Shards Of History
Posted on Wed Mar 27th, 2019 @ 10:55am by Lieutenant JG Teeran Shard
Mission:
S1E2: A Temple To New Gods
Location: Intelligence Hub
Timeline: MD 5 08:15
Dania had not slept well, not at all, since her discovery. Questions and theories ran through her head but what frustrated her most was the fact she couldn't talk about it with anyone, not yet and her data pool was limited to what Canopus' Computers had and the Traveller's library. Big research was rarely ever done alone, in intelligence circles. The benefits of varying viewpoints outweighed the negatives, and strayed away from bias of a single opinion, no matter how logical or impartial.
Even during Red Dawn, she had the benefit of the task group with her. Ahressa, Leonora, Kali, Sergei and Ioan at the very least she knew she could trust and talk to. Ahressa, Leonora and Kali at least were the ones that helped her with the tricky part of the operation, when she was asked to drop the investigation into the newly discovered cardassian mole.
Here...here things were so very different and almost everything would have to be done from scratch. Alliances, friendships and the like. There was one person she could technically talk to, yet not. From her research into the man, she knew he was around during the time of the launch of the Persephone V Mission. Well, his symbiont was, in a different body.
Would Teeran remember though? If so, could he tell her about it? She knew the de-classification periods of Starfleet, but given this was a Trill matter from before they joined the Federation, would they have the same laws? Dania wasn't sure.
So, she sat at her momentarily commandeered work station, PADD in hand on the Carpathia Colony below them, hoping to use that as a conversation stater and see how far she'd get. Teeran would just be coming on duty to relieve Rella Samaras, who was on 'air gap' duty this morning.
"Aren't you due in another two hours, boss?" She heard his easy tone as he entered the room, cup of coffee in his hand.
Dania smiled at the handsome trill, "couldn't sleep, which is a shame, considering I barely slept at all last night."
"Mmmm, I can tell. The rate you're going I'm going to have to get Kiiz to stand you down and rest." Teeran smirked as he came up behind her and glanced at what she had been reading.
Dania looked up over her shoulder, "just trying to distract myself and catch up on the more homelier aspects of our being here. Colonizing."
"Mmm," came a rater quiet reply from Teeran as he moved to the side and sat at the adjacent console.
Storm glanced over, "that was...enthusiastic." A small smirk played on her lips.
"Colonies stopped being a thing for me." Teeran smirked, almost wistfully.
"Oh?" Dania looked over, eyebrow raised.
Teeran shrugged, his usually vibrant blue eyes a tad darker, sadder almost. "It's...not my first rodeo as humans would say. Besides I was born on a colony, well one of me was, my second Starfleet stint, as Vysaranne. She was from Shal Tul."
She nodded, "I've heard of Shal Tul. One of your people's more successful colonies. I didn't know you were involved in Colony work, though, Teeran." Dania shuffled a little to face him.
He gave her a glance that seemed too serious and too sad for the cheerful yet serene man she'd come to know. "It was in the early days of colonization for many peoples, yours included. It...didn't go well."
"Gotcha." Dani schooled her expression to echo surprise, "Oh? I mean, colonization failure is not an uncommon thing though."
He shook his head, his eyes still somewhat haunted, "no, it's not."
"What happened to it? Did it take root?" Dania prodded gently.
Teeran sighed, leaning back in his chair, "it was supposed to be a new start for people and the colony name was quite apt for it, depending on which definition you went with. But it was done in a time where the fledgeling Federation couldn't afford it."
Dania frowned on cue, "a war, I take it?"
Teeran nodded, "I was Celesia at the time, stationed on the Earth ship Nike, as her Chief Medical Officer. I was part of the Interspecies Medical Exchange."
"Impressive, which run as Shard was it for you?" Dania digressed a little, to not make it seem like a grilling.
"She was the first Shard." Another wistful smile. "Young, ambitious, determined and utterly unafraid that she might be the first and last Shard, at the time of the Earth-Romulan War."
Dania chuckled, "that was some accomplishment. I.M.E. and then service on an Earth ship. How was it? I've often wondered how in the Hells we survived before the Federation banded together."
"It was wonderful, and scary at the same time. Sad too, especially when we lost." Teeran sighed, "I've lost so many important things over time...only to find them again, centuries later. Every time, I thought about how the host that lost would have loved to know they were alright. Persephone, the Bozeman, Algonquin Three."
Dania leaned forward a little, her voice lowering as she let her genuine curiosity into this living pillar of history shine through. "You were on the Bozeman? The Bozeman that got lost in Tyken's Rift?"
He gave her a smile finally, "Vysaranne was, yes. It was her first posting out of the Academy in 2273. She'd gotten a transfer to the USS Lysander just weeks before the Bozeman disappeared. She was crushed for a long time, having lost pretty much her first set of friends all in one go. Back then the Federation didn't know about our joined state. It was the CMO of the Bozeman that looked up Shard first, though by the time he'd talked to Captain Bateson, the Shard of the time, Iareth, my previous host before Teeran, had already contacted Bateson, having heard of her return."
"Let me guess, he was a tad floored, huh?" Dania chuckled softly.
Teeran made a gesture of size with his thumb and forefinger, "just a smidge. Eventually though, he was glad Shard was still alive."
"I can imagine that." She said, observing the minuscule changes on the man's face as he spoke. "So that one ended up well. Persephone V is an established, thriving colony, a Federation member to boot. So was it Algonquin Three that didn't go well? I remember reading about that, but she's still up and running there."
Teeran sighed, "it was Algonquin Three actually that ended up resurrecting itself. One of Thoris' daughters was one of the settlers, it was failing so badly the Federation was ready to pull out and declare it defunct. But Aranya, Thoris' youngest was one of the leading agri-scientists who kept at it until they figured out the right way to work the soil to generate enough food to sustain the colony."
Dania nodded, "so what happened with Persephone? I don't remember any particular issues over the years."
He seemed pained when he turned to face her, she knew she wasn't looking at Teeran then, but likely the host that was alive during the Earth-Romulan War, Celesia. "What you know as Persephone V is the second colony. The original Persephone V mission..." he took a deep breath, "was a life boat, last ditch effort to save our civilization...should the war go bad."
She nodded again, "what happened to it?"
"My ship, the Nike was part of a task force sent to stop them...because they had our best and brightest aboard as well as other assets that we needed...to win the war." Regret and sorrow seeped from his words. "The ship escaped and we never heard from them again. Are they out there or did they get destroyed? Who knows."
"We know...At least where they ended up. Question is, are they still there, they had been fifty years ago." Dania thought to herself, remembering the audio file: "Did you know? Did you know and send us anyway?" It was still a question, did they know what?
"You agreed with them though, didn't you?" Dania needed to finish the conversation off in the right fashion.
He raised an eyebrow in a silent question.
"With the life-boat." She clarified.
Teeran shrugged a little, "back then, no. Celesia was all in for the Nike's mission though, so she took it as a somewhat personal failure when the ship ran away. In hindsight, with time and distance, I think the lifeboat was a good idea. There were symbionts on that voyage and through them, the knowledge of my people would have survived. Maybe even found fertile ground to breed new symbionts to facilitate the trill population of the colony."
Dania nodded slowly, "the loss of the symbionts must have been a blow."
"It would have been, yes. Celesia stayed on Earth after her service on the Nike ended, so she didn't have much contact with the homeworld, but again, knowing what I know now, considering how few of us there are, the loss of any is one too many." Shard said.
"I'm sorry I dredged up bad memories, Shard," Dania reached over, placing her hand on his and squeezing gently.
Teeran's thumb ran over Dani's knuckles in response. "It's alright, boss. I rarely go back to those days, and Celesia's emotions just ram me sometimes with their intensity. You couldn't have known."
As he looked up at her and she looked down at him, Dania was struck by the sudden inquisitive, piercing gaze. Did he know? The question sprang up in her mind. Did he knew she'd basically set this conversation up and indirectly made him relieve some bad memories? While he said nothing, and gave no outward indication he suspected anything other than an innocent conversation, the norwegian couldn't help but wonder.
"What were their names? The symbionts. Do you know?" She couldn't help her own curiosity.
Shard shook his head, "I never found out who, nor how many."
Dania nodded, her hand still on his. "We should probably get back to work, hm?"
Teeran grinned, "our evelasting anchor, the job. Yeah."
There was that smile, which made Dania grin in return. "We're hopeless, aren't we?"
"That we are, young Storm. That we are." His words caused them both to laugh heartily.
