Disclaimer: I don't own seaQuest in any of its forms, if I did, Brody wouldn't have died!
**Originally, this story was written as a songfic, but due to the rules surrounding songfics on this site, I have taken those lyrics out. In lieu of them, I encourage you to look up the lyrics to "Those Nights" By Skillet, as this story was based on that song, or to search the song and YouTube and listen to it. For this song/story combination in particular, I feel it is needed, and am saddened to have to take the lyrics out of this here.**
Those Nights
Lieutenant Wolenczak glanced around the room one last time. This is where he'd won the poker game against Tony for the top bunk some amount of years ago (five, or fifteen? It depended on who was counting) with the help of Dr. Smith.
Dr. Smith.
Just another person lost.
He resigned himself to a small frown but otherwise left his expression open to question. The past was fleeting and malleable, and now this room, Tony, Wendy and the seaQuest all were now part of that past. For him, at least.
Lucas shut the door and began walking. He didn't stop or speed up his pace, but kept it steady. He was afraid that if he stopped or ended up at his last destination too quickly that he'd either never be able to get going again or never be able to forgive himself.
The war was over. The one with Macronesia. But so much was already lost. The seaQuest was just another one of those things tacked on to the list.
He'd be the last to evacuate, although truth be told, he only barely considered leaving in the first place. He had made a promise to Bridger, though, and he was determined to keep it.
As he made his way to the Stinger, his own choice for transportation away from the only place he'd ever really considered home—especially since coming back from Hyperion—, Lucas kept his mind shut off.
The war was won. That became the mantra in his mind.
So why, then, did seaQuest have to lose?
The question pushed the mantra out of the picture, swarming his mind and filling it with doubt and anger.
The war was won. But Bourne got the last laugh.
That was the only answer.
As he sailed quickly away from the now burning seaQuest, Lucas' mind was filled only with memories of the times he'd spent aboard the boat, back before Macronesia and Captain Hudson. Before Hyperion and ten years in stasis. Before Commander Ford forced him and Dagwood onto the lifeboat and back before they had any inclination that the seaQuest would travel through space.
His memories finally stopped and held onto the time Krieg brought the squid poo onto the seaQuest, when he'd convinced Lucas and the others to help him. He smiled as he remembered Krieg's face when Dr. Westphalen told him it wasn't a glowing rock, but bioluminescent squid poo.
He held onto the memory, putting the Stinger into overdrive, setting course for the rendezvous point where he'd meet up with the rest of the seaQuest crew.
Lucas promised to rename it the Gazelle the first chance he got.
Ensign Wolenczak restrained himself from doing a double-take at the orders on the letter he held in his hands. "You can't be serious."
"Have you ever known me to be anything but?" Hudson challenged.
Lucas bit back the response he would have given twelve (two?) years ago had he still been nineteen and had Hudson been Bridger. Instead he replied with, "Well, no, sir but—"
"But what?"
"I screwed up a lot, sir. Self-admittedly."
"And you've made up for it," Hudson argued.
Still, something about this didn't sit right with the young Ensign. Self-deprecation didn't seem to be working in getting his point across, so he decided to try a different tactic. "With all due respect, Captain… what's the catch?"
Hudson took a deep breath, leaning forward in his seat so that his elbows met his desk. "Well now that you phrase it that way…"
I knew it. There's no way they'd promote me this quickly if it was based on only merit alone.
The Captain pulled another sheet of paper out of the file on his desk and handed it to Lucas. As the Ensign began to look it over, Hudson continued, saying, "The rank promotion was due to the need for you to have security clearance."
"I thought mine was already pretty high considering seaQuest and all…"
"And unofficially you could have any clearance you wanted thanks to your skills," the Captain pointed out. Lucas cringed. "Consider this the legal way to obtain what you need—or want—now."
Lucas looked over the file, scanning for some idea of why he needed to be promoted in order to obtain clearance to look at these.
And then he found it. He looked up to the Captain quickly, asking once more, "You can't be serious, sir."
"Those are your orders. Take them or go AWOL. Your choice."
Lucas looked down to the paper again, trying not to frown.
"It's not that I can't do it, Captain," Lucas said. Three weeks had passed since his promotion went through and he had begun to work on his new project. "I just' don't know—""Then what is the problem?" he asked. "You worked under Dr. Westphalen. You worked with Bridger to solve the biologics problem not too long ago. What is the problem now?" His tone suggested he was less than happy with his Lieutenant.
"What you're asking me to do, what the UEO is asking—"
"I thought you learned your lesson about chain of command a long time ago, Lieutenant."
Lucas' jaw clenched. He wanted to express his concerns without all this red tape bullshit. He had to take a stand. He had to let Hudson know where he stood on this.
"Permission to speak freely, sir?"
"You already are, Lieutenant. Spit it out."
"I understand that you're under extreme pressure due to the escalation of the war with Macronesia," Lucas ventured slowly. "I also understand that you are not as forgiving with disagreements with your officers as some Captains have been in the past." That jab was intended. Bridger would have listened. "But you need to understand the repercussions of what the UEO is asking me to do. If you support this, even to end this war, you're supporting a possibly genocide. I want to go on record disagreeing with this decision."
"So you can do it, then?" Hudson asked.
Dammit. Why wouldn't he just give Lucas a break here? "Yes, I can do it," he said firmly. "But I don't want to, and I do not think this is the right move."
"I'll put you on record as such, Lieutenant. Just know that if you don't choose to follow through, it'll be seen as treasonous and I cannot and will not protect you from it."
"No, obviously not, sir," he said under his breath. "Permission to leave, sir? To get back to my work?"
"Permission granted."
Lucas turned and started to leave. He made it halfway to the door before Hudson said, "And Mr. Wolenczak?"
He stopped and looked back to the Captain, determined to say nothing further.
"We're at war," Hudson told him. "You're a soldier. You signed up for this of your own free will and so you knew what you were getting yourself into. These are you orders. You follow them, no questions asked."
"With all due respect, sir, I didn't sign up to take out forty percent or more of the human race. And the fact that the UEO is willing to risk that and more just to end this war before President Bourne can destroy what's left of this planet is completely absurd."
With that, he left.
Lucas held the sealed vial up to his eye level, staring at it. He thought it was interesting that such a small amount of liquid could start an epidemic. Of course, all UEO citizens had already recently been vaccinated. And, as far as he knew (as as far as he was promised), at least some of the Macronesian civilians had also been inoculated against it. Lucas had managed to work with outside sources to manufacture the disease to a less lethal form. It wouldn't kill, but it would still decimate the economy and most of the social structure of Macronesia—enough to end the war with the same impact, although less loss of life, as the atom bomb did when the United States dropped two of them on Japan to end WWII.
It was enough to defy orders by doing this, but he was hoping that in the end, the UEO wouldn't see it that way. His conscious wouldn't be able to hold the weight of genocide, and so he wouldn't allow it to get that far. He'd rather face his chances at a UEO prison that incite an epidemic of deadly proportions.
How did he get to this point? How long had it been since he was merely just the Chief Computer Analyst who sometimes got to help out the science contingent on sea-Deck? How long had it been since his last poker game with Tony, Miguel and Tim? How long had it been since his last swim with Darwin, his last science project with Dr. Westphalen? How long since he taught Darwin new words or gotten a new e-mail from Wolfman?
He shut his eyes and put the vial down slowly, reminding himself this was a new world now.
That Franky no longer and could no longer exist.
The War is Won.
That's what the headline read when it hit the masses. It didn't detail the fact that the UEO played an instrumental role in ending the war, though. It merely credited a "sudden outbreak of a non-lethal outbreak of disease" to causing Macronesia to surrender.
Lucas though it was pathetic. After all they did, the least the UEO could do was cite themselves, or even Lucas himself, as the man behind the curtain. He knew people were questioning how such a disease could make a reappearance without starting such a lethal epidemic that the world would barely know what hit it, but he kept his head held low.
If they hadn't questioned it yet, it was likely that they ever would.
It was three days after Macronesia surrendered that the UEO submarine seaQuest DSV 4600 was hit with a torpedo that ripped through the engineering deck, setting off a slow burn of the reactor that powered her.
The war was one, but Bourne got the last laugh.
The seaQuest sank with no loss of life but her own.
END
A/N: So I don't really know where this came from. I realize it's kind of depressing. I more or less just felt like writing for the first time in a while, and this is what came out. I highly doubt this is how it would have ended had Season 3 got an ending, or if the show were allowed the time to end the war in general. I also highly doubt the UEO would have resorted to biological warfare (although it seems I'm attracted to this idea, since I did the same thing in On It, huh?). Still, *shrugs* this is what came out. It is what it is. I'll get back to writing normal stuff, soon. Til then, I hope you all enjoyed this random one-shot!