Aftermath
Posted on Fri Mar 27th, 2015 @ 3:20pm by Captain Liarra Von & Commander Jordan Gunning
Mission:
Sins of Lives Past
Location: Commanding Officer's Office
Saying that Liarra didn't like the news she was hearing was an understatement. It was never easy to lose a member of your crew, but Deakin was one of her officers, a member of the senior staff. Not only that, but he was taken from the station, plucked right out of a corridor during a firefight. The fact that the firefight alone even happened was bad enough, but the fact that someone had the gall to kidnap someone off her station and her security forces weren't able to stop it was the worst part. And now a good man was dead.
Von was standing at her office viewport, staring out towards the sea of stars hundreds and thousands of light years away. The reflection caused by the glare of her office lights, she could see Jordan Gunning fidgeting behind her. "What happened down there?"
"Telan had a bomb strapped to his chest." Her First Officer replied quietly, still trying not to think of the dull thud of the explosion. "We didn't stand a chance until Deakin took him down."
Liarra nodded along with her first officer. She turned away from the window to address him directly. "Did you find out from Darby why Telan was after him?"
The answers Darby had given him on the return trip were unsatisfactory to Jordan. She had been much too vague for someone who was supposedly his replacement. "She didn't give too much away but according to her he was listed as an intelligence asset in Telan's organisation before he made a clean break and came here. The thinking is that Telan must have wanted revenge. It pretty much fits with what he told me before he was abducted."
Jordan suddenly remembered that day in his office when he had been too tired to offer anything more than a cursory agreement to Deakin's plan and had paid only the barest of attention to his problem. "I feel-" Gunning stopped. "I should have been able to save him."
"I've found that it's rather impressive what we feel we should have been able to do in hindsight. You can't blame yourself, Jordan." Von bowed her head while she tried to formulate the right words to say. "I know that the two of you were close, but Gus knew the danger he was putting himself in. A wise man once said that the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, or the one. Gus felt that your lives were more precious than his. And while I will always prefer to leave no man behind, it's hard to imagine that I would have acted any differently." She gestured to the terminal on her desk. "I received your recommendation for a posthumous commendation. I've passed it along to Starfleet Command with my approval. It's up to them now."
Liarra thought for a moment. "If you need to take any time..."
"I appreciate that, Liarra." Jordan said with a meek smile. "I know there's probably nothing I could have done; there wasn't any way to predict what Telan was going to do once he knew we were onto him. I'll be okay. It'll just take a while to get my head around."
"Sure. I know I'm not really much of a counselor, but I've lost some very dear people to me, one of them you knew very well. If you ever feel like talking about it, my door is open."
It had always seemed to Jordan that Liarra had found a way to cope with the death of his brother. Whatever she used to do so- or whether it was just a mask- seemed to be working. "Thanks."
The truth was though that sometimes she was barely coping. His brother's death hit Liarra very hard, and not a day went by where she didn't wish that things could have been different. But she was in charge. She had to be strong, even if it was just a mask. She tried her best to hide the pain with a meek smile of her own. "Anytime, Jordan. Anytime."
Captain Liarra Von
Commanding Officer
Starbase 332
Commander Jordan Gunning
Executive Officer
Starbase 332
