"They Wanted Blood"

copyright 2001/2009 (revised) by Whirlaway stonegd AT yahoo DOT com
http://whirlaway-pred.livejournal.com/
disclaimer: Beast Wars, names, characters CPY HasKen, ect.

**this takes place sometime in between Depth Charge's court marshal for what happened
on Colony Omnicron and the time he followed the Axalon into space. I wondered what the
proverbial point of no return for him would be-- when he decided to go after X-- and ultimately
decided it would be an internal conflict rather than political.


"It's not revenge I'm looking for. It's justice." -Depth Charge

________________________________________

Even though Iacon hadn't changed much since he'd left, Depth
Charge's first impression on seeing his old hometown again didn't
hit any soft spots. True, it'd been only a few stellarcycles since leaving his
life here and going to his permanent post out on Omnicron, but things
weren't the same anymore...


He shook his head.

Pitt, he thought, even a homecoming can't put it behind me. I
haven't seen the old streets- how long had it been? 7, 8?- and here
I am, standing on a street corner, citizens running all around me like
they all have somewhere important to go and some grand purpose in life.

Not one of them know. I would put diodes on it. I could grab anyone
of them, point to that little glow, that far off sparkle, and ask them what
they thought it was. A star, or maybe a few would guess a ship or comet.
No one would know but me that it was Omnicron. Sparkling faintly
up there, so far away now.

Everyone dead. It wasn't able to be kept- no. I couldn't keep It contained.

Is that the right word?

Hm. Contained is something done to a material. To something not alive
and unfeeling. Contained within solid barriers so it doesn't leak out into
society. It's bottled up and stuck in a CR tank indefinitely.
And this is what we do with people that show themselves willing to cause
harm and social disorder. We manipulate them into accepting their fate-
lock them away in a dirty little cell and keep them out of the sunlight
and away from anything that might give them pleasure and remove any
sense of satisfaction from their existence. Punishment delivered to any
who were unable or unwilling to coexist within the ways our omniscient
Maximal Council had deemed acceptable.


The large Maximal blinked slowly and his head dropped toward
the ground. His fist clenched but he didn't know it. Once in awhile
a passerby would look at him but none stopped to question him,
and none offered anything beyond the vague detachment of people
in transit too busied to be concerned.
Depth Charge noticed none of them; he was oblivious to
his surroundings. He tipped his head backwards and saw the
mad sprawl of stars above him, and his hand reached for the nearby
lamppost and gripped it.

In the distant inky black universe there was a glow that could
be mistaken for a star,though he knew better.


He'd been assured the court marshal had been nothing more than a
formal establishment of his clemency. He had been the ranking officer in charge
of security on the colony, had been personally in charge of Protoform X,
but the Maximal Council had decided not to hold him responsible for the escape
and horrific aftermath. It was a decision not taken well by many friends and
kin of those killed. They wanted revenge; they wanted someone to answer for
what happened. No one called for retribution, no one called for justice.
They wanted blood- plain and simple.

Through his career, Depth Charge held fast the nobility that personal
revenge, even for acts that shocked his conscience, was to be kept isolated
for justice to prevail. And now for the first time, he doubted.
He doubted.