Room of Caskets

[Cptn Corizon 0]

The doors slid shut with a slight swish. The low light of the lifeless room caused his pale yellow eyes to widen as they adjusted to the light. Countless tubular, black caskets stood on pedestals; each of them carrying someone to the next world, in memory or in body.

 

He swallowed hard. The best commanders feel a necessary duty – to face the people that trusted their orders and made that sacrifice for the mission. Face the people. There was no face. They were dead. KIA. MIA. MIA, PD. He’d read the suffixes attached to names a hundred times before. And every time – every time it just seemed, hollow. An entire life had been erased. Ended. And they could say, all they could do to sum that person up was put a little notation after their name.

 

The room was empty. He stopped at casket. The light blue flag of the Federation draped gently over it. He read the name on the placard: Ensign Gio Micholettie, USS Morningstar – KIA. He paused. Gio’s mother, Franchesica was getting the flag. His father had been killed in the Dominion War at the Battle of Chin’toka. His older brother had died at the Battle of Wolf 359. It would be Franchesica’s third flag. And Corizon wished with all his heart that he didn’t have to be the one to send it to her.

 

Dear Mrs. Micholettie,

 

It is my somber duty to inform you that your son, Ensign Gio Micholettie has been Killed In Action in the Gamma Quadrant while defending the Federation and her allies…

 

He moved on. Lieutenant Commander Grace Manyon. Mother of three, grandmother of two. Widow of the Cardassian War. USS Giza – Missing In Action, presumed dead.

 

The list went on. Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters. The web widened. They would go home. They would go home across the light years. Corizon paid his respects with a few whispered words of Dameon prayer for their safe journey home.

 

And then he left.

 

There came a point, when the needs of the living out weighed the need of respect for the dead. Sure he would have liked to have stayed there all day. And he would have liked to write the families of everyone of them letters. He would like to have been there when each of them were sent on their journey. But he knew all to well that if he didn’t take care of the now, he’d have even more dead, another room of caskets.