wounded pride.

That was the last time she saw him alive.

Now, finally alone with Hedwig Thörsen at last, Rhovel knew with dreadful certainty that she had be right. She would never be the one to put the broken parts of Hedwig back together. No one would. What made him so special, even the fractured parts of his soul that had so drawn her to love him, they were all gone now – taken by the Vaadwaur.

Some part of Rhovel wished that she could find it in her heart to hate the Supremacy for what they had done. For what they had taken from her. But more than anything else, Rhovel Senni felt a profound sense of sadness for the senseless waste of it all.

Sadness for the death and suffering that the Vaadwaur Supremacy so willfully inflicted.

Sadness for the people of New Providence (and the countless millions like them) that had lost their homes and been reduced in a moment to refugees.

Sadness for those sundered by the blackouts – like poor Hedwig’s parents in faraway Tromsø – that didn’t even know that their beloved son was dead yet, what was left of his body scraped together and locked into a torpedo – casing, never to see the shining fjords of his native Norway ever again.

Sadness for what they would now have to do to stay alive and the further death that that survival portended.

Rhovel bent her head, her dark – green hair mantling her face and obscuring her last tender kiss that she placed on Hedwig’s casket, affording her one extra layer of privacy in that moment.

“It’s all such a waste.” She whispered simply.

For, in Conflict & War, what else is there to say……?