Permanent Fixture
Posted on 09 Dec 2021 @ 1:15am by Major Declan Finn (*)
Mission:
M2 - Sanctuary
Location: Marine Commander's Office
Timeline: MD09 - 1721HRS
2094 words - 4.2 OF Standard Post Measure
For three days he’d managed to avoid this space. Three days he’d spent finding just about every other reason he could to be anywhere else but there. But he was running out of excuses. Running out of tasks and errands that kept his on-duty time anywhere else but there. He simply couldn’t ignore it anymore. As much as he didn’t want to accept his fate, there was nothing else for it. He had to give in. It wasn’t just him he was looking out for here, it was an entire Regiment that would suffer if he couldn’t get the job done effectively. That started in one place. The place he’d been avoiding like the plague.
Major Declan Finn stood outside the door of the Marine CO’s Office, deciding if he was ready to step in or not. It felt weird to be standing there, knowing that no one else had access to this space but him - the one man that didn’t want to be there in the first place. But this was where it all happened. It’s where he would meet with his fellow Officers, where he would plan their training and rotations, plot promotions and otherwise manage the logistics of a Regiment split between a Starbase and a field base. No small feat, to be sure.
The problem was, Declan was a field Marine. He’d spent his entire career as close to the ground as it was possible to be. In fact, until the Major General had given him this posting, he’d never actually had a desk or office of his own. Just a locker and a kit bag ready to go at a moments notice. He was more at home in a field tent or a rough barracks than any major Starfleet accommodations, to the point he’d refused DeHavilland’s initial offering of a ranking officer’s quarters on the station. He’d bunked with his Marines on the cargo bay floor with their gear and since the rest of the station was online, had claimed a bunk in the junior officer’s barracks. Basically everything he could do to make sure he never forgot that he was just a guest here, not a permanent fixture.
That wasn’t the case anymore.
Declan just stood there staring at the door until Sergeant O’Damhain started to walk past and then stopped to look back.
“Everything alright, Skipper?” The sandy-haired man asked.
Finn stirred from his thoughts and looked over, nodding, “Yeah. Door controls stuck,” he lied, tapping the panel roughly as if it needed coaxing. The door hissed open. “All good,” he tried to smile.
“Aye, Skip,” O’Damhain nodded and walked on.
The Marine CO’s Office was one of the spaces on the farthest edge of the Marine decks, and one of the largest. A huge panorama was visible on the outer bulkhead of the office, behind a stately desk and sitting area. It looked a lot like Captain DeHavilland’s space, only smaller and without the bookshelves. In its place was a stocked armory wall. Compared to what he was used to, this space was palatial. He couldn’t help but smirk too at the large holo-table that dominated one side of the space, matched to a huge terminal on the wall. He’d seen MacTaryn’s holo-setup on Falkirk and had definitely been jealous of that. For the first, brief moment, he wondered if this all might not be as bad as he’d built it up to be.
The inner side of the office looked out on to the training deck itself with the barracks on the far side, training range, and other training facilities. It meant that he had not only a great view of the space beyond, as befitting his station, but he was right on top of the action as well. Not much could go on down on the training floor or the deployment area attached to the auxiliary shuttle bay that he wouldn’t see. Assuming he was even in his office. Declan wasn’t all that keen on life behind a desk.
He had to admit, having this space away from everyone else might give him some time to get through the bullshit administration he knew he was about to absorb. Already he’d been asked more than a few things he had no idea how to answer, as he’d not been prepared to be taking on the management of this section. He’d been more than happy to hand off the security arrangements to the Starfleet staff and he had not dug into the Marine rosters. The Battalion staff in place he was sure was capable of doing their jobs.
It dawned on him that he didn’t know any of them. He hadn’t thought more than twice about it, if he was honest with himself. He’d spun off the security rotations and made all the preparations to make sure his unit had rotated back to Falkirk, expecting to follow himself once the Major General had been done. He’d been looking forward to a few hours on the range, seeing some familiar faces and maybe even convincing the unit to do a little cold weather training - just to shake things up. Now here he was. A completely different task in hand.
Throughout his career he’d always had his feet on the ground and an extraction planned. He purposely never put himself into a position to which he had no way out - that was just good planning. But here he was, firmly settled between a rock and a hard place. The rock was this new job, and the hard place the thought of refusing it and watching the career he’d worked so hard to cultivate vanish like a stray transporter beam. Yet despite knowing it might be a death sentence, he couldn’t help but thinking he would be wise to just make a run for the nearest shuttle and just get the hell out of dodge. Yet. Here he was, walking into his new office and standing before the desk not quite ready to sit behind it.
Like the doorway, he stood there staring at the desk, his mind off on another meandering tangent. A mix between professional speculation and personal soul-searching. He wanted to be happy and feel like he’d accomplished something, yet he couldn’t shake that he wasn’t ready for this deep down. That a life away from the dirt and action wasn’t going to drive him insane. That he was going to be able to navigate the incredibly awkward quagmire surrounding Captain DeHavilland. He shook his head, almost convinced that he had to walk away from this. He was all but nodding his head in affirmation of the decision when the chime to the office rang, stirring him as sharply as a gunshot.
He glared back at the door for a long moment before he cleared his throat and said, “Enter!” No sooner than he’d said it, he realized he wasn’t behind the desk and moved to the side, deciding he couldn’t get behind it. He was done. He wasn’t doing this. He’d accept the consequences. He wasn’t ready.
The doors to the office open and a Marine stepped through carrying a duffel bag that he deposited on the deck by the door and came in. He snapped to attention and saluted Finn.
Declan looked back at the man in surprise. He knew his face, how could he not, they’d served together for the last seven years on Falkirk. They’d spent countless hours in the field, on the range, training in the holodecks and training off world. He knew the man as well as he knew all the men in his Unit, he just wasn’t sure why he was here.
Gunnery Sergeant Sergeant Aodhan Vey was a slight man with dark brown hair and ice-blue eyes. Declan always said he had eyes cold as ice, as it suited Vey to a T. The man wasn’t one for words, if he didn’t have to speak them. That silence worked well for his chosen specialization. He was a Scout Sniper in the Recon unit Declan commanded. Had commanded.
Finn snorted and shook his head as he realized that MacTaryn must be adding insult to injury here and transferred his old Recon unit to OC. Maybe he’d meant it altruistically; to give him something of familiarity in the unit he was now commanding, but he kind of doubted it. MacTaryn wasn’t thoughtful in that way. This was his way of saying he had no choice but to take the job. That there was no going back. As he was framing that frustration, he noticed that Gunnery Sergeant Vey wasn’t wearing double bar’s under his chevron’s, but triple.
“Thank you, Major,” Vey said quietly, all but interrupting his thoughts.
“…for?” Declan asked, clearly confused.
“For accepting my transfer request to your command. For the promotion,” he replied, gesturing to his collar. Declan had almost forgotten how strong the man’s Irish lilt was.
“Ah,” Declan replied, not sure how to tell him that not only had he not done anything of the sort, but that it was a moot point, he wasn’t staying.
“I’ll miss the field. But if you can settle in behind a desk, sir. So can I,” Aodhan added. “There’s no one I’d rather serve with.”
It was like a knife right into his heart. He let out a slow breath, feeling his former confidence in his decision ebb away. He hadn’t approved Aodhan’s request, nor promoted him, which mean that MacTaryn or Rutland had. Maybe he’d misjudged the Colonel’s deviousness and put it all on MacTaryn needlessly. But the fact that Aodhan had requested it; a man that would have been happy enough to dig a hole and camp out with his rifle for a week without saying a word to another human had specifically requested to transfer into his command. To transfer knowing that it would take him out of the field. Out from behind the rifle he was so damned good with.
Declan had served in the Recon Marines for a long time. Served with a lot of men in a lot of combat situations and he’d never, ever, seen a marksman as solid as Vey. He just couldn’t fathom that the man would willingly give that up for a desk job. To be a Regimental Master Sergeant shuffling paper and administering training. Or was he just being narrow minded? Confident as he was, did Aodhan see the reality of things more clearly than him? Had he accepted that, at their age, life in the field wasn’t a reality for much longer if at all? Was he just more willing to accept the next chapter of his service? Was Declan holding onto a shadow of a thought for the sake of comfort and familiarity?
The realization hit him like a drunk Nausicaan. Coward, he thought to himself. That’s what he was being. A coward. He wasn’t nostalgic for life in the field, nor was he being sinisterly manipulated by Rutland or MacTaryn. The simple fact was he was scared. He was terrified of taking on a task that didn’t have a clear enemy; that put him in front of Marines as an example. That made him responsible for the well-being of an entire Regiment, not just a group of hard-assed Marines with a specific job.
Aodhan had accepted the reality and come willingly into it. It was time that he did the same. Time for Declan to admit he could do this job - that he was ready to do it.
“It’s good to have you here,” Declan finally offered to the man. He gave as friendly a smile as he could manage given the Tsunami of emotions roiling through his head, and gestured to one of the chairs as he stepped around the desk. He pulled the chair back from the desk and stared at it mutinously one last time before he dropped into it carefully and looked across at Vey. “I’ve got a lot to read you in on, so I’ll start at the top…”
