Commander Lee Carter sat impatiently on her waiting room chair. She was finding it very difficult keeping her seat; she would much rather storm into Commodore Rick Hunter's office and plead her case herself, but Captain Cross had made it abundantly clear beforehand that the chain of command was inviolate in this case.
The pretty blue-eyed blonde sitting at the receptionist's desk stood and approached wearing a kindly expression on her face. "Would you like something to drink while you wait, Commander?" she asked. "Some coffee? Or some tea to calm your nerves?"
Carter couldn't help but smile. "Is it that obvious?" she asked.
The blonde shrugged and smiled. "This is the office of the man in charge of all the Starfleet activity in the Briar Patch Sector. I've had the opportunity to observe many people sitting out here in the foyer waiting to see the Commodore."
"Maybe, but I'm not waiting to see the Commodore, Yeoman, uh..."
"Piper, ma'am. Jamie Piper." Yeoman Piper stuck out her hand and Carter shook it.
"Nice to meet you, Jamie."
"Likewise." The young woman seemed about to turn away and return to her desk, but a sudden thought made her tarry long enough to make a sagacious observation that belied her twenty-something years. "You may not be waiting for the Commodore, but you're still waiting, and like most people who wait here, their futures are determined by what goes on inside that office."
An agonizingly long twenty minutes and two unhelpful cups of chamomile tea later, Lee Carter heard the door to Commodore Hunter's office swing open to disgorge a stone-faced Captain Matthew Cross. She was instantly on her feet, and fell into step beside him as he swept wordlessly through the foyer and out into the wide hallways of the Starfleet Headquarters building. Not a good sign.
After walking in silence for almost a full minute, she finally could contain herself no longer. "Well?!?" she finally blurted. "What did the Commodore have to say?"
Cross' expression never wavered as he said in a very low voice, "The Commodore was less than pleased by the fact that we lost an entire squadron of brand new, experimental starfighters on our last mission, a mission that was supposed to have been nothing more than a simple survey trip out to the orbit of Txamsem."
"We had no way of knowing there was a hidden wormhole there!" protested Carter. "It's not our fault the Black Gate threw us halfway across the known universe! What about all those thousands of refugees we found and rescued? Doesn't that count for anything?"
"Apparently not as much as revealing the existence of the Time Planet and the Guardian of Forever to the Breen Confederacy," replied Cross hotly.
"We had to use the Guardian. It was our only way home," said Carter. "And what about the information relating to the Ancients that we discovered? The data ring Jo smuggled back?"
"Everything's been classified. All I know is that Starfleet is sending a science ship back through the Black Gate to Kurnugi. As for us, well..."
"What about us?" demanded Carter with growing trepidation. She didn't like the expression on Cross' face. She'd seen it before, after the Dominion War on the face of her CO at the time, right before he told her that her squadron was being disbanded because they were no longer needed in the new peace.
Cross drew a deep breath, and for the first time Carter saw his adamantine facade falter to let some of the regret and disappointment behind it show through. "The Banshee Program has been suspended," he said. "Starfleet Command will be reevaluating the effectiveness and feasibility of using recon fighter squadrons in place of larger starships."
"They can't. I--" But words failed Carter. She had expected some trouble from the loss of their starfighters -- the return portal from Kurnugi was too small for any type of vessel to pass through -- but she had never imagined in her worst nightmares that the Banshees would be disbanded. They had done too much good here in the Briar Patch Sector to have a bunch of Starfleet Rear Admirals back on Earth end it like this!
Matthew Cross stopped walking. He sensed Carter's distress and knew firsthand how she felt. He placed a comforting hand on her shoulder and ventured a small smile. "You should go break the news to your team. Don't worry. We'll get through this okay."
With that he turned and disappeared around a corner leaving Carter standing alone in the middle of the hallway trying to feel reassured.
"They what?!?" yelled Lieutenant Commander Max Vasser. "This is some kind of stupid joke, isn't it?"
It was the reaction Lee Carter had expected from her fiery XO and so she had steeled herself before delivering the bad news. "No joke, Max," she repeated. "The recon starfighter program has been suspended and we're all getting reassigned."
"Reassigned where?" asked Lieutenant Josephine Schmidt.
"Actually, that's the one bit of good news in this entire situation," replied Carter. She paced around the perimeter of the Banshee briefing room on the first floor of their apartment and stopped before the large glass sliding door that opened onto a patio overlooking the spaceport. She couldn't see the hangar building that had housed their starfighters, at least until they'd lost them, but a small civilian transport was just lifting off from the tarmac and she watched it ascend until it was lost in the midday haze.
She turned back to the four women gathered around the long wooden table and continued. "Commodore Hunter is letting us choose our own assignments, within reason of course. Sort of a thank-you for everything we've done for Serenity up to now."
"There's a backhanded thank-you if ever I heard one," grumbled Max.
"What are you going to do?" asked Ensign Alex Dalton of Carter.
Carter shrugged. "I don't know, Alex," she replied honestly. She hadn't given it any thought yet. The shock of their new circumstances hadn't worn off yet making rational thought difficult. "I'll take some leave. That'll give me time to think about it."
"Whatever happens, we should stick together," said Alex.
Carter smiled. She would miss the youngest Banshee's youthful exuberance and effervescence. "You bet, Alex," she said, but inwardly wondered if that would be possible.
"You were awfully quiet during the briefing," said Jo Schmidt. She was sitting on the edge of Samantha Beckett's bed watching her friend and teammate rummage through her dresser drawers.
"Mmm."
"That's all you have to say?" asked Jo, a little incredulous at Sam's apparent apathy regarding her future. Her eyes narrowed with sudden shrewd insight. "You're not disappointed that our squadron's being broken up, are you?!?"
Sam turned from her drawer spelunking, and Jo saw an embarrassed smile on the willowy blonde's face. "No, not entirely," she admitted to Jo's disbelieving ears.
"What? Why, for crying out loud?!?"
"Well, to be honest, I've been a fighter pilot on and off since 2371. That's fifteen years! I'm getting a little tired of it, always risking our lives flying tiny planes, first Peregrines, then Banshees, then Scorpions, fighting starships a hundred times our size... Honestly, I don't know why any of us are even still alive, Jo! We have no right to be, against the odds we've faced. And the cost... So much death and destruction..."
Jo had no ready response to that. It wasn't the reply she'd been expecting. "I had no idea you felt like that, Sam. Why didn't you ever tell anyone?"
"How could I? We were a team. I couldn't break up the team, could I? Besides, I love you guys. I didn't want to leave. But now..."
"Now things have changed," finished Jo, sadness tinting her words blue. "Jeez, Sam, this is huge!" She sat trying to assimilate the news for a minute, then asked the next obvious question. "So what are your plans?"
Another guilty smile flickered across Sam's face. "I'm thinking of switching over to Starfleet Medical."
Another unexpected response that took Jo completely by surprise. "You want to be a doctor? You'll have to go back to school for years!"
"Actually, I've been taking preparatory classes for over a year now," replied Sam sheepishly.
"Aahh, so that's where you were always sneaking off to," mused Jo putting the pieces together. "We always figured you were sneaking out on dates with that ruggedly handsome El Taco manager guy Rick."
Sam's cheeks turned red and her eyes dropped to the floor. A bashful smile forced its way onto her face. "No, no dates," she said almost wistfully, but quickly changed the subject to an apparent non sequitur. "I've never told any of you about my cerebral implants."
"Your what?" asked Jo, not understanding. She knew that Sam Beckett was almost 25 percent artificial -- repairs to damage caused by exposure to Delta-rays more than fifteen years ago -- but couldn't imagine what that had to do with going back to school.
Sam looked embarrassed. She didn't like talking about her deformities, as she thought of them, even though outwardly it was impossible to tell there was anything non-natural about her aside from an occasional tell-tale glint from her cybernetic eyes. "I've got certain cerebral augmentations," she confessed. "They were installed by Starfleet Intel right after the Dominion War for my covert missions inside the Romulan Empire. They let me learn things ten times as quickly as normal so I could blend into Romulan society better."
"I had no idea," replied Jo. "I mean, we all knew you worked for Starfleet Intel for a while after the war, but the details..."
"Everything was classified," said Sam. "But I've still got the learning implants, so the medical book-learning will be automatic. What I'll need is practical experience, and there's no shortcut to get that, just time and practice. I should be able to work my way through accelerated medical courses in about a year."
Jo was flabbergasted. She had heard so much new information in the last two minutes that she couldn't make heads or tails of it yet. But one thing was clear: her friend had decided to follow her dreams, and that was a good thing. She smiled broadly and stood. She embraced Sam and said, "I'm happy for you, Sam. I know you'll do great and make a wonderful doctor."
"Thanks," replied Sam, pleased at the support she felt from Jo, then detached herself from the embrace.
"When are you leaving?"
"Next week."
"Okay. I guess that's enough time for me to throw together a surprise farewell party," said Jo with a grin. "I just hope the rest of us can come up with something we want to do as easily as you seem to have."
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