To the "Demilitarized Colonial Federation"

Posted on Tue Oct 13th, 2026 @ 4:04am by Chief Warrant Officer Karzen Son of Arjune, Son of Ragan MD, MPH

875 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Home Waters
Location: Infirmary
Timeline: Current

“On behalf of the Colonial Directorate, and in the name of every world of the Demilitarized Colonial Federation:

Welcome home.”

Karzen shut down the comm and poured himself a drink. Rye whiskey, not blood wine. He honestly couldn’t stand the stuff. He knew that was very Klingon of him. He was just too damned old to care either way.

“Welcome Home.”

Strangely enough, despite the many years he’d spent in the colonies, starting long before they were the DMZ, he’d never felt like it was ‘home’. Not really. Well, maybe a bit when he was still married. When he lived with his wife and son, they were his home. Dirt and rock and soil wasn’t home. People were home. A family was a home. But since his wife left him all those decades ago and his son grew up and moved on… Karzen left home once, when he left the Nyberrite Alliance. He left family. But then, later, he made a new family, a new home, only to have it evaporate as homes do, over time, if one lived long enough.

“Welcome Home.”

The words meant little to Karzen, as did the pardon. By providing medical aid and only fighting when he had to defend himself, his colleagues, and his patients, Karzen had pretty much dodged being placed on any sort of terror watch list. As far as he knew, anyway. No one had ever come looking for him anyway. No one from the Federation, anyway. He supposed if there was any sort of Government left on Cardassia, or anything left of the Obsidian Order, they would have him on a list somewhere. But rumor had it that Dominion decimated the Obsidian Order, along with the Tal Shiar, when those two groups of power mad lunatics pooled their forces into one truly massive fleet and launched an attack on what they thought was the Founder’s home world. Except it wasn’t the Founder’s Homeworld. It was a trap and the Dominion massacred the idiots who had let themselves, in their arrogance, fall for the ruse. Frankly, it didn’t surprise him. Both Cardassians and Romulans were excessively full of themselves, and as the humans said: pride goeth before the fall.

Karzen grunted again. Throughout history, when the oppressed reclaimed their power, in nearly every society, they over compensated, sought revenge, punished first those who oppressed them, and then they punished those who they thought did not fight hard enough, then they punished anyone who didn’t cheer loud enough when the “revolution” was invoked. It would be interesting to see how the colonials worked through this process. He just hoped he didn’t get hanged or garroted or guillotined or whatever these particular “revolutionaries” would end up doing to the unenthusiastic, to the suspected, but rarely proven, collaborator. To the people who didn’t join the fight. The people who just tried to live their lives, get by, and be left alone. And what, pray tell, would they do to a doctor who refused to join their merry band, who helped anyone who was injured, colonist or Cardassian? Time would tell. Somedays, Karzen honestly wasn’t sure he cared. But then again, wasn’t that why he joined up with this merry band of (hopefully) former murderers and terrorists? To see what happened?

Karzen grunted a third time, and then grinned a feral grin, baring his teeth.

Even he knew that, most of the time anyway, his grumpy old curmudgeon routine was an act, that he actually did care about both people and events. But by Kahless the Unforgotten and Okhala (fire: passion, strength, the soul, light, and stars), Avilh (earth: endurance, renewal, the physical body, and family), Ihhuein (water: birth, death, purity, and eternity), Jaeih (air: mind, freedom, wind, and unpredictability), the Arch-Element (The binding force that oversees and unites the other four elements), and bloody damned Hippocrates and Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the bloody damned gods and goddesses, Karzen would be damned if he let it show in his everyday life. At least not often, and then only professionally, in his duties as a physician. In his personal life he had a damned fine reputation to maintain as a grumpy old bastard.

He was about to harrumph again, but decided against it. All the grunting might make someone in earshot think he was having an amorous rendezvous with himself.

“Welcome home.”

Karzen just barely resisted the urge to snort.

“Well,” Karzen said. “I already poured the damned thing. It would be a shame to waste it.” The old Klingon raised his glass. “To the Demilitarized Colonial Federation, which is about the most asinine name for a nation I’ve ever heard. May it survive without too much murder and self-mutilation and grow to become something other than tedious.”

With that Karzen drained his glass, wiped it out, put it away, and lay down in his bunk for a nap, as was his way. He drifted off swiftly, secure in the knowledge that if some damned fool did something damned foolish (as was the way of damned fools) and hurt themselves, someone would certainly come and wake him up… wouldn’t they?

 

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