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     Brigadier General Jeremy Ironside - Supreme Commander, Defender Ground Forces |
Ironside could hear the two security officers in the brig complex on the other side of the forcefield whispering to each other as if he couldn’t hear them. They debated back and forth why the General was still sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cell, exactly where he had been since he got up eight hours ago. Why he hadn’t torn his way through a bulkhead and out of his cell. Why he hadn’t done his little disappearing trick and simply taken off. The General, however, held no delusions about his ability to escape the brig cell. True, he could simply translocate or possibly even tear through one of the cell walls, but his recapture wasn’t in doubt. There were only so many places in a starship once could hide, and with Savant peering into every nook and cranny, it would not take long for him to be returned to the brig cell. Not that he had any reason to escape. Doing so would only confound the situation, the same situation that was now testing the bounds of the General’s individuality. When the transporter had activated on Kelaka he had felt something go wrong. Not something physically, perhaps not even something mentally, but something happened. When he rematerialized out of the matter stream, he was not in the control room of the defense tower, but in the brig, without recollection of any of the actions he was accused of performing. And the dream. Last night the dream returned. Where his doppelganger and Aldur trained him for battle against shadow forms – he had not experienced it outside of the fourth chamber until the previous night. The dream, combined with the overwhelming evidence that he was possibly no longer the man he had been for the forty three years prior to the events of two and a half years ago, drew up wells of emotion long buried and filled in. Rage, frustration, confusion, helplessness had flooded over him following the explanation of why he was confined. So he meditated. Every waking moment was spent in a state of peace as his mind transcended and emptied. He had no visitors to stir him from his reverie. No one came to ask him his side of the story – what had happened from his point of view. Either they were debating on how to proceed, or they simply assumed he remained subverted. The brig guards fell silent abruptly in mid-sentence. Ironside heard footsteps on the deck, but did not hear the facility strong door open. He brought himself out of the meditative state, a flood of emotion threatening to push him to irrational action. He managed to get the flood under control and opened his eyes. The two brig guards lay unconscious, draped over their consoles loosely. One was snoring lightly. Colonel Stephen Gregg stood on the other side of the forcefield. Ironside looked up, “Stephen, what can I do for you?” “Jeremy.” Ironside paused. In the eighteen years he had worked with Stephen Gregg, the man had never once called him by his first name. Then the General noticed something else, and he wondered how he had missed it before. Stephen Gregg had an aura; a mist of blue-white flowed around his body. “I believe the proper question, Jeremy, is what can I do for you?” responded the glowing form of Ironside’s longest serving marine. The General rose from his cross-legged position without the aid of his arms, now standing eye to eye with the man. “Who am I? What happened two years ago?” pleaded an uncharacteristic Ironside. “You are who you are, who you were, who you will ever be. You are Jeremy Ironside.” Replied Gregg, simply, in that affectless voice he spoke in. “But I died! Two years ago, crew watched me die at the hands of those grey orbs!” “No,” corrected Gregg, “they watched not you die, but your companion, your…analog, on a different thread. You are who you are, who you were, and who you ever shall be.” Ironside’s eyes and head fell as he shook them, “I don’t understand,” “Nor do I expect you to, but time is short.” Gregg’s voice hardened with purpose, with…emotion. Something Ironside had never heard him speak with before, “Know this, Jeremy. Your world, your universe, is in danger of being destroyed. Like a weed is torn from a garden, so shall your life and the lives of all.” “The Gardeners,” Gregg spoke the word as if he should spit at its usage, “know only perfection. Will tolerate only the most perfect specimens. They care nothing for diversity, for change, for variety. Only the strongest are allowed to survive, the weak tossed aside like so much garbage. Your world, Jeremy, is no longer as strong as the rest – hence they will attempt to destroy it.” Gregg moved forward, stepped through the forcefield as if it were not there. Somewhere, an alarm sounded, “You are a tool they will use to do this. You and others who have touched the Spindle.” Ironside took a step back. Was Gregg here to kill him, to destroy him? “No…I won’t let them.” “Won’t you? They have already used you, that is why you are here,” Gregg indicated the brig, “think of your dreams.” As Gregg spoke, Ironside’s mind split. In a bizarre fashion, his dream – the one of his training against the shadow forms - overlayed onto his view of the brig. It was the same as before, with the minute difference that his doppelganger and Admiral Aldur had auras as well. As the vision continued, Gregg spoke again, “But take heart, Jeremy,” The slightest grin appeared in the corner of Gregg’s mouth, “they had their turn, and now it’s ours.” The vision of his dream solidified, his view of the brig disappearing as he fell unconscious to the deck. The auras surrounding his doppelganger and Aldur faded, and with a blinding flash reappeared...different. |