Teach Me How To Say Goodbye, Part One

Posted on Jun 27, 2016 @ 1:27pm by Lieutenant James Barton
Edited on on Jun 27, 2016 @ 1:36pm

Mission: Fortress: Earth

“Teach Me How to Say Goodbye, Part One”
(continued from “Let's Have Another Round Tonight”)

=[/\]=

“I'm stepping through the door,
and I'm floating in the most peculiar way...
And the stars look very different today...”

-David Bowie
'Space Oddity;

“I'm a rocket man.
A rocket man burning up his fuse up here alone.”

-Elton John
“Rocket Man”

=[/\]=

LOCATION: USS TIGRIS, The Drop Point
SCENE: Cargo Bay
TIME INDEX: During 'Helpless'


Sometimes, in the stories, when a brave knight sets out to defeat a terrible dragon, after overcoming fearsome obstacles and perils uncounted, the valiant warrior finally comes face-to-face with his mighty foe and is promptly eaten.

In the monstrous squeezing tightness of the dropsuit, James Barton felt that he understood what it was like to find yourself in the gullet of the beast, when the doom that had constricted around you had finally become a physical thing that held you in place, that robbed you of agency, that trapped your arms and your legs...

And your hands so that you couldn't scratch your GODDAMN nose...

His vision was surrounded by so many status indicators and HUDS that they were nearly incomprehensible, but his attention was focused entirely on the transparent aluminum of the facemask in front of him. If he could...just...

He stretched his face forward as far as he could, hoping to graze the inside of the facemask with the tip of his nose. Millimeter by millimeter, he closed towards salvation, and was agonizingly close when he felt his chin press against some kind of helmet mounted control, and he felt it give ever so slightly.

He was about to activate the backup propulsion control and launch himself through the roof of the TIGRIS.

With a heavy sigh, his head slumped back. He cursed Jake Crichton to a frozen hell and resigned himself to dying frustrated.

Inside him, some part of himself flinched at the thought. He'd been trying to keep the thought of what was about to happen to him, and what it would almost certainly mean, at arm's length, but the notion had slipped around his defenses.

He was almost certainly about to die. His desperate adventures had come to their inevitable end, and for all his flailings at survival, he had ultimately allowed himself to be strapped into his own destruction. He had flashes of wondering about things like other sides, and legacies, and who else might live or die, but he was too full of the fire of adrenaline to fully grasp those abstract points. His actual course of thought was more primal, more animal, more about how quickly he might be able to get himself out of this thing before Crichton blew the hatch...

[[Crichton to Barton. How you feeling, Big Man?]]

And now here he was the Devil in Barton's ear to laugh at him.

*Jake, please. Please let me out of here. I don't wanna do it. I've changed my mind. I'm not as sure as when we started...*

*Please*

But he didn't say any of that.

“My nose still itches you son of a bitch.”

And all at once, he was talking to Jake again. The engineer had a way of doing that. You could be furious, or terrified, or even just busy beyond imagining, but he would make a stupid joke and you'd find yourself making one back. Suddenly, the shuttle bay door seemed further away than the scant 7 feet of carpet between them. Crichton's dumb jokes weren't enough to push you out of the black spotlight of impending doom, but he could nudge you out of the dread center to the milky edges.

Then his nose twinged again and his entire face twisted almost painfully into a grotesque contortion.

Jake Crichton sucked. The warp core should explode and a stream of superheated plasma should hit Jake Crichton right on the tip of his dick. That's what should happen if there was justice in the universe.

An orange light started frantically beeping above his left eye.

“There's a 'Check Engine' light blinking on helmet HUD. Is that supposed to be there?”

[[I guess Maynell couldn't help himself.]] He could hear the smug smirk on Jake's face.

“Yeah. Maynell. I'm sure it was him.”

Jake said something else, and he thought he heard himself respond, but he couldn't be sure. The terror had returned with a vengeance now, and he could hear nothing clearly but the rush of blood in his ears and the unbearable thudding of his heart in his chest. He could swear he could feel ten-thousand droplets of sweat all straining against the impossible grip of the dropsuit's padding.

[[See you on the other side of the war, Jim.]]

Other sides.

His resolve returned. *Sure. Why not. Let's do it. Take me now...before I change my mind...*

“I'll be there.”

He wished he believed it.

Over the comm, he heard the android. [[Decompression...now.]]

*This is where it gets me.*

There was a terrible explosion of silence, and the heartless boot of fate punted him into the vacuum.

=[/\]=

LOCATION: USS PHOENIX
SCENE: Corridor outside Main Engineering
TIME INDEX: Immediately following the events of 'Right Hand Man'


The doors hissed shut behind James Barton as he stepped out of Engineering. Removed from the data readouts and meager reassurances of the engineers, he could suddenly only recall the grisly readouts of the multiple failed simulations and Crichton's ominous prophecy.

“If you make a mistake, you die.”

*Sure. No problem.* It's not as if his adult life had been an unmitigated slew of mistakes, after all. *No, sir. Jim Barton doesn't make mistakes. Jim Barton's more of a 'fatal flaw' kind of guy. You know, one of those real 'grievous error' fellas. Tragic failures with bloody consequences! If you're looking for tragic failures with bloody consequences, then Jim Barton's your man.*

His step faltered as his hateful inner monologue, his constant companion, began to raise in both tempo and fervor, lashing at him with feral glee. *Tragic failures! Bloody consequences! You remember that, don't ya?*

His head swam, then lurched, and slipped under the surface of the terrible responsibility he was under. One man, first against a weapon designed for extinction, and then against a world of resources at Edgerton's command, in pursuit of one of the oiliest women he'd ever met and the impossibly dim flicker of hope that together they'd be able to figure *something* out before their attempts to poke the bear eliminated all life on Earth.

*All those people counting on you! People counted on you before, didn't they? Remember that?*

Without making a sound, he violently cursed his feet and demanded they walk straight. He wouldn't stop moving. He wouldn't allow himself to think, or to imagine. That way lied the death of his sanity and he needed it for a little longer. There was work to be done.

One foot in front of the other. Focus on the tasks that needed to be accomplished. Let himself be caught up in the momentum of preparation.

One foot in front of the other. He could insist to himself that the Whisper was behind him, and not within him. He could make himself believe that all it took was to move forward. He could demand the sign and semblance of certainty from his limbs and stride with a confidence he didn't feel.

One foot in front of the other. He could do those things because he knew the Whisper's intent like he knew the taste of his own blood. It wanted him to gaze into its dead stare and tear apart his own flesh digging for penance, but he didn't have to do that. He could run. It was simply willpower. He knew it would inevitably outpace him eventually, but while he didn't have its endurance, he could conjure the ability to outsprint it for short spells.

One foot in front of the other. He could handle business.

He blinked, and realized he was standing in the turbolift. He'd made it down the hallway. He'd dodged the killing lunge yet again, and somewhere inside of him, a counter ticked down once more towards a terrible eventual zero.

[[Please state your destination,]] the computer chimed without apparent irritation.

“I have so much work to do,” he muttered to himself. Where to go first?

=[/\]=

LOCATION: Space, Over Earth
SCENE: Inside the Dropsuit


The first thought he had, once he was able to have such a thing as 'thoughts' again, was that the holographic simulation had involved much more walking out of the runabout under his own power, and substantially less being spit out into space like a watermelon seed. He immediately decided that had been a bit of theatre by Crichton for his benefit. The engineer had obviously decided that there would be enough squabbles with Barton over the process and had spared himself this one.

Barton wondered what else Crichton had 'streamlined' in his demonstration.

Registering his unguided trajectory, the computer systems in the suit engaged themselves, and automatically fired the thrusters in his boots. He felt an uncharacteristic burst of motion sickness as the stars outside his viewplate spun in a lazy arc. His view was largely restricted by the various status displays that encompassed his vision (which he was gratified to note were all shining a reassuring green color), and so he couldn't get a great view of the star field around him. He decided it was for the best, remembering the last time he'd gone EVA with Kass in the Hyperion Expanse. Then, he'd felt the looming threat of the expanse even when he'd had the safeguarding grip of his metallic boots to the ship's bulkhead. Now, without that security, without even the grappling line he and Thytos had been reduced to in that harried flight from the Amaterasu, he suspected an unobstructed view might have adverse effects on his abilities to restrain his bodily functions. He was fine with only being able to see a few of the stars at a time.

Then the course set by his automated flight control system swung the Earth into his view, under the menacing glow of the Aegis shield, and he was indeed forced to clench up against his suddenly watery bowels. Even from so far above, the world was wide enough to fill his entire vision. He realized with a start that he could still see the blue of the ocean beneath the golden glow of Edgerton's doomsday weapon, but that the colors had resolved themselves, as blue and gold were wont to do, into a sickly green patina. He could see drifting clouds moving under the shield as well, and beyond them, he recognized the coastal pattern of the Eastern seaboard of the North American continent. A pale red broken line showed his course westward over the continent. His mind railed against the sight, seeming to understand in separate moments how large the world in front of him was, or how far away, or how quickly he was moving towards it, but never all at once. It was too much to comprehend, and so he mostly just watched it loom larger, like a beast of prey paralyzed by the approach of its destroyer.

Somewhere inside of him, one of the dourer aspects of his nature whispered to him that, while the Earth was beautiful, and could very well destroy him in a thousand ways, he was much more likely to be vaporized by the Aegis miles before the terra firma would have a crack at him. He forced his gaze to the shield itself. He could see, stretching out in front him as far as his gaze would carry, the golden web, and the dark spots at its junctures, the Aegis satellites themselves, each loaded with enough Thaleron to annihilate thousands of kilometers of life on the surface, and each constantly scanning for energy signatures like the ones in his boots to come close enough to awaken and bring to bear their terrible weaponry.

*The boots,* remarked the dour voice again. *Forgot about those. Those'll probably kill you before you even get to the shield...* Crichton had been very proud of this particular idea – the one where he strapped controlled explosives to Barton's legs. For his part, Barton had been less enthused from the very beginning, and his trepidation was steadily compounding now as he watched the Aegis rush towards him. In only a minute or so, the boots would begin to disengage, the remaining fuel in the multiple reservoirs would ignite, and each piece would flare up like a fist-sized sun. If even one of the pieces didn't disengage fully, or failed to fall far enough away before ignition, the best he could hope for would be to have everything below his knee burnt to ash. If the suit's emergency atmospheric controls didn't seal off the breach, he'd face decompression and asphyxiation, and then, having lost a sizable portion of his heat shielding, he would cook in the atmosphere.

He tried to glance down at his feet, but in the stiffness of the Dropsuit, he couldn't get the angle. At most, he could see the barest tip of the orange jets of his boot thrusters. One of the HUDS in his display turned from green to yellow, and there was a warning buzz in his ear.

*I'm running out of time.* He wished he was religious. He wished he felt an honest compulsion to say a prayer, but he didn't. He often envied those of faith, he'd never learned to manage the trick. He had no prayers to offer, only a silent running commentary on the peril he found himself in. *I'm running-*

The HUD display blinked to an angry red, and the warning buzz became a screaming insistent tone.

*And my time's up.* The shield was right below him now, zooming towards him with what seemed purely murderous intent. He could see the satellites now, not just as dark spots in the shimmering web, but as an endless field of squat gray monoliths, each menacing in their stillness. He could see golden energy thrum across the nearly transparent field, probably reacting to solar radiation. It was...beautiful...

The alarm tone broke through his reverie, and his bit his own lip in contempt. *Wise up,* he snapped at himself, sparing an instant's thought for Greek sailors rushing joyously to death at the Siren's hands. He viciously thumbed the disengage controls in his right glove, and instantly felt the barest easing of the constriction at his feet. There was a hint of a white flare at the bottom edge of his viewplate, and he was gripped by an urge to see more, but he knew that, now without his thrusters, he needed to be very careful not to throw himself off course.

*Eyes up,* he ordered himself, and raised his face to the shield before him, but all at once his attention was grabbed by the closest satellite. It was only a handful of kilometers away, and getting closer. He wasn't on a course to strike it, but in a terrible instant, he didn't know if that would matter.

The surface of the Aegis satellite was alive with a hundred red pinpricks that hadn't been there before. A half instant before he could identify for himself what that meant, the Armageddon device loosed a fusillade of phaser fire at him.

=[/\]=

LOCATION: USS PHOENIX
SCENE: Outside Thomas Varn's Quarters
TIME INDEX: After 'Right Hand Man'


As he approached, he saw two of Kass' Marines posted outside of the quarters they'd given Varn's doppelganger. The sight didn't please him. He'd decided that he'd prefer to handle his business with the former science officer, or the simulacrum of such, first so that he'd be able to say some other goodbyes without the frustration weighing on him. However, from the moment the turbolift had activated, that frustration had begun steadily compounding in his mind. He'd all but leaped out of the Turbolift when it stopped, nearly bowling over a young crewman in Science teal. She'd squeaked as she dodged out of his path, and he forced himself to slow down, to not charge in guns blazing, no matter how much he might want to. Now, the sight of Kass' Marines handling the guard duties that he still felt should be his crew's responsibility only added a layer to his chagrin.

“Privates,” he said, coming unhappily to a stop in front of them. Closer now, he recognized them: Suarez and Nguyen. Both of them had come aboard the PHOENIX when he had, as part of the crush of refugees from LIMBO.

“'Tenant,” Nguyen grunted in her unusual way. For his part, Suarez didn't look squarely at him, but instead just glanced at him from the side of his eyes, as if hoping that he could escape the larger man's notice. The tensions between the security staff and the Marines, and their respective commanders, was quickly becoming the PHOENIX's worst-kept secret.

“Anything happening,” Barton asked, with a significant nod to the closed door.

Winifred Nguyen glanced at the door and made a dismissive scowl. “Gets calls. Don't answer. Quiet.”

“Okay. Well, I'm going in.” Both Marines' postures stiffened, though each of them had the good grace to try to be casual. “Problem,” Barton growled at them?

Having a suspicion that Nguyen might answer the question with a headbutt, Rico Suarez spoke up. “No, sir. No problem at all. It's just that, y'know, he's supposed to be working and our orders from the Major are that he's not supposed to be interrupted, so...”

Barton nodded. He understood where the smaller man was coming from, but he was operating on a restricted time schedule, so he didn't hesitate to point the biggest gun he had at the Marine private. “Okay. That's fine. I'll just have to call up Thytos. I'm going to let her have it good and hard, really piss her off. I know how to do that. I'm gonna crack a couple of 'blind' jokes, and toss in the phrase 'jarhead,' a lot. And when I've really got her worked up, you know that multi-colored shade of pissed that she gets, I'm going to say that I have to report for my drop to Earth and that she'll have to talk to you for the rest of the report.” The color drained from Suarez's face, and he looked around frantically for aid. Nguyen, judging by her chuckle, was unsympathetic. “So you can spend the rest of the day picking the Major's teeth outta your ass, or, you can get the hell out of my way, I can go inside, handle my business, and in ten minutes, it's like none of this ever happened.”

“You won't be long,” Suarez asked weakly.

“I won't be long.”

“Then, I guess I don't see the harm. You?” Nguyen only chuckled at him again. “Ten minutes,” Suarez said, trying and failing to put a tone of command in his voice, trying to save what little face he could.

“Sure. No problem.”

The Marines each took a step to the side and Barton thumbed his security override code into the door controls. As he finished keying in the combination, the doors hissed open and he stepped into the dimness of the quarters they'd given their guest from Lavenza II.

The ersatz Varn was sitting with his back to the door, working intently at the computer console the engineers had installed for him. The workspace screen was the brightest light in the room, and it threw the winged man into striking silhouette. His overcoat was thrown over a nearby chair, and the large feathered wings that had become his trademark flexed just slightly with his breath.

He didn't turn around, or call out in greeting. If he heard Barton's entrance, he gave no sign of it at all.

Barton hesitated just a moment, and when it became clear he wouldn't be acknowledged, he called out. “I'm sorry to interrupt your work.” Still, the other man didn't turn around. “Or not,” Barton muttered.

For a moment, he faltered, unsure of what to say. He'd never been a fan of the silent treatment. He summoned his focus and decided to simply state the facts he'd come here to share. “I thought it best to inform you firsthand, I'm having you marked in records as a Person of Suspicion. That means that you will not be unsupervised at any time. I'm having your quarters put under surveillance inside, in addition to the guards who will remain posted outside. Your computer activity and communications will be logged and monitored by my staff remotely when they're not directly beside you, which they're going to be a lot more than they have been.”

Several long moments passed, and the only sound was the sound of the smaller man's fingers on the workstation. Barton tensed at first, waiting for an explosion of indignation, but none came. Still he waited, until finally it seemed that the newcomer would take Barton's pronouncement with the same silence he'd given in all of his previous responses. Satisfied that he'd said what he needed to, Barton turned to leave.

A voice cut the silence behind him. “I'm helping to disarm the Aegis shield. I can't have your staff hindering me.” Barton turned on his heel. The ersatz Varn hadn't turned around, hadn't seemed to have moved at all.

“They won't. Their orders will be to give you all the room in the world you need to work, and not one inch more. I'll have my best put on it.”

Still he didn't turn around, he barely even glanced back over his shoulder. “Will be? They don't have these orders now? Are we under surveillance now?” There was a superior tone to the smaller man's voice that made Barton consider, just for a moment, tearing his wings off and beating him with them.

“The orders are in the computer under a timed execution. I've got enough to deal with without fighting Kane about this if he finds out before I go.”

This time, he didn't even bother to glance backwards, and merely continued typing as he casually tossed his words behind him. “If you're concerned that Captain Kane won't support your actions, then wouldn't you expect him to just cancel the order as soon as you're gone, Lieutenant?”

“He might. He can. But the orders are filed under the authorization of the chief of the PHOENIX's security. So, if I die out there, even an acting Sec/Tac won't be able to undo them. He'll have to appoint a new permanent Chief before they can undo the orders. If Kane rescinds them himself under his own authorization, then an automatic report gets sent to the brass on the DEMETER and he'll at least have to explain why.”

The man at the console's bearing changed, just slightly. Barton couldn't be sure, but in the healthy pause before the smaller man spoke again, he was gratified to sense frustration. “Very tidy.”

*Tidy enough for you to choke on.* “Well, I just thought you should know what's happening when it happens in a few hours. Have a nice day.”

Finally, the quarter's occupant spun in his chair to face the Security Chief. His tone, and the look on his face, shifted rapidly from the cold reserve he'd shown earlier and a desperate, hot, frustration. “Could I trouble you to answer me just why you're so dead-set on this harassment campaign, Lieutenant Barton? I'm here, working under conscription, but still working – when I'm allowed to – for the benefit of you and your crew. What possible explanation could you have for this unfair suspicion?”

“Because I don't know who or what you are.”

“I'm Thomas Varn-”

Barton took three powerful strides toward him, and wasn't displeased to see the other man brace for an attack. “No, you're not. I don't know if anyone has had the nerve yet to tell you directly to your face that you are NOT Thomas Varn,” here, he stuck a meaty finger uncomfortably close to the other man's face, “whatever you may think. Thomas Varn died in service to his ship and his family. I don't care if you have his memories, or you have his face, or his voice. You're not Thomas Varn. You are a madman's term paper dressed up to look like Thomas Varn, and he used the life of a woman I was supposed to protect to write you. Sam Perry and Thomas Varn are dead, and you may be here because of one of my dead friends, but I'm never going to let you stand by and take the name of another, and I don't give a damn how much right you think you have to it.”

The winged man's anger was much farther from the surface, but still anything but mistakable. “Foster has done the scans. I'm not a time bomb or a plague carrier. You have no right or reason to accuse me of being so.”

“No reason? You mean beyond me having to choke you out while you assault my crew, shouting 'I'm not me! I'm not me! I'm not me?' I should ignore that because of what Cade says? Foster's a fantastic doctor, but when it comes to figuring out what you are, he's only as good as the tools he has to work with, and Conniston put you together with things we haven't even encountered before. So as far as being a time bomb or a walking plague vector, yeah, my jury's still out. If I could, I'd have you posted permanently in the brig behind bio-shielding, but I've been overruled on that one. Primarily because you've got a face that makes some people around go soft in the brain, and our captain hasn't exactly earned a reputation for prudent caution. But even if you are nothing more than what you appear to be – an ordinary genetically enhanced human who looks like Varn and remembers Varn's life – then you're still an asshole for trying to take his name and erase his service and sacrifice. And I didn't know him well...I've heard that Varn was a complicated guy, but I haven't heard anyone call him an asshole. From what I understand, he might not have worried about everyone, but there are people Varn just wouldn't have done that to.”

Anger, and perhaps something else, began to twist a curl into the face which had remained so calm. “I am not responsible for either Ensign Perry's death, or for actions I took that I cannot remember. What would you have me do to make penance for crimes I didn't commit?”

“First, acknowledge that those crimes have happened, that they affect the people Varn claimed once to care about, and that you are in a unique position to address that hurt, whether or not you instigated it.” His voice took on a high, mocking, schoolyard tone. “'I didn't do it...It wasn't me...' Stop being a child! Then, I don't really care what you do. Get the hell off my ship and out of my hair. Stay here and build a life for yourself as someone other than Thomas Varn, write your own story, earn your own trust. Or stay here as Thomas Varn, but understand that I'm not the only one who will never...NEVER...accept you as such.”

The man who called himself Thomas Varn rose slowly to his feet. A long moment passed as the two men stared hatefully at one another, like ancient gunslingers, looking one another in the eye and silently counting down to opening fire.

His voice was quiet again. He'd managed to tap back into the icy reserve that Barton had disrupted. “Just so I'm clear. You will never accept me because Thomas Varn died. His friends and fellow officers mourned him. Then, I reappear unexpectedly, and you're upset because I have the audacity to use the name I was born with and make some meager attempt at picking up the pieces of my life. Am I fairly summarizing your point, Lieutenant?”

Barton didn't move at all, didn't even nod. “More or less.”

“Then, I wonder. Why are the rules different for you than for me, Mr. Barnes?”

Barton's face was suddenly ruled by a monstrous hybrid of fury and hate, made only worse when the winged man saw him cringe...and let his face split into a casual, contemptuous smile. For a dangerous moment, the man who'd once been Jacen Barnes considered his options. He had nothing to say in his defense, he had no more intellectual points to make. If he stayed much longer, he'd be capable of summoning only a single response: a physical and a violent one.

So, with the memory of the dead man's smile blazing in his mind, he turned and stormed out without another word. Varn watched him go, then turned and resumed his work at his workstation.

Outside the quarters, Rico Suarez and Winifred Nguyen watched the Chief of Security bound out of the quarters and up the hallway without a word or a spared glance for either of them.

“Wow. What do you you think they talked about?”

“Dunno. He looks pissed.”

“Yeah, he does. I really want to know, though. You think they brawled a little bit?”

“They didn't.”

“Huh, too bad. That would've been fun to see. This guard duty thing is so *boring...*

=[/\]=

LOCATION: SPACE
SCENE: Inside the Dropsuit

It was very, very important to try to maintain position while he fell. He had only the height he fell through and the residual momentum from the thruster boots (which didn't seem to have vaporized his legs) to help him cross the thousands of kilometers between where he was and his landing zone. He wasn't even yet close enough to be firmly gripped by the Earth's gravity, so twisting around and spoiling his momentum was likely to be fatal.

But when an orbital weapons platform unloads on you at full power, you flinch. It's what people do. Barton wrenched violently, an instinctive move to dodge something he'd never be fast enough to, and began to pitch wildly end over end.

So, even when he realized that the weapons had been locked on the exploding remnants of his thrusters, kilometers behind him by the time the blasts struck home, and even as he realized that his projected trajectory was now taking him much more south than west, as it had been moments earlier, his inner critic was significantly gentler than he would have expected. It merely pointed out to him, with no apparent malice, that he'd made the mistake that Crichton had warned him of, and now he was certain to die.

No biggie.

But if he was going to die, he could die trying. That's all he could ask of himself; that would be enough. The first thing he needed to do was to try to level himself out and get out of the deathroll he was now in. He spread himself out and tried, by waving his arms and legs, to steady himself. It was an exercise in patience; if he over-corrected he would only start rotating in new directions, and he only had so much time to start generating forward momentum again before the friction of the atmosphere really started to slow him down. If he didn't have himself on the right track by the time he entered the thermosphere, that would be it for him.

He breathed, and tried not to pay to much attention to the way his view alternated sickeningly between the black of space and the green patina of the Earth below him. He jammed his eyes shut and thought back to the thousands of workouts he'd done, honing his balance and his sense of his own body. Slowly, conscious of every passing second, he strained himself against his momentum. He breathed, and began to feel himself steady, just a little. He allowed himself to feel like it was working.

Then there was an electric current that made every hair on his body stand at erect attention and which screamed at him instantaneously with a demonic fervor.

*What was THAT?!*

He started, though not as badly this time, wondering if he'd just died and somehow managed to miss it. He opened his eyes and glanced at his heading, still more southerly than he needed, and looked around wildly. There was quiet for just a moment...a yellow sky...

A yellow sky...

He was past the shield! He'd passed the Aegis and, judging by all evidence, he'd survived! Alone, with no one to hear him, he whooped in celebration. From here on out, if everything else went tits up, he'd earned a victory that Edgerton could never take away: he had crossed the uncrossable shield. The heady rush of possibility washed over him for the first time since Kane had proposed this ridiculous plan.

Now that he'd crossed the artificial barriers created by men, he had to focus on surviving the natural barriers of the planet herself. He could do this. He could survive. He just needed to focus on steadying himself and not burning alive before he got where he was going.

He just had to end the desperate flailing...

=[/\]=

LOCATION: USS PHOENIX
SCENE: Holodeck -> Counselor's Office
TIME INDEX:


Eve had been having a lovely time on the Holodeck when the call had come in. A Romulan street tough in a crowded alley on an overgrown and under-policed colony world had insisted she make a choice between the valuables on her person and her continued well-being. She'd spend several minutes devising creative methods of showing him the error of his ways, but was really only beginning to build up steam when her communicator had sounded with a priority request. Someone had called her to her office.

She'd almost forwarded the call to to Arion, who was the counselor on duty. She'd been running herself ragged for days. First there was Varn, who near as she could tell, had come back moodier than he'd been when he'd shuffled off his mortal coil – and that had been pretty moody to begin with. Then, there had been an influx of people coming in for sessions. It seemed that the sensation of being so close to Earth, and yet helpless against Edgerton's Aegis, was playing ten kinds of hell with the crew's calm. Added to that was the stress of repeatedly trying – and repeatedly failing – to find or make contact with either her family below or any of her extensive contacts. She still had plenty more names to try, but having gone through so many without success was wearing her down. Finally, on top of all that, she'd been personally upbraided by nearly every member of the senior staff, and at a time, when frankly SHE could have used a little support or a friendly ear for once. She was as frightened for the Earth as anyone, she was as exhausted as anyone after this impossible 2-year crusade, she was as confused as anyone about what the reappearance of Thomas Varn meant...and yet there had been no one to counsel the counselor. She wasn't a teenaged girl, and she wasn't going to cry about, but...damn it...it wasn't fair. So she was nearly on the verge of saying, “screw it,” and leaving the inmates to run the asylum on their own tonight, but then she looked at who had placed the call. While still holding the frightened Romulan hologram in a hammerlock and pressing forcefully on the pressure point under his thumb, she checked her chronometer.

*So, he's got two hours before he leaves, and he wants to spend them bitching at me.* She sighed and rolled her eyes in exasperation. Well, that was just fine with her. She'd been taking nothing but whippings ever since Varn had returned to the Phoenix, many of them from her former friend, himself, and she was tired of it. She was also still more than a little upset at the way she'd been laid into, and then dismissed, by the man who was now summoning her to her office.

She locked eyes with the Romulan for just a moment, enjoying the confused terror she found there, then ended the program. If she was going to twist someone up in knots, the cretin waiting in her office would almost certainly be more fun.

=[/\]=

The doors whooshed open and she stepped into find him there waiting, hovering menacingly over Owen Arion, who looked at her with barely disguised relief. “And here she is now, Mr. Barton. Eve, the Lieutenant-”

Barton was staring a hole through Dalziel, who returned the look with as much hostility. “Leave us alone.”

Owen blanched, then looked back and forth between them a moment, painfully aware of the current in the room. “Maybe that might not-”

“Owen,” she cut him off, continuing to glare at Barton.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Take a powder.”

“Ma'am,” he asked, not wanting to risk defying her order, but also clearly unsure about leaving her alone with the upset Security Chief. It was no secret that Eve could handle herself, but still...

“Take a walk, Ensign. The Sheriff and I need to have a conversation in private, I think.”

Arion looked at Barton, who confirmed with a harsh glance that Dalziel was correct. He could tell that the counselor was searching for some sign that he was, or wasn't, planning on hurting the Cardassian woman, but he evidently found Barton inscrutable. So it was with obvious trepidation that he stood. “Well, then I guess I'll take the Captain for a walk,” he said, moving to take up a leash. He moved into the back office. Dalziel watched him go.

“There's something we-” Barton began.

Dalziel held up a hand to silence him, and stared in the direction that Arion had disappeared. She said nothing. A moment later, Owen reemerged with the Pug who had gone from being a therapy dog, to a mascot for the counseling division, to-somehow-a mascot for the entire ship. He trotted in front of Arion on his leash, smiling happily with his curled tongue extended from his mouth. When he saw the two officers standing still, staring daggers at each other, he drew up short and his tail dipped. Then, after only a moment's pause, he moved towards Barton, popped onto his hind legs, and rested his paws on the giant man's ankle. Barton glanced down at him, let half a smile cross his face, then reached down and scratched the pug twice behind his ears. Barton stood, looked at Arion holding Smooshy's leash, and the smile drained from his face.

“C'mon, Smoosh. Let's get outta here, whatdoya say,” Owen said with a joviality that didn't seem to touch his face, and then he was gone. Barton and Dalziel watched the pair vanish, and the door to the counselor's office hiss shut behind them.

“There's something we-” Barton began again.

“Where do you get off, you mammoth prick,” she demanded, cutting him off. “Don't you EVER come into my office and threaten my staff again. Next time you do that, I will make you wear your ass for a hat.”

“I didn't threaten him-” he stammered, suddenly looking less sure than he had a moment ago.

“The HELL you didn't! Your ass for a hat! Looming over him, growling at him like that, you know exactly what you were doing, Barton. You may be dumb, but you're not that dumb, and you may think you have license to treat your team like that, but I'm telling you straight, don't you ever do it to mine again. You got me?”

“I didn't-”

“Do you GOT me, asshole,” she demanded, taking a step towards him.

He bit back whatever he was going to say first, then looked at the door where Arion had disappeared. She saw his face fall just a little. “Yeah, I do. I'm sorry. I didn't mean-”

“Good! Now, you got a reason you're interrupting my vigilante time?”

“Yes, I do. I-”

“Oh, I already know why you're here, Jimbo. You've had a couple of days to stew over what I said to you, so now you're ready for another round of 'Ambush the Counselor' before you take your plunge later. So what is it, now? You've already used that I'm stupid, that I'm incompetent, and that I'm a narcissist who doesn't care about anyone. What else you got?”

He glowered at her. “Don't get righteous with me. You said that I'm standing on a hill of corpses, that I have a death wish.”

“You wanna know the difference, Bright Eyes,” Eve baited him. “I'm not incompetent.”

Inwardly, she smiled. She'd been right, this was proving to be fun. Let him hit her with everything he had; matching insults with someone who'd read your psyche profile almost never ended well. She waited in predatory anticipation for his next attack. She could see him formulating it, the way his eyes were boring into her, and the way his jaw was clenching. He was building up to something he thought was going to be good.

*Whatdoya got,* she demanded silently.

He looked away, just for an instant, and then forced his gaze back to meet hers. “I think I might need some help,”

She blinked at him. It slowly dawned on her that too much time had passed...the silence was quickly becoming awkward. She knew she should have something to say, she'd been SO READY a moment earlier, and yet...

He sighed, and his shoulders slumped. As she watched, trying to keep her jaw from dropping, he stepped towards the couch, and with an embarrassed glance around, he sat.

On the couch.

She found her voice. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Instantly, she realized that was probably not the best opening question she might have gone with.

He jumped up, as if burned. “I'm sorry, I thought I was supposed to... I should probably-”

“No,” she exclaimed, taking two quick steps towards him before remembering herself. She didn't want to spook him anymore than he already was. “No, you can sit. I'm sorry. Go on.”

He looked back at the couch with obvious discomfort, like a man who'd just escaped the lion's den looking back down at the waiting beasts. “Do I have to?”

Her voice was calm now, almost serene. “I think you should. I can sit, too, if it makes you more comfortable.” She pointed at her own chair. He didn't move. “Please, Jim.”

Another long moment passed, and Barton moved back to the couch. He sat, immediately looking somewhat ridiculous on the undersized piece of furniture. He immediately looked so out of place, and so aware of it, that she found herself nearly pitying him. She sat next to him in her chair.

For the first time, they were eye to eye, on the same level. “Why don't you tell me why you came here, Jim?”

“I've been trying.”

“I know. I'm sorry. Tell me now.”

He swallowed hard, then looked her square in the eye. He couldn't maintain the gaze, so his eyes floated to a space behind, and to the left, of her. “I know I'm... I know I'm a little crazy.”

“Let's, maybe, not say 'crazy,' cool, Jim?”

“Okay...batshit.”

“I think we can do better. Tell you what, instead of telling me what you ARE, why don't you try telling me how you FEEL.”

He nodded, pausing for a moment in contemplation. “Fucked in the head?”

“You know, let's just go with it,” Eve sighed.

“I know that I should...I shouldn't be like this.”

“How should you be?”

The Security Chief struggled for a moment, then stood and began to pace. “Do you know that I haven't gotten drunk in...God, it must be months now.”

She blinked, suddenly unsure what he was getting at. “I don't follow.”

“I'm a drunk, Eve. I've been a drunk for a long time. It's kind of what I do. You pick around in people's brains, Cade pisses people off, Kass picks fights, I...get drunk. It's not that I like it so much, I really don't. I don't like the way it makes me feel, or the things I do when I'm deep in it, or waking up and not knowing where I am. But I put up with all that because when I drink enough to overcome this ridiculous metabolism, the screaming doesn't wake me up.”

“What screaming, Jim?”

He wasn't looking at her, but through her, at something very long ago and far away. “The sounds of that day on Vulcan. The ghosts that haven't stopped chasing me. I'd get blind drunk and I'd pass out and they'd...just...wait. They wouldn't go away, they'd always be there when I finally came to, but they'd finally have to stop hounding me for just a little while.”

She nodded. Every addict had a reason for their behavior, but it wasn't always helpful to point that out. “But you said you're not drinking anymore.”

“No, I drink all the time. I like bourbon, and John Doe's got better stuff than he should have after being away from Kentucky for as long as you all have.”

“But you're not getting drunk. That's what you said.”

“I'm not. I took on this job and there just...there hasn't been time. I had to get the Limbo crew settled in, and then I had to deal with the transfers from the other ships, and then there was Kass and her damned death marches masquerading as joint drills. Then Lavenza. And then and then and then. And, here's the thing, I've been so tired that I've been sleeping. Just barely keeping up with the job that I have to do wears me out enough that I sleep.”

“And that's a problem?”

He nodded. “It's a problem. It's a problem because now I need to be crucial. I need that. It's a problem because unless I have to keep everyone alive every moment, then the ones I didn't will catch me. I'm...so afraid of that. I'm afraid that if I'm not needed every second that I'm not needed at all, and once I'm not needed anymore, that's when they get me. I know they're not behind me. I know I can't outrun them. So either, I die in a few hours, or I leave the PHOENIX and we both know I'm never coming back. Even if we win, it's onto the stockade at Jaros for me. And I won't be needed there, and I won't be...” He trailed off. “Maybe you were right. Maybe I should have said something earlier.”

“I was. And you should have. But, you're here now and that's what we're going to have to work with. But Jim, if there's any chance of me helping you at all, we need to be very clear with each other. What would you like me to do?”

“I...”

“Jim?”

His frame was as hulking as it had been since she'd met him, and yet...she saw him wither, and suddenly he was so very small and powerless. “Can you make the voices go away,” he whispered. “Can you get rid of the ghosts?”

The hardest part of counseling wasn't when your patient broke your heart. The hardest part wasn't making sure your eyes didn't well up and that your hands didn't shake. No, she'd learned a long time ago, the hardest part of counseling was being able to tell them hard truths in the moments after it happened. Sometimes it sucked being a good counselor. “No, Jim. I can't.”

He hadn't expected that. When he looked up at her, she could see the track left by a tear, though the drop itself was already gone. “You can't?”

“Not while you're the one carrying them around with you,” she said softly.

“Then what can you do?”

She reached out, and touched him lightly on the arm. “I can teach you how to do it. I can teach you how to let them go.”

“Teach me...teach me how to say goodbye?”

“Yes, Jim. If we get a chance, if we have time enough, I can do that.”

He heard the unspoken caveat in her statement. “But not now.”

“No, Jim. Not now. You have a job to do, and for just a little while longer, you have to do the job before you can worry about getting better.” She tried not to hear her own words as she said them. She forced herself to think of the billions of lives on Earth, and not the first tenet of the Hippocratic oath.

God, she suddenly felt like such a fraud.

He stared at her for a moment, and she was irrationally sure that he could hear her thoughts, that he could see what a sham she felt right now. Surely a man who'd spent so much time protecting himself from others knew what it smelled like to be betrayed.

But if he knew, he didn't say anything. He simply stood, pulling away from her touch. “Okay. Then I guess I should get to it, then.”

She watched him from her chair, not sure if it was because she wanted to give him space or because she didn't exactly trust her legs to hold her right now. She felt swimmy, and terrible. He gave her a broken tin soldier's smile, and trudged towards the door. But before he left, she knew she had to give him one more piece of truth.

“Barton,” she called out.

“Yeah,” he stopped.

“You didn't come here for counseling. You know I know that, right?”

“I didn't?”

“No, Jim.” She paused until he turned to meet her stare. “You came here for confession.”

“Confession?”

“You're not religious, so you came to me, but it's the same effect. You're not thinking you're gonna live through the jump, and you were just looking to go with a clean conscience.”

He turned back to the door. “Maybe.”

“No, 'Maybe,' Jim. I know what I'm talking about. And I don't blame you. Perfectly natural. But you need to remember something.”

“What's that?”

“Dying's easy. Living is harder. If you survive this, I'm not going to let you pretend this talk didn't happen. You know that, right?”

His sad smile was matched with a laugh, and though it was brief, it sounded like it contained a spark of actual humor. “Well, then, hopefully I can get lucky and die. Goodbye, Eve.”

“Goodbye, Jim.” He stepped out of the office and the door shut behind him. “Good luck.”

=[/\]=

LOCATION: Earth, Upper Atmosphere
SCENE: Inside the Dropsuit


There was nothing left within him to actually think with. It had been minutes, or hours, since he'd had anything like rational thought. He just couldn't spare the energy.

At first, he had focused on ignoring the rising heat within the suit, holding himself steady on the course he'd fought so hard to reclaim, waiting for the HUD pop-up that would tell him it was time to deploy his chute, that he hadn't cooked to death. At first, he focused on those things, then he tried to focus on them, then he tried to remember them at all. Now even that was gone.

But he had flashes. Images. Occasional awareness of sensation, but only defined by whether they eased or intensified the agony he was in.

The pale red arrow pointed East, now. He couldn't remember why, but the arrow pointing East made him hurt less.

The words and numbers were green. That made him hurt less.

Those were the only things that made him hurt less.

He was so hot. He was the image of hot. He was the definition of hot. He was the purest form of the idea of hot. He could feel each of his individual nerve endings screaming at him, every part of him cooking, an equality of agony that allowed his awareness to favor no one hurt over any other.

But the words and numbers were green.

Below his blistered skin, his knotted muscles bellowed in fury, in exhaustion, at the inhuman demands he made of them. Holding himself rigid and inflexible against the buffeting of atmospheric winds, fighting the resistance of the suit's outer shielding, compensating with the only the most focused and considered movements, but being required to do so in an instant. Like holding the most difficult position in yoga for hours in a hurricane. He could feel his body pulling, straining, threatening, not idly, to tear itself apart.

But the arrow pointed east.

He was so hot.

He could move his head much easier now. He could turn his head and see pieces of himself exploding off in a constant stream of fire.

He was on fire. He was burning away.

He couldn't see the fleet anymore, but they were there. He couldn't see Edgerton on the other side of him, but he knew he was there, too.

But the words and numbers were green.

He was shooting across the skies, trailing fire, exploding. He'd set himself on this course, or let himself be set on this course, and now the reason he was so hot was because pieces of himself were tearing themselves away, being torn away, in protest and in punishment. His own self, in a constant process of abandonment and immolation.

Was this why he was? Was this the point of him? The training, the tragedy, the experimentation, the endless hours of punishment he'd inflicted on himself? It made a kind of sense, in the way that nothing had made sense since he'd last eaten mushrooms with his roommate's girlfriend in the second year of the Academy, that all of those pieces of his life were just preamble to this glorious act of insanity.

Anyone else would already be dead by now.

But everyone was depending on him, so he couldn't die.

He was so hot, though. So hot.

He was on fire.

*If it were night, someone could look up and make a wish on me.*

But it wasn't night.

That was a crazy thought.

*You have to expect those when you light a crazy man on fire.*

But the words and the numbers were green. He could trust that.

So hot.

He had to hold still. He had to move constantly.

He had to trust the green words and the pale red arrow, because there was nothing else to trust, and if he didn't...

He was burning up.

It was too much.

Even if it was his purpose, his destiny, why him? There was a galaxy full of people it could have happened to.

Why him?

Someone else could have gotten it wrong.

He was suddenly rocked by a violent gust of wind that sent him into another tumble. He didn't panic this time, or didn't panic any more than he had been since...forever? He only began demanding his flaming body to do what needed to be done so that he could accomplish his task, and his mind sank deeper into his own reverie.

So hot...losing pieces of myself...trust the course...why me...had to be me...stay rigid...anticipate everything...fleet behind...Edgerton ahead...a planet and a Federation counting on him...too much pressure...an impossible task...one he had to achieve...

He had another crazy thought.

*Is this what it's like for him?*

The words and numbers turned red.

************************************

NRPG: Part One of two...

=[/\]=

Dale I. Rasmussen

~writing for~

Lt. James Prophecy Barton
Sec/Tac USS PHOENIX
The Man Who Fell to Earth