For All Our Sakes
Posted on 09 Jul 2023 @ 10:20am by Captain Corvus DeHavilland & Commander Calliope Zahn
Edited on on 29 Jul 2023 @ 2:48am
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Captain's Ready Room - USS Pathfinder
Timeline: M3 D13 - 2000HRS
1222 words - 2.4 OF Standard Post Measure
”Sepandiyar, out,” the man on the viewscreen said before winking out of existence. Corvus let out a long breath, hunching her shoulders and leaning forward onto the desk from her chair. The charade had hardly started and already she was exhausted of it; exhausted of dancing around a truth she couldn’t reveal. It was yet another thing in a list of things going on today, all set in motion by their return to comms range. And before she could even pick up another PaDD, the door chime to her office rang, taking her right to the next thing without the chance to digest the previous.
She groaned to herself and called out, “Come in!”
“Captain.” Calliope tapped a Padd against her thigh as she approached Corvus’ desk. She set what would be her final watch report for Pathfinder’s mission onto the desktop, but had no comments to make on it. Instead she had another item of business. Something more personal. “I have to ask a favor. It’s about Lance.” She began straightforwardly. The station was only a few hours out now, and Calliope wasn’t sure she’d have another chance to ask. Her face was neutral, as were her expectations.
“Who?” Corvus asked, shaking her head. She held up her hand almost immediately, “Right. Commander Quinn,” she sighed. “Calli, I know he’s your husband but…” she shook her head.
“If this thing ever gets unsealed, with the Alabama? If actions come to light?” She inhaled, hating to ask but torn at the same time. “Please consider not filing an insubordination charge against him.”
“If it comes unglued with the Alabama,” Corvus replied, “Quinn’s actions are going to be a low priority item,” she answered honestly. Granted, if things hadn’t gotten sealed up by Bowlder and team, that’s exactly what she would have done and would have seen to it he was on the first ship home, regardless of Sepandiyar’s opinion on it. Or at least, she would have tried to do it without his involvement. Maybe she was deluding herself into thinking she could have done that. Point of the matter was, as far as she was concerned, Lieutenant Commander Quinn was only still a part of her staff as a formality.
“The issue now is; I don’t trust him,” Corvus went on honestly. “But I don’t have a leg to stand on, do I? How do I explain to Admiral Sepandiyar that I’m demoting the Chief Engineer?”
“I don’t want you to have to explain anything. And I don’t want to have to manage Lance on staff any longer either.” Calliope bit her lower lip and drew a finger on the edge of the desk. “He should have never been on Station Staff in the first place.”
“... him being here was… how I convinced you to take the job. It’s what you wanted. It’s what we agreed to before… all the rest of the noise since,” Corvus replied incredulously. Was Calli insinuating more than she was sharing? “I don’t understand.”
Calliope’s expression softened. She’d thought it was something of the other way around, or told herself it was. She’d thought that Corvus had considered Lance for her stable and brought Calliope along to convince him. Had she said that first? Or had Lance? Or had Lance confirmed her fear of it? She remembered during her difficult recovery, after the shock of Corvus removing her from her post, telling Lance it was her fear that Corvus hadn’t really wanted her to work with anyway, that maybe Corvus had only ever really been after his expertise; Lance hadn’t disagreed with the notion. She wasn’t sure, now, where it had begun or where it had ended, only that his ego had colored it.
“I wasn’t clear enough about my misgivings when we concocted the thing. I wanted it to be true, that he would adjust to it like you thought he might for my sake, and I told myself that I could run all of the interference I knew would be required, for his. The whole time, I knew in my gut there was an inevitability of some kind of event springing from—” she grit her teeth looking for some way to articulate it. “What makes Lance, Lance.”
Corvus wasn’t even sure how to respond to that and simply sat back in her chair, stunned at the revelation, and still angry at the man for what he’d refused to do.
“All I want now is to put the pieces back, where they should have been.”
“And how do you suggest we do that, Calli?”
“If he came by invitation, I was considering he might leave by the same route. I learned they never reassigned his lab with Daystrom.”
Captain DeHavilland sat up a bit, “Find a way for Daystrom to come calling?” she asked, “Have him leave on his own terms, to a job he prefers. Rather than stay here and risk Alabama crashing down around us and my wrath when unchained?”
“He’s a Three-dimensional Chess Life-master, Mars Division.” Back when there had been an active Mars Division… “I think he’ll recognize the opening on the board. I’ll do what I can to clear the rest of my pieces.”
“How do we do that?” Corvus asked with a shrug. “Aside from Quinn, I don’t have any connections that would reach Daystrom.”
“I don’t know. But if you found a way? I’d consider it a kindness, for his sake. For everyone’s, really.”
Corvus adjusted in her seat, sitting up a bit and shaking her head. “I don’t know if I can find a way, but,” she nodded. “I’m certainly going to try…” she said, looking away pensively. “I wonder if Chief Edgerton has any connections…” she trailed off thoughtfully.
“Thank you, Captain.” Satisfied knowing that Corvus was going to even consider her request for a merciful outcome for Lance, let alone giving her word to make an effort to, she started to move to excuse herself, when she couldn’t help but share another thought. “Corvus?”
“What is it, Calli?” she asked gently, too tired to be snappy and her mind already trying to figure out every thread she could pull on to get Quinn gone.
“You know I would have taken the job entirely apart from involving Lance, right? Not that… not that it amounts to very much, I know.” It wasn’t like that could be put back together, the years of broken trust.
“I was trying to help a friend, Calli,” Corvus answered softly, now offering a genuine smile. “Just like I’m doing now.”
Calliope swallowed a lump in her throat that went like a bitter pill with a mix of emotions she didn’t yet know how to articulate about the whole affair. But Corvus’ intentions had been good. The rest she could only attribute to Lance. And to herself.
“I’m going off shift. Lt. Haille has the conn. I’ll be on the Bridge in the morning when we dock,” Calliope said.
Corvus just gave her a steel nod in reply, “Dismissed, Commander.”
