From: Kenneth Field (envision_at_fidalgo.net)
Date: Thu Dec 20 2007 - 20:27:17 PST
"Fare Thee Well"
(continues from Kim's "Approximately 12 Months Ago")
Location: GS-2
Stardate: 2.71020.0824
Scene: Sickbay
CMO Jeffrey Gorman settled into the chair behind his desk.
He didn't ever want to stand up again.
Bad enough, the thing with Lt. Salor of Engineering ... now, he
was burying a friend.
His assistant, Dr. Roke, stuck his head into the office, leaned
against the doorjamb.
"Anything I can do?" he asked.
Jeff shook his head, not even attempting to smile politely. How
could he explain how he felt even to a close colleague? How do you
explain such emotions? Gene McInnis had once punched him in the
mouth, then thrown them both off a building. They'd survived that,
oddly enough. But from now on he was going it alone.
The man's body was carefully wrapped and secured in stasis in the
morgue. His body would not deteriorate so long as they maintained the
field around it. Eventually he would try to arrange shipment back to
BAJOR. He knew Gene wanted to be buried at home. And Xana would want to go with him ... take him home one last time.
But Xana was still on board the Dominion ship. The Xana that had
come back to them had been an imposter, a Founder. And the bastards
had paid for that mistake, right enough. But so had they.
"Oh gods," he breathed, his voice choking, "how am I going to tell
Xana when she gets back?"
He didn't even think that she might not get back. Not once.
-------------------- =/\=
Location: Dominion Vessel
Scene: Holding Area
Xana sat on the only piece of furniture she'd been given ... a
folding cot. Her mind in turns both raced and stood frozen as she
contemplated all the possibilities facing her. A Founder had taken
her form, her voice and gone back to the GATE. She was tempted once
again to throw herself against the forcefield of her cell as she'd
done once or twice already. But she knew she had to hold herself
together. She had to escape, had to get back to safety and freaking
kill that shapeshifter.
A Vorta she'd seen before ... although it was hard to tell since
they were cloned rather indiscriminately by the Founders ... entered
the holding area guarded by two Jem'Hadar soldiers in full riot gear
and weapons. She said nothing at all as the door slid shut behind
her, and the Jem'Hadar were too disciplined to question her presence
once she'd given them the appropriate password.
The lights blinked suddenly, then went dead in the room. A moment
later there were the sounds of bodies falling, and the lights came
back up, but where the Vorta had been stood another person Xana was
uniquely familiar with.
"Tomas'?" she gasped.
The bald Slav put a finger to his lips, still wearing the Vorta's
clothing, and paced across the holding area to her cell. The two
Jem'Hadar lay twisted on the deck behind him, either stunned or dead.
Xana couldn't tell. Tomas' touched the control plate, and the force
field came down.
"Where did you come from?" Xana whispered.
"Now is not the time," Tomas' whispered back.
He bent down, retrieved the personal cloaking devices from the two
guards and handed one to Xana before taking the other one for himself.
"It's time to leave. Things are in motion, and we have to get off
this ship right now. You're needed back at the GATE," he said
cryptically.
"Why? What's happened?"
"Not now," he refused to answer her.
The door slid open, let them out, and then closed behind them,
leaving an empty cell and two Jem'Hadar soldiers lying prone on the
ground.
-------------------- =/\=
Location: DOMINION SHUTTLE
Scene: Flight Deck
"Tomas! I was rather damn fond of my craft," Xana Bonviva said.
"Don't get me wrong, I'm more fond of escaping but still...I got that
craft as a gift from my Bolian grandmother who said my grandfather
wanted me to have it. We all got an inheritance when he died and that
was mine. Besides the fact that Bolian boomerang-shuttles just don't
come out of the sky!"
"Actually they do," he murmured focusing on the flying and not on the
woman next to him.
"Don't be cute," she snapped.
"Now there's one thing I've never been accused of," the Borg/Human
replied wryly. "Xana there's something we need to talk about."
"Unless it's you offering to buy me another shuttle I'm not
interested," she said. Looking out the window at the wreckage
floating by, her entire demeanor changed. "Child of the gods, what's
happened?"
Tomas sighed. Due to his...*unique*...position as Borg who could
masquerade as a Founder, he had access to an extraordinary amount of
information. More information than any one person really should have
had. "There was an explosion on the GATEWAY."
"I can see that!" Xana exclaimed. Studying the wreckage and where it
was coming from she inhaled. "That's the Habitat Module! Dear gods,
that's where the civillians are."
"And officers," Tomas replied. He paused for a moment and said, "And
a Founder."
The former Ambassador gasped at that as her mind spun very quickly
through what had happened. "The GATEWAY was blown up...by the
Founder...who looks like...*me*?"
Tomas' nodded.
"Oh gods," she murmured. She brought her hands up to her lips in a
prayerful motion and shook her head. "I'm going to kill the Dominion.
I didn't want to kill them when they imprisoned me, either time.
That's just...war. It's to be expected. But to use *me* to destroy
*my* home...no, now I want to kill them."
"Xana," Tomas' said softly. He waited until she turned towards him to
say the rest. He had to get it out in one breath otherwise it would
never come out. Better she should hear it from a friend, someone who
cared for her, rather than some bureaucrat. "From what information
I've gathered...Gene went off to fight the Changeling..I'm sorry but
he died."
And then Xana did the most remarkable thing -- she smiled at him. It
wasn't her normal flirtatious charming smile, it was the same smile
she gave Dahlia when her daughter couldn't quite figure out how to do
something. It was a mother's smile -- a smile that said she loved you
even though she knew you were making a mistake. "Don't be foolish,
Tomas, Gene isn't dead."
"How do you know that?"
"My husband isn't dead. I know this," she replied calmly. When she
saw the look he gave her she sighed and explained it, "My husband
survived the Orion Syndicate, the explosion of the EIDOLON,
Essentialists, and the Gods know what else. One little Changeling did
not kill Gene McInnis. He's a survivor, long after you and I will go
from this life, he will still be here, saving people." Patting his
hand she said, "I realize you're trying to prepare me for the worst
but what you're saying just isn't...possible."
=/\=
Location: GATEWAY STATION - 2
Scene: Bonviva/McInnis Quarters*Corridor
It had been a mess, Jeff thought to himself.
First Xana Bonviva arrived miraculously on the station which had
thrown Security into a dizzy. They threatened to lock her up and in
true Xana form she threatened them with hellfire and damnation before
she went into quote "another damn prison today". Finally someone had
suggested Angus -- since so far he was the only reliable Changeling
dectection that they had.
And when the German Shepherd/Rotweiller bounded for his mistress,
covering her in big wet slobbering licks, Jeff didn't know whether to
be thrilled or depressed. Most certainly it was Xana -- Angus would
have only reacted that predictably joyous at seeing her. But then
that meant it *was* Xana...
Funny thing was Xana didn't seem all that upset when he told her about
Gene. It was as if someone had already told her. She was calm, gave
him a hug, and asked about her kids -- both the Svenson boys and
Dahlia. Upon hearing they were all fine she smiled at him and said,
"Jeff, thank you for the concern, but Gene isn't dead."
She did, however, want to see her quarters. So Jeff escorted her and
when they got there ordered all the guards back. He watched her as
she sighed and catalogued everything that was destroyed. Every so
often he'd hear something like "Damn it all, I was rather fond of
that" or "Heh, who would have thought *that* would have survived?".
And yet she said nothing about Gene. **Denial,** Jeff thought. **She
moved right into denial.**
From behind him he heard footsteps. "Is that Xana?"
Jeff turned around and saw the younger Svenson boy, standing there
with Angus. "Mikey--"
"It's Mike," the kid corrected him.
"Mike," Jeff said. "You're not supposed to be here."
The 11-year-old ignored the adult and started to move around him. "Is
it Xana? I heard Angus licked her so it must be her--"
And then they heard it. The scream. No, it was a wail really. Jeff
turned immediately to the Security guards, "Keep him back here!" he
ordered while he went running into the quarters.
Xana was on the floor, next to the sofa, next to the pool of blood.
And Jeff saw Xana's face and realized that it finally penetrated past
the denial...she realized that no human could ever bleed that much and
live.
So he kneeled next to her, hugging her, and trying to tell her things
to bolster her but it was no use, so he stayed quiet. He stayed quiet
while she screamed and pounded his chest with her fists, screaming in
a mixture of her natve tongues, screaming at the gods she believed in
and the Prophets that Gene believed in. She cursed the gods and
promised retribution to the Prophets, he realized. She cursed every
Dominion and promised to kill them all, to bring pain and misery upon
every single one of them until they begged for death. She screamed
until she was hoarse, until her voice was no longer understandable.
But she still kept crying.
"Xana! I want to see Xana!"
Jeff held onto her as she whipped around at the blast opened doorway.
*That* penetrated her next fog -- the kids. He helped her get up but
still in her grief-struck state she stumbled through the rubble. She
began to run, and Jeff did his best to guide her out of the quarters.
When they got to the corridor he let her go and gave the signal to the
guards to let the kids go. The other Svenson boy had come, and had
brought Dahlia too. Jeff watched as Xana opened up her arms and the
boys came to her and how she picked up Dahlia. The girl, not quite 2
years old and not understanding everything that was going on, wiggled
in her mother's arms. "Dada?" she asked.
"No, baby, Daddy isn't coming home," Xana said hoarsely.
Jeff swallowed the lump in his throat then. "Let's get them some
quarters," he whispered to the Security guard.
-------------------- =/\=
NRPG: Rahul, hope we did okay with Jeff.
-------------------- =/\=
Sarah Albertini-Bond
Xana Bonviva
Former Ambassador, Candidate for Governor on the GS-2, former Dominion Prisoner
GATEWAY STATION - 2
=/\= and =/\=
Kenneth Field
envision_at_fidalgo.net
aka Lt. JG Mowree Nurunyon
aCNS/GS-2
aka Tomas' Alexei Vukovic
Former Chief of Staff to Ambassador Xana Bonviva
currently operating covertly in the Dominion fleet
aka Maury R. Tee
Professor of English (Retired)
Proprietor of "Impulse Drives,"
a little shop of horrors
GS-2, Promenade
aka Commander Gene McInnis, deceased
formerly CNS/GS-2
"I start fighting a war, you're definitely gonna see something new." Malcolm Reynolds -- "Serenity"
From HyperNews_at_youth.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Feb 17 2008 - 03:10:19 PST