What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart!
What jailer so inexorable as one's self!
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables
Space was black, but Vince Kelly's heart was blacker still. He cared nothing for the sacredness of life -- the only thing that mattered to him was his insatiable need for revenge. Revenge against the Starfleet officers on Starbase 901 who had forced his dismissal from the Service in disgrace. Revenge against their friends, against their pets, against every living, breathing thing within 10-million miles!
The direct approach had failed him in the past -- several times -- so now he was about to unleash an in-direct attack on his chosen foes. Where they would certainly see an attack on their precious Starbase coming from a lightyear away, no one would pay the slightest attention to a small civilian runabout heading for the system's gas giant Txamsem. And that would be their fatal mistake.
Kelly chuckled evilly to himself as he stood in the center of his small but extremely well appointed laboratory gazing with undisguised affection at the instrument of his enemies' destruction: a nova bomb.
The device was roughly spherical, six feet across, with oddly-spaced bulges and protrusions all around its surface. It was painted a flat black, except for a grinning skull-and-crossbones on one side -- a fit of evil whimsy had prompted Kelly to add that particular flair. Inside were all the ingredients he needed to turn a gas giant planet into a miniature sun: protomatter, trilithium, and a host of other even more exotic materials. He would have had the scientist who built the device explain it to him again, but the unfortunate man had fallen victim to a certain trap door in the floor of Kelly's office.
Kelly had one problem left before him however. His own vessel, an old Cardassian cargo ship, had been destroyed when he had entered the Serenity system three weeks ago in the battle with the infamous Banshee Squadron. That's meant he'd have to get another from somewhere…
West cautiously peered out the ramp of the Rocinanté. It had been a week since his hasty departure barely ahead of an angry mob of sore losers, but it never hurt to be on the safe side. Outside his ship, all was calm and quiet -- a typical day in the small village of Lake Town. Beyond the red-tiled roofs of the town's houses and stores, West could see the sun glinting off the waves of the mysterious Blue Lake. He breathed a sigh of relief. Apparently a week had been long enough for everyone to forget. He slung his duffel bag over his shoulder and sauntered down the ramp and onto the small spaceport's tarmac.
As he walked towards town, he mused idly over where he should go. The Monaco Bar & Grill was always good for some action, but on second thought, it might be wiser to just lay low for a while. The last thing he wanted was another angry mob chasing him out of town over some exaggerated crime of his.
He was just passing the last drab building of the spaceport administration complex when a heavy object struck him a blow to the back of the head. His vision exploded into a thousand blinding stars, then faded to black…
When West came to, Serenity's sun had already climbed to high noon and even a little beyond. He'd been out for hours. He levered himself groggily to a sitting position and felt the back of his head. Wincing with pain as he touched the spot where he'd been clobbered, he drew his hand back and noted dried blood on his fingers. No wonder he still felt so groggy; he probably had a concussion.
With agonizing slowness and using the side of the building for leverage, he clawed his way to a semi-standing position. Though the world around him was spinning, he could see that the Rocinanté was no longer on its assigned landing pad; obviously whoever had bashed him over the head had stolen it.
For a few minutes he just stood leaning against the wall, wobbling, almost falling over a few times, drifting in and out of semi-consciousness. Finally it registered on his rattled brain that he should probably report the theft of his ship and find a doctor, so he staggered off towards the spaceport admin building.
Vincent Kelly took the stolen Rocinanté out over Blue Lake and headed for open water. Once above the proper coordinates a hundred miles from the closest shore, he activated the cargo transporter in the ship's hold and beamed up a six-foot black sphere with a garish skull-and-crossbones painted on its side and planet-igniting mechanisms inside. With another of his trademark evil grins disfiguring his face, he set a course up out of the atmosphere and towards the fourth planet, Txamsem.
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