Reconnecting
Posted on 12 Aug 2023 @ 10:03pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Command Master Chief Tāne HaiRoa
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: Obsidian Command, CiC
Timeline: M4 D1, afternoon
3439 words - 6.9 OF Standard Post Measure
HaiRoa leaned on the edge of the alcove watching Zahn at the workstation. He had been passing by and noticed the Commander there. A woman he had once had a short but intense crush on and whom he had not seen for several years, though they had remained in contact.
“Tēnā koe Pūngāwere-Tai-Reire” He said quietly with a grin, “Hello Spider-Friend-Lady” Then he pulled a face and stuck his tongue out when she turned around. “Although now, I hear it’s “Ika oneone Tai” Amphibian-Friend”
“Tāne!” Calliope’s focused expression broke with recognition at the friendly voice and she’d happily turned from her reading. She was never incredibly formal, and sprang to her feet to greet him with a brief hug. When she stood back again, she searched his face for a moment. He was in such good spirits, she didn’t want to say anything more about his grieving, even though it seemed to her they both knew what she wasn’t saying. That felt like more than enough for the moment.
He returned the hug with warmth, it was good seeing a friendly face again. Although she looked a little tired, or concerned perhaps.
“Yeah, the Korin are having a hard go of it." She said about the amphibian friends. "Walking around on flipper-feet is kind of brutal. DeHavilland has me giving them the tour. We have to take it one department at a time. So far we’ve been through Medical and Science. We’ll hit the Promenade next.”
“Grav-sled perhaps?” He suggested, ever the practical former Bosun. “I have an Engineering contact might be able to knock something up,” he said, thinking of Sopwith and her team. Which also reminded him he had found her signature touch on the original wreck of what was now Proud Mary
“I like that.” She chuckled, remembering something. “Reminds me of this one tour Lance and I took on this supposed safari on Risa, where we were driven around in a golf cart…” She trailed off before she got to the part where Lance had insulted the tour guide and decried the entire attraction as a sham. He’d missed the whole point. With some rare exceptions, the planet was by and large a tourist trap. “It’s a great idea.”
He grinned. “Yeah I have my uses. You busy?” He nodded at the workstation. “Almost lunch time…”
“I have a couple of hours until the Korin are ready for the next stage of the tour. And this will keep.” She turned to close down her menus and log out of the station. There were rows of other access stations stretching on either side, sparsely populated as crew came and went from the cavernous Command center. When she came back, she could just choose any of them and pick up where she left off. It only took seconds before she turned her attention back to Tāne.
“Since you’re hitting the promenade later, how about the CIC mess hall?” He nodded his head across to the far side of the compartment where the dining area was. “I’ve got the replicator programmed to produce a passable Kānga Pīrau” It was a form of Maori porridge, made from mashed fermented corn, rather strong in flavor, it was an acquired taste and one of his favorites.
Calliope stuck her tongue out and fake gagged, the way she had when he’d first sat down at a table with her and set his bowl of rotted corn out. She’d gotten accustomed to it over time— not to eating it. To him eating it. And that was as far as she was ever going to be interested. But she followed him, grinning at the memory.
“Don’t know what you’re missing!” He smiled.
Ten minutes later found them at a table, he had a bowl of steaming porridge, she a roast beef sandwich and another glass of her nutrient sludge. She wondered outloud briefly if HaiRoa wanted to trade her for the protein shake, but then she caught her first whiff of the stuff and the shake was suddenly much more appealing than it had ever been before.
HaiRoa caught the look. “Oh no, you know the deal, you try HuHu Grubs—” Fat white insect larva, that actually tasted like peanut butter, when eaten raw and wriggling— “And I try the …that stuff!”
Calliope’s head rolled up towards heaven as if to ask why, but she got back up and returned with a glass full of water. She’d built up the capacity to eat with Klingons so she reasoned she could muscle down a couple of grubs. Calliope slid him her shake.
“No fair, you know there aren’t any live HuHu within five sectors and those frozen ones don’t count.”
Calliope leaned in towards him, one forearm on the table. “You backing out of your own dare?”
He pulled a stern look, made more fierce by his facial tattoos, “Never, just that there are certain conditions…”
“Well, when you find the appropriate grubs—” She took back her glass. “I’ll get you the recipe.”
“Deal” he nodded, relaxing his face.
Calliope relaxed back in her chair and loosened her collar, smirking.
“So Captain DeHaviland has Command,” HaiRoa continued. “I remember her from when we were all on the Challenger, she was a Lieutenant Commander, Chief Tactical, right?” he had not yet met his new Commanding Officer, since her return on the Pathfinder she had been in nearly constant meetings with the Admiral’s team.
“That’s right. When I recommended you, she put the request right through. It’s a big adjustment, going from ship assignments to a Station Command. I’m glad you’re here. She needs good people around her.”
“Huh, well somebody has to keep young Operations Ensigns out of trouble.” He smiled “And I appreciate it, needed to get back into work after… “ he trailed off. “Yeah, well you know…”
Calliope was quiet for a moment, reflective. She thought back to when she had last seen Tāne, aboard the Challenger, when he'd had a complete, happy family. She remembered thinking little Kauri had been growing altogether too fast and that by the time she met them again, he’d probably be as tall as she was if he kept at that rate. Lilly kept sending her pictures every year. Calliope had traded back some vacation photos with Lance. They’d never met Lance. He was never interested in connecting directly with the Challenger and meeting any of the people she worked with. It would have been a waste of perfectly good shoreleave, he’d said when she had suggested it.
“You holding up okay?”
“Yes.” He nodded firmly, and for the most part he was. After the death of his wife and son in a skiing accident HaiRoa had taken them back to new Zealand for burial, entering the specific phases of Maori mourning and grief, with the necessary funeral rites ensuring their spirits were free to pass on into the afterlife, working their way through the nga rangi tuhaha, the spaced heavens.
The grieving had ended with the Hakari, a meal of thanksgiving for the lives of those departed, it had been attended by their many family and friends and afterwards the restrictions of mourning had passed. Although the loss remained and would always.
“I got to take them home, see their spirits on the right path and I will be with them in time.” He nodded again. “I’m holding up and now I have a job and purpose again.”
Calliope nodded. She believed him. Tāne wasn’t the kind of man who could lie about his feelings.
“How about you and Lance?” He had never actually met her husband, The guy always seemed to be involved in research projects. To HaiRoa’s recollection the only thing he had seen of him, besides photos Calli and Lilly had traded, was the necklace and ring Zahn always wore. Although when he looked now the necklace was missing. He had never not seen it there since she had first shown him it, while they slowly froze, cramped up in an icy cold service conduct aboard a supply station, being hunted by Breen raiders.
Calliope tried to search for something positive to share. “He’s on the station.” After that she came up short of anything else to volunteer. It felt like that was the long and short of what she could say.
“Both of you, in the same place at the same time? That’s a rarity for you two!” He smiled. “Well I liked being married and now you two actually get to do it together.”
Calliope twisted her ring. “I don’t think we’re doing it right,” she admitted with an uncomfortable smile. Maybe he would think she was kidding, she thought as she said what was on her heart. “We were better at it mostly separately.”
This was new, since as long as he had known her, Zahn had been the ever-optimist, not really one who struggled in relationships, she was friends with everyone. He was about to ask further, but decided not to intrude and opted to change the subject.
“So I found something you had been working on while you were gone, a damn great combat robot” He relayed the discovery of the dismantled robot and its reconstruction into Proud Mary “The team found some boxes of components with your initials on. I had them keep them safe. What were you doing with it?”
“Ogre.” Calliope said after digesting the story of how HaiRoa had overseen the rebuild. “That’s what I called him. I was going to see if maybe they wanted him for farm labor on the planet. But you’ve put him to better use. I hope we don’t have to pit him against the real thing.”
“Well he, she, got a make-over and paint job and based on the holo-simulations it’s got a good chance of standing up to those black-suited monsters. You encounter any of them on this Korix planet?”
“Not personally, no.” She took the opportunity for a slurp at her shake to reflect. The reports he would have access to would include that one had been killed, just not that they’d ever had possession of the body. “The Marines just took down that one on the planet. And we tangled with a few of their ships before we managed to high tail it. Marshal Steiner had some countermeasures planned, but thankfully we never needed to test them on any actual Pyrryx.”
“Steiner, he’s the civilian Assistant Chief of Security right?” He had seen the name on the personnel rosters, on a facility with such a large non-Starfleet population having a Federation Marshal aboard made sense.
She nodded. “That’s the guy.”
“You think they will come this way?” HaiRoa was a Dominion War veteran and had seen his share of combat. Not much frightened him, but those blacked suited warriors were daunting.
Calliope took a deep breath and looked off a little. She’d put in a lot of heavy thinking on that question on the ride back. “I wouldn’t rule it out. Especially if we do get more involved with the Korix system.”
He nodded, tapped his chest “It will come down to rira, strength and who can fight like the shark. If the Marines killed one that’s good. You think the Federation will help the Korix, could lead us into direct conflict if they do?”
Calliope nodded. “I think it’s a big chance it could lead to some territory issues if we annex the system under our defense. I don’t know which way the policy makers are going to land with that possibility in the air.”
“There’s a slipstreamer bringing in Brass and Politicians tomorrow, the Cassiopeia,” he said. “Would be better if they sent a dozen troop ships, we are too short of personnel for this.” He relayed the latest staffing numbers and particularly the shortage of Security personnel.
Not ready with any immediate answers to the seemingly impossible puzzle, Calliope sat back, absorbing the facts.
“You have pull with the Captain, can’t she get us more people?” He asked “Actually what do you do here, when you’re not getting into mischief.” He knew Zane was the Executive Officer, until now he had not thought of what Zahn did on Obsidian Command.
“I can make a recommendation. Actually I was just working on a suggestion for new ship patrol patterns. I’m an ‘advisor’ now,” she said with some air quotes. “It’s like an in-house Ronin on a leash. Too much mischief landed me the role. If you can call it a role.”
“You’re not one who works well on a string,” he said seriously. “I know this from experience.” Which he did. “You’re the original outside of the box thinker. You make your own roles, and rules.” Which once he had found extremely annoying but had come to realize it was her way of leading, and it worked. He would follow her.
“I don’t know how much longer I can stand it. I’m looking at other openings in the fleet,” she admitted.
“You’re doing what?” He put down his spoon. “You don’t run from fights either, what’s going on?”
Fear cast a shadow over her eyes for a moment and she stirred uncomfortably. Corvus had questioned their entire friendship and working history when she had been forced to come clean. She didn’t want to lose Tāne’s respect too. But if she’d learned anything it was that she’d gotten into the mess by dismissing it under excuses and keeping it to herself in the first place. No more secrets. At least not ones she had any personal control over exposing. “I made some really bad decisions,” she managed to say. “For a long time. I don’t think I can put my reputation back together here.”
HaiRoa frowned, this was not the up-beat Zahn he knew, the earlier comments concerning Quinn, now remarks about her reputation, something was not right.
He shrugged “As I recall your reputation was shot when a certain fresh-from-the-academy Ensign assembled those power relays backwards and blew out the power on four decks on the Skorpio, so it can’t be worse than that…”
She smiled at the memory, remembering at the time thinking she was going to get escorted to an airlock. “I had the schematics on a Padd and it didn’t reorient when I flipped it.” She laughed but the chortle faded quickly. “Man, I wish that was my low point.”
“That was a lousy excuse then, as it is now,” he smiled. “But don’t let others define your highs and lows,” he continued quietly. “That’s not like you.” He was wondering what had happened to the Zahn he had known for years. The troubled woman sitting across from him was not her, he had never known her to be down like this, no matter the situation.
“I… I traded resources for Vamiraxil, when they stopped prescribing it to me a couple of years after academy.” She looked up, wondering if she was having the last friendly conversation with Tāne.
“Traded? you mean like for un-prescribed doses? I thought all Orion women got that automatically?” He was a little confused and not sure what she was telling him.
“I’m not fully Orion. It was complicated, messing with my hormones. Contraindications the doctors said, something about new study results. I didn’t want to hear it.”
“You’re saying they stopped your meds, so you found your own supply?” He was a little shocked at that. Yes, she was unconventional, and it had taken him time to appreciate that aspect of her character, but he had never known her to be anything less than totally professional and well, totally honorable.
“I’m really good at resource allocation. And I was really good at excusing myself for it. And now… I’m on some medical therapies for all the damage it did. Drinking this sludge for my recovery,” She motioned to the glass. “And I don’t blame anyone for not trusting me. I either need to find some corner of the fleet where they need staff bad enough to overlook my record, or I don’t know. Resign and learn to serve tea on Sol.”
He looked off to the side for a moment. She was basically telling him she had developed an addiction to her medications, when they had been stopped she had obtained them, well, illegally. He did not like the sound of that and that would take some processing through. Although now it seemed she was in some kind of treatment, so that aspect was being addressed.
Whatever she was going through now, he owed this woman his life, as she did him. They had saved each other from the Breen and both of them had seen the wrong side of each other during that situation. A rookie Ensign and a brusque Bosun, at odds with each other, had gone on to a supply station, faced down challenges together and life-long comrades had come off. One thing he did not do, was abandon his friends and the people he admired.
He turned back “Well that ain’t happening, your drink making skills are awful” he pointed to her sludge “So best you get your head in the game! And you know that I trust you with my life.”
Calliope opened her mouth to say that it was probably just the pheromones, thinking to suggest that as soon as they went their own ways, he’d feel differently about her. But she looked at that awful bowl of barf-scented hot porridge in front of him and changed her mind. That stink was taking up all the air in the space between them. “Thanks, Tāne.”
He wanted to give her another hug, she looked like she needed one right now. Once that would have been driven by desire, now his heart was filled to overflowing with the memories of Lilly and all he felt for Zahn was compassion, affection and concern for her wellbeing. He had never seen her like this. Unsure of how to deal with it just yet, he turned into Command Master Chief mode.
“So no more talk of leaving! You helped bring me here, I like it here, there’s work to do and you’re needed. No running off somewhere to feel sorry for yourself either, we did that already.” He gave her a scowl, moko and koru tattoos exaggerating the expression. “Anyway, you’re the Ika oneone Tai around here.” The scowl turned to a wide grin “Without you, your amphibians will probably pine away or something.”
“They’re pretty overwhelmed. And yet things… are not moving fast enough for them. It’s hard to imagine what they’re going through. I’m sure they’ll appreciate their own sled though. Don’t put any seats in it. They actually prefer to lay down on their bellies.”
“Well let’s go talk with some engineers” Finishing his lunch and ignoring the Steward’s grimace at the last wafting odor of his fermented-corn porridge as she cleared the table, HaiRoa made a suggestion “Want to see what your Orge looks like now?”
“I’m kind of afraid to,” she admitted. She’d been working on de-arming it, and from the sound of it the project had gone a complete one-eighty. Even if she could agree with the reasoning, it wasn’t really her project anymore. It was his now. “But maybe it’s best if I do.”
“I think it might be a bit more useful dealing with those Pyrryx than digging irrigation channels on Obsidian.” he offered.
“Moats…” Calliope pretended to take the idea seriously. Hell, since Steiner had come up with sticky foam, she wasn’t quick to put down any ideas any more. They’d ended up with advanced spear guns for heaven’s sake. “And catapults. Maybe some hot tar spills.”
“Sounds positively medi-eval” HaiRoa commented, standing up. “C’mon.”
