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     Brigadier General Jeremy Ironside - Supreme Commander, Defender Ground Forces |
Seventh Heaven was conspicuously empty. A lone tender wiped down the bar with a wet rag in the dimmed lighting but other than him, General Ironside stood alone at the windows, gazing out at the starfield aft. The majority of crew, he supposed, were busy monitoring the conversations going back and forth from the Milky Way between the Admiralty and Starfleet. Either that, or pouring over the latest from the Federation News Services concerning the goings on nineteen million light years away. A select few perhaps were even getting the chance to speak with their loved ones; if the bandwidth were available and the opportunity presented itself. The crew, as it were, was getting a taste of home. The General snorted to himself. Home. It was such a relative concept. In Starfleet, one was almost never in the same place for more than a few days at a time. Never long enough to settle down, never near enough to one’s family to keep a house or quarters in any one place. Any one place that was, except the starship they served on. Did that mean that Coronado was his home? Or was home not just the place one worked and lived; but the central location where the men, women, and children he protected lived; Reor’sa. And yet still, was home the place where one’s friends were? Where the people one cared most about resided? For some, the case for where ‘home’ was was straightforward. For the Braids and the Churchill descendants it was Reor’sa. For the majority of the Starfleet officers in the task force, it was somewhere in the Milky Way; the planet where they grew up, where their and where their loved ones lived. But in his case, home was much harder to distinguish, if he had a home at all. Once he did; Gilgamesh Nine. Then Earth. Then…. Ever since the incident on Helios, he had no home. All those he knew and loved either abandoned him following his transformation, unable to deal with his change, or he distanced himself purposefully from them for their own good. And since then he had known nothing but war. Jumping from system to system, planet to planet, leading a band of battle-hardened marines who looked upon him as their unquestionable leader, but with whom he could not associate in order to keep command of his strengths and faculties intact. Some of those marines had followed and been with him for years. Lightbody and Stampfer, for instance...were they friends, or merely acquaintances? He worked with them daily, but never associated with them outside of that. Would they look upon him as friends? Dejat, perhaps, had been the closest thing to a ‘friend’ since before Helios. But with his death… And the rest of the crew of the ship; He shared a strong working relationship with them, particularly the Admiral, but again he doubted any would consider him a close friend. His relationship with his daughter was…difficult to quantify. He had fond memories of time spent together in an alternate life, but here, and now, he still found their relationship more professional than familiar. He signed inwardly. If the hypergate were fixed tomorrow and he could return to the Milky Way, would he? Would he have a reason to? Was there anything there for him to return to that was different from M64? From reports, it looked like there was little for him to do in the Milky Way. As a general, he would not have the luxury of hopping from planet to planet in order to lead men in military action; he would run things from a desk, and only if there was any military action to pursue. In M64, there was a Division of men under his command, a division that he would feel uncomfortable leaving in the hands of anyone else. And there was work to do; the remnants of the Pfhor Hegemony would not lay idle forever and the fledgling Defenders faced countless dangers with its collapse. His thought train paused for a moment, as he felt the presence of Lieutenant Colonel Gregg in the room. It was odd, sometimes. He attributed it to his highly developed combat sense, but he always seemed to sense Gregg when others could not. Perhaps it was the eighteen years he had spent fighting with the man. He continued looking out the window, “Do you ever think of home, Stephen?” There was a short pause, “Sir?” Ironside smirked for a moment and looked over his shoulder, into Gregg’s eyes. He held the gaze for a moment and lost his smirk, turning to look back out the windows again, “No…of course you don’t.” Gregg moved forward, stepping up a level to stand beside Ironside to look out at the starfield beyond. His empty voice sounded comfortingly soft in the empty darkness of the room. “Do you, General?” A short pause, “I was just attempting to quantify home, for myself. I haven’t come up with a definitive answer, so I don’t believe I could think about it in much depth…” There was silence for a minute or two, the two warriors gazing into the void separated from them by only a sheet of transparent aluminum. Gregg broke the silence, “Have you written to your parents?” Ironside nodded slowly, “A short letter. My father will expect nothing else. My mother will…likely not understand, should she still be alive.” Another minute or so of silence followed. Ironside broke it the second time, “Do we have homes, Stephen?” Although Gregg seemed to think for a moment before answering, Ironside got the feeling that the man could have responded almost immediately; as if he knew long ahead of time what Ironside was going to ask. “If home is where one can find men and women who will put their lives on the line with you not only because it is their duty, but also because they have a concern for your well-being. Who will forgive you if you make a mistake. Who will support you in failure and who will celebrate with you in triumph. If these things are home then yes, Jeremy, I believe we have one.” The smallest of smiles crept into the corners of Ironside’s mouth as he peered out the window, “Thank you, Stephen.” “You’re welcome, Sir.” |