Not Quite Home

Posted on 04 May 2021 @ 6:59pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Lieutenant Commander Lance Quinn (*)

Mission: M2 - Sanctuary
Location: Quinn & Zahn Quarters
Timeline: MD03 Morning, Immediately Following Love and Sacrifice
2298 words - 4.6 OF Standard Post Measure

For the couple, it was another quiet transit from the Environmental ring to the turbo-lift and up to the Senior Quarters. Compared to the first arrival to OC, Calliope felt the marked difference in the broad corridor now, as it was fully lit, cleared, vacuumed and no longer piled up with supplies or packaged up moving boxes. She felt a dissonance about being here in a hover chair and without her assignment as a senior officer. She didn't belong here on her own merits. Calliope voiced none of this as it worked over her countenance like a shadow. She piloted the chair with her right hand while her left rolled the betting cube between her fingers.

Lance's mind wandered as he trudged along behind her. Matching her pace. Not speaking, just thinking. He spotted the stunning blonde Lieutenant Monroe entering her quarters up ahead of them. He caught her eye in a momentary flash of recognition - and something else - before she smiled and closed the door behind her. His heart skipped a beat just for a fraction, before his eyes landed on the back of his wife's mobility seat. A strange melancholy returned.

When they arrived at their door, she stopped the chair and looked up to Lance. This wasn't how she pictured this moment, the moment she'd built up with so much expectation, when they would make their first home together. An apology failing to fully form into words, she touched his hand instead.

Lance felt her cool skin touch his, snapping him out of his own daydreaming.

"Home at last," he said quietly, touching the door control. "Take your time."

Once fully in the entry way, she paused and took in the spacious open living quarters. The floor plan was no different, but all of the furnishings that had been John Morrison's were taken away— Only the built in counter and recessed wall units remained. All of the boxes she had left half packed for him were gone. It seemed like he'd been erased and that added to her heavy heart. There were all new sofas and chairs and tables. At first she felt it was someone else's home, until she recognized things that Lance had in his living space back on Earth.

His model ships filled the lowest three rows of one of the inset displays and she moved closer to admire the little tags written in a middle schooler's careful print. She always did love those. On the shelf above the models, his science fair awards were in a set of vintage shadow boxes his mother ordered custom made for them. Above that a row of Honors from his Academy projects and a framed hard copy of his Thesis' signatories. On the upper most shelves was a case of holo foil recognitions for his propulsion theory work. She came to the end of the displays and realized.... that might very well be where it left off now that he had left his research work.

As her eyes traced around, She noticed too, that the replicator had been refitted lower so it would be reachable from the hover chair, and that there was a lift installed on the stairwell to the second level that would ferry the chair up— the mobility changes he'd mentioned. If it had just been this once, she would have told him it was unnecessary. But she would have several of these treatments in the coming year and had to admit it was very practical.

There was nothing of her own in the room, she thought, until she realized that her two shipping containers from the Paracelsus were neatly set to the side. She shifted back around and looked at Lance, who was hands down her favorite thing about the whole place. Nothing else really mattered.

"It's nice," she said. "You did a nice job with it."

Of course I did. I'm the theoretical physicist and engineer. The thought went through his mind but didn't come out of his mouth. "Thanks," he responded verbally. "If there are any accessibility changes needed, I'll make sure they're prioritised."

Calliope bit her lip, still looking at him but refraining from remarking. He felt a million miles away.

Leaving Cali to get used to their environment, Lance flopped onto the couch, shuffling a pile of previously discarded reports, theoretical papers, and updates. His downtime had been spent on the physical adjustments to their quarters, and as such he was a little behind on some of the things he'd have normally kept up with. Grabbing the first thing he could lay his hand on - a series of notes by a Rigellian professor on transwarp field dynamics - he almost didn't notice her looking at him. "Is something wrong?"

Everything. She swallowed back against her feelings to keep them from running out and expressing her brokenhearted expectations about how everything was wrong. There was no fairy tale. No magic moment. No landmark page turn to cherish. She'd spoiled everything and only had herself to blame. But saying so would just make this worse yet. "Sorry. I..." Struggling against the weight in her heart, she smiled. "I still think you look striking in the dress whites."

"The what? Oh." Lance took a moment to follow her statement. "I've not really had much reason to wear them recently, with everything." For the tiniest moment, he almost continued the conversation. But the sadness was clear beneath her faint smile. He could see the dissatisfaction there. Maybe she was unhappy with the layout of their quarters. Honestly, he figured it might have been just one thing about the arrangement that she disliked. Faked happiness was an irritation to his structured mind; if you were unhappy about it, say something. Instead of speaking he let his tired eyes drift back to the PADD he was semi-reading.

Calli sat awkwardly in a home that wasn't quite her own, with the crushing weight of unsayable things. She rubbed her hands together, the dice a prayer bead between her scraped palms, and she closed her eyes and breathed in and out in an even pattern that Walker had taught her. She sat in the silence, thinking about the discussion she'd just had on the bench and the feeling she'd sensed at the wall. She saw in her mind's eye her own eyes staring back at her through the Obsidian face. She asked herself... what did she want? She wanted to give something. She had skills in operations, with materials and repairs and logistics... Maybe she could contribute analysis.

She moved to the little office space set into the back of the room and started the terminal, hesitating before entering her access codes, fully expecting the function menu to return void and closed out. But it didn't. Corvus hadn't rescinded her access. Involuntarily Calliope made a bright little "Huh!" sound, then readjusted her chair at the desk so she could lean in and immerse herself.

Lance almost ignored it. But curiosity got the better of him and he peeked over the top of his PADD to watch her. Just the sight of her re-engaging with some sort of work task was a little uplifting. Maybe she could make it, after all. Maybe she wouldn't completely fall away from who she really was. The faintest of proud smiles crossed his lips. But he left her to it, allowing her the space to figure it out for herself.

After an hour or so of reading some of the security and intelligence analytics on the weapons and ordinance confiscated from the combatants, Calliope saw they hadn't really established any method to the madness. Most of them were replication generated or otherwise untraceable. Some were personal to the individuals and traceable to a manufacturer or an old registration to someone they'd been taken from or trade by illegally but the trace didn't produce any patterns of suppliers. She drummed her fingers on the desk repeatedly, thinking...

"I know that sound." Lance spoke up from behind his own reading. He lowered the PADD more fully this time. Still laid almost horizontally on their couch, he looked across the room at her with a knowing expression. "You're thinking about something. What puzzle are you fighting this time?"

"Just reviewing the work investigations has logged. Most of the confiscated weapons that have been filed since the attack are illegally printed or replication pieces. There's no way to trace them. There's only a minority of them in evidence that have any kind of identifying manufacture or characteristics. I suspect, mostly pieces with personal meaning and probably not supplied to them for the attack. I can't see any key similarities between them. Other than lack of current registrations and spotty ownership records." She skewed her lips sideways, and stepped her fingers, looking at the diverse details on the narrowed down list. "There's got to be a method to the madness."

Her response was the motivation he needed to rise from his lazily slumped posture and stroll to her side. He blinked at the reports she was looking over, questioning for a moment whether it was right that she was doing this to herself, diving into something that she neither had the authority nor the physical capability to truly handle. But a look in her eyes - those formerly sad and lost pupils now showing signs of hopefulness - caused him to divert away from criticism to an interest of his own.

"You always did like to want to find the answers underneath the problem..." he muttered, leaning over her and tapping a few commands into the console. "You just...need...the connections." He pointed to the cross-referencing algorithm he'd input. A simple equation, but with an outcome he felt she would be excited by. "A dozen of the recovered weapons were registered with three different manufacturers based out of a transport and shipping operation located at Freecloud."

"Drukas & Falcor shipping." She perked up, leaning her head back into Lance's chest where he stood over her. "That's a start. A thread to pull on." She began to type with some energy, pulling up all the records on the shipping business, their contracts and routes. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't a lot on their operation at Freecloud. She clucked her tongue and hummed. She needed more to hone in with if she wanted to fill in the blank that was the payor of those shipments.

A grumbling surprised her and she looked at her own stomach.

"Let me," he said, recognising that sound. He turned to the replicator and had it whip up a couple of light tuna sandwiches. He passed the first over to her with some water and watched as her mind went to work.

"If I can find other funding points, I can figure out details of the orders and trace the payments." Calliope looked thoughtful while she ate, "What if," She said between bites, "I could handle some of the evidence. The shielding sleds. The breaching devices, some of the EVA suits. Hell, I bet some of the footwear had to be custom. Ship parts. Someone had to finance all of that. They didn't just show up here on a whim one day." She licked her fingers thinking. Investigations had likely covered all of this ground. If she wanted to get somewhere they hadn't, she had to look at something unusual....

"Hey!" she exclaimed, eyes wide with a mouth full of lunch and then started chugging on the glass of water to wash her mouth before she could continue; she was nearly jumping out of her seat with the revelation she could barely contain. Finally she sputtered breathlessly with water spraying from her lips for emphasis. "Robot!"

"Where?" Lance turned and blinked as his eyes surveyed the room.

She was coughing and laughing. "There was a robot! I mean, if I didn't imagine it," She held her arms wide to demonstrate sizable measure , "There was a big robot thing! In a pile of cleared rubble! When..." She mellowed a little. "When I was carried down to sickbay."

"Are you sure?" Lance frowned. "I don't remember reading any salvage reports relating to anything like that. Do you remember where exactly? What it looked like? Perhaps we can run a search."

"It was beside the broken bulkhead near the breached door. Armored, maybe three or even four meters tall if it had been standing." Calliope let Lance lean back over her and work the computer's search through the logged evidence while she closed her eyes to try to access her mental recall, almost becoming trance like as she aimed to capture the details of the memory. "Big claw like gripping arms, I think four of them, one was missing but there was exposed shoulder joint. The arms were highly articulated but with armor plating covering the joints. The head was steeply slanted. The legs were almost leaf-spring like: long, expandable in height but probably low to the ground when not extending, with elongated feet and stabilizer expansions. I saw part of the armor missing and it had Servo housing that looked like something from Cardassian tech. Like..." Her eyes opened. "Like a mining automaton I saw on a colony project." She looked hopeful as the computer cross referenced the descriptions lance was entering.

When nothing returned from the account of the evidence reports, she looked crestfallen. "Maybe it was disintegrated with the rest of the damaged material. Or. Maybe—" She sighed, unbuttoning her collar with resignation. "—Maybe I just imagined it when I was hallucinating." She felt the creeping self doubt. For a bright moment she had hoped... but what good was hope? The tuna wasn't sitting right, now.

"You'll find it," he said reassuringly into her ear. "It's what you do."