Generation Gap

Posted on Sun Mar 21st, 2021 @ 10:01pm by Administrator LordeEmp

Mission: Heroes of the Hov'hurgh
Location: Qo'nos, Family holdings of Lon'HocH'tul
Timeline: 2351

Her father had put his foot down. It mattered not that war required able Warriors. His eldest son had already perished, the younger two were in their rightful place, fighting the enemies of the Empire. K’Rol, Head of the Honorable House Lon’HocH’tul, was insistent that his youngest take her place in the family business, so that it would be passed on to his heirs.

But his youngest saw things far differently. VaQ’taj wanted much more than simply a mate, mewling children and endlessly producing what ‘worked’ instead of what ‘could be’. She threw the tool that she had been using across the hangar, knocking over a bin of small parts. Grumbling, the young, red-haired Klingon woman moved to the scattered bits and began gathering them. A messy workshop only served to make the work more difficult after all and her workspace spoke to that belief, being almost obsessively organized and tidy.

Her father’s engineers scoffed at her designs and treated her like a half witted child no matter how many times that she had proven them wrong... or perhaps because of it. While she was old enough to go to war, she was also old enough to be married off to forge some clan bond or another. But when the JinaQ had been draped around her neck, she had uttered a challenge; if a man could take it from her, she would marry him. Because if they could not, they were not worthy of her.

Her father had almost torn himself in half, not knowing whether to be proud of his youngest offspring, or be mortified by her open defiance of tradition. Her mother had simply smiled and given a single nod of approval. The daughter of D’lyn would not be an easy one to tame and it was fitting, as she would remind K’Rol later in private.

She continued to stand outside of tradition by wearing the gaudy jewelry as an ever present accessory to any outfit, as though in direct challenge towards any male within the Empire to attempt the theft. Which was technically the truth. When pressed by her parents, her friends... her tormentors at the shipyards, she would simply grin and respond, “They expect me to find a mate and one never knows when he will present himself.”

Many had thought themselves warrior enough- they had judged poorly.

The Klingon engineer climbed into the cockpit of the small vessel that she had designed, slaving for months to perfect the engineering. She ran a hand over the smooth control panel in front of her, smiling a bit to herself. While she complained about her father’s desire to see her carry the family tradition forward, she was a damned fine engineer, and she truly revelled in the feeling that she got when one of her projects was nearing completion.

The qul’toQ fighter was VaQ’taj’s first real concept to finish project, and while the long range interceptor resembled a miniature b’rel class, it was a much more dedicated system. The dual seat fighters were meant for a team duo; one pilot, one gunner. Designed to evade and confuse auto targeting systems, packing enough fire power to tear holes in shields and deliver a payload through those holes to impact the hull unimpeded.

Transatmospheric flight capability, full impulse, low warp capable; sure it was untested, but she was hopeful that would change in relatively short order. VaQ’taj settled into her seat and locked herself in. The seating was comfortable and a five point safety harness was actually installed. While she did have inertial dampeners, one never knew when that system would get blown out and it was a strange detail that most of her father’s engineers would have simply overlooked if they would have even bothered to imagine anything other than their own nearly obsolete designs.

As she touched the control panel it sparked to life, and the smile spread a bit as she let out the breath that she hadn’t even realized that she had been holding. As the craft powered up and the pre-flight data began scrolling across the small screens in front of her, the young Klingon slipped easily into the familiar position. She had drawn every line, welded every seam and set every rivet; now came the moment of truth.

Tapping at the console that was lit up in front of her as the craft lifted off of the ground, the young Klingon engineer adjusted the lift and thrust of the engines to stabilize the ascent. Then she tabbed a panel that was linked to the roof of the hangar and as it spiraled open, spilling in the dusky evening light, VaQ’taj took to the air to test out her design. She had already been cleared by the shipyards to run a test flight of an experimental small craft, they were simply clueless as to what was about to happen.

Moments later, she was soaring through the skies of her Homeworld and even as the diagnostic programs scrolled data in an unending stream across her interface, the grin that was affixed to her face threatened to split her head in two. After years of design and fighting to work all of the planned specifications into the small framed craft, it was finally in the air and holding up well to the rigors that she put it through. She knew that once the flight was over, her future would be irrevocably changed; for better or for worse, she simply didn’t know.

After spending an hour testing her creation, and performing a couple of small emergency fixes, VaQ’taj turned the craft towards her House’s lands where she knew that her father would be enjoying his evening meal and a good drink or two. ~He will need those once he sees this, I’m certain~ she chuckled as the thought formed in her head.

And she had not been wrong.

As the fighter craft buzzed her father’s house, people began to gather outside, pointing up at the engineer and the toy that she had built. It hadn’t taken long before her father emerged, red-faced and bellowing about the failure of the automated ground defenses, not realizing that his own daughter had disabled them for this particular flight. She hadn’t really wanted to attack her own lands and either destroying, or being shot out of the sky by the ground based disruptor cannons, would have done nothing to prove her point.

Once she had landed, K’Rol had her escorted in to see him by warriors of the family. Flanked on all sides by her cousins, VaQ’taj braced herself for the coming confrontation. Her father had been flatly furious about the whole scenario, and when he found out that she’d tampered with the land’s defenses, it had managed to get worse.

“How DARE you! You left your family’s lands vulnerable so that you could show off?!” her father bellowed, loudly enough to wake small children that were sleeping in the nursery down the hall.

Not really thinking before she spoke, VaQ’taj answered through gritted teeth, “I believed that to be a better course of action than actually attacking them, father. You can simply reset them this way, rather than having to rebuild them entirely.”

She had expected his ire; it was the punch to the face that followed that comment that caught her slightly off guard. The scrapper of a Klingon woman didn’t go down over being hit, nor did she utter complaint. She simply straightened herself up and wiped the blood from her nose, glaring at K’Rol.

“Nothing that I say or do pleases you,” VaQ’taj shouted, her own ire raising in her chest, “For two years, I’ve been working on that project in my spare time. I designed it myself and built that fighter from scrap metal, with my own two hands! I know enough about our security systems to be able to manipulate them at will! But you can only react in a way that assuages your perception that you have been wronged in some way. I have no idea why you would want to keep someone around that seems such a bitter disappointment to you!”

The tall, rotund Klingon man bristled even further, his face reddening to an unhealthy, nearly purple shade as he seemed to struggle for the proper words to vent the heat that was building up in his body, “You do not listen! You do what you want instead of what is acceptable! You rile up the other engineers that work for this House, constantly trying to make them look simple minded!”

That made the young, headstrong Klingon woman laugh outright, “I do not have to work very hard to make them look simple minded, Father. They are quite adept at doing that all on their own. And I do listen! I simply choose to follow my own mind and heart than act as a slave to outdated thinking!”

“In all of these years, I have not been able to teach you discipline and respect,” K’Rol growled through his own clenched teeth, his voice dropping dangerously, “You want to go to the Academy? Fine! GO! Maybe they will be able to teach you what I have not! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!”

When he closed on her, she did not flinch, nor did she move, the red-braided Klingon braced herself instead. She wouldn’t strike the old man, and she knew it. VaQ’taj had opened her mouth and she was getting exactly what she wanted, even if it did have to come with a few cuts and bruises. She did defend herself as he began taking swings at her, managing to knock some of the more punishing ones out of the way, which only seemed to enrage her father further.

It had only taken one slip up and it was bound to come as the Elder Warrior and his youngest child faced off. Before she knew it, the beefy hands that had been throwing flurried punches was suddenly wound up in her long, red hair and she was being drug out of the house kicking and screaming while her family gathered and children peered, wide-eyed, around doors. She was deposited with the House guard and they were ordered to ‘escort’ her to the Academy.

As she was led away, blood staining her flight suit and bruises darkening, VaQ’taj glanced back towards her father, who had been joined by her mother D’lyn at the front door. While K’Rol was still in a breath heaving fury, her mother looked stricken. She had not intended to make him so angry and while she was getting what she wanted, it was with a heavy heart that she made her way towards her dreams.

She could only hope that they would be willing and able to forgive her when she survived the training and returned as an engineering officer of the Klingon Defense Force. Little did she know the twists of fate that would prolong that return. Or just how much that she would later regret that her parting words with her father had been so contentious.