Beach Day
Posted on Sep 07, 2015 @ 11:28pm by Commander Jacob Crichton
Edited on on Sep 07, 2015 @ 11:29pm
Mission: Civil War
= Beach Day =
(cont'd from "Safe Harbor")
LOCATION: ELANDIPOLE IV
SCENE: Beach
STARDATE: [2.15] 0907.1913
A large hill, covered with white sand, crested up behind them. It was dotted with footprints, three separate trails that became two when Benito said he was too tired to walk and demanded that Jake carry him. The footprints wound their way down the hill at an angle, going first in one direction, then folding back to go in the other. The hill itself wasn't too steep, but the sand was loose enough that a careless explorer could lose their footing and stumble, winding up with sand down the back of their swim trunks. Fortunately, the whole expedition managed to make it with no stumbles, and eventually the white sands leveled off, continuing on for perhaps 20 or 30 more feet before disappearing into the shimmery blue waters of the ocean.
The smell of salt was heavy, but not oppressive. The cries of the planet's oddly saurian birds cut sharply through the gentle swells and crashes of the tide. Sometimes, one of those birds - brightwings, if Jake remembered correctly - would detach itself from the sky to bomb down into the water, disappearing beneath the surface with a whisper. Moments later, the brightwing would explode up in a spray of sea foam, clutching some wriggling thing it is jaws. Benito and Dahlia both watched this for a time while Jake spread out the blanket and unpacked the picnic basket and satchel he'd been carrying. Occasionally, Jake would look up from his work at his children, at the way Ben would smile and clap his hands each time a brightwing returned from its dive with a meal clamped firmly in its mouth while Dahlia looked on with a contemplative expression, and Jake couldn't help but smile.
When the blanket was laid out, Dahlia came and smoothed out its edges, and brushing away bits of sand that Jake had accidentally kicked up. Then she helped Jake lay out their lunch - sandwich fixings, an insulated thermos of cold lemonade, plus assorted snacks and bits of candy. They ate slowly, taking their time as they watched the brightwings dance and the tide roll gently in and out. When their food was finished, Ben wanted to get in the water, so Jake and his family went down to the water's edge. Ben ran around, never going in deep enough for the water to pass his knees, but he whooped and laughed as he stomped his way through the spray, laughing as he kicked water at his sister and Jake. Dahlia went a little deeper, but not before making Jake repeat his promise that there were no dangerous predators lurking in the water nearby. Once she was satisfied, Dahlia began to dive beneath the water, letting the ebb and flow of the ocean pull her gently in one direction before pushing her off in another.
Later, they built sandcastles at the water's edge. Despite being a trained engineer, Jake did not seem to have a talent for working with sand. It seemed to always shift and scatter at his touch. Dahlia did better, bringing a gentle certainty to the work that had her castle's highest towers looming far above the best that Jake could do. For his part, Ben's castle never quite made it past the first level, but the young boy quickly busied himself with searching for seashell "guards" that he could post in a ring around the top of his castle, informing Jake and Dahlia in his matter-of-fact way that they were there to protect his kingdom against incursion. The castle project came to an abrupt end when the tide began to creep back in, and a rush of water splashed over the top of their sandy fortresses and reduced them all to runny mud.
Ben was frustrated by this, but then Jake pulled out the contents of his rucksack - bits of loose fabric, string, and sturdy wooden sticks, along with loose bits of wire or metal - and shortly after both kids were busy again, this time working diligently on homemade kites. Jake helped Ben with his, but Dahlia got the idea quickly and didn't need the assist. After 20 minutes, both kites were finished, and Jake was helping his kids tie the bits of metal onto the tail of each kite, explaining that they would catch the sun and glitter and shine against the deep blue of ELANDIPOLE IV's sky. Jake showed them how to make the kites fly, taking a running start with Ben's kite dragging out behind him. It took a few tries- Jake hadn't done this himself in better than 20 years, and he was a little rusty - but before long both kites were dancing and whipping their way through the air, eliciting more than a few annoyed shrieks from nearby flocks of brightwings. Jake sat down on the blanket to watch his children run along the beach, their kits dipping and swooping with the wind. It felt good to hear them laugh.
Eventually, the kite games got boring. Dahlia came to join Jake on the blanket while Ben stayed near the water's edge. The young boy would wait for the tide to creep out, then would dig into the wet sand, looking for tiny crustaceans that quickly buried themselves. Then, the tide would come rushing back in, and Ben would laugh and dash back up the beach, avoiding the creeping water by inches. Dahlia and Jake watched him repeat this several times. Jake fixed himself another sandwich with the leftover food.
"Jake?" Dahlia asked, her voice casual, her eyes on her brother as he stomped and danced through the ocean spray.
"Hmm?" Jake asked.
"Have you ever killed anyone?"
Jake had just taken a bite of his sandwich, and he nearly choked on it when he heard the question. He looked over and saw that Dahlia was watching him now, with genuine interest. Her brownish-gold eyes were wide and guileless.
"Hell's bells, kid," Jake said, coughing around the chunk of sandwich that had nearly wedged itself in his throat. "This is supposed to be a relaxing day."
"I just wanted to know," Dahlia said. "I think mom has killed people before, but she never says."
Jake shook his head, and frowned. "Dee, maybe this isn't--"
"People are coming here to kill us, right?" Dahlia asked. Her eyes left Jake's, and went back to watching Ben as he played at the water's edge.
Jake blinked. "What?"
"I hear things, you know," Dahlia said.
"There's nobody--" Jake started.
"Don't treat me like a dumb kid," Dahlia said sharply, and a little sulkily. "I'm not stupid."
The girl still wasn't looking at him, but Jake recognized the familiar, stubborn set of the jaw in her profile. It was something she'd gotten from her mother. Jake knew Dahlia wasn't going to let this go easily. He sighed.
"Dee, you don't have to worry..." Jake started, but then he trailed off. The words sounded false to Jake even as he spoke them. Dahlia wouldn't be persuaded by comforting lies. The girl was young, but she deserved better than to placated, or to have her concerns dismissed.
"Ah hell," Jake said quietly.
"You were in the war," Dahlia said. "I bet you killed lots of people."
"You can protect someone without having to kill someone else," Jake said.
"Not always," Dahlia said. She brushed absently at some piles of sand that had collected on the edge of the blanket. Jake remembered Dahlia's father, Gene McInnis. He had been a good man, a fine officer. He had given his life to save his family. Dahlia was too young to have many memories of him, but Jake knew she carried the loss inside her all the same. For such a young girl, Dahlia had been through a lot. Her father killed, her mother and step-father separated, always living in half a home... and now, with Xana gone to the Bolian front and the promise of a happy family snatched away once more, here was Dahlia. She was strong, but she was too young to live her life wondering when someone was going to pull the rug out from under her feet again.
Jake let Dahlia's question hang in the air between them for a moment, long enough for it to become uncomfortable. This wasn't a conversation he'd expected to have, not today, maybe not ever... but Dahlia deserved an answer.
"Yeah," Jake said after awhile. "I've killed someone."
Dahlia looked at him again. "Was it in the war?"
"Yes," Jake nodded. "It was an enemy soldier. A Jem'Hadar. He was trying to kill me, and I..."
He trailed off, and Dahlia didn't push. Jake was grateful for that; Dahlia always had seemed wise beyond her years, and Jake suspected she could tell that this wasn't a memory that Jake was fond of revisiting. The honest truth was that Jake had helped to kill a lot of people. Being chief engineer of a starship or starbase in the middle of the war often meant improvising new ways for phasers to cut through shields, or masking the energy emissions from photon torpedoes long enough for them to strike their targets. It meant finding weaknesses in enemy ship compositions, and giving that information to the people firing the guns, telling them exactly when and where to strike to inflict maximum damage. Jake wasn't the one who gave the order, or the one who pressed the button, but he'd had his hand in more than a few decisive victories during the Dominion War, and that meant he'd been at least indirectly responsible for quite a few enemy deaths. It was a weight he carried, but the impersonality of it made it easy not to think about.
But he didn't think that's what Dahlia had meant with her question. She wanted to know if Jake had *really* killed someone. If he'd looked them in the eyes as they'd died. That's the sort of people that were coming to destroy her life once more, after all.
In all that time, fighting the war, telling himself he was saving lives instead of taking them, Jake rarely had to face the enemy in person. But there had been one mission, on some planet whose name Jake couldn't remember. Jake and his crew were captured by the Dominion. They'd managed an escape from their cell, through an old system of subterranean caverns. A Jem'Hadar patrol had ambushed them. One of the aliens had tackled Jake, clamped steel fingers around his throat, cutting off his oxygen. With adrenaline pumping through his veins, Jake's fingers had clutched blindly, desperately, before closing around a large stone. Jake had brought the stone up to crash against the side of the Jem'Hadar's head. It knocked the creature off, and Jake fell upon it, bringing the stone down again, and again, until the Jem'Hadar's struggles had stopped. Jake looked down at the ruined mass that had once been the alien's head and skull, saw the syrupy blood still dripping off the end of the stone. He still remembered how he felt in that moment - alive, more alive than he could remember feeling before or since, but also strangely numb. He remembered how it felt to have the impact travel up his arm each time the rock smashed into the Jem'Hadar's face. He remembered wiping blobs of purple blood out of his eyes, off his cheeks.
It made Jake sick to think about it.
But that had been a long time ago. They'd escaped the caverns, completed their mission, and even gone on to win the war. Jake's engineering expertise contributed to who knows how many more deaths, Jem'Hadar and Vorta left twisted and burning in ruined starships thanks to Jake's recommendations. He never faced down an enemy soldier like that again, not in a life-or-death struggle. Once had been enough.
"What was it like?" Dahlia asked, bringing Jake out of his memory and back to the peaceful white sands of the beach. Jake let the question hang in the air again. He wasn't sure there was a right answer to this question.
"I didn't like it," Jake said finally. Dahlia seemed to consider this for a moment.
"But you would do it again, if you had to," she said. Jake closed his eyes.
"If I had to," he said.
Dahlia nodded. Then she looked back at Ben, and watched the young boy play at the water's edge. His lilting laughter floated over to them on the gentle breeze, sounding not unlike the shrieks of brightwings circling overhead, waiting for the visitors to leave so they could help themselves to whatever bits of food might be left behind.
"I'm sorry you had to do that," Dahlia said, without taking her eyes off of Ben. "You wouldn't be here if you hadn't, right?"
"I don't know, Dee," Jake sighed. "Probably not."
"Then I'm glad you did it, too," Dee said quietly. "Am I bad for thinking that way?"
"No," Jake said, gathering the young girl into a hug and kissing the top of her head. "I guess I feel the same way about it as you do."
"When those people come to kill us, you'll kill them first," Dee said, not as a question but a statement. "If you have to."
"If I have to," Jake repeated.
"So that they can't take you away from us."
"I won't let them take me away," Jake said. "I promise."
"Even though it makes you sad, you'll still do it," Dee said.
"Yes."
Dahlia nodded. "Thank you, Jake."
Jake felt like he should smile, but he couldn't quite manage it.
"Don't mention it, kid," he whispered.
"I love you," Dee said, kissing him on the cheek. Then she stood, brushed off bits of stand that clung to her swimsuit, and went to join Ben by the water's edge. Jake watched his children laugh and play together as the sun began to creep slowly below the horizon.
=[/\]=
Shawn Putnam
a.k.a.
Jake Crichton
Chief Engineering Officer
USS PHOENIX