TEST DRIVE #6 - The Bridge and Ten Forward

[ten_fwd_mods]

Option 01. Ten Forward: The first thing you see is a bar. A large, lively bar filled with many different faces and many different smells, sights and sounds. This is Ten Forward, the Enterprise's off-duty lounge; feel free to get acquainted with your fellow travelers and try to find somebody who's in charge: this is your new home now, after all...





Option 02. The Bridge: Well, aren't you a lucky duck? You've found yourself in hallowed quarters. Wherever you were before, you're not there anymore. Now you're in a room that could be some kind of command center or control room; there's a captain's chair flanked by seats for his chief officers, computer panels and stations at each interior wall, and before you a broad viewscreen that shows the wide expanse of space rushing towards you. Have you ever wanted to be a starship captain for a day? Well, here's your chance. Feel free to roam around, but try not to touch anything shiny.


[OOC: The Bridge isn't usually available for in-game posts, so if you've ever wanted to play there, here's your chance!]

Comments

[dreams_dont_die]

He'd known, on some level, that it would be impossible for Gaheris not to notice the difference. They'd been the closest of friends. Gaheris had been the man Dylan chose to have at his back, at his side. The man he trusted with his life, with his ship, with his crew. He'd been going to be Dylan's best man.

Now he was the man Dylan blamed for ruining his life.

(Yet ... he still kept a photograph of the two of them in his quarters on the Andromeda.)

What would happen, if he told Gaheris the honest answer to his question, the result of the uprising? Could he stop it, or win Gaheris over? Did he have the right to even try? Could Gaheris see sense, see that what he was doing was setting the Known Worlds up for three hundred years of chaos?

At Witchhead, he'd decided to maintain the timeline, whatever the cost, because no other option had been better. Because nothing was certain except what had happened.

What had happened was that the man walking beside him had plotted against him and everything he stood for. Had shot one of his friends in front of him, sabotaged his ship, and tried to kill him.

Yet here he was, acting as if they were friends, when Gaheris had been planning to betray him for years.

Dylan paused, for a moment, then, very slowly, drew his force lance.

"The last time I saw you, you sabotaged my ship and tried to kill me."

[truth_is_cold]

Gaheris set his chiseled jaw hard, hands clutched behind his back for the time being. But his eyes had strayed from Dylan's face to his elbow, watching what he was about to do with that force lance. It was obvious that he wasn't about to take chances, not really.

But still he was reluctant, at this point, to pull his weapon on his friend.

"Put it away. We're not aboard the Andromeda and it would do no good here. Revenge is my prerogative, not yours." He didn't move. Not a hair. Not an inch. Not a sigh. Not a breath beyond what he needed to make words. He was intent and ready for defense.

"And I don't suspect anything that I say about what hasn't happened yet-" what he wasn't even sure he wanted to happen "-will matter to you now. I can tell from the look on your face." So, with that, he let his gaze slip up to Dylan's face. And then he did what would otherwise be unthinkable. He almost needed to see if, whatever had been done, had actually broken Dylan.

"Put it away or shoot me in the back. It's your call." And with his hands still clasped behind his back he turned on him to continue down the corridor. But it made him grind his teeth, a risk that rubbed him the wrong way and ate at him. He was a fool, an idiot. If he shot him in the back for such a moronic risk he would deserve to be removed from the gene pool.

If he didn't, at least he would have given the man he betrayed his space. Because despite some Nietzschean traits, Dylan wasn't Nietzschean. He wouldn't understand, and he didn't think he would be able to explain it.

[dreams_dont_die]

Dylan, like any soldier, knew better than to pull a weapon he's not prepared to use. That didn't mean he was about to shoot.

It did mean that if Gaheris made just one move that made Dylan think he was in for a repeat performance, he would.

He'd shot Gaheris. They'd fought on the command deck of the Andromeda with Dawn's body still slumped in the pilot's chair. He'd held Gaheris while he died as a battle raged around them and as everything he knew and believed in started to fall apart. Somewhere, inside, where he almost never let it show, even to himself, he hated himself for that almost as much as he'd hated Gaheris, at times, for what he'd done.

Though Dylan's stare was harder than Gaheris had once been used to seeing and his hand was perfectly steady on his weapon, Gaheris was, of course, right.

Dylan was never a man who could shoot someone cold as he walked away, offering no immediate threat and with no weapon in his hand. Not even if it could change history. If he ever became that man, he'd have crossed a line he never wanted to cross.

Still, for almost nobody else would he, in that moment, have slid the force lance back into its holster. Gaheris had always had a way of speaking as if whatever he suggested was the only logical option and anyone else, including Dylan, was a fool for thinking otherwise.

This time, he was right. But it took a lot for a Nietzschean, especially one as paranoid as Gaheris, to deliberately turn his back on a man with a weapon drawn on him. It was a simple, potent move, and it called a bluff Dylan hadn't really meant to play.

"You know I can't," he said, one small concession to that fact.

[truth_is_cold]

He stalled toward the end of the corridor, and looked back to Dylan.

"No, I don't." Because if he knew that for sure, then why was Dylan standing there and looking at him that way. He didn't want to ask, because he knew that- even if he wished for his failure, hearing about it would set such a sick sense of disgust with himself it would be intolerable. And even that would be repulsive because no Neitzschean should hold themselves in contempt.

Gaheris didn't. He didn't want to, either.

Any sort of parting words, even temporary, seemed inappropriate for the moment. So he continued on after that, in search of some crew that could give him more information.