by Keiran O’Sullivan
90628.18
Soundtrack: Pie Jesu, performed by Sarah Brightman
-=/\=-
...continued from Part One...
-=USS Zenith=-
90628.18
Soundtrack: Pie Jesu, performed by Sarah Brightman
-=/\=-
...continued from Part One...
-=USS Zenith=-
He led her into Captain Grey’s ready room and ripped the compass from his pocket. He waited until she looked up, and then he tossed it to her. She caught it out of the air and opened the lid.
“Well?” he asked, afraid of the answer whatever it was.
Landry slowly shook her head. “It’s dark.”
Keiran knew better than most that meant that as far as Temporal Investigations and History as it stood now was concerned, that what had just happened was meant to happen and there would be no trying to change it.
For some reason, the crew of the Zenith was allowed to perish; and it was something that Keiran knew he was going to have a very hard time accepting, let alone explaining to those who would have the hardest time of all.
“So now what.”
“Dengar.” Landry said suddenly. “He’s going to have to be resequenced.”
“What did you just say?”
“What he just did- it was the right thing and it saved a lot more people than…” She stopped, wondering just how much she should tell him.
“Oh no you don’t, damn it. You don’ start and stop on me like that. I was almost made head of the bloody Agency awhile back an' this could’a been my ship if I’d taken her. It could’a been my crew all dead now, myself along with ‘em. So you tell me now.” His voice barely concealed his rage though he wasn’t truly angry at her, he knew she was only a messenger. “All of it.”
“Dabin Reece is about to find out that the Domox had accessed star charts from the computers of all of our ships.” Landry announced. “And not long from now, they’ll figure out that the Domox didn’t have a Varion weapon, so if Dengar’s original plan of a shield had been completed instead of his changing it into a weapon at the last moment, we’d all be dead now.”
Keiran shivered.
“What’s more,” Landry continued, folding her arms to try to stop herself from shaking as well. “With the star charts that they’d stolen, they were already planning to go after the populations of every Federation world with telepathic inhabitants.” Her eyes glazed over, but tears did not spill, if they were the reason for it. “Betazed. Vulcan…just the beginning.”
“Then,” Keiran tried, but couldn’t speak any more.
“Dengar didn’t just save us. Though we lost the crew of the Zenith, they were already truly lost, nothing could have saved them at that point.” Landry revealed sadly. “Dengar saved the future of the Federation as we know it.”
“But he still has’ta be…”
”Resequenced? Absolutely.” Landry said with certainty. Her orders were clear. “If he’s not, even if he can manage to survive the guilt he’ll feel at what he’s done, he’ll be far too dangerous. The knowledge he possesses is just too deadly. It has to be destroyed, all of it.”
Landry adjusted the dial on her compass, and nodded before closing it gently and lifting her eyes up to the towering O’Sullivan again. “His work. His notes. His memories.” She concluded sadly. “All must be destroyed.”
Keiran walked away from her now, over to the view port, and dropped heavily to his knees. He again directed his face toward the floor and plead with his God to be granted help and strength as he contemplated all that he yet had to do. He just didn’t know if he had it in him to do it.
“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.” He whispered.
Slowly, Landry backed away and silently exited, leaving him alone to his prayers.
Tears spilled gently from the corners of Keiran’s tightly clenched eyelids, and his voice was quaking with sorrow. “Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith: where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.”
The words felt empty to him in the moment, how could there ever be joy again for the families of the almost nine hundred people who had served aboard this ship? Still at moments like this when he didn’t know what else to turn to, he always seemed to return in the end to his faith; to the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen.
As the weight of pending responsibilities threatened to crush him, alone in this empty room, he wept.
“O Divine Master, grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” His eyes finally fluttered open, and he wiped at them firmly with the back of his hand. “Amen.”
He rose slowly, and he looked down at the ring on his left hand.
God, he thought, how I wish she was here. He wanted nothing more right now than to simply allow himself to fall apart, safe and protected in the warmth of her embrace.
“Oh, Liis.” He whispered. “How are we ever goin’ to get through this? Can ya help me find my way? I…know I can’t do it on my own this time.”
As if in answer to that prayer of a different kind, Dwan Tubman’s voice sounded over Keiran’s combadge.
[Captain, we’ve finally got the Serendipity. Captain Zanh is asking for a secure channel.]
“In here. Thank you.” Keiran responded gratefully. He needed to compose himself before he returned to the bridge; no one but Liis could be allowed to see him this way.
He slumped down into the chair at the desk and watched the screen come to life. “Liis? Tell me you’re alright, please.”
[I am. But Keiran,] she shook her head. [Gem Lassiter is not.]
“What?” Keiran’s heart sank, plummeting to a new low.
[She’s collapsed and is in our Sickbay. Hartcort is treating her now. He says it’s her heart.]
“Hail Mary, full of grace,” Keiran whispered.
One look at him was enough to shake Liis to the core. He couldn’t take much more, she knew that. She had to hurry up and bring him home.
[A chuisle, listen to me.] Liis pleaded, staring at the screen, wishing more than ever that she could reach out and touch him through it. [Right now a replacement bridge crew from the Gauntlet is being beamed over to your location. In sixty seconds they’ll be ready to relieve you all.]
He looked up, scarcely able to believe it. He would, under any other circumstances, have insisted on staying; on making sure that every single detail was handled until the ship was back to port.
This time, though, he was glad he’d had the forethought to use the hours of waiting between battles to lay out a specific set of orders for anyone who might come after, so that someone else could finish the work in his stead.
He needed to be there for Gem, and for Gira.
He needed Liis to be there for him.
He needed to go home.
[It’s all over, Keiran.] Liis whispered. [It’s time to come home.]
He closed the channel, and wasting not a moment he returned to the bridge, where Dwan was already preparing to turn over his station to his replacement.
Each Serendipity bridge officer quietly and quickly locked down their station, more than ready to follow Keiran O’Sullivan home.
He waited until each of them had transported back, and then, with a longing, last reverent look around him at the bridge of the USS Zenith, he repeated the prayer he’d said before.
“Eternal rest grant to them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.”
-=Transporter Room One, USS Serendipity=-
Zanh Liis sent Andrew Parrish out of the room, and handled the controls herself to bring Keiran back from the Zenith.
She watched the expression on his face change the moment he took solid form before her.
His unmoving lips silently spoke of a hundred things he couldn’t say.
His stormy eyes revealed a thousand emotions he wished he didn’t feel.
His stance betrayed that the weight of the loss of every one of those eight hundred and seventy-one souls, now gone, was weighing upon his shoulders.
He slowly and heavily stepped down from the transporter but felt he could go no further. He lacked the strength to simply continue to put one foot before the other and cross the room to reach her.
Liis found the strength to take those last, but most important steps.
Without a word, her eyes told him everything that he needed to hear.
With arms outstretched and her heart open wide, she grasped hold of him fiercely, softly kissing the tears from his cheeks as she promised him that somehow, they would find a way through this, just as long as they never let go.
--------------
Commander Keiran O’Sullivan
Security Liaison
to The Alchemy Project
Commander Keiran O’Sullivan
Security Liaison
to The Alchemy Project