...and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
- Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to a mother of five sons lost during the Civil War
Eventually, Carter roused herself and recovered her senses enough to look around and take stock of their situation. She was surprised to discover that she had fallen asleep here amid the rocks and fallen logs at the bottom of the ravine, and that the first rays of dawn were setting the gray eastern sky aglow. The pain of Jazz's death still stung deep, but there would be time enough to mourn later. For now, their own survival was paramount. Carter forced her stiff muscles into motion and heaved herself to her feet.
Thankfully, there was no indication of pursuit from either the small tunnel up the mountain slope from which they had escaped, or from the direction of the main mine entrance and spaceport.
By now, Carter's movements were rousing the other four women as well. Alex awoke with a violent start and sputtered incoherently for a few seconds before realizing she was no longer underground pursued by real-life nightmares. The commotion she made woke Jo, who immediately rose and hopped across the trickling stream to where Sam had collapsed the night before and began checking the burnt stump of her cybernetic arm. Satisfied that Sam wasn't in any immediate danger of complete systems failure, she had Alex help her clean her own wound, an ugly, bloody gash down her left cheek, souvenir from one of the large, mandibled creatures. Max however, was nowhere to be seen.
Carter found her missing team mate a minute later, sitting by herself atop a boulder a short distance from the others, staring back in the direction of the mines. Her face was mostly concealed within the deep shadow cast by her long brown hair, but her eyes shone out like a pair of glowing coals. Carter stopped at her side, loathe to disturb her. She could barely imagine what Max must be going through right now, to have lost her best friend. Again.
"Max..." she ventured softly. "We have to go."
For long seconds, Max remained unresponsive, but finally turned to face her CO. Her face was a stone carving of fury and hatred, and as she spoke, her eyes flared like two miniature novae. "I swear I'll have my revenge," she vowed, her voice low and deadly dangerous.
Carter could understand Max's feelings, but she had to channel her friend's anger away from this alarming, self-destructive course. "Jazz knew what she was doing," she argued gently. "She was Wing Commander of Banshee Squadron up to the second she died; putting the lives of her wingmates before her own. She wouldn't want you to waste your life avenging her death; that's not what she sacrificed her own life for. She'd want you to go on, to keep up the good fight!"
She placed a reassuring hand on Max's shoulder and looked her friend in the eye. Some of the dark fire had gone out of them, and Max's features had softened somewhat. "Come on -- let's get the hell out of here."
The five-mile trek up the narrow ravine back towards the abandoned Ferengi spaceport and their starfighters went completely without incident. By the time they reached the outlying buildings of the spaceport support facility, the Rostellan sun had risen well above the horizon, throwing its watery light across the wasted earth. Where, the night before, Jelly-animated corpses of fallen soldiers had stalked them so relentlessly, today those same victims lay once again strewn all across the ground, simply fallen where they had been standing when the Jelly Brain was destroyed by Jazz. It would take the Starfleet Corps of Engineers a long time to clean up this mess and give all the dead proper burials.
With the help of the other four women, Alex had their starfighters repaired in a couple of hours, and minutes after that, they lifted off in a flurry of dust and were headed spaceward. The Battle for Rostella had ended several hours previously, the Federation forces winning the day, so they had a clear vector to the rendezvous with the fleet. Carter radioed and got clearance to land back aboard the Ronin for the long ride home.
The five Banshees rose quickly towards orbit, and as the thin upper atmosphere outside her cockpit faded from deep violet to the utter black of vacuum, Max cast one last glance backwards and muttered, "Goodbye, Jazz."
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