Emotional Damage
Posted on 19 Mar 2023 @ 7:04pm by Admiral Zavareh Sepandiyar & Commander Thaddeus Zayne & Lieutenant Commander Hamish Pembroke MD
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Executive Officer’s Office
Timeline: MD09 - 1754HRS
2772 words - 5.5 OF Standard Post Measure
Commander Thaddeus Zayne swept through the doors into his office feeling the weight of the station on his shoulders. He walked smartly through the doors, drawing his hand along the shortly cropped hair aside his head. It had been a rough few hours to say the least, and he hadn’t had a single moment to truly process it all. All he’d been able to do was move through the processes and procedures. No moment to consult his own thoughts and emotions. All that he had been able to do was his duty as Executive Officer of this station.
Thad’s office was not as large and grand as the Captain’s, but as this was a large station it was still far larger than anything an XO on a ship would be able to boast. Like the Captain he had a holotable on one side of the room and most of the wall there was a large data display which he preferred to have listing the various duty shifts and personnel assigned to them by team leader. It was just a quick way for him to see who was where at all times. But unlike his boss, he didn’t posses a lot of personal items to adorn his office. All he had were a few pictures of his mom and sister, and a set of golf clubs tucked into the corner, waiting on him to have a free moment to go to the holodecks and play. Something that had yet to happen.
His desk sat facing the door with two large chairs facing it, though he hardly ever had guests that might want or need to sit down. On the left hand side of the room from his desk, he’d moved the two chairs there aside and had laid out a small putting rug which he occasionally dabbled with if he was wrestling with a tough question or just needed a break from the monotony that often followed life as the XO.
Zayne walked around to his desk, seeing a trio of data PaDD piles his Yeoman had put there, all needing his attention. With a heavy sigh, he grabbed the first one off the top, powering it on and reading it slowly. Only, he barely got one paragraph down before he lost the thread, his mind drifting off as he thought about Ptolemy. It was a solid five minutes of that before Thad realized he wasn’t reading anymore. With a growl of frustration, he set the PaDD back down on the desk. But as he looked at the pile, a surge of frustration and anger flared through him and he howled with fury as he swept the entire pile off his desk, kicking a stray one that had hit the ground for good measure.
It had been a long time since he’d allowed himself to let his guard down. A long time of cold calculation, of letting people think he didn’t care to be liked or even loved. He wasn’t the most social, or emotionally accessible person in the galaxy but that was who he was. He was confident in that part about him, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a side of his personality that craved some kind of social connection. Cora had sensed that in him. He’d come to the realization that, like her beloved Tholian silk, she was used to dealing with hard to handle items. He was just a different version of that silk.
But with Ptolemy, he’d made a true friend and in Minka, he’d found a kindred spirit. A woman who’s personality was so similar to his own. Who was no stranger to the unkind opinions of personality from those around her and who, like him, didn’t give a rip about it. Because, at the end of the day, they were both damned good at their jobs. Just because they didn’t smile, make jokes and otherwise pretend to be people they weren’t, others didn’t ‘like’ them. Neither of them cared.
Thad had known ‘of’ Doctor Mazur for quite some time. She was the Chief Medical Officer at Camp Falkirk where they’d both been stationed. But as she was there to tend the Marines, any care Thad had needed usually came from Doctor Corduke at the Aceso facility tucked into the station - the small refuge of Starfleet amongst the sea of Marines. Being that she was senior staff and he just a Strat Ops Officer on loan, their paths rarely crossed. It wasn’t until the incident here on Obsidian Command with Ptolemy that their paths had crossed and they’d been fast friends ever since. Now, in the blink of an eye, she was gone. Ptolemy was broken. And for all his training and experience, he didn’t have the slightest clue where to start.
His fury still bubbling through his veins, Thad realized he was just staring down at the mass of data PaDD’s as if his furious glare might obliterate them all where they laid. He slapped the last remaining one off his desk for good measure and then walked around towards the doors again, feeling one crunch underfoot as he went by. The doors hissed open when he was a few feet away and as he turned to leave he glanced briefly at his golf clubs in the corner, took a step and stopped in the middle of the doorway. With a grunt, he turned back and went to the bag, grabbed his favorite iron and pulled it out, knocking the bag over as he did. Frustrated that he’d knocked it down, he gave it a swift kick and turned back to the doors. Standing in the hallway was his Yeoman with a fresh stack of data PaDD’s.
“Sorry to bother you, sir,” Lieutenant Junior Grade Beauvon declared. The woman was new to the job but had been a relatively sharp addition to the team. Beauvon was a pale-skinned, dark-haired woman who had cut her hair almost as short as Thad’s that spoke with a thick French accent. He’d chosen her from a list of candidates for the job but had spent very little time with her other than to tell her how he liked things done, and to give a few short orders here and there. Most of their interaction had been via data PaDD.
“What is it?” Thad snapped from the doorway, part furious still and part embarrassed at being caught beating an inanimate object.
A wiser Yeoman might have simply said ‘never mind’, but Aurélie was not so experienced and instead just handed over the PaDD in her hand. “Inventory reports you asked for,” she said, offering the device.
Thad snapped it from her hand, then turned and chucked it like a frisbee through the open doors of his office. “Anything else?” He snapped, gripping the iron in his left hand almost like a club he was ready to use on anything or anyone in his way.
“No, sir,” she said, “Good day, sir,” she added, then hurried off the way she’d been going.
Zayne harrumphed with satisfaction then headed the opposite way, towards the lift, and the holodeck several decks below. He stalked right past the guards at the entrance to the hallway and as he approached the lift, the one’s standing by the doors hit the button for him. It was only a moment before the car arrived and he was able to climb in. As he turned around in the lift and let the doors closed, he looked up to the top of the railing to see Admiral Sepandiyar standing there.
Zavareh watched Commander Zayne enter the lift carrying a golf club caught between thinking that this was a poor time for a leisurely activity and wanting to be accepting of whatever means Thad needed to consult his grief. He often dealt with stress by taking his fishing rod into the holodeck and fishing some great river of Earth for hours. Maybe Commander Zayne had a similar outlet with golf. Maybe he intended to beat a tree in the Environmental Ring with it? He certainly didn’t know and, as he considered the thought even more, he didn’t really care so long as no one got hurt.
Grief did strange things to people and from what he understood of things, Thaddeus was closer to this particular loss than most others were. Doctor Mazur wasn’t specifically ‘liked’ amongst the crew and the senior staff, though none doubted her competency in the least. But that all evaporated at the thought of her loss, especially leaving such a young family behind. It was a feeling Zavareh knew all too well, and one he didn’t like to dwell on for long. He’d had an advantage though. His wife had passed when their youngest were nine; old enough to remember their mother at least. Ptolemy’s son would not be so fortunate and it was quite possible neither would his daughter, being so young.
Sepandiyar tapped his hand on the railing and then turned away, walking to the stairs and then down into the lift atrium and on down the hall towards the Captain’s Ready Room. As he walked he passed the open door of Commander Zayne’s office. Normally the doors were closed, but there was a clean up kit just by the door keeping it open inadvertently. He paused in the doorway and looked inside to see a woman on the floor by the desk cleaning something up. She didn’t notice him until she got up and nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Admiral!” She squeaked, holding the remnants of a crushed data PaDD in hand.
“What happened here?” He asked, gesturing to the PaDD and a hasty pile of others on the XO’s desk.
“Oh…” she trailed off, glancing around and then at the thing in her hand. “I… I didn’t stack… stack them right and they fell over. This one broke,” she lied quickly.
Zavareh stared quietly back, well aware that it was a lie, but chose not to acknowledge it. He would gave Thaddeus this small mercy, so he simply nodded in reply. “Carry on,” he said, as he turned to leave, eyeing the golf bag on the ground suspiciously.
The Admiral continued on down to the Captain’s Ready Room, which he’d commandeered as his own until Captain DeHavilland returned. He hadn’t dared change anything about its configuration he simply took up residence at her desk and holotable to handle station business just as he was certain Hawthorne had not done anything to his Ready Room aboard the Alexander whilst he filled those shoes.
The only thing that Zavareh had done to make his time here on OC anything at all like home was to bring his children. He hadn’t felt safe leaving them on the ship while he wasn’t there and in the grand scheme, OC was probably the safer of places to be now that she was fully online and nearly fully staffed.
He sat down at the desk and powered on the terminal there, but paused to consider his thoughts. Much like Doctor Llwyd, he had a duty to file a specific report on the outcome of his days duties. Zavareh had need to do the same, but he had two to give. Normally, he would issue his report to Starfleet Command, to inform them officially of the loss of one of his officers. Unfortunately, this was a task that he was all too familiar with, having done it many times over the years, often en mass. The only small mercy was that this time he only had to issue one, and the details of that loss were already heavily documented by the medical teams.
However, since Doctor Mazur was not technically a member of Starfleet, his report didn’t go to Starfleet Command but instead went to Marine Command which, in this sector, would have been Camp Falkirk if Lieutenant General Kinghorn hadn’t been on station dealing with other matters related to Camp Cerastes on the surface of the planet. Zavareh had considered just summoning the man to give him the report in person, but the more he thought about it the more he felt like the right course of action was to put the report down formally, then delivery it in person to Kinghorn and simultaneously to Major General MacTary on Falkirk. The former, because he was here and was the ranking Marine, the latter because he was the standard chair of command and because he was a good friend whom Minka had served under for quite some time. Technically speaking, she was on loan from Camp Falkirk.
Of course, the second report he needed to make was to Captain DeHavilland, as this was still her command, he’d simply tasked her with a support mission. She should have been the one here dealing with this and the fact that she was not mad him question his decision to send her on this mission at all. Was he wrong to? Should he have taken the mission, or tasked Markus with this task instead of DeHavilland? It wasn’t like him to doubt his decisions, especially this long after the fact, but he found that was the only course of action that actually did make sense to him at the moment.
His debate now was whether he told Corvus the news now, or if he waited until they were safely on their way back to Obsidian Command. On the one hand, their mission was sensitive and in a dangerous sector of space should the Pyrryx be active in that area and she needed her full attention on the matter at hand. But on the other, this was her command. Should she not be immediately informed of matters like this as they happened? In the end, he wasn’t sure the right answer. But he was sure of what he would have wanted the answer to be if he were in DeHavilland’s shoes.
Zavareh drew the console slightly closer to begin his report and reached out to touch the activation command when the door chime rang. He withdrew and powered the screen off.
“Enter,” he called to the door.
The doors hissed open to admit Doctor Pembroke who came inside, letting the doors swish behind him, as he walked towards the desk. Hamish’s usually cocksure grin was gone and replaced by quiet calm as he approached, holding a PaDD in hand.
“Have a seat,” Zavareh offered.
With a nod, Hamish sat down, offering the data PaDD now. “My report on today’s surgery,” he said.
“Any material differences from what Doctor Llwyd has provided?” Sepandiyar asked as he accepted the device.
Hamish shook his head, “Not at all. Only more details from my surgical perspective. Alwyn did an impressive job of handling this situation. I’ve notated how,” he said, gesturing at the device in his hand.
Zavareh sighed slowly and set the device down. “Any change in the child’s condition?”
Doctor Pembroke shook his head, “He’s premature and will need to remain in the incubation pod for some time yet, but I do not see anything that would make me think that there are any further complications.”
“And the father?” Sepandiyar pressed.
“Ptolemy,” Hamish supplied. “With Doctor Walker and Doctor Melanthio,” he said, offering a slightly smile of hopefulness. As far as he was aware from his own inquiries and from their professional records, they had two of the finest Starfleet and the Federation had to offer in terms of counseling.
“Good,” Zavareh nodded solemnly, letting a brief silence fall between them as he quietly consulted the grain of DeHavilland’s desk. “When will you return to Alexander?”
“I was on my way to the shuttlebay,” Hamish replied, “Unless you would like me to remain?”
“If you feel Doctor Llwyd is capable of handling the Infirmary, I see no reason to keep you,” Sepandiyar answered.
Hamish chuckled, “Alwyn is more than capable of managing this stations infirmary. I do not expect him to serve as my Assistant Chief for that much longer. He is grossly overqualified.”
“Perhaps this is where he should remain then?” Zavareh asked.
Pembroke shrugged, but smiled, a glimmer of his normal cocksure grin. “It just might be.”
