Captain Zolaria was walking to the upper command levels of Earth Spacedock with her mind set on a mission. A fair woman aged around her early thirties, she always got looks for her Silver Hair, and even more looks for her pitch black retinas and her blood red Irises.
As Zolaria made her way towards the recently Retired Admiral Brandon "BranFlakes" Felczer's office, she was reminiscing on how they had never truly gotten along, and she had hoped that perhaps they could at least part on amicable terms before he departed to begin his long journey.
'For the most part, it looks the same as I remember', she realized. The only major differences was that the Admiral was putting several belongings into large storage boxes for transport to his special warp ship, which had been christened the Phoenix Mk II, in honor to the original ship that initiated Earth's First Contact.
'Here goes nothing.' she thought, knocking on the doorway.
He turned his head over to her, and was a bit suprised.
"Captain Zolaria.", he stated with a straight tone of voice.
"Admiral.", I replied, with an equally straight tone. "Permission to speak freely?"
After thinking it over for a second, he simply replied, "Granted."
'Here goes.' "Brandon, although our personalities have clashed in our careers in StarFleet, and we have had alot of arguments, which even lead to you having my ship pulled off of your division and reassigned to Sector Patrol, I just wanted to apologize for everything that happened, and wish you well on your journey into the great unknown with the Mk II." I offered my hand, hoping that he would take it.
Putting a model of his earlier posting, one of the newer Avenger-Class ships down, Brandon calmly walked over and took my hand, shaking it in a firm grip.
"Thank you Zolaria. Although we never got along, I hope to see you again sometime. I'll keep an eye out for the Tesadora Advent during my journey, maybe we can get together and have a game of fizzbin." After releasing my hand, he stepped back. "I gotta get back to this. This will be Captain McNesby's office tomorrow, after all."
With a small smile, I replied, "No problem. Safe journey, Brandon."
With all said and done, I returned to my ship, feeling a great weight lifted off of my shoulders.
THE NEXT DAY
After assembling the crew in the ship's large cargo bay, I had the main viewer there with Brandon's ship, being escorted out of the system by the Enterprise.
As it passed by, I turned to my Comm Officer. "K'Rona, open a channel to the Mk II."
K'Rona, the Half-Klingon Communications Officer typed in a few keys and replied, "Channel is open Captain."
With that, I tuned to the crew. "CREW! ATTENTION!"
With a loud, resounding snap, the crew instantly came to attention.
My next order was a simple one. "SALUTE!"
As we watched the Enterprise & Mk II leave orbit, we kept our salute.
When the ships had warped out, I called out "At Ease. Crew, remember that man. He stood toe to toe with the Klingons, the Borg, the True Way, the Voth, the Undine, and the Iconians. although he is gone, he will NEVER be forgotten." a pause, then "Dismissed."
As the crew filed out to begin the day, I continued to stare out at the stars, hoping that someday, our paths would cross again, and maybe, just maybe I could finally beat him at Fizzbin.
