From: Kenneth Field (envision_at_fidalgo.net)
Date: Fri Jun 29 2007 - 23:01:55 PDT
"Where You Gonna Run To?"
(continues from Sarah's "We Are The GATEWAY")
Location: GS-2
Stardate: 2.70629.2301
Scene: Promenade just outside the Bajoran Temple
{{We **are** home,}} Xana's voice echoed up and down the Promenade.
Someone, probably some scared media type with a remote cam, had tapped into the Stations CommNet and was broadcasting his wife's impromptu speech. He could see her face on the marquee mounted on a bulkhead just a hundred yards away. Normally it showed a constant news feed, but that had been overridden in favor of the statement coming from the Federation's Ambassador.
The fact that OPS hadn't shut it down meant that someone high up the chain of command had made the decision to let it air.
{{We are the GATEWAY, and we will endure through this crisis together, and we will be all the stronger for it,}} she concluded.
Gene McInnis stood silently among a crowd of his fellow Bajorans, listening to Xana Bonviva as she reminded them who they really were. It was the first time in days he'd felt anything other than despair. She'd always been good at this, he recalled. Bringing order out of chaos. It wasn't going to last. He knew it. And he knew she knew it. Entropy is the order of the universe.
But it would last long enough perhaps to figure out the problems of supply for the GATE and its inhabitants, thousands of sentient beings from hundreds of different worlds and cultures trapped in a pressure cooker far beyond the direct influence of the Federation and Starfleet. The crowd had pushed through the security forces sent down to contain the unrest, and no doubt there was trouble in various parts of the Station. But here, within sound of Xana Bonviva's voice, people had come back to some semblance of normality.
Gene had been in just this kind of situation before. It made him uniquely suited to assist. His first posting had been to the USS SUTTNER as a green ensign in charge of the Counseling Department. The SUTTNER, the only Starfleet vessel gifted with transwarp technology provided by the BORG, had also been the only Federation starship allowed in the DELTA Quadrant. The officers and crew of the SUTTNER had grown used to operating on their own, far from support by Starfleet. As it turned out, he was the only officer of that distinguished vessel to be assigned to the GATE. The ship itself had been semi-retired, turned over to the command cadets of Starfleet Academy to replace the USS SEATTLE lost in a recovery effort. It seemed like years, and it was. But here he was.
Gene McInnis tapped his combadge.
"McInnis to Kane."
-------------------- =/\=
Scene: OPS
[[McInnis to Kane.]]
Captain Michael Turlogh Kane turned away from the viewscreen as local newsfeeds began to flow again. Bonviva's public address had done what he'd meant it to do. Better that the "rah-rah" speeches come from a civilian, someone with credibility among the residents of the GATEWAY, rather than from a military leadership that might have to make some very hard choices in the near future. Bonviva had been remarkably helpful in that regard. And it gave him plausible deniability. Certainly a win-win situation, if ever there was one.
"Kane here. Hope you have good news, Counselor."
[[I guess that depends on how you define *good.*]]
"Report."
[[The unrest in the vicinity around the Temple has calmed down considerably. The Ambassador's speech seems to have done the job.]]
The man was insufferable, Kane thought. Leave it to him to point out the obvious, that it was his wife, not the CO of the Station who'd calmed the populace.
[[And nobody's going to come banging on your door when things go wrong, will they?]]
Insufferable. But not stupid.
"That was the plan," Kane admitted.
[[Well, it worked. But you're going to need everybody you can get to do the job ahead of us.]]
"Make your point, Commander."
[[Bring me back on duty.]]
"You haven't been cleared."
[[Fort Apache, Captain. You familiar with the Ancient West on TERRA?]]
"Understood. You going to freak out on me? Make me regret this?"
[[I can't speak to regret, but I won't freak.]]
"Report to OPS. Leave off the uniform for now. I want you able to move among station populace without drawing a lot of attention."
[[McInnis out.]]
-------------------- =/\=
NRPG: Just a short bit I wanted to get out. Nothing in particular needs to follow. I suspect that as a Bajoran, Gene may end up being an important liaison between the Station's Bajoran population, the civilian government and Starfleet personnel. But don't forget, he's still "walking wounded."
-------------------- =/\=
Kenneth Field
envision_at_fidalgo.net
aka Commander Gene McInnis
CNS/GS-2
aka Lt. JG Mowree Nurunyon
aCNS/GS-2
aka Tomas' Alexei Vukovic
Former Chief of Staff to Ambassador Xana Bonviva
currently with the BORG
aka Maury R. Tee
Professor of English (Retired)
Proprietor of "Impulse Drives,"
a little shop of horrors
GS-2, Promenade
"I dreamed a dream ... but now that dream is gone from me." -- Morpheus, "Matrix Reloaded"
From HyperNews_at_youth.net
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