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Date: Mon, 31 May 2004 19:23:41 -0400
Subject: [ASC] NEW OCC Far Above Our Poor Power 1/1 [PG] (Marrissa Stories)
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Title: Far Above Our Poor Power
Author: Stephen Ratliff
Series: OCC, Marrissa Stories
Part: NEW 1/1
Rating: [PG]
Summary: Marrissa does a ritual every time she's on Essex, to honor the fallen.

It was a small island only separated by a fast flowing channel from Star Fleet's
Essex Fighter Academy.  Tall tress filled its edges, obscuring its center save a
tall towering flagpole, topped with the blue and white Federation Flag.

Captain Marrissa Amber Picard, commander Endeavor, approached the bridge to the
island on foot, as she did every time she had returned to Essex since the end of
the Dominion War.  She was a Princess of this world, and often took that as an
excuse to avoid the uncomfortable dress uniform, but not today.  Today demanded
her full dress uniform, with its medals and honors.  Her task did not demand
this because of orders, or customs.  She did it because to do anything less
would dishonor them.

Her boots echoed on the bridge as she crossed, the orderly beat much like that
of the honor guard approaching.  She stepped off the bridge onto the black slate
path.  It was fall, and trees had begun to turn from their normal deep
blue-green to a golden yellow hue.  Marrissa slowed her pace, preparing herself
for her self inflicted penance for being one of those that had survived.

The clearing ahead was filled with a large blue gray slate-paved circle, the
same dimension as that of the saucer of the Stargazer.  Two long pools of water,
the shape of it's warp engines stretched outward, and a tall ivory pillar stood
between them, slanted back to touch the flag pole.  At it's front where seven
marble fighter craft profiles.  The lead one's registry read "Dominion War" and
was covered with engraved names of those who would never return to this hallowed
ground near were they had got their wings.

Marrissa's fingers rested on the gold wings pinned to her chest.  They weighed
heavily on her.   As it always was when she visited this slate circle of honor,
she wondered, irrationally, if there had been anything she could have done to
prevent there from being any names on this Memorial Island.  Then she took out a
long folded sheet of parchment.   She had written the names of every pilot that
had died under her command on this parchment.  Marrissa remembered when she'd
written the first of them, and when she had written the last, the hundred and
first.

The paper was tear-spattered, and had gotten more tears on it over the years.
It had never escaped a visit to this isle without it.  The names were still
readable, though, and in the steady voice, Marrissa began to read them aloud.
One hundred and one names.  One hundred and one men and women, humans, Bajoran,
Vulcans, Andorians, Tellerites, and Betaziods, all of which Marrissa had known.

She paused after each name, trying to recall the face that went with the name.
Some were easy, they had been under her command for a long time.  Others were
hard, and had gotten harder over the years.  Marrissa tried.  It was those names
that were important.   Those names were more important than all the battles
she'd won, the medals she'd earned, and the promotions she'd been given.  They
deserved to be remembered.

The Stargazer had been the best ship she'd ever served on, and they the best
crew she had ever served.  They had taken a fifteen-sixteen-year-old girl and
turned her into a woman.  Credit should not lay with her, but with the crew,
those people that were just names on this marble monument to others.  Tears
began to flow as she reached the fiftieth name, each name causing her soul to
ache as she brought their faces to mind.

It was not easy to work through this list of names.   This list of memories of
those that should not, could not, be forgotten brought tears.   Tears of
sadness, tears of morning, tears for those whose lifes had been cut all to
short.   Marrissa's voice began to catch with each name, and she tried to make
each name clear and strong, as she stood at the head of the slate circle.

Tears continued to come, flowing unhampered down Marrissa's cheeks.  Finally the
last name was reached, the last fighter pilot to die under her command during
the seven hundred and forty-two days of the Dominion war.  Her gaze moved up
again from the once again tear-wetted parchment, to the inclined reflective
metal serving as the windshield of the lead fighter.   It reflected the sky
above, the fast-moving clouds on this cool fall day.

Marrissa did not enter the slate circle.   She did not approach the pillar with
the names of those who died on the carriers in support of the hallowed named she
had just finished reading.  Instead she folded her list up once again, and slid
it under her uniform jacket.   She stood at attention for a full two minutes,
her right hand in the old salute, looking upwards at the Federation Flag flying
above the monument.

Then she broke her salute, and about faced, with the precision she'd learnt when
she had been Chief of Security on the Enterprise.  She left nothing behind as
she marched out of the memorial.  They had given their last measure in service
of their worlds.   She could add nothing more.


"But in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can
not hollow -- this ground.  The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here
have consecrated it far above our poor power to add on detract."

-- excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863.
--
Stephen Ratliff

"To hell with crack, heroin, whiskey, tobacco.  Writing is far and away
the single most addictive thing in the universe, IMHO."   ~ Greywolf

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