Title: Regrets…I've had a few
Author: sth1981
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Episode 3.21
Summary: John's POV after the events of episode 3.21
Notes: Those who do not wish to be spoiled for the final 4 episodes of Season 3 should not be reading this story, cuz it will give away some of what has happened in episode 3.21.
***
What I have done was by far the most difficult thing I've ever had to do in my entire life.
When had it come to this point? When…but more importantly: how had it come to this point and why? It was difficult to believe that everything that had happened to me in the past three years had been leading to that one moment. Had it been my decision to make in the first place? What gave me the right to decide who was going to live and who was going to die?
Did the needs and safety of the many outweigh the needs of the few?
I'll never forget Scorpius standing in the distance surrounded by the fires and the look in his eyes. It had been the look of a man who had lost everything and I am the one who had been responsible for it The hangar looked like a scene from a war movie, where the surroundings had been bombed to hell. I could only watch as Scorpy walked away from me and disappeared into vastness of the surrounding smoke: a broken man from whom I had taken away his only chance of vengeance on the Scarrans. Yeah…John Crichton has finally gotten his revenge, but the taste it has left behind is a bitter one.
Wormholes.
Scorpius' had been obsessed with them as I myself have been. The difference between the two of them was that the Scarran-Sebacean hybrid had sought to use it as a weapon against the Scarrans and I instead had sought the wormhole knowledge to find a way back to Earth. Should the wormhole knowledge end up in the wrong hands the consequences could become catastrophic, which was why I had come aboard Scorpius' command carrier under the guise of helping Scorpius with his wormhole research all the while I was actually trying to kill it from the inside.
It seemed an easy enough plan when the thought of it first entered my brain, but like always things got complicated…
Why couldn't it ever just be easy?
Scorpius had begun to suspect that I was deliberately stalling him and he decided to kick the crap kicked out of me. Laying face down on the table and spitting blood, Scorpius forced me to look at the display in front of him and me. Imagine my surprise as I saw some very familiar continents pass by. At first I thought he was faking it, but Scorpy told me that my eyes weren't deceiving me. The planet turning around on the display was indeed Earth and he was quick to add that Earth was just 60 cycles away from where I am now.
That's where the threat came in…
If I didn't start cooperating, he would keep me alive long enough to see Earth destroyed. It wasn't because Earth and humankind mattered to him, but because it mattered to me. Right then and there I decided that my first plan to simply sabotage the research wouldn't be sufficient enough. It was necessary to switch to a more drastic plan and if I had to pick a choice between the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans, I would still choose neither. Sparky had been right when he said that no one should be able to wield such power as wormhole technology…even if the Peacekeepers were the lesser evil of the two.
So with plan A left laying in the garbage can, plan B entered the playing field: I was going to blow up the Peacekeeper command carrier. All of Scorpy's data was on that ship. He had retrofitted the entire hull into a repeater necessary to stabilize a wormhole. Hell…the whole command carrier was Scorpy's entire damn wormhole project.
What was the problem with my plan? Well…for instance that there were more than 50.000 men, women and children living aboard the command carrier. I needed to find a way to get all those people off the ship before I destroyed it and *that* was easier said than done.
But sticking a banana in the exhaust pipe or simply throwing a few switches would not be able to destroy the command carrier. We needed another way to blow it up. In the end I wasn't the one to come up with the solution for our problem. It had been Crais. He had proposed that he and Talyn would starburst while inside the hangar of the command carrier, causing the command carrier to collapse upon itself: outer decks first and central core last. It would take half an arn to fully collapse, giving most of the carrier's crew enough time to escape.
The plan had succeeded.
Yeah…millions of lives have been saved by our actions, but in doing so others had paid for it with their lives: the people who had been unable to escape the command carrier, Crais and Talyn. I feel horrible for having made the decision and I keep going over and over it again in my mind. Should I have helped Scorpius and the Peacekeepers? Did I do the right thing? Could I have come up with a better plan so that less people or no one would have died?
Regrets…
Yeah, I've had a few.
~The End~
Author: sth1981
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Episode 3.21
Summary: John's POV after the events of episode 3.21
Notes: Those who do not wish to be spoiled for the final 4 episodes of Season 3 should not be reading this story, cuz it will give away some of what has happened in episode 3.21.
***
What I have done was by far the most difficult thing I've ever had to do in my entire life.
When had it come to this point? When…but more importantly: how had it come to this point and why? It was difficult to believe that everything that had happened to me in the past three years had been leading to that one moment. Had it been my decision to make in the first place? What gave me the right to decide who was going to live and who was going to die?
Did the needs and safety of the many outweigh the needs of the few?
I'll never forget Scorpius standing in the distance surrounded by the fires and the look in his eyes. It had been the look of a man who had lost everything and I am the one who had been responsible for it The hangar looked like a scene from a war movie, where the surroundings had been bombed to hell. I could only watch as Scorpy walked away from me and disappeared into vastness of the surrounding smoke: a broken man from whom I had taken away his only chance of vengeance on the Scarrans. Yeah…John Crichton has finally gotten his revenge, but the taste it has left behind is a bitter one.
Wormholes.
Scorpius' had been obsessed with them as I myself have been. The difference between the two of them was that the Scarran-Sebacean hybrid had sought to use it as a weapon against the Scarrans and I instead had sought the wormhole knowledge to find a way back to Earth. Should the wormhole knowledge end up in the wrong hands the consequences could become catastrophic, which was why I had come aboard Scorpius' command carrier under the guise of helping Scorpius with his wormhole research all the while I was actually trying to kill it from the inside.
It seemed an easy enough plan when the thought of it first entered my brain, but like always things got complicated…
Why couldn't it ever just be easy?
Scorpius had begun to suspect that I was deliberately stalling him and he decided to kick the crap kicked out of me. Laying face down on the table and spitting blood, Scorpius forced me to look at the display in front of him and me. Imagine my surprise as I saw some very familiar continents pass by. At first I thought he was faking it, but Scorpy told me that my eyes weren't deceiving me. The planet turning around on the display was indeed Earth and he was quick to add that Earth was just 60 cycles away from where I am now.
That's where the threat came in…
If I didn't start cooperating, he would keep me alive long enough to see Earth destroyed. It wasn't because Earth and humankind mattered to him, but because it mattered to me. Right then and there I decided that my first plan to simply sabotage the research wouldn't be sufficient enough. It was necessary to switch to a more drastic plan and if I had to pick a choice between the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans, I would still choose neither. Sparky had been right when he said that no one should be able to wield such power as wormhole technology…even if the Peacekeepers were the lesser evil of the two.
So with plan A left laying in the garbage can, plan B entered the playing field: I was going to blow up the Peacekeeper command carrier. All of Scorpy's data was on that ship. He had retrofitted the entire hull into a repeater necessary to stabilize a wormhole. Hell…the whole command carrier was Scorpy's entire damn wormhole project.
What was the problem with my plan? Well…for instance that there were more than 50.000 men, women and children living aboard the command carrier. I needed to find a way to get all those people off the ship before I destroyed it and *that* was easier said than done.
But sticking a banana in the exhaust pipe or simply throwing a few switches would not be able to destroy the command carrier. We needed another way to blow it up. In the end I wasn't the one to come up with the solution for our problem. It had been Crais. He had proposed that he and Talyn would starburst while inside the hangar of the command carrier, causing the command carrier to collapse upon itself: outer decks first and central core last. It would take half an arn to fully collapse, giving most of the carrier's crew enough time to escape.
The plan had succeeded.
Yeah…millions of lives have been saved by our actions, but in doing so others had paid for it with their lives: the people who had been unable to escape the command carrier, Crais and Talyn. I feel horrible for having made the decision and I keep going over and over it again in my mind. Should I have helped Scorpius and the Peacekeepers? Did I do the right thing? Could I have come up with a better plan so that less people or no one would have died?
Regrets…
Yeah, I've had a few.
~The End~