Leashed
Posted on 26 Mar 2023 @ 11:37am by Captain Lachlan Callum & Commander Faye Magnolia
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Bridge - USS Theseus
Timeline: MD09 - 0200 HRS
1974 words - 3.9 OF Standard Post Measure
Patience was a virtue, but it wasn’t one that Lachlan had ever been accused of having in any great measure. Truth be told, it wasn’t a virtue he had ever been accused of having at all. All his career he had fired from the hip. Took one good look at the situation and ran headlong into it. No tactics, no planning, just gut, instinct and bull-headed determination. Of course that wasn’t the ‘Starfleet’ way and one-hundred percent accounted for why he’d only just been given a proper command. The kind of command he’d long ago assumed would pass him by without a second thought. He’d never played nice. Never overachieved and never played politics. He just did what he thought was right. It honestly hadn't been all that long ago that he'd finally made an enemy he didn't think he'd be able to get past. One particular Vice Admiral who was dead set on removing him from Starfleet, despite the fact that Lachlan and his 'team of misfits' (as the Admiral had called it) had saved his life.
But this particularl Admiral's plan backfired in ways that neither of them could have imagined. Admiral Isfahani had transferred Callum and his merry band of misfits to the back end of Federation space on a dated Wallace Class runabout - the USS Devil Dog, assigned to Camp Falkirk. And in that command, miraculously, he'd somehow failed all the way into the purview of Admiral Sepandiyar. A man who, unbelievably, was taking a chance on him. He’d squared himself with being a career malcontent, always assigned to the ass-end of nowhere but despite all of that somehow he’d managed himself in the good graces of Sepandiyar, despite being wholly despised by a great many of his peers, Isfahni not withstanding. It was one of the rare times that Lachlan had put aside his instinct to bite the hand that feeds and took the offered olive branch. Of course, there were few in Starfleet he respected like Sepandiyar and so he felt obliged to follow the man’s lead, at least for now.
He knew and had to believe that Sepandiyar knew that there would come a time where their relationship was challenged. That the Admiral would issue orders Callum couldn’t follow. And while he was doing his best to toe the line expected of him, he wasn’t going to change who he was. He would always be the career malcontent that followed his gut and lived true to Federation ideals, no matter the orders. And if that cost him this command, as it had the others, he could live with that. The only problem with that line of thought was that while he could live with that, his wife, Giselle could not. And no matter what pressure the Admiral, or Starfleet might put on him, there was no pressure quite like what Giselle could provide.
It was hard for him to admit, but the hard-nosed, ‘fleet-be-damned’ man that he had been when he’d met his wife had been wholly tempered and tied down by the woman. At first, things had been as they’d always been, only with a new partner in crime. But then he’d been assigned to the USS Devil Dog and based on Camp Falkirk. Of course, he’d brought Giselle and their young daughter Olivia, but Falkirk had done something he’d not expected. It gave Giselle a taste of something she’d never, ever had in all of her life. Stability.
Giselle had not come from a stable upbringing as Callum had. She hadn’t been educated on stable Federation worlds, had not gone through any advanced educational programs like Starfleet Academy. She’d grown up on the grift, bouncing from one quick stop to the next following her parents who had taught her and her siblings the finer art of their craft. But for all her life before Lachlan, she never had a place to really call her own. Once she had a taste of it, she wasn’t keen to let it go and she made sure her husband knew that.
Not all that long ago, he’d thought he was getting his final parting blow from Starfleet and would be returning to Sol to find a new path in life. He’d gone into that fateful meeting with Admiral Sepandiyar, Captain Hawthorne and Captain Parnell expecting one last lashing before being drummed out. When he’d been summoned, Giselle had laid bare her expectations of him once they were off of Starbase 99 and back to Sol as she told him she was pregnant with their second. The expectations were simple: stability. They would have a home, and he would be in it with their children. It wasn’t a threat, because he knew how miserable he’d be without her and how miserable she’d make him if he didn’t make good on that simple request. So he’d accepted that whatever happened with Starfleet, he was going back to Sol to find a quiet slice of somewhere to raise this family and give Giselle the stability she’d never had and desperately wanted for her own.
But instead of being drummed from the Fleet, Lachlan had left that meeting with the command of the Theseus and a promotion to a rank he never thought he’d attain - Captain. It came with the pressure of being responsible for an entire ship’s worth of crew, not just a handful of like-minded misfits as he’d been for the last decade. But even more daunting was the pressure to keep it and in so doing continue to give Giselle what she had demanded of him. The thing that he secretly had always wanted too, and just could never motivate himself to set aside his pride to gain. Giselle didn’t give him that choice anymore, and he wouldn’t dare do a thing that would put him away from her or his children.
That didn’t mean that days like this didn’t try him to his core. Sitting there on his hands, waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop, taking orders from a younger and much less experienced officer. One who hadn’t gone through anything near the same experiences he had. DeHavilland was a textbook progression officer following an ideal. She’d never darkened the door of a prison cell, been held hostage for information, beaten, given a beating or likely raised her hand in combat in any fashion other than saber rattling. He knew that was of course why he had command of this ship, and would have command if the shit hit the fan, but it still stuck in his craw that he had to follow her orders until it went sideways.
Lachlan would have never said that to her, or to anyone, and let it be known that it bothered him. These things he kept to himself these days. A couple years ago, he’d have told the Admiral what he could do with that order. But considering who was giving it and who he’d have to answer to at home if he ruined this, he had kept his mouth shut. He presented as a man simply reading the data feed on the holo-projection from the arm of his command chair, but inside he was a rabid dog barking at the end of his leash at the darkness in front of him, trying desperately to break free of his chain.
“Captain?” Commander Magnolia interrupted his brooding silence. It took him a solid minute to register that he was being spoken to and stir himself from his thoughts.
Lachlan sat up in his command chair on the bridge of the Theseus and looked over at the blonde-haired woman to his left, smiling sweetly, well aware that that smile could produce just as much venom as it could sweetness. “Mm?” He grunted.
“Pathfinder has launched the away team,” she explained.
“Mm,” he grunted again, glancing forward to the CoNN and not seeing Gunnarsen, as he’d gone with the away team nor Brightwood to take his place.
“Battle bridges are manned and ready for separation,” Faye added, reading her skipper’s gaze. She might not have been with the man for decades but she’d already learned to read him. She was familiar with his type; three of her brothers were cut from the same cloth. Of course, that was her job; to learn to read the skipper and be ready with exactly what he wanted when he wanted. She liked working with Callum though. He was a no-nonsense type. No politics to maneuver, no good 'ole boys club sort of hazing or expectations. Just simple orders and expectations. She was glad of that she'd worked with the other type and had hated every minute.
Lachlan just nodded now.
“I still think we should separate now and be ready,” Faye offered quietly, reasserting her opinion once more. The strength of the Prometheus was being able to be three separate, powerful ships when needed. Considering their opponent, she thought it wise to be ready.
“Only if we have to stand and fight,” Lachlan shook his head. “I’ve debated it myself. I know what you’re saying. But we can’t run if we’re in three pieces.”
“You think we’re meant to?” Faye asked.
Callum snorted quietly. “The Admiral sent us to protect them, but he’s not the sort to send us to certain death. If he thought it that bad, he’d have come himself. That’s not his way,” he shook his head. He could see where she’d have thoughts like that but he’d known and worked with the Admiral long enough to know that wasn’t his way. He knew plenty that were; that would have happily sacrificed your life and the lives of your crew if it meant a petty bit of information or advancement of their career. He knew Sepandiyar as the kind of man that would have put himself in the line of fire long, long before he dared send another.
“Hopefully you’re right,” Magnolia sighed quietly.
“It’s not Sep we need to be concerned with, it’s DeHavilland,” Callum said quietly, drawing his First Officer closer conspiratorially. “She’s overly cautious. Her lack of experience is showing,” he confided genuinely in her. He certainly wouldn't have told Sepandiyar that, but he had half a mind to have a sit down with DeHavilland about it when this was over. If he was honest with himself, he was surprised that she was being this way after having been so decisive during the fight for the station, taking her teams EVA to try and circumvent the boarders. Something clearly had changed between now and then. Maybe she'd just been desperate? He wasn't sure, but he hadn't fully decided to confront her on it yet. Regardless, now, in the thick of this wasn't the time.
Faye agreed, “Should we be doing something different then?” She asked, as if she was ready to disobey whatever orders they’d been given to follow Callum.
He shook his head, “Not yet. She’s not stupid, she’s just playing it too careful. There’s going to be a time very soon where she won’t have a choice. She’ll have to make a decisive move. You and I just need to be prepared to make that move ourselves if she doesn’t.”
Magnolia smirked, “We’re with you, Captain. All of us.”
“Mm,” Calllum grunted, turning back to his holo report and his quiet brooding. Waiting for whatever was going to happen next.
