Warp and Woof

Posted on 28 Nov 2021 @ 12:01am by Commander Calliope Zahn

Mission: M2 - Sanctuary
Location: Quinn & Zahn Quarters
Timeline: MD07 afternoon
2127 words - 4.3 OF Standard Post Measure

When the door opened for her, there was a delayed moment while Calliope stood in the hall looking in. It was late in the afternoon and she hoped to find their quarters already lit, her husband hunched over some projected calculations when he would look up and his intense concentration would break with a look of welcome... and Calliope would be home.

But it was dark inside, for the most part. Accent lighting in the display case and along the back wall highlighted the stillness. A new stack of deliveries from Sol stood unopened beside the sofa, the only evidence that Lance had even been there long enough to accept the delivery and set them to one side. Otherwise, the tables and seating were cleared. Calliope’s own partly unpacked shipping box was still on the side bar.

With one foot and the end of her cane, Calliope crossed the threshold. The lights gently rose to a pleasant level and changed to a soft warm tone as the display by the door registered a personalized entry protocol based on her lifesigns. A small “Welcome home, Calliope” message appeared on the panel as the security biometrics were confirmed. The computer adjusted the environmental controls to a preset with a temperature setting and humidity point similar to her own colony’s homeworld on a sunny day in the spring. Coming to life, the display panels throughout the room simulated window views, slightly out of focus, overlooking a grassy yard with tough foliage, the leafy branches lifting and falling with the wind. She remembered reminiscing about springtime to Lance more than once. It seemed he remembered as well.

At his formulated considerations, Calliope felt his absence all the more. It was probably just additional work keeping him away— all of the tasks that had likely accumulated while Lance had taken time away to be at her bedside in the first couple of weeks. Calliope found an unbidden guilty feeling in her stomach for having monopolized all of his time and caused him so much worry. Now that she was getting about a little he likely needed to make up for it.

Too tired to save face any longer, especially with no one looking on, Calliope relaxed into the hoverchair tucked beside the coat rack at the door. She hooked the cane to the side and rubbed her knees while baring her teeth against the throbbing pain.

Calliope reflected as she massaged her kneecaps. She was always thrilled at arriving at a new port, or beaming to a new planet on a mission, or catching up with Lance at one of their destinations. Something of that same excitement arose while she had earlier strolled Obsidian Command’s restored promenade— but this time, a different type of feeling seemed to accompany it. It wasn’t some distant land that she was visiting for some fleeting mission or shore leave. She felt more as if she were meeting her new neighbors; Calliope hadn’t had such a feeling for a long time. Maybe not since childhood.

Calliope’s stomach burbled. She’d been putting off having dinner, for two-fold reasons, really. For one, she had hoped maybe to share something with Lance, as they hadn’t eaten together since the one meal they had before their argument. Calliope frowned at the memory of that day— the hurt she’d felt from his justifiable frustrations which had everything to do with the hurt she’d caused. But really, the main reason she had been putting off eating anything was due to her stomach being delicate, still. She’d had a talking to from the nursing staff about her skipping meals, but she just hadn’t felt completely right ever since the feeding tube. Between the indigestion and the troubled stomach nothing seemed to stay down and she was tired of revisiting her meals.

Motoring over to the replicator, she paused to fully appreciate Lance’s modifications which had moved the unit low enough to access from seated-height, seeing as she hadn’t the balance to carry a bowl evenly while walking. Her lips twisted in consideration as she ran a hand along the frame of it and paged through the order history. Lance had some noodles a few days ago, but aside from their visit together after the memorial, didn’t seem to take anything other than breakfast in the apartment since.

She hoped he wasn’t forgetting to eat... and then shook her head at the irony of worrying about Lance skipping meals. Putting her face in her hands, Calliope closed her eyes for a moment. What she wanted most was to get free of sickbay and regain the rest of her independence. To get better. Avoiding food was just going to take her backwards. She had to eat and just hold down whatever she could.

“Let’s try this again,” she growled. Not knowing what she really wanted, she decided Lance's noodles looked safe, and pressed a reorder command. Carefully she set the newly materialized ceramic bowl in her lap. It was comfortingly warm and smelled nice, at least. The motion of the hoverchair was smooth enough not to rock the broth overly much and she re-situated herself in the office area at the rear of the primary livingroom. Maybe she could crack open some more reports to distract herself while she ate.

“Computer, dim the lights, 30 percent.” They were further reduced. “Drop temperature three degrees, increase airflow, like an open window.” The computer chirped, and Calliope felt slightly relieved when the ‘fresh’ air reached her from the quiet exchangers. She put her chilly fingers on the back of her neck to cool a growing gross feeling and sooth a throbbing headache in the base of her skull. After a moment of collecting herself, she pushed her sleeve from her wrist and from her cuff device, she activated the display.

The holographic representation she had been working on since first trying to fill her time in the Medical Ward had now grown from a single display board to a graphical surrounding globe with multiple layers of information and key menus reduced to points in a navigational GUI of interconnecting neon lines, webbing madly in all directions.

Calliope mused for a moment how she’d not so long ago tried out a loom weaving class. It had been a soothing and enriching experience, working with the fibers and exploring a synthesis of traditional, new, and personal tools, materials, context, and expression. Now she had a new warp and woof to navigate.

It wasn't a sensible tapestry though. More the work of a drugged spider. A bundle of tangled string, collected more like a bird’s nest than a tapestry. At this phase in her process, the collection, nothing was too unusual or esoteric for her map. She gathered it all. If it had even the most tenuous connection it was on her radar. Some items were old security matters on the station. Some were strategic concerns of the fleet. Other Marine engagements. Many were political, economic, scientific, or technological. As an officer whose work had always consisted of interdepartmental cooperation, she reached even further now, knowing that specialties, while incredibly powerful in some applications, also created narrow perspectives and a lack of knowledge exchange and shared terms between disciplines. Everyone had a piece of the puzzle to the larger picture. Calliope was determined to bring that larger picture into focus, allowing it to emerge from the noise.

Picking up where she’d left off last time, was an auto updating display of planetary and regional elections. This particular season was fairly hot in the Federation as the presidential race and several key planetary members were also holding large and noisy races. While Calliope wasn’t much of a political science ilk, she knew it was smart to watch the prevailing winds. Political movements tended to have their reasonable centers with valid issues and concerns in mind, but always their fringes, desperate members, and those susceptible to activation for nefarious purposes. She’d highlighted several groups that she was sure were already on intel and tactical watches. A news feed tuned to key words, locations, and names was updating live and being auto translated for her to read later. The computer was running a terms analysis from the multitudinous messages so she could filter them by any apparent patterns. No one could read all the news feeds in all the worlds. The sheer volume of reports made the information glut practically useless without smart filtering. Calliope marked a set of filters to read later and they queued beside the transmissions she’d already read and remarked on.

“Maybe I should run for President,” she mused. “Might as well. There’s a glut of other candidates this cycle. I’ve got as much a shot as anybody.” She still had no idea who she was voting for. Her favorite candidates never had the most support. Politically, Calliope felt like there was always too much compromise in favor of the core member worlds. Everyone on the periphery had to settle for what they could get. Regions this far out near the border? It wasn't surprising how low voting turnout was for the UFP presidential race in the region. few thought it made any differece to their way of life.

Calliope had often thought that the Romulans just on the other side of the border evinced far more interest in UFP central politics than the local Federation populace did. They weren't stupid. They knew how to get their hooks into just about everything. Someone was going to, and they were going to get first dibs either with honey or traps. Any Romulan worth their salt knew that knowledge alone wasn't power. Influence was the currency. The less visible the better. While Hobus was a tragedy of unspeakable proportions it was an equally sized opportunity. The supernova had left power vacuums in a perimeter much larger than the shell of it's own actual shockwave.

Romulan factions vying for power and influence in the new amorphous forms of their own governing bodies and influence and legitimacy with the Federation would be a factor for all of the contested seats, as ambitious persons applied both the kind of social currency that was the oil that moved nations, and the kind of intangible cloak and dagger influence the Romulans were unlikely to give up just because their capital world had been destroyed.

Calliope had a list that her friend A’Koja Dea had made, full of what A’Koja had termed the winners and the losers in the Hobus supernova outcomes. With each dossier on each head of state, military commander, influential figure, or key regulatory personnel, A’Koja had regularly updated notes and personal thoughts. A'Koja's experience with Romulan politics went rather far back- nearly twenty years. Which was good, despite barely scratching the surface, as many Romulans seemed to hold past grudges or spin plans for future grandeur measured in generations and millennia.

Lost in her research, Calliope barely noticed that she'd come to the end of the noodles until she surprised herself with a belch. She waved the display closed and leaned forward in anticipation of controlling impeding gagging, but the reflex didn't develop into reflux and she relaxed back into the hover chair.

She'd successfully eaten. It was her little victory. Hers alone, she thought with melancholy as she surveyed the still quiet apartment. A small flashing message displayed across Lance's console and caught her attention. It wasn't encrypted and Calliope couldn't help but read it, discovering it to be a reminder for an event, his attendance being required at a diplomatic corps dinner in Kalara.

"Why didn't I get an invitation?" Calliope wondered, double checking her own message board but failing to find a similar invite. For a moment she was miffed. Why wouldn't Lance have even forwarded it to her? She shook off the imagined slight. He had to have assumed she had received the same invitation. He just hated functions like those and probably wished he wasn't required to go at all. Calliope determined to meet him in the shuttlebay without mentioning the misunderstanding. If she accompanied him, they were unlikely to turn her away even without an invitation. And there was always the off chance they would have a nice time. She amended his RSVP with a plus one and left the reminder up. At least now they had dinner plans together.

Knowing that she was due to check back into the medical ward for the night, Calliope returned her nearly empty dish to the replicator and shut down the lights.

"Goodnight, Lance." She whispered to the empty room. "I'll see you tomorrow."