Chapter Four

Commemoration

The sun is just coming up - another affair of fiery pinks and ambers that heralds a glorious day to come. Well, glorious for some, perhaps.

Seated beside the headstone, Taylor sighs to himself and looks down at the clumsy bundle of wildflowers that is the best he can manage in terms of a bouquet. He wouldn't consider getting anyone else to make it - and he knows she would appreciate the effort.

"I hate this." He says, aloud, "I hate that you died. I hate that I wasn't here to stop it. You were so brave - and you didn't deserve what he did to you."

There's no reply. There never is.

"I finally did it, Wash; it needed doing, but I got those people we brought in on the Seventh into the team. I guess I always thought that relying on them would make us a failure - but now that we're cut off from those bastards in the future; maybe it doesn't."

He sits in silence for a while, listening to the sounds of various creatures out in the forests nearby while the wind caresses the leaves and sets them to whispering. If he sits there long enough, sometimes he can almost imagine that the whispering is her voice.

As he did last year, he has spent much of the last few days away from the rest of the Colony; either holed up in his house or out here in Memorial Field. Other people visit the graves of their lost loved ones, too - so he prefers to come in the first light of dawn to avoid them. Seclusion demands privacy, after all. It's one way of concealing the regularity with which he visits her.

"Not much else to report since last month." He sighs, "Jim wants me to send a team out to find where the stranded soldiers have gone. We've been lucky so far - they've never come back. I hope they're all dead - that would make my life a hell of a lot easier." He doesn't add and it would serve them all right, but the tone of his voice does. There'll be a lot of people hurting in the Colony today: he's not the only one. If the people who brought them their suffering have suffered in their turn, then, in his mind, it shall be justice.

"Don't be angry with me for thinking that, Wash." He sighs as he rises to his feet to depart, "I'm not built to forgive."


This was where it happened. Josh looks around the bar that is now his responsibility; this was where Lucas was bothering Skye…where he intervened…where Lucas 'made an example' of him.

Most of the time, he doesn't think about it - the moment that Kara died, only minutes after taking her first steps into a new world. The discovery that his father was tortured after Lucas released him from the brig…all of it. This is the only day that he allows himself to remember how close they came to losing everything - and the price they all had to pay to save it.

He looks up from the glass that he has been mindlessly polishing over and over for nearly ten minutes. She's there, sitting quietly and watching him.

"I know." Skye says, simply, "I feel it too."

Finally, he sets the glass down, "I wonder if it'll ever go away." He admits.

"Maybe not - but we all have each other, and it was worth fighting for. I suppose that's why we still remember - so that their sacrifice wasn't in vain." She reaches out to take his hand, "At least they can't reach us anymore. Somehow, I can't help feeling that all the dangers this place can throw at us are nothing compared to them. Now that we're cut off, I feel safe for the first time since I got here."

"And we still have our families." He admits.

"We do."

"D'you think they'll come back?" he asks, suddenly.

"They're leaving it a bit late if they want to." Skye muses, "Two years without hearing anything? We don't even know where they are. They can't have much left now - so if they want to strike at us again, we're better prepared than they are, and we've got more supplies. Maybe they found another time fracture and got the hell out and now they're some other reality's problem."

"So long as they're not ours."


Zoe is playing a game on her plex, giggling as she does so. Watching her, Elisabeth smiles; at least the commemoration isn't hanging over her head. She processed it, put it aside, and decided that life goes on - all tidily considered and thought through in the terms of reference available to a child of five.

In the two years that have followed, they've worked hard to ensure that she doesn't dwell on the occupation; but, as she had her family about her, and she knew that they were safe, she seemed quite content to accept everything that was thrown at them once they were safely out of the compound. She even found it in herself to go and comfort the Commander after Alicia was murdered.

Elisabeth shudders inside at the word murdered. Even now, it still seems strange to her that they lost Alicia; she seemed so indestructible, so powerful. And yet, when it came down to it, her courage was quiet and simple - and she gave her life so that they could live. People she had barely yet got to know.

Like most people in the Colony, Elisabeth puts aside those thoughts that come to the surface at this time of the year. If they didn't, then how could they function? Most of the time, she's far too busy to think about how close she came to losing Jim; what if he had been captured, and ended up being destroyed with Hope Plaza by the pyrosonic device? What if the Carnotaurus had woken prematurely? He hadn't even hesitated - to save his beloved family, he would have willingly gone to his death if that had been required of him.

And then he is there, behind her; his arms encircling her, "Penny for 'em."

"They're not worth that much." She says, quietly, "Not when we won. I just wish it had cost less than it did."

They stand together for a while, watching Zoe as she plays. Absorbed in her game, she is unaware of their scrutiny. Does she still think about it? Perhaps she does - but, like many children, she has put the bad experiences away and accepted them. After all, the good side won, and the bad side lost. Children seem to be able to accept the most awful adversity if there's justice at the end of it.

Thank God they got it.

"Is Maddy prepped for later?" Jim asks, after a while. She will be reading the first of two poems at the ceremony; one that speaks of how those that are loved are not truly gone. As the other is a Shakespearean sonnet, Taylor has persuaded Malcolm to read it, as he thinks it will sound better spoken with a British accent.

"I think so. Mark will be nearby, so I think it's less likely to affect her emotionally than it would if she couldn't see him. If he hadn't made it, then I wouldn't have agreed to her doing it."

"And how are you doing?" his grip tightens a little about her midriff.

"Okay." She answers, truthfully, "We were lucky - we all made it. Not everyone can say that."

"That's what the ceremony's for."


Malcolm is sitting at a workbench, attempting to concentrate upon the agenda he's put together for his meeting with Yseult. She's due to arrive in a few minutes, though he is almost wishing he had postponed their meeting.

Not that he wants to avoid her - far from it…but last night. That dream again.

He had never imagined, when he defiantly refused to help Weaver and Lucas Taylor, that his act would have the consequences that it did. Steve McCormick had been just twenty two - bright, capable and showing real promise as a chemist. The worst of it was the casual nature of Weaver's indication to one of his men to grab the young man and bash his head through that window. He wonders sometimes if, had the glass not slashed into Steve's neck, he might have lived. But it did - and he did not. To see him there - the blood pumping out of him…taking his life with it…

And to know that, if he refused again, then someone else would join his dead assistant, that bloody puddle becoming a lake…

Malcolm chews at his lower lip, and curses as he bites down rather too hard, tasting blood. He usually forces himself to shut out the whole sorry business - from the moment that the fighting began, to the moment that he finally escaped into the forest to join the other exiles. So much happened that he wishes only to forget. And can't.

"I'm sorry - am I interrupting?" He looks up, sharply at the woman's voice. He has lost track of time, and Yseult is standing in the doorway, her plex in her hand.

"Not at all - come over; please. Sorry, I've not made a space for you. Hang on…" hastily, he clears aside equipment and a half empty coffee mug. "I'm doing one of the readings later, and I'm a bit nervous. I'm not that good at standing in front of an audience if it's not about something scientific or technical." He lies.

Yseult nods, and smiles as she sits down on a chair hastily vacated by an abandoned coat, "I can come back later if you prefer?"

"It's fine - I'm stupidly busy later on, so now's the best time. It'll take my mind off Shakespeare for a bit." He draws up his chair alongside to sit down beside her.

"I've brought the last bit of that tamahagane that I mentioned at the meeting," Yseult begins, "And some of yesterday's steel bloom so that we can do a comparative analysis. It's been a while since I last got the chance to do it properly."

He nods, and reaches for the smaller of the two lumps, examining it quite meticulously, "I'm not an expert on metallurgy - it's a field I've not really had the chance to investigate. The mass spectrometer is a bit busy for the next few days, I'm afraid, but I can free it up towards the end of the week if you want to come over again."

"That would be great." Yseult hopes that her enthusiasm is about her samples, not the prospect of being invited back. She hadn't been sitting as close to him in the meeting as she is now, and her confusion is not being helped by his proximity, "We have some scope for casting iron as well, so that we can build a power loom. Wood's not really strong enough for that, so we'd need to use iron."

"You seem to have a lot of plans." He turns to her, intrigued.

"That's what the Commander hired us for." She quips. They're blue. His eyes are blue…stop it…

"I'll put you in touch with Rob later," He resumes, "He's one of our best botanists, so he can advise you on how best to domesticate that wild cotton that you've found."

"Gossypium Maxwellii?" she asks, and he has the grace to look a touch embarrassed.

"Sorry I did that to you - I was a bit of an idiot a few years ago and named a new species of pterosaur after myself. Jim's quite intent on never letting me live it down - so it was something I came up with at short notice to get myself out of a tight spot."

"I rather like it. I've never had a taxonomic name based on me before." She burrows into her bag and retrieves two of the bolls, "This is the raw cotton in its natural state. It's surprisingly good for such an early stage in the evolutionary process. It gins really well…"

"Gins?" Malcolm asks.

"Sorry - ginning's a process where you separate the cotton fibres from the seeds and debris. We have a mechanical ginning machine that's run by hand crank; but it's something else that we'll probably mechanise with water power once we have a loom going."

"I can see that I'm going to have a lot to learn with all of this." Malcolm admits, "I'm not used to historical technology."

"It's a bit weird, to be honest; we've had to re-learn a lot of it as we go - so in some ways it's a new frontier all over again."

He reaches for one of the bolls and examines it as carefully as he did the steel blooms. As he does so, Yseult watches him surreptitiously; not wanting him to notice her rather nervous scrutiny. She hasn't paid this much attention to a man in five years - not since Niall was alive and occupied her so thoroughly. Again she catches herself wondering if he's seeing anyone, and presses the heel of her left boot into her right foot. Get back to the present, woman…

She emerges from her furious internal battle to notice that Malcolm has gone quiet, and is looking off towards the far end of the laboratory. His face is in profile, and she can't quite read his expression - but, as far as she can see, he looks sad. Then she remembers: everyone knows that he was holed up in this place to work on that broken terminus device, though some thought he had done so willingly, or out of cowardice, until the truth emerged and everyone learned that he had done so to prevent any more people being murdered in front of him. It must've happened in here - is he looking at the spot where his assistant died?

"Malcolm?" she ventures - the first time she has ever spoken his name out loud to his face.

The word rouses him from his reverie, and he turns to her. They have never actually fully looked one another in the face - not yet: it is, after all, only their second meeting, but as their eyes meet, they seem almost to lock - and in that moment, to Yseult, there is not another person in the world. She hasn't felt that since Niall…

A door opens loudly nearby, "Oh, sorry Malcolm, I didn't realise you were in a meeting."

They seem almost to leap apart, startled as much by the reason for their stillness as the disturbance of it. Slightly flustered, his eyes a little wide, Malcolm turns to see the robust frame of Robert Stanley in the doorway, "No, it's fine, Rob - I wanted to introduce you to Yseult so you could talk over domesticating that wild cotton her team have found. No time like the present."

The words tumble out in a rather nervous torrent and he hopes fervently that neither of them notice.


Apprehensive, Maddy mounts the stairs to the Command Centre, and stops a few steps up, then turns to face the gathered throng. Everyone is present, except for those whose essential work cannot be set aside. The sea of faces looking at her is quite unsettling, until her searching eyes find the face that matters the most, and she feels that safe anchorage that, to her, is Mark Reynolds.

"They are not dead, who leave us this great heritage of remembered joy.

They still live in our hearts, in the happiness we knew, in the dreams we shared.

They still breathe in the lingering fragrance windblown from their favourite flowers.

They still smile in the moonlight's silver and laugh in the sunlight's sparkling gold.

They still speak in the echoes of words we've heard them say again and again.

They still move in the rhythm of waving grasses, in the dance of the tossing branches.

They are not dead; their memory is warm in our hearts, comfort in our sorrow.

They are not apart from us, but a part of us - for love is eternal, and those we love shall be with us throughout all eternity."

There is no applause as she descends, but she didn't expect any - after all, this is hardly a performance. She is, however, relieved that she remembered it all. It seemed entirely wrong to read it from a piece of paper. As she rejoins Mark, Commander Taylor smiles at her briefly, before he mounts the steps in his turn.

"Thank you all for coming." He begins, "I still remember what I said to you all when we gathered together after we re-took the colony from those who wanted to destroy all that we'd built, and I stand by it even today. When we closed the door on 2149, we opened a new one - a new chapter for our new world. We had to pull together to make it happen - and we did. You did. Not a day goes by when I don't think how proud I am of every single one of you. We are a family. All of us together.

"Like all families, we have experienced loss - and very few of us here today came out of that time unscathed. In some ways, none of us did - what affects one, affects us all. But families pull together, and they survive. Our dead will never be forgotten - and we must strive to make sure that their sacrifice was not in vain. You're good people. All of you - and together, that's what will keep this Colony, and our dreams, alive."

He steps down, and nods to Malcolm, who - rather reluctantly - steps up to take his place. For one so normally full of himself, he seems rather forlorn, until he straightens up, and begins to speak.

"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,

And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,

And moan the expense of many a vanished sight.

Then can I grieve at grievances forgone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er

The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restored and sorrows end."

As he returns to his place in the crowd, Malcolm wonders how many people understood the archaic words; judging by the damp eyes of many about him, however, it looks quite likely that a lot of them did. For a moment, the words strike at him, and he remembers Steve's death again. For some reason, however, his response is to look about for someone - someone that, until barely two hours ago, he wouldn't have noticed at all.

There she is - standing with a few people who must be members of her team. Loath though he is to admit it, as he resolutely refuses to believe in such things, he is really taken with her; and it seems to have come from that single moment when he locked eyes with her in the labs. Love at first sight? Oh please…

Taylor mounts the steps again, "I'd like to thank our readers today, Maddy Shannon and Malcolm Wallace. Before we hold the silence, however, there is one more thing." He looks back down towards Jim and Elisabeth, where their youngest is standing, "Zoe - could you, please?" he invites.

Solemnly, she steps forth and approaches a cloth covered item, about a metre in height, alongside the steps and surrounded by new flowerbeds. Having appeared overnight, most have guessed what it is likely to be - though none have seen it.

"We've commemorated our lost - but as not all of them have graves, the school kids have created a memorial garden." He nods to Zoe, who carefully removes the cloth to reveal a small obelisk of granite, upon which the names of all who died in the occupation have been incised by an elderly stonemason who came through on the eighth pilgrimage. He thanks her as she returns to her parents.

The silence is, perhaps, the hardest of all - for there is nowhere to hide from grief. About him, Taylor can hear the occasional sob, sniffs, the sound of someone blowing their nose as quietly as they can. It takes all his fortitude not to join them, which he focuses by keeping a close eye upon his watch to gauge the passage of the two minutes.

"Thank you all." He says, to close it, "Before we depart, I'd like to end on a more positive note - and, while we commemorate loss, we balance it with the gain of someone new." He nods forward a proud couple with a newborn, "I'd like you all to welcome our latest colonist…" he pauses, though he is not sure whether this is for effect, or because he is psyching himself up to say her name, "Alicia Hope."

This time, there is applause.