This Is The Day

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You didn’t wake up this morning cos you didn’t go to bed

You were watching the whites of your eyes turn red

-The The

 

As he came of his first duty, Atticus put a phaser back in the security office armoury. He was exhausted. The adrenalin he’d been running on since the battle at Camelot had finally been spent and the long period spent awake and on his feet had definitely caught up with him.

 

A few minutes later, he somehow managed to get back to his room, though in a way it was a small miracle that he did, since it had only been ‘his’ for less than a day. Spending several hours marching up and down Excalibur’s identical hallways they had all started to blend together, making their navigation a confusing affair.

 

As he entered his home, he breathed in the air. It smelt…fresh. Not fresh like an open field or a mountain-top but like a new coat of paint. It seemed that even in the urgency of getting the Excalibur re-fitted, people had taken the time to fix up the living quarters to that “good as new” state. It was like no-one had ever stayed in them before him. An almost sterile feeling, it annoyed the ensign. Though he had few mementos and always preferred his lodgings to resemble a military accommodation rather than a cruise ship cabin, he found the area around him too devoid of life. But there would be better times to find his inner interior-designer. For now, all that Atticus wished to do was to fling himself into the arms of Hypnos and to slumber for as long as he possibly could.

 

Which wouldn’t be long.

 

The ship would arrive at its secretive mission’s destination far too early for Atticus’s liking. As a security officer, he would be expected to be back on duty before that happened to be briefed on his department’s protocols and objectives. If he even managed to get a wink of sleep it would be a blessing.

 

He looked out the window at the stars flying by and pondered for a moment on the words of Tandaris and on his thoughts of the hundred. If they were as powerful as it seemed and if they did manage to crush the remains of the dominion, what would stop them from coming into the Alpha quadrant? How many more souls would have to perish because some foolish shapeshifters decided to have a go at being intergalactic warlords and screwed it up big time?

 

Atticus grumbled, the stress merely giving him a headache. He set his alarm, stripped off his clothes and got into the unfamiliar bed. It was a bit too squishy for his tastes. He closed his weary eyes and tried as hard as he could to drop off. Even though he knew full well what dreams would come…

 

“Wake up! Wake up darling! Please don’t do this to me! Don’t do this to me!”

“She’s dead lad. She’s dead.”

Edited March 11, 2006 by Images