In Repair
Posted on 13 Jun 2023 @ 9:55pm by Captain Corvus DeHavilland & Commander Anson Corduke MD & Major Declan Finn
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Sick Bay - USS Pathfinder
Timeline: MD09 - 1115HRS
2957 words - 5.9 OF Standard Post Measure
Sick Bay wasn’t really where Corvus wanted to be, but she knew she had to be there. The Marines, the crew, everyone needed to see her taking their injuries and self-sacrifice seriously and gratefully. Part of her wanted to have good strong words to share with them, but another felt confident that her just being there to check on them and let them know she appreciated what they had done would be enough. It was an almost instinctual need to have something powerful to say, even though she’d all but convinced herself she didn’t have to.
By the time she got to Sick Bay, the chaos had died down, though the majority of the patients still remained. Corvus saw Doctor Wagner attending to someone else with the help of Doctor Corduke, from the Theseus, but she wasn’t here to get the butchers bill. She was here to reassure those that were injured. She didn’t even announce that she was there, she just went to the first bio bed, to the Marine injured there and smiled.
Corporal Drakes sat up quickly as he could as Captain DeHavilland approached but she shook her head and waved her hand, “Not necessary, Corporal,” she smiled as she came over and stood by the side of his bed. “How are you doing?” She asked with genuine concern.
“Nothing to write home about, ma’am,” he replied quickly. “Doc’s want me to hang around. Said I’m in concussion protocol, but otherwise fine.”
She nodded in understanding, “There’s no rush to get out of here. We’re clear of any danger. You just do what the doc’s say and get yourself better,” she smiled.
“Aye, Captain,” he nodded in reply.
She glanced past him at the next bed, “Everyone’s still here, right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he affirmed quickly. "I think Parveaux's still being sorted, but everyone else is here."
Corvus patted his shoulder gently, “Thank you, Corporal. For helping bring everyone home,” she said, moving on now to the next bed. To a face she was much more familiar with.
Sergeant Matz Eindorf had already sat up when he’d seen the Captain with Philip and was ready for her to come over to him next. But even though he’d prepared himself for her to come and check on him, he still felt a wellspring of guilt and shame for having dropped with Major Finn and the rest of the team knowing that she hadn’t wanted that and hadn’t ordered it. He knew it was the right thing to do at the time, and he certainly would have done it again in the same situation, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel for the strain it put on the Captain.
“Sergeant,” Corvus offered as she came over to his bedside, realizing as she did that she wasn’t entirely sure what his first name was. She knew she’d heard it before, but she couldn’t recall it off the top of her head - just Eindorf. He was a Marine she was singularly familiar with as he’d been with her on their fateful EVA walk when OC had been besieged. The Sergeant had been on her chain, one of the two Marines with her on that day.
“Captain,” Sergeant Eindorf nodded, wincing slightly.
“Are you alright?” She asked him worriedly.
“I’m good, skipper,” he tried to smile reassuringly. “Just a few bumps and bruises. I pulled a hamstring, of all things,” he tried to chuckle casually. “Doc wants us all to stay put. He said sonic weapons can have downstream affects we haven’t experienced yet. So… we’re just staying put.”
Corvus put her hand on his shoulder too. “I’m glad you’re back in one piece. I was worried I’d lost you all,” she confessed. “I need my EVA buddy,” she added with a smirk.
Matz laughed loudly at that, nodding. “You saved my ass out there, skip. I’ll be on your tether any day,” he declared emphatically.
“If I remember, Sergeant, you were the one carrying me around transporter pads and bridges,” Corvus shook her head, grateful for his attempt to put that on her as a point of honor but knowing it wasn’t true.
“Bullshit… ma’am…” he said, correcting himself from the knee-jerk response he had. “You pulled me down out of the void on that tether out there. If you hadn’t we’d have all been floating away,” he replied emphatically. “I never got to tell you thank you for that. Thank you, Captain.”
DeHavilland blushed slightly, not remembering things quite like that but understanding that from his perspective that was what had happened. In the back of her mind, her more emotional response was to demand to know why a man that owed her his life would knowingly disobey her and jump with Finn. She pushed that aside. It wasn’t his fault. He answered to the Major and was following his orders; at least that’s what she told herself. She didn’t want to know if the Major had or hadn’t told his Marines what they were dong and what they were risking. The logical part of her mind that now spoke louder than the emotional, assured her that he had, and that Eindorf and the others had knowingly gone along.
Major Finn might been a royal pain in the ass, but he wasn’t an idiot. He knew what he was doing, had planned it and no doubt told his Marines what they were risking. She knew they went down there to rescue the Marine left behind, and the fact that he was on a bio bed just down the way near Major Finn was in a way their own victory. She got it. She just hated that they’d done it without her, almost as much as she hated that she hadn’t sent them herself.
That was what was eating her alive now. The indecision. The fear she’d felt in those moments of confusion. She’d seen her Captain be so easily decisive when she was First Officer on the Praetorian and she thought she had it too, that she had her mind at that level, that she had her confidence at that level. Yet when the moment had come, she’d let it slip right past her in a haze of indecision. Of fear that the choice she made would send people to their deaths. Her decisiveness had cost lives on the station when they’d gone EVA. It had cost Parmath his.
She knew that there was no way you could be sure that your orders wouldn’t send a crewman to their death but she’d have been lying if she said that the loss of Parmath hadn’t shaken her to her core. Enough so that she’d doubted every command since, convinced that she could prevent another meaningless death with just a little more forethought. A point she’d been summarily proven wrong on right out of the gate.
Corvus gave Eindorf a final smile and gentle pat on the shoulder and moved on to the next bed, where there was another Marine, this one a red-haired woman who looked extremely uninterested in being on the bio bed and being held in check by Gunnery Sergeant Johannes - one of Obsidian Command’s Marines.
“Captain,” Gunny Johannes nodded as she came over to see what the young woman’s status was. “This is Sergeant O’Shaugnessy, platoon Sergeant on the Theseus,” he explained, gesturing to her.
“Captain,” O’Shaugnessy greeted her politely. She wasn’t quite what she’d expected a Marine to be, but clearly cut from the same cloth as Major Mazur. Small, petite and one tightly packed firecracker. “Just waiting for ‘doc to cut me loose. There’s plenty more people need this bed than me,” O’Shaugnessy declared emphatically.
“I’m sure you’re here for a good reason,” Corvus said, speaking to her from the foot of the bed, glancing left to see the occupant of the next one and purposely shifting so her back was to him, so she could focus her attention on O’Shaugnessy. “Thank you, for bringing everyone home safely,” DeHavilland continued on. “Both of you,” she said, looking to Johannes as well.
“No one gets left behind, ma’am,” Johannes replied.
“Any time, ma’am,” O’Shaugnessy agreed quickly.
Corvus turned from them to the next bio bed which wasn’t exactly next to the one she’d come from but removed slightly by a partition that was partially bulkhead and partially a curtain drawn back as needed. The curtain was halfway back and on the bed beyond was Major Finn.
The grizzled Marine looked pretty worse for the wear. Unlike the others she’d met with, he wasn’t in a grimy uniform still, having just been patched up for minor bumps and bruises. Declan was in a medical gown with a device attached to his chest, a device on his temple, a cuff around his wrist and an ongoing data feed on the panel behind his bio bed. Needless to say, while he was up and awake, he was clearly not just here for a bandaid and a ‘be careful’ speech from the Doctor.
Declan winced a bit as he sat up for Captain DeHavilland. He thought to himself that he might have gone through hell and back with that Pyrryx, but she looked just as bad. Like she’d aged a hundred years in the last few hours. He felt a definitive pang of guilt for being a part of that aging process no doubt by having jumped with his Marines. But he didn’t feel for a second as if he’d made the wrong decision. He just hated that he’d felt he’d had to do it. And hated that, whatever budding thing there had been between them had likely vanished out of the bulkhead when he’d decompressed the section to allow them to jump.
Corvus had kicked him off the bridge. She’d refused to hear his advice, even after lecturing him heatedly about him not giving it to her. They had a downed Marine on that planet; one who’d been forgotten about by Starfleet and he was going to be dead in his grave before he left that planet with the Marine on it. After he’d left the bridge, he’d gone straight for the armory and suited up. Eindorf, Parveaux, Drakes, Mamello. He’d told them all what he was planning to do and he’d told them all that they would be considered to be disobeying orders by DeHavilland when they got back but that he was going with or without them. No one argued, they’d just suited up and jumped.
Declan of course knew what MacTaryn would have said about it, if he’d stayed put and they’d left Wallace on that planet alone to die. The General might not have been able to court martial him, but he had zero doubts that MacTaryn would have made his life hell for it. Hell, the Major General might well have staged a rescue mission on his own once he found out. But, even without the overhanging fear of MacTaryn’s disappointment, there was no way he was going to walk away from this. Even if Corvus couldn’t make the call herself.
That was a hard thing to do though. To make a decision that he knew would piss off someone he had respect for. Someone whom had only just shown might be something more.
“You should see the other guys,” Declan quipped as Corvus came to stand by his bed, looking him over with clear worry.
“Is there any… lasting damage?” She asked, looking him over and then past him at the big display behind him with various readings.
He grunted a bit as he adjusted on the bed, “Might have a few scars to show off to the lads,” he shrugged. “Doc’s just concerned for my heart and my noggin’,” he said, pointing to the device on his chest and the one at his temple. “Big fella rang my bell a fair few times.”
“And you… helped kill him?”
Declan let out a quick bark of laughter, “Doubt that,” he shook his head. “Lieutenant Tahriik handled him though. That was one helluva fight,” he harrumphed in awe and disbelief. “Bloody clash of the Titans, that was.”
“How big was the Pyrryx? I haven’t been to see the corpse,” she questioned him gently.
“Big as Tahriik. Broad shouldered, heavy, one big ass ball of muscles,” he explained. “Tossed Parveaux like a lawn dart!” He shook his head. “But,” he said, trying to turn to the bright side of it. “We learned a helluva a lot about his lot. Their weaknesses. Next time, we’ll be ready.”
“I’m not sure it was worth the price you almost paid,” Corvus replied solemnly, looking him over once more.
Declan looked at Corvus, and then over at Major Wallace on his bio bed not far away. He smiled and turned back to her, “Hell yes it was,” he declared.
A silence fell between them. Corvus stared down at the panel on the side of the bed and Declan simply sat there, adjusting in his seat to be more comfortable. Finally, Corvus broke the awkward silence, “I shouldn’t have sent you off the bridge,” she said quietly. “It was… I asked for your advice, and you gave it. I was… after the station… after Parmath. I thought I could… minimize the losses.”
Finn nodded slowly, drawing a slow breath and letting it out. “I don’t…” he started, then stopped. “I don’t regret bringing him home,” he said, gesturing over to Wallace. “But I do wish it hadn’t been at your expense, Corvus” he said, glancing about quickly to make sure they weren’t being eavesdropped on. He leaned slightly closer, “Or at the expense of any… connection we had,” he all but breathed.
“I put you in a corner when I shouldn’t have. I don’t blame you for what you did. In your position… I might have done the same…” she said, shaking her head at the hypocrite she was. “Ok… I have done the same,” she confessed. “When I was an Ensign… I went against the Chief’s orders and took a shuttle to the surface of a planet. It was going to be hours before we could be down there, and the Lieutenant on the surface was a friend of mine. So I took a shuttle, and went to get her and the away team,” she explained.
Declan sat up, smirking at the thought of a rebellious Corvus DeHavilland not following her orders like a good Fleetie.
“There was an ion storm, that was why the Chief had grounded us. But when I cleared it on the way down, I was attacked by locals. The shuttle was pretty badly damaged, but operational. I got the away team aboard and, with a pretty beat up shuttle, still managed to navigate the ion storm and get everyone back to the ship.”
Finn smirked, “Worth the price you paid?” He asked, purposely using the same words.
Corvus blushed slightly, “I… uh…” she chuckled quietly, “I got a Commendation and an accelerated promotion.”
Declan laughed loudly, shaking his head, looking at her in disbelief. “Corvus DeHavilland, the rebel,” he grinned.
She smiled back, glancing back herself to see that they weren’t being watched and touched his forearm, squeezing it gently. “I…” she started quietly, “Call me Amélie,” she said, sliding her hand slyly away as Doctor Corduke spotted her and came over, giving her a wave that was clear he meant for her not to leave. “We can talk more about that when we get back.”
“Yeah,” Declan agreed. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
“Captain, I’m glad you’re here,” Doctor Corduke said, hurrying towards her, looking as if he’d been through the same fight the Marines had.
“Doctor Corduke,” she nodded. “Thank you for sticking around, I’m sure Doctor Wagner is happy for the extra hands,” she said gratefully. “You’re mentioned prominently in my report to the Admiral. Thank you.”
Duke waved that off dismissively, then waved as if to dismiss that. “I don’t mean to dismiss that, Captain. Thank you, I appreciate the kudos. Never have too many kudos,” Duke replied quickly. “That’s not the thing though. The thing is the Pyrryx.”
“The Pyrryx, as in all of the Pyrryx, or the Pyrryx as in the dead one in the morgue?” DeHavilland asked.
“Yeah. The morgue is where I put the Pyrryx, but that’s the problem,” Corduke said.
“Why is that a problem?” Corvus shook her head, folding her arms across her chest.
“It’s a problem because he’s not in the morgue anymore. Sensor logs indicate he was transported out just before we left Korin space,” he explained.
“You’re saying the Pyrryx beamed him out through the shields?” Declan asked in awe.
Corvus started to cock her head in unsettled curiosity when the reality of what had happened hit her like the proverbial freight train. She looked up at the ceiling, groaned and then stomped her foot. “God dammit, Bowdler!” She cursed to herself.
Corduke shook his head, “What’s a Bowdler?”
