Marcus Kane looked at the floor, forcing himself to not raise his eyes to the airlock, or look at the medical apprentice by the door shushing a blanket-wrapped baby. He focused on the quiet humming that was the Ark, attempting to block out the chatter of the other guards. His attempts were all in vain. As soon as Chancellor Drummond entered the room, and the collection of guards lined up at the wall stood at attention, Marcus' training kicked in. He snapped his head up, and looked at the doomed prisoners being escorted in.
His friends.
His best friends.
Thomas and Georgia Newell.
Neither of them looked at him when they entered. They looked towards their daughter, the infant, only a few months old, held by the medical apprentice next to the airlock. The girl who, in a few minutes, would be left an orphan.
Marcus' gaze was pulled from the couple as Councilor Jennings, the man in charge of the Guard and the Ark Justice System, sauntered over to stand next to him. "It's always harder when you know them, Marcus," the large man offered, patting his attaché once on the shoulder.
The younger man shuffled on his feet, ducking his chin in. "With all respect sir," he said, trying to keep the bite out of his voice, "They're more than just people I know, they're like my family." Wringing his hands together, Marcus stepped slightly towards his friends, only to be stopped by Jennings' hand on his collar.
"Don't interfere. You'll only make it worse for yourself, and for them." Marcus bristled, ready to defend his actions to his boss, but there was a sympathetic gleam in the man's usually cold eyes. "If they want to say goodbye, they will. Best to let them do this on their terms."
As much as he hated it, the Councilor's advice rang true. So instead of running to his friends and embracing them one last time, Marcus stayed a step behind the man who had sentenced them, and waited silently with the rest of his peers.
Peers that had come to say goodbye too, to their own boss. Sergeant Thomas Newell, Chief of the Ark Station Guard. Even his boss, the Guard Commander, and most of the Majors were in the room. When Thomas turned his kind green eyes to the crowd, they all snapped a hand to their foreheads. A salute to their commanding officer, their colleague, and their friend.
A friend whose heart was too kind for his job, whose wife also possessed the same warm heart. Whose kindness had been his downfall.
The man -the fugitive- they had harbored, was floated the day before. He had drunkenly tried to attack a member of the guard following his wife's death, due to medical rationing, she had not survived giving birth to their child. The child hadn't survived either. The Newell's had taken pity on the man, and Georgia convinced her husband to hide him in the extra room in their quarters until Thomas could find a way to prevent the guard from pressing charges. But they were found out.
And now they were here.
Thomas was saying farewell to his fellow guards, including the guard who had agreed to let the man off the hook, but not before it was too late. Georgia had given into her tears as she faced her daughter, who had fallen asleep in the apprentice's arms. Her eyes, the same clear, glass green as her fathers, peacefully closed. Marcus was grateful for it. Even though the girl would never remember it, she shouldn't watch this.
Something tightened in his chest when he watched his friend turn away from the guards and towards his daughter, when he saw his friend, the always brave, always strong Sergeant Newell, start to cry. Cry for the daughter he wouldn't get to see grown up. Cry for the girl who would grow up without parents, with the burden of being the child of two criminals on her shoulders.
Thomas's mouth began to move in a silent prayer for his little girl. But while her husband fell apart, Georgia somehow gathered all her remaining strength, and turned to Marcus.
Stepping as close as her guards would let her, she approached him. Her eyes burned with a fire that Marcus had never seen before. "Take her, Kane, please," she didn't let her eyes look to the girl she now spoke about, even as the guards began pulling her and Thomas into the airlock. She continued to yell at him, "Take her! Raise her to be better than this place! To-" a guard pushed her in, the door hissing shut, and she lost her strength.
So did Marcus. He let his tears flow freely as his friends held each other, waiting for the Chancellor to end it. They didn't have to wait long.
Drummond stepped forwards, arms crossed behind his back. He swallowed, "Sergeant Thomas Newell, Georgia Newell. You have been found guilty of harboring a fugitive. In accordance with the Penal Code One, you are hereby sentenced to death. Do you have any last words?"
Thomas clung to his wife, both of them crying, but he managed to look at his daughter one last time. "No, we've said them already."
The Chancellor bit his lip, the only sign of weakness Marcus had ever seen him show. "Very well then," he motioned with a nod of his head, and was joined in front of the airlock by Vera Kane.
Vera smiled at the prisoners, a thin veil of tears clinging to her deep brown eyes. She spread her arms wide, and all in the room bowed their heads. All except Kane, who kept his gaze on his doomed friends as his mother prayed, her voice shaking. "In peace, may you leave this shore. In love, may you find the next. Safe passage on your travels, until our final journey to the ground."
"May we meet again," the final words of the blessing rang loudly, all of those present speaking them together. Then silence fell.
All heads turned to the airlock. Thomas and Georgia, still holding one another, stopped crying and looked out once more at the sea of their friends. A final goodbye.
Chancellor Drummond nodded again, and a guard lifted the cover on the airlock release. A moment of hesitation, and then-
Then they were gone.
The hiss of the doors flying open and a rush of air, and the Newell's lifeless bodies were sucked away into oblivion.
But the room stayed quiet, stayed still. For several minutes, no one moved, no one dared. Then Chancellor Drummond turned, and left. One after another, all those in attendance followed, until only Marcus, Vera, and the medical apprentice remained. The baby was still silent.
The apprentice moved to leave, but was stopped by Vera. She stroked the baby's soft head, only a few curls of brown hair sticking out from beneath her cap. "I'll take her," she whispered, lifting her from the young man's arms. He let go, setting her gently in the old woman's arms, and left.
Vera bounced the baby slightly, gently waking her from her nap, and turned to her son. "Marcus, come here." She extended her arms, beckoning him forward. He complied, anguish twisting his face as he looked down at his friends' orphaned daughter.
His daughter now, he supposed.
Marcus let his mother set the girl in his arms, and he held her tight.
"You'll be good for her," Vera said, pushing his too-long hair out of his face, "and I think she'll be good for you too." Marcus only smiled a little in response, still reeling from watching his friends' death. He let his mother lead him out of the room, through the maze of hallways on the Ark, and back to his quarters. Not once did he take his eyes off the baby in his arms, off her smiling face, blissfully unaware of who she had just lost. Even when his mother left to collect the girl's belongings from the Newell's now vacant quarters he did not look away from her.
She wrested her tiny arms free of the blanket around her, swinging them around to see what they'd find. They found his thumb. Her small fingers held it tight, as if she didn't want to let go.
Marcus Kane cried for the second time then, as he wiggled his thumb that she held, and a quiet, joyful laugh filled the room. He tried to blink back his tears and he brought the baby even closer to him, as he whispered his first words to her, "Hello there, Rachel, welcome home."
Marcus was a better father than anyone expected. The way he saw it, he wasn't just caring for the little girl he had come to love so much, he was also honoring his friend's memories in the best way that he could. So he devoted all the time he could to personally caring for his new daughter, even carrying her to many council meetings and training sessions in a sling his mother had made for him. When he couldn't have her along with him, he only trusted a select few with her care.
Vera was the most common of the babysitters, since she was after all the girl's new grandmother. When she had Rachel, she often made sure to bring her to the Eden Tree, and to tell her the story of the Ark, and how they would one day return to the ground. When Rachel got old enough, Vera even convinced the headstrong young girl to be the Tender of the Tree. "Three generations of our family," Vera marveled as she and Marcus watched Rachel's first service together, one of the last that he attended (due to his election to the council shortly after, he claimed). Sadly for Vera, the energetic young girl soon lost interest in being the Tender, But even though her father never came with her, Rachel never stopped attending services.
Marcus' best friend also took a good chunk of the babysitting, since he also had a child who was only a few months older than her, and he too had been close with Rachel's parents. So Nathan Miller became Rachel's best friend, nearly a brother, and Sergeant Miller became like a second father. The two children were inseparable, and notoriously mischievous when they were together. They were often caught trying to sneak out of quarters to watch the moonrise, to follow their fathers into meetings, or to get a midnight snack, even when it was hours past their curfew. The two did however, learn to channel their excess energy when Sergeant Miller, with Marcus' eager permission, started training them to fight in private lessons, preparing them early on to follow in their father's footsteps.
Rachel was looked after by several other people when either Vera or Sergeant Miller wasn't available, but she was more often than not, under her own father's care. As she grew up, Marcus made sure to supplement her school learning with his own lessons in weapons combat and strategy, he brought her books on philosophy and on the history of war on Earth. He did everything in his power to make sure that his daughter would be as prepared as she could be to take on whatever challenges the world would throw at her once he was gone. Marcus wasn't, however, a remarkably strict parent, he actually spoiled Rachel quite a bit, using all of his resources as a Councilor's attache and later as a Councilman to make sure that his daughter never wanted for anything.
And so Rachel Newell-Kane (she opted to assume both names when Marcus offered her a choice) grew up an extraordinarily happy child.
