Ecce Homo

[Cmdr JFarrington 0]

Meritorious Achievement Award

 

Ecce Homo

 

There is a silence in the morgue that defies reason. Depending on one’s personal level of comfort the silence is known by various names, but Jami Farrington called it comforting. It was one of the few places on the ship where all pretense was stripped away, where she could be truly alone. Today she wasn’t quite alone. She had come to bid a dear friend good-bye.

 

Despite her medical training, it never got any easier. Consoling the loss of a loved one was no less easy now than it was when she began her medical career decades ago. If anything it had become more difficult. Especially now. Especially with Brutus. With Crystal’s grief fresh in her mind, Jami realized she needed to come to grips with her own.

 

Lt Yancy Brutus. Young. Strong. What Jami always called All American Boy good looking. He was the kind Starfleet recruited for posters, the kind they liked to parade around to schools during recruiting drives. But he wasn’t all that innocent, nor did he pretend to be. He was voted Most Likely to Succeed by the female crew – single or not – and he loved the implications. He enjoyed life. Lived it to the fullest extent he knew how.

 

And now it was gone.

 

From what Jami had observed he did his best to hide his full potential, not because he was a slacker – which he wasn’t. He wanted to fit in, to be accepted by the crew as a normal ordinary guy with nothing more than his love for Starfleet that brought him to the Manticore. Oh, and women. After all, uniforms are a chic magnet, he often joked. But Jami knew there was a deeper reason.

 

Brutus had been aggressively recruited by Deep Space Covert Operations and a dozen other sub-entities of the Fleet. With an IQ topping out at 187, the only things he didn’t master were those he never tried. He chose Manticore. He chose security, and he did so because he wanted to preserve life, not take it. He knew his job and did it well, often joking that he took more pride in doing his job than in flirting with the ladies – a completely debatable point he and Jami joked about during yearly psych evals.

 

And now he was gone, tortured to death by the robotic overlords of Oppo. Whether he had not been properly connected to the Network or his complex human brain structure defied the connection and allowed him to remain conscious throughout the ordeal would never be known. But the evidence of torture was there, etched into his comatose body from the time he beamed aboard Manticore until the moment of death.

 

Of course, Jami would not share that information, and she certainly would not say anything to Crystal. Brutus was gone. Crystal still had a full life ahead of her. It was important that she grieve, come to terms with his death, forgive herself for withholding her true feelings while he was alive, and move on with her own life. It was what he would have wanted her to do. It was what he would have wanted them all to do. Jami helped Crystal move on, and in so doing helped herself move on, beyond the senseless death of a vibrant young man, beyond her own misgivings, her own regrets, her own grief.

 

Slowly, carefully, Jami sealed the stasis pouch and engaged the environmental controls, but she stayed a few minutes more to revisit the thoughts she had after every tragic mission.

 

A wise man once said that if you ever stop questioning your motivation, if you ever stop wondering if you are doing the right thing and for the right reasons, then it’s time to get out. No problem with that reality check. The more Jami stayed aboard Manticore and the more she worked in Covert Operations, the more she questioned why she stayed. It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it? Hell, no. More like it’s a dirty job and if she doesn’t do it someone with no sense of morality whatsoever might take over. Not that she was all that righteous. But the Adrian Wolfes of this universe were becoming more numerous by the minute, and she wasn’t about to leave operations to them.

 

So she would stay. She’d help patch up those who needed patching – physical or emotional. She’d sit at OPS and help Chief Garnoopy keep the ship on an even keel. In the interim she would enjoy her husband’s company. Unless, of course, he was relieved of duty when they arrived at headquarters in – oh – a few hours. In which case she would resign and join him in retirement.

 

Her boots made no sound in the morgue’s muffled silence as she walked slowly towards the exit where she paused, turned, and looked back.

 

“Good bye, Brutus. Sleep well.”