Ante Up
Posted on 07 Jul 2023 @ 10:54am by 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 Pathfinder - Secondary Sick Bay
Timeline: M3 D12 - 1305HRS
1189 words - 2.4 OF Standard Post Measure
“I’ll see you, and raise you… three,” Major Declan Finn said, confidently pushing three chocolate candies across the makeshift poker table. Sitting at the foot of the bio bed, he hardly felt like he was at a high roller table, especially pushing chocolate candies about, but they were fresh out of things to do. All they really had were a deck of cards, a few books and these ‘chocolates’ which were really some kind of supplement that Doctor Corduke had replicated into a more palatable form.
Doctor Corduke looked between Declan, on his right, and Wallace, on his left as he sat on a rolling stool by the middle of the bio bed. He wasn’t sure if Declan was bluffing but he wasn’t about to let him give up on his peach of a hand.
“I’ll see you,” he declared, pushing his chocolates in to match.
“Call,” Wallace tossed three of his own chocolates into the pile.
Declan grinned at the three of them and dropped his cards on the table, spreading the five of them out dramatically, “Full House, Aces of King’s,” he declared as if that was the end of it all.
“Cute,” Doctor Corduke nodded, laying his cards down on the side and then slowly laying them down to spread out on the bio bed revealing a nine, ten, Jack, Queen and King, all of the same suit. “Straight flush, boyo. Matches the red on your face,” he grinned.
“Two pair,” Wallace threw his own cards down and leaned back with a sigh. “I’m a little out of practice. Should’ve folded two antes ago. Doctor, that stuff you’ve been giving me makes it seem like cotton-balls are stuffed in my brain. Was doping me just a quick way to win at cards?”
“Maybe you, Finn here lost all on his own,” Duke smirked, scraping all the little chocolates his way, but peeling off a handful for Wallace. “Eat a couple of those. Blood sugar is looking a little low,” he said, glancing past Wallace’s head at the display on the wall.
Wallace smiled weakly. He’d been improving over the last couple of days, he didn’t feel like he was going to bust a lung every time he spoke. He watched Declan shuffle the cards for a few seconds before admitting, “This is all very bizarre.”
“Bizarre as in, I don’t feel so good, Doc. Or bizarre as in… I’m used to being on a desert slice of sand with no way home?” Duke asked.
“Doc!” Declan hissed.
Duke shrugged, “Sorry. Not a counselor. Just making sure I understand,” he replied.
“It’s okay,” Wallace assured the other Marine, “He slowly unwrapped a chocolate and bit down on it, closing his eyes as he did. “Just days ago, I spent most of my time just trying to survive or thinking about what was going to happen to the kids when Ibis and I died, especially if that came before either were an adult. Now I’m sitting in bed eating chocolate.”
Finn stared quietly back, not sure what to say.
Duke crinkled up a chocolate wrapper, looking at Finn with a confused expression before shrugging. “You’re welcome,” he quipped. “So we playing another hand?”
“Shit, Doc, you’re as subtle as a rifle butt to the forehead!” Declan exclaimed.
“You… did hear the part about not being a Counselor… right?” Duke asked with a shrug.
Finn just glared at the man as he chomped on his chocolate and shrugged back. He shook his head and turned back to Wallace. “You ok, mate?” he asked.
He glanced at silver-haired Duke, “I expect you served in the Dominion War, Doc, but you Major?”
“I left training straight into the war,” Declan answered solemnly, “2nd Marine Division, 1st Recon Battalion, Alpha Company.”
Wallace eyed him appraisingly, “You must have been young.”
Declan just nodded.
“Thunder Ridge and Recon. What was dropping into the mix like for you?”
“My first assignment out of training was a recon mission forward of the operating lines on Gavaris VII,” Declan nodded. “Three of us made it back to base, only to find it overrun. What was left of that… barely a platoon and five Starfleet. We had no choice but to retreat and wait for Starfleet to come back for us,” he explained. “Three weeks. Living on kit rations, or what we could manage from the local fauna. Yeah,” he sighed. “Lot of good Marines gone. Even a few good Starfleet,” he added with a smirk at Duke.
“Dominion war is the reason I retired,” Duke replied matter-of-factly. “Found a slice of paradise that had a nice sandy beach, decent climate, and the best girls this side of Risa,” he chuckled. “Worked out great. I earned my keep patching up the likes of you two during the Wars and during my time with Starfleet. I earned retirement,” he said, cracking open another chocolate.
“So what are you doing here?” Declan asked, “Run out of pretty girls?”
“Hobus went boom next door. Tropical oasis no more,” he replied. “Hopped the first bird out. Landed back where I started.”
“Me, too.” The other two looked at Wallace questioningly, he shrugged. “Sandy beach. Decent climate. Best girl in the universe. Minus the virtual slavery, death, malnutrition, and rotten teeth, it was about the same thing.”
He unwrapped another chocolate and flung it into his mouth, “My first war was the Federation-Klingon War. War,” he snorted. “One action with the ship I was serving on. We all thought that it was the most horrid thing we’d experience.
“Then the Borg came and I lost my wife. Then the real war came and I put my one-year-old daughter on a transport back to Earth. Transport never made it. I got reassigned with my best friend to the third of the 110, the Crazy Eighth and he died…” Wallace sighed. “They all died, it seems. The War took a toll, you know? All that loss, all that violence. I was just angry afterwards.”
“I think we’ve all dealt with it in our own ways. I burned through three marriages. Managed to hold on to one for seven years, before she finally got sick of trying to fix me,” Finn shook his head. “Taken me a long while to realize… no one can fix me but me,” he shrugged.
Wallace nodded. “I didn’t want to be fixed.Then someone decided she was going to be my friend, no matter what I wanted. And then some folks became friends. And some more. Then they died slow, pointless deaths on Korix.” He picked up the cards and started to slowly shuffle them. “You’d think that would’ve sunk me deeper into that persona of a violent bastard. But that’s not what happened. So, what’s really bizarre about this is that nine years ago I wouldn’t have been caught dead playing a friendly game of poker. Now?”
He tossed a chocolate between them on the bed. “Ante up.”
