From: Jasmina Grosic (jgrosic_at_yahoo.de)
Date: Tue Dec 04 2007 - 23:16:03 PST
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“Seven Year Voyage ” (continued from “War Drums”)
A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
- George Moore -
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Location: GATEWAY-2
Stardate: 2.71205.0618
Scene: turbolift
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Kane sighed.
"Are you alright, sir?" Lt. Kor asked.
Kane didn't say anything. (NRPG: quoted from Shawn’s last post)
The Chief of Security turned round again to face the doors of the turbolift. Kane just stood there, audibly inhaling and exhaling slow breaths while in his mind, he tried to formulate a speech that would pacify the crowd. An oncoming headache was announcing itself by little dancing specs of light in front of his eyes. Suddenly there was a pain as if a flash of lightening was exploding right behind his eyes. He went to the floor as a sharp pain began to shoot up his left arm. **A heart attack? That’s ridiculous!** He thought, **Nobody gets those anymore!** His last thought before his lights went out was **All right, if I get out of this intact, I’ll quit smoking… or at least I’ll cut down on my smokes.**
When she heard the thump, Eishnala Kor spun around and got to her knees beside the unconscious form of her Captain. She checked for a pulse and then immediately contacted sickbay.
[[Stand by for emergency beamout,]] came the reply.
The turbolift reached the promenade and the doors slid open. All that happened now didn’t take more than a few seconds, but it felt as if time had been stretched out indefinitely.
One or two people in the crowd turned their heads and shouted “It’s Kane!” Then, almost in unison, the people turned towards the lift and fell silent.
From his elevated position, Zane Rixx saw the lifeless form of the man he had been rallying against mere instants before. He felt the sympathies of the crowd shift. Rixx cleared his throat. It had suddenly become very dry. He cleared it again and then, in a voice that sounded as if it was about to break, he yelled “It’s a trick. He’s playing on your sympathies by pretending to be sick!”
Eishnala looked up. She wanted to kick Rixx so hard that he’d fly straight through the room, or put him in a holding cell. Preferably both.
[[Commander Kor?]] It was sickbay again.
“Yes, Doctor?”
[[We cannot lock on to the Captain’s signal!]]
She looked down at an empty floor. Kane was gone.
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Location: unknown
Scene: white plain
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All he heard was the sound of a slow, regular heartbeat. Ba-boom… ba-boom… ba-boom.
He just stood there for an instant or two, the white light all around so bright it hurt his eyes. He blinked once, twice; something was different. His eyes didn’t feel right. Or rather, they did, and so did the rest of his body. He realized that all his prosthetics were gone. His left eye was its natural emerald again. For the first time in a long time, he felt whole, at peace.
But he wouldn’t have been Michael Turlough Kane if he didn’t have something to say about the matter. “So now I’m dead or what? Feck! That couldn’t have happened at a less opportune moment! And also, I’m not the kind of man who gets killed by a heart attack! Who is responsible for this? I demand to speak to someone right now!”
The scene changed. He found himself back on the floor in the corridor of a starship. There were fights going on around him everywhere, but he could not hear them. A display on the wall marked the ship as the USS CENTURY. A hand was stretched out to him. He took it and got up. He looked into a face with Asian eyes and Vulcan ears. Selyara. Kane smiled.
She looked at him blankly for an instant or two and then said “Very much like him, but not like him.”
“What do you mean?” Kane asked.
“The one they called the emissary. You are not him.”
“Oh, you mean… that was a long time ago. He’s dead.”
She cocked her head to the side. “Dead? What do you mean?”
“You’re one of the prophets, right?” He asked.
“What do you mean by dead?” She repeated.
“Look. You’re right! I’m not him. And I have neither the time nor the patience to explain death and the concept of linear time to you. If you are one of the prophets, you need to help us. You have to reopen the wormhole!”
The scene changed again. He was rushing up the stairs of the ACT dormitory at Starfleet Academy, trying to keep up with a blonde who kept looking at him over her shoulder. She reached the top of the stairs first and gave him a big grin. It was Daisy.
“Sweetheart, that’s not gonna happen.”
“You don’t sound much like a prophet!” Kane stopped two steps below her.
“Honey, when we first appeared to you, we thought you were, you know, that other guy from that other space station. But you’re not. And we appear to everyone in the form he’s most happy with. Deep down, he liked all that mystical mumbo jumbo. You apparently are more comfortable with someone a little more down to earth.”
Kane took a second to stomach that idea. Then he continued, “Your people are desperate. We need your help. Bajorans on both sides of the wormhole lost all hope. If it is in your power to do so, please help them!”
“I think not!” Daisy smiled again and shook her head.
There was another flash and he found himself in a brig – on the wrong side of the containment field. Commander Shiobhan Reardon-Marxx was standing on the opposite side, her hands on her hips. She looked at him angrily for a moment or two, then a calm cave over her face and she began to speak.
“We are of Bajor. You are not! Your time here is over. There are other people who need you. Go back. It is not your destiny to remain there!”
“Destiny?” Kane approached the entry to his cell and the containment field came to life in a sparkle of particles. “I think I’ll have a word or two to say about that! I need to go back. My crew needs me! I have to take care of the station!”
Another flash.
He was sitting at a bar. The seat next to his was empty. On the seat next to that sat Coyote and took a swig from a glass of whiskey.
“Oh, great!” Kane muttered.
“Other people need you more. Go back to them. We can help you! We can rebuild you. We have the technology. We can make you better, stronger, faster!”
Kane, oblivious at the reference, just gave him a dirty look. “I’ll not let a deity I don’t even believe in decide over my life, thank you very much!”
“Suit yourself,” Coyote replied and finished his drink.
There was another flash and Kane found himself in a large, cold room. The floor and walls were made of dark stone. He couldn’t see the ceiling when he looked up. The only light came from a few rows of candles on the wall. He inhaled and noticed the distinct smell of holy water. He was in a church. More precisely, it was the church belonging to the monastery at Inis-da-druim. He had been there many times as a child. He took a deep breath and sat down in one of the wooden pews.
“Now what?” He muttered.
“I once was on a seven year voyage myself.” Came a calm voice from right beside him.
Michael turned his head and saw a man sitting next to him. He looked vaguely familiar, but Kane couldn’t quite place him.
“At first I didn’t want to leave. But oh, the things I saw. I saw Judas frozen on one side and buring on the other. I saw people with swine heads, dog legs and wolf teeth. I found the Isle of the Blessed. But even I eventually went home.”
Michael shook his head. “You are Saint Brendan? That’s impossible!”
“Is it that much harder to believe than believing that you’ve met the prophets?”
Michael didn’t know what to reply.
“All that matters now is that we are sending you home. That is where your place is right now. It is time to put an end to your trek amongst the stars. That doesn’t mean you’ll never return. But right now, your place is somewhere else!”
Michael sighed. “I cannot change your mind?” He asked.
“You cannot.” Was the only reply.
“Alright. But I have one favour to ask. Coyote spoke about rebuilding me. I don’t want that. Not like that. The way my body is now is part of who I am – what I went through. Please let me be the way I was.”
And then there was only darkness.
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Location: Thomond Estate, Dal Cais
Scene: A glen,a river, Kane
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The river ran on forever. Night and day it called to him, 'Come away with me and see what lies beyond the hills!'
Michael Turlogh Kane's boyhood was surrounded by hills. Behind the castle where he had been born rose the mighty Slieve Bernagh. There the legendary guardian spirit of the Cathain clan, the banshee known as Aval, watched over them from her brooding gray crag. Across the river and to the south were more hills, but the Shannon escaped them all. She ran on and on to places the young Kane could only dream about. 'Take me with you,' he whispered sometimes.
Now Kane the man had finally come home.
(stolen and adapted from Jerome’s first post “Opening shots, Part One)
He lay unconscious in the grass and his uniform was soaking up the morning dew. A moment passed, then another, then there was thunder quickly followed by a flash of lightning. It began to rain. Michael Turlough Kane, heir of the Clan of Cathain, opened his eyes. He groaned. He felt as if he had been dropped to Earth from it’s orbit, shattering every bone of his body upon impact. Slowly he got up and just sat there for a second. The thunder roared again and Kane cursed. “Aw, hell!” He wiped the rain from his eyes. Without having to check his reflection he knew that the right one was emerald and the left one was golden. All his other prosthetics had been returned, as well.
“At least the prophets, if that’s what they were, kept their word about that part,” he muttered as he became aware of his family castle standing in the distance. He raised his hand to activate his communicator and contact Starfleet, but it was gone. He looked down to see if it had dropped to the grass, even though he knew it was futile. There was nothing there. He sighed and started walking towards Thomond.
TO BE CONTINUED
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NRPG: I hope everyone is happy with this. Now I really need to get ready for work. There wasn’t even time to spell-check, so, bare with me :)
Jerome: Is this OK with you? Try and come back to the game soon, OK?
Jasmina Grosic
«jgrosic_at_yahoo.de»
Lieutenant Yao CSciO
GATEWAY STATION - 2
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