Last Full Measure - Michael A. Martin [106]
The Starfleet honor guard then turned as one, took up their service’s flag from the torpedo-casket, and folded it with as much precision and veneration as the MACOs had shown to their own banner. Once that task was completed, O’Neill presented the flag to Archer, who held it with the same gentleness he might reserve for an infant.
Answering a silent nod from Archer, the Starfleet and MACO honor guards simultaneously approached the catafalque and began working together to fold the two Earth banners. Once they had finished their tandem work, the honor guards separated once again into two distinct squads, both of which carried its own tightly folded Earth flag. The flags were ritually passed to O’Neill, who held them straight in front of her, one in each hand, as she continued to stand at attention. Archer would entrust her with the task of sending the Earth banners to the families of both of the honored dead, along with all of their personal effects.
But D.O. could not write the letters explaining these deaths to the bereaved loved ones back on Earth. That was a responsibility that Archer knew fell squarely upon him, and on Hayes.
Their flag rituals discharged, both honor guards stood at attention beside each other, facing Archer, their eyes facing straight ahead. Archer nodded to the two disciplined squads, then watched soberly as Trip and T’Pol moved from the front of the congregation toward the torpedo-casket. Very gently, they lowered it down one of the ramps and onto the tracks that fed into the torpedo launcher’s hatchway.
Archer then gave a single terse order, and Trip and T’Pol quietly saw to it that the torpedo bay was locked and loaded after the casket had finished its slow, lugubrious glide through the hatch.
Moments later, in fulfillment of Ensign Ravi Chandra’s written will and centuries of naval tradition, the firmament of the Delphic Expanse blazed gloriously, if briefly, with the light of a new star.
Once he had gotten back inside his austere personal quarters on E deck following the memorial service, Hayes had wasted no time exchanging his formal dress for more comfortable khaki fatigues. For some reason, he had always associated dress uniforms with funerals, although he’d certainly seen more death and horror dressed as he was now, in his gray MACO cammies and standard-duty boots.
Whenever he tried to deconstruct precisely why he felt most comfortable in his present garb, he felt vaguely uncomfortable with the results; he had decided years ago that it was best not to spend too much time considering such things, and combat duty and its accouterments were, in Hayes’s considerable experience, among the best antidotes to such vexing thoughts.
“To absent friends,” the MACO leader said, seated on the edge of his bunk and raising his mug to the four fatigue-clad subordinates who had joined him in his billet for an informal memorial gathering. Gathered with Hayes in his dimly lit cabin were Sergeant Kemper and Corporals McKenzie, McCammon, and Chang.
“Absent friends,” the rest of the group chorused as one, clinking their motley collection of drinking vessels together where they were seated amid the room’s scant furnishings. Although their cups all contained the same fairly potent spirits—bourbon from one of the few New Orleans distilleries that had been in continuous operation since before Lake Pontchartrain had temporarily engulfed the Big Easy in the early twenty-first century—the mood among the assembled MACOs was anything but festive.
One of their comrades-in-arms was dead, and all of the MACO squads would be marching in the “missing man” formation for the next seven days, as tradition demanded.
Still, even though today had been largely set aside for remembrance and grieving, the mission would go on, even if