An old man's advice

Posted on 11 Jan 2013 @ 11:00am by Command Master Chief Markum Quinn & Chief Warrant Officer 4 Cyrus Kiwosk
Edited on on 11 Jan 2013 @ 1:25pm

2,470 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 02 - Resupply
Location: USS Galileo - CoB's Quarters
Timeline: MD 11 -0200 HRS

ON:

Cyrus wasn't overly busy in the past days. He had been lucky to have the chance to integrate himself with the crew before deploying on the Galileo's following mission. It certainly would have been interesting had he not gotten to know the majority of the crew beforehand. He rolled his shoulder, glad that the pain that had been bothering him for months was finally gotten, only a slightly stiffness remained that was hardly noticeable on most occasions. Considering the alternative, again he was forced to admit he had been lucky.

All this luck, and it seems that all it gets me is more questions... He thought to himself. For everything that he was, it seemed he was only good for getting injured and incapacitated. He wasn't helping anyone like that. His talk with Scarlet had help alleviate a lot of the harbored guilt, but the thoughts of the pain his fellow marines, of himself, was sometimes almost too hard to bare. The sleeping meds were only working half the time. Antioch had been fixed on the idea of Cyrus taking the harder meds until completion, but he had asked Pola to reduce the dose.

Now he was thinking that might have been a bad idea.

As made his ways through the halls of the ship he heaved an inward sigh. How did someone cope with the damage, both physical and mental. The stresses at times threatened to overwhelm Cyrus when he was alone like he was at the moment. When he was around other people he could forget what happened to him, at least for a time.

While making a late night round of the ship, to check that the Gamma Shift enlisted knew the CoB was always lurking...and available, but mostly lurking, he turned a corner in the corridor when he nearly bumped into the Chief Warrant Officer. "Whoa, Cyrus. Sorry about that. What are you doing up so late, I don't have you down for a Gamma Shift this rotation?

" wha-? Oh Quinn. Hey." Cyrus replied distractedly. "No I'm not on Gamma tonight, I just couldn't sleep. I figured I could try walking around try and tire myself out. " The answer was simple, but it was more than obvious that Cyrus wasn't his usual jovial self. "It's been a rough day."


"My quarters are just around the next bend," Quinn answered. "C'mon youngster, I'll buy, you pour."

Cyrus looked up at the old man, and gave a little half-smile. "Thanks Quinn, Appreciate it" He gestured for the Chief of the Boat to lead.

Markum lead the way for the two men. After only a few seconds of walking, the door to Markum's quarters opened. Markum sat down and pointed over to a large chest. "Beer is in the chest, Cyrus. What's eating at you?"

Glancing over at the beer, at first he resisted the sudden urge, but gave in a second later. He reached in and took one of the ice cold beverages and let his mind focus on the satisfying pop of escaping gas. He took a small sip and sat down in a nearby chair. "Just coping with all the adjustments I suppose." He looked around. "It feels like I'm constantly watched by the other crew, like they're waiting for me to screw up. " He thought back to Panne and some of the others.

He leaned forward, the bottle dangling in a light single handed grip between his legs. "Then there's others, like Lieutenant Cho, that it seems like no matter what I say, I always seem to offend, and you can only apologize so much before it starts sounding hollow. " He chuckled. "When I was on the Fitzgerald, the girl was so big, if I annoyed someone, chances were I wouldn't see them again, but here..." He let the sentence hang in the air for a minute.

"I hear ya." answered Quinn. "tht's one of the cons of such a small ship. Don't worry if you screw up, because you will, and as long as you learn from it, it's not a total failure then. Id I had a bar of gold pressed latinum for every screw up I made, especially during the War, I'd be a rich sonofabitch. As far as Cho goes. Maybe she is the problem, and needs to come to grips with whatever her problem is. If you hurt her feelings, well...shit happens. It's not a nice galaxy out there. Maybe holding a dying crewman during their last breath would change her attitude about what to get upset about."

Cyrus was nodding before Quinn had even finished. He knew just how evil the world could be, just how dark. "Yeah, I hear you. " He glanced over to the synthetic arm, it was quite noticeable now that it had been brought up on the beach. His side ached slightly from the internal damage that had been done. "We'd both be rich. That's for damned sure." He took another sip of his beer. "So I heard through the crew you were Chief Engineer..." He started. "Why the change to CoB?"

Quinn stood up and walked to a clear cabinet and removed an odd shaped grey colored bottle and a glass. "Well, that is about the easiest question I've been asked in weeks." he replied as he returned to his seat and set the bottle and glass down on the small table, while removing the cork and pouring the brown-clear colored liquid into the glass. "I was a Chief Warrant Officer and my Ensign Peers was my Assistant, before she was an ensign and still a Senior Warrant Officer. She was too young to stay as a SWO, and after the," looking down at his prosthetic arm, "incident, I just wasn't able to perform the very minute, hand to instrument functions that I once could. So, Peers was up for a promotion to officer, and I had taught her almost everything I could. I then went to the CO, and resigned my Warrant and was moved laterally in rank to Master Chief Petty Officer, and was taken into the Command Position of CoB. This really does give me more freedom, and I get to pass my knowledge and instruct and teach more than I was able a Chief Engineer."

Quinn slid the half full glass over to Cyrus, then took a swig out of the bottle. "Tennessee Whiskey, have a glass, son."

Cyrus took the glass, Quinn seemed to take it all in stride. It was certainly something short of a marvel. "I've heard some things about what had happened during the Sienna incident...Shit went to hell. " He took a small sip. He hadn't had a good glass of whiskey for a very long time. Full bodied, smooth with a hint of earthy flavor that made Tennessee whiskey known well in Canada. Grunting with pleasure he nodded. "That's good." He took another sip almost immediately.

"Pola seemed worried about your arm..." He added offhandedly. "Had my own bad time before coming aboard Galileo ." He sighed. "I took a grenade while on a mission...I guess I didn't look very pretty." He shuddered. "Suffice to say...I'm still dealing with it."

Quinn took another swallow from the bottle and nodded towards Cyrus. "Near death can really screw with you. What happened?"

He sighed and leaned back. "My old Marine CO was ordered down to a rescue mission just after the war. " He took a sip. "You know how you always get those diehards who don't want to admit they lost?" He sighed. Shaking his head, eyes glazing over. "Well, it turns out they were calling themselves the Dominion Remnant Contingent, they captured a large group of Starfleet civs, and we were sent down to rescue the civs. We were a six man team, three fireteams of two. It was supposed to be an quick in and out." He shook his head. "Shit's never that easy. The Fitzgerald was a Dominion killer, We were one of the leading vessels during the entire war, and the DRC wanted to end that. Major Fernandez, they wanted him dead, they knew we would go in for those prisoners..." He skipped large parts of the hall running. "When we finally got into the compound, into the cells we found they had mistreated them all. Many had died in their cells...there was this one girl...Sweet blue eyes" His eyes brimmed with tears. "They had hacked her arm off and didn't treat the wound, but she was still...alive." He finished the drink in a single gulp, and shook his head violently. "We lost contact with one of the teams, the one meant to take out the shields so we could transport out, we had to cut our way through the Dominion, once we got outside, they had laid out another ambush, took out two more of us, then they started attacking the civs. " He sighed. "One Vorta..." He said, practically spat. "The purple skinned sonovabitch, he saw the people we were taking to the shuttle, the one that our Commodore had been able to send through the AA fire, he threw a stolen Photon grenade. " His hands trembled. "I did what any other marine would have done, the Vorta had cooked it, so I couldn't kick it in time, so I scooped it up and ran the other way...I ducked behind a rock, away from the group of people, I tripped, dropped the grenade from my chest and then" He shrugged. "All I remember after that is waking up in Sickbay on board the Fitzgerald, though my CO says I had gotten back up after the grenade went off and killed the Vorta and his buddy before keeling over."

Quin pored another round into the mans glass. "Damn, son. That's hard core. The Dominion changed the way wars were fought, that's for sure. SO, you were on the Fitz? Nice ship, lots of ass kicking that one did. I was on the Thor, a Defiant-Class during the War. Cloaking Systems Specialist, and then promoted to Chief Engineer's Mate. We spent some time in the Gamma, sabotaging Dominion facilities and research centers. Even survived a battle while in the Wormhole. We almost died that time, and if we wouldn't have been on a Defiant-Class, we would of bought it in transition between the two quadrants. We even rammed the bridge of a Cardassian frigate on time and somehow survived mostly intact."

Quinn set the bottle down and looked to Cyrus. "Son, let me give you some advise from a man that has been form one end of this galaxy to another...twice. The pain never goes away and the faces of the dead will never leave you. But, you have a choice to either lay back and feel sorry for yourself, and morn those that are gone and wallow in your sorrows about how it should of been you...or, you can stand your ass up, look in the mirror and tell yourself to accept what happened, get help form a counselor or a friend you can trust, and let it out. And don't morn for the dead, they're dead. But celebrate their life by living yours to the fullest."

Cyrus nodded. "If the Cardassians hadn't switched sides at the last second..." He shuddered to think what would have happened. It was bad enough that the Cardassians were permitted to transfer certain members into Starfleet under strict restrictions. He found himself nodding more and more as Quinn went on, raising his eyebrows at Quinn's time on the USS Thor. The Thor had been a a ship he had heard about a couple times when Fernandez had spoken about the beginning of the war against the Dominion.

The CoB's words made sense, a lot more sense than Cyrus had been thinking himself since he came aboard. When he was posted to the Fitzgerald, he didn't have the time to sit and think about everything that happened, the lives that were lost, yet this shore leave seemed to point out everything that was wrong with both him and the way he used to cope. It was good to be able to voice how he felt to someone that had that experience, that had been in the dirt and knew just how horrible things could get. He never thought he would have been a veteran.

Quinn's words also forced him to think about his older brother, Osric. What would he say about how Cyrus had been acting as of late. He could hear it now. Shape up little brother, the hell was Fernandez doing with you? Jeez! He took a sip of his whiskey and smiled. "You're right, I've been getting too caught up in the past lately. I've not really had the time to actually think about everything that had happened. You really put things into perspective Markum." Cyrus chuckled and raised his glass for a toast.

Quinn answered the toast wit ha clink of glass on bottle. "Here, here, Cyrus. Besides, you need to pull your head out of your ass, son. You have a very beautiful girl that likes you, and deserves to have the Cyrus that is always looking towards the future, not sulking in the past." Quinn took a long pull from the bottle and then set it down. Quinn had felt a kinship with Cyrus from day one. Not many seemed to care for him, but Quinn did. He reminded Quinn of himself when he was that young..hell...was he ever that young, he asked himself?

Cyrus nodded. "Yeah, Pola...she's somethin'." He grinned. " I don't think I would have adjusted as well as I did without her, or you or Willis for that matter." He leaned back. "Or Li...do you know he kicked my ass in golf...A Vulcan...that knows golf...I'm telling you that man isn't as Vulcan as he lets on!" He laughed, glad for the company. " Thanks Quinn. I owe you one. This talk helped a lot. Might be able to get to sleep tonight after all." He chuckled.

Quinn smiled and nodded his head as he picked up his old harmonica. "Good, now get your ass to bed and leave me the hell alone youngin." Quinn quipped with a chuckle. "I have a date I need to keep with an old friend."

"Prune juice is hardly a friend Quinn." Cyrus retorted chuckling. As he got up to leave he looked over his shoulder. "Thanks again."

"Anytime." he answered as he picked up his harmonica and started to play a few bars."

OFF:

CWO Kiwosk
Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo

Master Chief Petty Officer Markum Quinn
Chief of the Boat
USS Galileo

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