| Author | Message | ||
     Cdr. Velorna Tal |
"Why?" "Admiral Aldur asked him to go. As a favor." "A favor?" "Yes, ma'am. Admiral Aldur said that his - skills - might come in handy at some point. I was given strict orders not to deliver this to you until two weeks after the Odyssey had set forth down the Way." "I see. Very well, Lt. Ebsen. You have delievered your package. You may return to the Foundation." "I was also told, ma'am, that I was not to return unless you accompanied me. He was very specific about that. You are to be the new Mayor-Administrator of Seldon Foundation One at Star's End. Commander, please don't make me disobey my orders." "I will not be my father's puppet, Lieutenant. Certainly not now that he's gone. I will watch his message, but I will leave the adminstation of the Foundation to those who believe in its purpose." "Ma'am, it's purpose is to prepare for the eventuality that the Odyssey will fail. Surely you believe in such a goal." "No, actually, Lt. Ebsen, I do not. Brian Aldur will not fail in his task, especially not with my father by his side. If Admiral Marshall were with them, I would say that they would not only be victorious but on their way home as we speak. No, Lieutenant. I do not believe in the Foundation's mission. But I will not hinder it. Rest assured that it will remain the secret that it is meant to be." "As you wish, Captain Tal. But I'll have to note this in the report we're preparing in case Admiral Wallace does return." "Whatever. Dismissed, Lieutenant." =/\= "Hello, Vel. By now your promotion to Captain will probably have gone through. I hope you like the ship we left you. She's not Coronado, I know, but Pegasus is the finest ship in the Fleet. "Now that I'm gone and will likely never see you again, I suppose I should tell you all the things I never told you while I was around. "I love you, Vel. You saved me from something dark and terrible. And I am proud of you, the woman you have become. You're a far better person than I ever was when I was with you. I tried to be a good father. I hope that I succeeded at least some of the time. "But good or bad, I did - do - love you. That's why I've hated lying to you for all these years. "Vel, you once asked me - when you were a child - how it was that I came to save you. I told you that it had been in the course of a routine patrol that we stumbled across that damned Ferengi's slave trade operation. "Truth and deception, rolled into one. It was second nature to me for so long that I couldn't do anything but tell you what you wanted to hear. Because the truth is far more terrible. "In fact, the Ferengi operation had been planned for many months by the time we struck. I knew you were there, suffering as his slave. I knew that there were many others like you there. Our mole had delivered to us unprecedentedly detailed information on the operation. Command wanted me to push up the operation, insisting that we knew all there was to know about it. "I convinced them to keep delaying. Because I was running my own operation, you see. I was having a second operative gather information on you and your fellow slaves because I wanted to know who would make the best additions to our organization. "So, you see, Vel, your dear old Dad is little more than a sick, sadistic bastard with delusions of godhood. "I don't expect you to forgive me, now or ever. But I hope you can at least come to understand that I did - do - always will - love you. You see, I chose you out of all the slaves there to adopt because I had already fallen in love with you. I wanted a daughter who was smart, strong-willed, who could never be broken, who knew the difference between loyalty given and devotion earned. You were all that I could want in a child and more. Ultimately, Vel, you were the reason I broke down under the pressure from Command to carry out the operation. "I did it all for you, the good and the bad. Some would say that I am an evil man for making you suffer and for hiding the truth. Some would say that I did what I did for the greater good. Who can say? Maybe it's just one more thing you will discover without me. "I have to go now, Vel. The Odyssey is preparing to go. I already know you won't be with me. And I know you'll disregard my orders that you take over the Foundation. You've become too headstrong and independent for even me to control you. Then again, you always were a bit of a wild child. "Do me a favor, though. Someday, when you have children of your own, tell them of me. Good or bad, whatever you have to say, tell them about me. I don't want to be forgotten. Not by you, and not by those who would be my family. "All my love, Velorna. As our Vulcan friends have said so many times, peace and long life, my daughter." =/\= Velorna Tal would forget about that message for many years. She would carry on with her life, not even thinking about the message from Dev Wallace as she aged, married, bore children, and watched her grandchildren grow up strong. In fact, it was not until the day after her husband's funeral that she came across the old recording and watched it once more. After so long, could she really carry hatred in her heart for the man who had raised her? In a way, he had been responsible for the life she had shared with Jarod and the children. He had molded her into the woman who had married such a wonderful man, who had mothered such strong and wise children, and who had led a long and distiguished career in the Defenders Alliance Fleet. Dev Wallace had given her all of that, and she could no longer hate him. And so it was, on that day so many years later, that Velorna Tal Bentall, retired Sword Admiral of the Fleet, gathered the family she and her husband had raised together and told them of the man who had brought her up. She left nothing out - his great deeds and his evil works held equal precedence. She let each member of her family decide for themselves what kind of man her father had been. Many years later, when she herself was laid to rest beside her husband on a world more than 19 million lightyears distant from the one on which she had been raised, her great-great grandson sat down the family and told them of her. Rear Admiral Dev Wallace never returned. ---- Christian D. Clem '01, aka "Aggie" Cdr. Velorna Tal, Executive Officer (IC) U.S.S. Coronado 97901 P.S. - That's all for Tal and Wallace for now. Thanks for 6+ great years of Trek simming, Jester. Oh, and Alffred, sorry about using Bentall like this. I wanted to ask you, but you haven't been around. To the rest of you, it's been a genuine pleasure. See you on the flip side. |