After Honor

[Jaiysa t'Tamarak 0]

Meritorious Achievement Award

 

((This log is probably more appropriately set during last week's TBS, not the current one.))

 

Vang'radam.

 

It had been a legitimately considerable number of weeks now and the term still grated. Traitor.

 

A Rihan was judged by their honor. Not, of course, necessarily by their personal loyalty or trustworthiness, but by their honor, a slippery term by any account and in Jaiysa's mind even more so than for many. It certainly had nothing to do with the terms the lloann'na computer produced as definitions when she had questioned it.

 

"Honorable...not deceptive or fraudulent. Entitled to esteem and respect. Adhering to ethical and moral standards."

 

That was how the lloann'na defined it. What she knew to be honor to the Rihan at times meant nothing like these terms. Honor was the Empire; those who defended it, supported it, sacrificed for it (or sacrificed others for it, where occasionally necessary). Of course, her final activities on ch'Rihan which had perhaps saved the entire empire had resulted in the complete disintegration of her own honor, so perhaps she didn't know what it was either. It was a term without definition.

 

It didn't matter now at any rate, except insofar as she felt it a legitimate explanation for a perpetually foul mood. Her absolute dislocation from her homeworld was something that simply sat at the back of her mind, and this new ship...more or less a waystation, though she had no idea where she might go beyond it. She had rested with them on Risa, she had suffered with them on Oppo, she had begun to get to know them, but she had not felt (had not *let* herself feel) like one of them, in any true sense.

 

The past few days had been different, however. The ship had nearly fallen to yet another plague -- one on whose details Jaiysa was still not clear -- and she had, with little warning, been thrust into a situation not unlike that which she had faced in the Echo facility not so long ago. A race against time, in which she had not slept, eaten little, and stared in bewilderment at a perhaps-intentional bit of biological abomination which moved extremely quickly and which she, personally, was tasked with determining how to stop.

 

And that was where the similarity ended. Because she had stopped it.

 

Not her alone, of course. Vilanne had managed to avoid falling to the disease long enough, as well as the officers in the science labs, the engineers...she was not so arrogant that she would not, in this case at least, admit their contribution, or that she could not have done it alone. But that was not the point.

 

They had, together, stopped it. There had been none of the powerlessness that she had felt against the Echo virus or in those terrible years on Tehann, none of the sensation of having her hands tied by the secrecy demanded by the Empire. Demanded by her honor.

 

Vang'radam. Traitor. But a productive one.

 

The enriov, Atragon, had approached her after it was all over; she'd expected that he wished a report and had had her mouth already open to provide it but his question had been more general.

 

"So tell me, Doctor t'Tamarak, are you sorry you joined this crew?"

 

It was a legitimate question and one she had to consider for a moment. "Rekkhai..." she finally said carefully, "in the last twenty-four hours I did more work than I did all the time in the Echo facility." More work...perhaps. More productive work, certainly. More work that meant something. "So...na. I am na."

 

A wide grin had flashed onto his face. "Good, because we're glad you're here."

 

This had been approximately the last thing she'd expected to hear from anyone, with the entire crew still in the midst of cleanup and with far more to worry about than any particular need to reassure her, and so exhausted and worn out did she feel at the time that she'd found herself, for a moment, abruptly shaken out of any kind of defensive hostility and honestly a little embarrassed by the compliment. She'd managed to get out only a muttered hann'yyo before he had disappeared but it had left her thinking.

 

When she had first arrived, Atragon had said something roughly to the effect that he expected she might eventually consider the possibility of joining Starfleet proper. It had been a discomfiting suggestion, one she had, at the time, ignored. Perhaps she had been afraid, perhaps she had simply felt there was no point. More likely she had felt like it would be the final step, the final severing of all ties between where she was and where she had come from.

 

It had to be faced, however. The past few days had shown her that very clearly.

 

Vang'radam. She was here and she was never going home. It was time to start thinking about how to make the most of that.

 

It would bear thinking about.

 

*****

 

ch'Rihan -- Romulus

enriov -- Admiral

hann'yyo -- Thank you

lloann'na -- Federation

na -- no, not

vang'radam -- traitor

Edited August 19, 2010 by STSF Jami