[USS Charon] SD240908.29 || Backlog || "Escaping The Darkness - Part I", Cpt. Zane Akina, SFI

[ BACKLOG – Eight Months Ago ]

Astate Colony
Unpopulated Jungle Island Chain - Secret Underground Research Facility (NeoDyne Corp.)
"Escaping The Darkness" - Part One
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[ Part One ]

Pulling himself from the exposed hatch back onto land, Zane grabbed the critical tricorder from his backpack quickly shedding the extra bulk and weight.  He knew if he could reach his base camp half a mile away he might have enough time to escape the island or at least be far enough away to avoid the initial blast that was now inevitable.

A facility as large as the one beneath his feet despite the warning would take several minutes to fully detonate.  A fusion explosion was typically used to destroy large secret facilities and took time to fully activate.  Multiple fusion power cores were often overloaded.  The end result was several runaway nuclear power plants which when properly constructed and with other technologies could create atomic destruction on massive scales with horrific releases of energy and radioactivity.

Zane estimated he had only a few precious minutes to make it back to his shuttle.  He dashed off back to camp – he’d never been a sprinter, but now he had little choice.  He had to get as far away from the facility as he could and quickly.  The entire area was likely to be devastated and highly radioactive for years if not centuries to come.

Dashing through the underbrush and trees, limbs tore at his face, scratching and cutting his flesh like knives as he ran.  Tripping on a plant he felt forward into the dirt rolling down a steep embankment as rocks and dirt did further damage to his already battered body.

Picking himself up he continued to run, his heart pounding in his chest, until at last he could see his campsite and his shuttle.  Continuing to run the ground suddenly shook violently beneath his feet.  Again he was thrown forward as hell erupted around him.

White light more intense than the sun itself enveloped Zane and the campsite blotting out existence.  Zane was bathed in a sea of pure, absolute white as he rested on the ground which jerked and shook beneath him like an untamed bronco.  Closing his eyes tightly, the brightness of the light still penetrated his closed eyes seconds before a deafening roar could be heard in the distance.  There was a sudden second of calmness.  The birds and animals had all ceased chirping and talking, silence reigned for that one instant in time, before hell itself erupted into the world of the living destroying all life it touched in the distance.

A massive shockwave rattled the ground around the battered captain.  Gale force winds snapped trees like toothpicks, rocks were thrown about, trees were uprooted, and the air became thick with dust and dirt.  Then, as quickly as it had overtaken him, it was over.  The hellish nightmare retreated back through its gate as quickly as it had sprung forth and a deadly quiet fell upon Zane’s ringing ears.

Pulling himself up from the dirt with what little energy he had remaining, Zane turned and looked off into the distance wiping the blood from the many cuts on his neck and face.  A huge, grey and black mushroom cloud rose miles above the tiny forest island.  With the facility underground much of the surface had been spared the inferno of the nuclear detonation.  NeoDyne had done its work well.  The facility was gone and with it all traces of the horrors it had created deep below.  The nuclear fallout and high radiation levels would ensure that no living thing would be able to venture anywhere near the explosion site for years to come.  No one would see the horrors – they had just been erased from the pages of time and history forever.

Zane held up the tricorder which was still tightly clutched in his hand.  The device, spattered with droplets of his own blood, was now the only record of the facility, the children, and NeoDyne's sinister activities.  He had to get this to Starfleet – the galaxy had to know what had happened here.  Staring up at the giant cloud that towered above the island like a giant umbrella, Zane sank to his knees.  He hadn’t been able to save any of them.  The smiling face of the child known only as X109 filled his vision.  That child and the others like him were now only memories erased by the NeoDyne Corporation - killed at their hands to silence them and their secrets.

Unable to control himself, Captain Zane Akina, the fearless intelligence officer who sometimes doubted the existence of his own heart began to cry.  Shuddering from an overload of emotion and regret, Akina finally let loose a torrent of harsh emotions; pain, sorrow, guilt, and anguish.  The faces of those children filled his mind and heart as tears rolled down the captain's face.

As his emotions poured forth beyond Zane’s control deeper within himself a raging fire, he could not yet sense grew ten fold in intensity.  Other emotions held it for now in check, but the primal human instinct for revenge had taken root.  Someone had to pay for the atrocities committed – someone had to answer for the children who had been made to suffer and who were ultimately destroyed  That person was the chairman and president of the NeoDyne Corporation – Alistair Merikai.

Zane had to stop the man and his ambitions - even at the cost of his career or his own life.  The blood of too many lives was now on Merikai's stained hands.  The slippery executive would come to know the same pain and fear he had put others through.  The lives of those at the facility cried out for justice - Zane was now their only hope at redemption and peace.  He had to stop Merikai at all costs - and stop him he would using every advantage and every fiber of his existence to do so.  Akina swore to the dead children he would avenge their deaths - he owed them that much having been unable to save any of them from annihilation at the hands of a corrupt and unholy corporation with terrifying ambitions to unleash hell upon the world of the living.

[ To Be Continued ... ]