[ussbansheec] Eavesdropping

From: Andy Maluhia <CaptainAndy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: ussbansheec@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 06 Sep 2005 12:58:19 -0400

*_Eavesdropping_* by Joshua McEntire, JD Garrity, Li Zachan Kabuki, James McEntire, & Moria McEntire-McKenna JoshieMac paced angrily as his brother James and cousin JD scanned again for his uncle's missing shuttle. How could they have been so stupid? His father had regaled them time and again with tales of his uncle's ability to think outside the box and accomplish whatever needed to be done despite remarkable odds. How had they thought, given the tools they'd left to him without a second thought, to keep him still once they'd shown him what was at stake? He'd taken quite a tongue-lashing from Grace when he'd told her of the escape, though he'd gotten off easy by comparison to the officer guarding the shuttle. Still, he suspected they'd both be let off easier than Grace herself would be once she informed the captain of the Avalon, who she was on her way to speak with this very moment, that they had lost his chief engineer. Zachan's usual light hearted bounce changed to a purposeful stride as he entered Engineering. He had all his temporal mechanics information on a heavy duty PADD and his own ideas buzzing around his head. "Whatcha got so far, Joshie?" "Not a goddamned thing," Joshie growled, frowning. "Jaimo? JD? Anything?" "Go fishing?" Zachan asked. At the odd looks, he shrugged, making his earring shake. "You know..throw out a line and see what you catch?"

"I swear, this guy is slipperier than an eel," James muttered. "Remember what dad said. Swore all the guy needed to make whatever you needed to have happen was chewing gum and bailing wire. Just our dumb luck we made sure he had them." Joshie's frown deepened. "How the hell did he just disappear? Even with a cloak, there should have been an ion trail or something. I'm not finding anything." Zachan pinched the bridge of his nose and closed bright blue eyes. "No cookies...no crumbs. If you have no power then you don't leave a trail." "Okay..but we should still read distortion," Joshie muttered, searching yet again and coming up blank. So he's either recalibrated his cloak and shield to hide from ours, which I'm not sure can be done, or he's actually completely vanished, which I'm sure can't be done. Okay, Zachan...fishing...what do we use for bait?" "You tell me. I've heard the same stories you guys have but you must have better insights. How do you bribe a guy who can't be bribed?" "Oh, yeah." Joshie grumbled. "We've got such great insight, we showed him what would be lost if the future were altered, then push him to do it anyway, as if that'd work. And of course, never once consider he might decide to take curtain number two and try to keep the fucking thing intact. Sure, Z-man...we're freaking geniuses, the lot of us." "I don't know about Z, but J&J were dropped on their heads." Moria piped in from the doorway. Then she simply added. "Annabelle." "How are we supposed to get Mom on the ship?" JD snapped. "And why would I want to subject her to the pain of losing him again?" "Fish...bigger fish..." Zachan had developed the habit of thinking out loud. He blinked blue eyes them again. "Whose a bigger fish than him?" Moria chewed her lip. "I talked to my Mum, why can't we talk to yours? Use her as bait. Get her to talk to Uncle Josh." Turning to look at Z she answered, "Ketchum. Grace and Andy just left to speak with him." JoshieMac winced at the thought and muttered "I don't envy them that discussion..." even as JD whirled on them. "You can't ask her to do that! Don't you remember how much losing him hurt her? You can't use her that way...if he doesn't come back then she'll be sure it was because he didn't love her enough to, don't you see that?" He glared hard from one to the next. "You are not asking my mother to do this." "Ease up, guys," Zachan said, seeking to make peace as usual, "Mo's got a good idea. He can blow off kids but he can't blow off the boss." "Which boss? His Captain or his wife?" Moria asked with a smirk. She knew JD was upset, so she didn't say anything about his rant. JD's eyes narrowed at MoMo. "...his captain..." he clarified clearly. Zachan placed a warm hand on the younger man's shoulder. He wasn't going to repeat the fact that Uncle Josh said he wouldn't go back to her if it would hurt them.

Moria held up her hands. "Take it down a notch, JD."

"By the way, Mo, I was never dropped on my head. My weirdness is all Celestial," Zachan said, still frowning in his attempts to ponder a solution. "Too bad we don't know how to contact this Ketchum character."

"Sure we do," JoshieMac responded absently, still absorbed in the search on his screen. "But who's to say that the minute Grace told him of Uncle's disappearance, assuming they've gotten that far in the conversation, he didn't come up with the idea to look on his own. In the few communications between the two ships he's taken part in, he didn't strike me as a fool. If he's got any ideas we can rest assured he'll try them."

"My scientific soul says it would like to be sure that's being done," Zachan told him.

"Okay..."Joshie answered slowly, bringing up the surveillance in Grace's ready room so that they could monitor the situation between Grace and Ketchum. After monitoring a moment, Joshie frowned. "Damn it...they're not there...hang on..." He began coding in a security query then swore a blue streak before informing them. "They've gone over to the Avvy! After all that bullshit about keeping history at a distance and not contaminating the timeline any further, they've gone directly over to commune with our past and shit. Who the hell's harebrained, halfwit dumb ass idea was that? I mean...as if we hadn't fucked things up enough already, let's just go over there and see if we can screw the past up further? Maybe Grace can visit her mom or her long lost aunt and just FUCK HER HEAD UP TOO? What the hell...." He continued swearing and seething in this manner as he called up all the historical data on the Avalon, locating her security codes, and tapped into Ketchum's ready room, determined that they should be aware how things were progressing.

"And breathe," James said with a smirk.  "Who's going over with her?"

Moria shook her head. "Joshie's spent to much time being my brother." Looking at the screen she hissed softly. "It's Andy."

James flinched. "Fuck, he'd better come back." His eyes met Moria's for the briefest moment and he frowned. He'd made his peace with Andy, he wanted the guy to be there for his little sister.

"He will, James, don't worry." Moria said softly.

"I know too many more celestial people," Zachan said quietly, his hand making a gesture his father used. "Andy's coming home and JD's dad is going home to be his dad. I won't take anything less."

"Then we're going home." Moria added. /Please let us be able to go home. / // JD was no longer listening to the others as he scanned and rescanned the area frantically. He wasn't sure what he wanted to do more - scream or cry. How had they come to this? In trying to talk his father into following his first instinct and returning to his own ship, they had proven to him why he couldn't. Had it always been so? Had his interference always been the reason his father had never come home? Was fate really capable of so cruel and vicious an irony?

Spying the boy's expression, JoshieMac placed a hand gently on his shoulder, reassuring him quietly. "Don't worry, kiddo. We'll find him." /God, please let that be true.../

"Hey, come on, little man," James attempted to soothe. It felt awkward coming out of him, he was more the pick up the pieces afterward sort, rather than the deal with it as it happens sort, that was what Victoria was for. "How about we try a different algorithm." Stepping up, he started adding things to the boy's scans, not actually getting anywhere, but hoping that if they at least tried, JD would feel better.

Watching the video feed of Grace's meeting on the Avalon, Moria blinked. "Did you guys hear what I just heard?"

"No," Zachan said softly.  "We are going home."

Sighing Moria moved over to another screen and called up the section of the feed she'd just heard and played it for the others.

/Grace read over the PADD and sighed deeply. "Your telling me that not only are we 40 years in the past, but we're in the wrong reality?" / // /"That's what it appears. Based on our timeline, your ship was monitoring the Solar Flare of Timericus. And it could have been worse, this could have been a mirror universe or one that war had destroyed almost everything. At least this is probably close to what it was.. is.. well, you get the picture. Two things that need to occur, one in rather short order, locate Mr. Garrity, and then two, we try to get you home."/

Looking at her brothers and cousin she pointed to the screen.

JD paled, looking stricken. "He's out there because of us...because of me." his voice was filled with grief." I can't find him...I keep...I've modulated the sensors every way I can think of...he's just gone. He's not supposed to be out there...we're not supposed to be here...we did this..." His voice seemed to fade as he paled further, the guilt hitting hard,"Is this where their timeline and ours diverged before...when I interfered? Did we always lose him because of me?" He looked at each of them in turn, as if believing one of them could possibly have the answer.

"Didn't you hear the manny?" James said, putting a gentle hand on JD's back. "In their reality, this never happened. In their reality, we're miles from here. We had nothing to do with it the first time around, not in their reality. And not in ours. In ours, Uncle Josh just never came back. I mean... does any of you actually remember your parents telling you about an invasion? Mum never said anything to me and neither did Dad. Z, did your Mum say anything about you being born when there was fighting outside in the hall? Coz, quite frankly, that's one hell of a story and I'd have liked to hear it. But I never ever have, have you?"

"I heard him," JD mumbled, unable to face them anymore. "He was surprised my father wasn't with Grace. He was supposed to be. His report didn't tell him he'd disappear...or where to find him."

"Mom and Dad never said a thing about my being born in anything other than the usual times, just that I was the first Avalon kid. Mom would never talk about Uncle Josh. It made her cry and even Dad was very vague about things," Zachan finally said.

"Can we broadcast this?" Moria asked. "Send it out and maybe he'd pick it up? We got to let him know that by going back he doesn't mess up our lives."

"Well, I could try that but you never like what I do to stuff to make it work, Mo," Zachan said mildly.

Moria rolled her eyes. "I'll make an exception this time, Z. She might not be 'our' Aunt Belle, but there is a Belle Garrity over there who needs him, plus the us from this time line."

"Sorry, James," Zachan said as he took off his jacket. Work like this required a bit of elbow room. He pried off the panel cover in front of him and stared intently. Reaching over into his jacket pocket, he took out a small thin tool and touched it to a resistor. It sent out a slight spark but it also forced misbehaving comm relays into broadcasting where they weren't supposed to. "That ought to have the comm open on frequencies you'd never expect."

"Send the message, Bro," Moria told James.

Taking the recording that Mo had made of that tiny piece of very vital information and looping it, he sent it through the relays Zachan had set up. Smiling at his own foolishness and knowing none of his family would understand, he sent the message along with a tiny prayer to whoever was listening. Oh God, he thought, if you really can hear me, send him home. Then he sat back and nodded to everyone. "All done, just gotta keep our fingers crossed now."

[ussbansheec] Eavesdropping

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