One Last Duty
Posted on 07 Jul 2023 @ 10:52am by Captain Corvus DeHavilland & Commander Anson Corduke MD & Major Declan Finn & Major Porter Wallace
Edited on on 29 Jul 2023 @ 2:47am
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: USS Patfinder - Secondary Sick Bay
Timeline: M3 D11 - 1944HRS
2447 words - 4.9 OF Standard Post Measure
Sick Bay was much less chaotic this time around. The last time she’d been here it’d be only recently after their departure from Korinn space when the injuries were numerous and still being tended to by the Physicians. Now, things were so calm and silent you might have thought they were back at spacedock and all the staff returned to their duties elsewhere. Doctor Corduke had done as she’d asked and let her know when their guest in Sick Bay was up and ready to have a visitor.
Corvus walked into the secondary Sick Bay, down the corridor on Deck Three from the main unit, immediately seeing Major Finn sitting on his bio bed doing some sort of exercise where he was lifting himself up off the bed with his legs outstretched - a sort of backwards pushup. He stopped as she came in, but looked as if he’d been at it for a bit. On the bed next to him was a man she’d only seen in repose, never up and awake.
Doctor Corduke waved politely from the terminal he’d been working at. The secondary sick bay was the spillover ward from the main unit. Now that they had the majority of the wounded and distressed taken care of, he had left main Sick Bay to this ship’s assigned medical officer. The only reason he was still here and not back on Theseus with his team was that he was still taking care of Major Wallace. The man’s family was here, for one, and Duke wasn’t keen on transporting him at warp just to be more comfortable in his own Sick Bay.
Major Finn, in contrast, had no real reason to be in this sick bay. He was part of the Pathfinder’s contingent so should have been with the main sick bay crew. But the man had insisted on coming along with him, to keep Major Wallace company. Duke wasn’t about to start a fuss for no reason so just shrugged and let him come on.
Duke gestured to the bio bed in invitation for Corvus and she nodded, walking over with a smile to greet the last of the guests aboard this ship.
Wallace had already saved his place in the Odyssey and tried to gingerly sit up straighter in the bed, a Pavlovian response that was mimicked standing at attention as best as his body would allow.A shudder of pain went through his body and his arms nearly refused the move, but he succeeded in at least angling himself close to 90-degrees in bed.
“Sir,” the effort of getting out words was still greater than it should, but even within the short amount of time he was starting to feel stronger. “Major Porter J. Wallace…” his voice drifted off. The Sunrise was no longer a ship, but tradition stated that he was still a member of its crew of two. Still, this was the first time he’d introduced himself since coming aboard and the words were stuck in his throat. “...Marine Commanding Officer of the USS Sunrise.”
“Welcome aboard, Major,” Captain DeHavilland smiled back. “I’m Captain DeHavilland. Please, as you were. Have a seat. There is no need to sit up on my account,” she said, waving for him to lay back down.
“Aye, Sir.” Wallace sank back into the bed.
Rolling his eyes, Duke emerged over DeHavilland’s shoulder and pressed a hypo to the man’s neck without a word of warning or invitation, “Yeah, yeah, there’s no way in hell that didn’t hurt,” he grunted as he turned and left, shaking his head, “Marines…”
“Thank you,” he said to the retreating medical officer, before asking Corvus, “Did you get the data recorders and PADD, Captain?”
“I did. Chief Xeri provided me everything. As soon as we’re back in comm’s range, I will send it all, along with everything else. Officially, I should just send it back in the data stream. But, the tradition is that I send it under the Sunrise’s signature. Her final transmission,” she declared solemnly.
He found himself tearing up. Trying to comport himself proved almost impossible and he began to try and talk around the lump in his throat. “I’m sorry, Sir. I…uh…um. It’s just…” he sucked in a breath and let out a shaky one, steadying himself. “After getting Ibis and the kids off the planet. Those were it. The last of my duty to the Sunrise.”
“You’ve done an incredible job, Major. Part of my comm’s out once we’re in range will be to inform 2nd Marine command that you’re still alive as well,” she said, looking over to Declan now. “Now, I’ve only dealt with the Major General a little, but I would think he’ll be over the moon?”
Declan laughed, “If he can beat us to OC, he’ll be there when we get back. Guaranteed,” he clarified.
DeHavilland smiled, “That’s what I expected,” she said. She had intended to make sure that their return was met with much more fanfare than normal to make sure Chief Xeri, Major Wallace and the children had a proper welcome back to the Federation. She wanted them to feel safe, welcomed and hopefully soon, at home. “We have a delegation of Korin with us. When you’re feeling up to it, I’m sure they’d welcome a friendly face. I’m sure they’re feeling out of place here.”
“I can relate,” Wallace replied, regaining some semblance of control.
“I hope it’s not to soon to ask this but… what can you tell me about ‘Camp Sunrise’? The survivors, and the situation. What about the Korinn? The Pyrryx?” she asked gently as she could. “Anything that colors in between the lines of what we already sort of know.”
Wallace leaned further back into the bed. He’d expected the questions, just not all at once. Not sure which to answer first he started with the one he was sure was most on DeHavilland’s mind. “Don’t really know much about the Pyrryx. It lived in what the locals called the Temple. Up on the volcano.”
“Saw it in action from a distance once. Four years or so ago. There was a small uprising by the Irix. ‘Uprising,’” he snorted. “Just a bunch of miners worried about safety conditions in the mine going on strike. The Z’ala tried to beat them into submission and the Irix started to beat them back. The Pyrryx governor came down from his mountain when the Z’ala started running. What followed was…brutal.”
“I’m sorry. Irix? Z’ala?” Corvus queried, unfamiliar with the terms. “Are those factions within the Korinn?”
“That’s probably the best way to describe them,” Wallace replied, running through what he knew of the school system of the Korinn, it breaking down upon the invasion of the Pyrryx, the formation of the two ‘great schools,’ the Irix - enslaved and free - and the Z’ala who worshiped the Pyrryx and were the overseers on the island. “It took us a while to learn the language. Some of the Sunrise crew became pretty good at it. Olivia is fluent. Me, I can understand what’s being said, but speaking it isn’t something I really mastered.”
He tried to say show them what he meant by saying ‘my name is Wallace,’ but into the four click he started coughing. “I guess I’m even worse at it when I’m all busted up.”
“And the Camp? What can you tell me about the camp? The Survivors?” Corvus asked. She knew that it was going to be hard to answer those questions, but she also knew he was going to get the nth degree about it when he got back to Obsidian Command. She was hopeful she could preempt the Admiral a bit before they got there.
He nodded and tried to think of where to start. At the beginning? When they watched the Sunrise implode? Or just the facts? He wanted to begin at the beginning, but he was starting to feel the exertion, so just the facts then. “Forty-four survivors. Two children born on the planet. Ikemba was one and the other didn’t survive but a few days. Not much to eat, we had to work for our food, basically. Something akin to slavery, though the Z’ala seemed to care less whether we actually worked. I think maybe we were an experiment that just didn’t pan out.”
“They… said that they were experimenting on you?” Corvus asked. That was definitely a revelation.
“Not physically, but maybe a social experiment. Honestly, it was just a bit of a hypothesis developed by a few of our science corps survivors. They thought maybe the Pyrryx just wanted to see how we’d do as forced labor on the planet.”
She just nodded in reply, “What happened to the others?”
“Most everyone ended up dying of some sort of disease or just bodies giving out. Things easily curable if we’d been in the Federation. Little things. One person died of a tooth abscess of all things. I probably was not far away,” he indicated the few left in his own mouth, which the medical team had patched up and cleaned, although most of his teeth were still gone. At least it didn’t stink like rotting fish anymore when he opened his mouth.
“You’ll have access to the best Medical care Starfleet can provide once we get back to the station,” Corvus tried to smile back, though she did gesture to Corduke. “Not that you haven’t been in good hands already,” she sighed, adjusting her posture to turn the subject to things the man probably didn’t want to hear. “The Pyrryx are, for lack of a better explanation, the hot topic on OC right now. They’ve been a closely guarded secret within Starfleet for some time now, so you coming back with stories of being a captive one is going to warrant a lot of attention,” she outlined. “Admiral Sepandiyar is going to want to debrief you himself, I have no doubt, and I’m sure Starfleet Intelligence will as well. I’m afraid this may be the last bit of respite you get for a while until you’ve had a chance to debrief with… well… everyone,” she frowned. “Anything you can tell me that helps limit the amount of things they need to question you about is going to help. As well as any rest you can find here. Maybe I can convince Doctor Corduke to let you join your family in their quarters,” she added.
“What do you mean ‘a secret?’”
“From what I understand, Starfleet’s kept this close to the chest because they’re afraid of igniting tensions,” Corvus answered, “I was only read into it because we encountered a Pyrryx vessel.”
Wallace’s eyes widened slightly, “You mean to tell me that Starfleet knew of the Pyrryx? Was that before or after the Sunrise?”
“I suspect well before,” Corvus answered.
“Before?” he pushed himself up a little, “Folks have been operating out here not knowing…Good God. They ripped through the Sunrise in less than ten minutes. Why didn’t they warn us? Why didn’t they share information?”
“There’s nothing to share. They’re bogey men. We have a few scattered security feeds, one encounter with a Luna-class vessel and the debris remains of another. There’s next to no information available on the Pyrryx. What your logs have, and what we’ve gathered during our escape, are the best intel we’ve got on them. Starfleet has no idea that that planet was in Pyrryx space. Let alone had that information when the Sunrise was in this area.”
The Borg had once been like that: a rumor or myth to be taken no more seriously than monsters under the bed. Why was it always like that? “I suppose,” Wallace finally said.
“Is there anything else you can think of that I need to know? That Starfleet needs to know?” she pressed as gently as she could. Bedside manner wasn’t exactly her forte.
“I don’t know that I know much more than what I’ve told you. They scooped us up, searched us, and dropped us on Korix without even an interrogation. I got the impression they thought we were beneath them and not worth the time. But a few years after we were stranded, they dropped off a Federation Marshal. They’d tortured him. He died not long after we got him into camp.”
“Do you have a name? Anything I can use to try and find who he was?”
Wallace relayed his experience with the Marshal named ‘Cubo.’ Or, at least, the lack of it. The one meeting they’d had in the shed before the Bajoran had expired. “If Laura Winetrout had survived she might’ve been able to tell you more about him, but…” Nine months. If she’d just held on for nine months, she’d be here, too.
Corvus simply nodded solemnly, “I know it doesn’t seem like much, but it helps. I’m going to put this all in my report to Starfleet that’s going to go out the minute we hit the relay system,” she tried to smile reassuringly to him. “I’ll let you rest, Major. If you need anything, I will do my best to get it. You’re welcome on the bridge, or my Ready Room any time you need me. Ok?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Ok,” she said with an air of finality. “I’ll let you rest. Thank you for sharing this all with me,” she said one last time, then with a smile, she turned.
“Captain,” Wallace called out, before she could leave. “The Irix. We wouldn’t have survived without them. They had no reason to help us, but they gave what they could, taught us to survive. They became friends. Whatever I can do to get them help, I’ll do it.”
“Part of my report is making an official request for them to be considered Protectorates of the Federation. I’ll do what I can to make that happen,” Corvus answered, giving him one last smile before leaving Sick Bay.
