Successor’s Dilemma
Posted on 16 Jan 2024 @ 9:09am by Commander Calliope Zahn & Lieutenant Commander Christophe Leblanc
Edited on on 19 Jan 2024 @ 9:52pm
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: Main Engineering, CEO's Office
Timeline: M4 D8 midday
2341 words - 4.7 OF Standard Post Measure
Several hours had passed since he had helped his neighbor out of her furniture hell, and Chris had put the larger items in his apartment away. Having finished the liquor left in the teacup, he sat the bottle down in the kitchenette. During his hours setting things up, he had spent a shameful amount of time puzzling over the woman’s reaction. He supposed, in the end, it was a mental distraction from his breakup with Greta. Quite honestly, it was welcome.
After the larger items were squared away, and all that was left for him to do was to put away his clothing, his kitchen items, and to decorate, he threw in the towel and took a hot shower. That had gotten him thinking about work. He decided, despite the late hour, that he would go to the engineering section and get the lay of the land.
Pulling on a fresh uniform, he grabbed a box full of items meant for his office and headed for the door. Thinking better of it, he turned back around, grabbed the decanter of malt, placed it in the box, and departed.
In the next few minutes, he emerged from a lift in the Upper Utility Ring and was rewarded by a sea of late beta shift officers and enlisted in service gold. They acknowledged him if they saw his rank, but otherwise went about their business. The station was far too big to worry about new arrivals. He walked only a few paces, just before the entrance to Main Engineering, and paused outside of the door to his new office. Shuffling his box onto the floor, he turned his attention to the keypad in an attempt to open the door.
After multiple keycode attempts, the door eventually did slide open, but not from any effort on the part of Chief Leblanc. There stood another human equal in height and rank, his brows furrowed. “Are you attempting to defeat the lock? At your current rate, I should say you might have more marked success employing a degausser and a mallet.”
“Mon Dieu.” He uttered suddenly. As the door slid open, Chris stood in surprise. His eyes fell on the brown-haired man, frowning. “I was trying to remember the code I was given. I forgot it. Who are you?”
The sheer nerve of it, a man coming to your office to break in and then no less to demand to know who you were. “Quinn. Commander Quinn.” He crossed his arms. “Obviously you either have the wrong code, or the wrong door, Mister…” He prompted for a return of a name.
“Leblanc. And I’m certain I don’t. This is my office you’re standing in.” Chris corrected, feeling slightly annoyed by the Commander’s brusque style. “I assume you’re my predecessor. I assumed you’d clear out your belongings as your transfer is already active.”
“And I presumed you would not be along until after the weekend.” Quinn uncrossed his arms, even if his brows remained knit. He hadn’t anticipated crossing paths with his successor, personally. It was almost as if someone had put in for his replacement before he'd even submitted his resignation. “I have had a significant number of personal research projects to see after properly transferring back to Sol,” he said by way of explanation. Quinn continued letting his voice trail as he was talking more to himself than to Leblanc. “Work on the entire theoretical basis for slipstream drive, and then be assigned transfer aboard the slowest tug in the fleet due to ‘cargo storage constraints’. The irony.” He made another face, his lips pressing together in a very British sort of way as if to say, ‘but what was there for it,’ and then said aloud, “But come in, confirm your biometrics with the computer and I shall transfer the department codes to you forthwith.”
Quinn stood back from the doorway to admit him, then lead the way through the larger than usual office, past the guest seating and all of the holographic monitoring stations, to the Chief Engineer’s desk.
Chris went into the room without delay after picking up the box. He wasn’t concerned how this particular issue would be resolved, knowing the man would be gone in the next few days no matter what.
“I was under the impression the research currently being conducted by the department would stay here. Slipstream Drives are difficult to test in Earth, after all.”
Chris placed the box down on a nearby coffee table before turning his attention back to Quinn.
Quinn hummed a soft note, as if it was hardly worth explaining. This man was a glorified maintenance engineer after all, and the matters of Daystrom’s advanced propulsion labs and proving grounds selection were hardly in his direct purview. He proceeded to pull up the protocols surrounding Engineering’s security and access the security profile and transfer orders of one Lieutenant Commander Christophe Lablanc. “This is you?” He asked drily as the obviously matching security image populated the display.
“Yes, it is.” Chris answered, looking at the man with a questioning expression. Of course it was him. “What are your orders concerning the transfer of projects from the station, Commander?”
Quinn continued to ignore the curiosity in his project transfer. “They are mine, and they will remain mine, that is all you need know. Iris scan, if you please?”
Chis was suddenly aware how eager he was for this man to leave his department. He wondered if his obvious flaws were the reason he was being shipped back from the frontier. He stepped up to the scanner and stood still as the stream of blue light fanned offensively against his eye. He held his cool blue eye open, resisting the urge to protect it. When the scan was done, he turned back to Quinn.
“Obviously you won’t be taking any equipment that belongs to my department.” He said, not hostile but certainly intimidating. “I wasn’t transferred out here to start over with a depleted research section.”
“Trust me, I’m leaving the place in far better condition than the one in which I found it,” Quinn responded, completely unaffected by the posturing while thinking back to the almost offline station damaged by unimaginable levels of sheer distortion from the void suction and following recovery from the same void. “You will find everything in good order.” He waited for the full transfer order confirmation ping which had to go through multiple computer data links, including a subspace access repeater that had an offsite confirmation code. Finally the command prompt asked for both the current and incoming officers to enter their personal access codes. “You do remember your own access codes, I should hope.” Quinn could hardly respect a man who couldn't memorize a twelve digit alphanumeric code, let alone transfer someone like that an entire Stardock’s operation.
Leblanc entered the code quickly, pretending not to notice the man’s tone. This kind of behavior wasn’t uncommon among engineers. Chris just happened to take the obsessed workaholic trait without taking the full arrogant-asshole package. This man was nothing to him, and soon he would be gone. He’d always felt well-equipped in these dick-measuring contests before, and this was no difference. He simply made a mental note to get downloads of all his research records.
Quinn followed up with the entry of his own code, though he seemed to hover over the submit key, as if pulling a trigger. It went through almost instantaneously when he did, however, demonstrating the system access switching in the graphical interfaces all over the office simultaneously, as the hierarchy trees updated.
That business being over, Quinn collected his service jacket and slid into it. “It’s all yours.” He said, having no personal attachment or affection for the assignment he had resented from the outset. Nothing like the way it was for engineers who counted their posts, be they stations or ships, as if they were extensions of their own bloodline. He didn’t even so much reach out to shake Lablanc by the hand, moving instead to head out of the office he had just surrendered to him. He paused at the coffee table in the seating area, recognizing one of his possessions and reaching out, snatched the decanter a top the box with a surprised, “Hullo, there.”
“It’s malt; pretty damn good.” Chris said with a raising of his brow. He walked over to the man slowly. “ Care for a drink?”
Lance double checked the bottle; to be sure it was the exact handcrafted one of a kind cast glass that matched the rest of the set which was gifted him from his brother in law. He wondered if perhaps he had brought it with him after one of his fights with Calliope, when he’d overnighted in his office. In any event he was quite certain it was his own. “I should say it's damn good, as it is mine. And if you’re offering me my own whiskey, I’m afraid it doesn’t come part and parcel with the office. Although I am uncertain how it came to be here in the first place.”
“Your whiskey?” Chris asked, looking confused as he stopped in front of Quinn. “You are mistaken, mon ami. That is mine. I brought it here.”
He reached out and pulled it from the other man’s hands quite roughly, caring about as much as the other man did about maintaining polite decorum.
Lance’s eyes rolled, hardly planning to arm wrestle this neanderthal trying to pass for an engineer. It wouldn’t surprise him if Captain DeHavilland were begging him back to the job within the week after taking the Frenchman on. “I suppose next you're going to tell me your initials somehow amount to L.E.A.Q. as found etched into the bottom of the decanter.”
Chris immediately looked under the decanter and saw that the man’s initials were indeed there. Frowning, he lowered it in front of him again and remembered what Calli had told him about its origins.
He smiled, a light chuckle leaving his lips. Everything made sense now. This must be, for some inexplicable reason, the ex husband of Calli.
“Mystery solved.” He said quietly, and chuckled again. He decided not to explain. The man was superior enough in his own mind; he was sure he could figure it out on his own.“No, those are not my initials. This was given to me yesterday by a beautiful woman.”
Lance looked confused momentarily. The only one who would have had access to his things would have been Calliope. When the likely scenario set in, something approaching hurt came to his eyes. But he stole himself willfully against the sense of betrayal. It was after all, entirely as he suspected. She’d either been cheating on him or awaited the first opportunity for the nearest time to attach herself to another, not even waiting for ink to dry. All while claiming not to have any desire for an open marital arrangement to solve their problems. She’d needed to take an axe to him, and he saw it playing out like a chess game now.
“Very well.” Quinn said as they had both reached their conclusions. He held out a hand to collect his decanter, the only dignity he would have left in the scenario. “I believe we can both agree it was not hers to give.”
Chris looked at the hand thoughtfully, not moving right away to give the bottle. He had earned it fair and square in his mind, and though he had enough fight in him to make this difficult for the man, he saw very clearly there was more going on than he had any right involving himself in.
“I'm not sure about that, but my reason tells me one of two things is possible: either you are the rightful owner and should therefore have it or she was, making me the rightful owner.” He paused then, enjoying the tension of the situation, knowing it was uncertain what he was going to do and finding the mystery of it all quite enticing.
Unwilling to back down, Lance didn’t withdraw his hand, willing to carry on the discomfort in a silent demand. All the while he felt a growing heat of disdain in his chest just looking at the man trying to replace him in more than just his working role.
“But I’ll give it to you. Pauvre salaud, you clearly need it more than I do.” He said, extending the bottle out to Quinn with a slow smile.
Somehow Lance realized that reclaiming his own decanter was as much of a concession as it was a victory, and his nose and lips formed a near snarl as he snatched and subsequently cradled the weighted glass in the crook of his arm.
“Thank you for letting me into the office.” Chris said, still holding his eye contact and waiting for the man to decide, ultimately, what he was going to do. “You have time to finish moving your things. I'm going to give myself a little tour of the key areas in Upper Utility.”
“That won’t be necessary. Good day, Mister Leblanc.” Lance’s vitriol marked the name, made all the more easy to do for being French, and with that he took his leave.
Chris watched the man go, not surprised or particularly dismayed by his response. He had no doubt Lance had read far more deeply into the gift than was correct, but he hardly considered it his problem, at the very least. He moved the box to his new desk and took a look around. It reminded him of the Chief's office on Earth Spacedock. But, then he had only been a frequent visitor. This one was his, no matter who had occupied it before.
