There's a picture-- you've probably seen it. The day we got back to Deep Space Nine. Captain Sisko himself asked Admiral Ross if he could give us our medals. Me, Tim, Alri and all the sergeants --even those no longer among us physically-- were given the Order of Starfleet. Yeah, it sounds shiny, but it meant nothing. First off, everyone thought it was a photo-op for the Emissary. And second, all it meant was that we were getting more stuff to hang on our chests come dress-uniform time. I got me another pip, too-- half-filled. Lieutenant Commander Sean Patrick Dixon. Had a certain ring to it, I thought.

We all got a month leave on Bajor. We took out a place in Rekantha province, about the same time as the Dominion was talking the Breen into the war. The whole regiment bunkered down there. They weren't going to break us up. No regiment that well adjusted could split now. Went against Starfleet's way. We couldn't conduct this war back to front. We became closer than ever after Kalandra. We took to calling it "Big K", or "Jemmygrad". Corny started writing songs and stuff, making us --me, Julia, Marianne, Tim, Alri-- all out into heroes. Passed the time. We were just glad for green fields that didn't have Jemmy in them.

But joy only went so far-- duty carried the rest of the way. We shipped a lot of bodies home. I stopped counting the letters I wrote. I stopped counting the tears I shed. God, how I wanted them all back. Even the ones I hadn't known that well. McClellan had been in my lines for all of a month before we touched down on Kalandra. Will Ulrich hadn't even lasted a week. He volunteered.

Marianne came with us. She told her CO, in no uncertain terms, that either she got the time off or I'd be spending my leave at a starbase-- whatever one they chose to send her to for detention after they charged her for absence without leave. I pulled some strings with the T-child command crew. It wasn't like she was chief of anything.

Didn't realize then, but it was the second time I saved Marianne's life. The Dominion came back at the Seventh and Third Fleet, with their new friends the Breen. T-child was there. Didn't make it back. Breen weapons crippled her, and she had to abandon ship. A hundred dead. Mostly from the lower decks. And one less Akira-classer in the Fleet.

Defiant went down there, too. Sisko was there-- he gave the abandon-ship order on Defiant. He was a nice guy: nice enough to me, anyway. We talked a bit, at the reception after the ceremony. He mostly talked about AR-558 and a couple other worlds he'd seen combat on, trying to trade taps with me. Seemed like a decent guy to me, even if he was a starboy. If I'd known then that he was going to buy it on Bajor, I would've said more. I just wanted to make my face to Admiral Ross, meet Worf, shake hands with their Chief O'Brien, who'd been on the Rutledge. That sort of thing. After all, Marianne had a celebration all our own waiting for me, and I wouldn't have missed that for all the admirals in the Alliance.

I tried to get in touch with Renalla when her homeworld fell. She was a Lieutenant Commander herself now, I saw in her duty record, out with the 313th, a battalion commander. But she was off on classified duties. No word as to how to contact her.

They rustled the Two-Oh back into service, though, aboard Challenger, before long. We had fresh ranks, so they put us in training on DS9 for three weeks. Challenger was in for some repairs-- she'd made it out of Chin'toka, limping on impulse with a Klingon escort. Klingons were doing all the fighting now, so they didn't mind us using a Galaxy-classer as our personal training ground.

The Galaxy-classer changed a lot over the course of the war. Time was they were cruise ships with rings of phasers. But now they were talking about fitting warp nacelles and a smaller reactor into the saucer section, talking about additional crew accommodations and dedicated use as a troopship. They modified the emergency transporter rooms into troop transports, changed the huge officers' quarters into more sensible double-bunked marine housings. I talked them into letting Marianne into the troop transporter staff. She had experience, after all.

We made two drops. One was a cleanup operation against elements of Tenth Order. We lost three of the new people. I tightened up operations. David Emerson got back in the line-- he requested Fourth Battalion specifically. I put him in at Sergeant First Class. His new bionic arm was just as good as the old. Rachel Pratt was his medic. I made sure they got kept together.

It was about that time, before Challenger got orders, that I ran into Colonel Kira on the Promenade after duties. She was linked --pardon the pun-- arm in arm with Constable Odo.

She recognized me first, admittedly. "Lieutenant Commander Dixon," she said to me. She'd been at the reception when I'd gotten my third pip, but she'd stepped out early. Something involving a holodeck or something.

"Major--- Colonel?"

"That's right. I remember you. The day we took this station back, you led the way back into Ops."

"Yes, ma'am."

"You were just a Sergeant then?"

"I was, yes. Figured I'd go out of my way to make you proud, ma'am."

"I'm glad to hear that." She smiled and walked on. Then she stopped, as did Odo. "If you're ever by this station again... let me know."

"Reckon I'd be proud to do so, ma'am. Pleasure seein' you again." I caught hell from Walters for being late for my own briefing, but it was worth it.

Something big was in the works. They'd suspended additional repairs on Challenger to get us back in the fight. Our recruits were barely trained, young, wet behind the ears-- the kind to die easy in combat and not be remembered if not for their DNA. Word had it the war was grinding on, slow like. We were going to make one last drive. Cardassia Prime --and nothing less-- was our objective.

We trained on Challenger for the better part of a month on everything: Spoon psychology, crowd control, occupation duties, partisan fighting tactics, winning hearts and minds made easy-- the whole kit. Our drop was to be in the city of Kirlar, on the southern continent. Kirlar was a big city, home to the Sixth Order once upon a paper moon. That was half the reason they wanted us hustled back into service: they wanted the heroes of Jemmygrad to better pacify the population. Funny how they remembered us when they needed us.

Our orders were specifically to link up with elements of the surrounding divisions in order to form a cohesive defense. We were also to provide support for the Corps of Engineers. Cardassia was pretty much devastated-- word had it their old boss, Legate Damar, now citizen Damar, was striking back against the Dominion. Spoony was on our side by the time we got there.

Our beam-in point was along a street in Kirlar. Marianne did the honours-- I insisted. We dropped on Cardassia, phaser rifles out. Soon we slung them over our shoulders. The Founder had ordered Jemmy to stand down earlier that morning. Spoony wasn't offering any resistance. Everything was over on Cardie Prime but the crying and the reconstruction.

We made one last patrol around the blocks of Kirlar, that godawful Spoon architecture jutting out all over the place. Alri was walking next to me, and her jaw was hanging open as she gawked upwards.

"What is it, Alri?"

"If my parents knew they'd given birth to the generation of Bajorans that would one day walk in conquest down these streets..."

"Conquest?" I asked. "No, no. We're here to help these people. Not prevail over them. That's our way."

"I know, but you understand."

"Of course I do." I put my hand on her shoulder. "All right. There's no need for this. Let's break out, teams of two-- Alri, you're with me --and see if we can't find someone in charge of civil administration."

I walked with Alri over a bridge that connected Kirlar to its nearest city, Darlok. Darlok was famous for its ties to the Obsidian Order, the same Obsidian Order that had ceased to exist after their disastrous raid on the Founders' homeworld.

I tapped my commbadge. "Anyone out there?"

I got six or seven replies. Mostly starboys listening too hard from above.

"This is Lieutenant Commander Sean Dixon of the First Battalion, 202nd Division. Captain Tulin? Anyone?"

"Sean?" I recognized that voice. "Sean Patrick Dixon? From Setlik III?"

"Uh..."

"Sean, it's Renalla."

I smiled.

"Sir?" Alri inquired.

"Ren," I said, ignoring Alri. "Ren, it's you?"

"Yes. I'm here."

"Where are you? Give me directions."

"Okay."

Twenty minutes later, Alri and I were led to a majestic courtyard, even by Cardie standards. We had walked up the stairs, and into the downright palatial foyer, when two redshirts came up to check us as changelings. They identified us, and led us into a room. A chair turned, and there she was-- dark hair and eyes as ever, sitting fair in that light face.

"Ren. Where are we?"

"Enabran Tain's house."

"Get out." She lifted a bottle, and I recognized it by the twisted shape. "Since when are you into kanar?"

"Since it's free."

"Now, we're not supposed to be drinking straight without--"

"It's all right," a voice said as he stepped from the shadows. A Cardie. All smiles.

"And you are?" I had my hand on my sidearm.

"Just a plain, simple tailor. And you're all guests... in my house."

Ren, Alri and I weren't there long. We had a drink and left. I never did catch that Cardie's name, though the look on his face has always haunted me.

"So, how's the war treated you?" she asked me.

"Pretty well. My adjutant, Alri Magro."

"You're a Betazoid," Alri asked.

"That's right. Sean and I were... close. Once."

"Yes, well---"

"Marianne?" Renalla asked.

"What about her?"

"I thought so."

"I... don't understand," Alri protested.

"It's all right. I can't order you out of my head now, can I?"

"No." She smiled at me, and then sent to me a few things I'd missed. She'd been with the 313th, commissioned and spent eighteen months at the Academy in old-fashioned training. They'd wanted to send me off for that, but there wasn't much of an Academy left by that point. Ren had just left on USS Nevada when the Breen attacked San Francisco. Nevada had put her back in the line on some planet, and when her CO bought it, she was promoted since no one else wanted the risk. She hadn't changed a bit. Still an open book.

"It was good seeing you again," I said. "Maybe we'll see each other again."

"I'd like to think so," she replied. "But one can never say. We live in uncertain times." Then she walked off.

We were on police actions across Cardassia until V-C day. Then we were to hand things over to a provisional government, and pack it in. The Two-Oh-Second was disbanded, and with it, so was most of the Marine Corps placed on inactive status.

A week later, I called Colonel Kira to ask if she knew a nice place on Bajor we could get married, in a ceremony. She set the whole thing up for us, actually, with a little help from Alri. We had a whole Bajoran monastery to ourselves for the ceremony, presided over by a none other than Admiral William Ross, Supreme Allied Commander, Cardassian Sector Reconstruction Force. Marianne's folks came all the way from Luna to see their little girl marry her dashing marine. So'd her whole family, actually-- they filled a whole Bajoran transport that Alri had commissioned on our behalf. Tim Walters was my best man, Alri was Marianne's maid of honour; and on Stardate 58312, Marianne and I took vows that lasted longer than the armistice.

Within two months, see, the Breen have started acting up again. Sure, they'd signed on at first, but as soon as the Fifth Fleet came out to see how things were holding up, old Breeny decided he was game for a rematch. The party was over. Our work had yet to be done.

You see, reason I wanted to get this debrief done was mostly because I want it on the record. The achievements of our everyday redshirts in this war have, to this point, been completely underrated. Breeny lives on cold planets. Very cold planets. It's going to be a long, hard fight in the days and months to come. They're bringing the 202nd back online in a week's time, and we're to ready to ship out for Breen country.

I can't tell you how angry it makes me, knowing that us redshirts are going to head in there and have to do the ground-pounding while someone who holds a geosynchronous orbit gets the medals for us. Many of us aren't going to live to see day when peace returns to the Federation. And I wanted it down, in writing.

I'm fully ready to give my life for the cause, for the Fleet, and for the uniform. So's Alri, Renalla, Walters, all of us. We're not going to give up. As long as there's a peace to be won, war may be our only hope. And that hope isn't worth a flash in the pan if we don't recognize that victory has a price that we redshirts have paid with our very lives, on every ball of rock that strategy and Starfleet Command deemed it logical to take.

Last thing I want to say. I just found out this morning that my wife won't be coming with us on to Breen space. Turns out that she wouldn't be alone in that uniform if she did. And I suppose I just wanted my daughter to know what we went through in order to give her a Federation to call her own. I would gladly go out there and lay down my life if it meant that a Federation lived on beyond my years, a Federation that recognized all branches of Starfleet-- not just the starboys, a Federation that looked after my daughter, and my wife, as well as it looked after me. As well as I hope it will always watch over me from the stars.

I can't even tell you how little I want to raise a rifle in anger again. I would much sooner let Breeny be and trust to diplomacy. But diplomacy doesn't always work. And where peace ends, the line --held by us redshirts-- will ever be held. For the Federation. For the Fleet. For the cause.

The cause has a name, you know. It's a Vulcan name, an Andorian name, a Caitian name, a Tellarite name, a Human name, a Benzite name. It's your name, and it's mine. And it's my daughter's name-- even though she won't hear it for another three months. That's why we fight. Because we believe in those names. And to not be able to hear just one of them again is a voice lost.

And I suppose I just wanted you to know that daddy's out there trying to make you proud, Kira. That's gonna be her name: Kira Nerys Dixon.

Now, Kira, I want you to listen close. Your old man might not be around much. I'm not sure what to tell you 'bout how this is going to end. But if I don't make it back, when the time comes, there's a couple things I need to have said to you. You be kind with your mother. Don't ever forget she's the strongest woman I've ever known, and the most beautiful. Take care of her. Be careful with love, be daring in life. Be the girl, become the woman, that your mother knows you're going to become. Make me proud. Honour our brave soldiers and officers in that Starfleet uniform, however it looks when you see it, red or not. And always remember: we did our best. We are going to do our best-- forever. For you.