Refractions: My Here Comes With Me Everywhere
Posted on 10 Jul 2024 @ 9:17pm by Commander Calliope Zahn & Commander Anson Corduke MD
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: Pathfinder - en route to the station
Timeline: MD25
2854 words - 5.7 OF Standard Post Measure
Commander Zahn left security with a lot on her mind, considering everything that was coming to the fore again with the latest arrests and what it would mean for the cases she'd been building. She'd been working on those investigations for months while she had been removed from her job as first officer of the station. Although she had sometimes advanced her investigations in unorthodox ways back then, they had all been productive to one degree or another.
Calliope thought back. The long distance sting she had directed under writ against a vault on Freecloud (A vault which had made payments to several of the mercenary groups who had made the attack on Obsidian Command) had put her inside and she'd been able to pay the specialists she'd hired from the funds claimed. It had been the data she wanted on the criminals banking there, however, and the hacker she'd hired had made herself scarce after the op. For as long as Zahn had known her, Elshi had always answered her messages, and there had been no need for looking very hard. Now Calliope wasn't sure where to start searching for a hacker who didn't want to be found. Lofthammer could probably help with that, but it was a very big Galaxy...
While she hadn't been cleared to go very far during her recovery, she had been far from running out of fishy things in-system to sniff at. Just 'kicking rocks' in the ort cloud with Kensforth, following up indications in sensor data that there were listening posts in the system, had led to discovering more than transmitters and antennas. The Loki system turned out to be riddled with hideaways. On a display chart, a star system seemed a neat thing, something that an active scan could sum up in a few minutes. But reality was much different. There were myriads of small objects that evaded close scrutiny and ways to mask the movements of small ships in an active and expansive system...
It had always been a challenge for the installation of Obsidian Command, which had taken up residence in a system where outlaws had historically had bunkers and coves and troubled the Obsidian natives hundreds of years before Starfleet presence was invited to keep the peace there. So Calliope wasn't sure why anyone was surprised (herself included) when the anomalous sensor readings turned up active hangars of pirate fightercraft. She supposed it was easy to assume they would have moved out of the system years ago, what with a Federation Spacedock constructed in the area and all of the traffic coming and going. But it made sense when she thought about it, that the installations were difficult to find, and created an opportunity for criminal organizations to track fleet movements and any broad signal transmissions they could tune into. It didn't make those hide-outs easier to abandon. If anything, it made them far more valuable for the shady organizations to actively retain...
And there had been the near-genocide that she had embedded herself into among the victims herded up on Loki III in the ring formed in the mountains known as the Devil's Golden Bowl. She knew she had been careless then. Not that she had done wrong, but that she had almost died trying to do something right. She'd been drunk going into it, sure enough, and some could argue that she'd allowed her judgement to be clouded, but even if it were the case, she didn't regret the decisions she'd made. She'd been able to call on the soberminded response of her replacement, Commander Thaddeus Zayne, and thousands were saved by the intervention of the station's Marines.
As she walked from Security back to Sickbay, Calliope pulled out her hairband and drew it back over her head and down around her neck to regather her hair and draw it up neatly again. Those three incidents were the results of looking into just a fraction of her analysis surrounding activities and persons of interests involved in the region and connected to Loki System events. Alone she could hardly make a dent in the investigations. She needed a whole team. A whole crew. Maybe dedicated just to investigations in the region. People she could either send out or ride along with. It was good to be on patrol, but these two people in her brig that intersected with her investigations just happened to get caught in the trawling net. If she could have a whole ship which she could direct, long term, then maybe they could root out some of the criminal rings instead of picking them off at the edges.
Coming up on the doors to sickbay, Zahn straightened her shoulders, setting aside her mental review and her wishes on stars. She had Lofthammer's support, and that would double her efforts. It wasn't nothing.
Inside, sickbay was more empty than it had been during her earlier visit. Sabba was still in her bed being monitored while she was watching a holoprogram on the wall to pass the time. Most of the Virgil's crew must have been released to quarters, although a couple of them with more severe injuries were wearing goggles over their eyes and covered with modesty sheets, while under deep tissue regeneration emitters.
Calliope looked for signs of her injured crew. The ones who had been in the passage with the burst plasma conduit...
"Unless you're dying, bleeding, burned or about to fall over, we're closed," a tired voice intoned from one of the bio beds. The figure was laying down with his forearm over his eyes but his head was turned slightly at the sound of the doors opening. He peeked out from under the forearm, "Unless you've brought chicken parm sandwiches?" he asked, his trademark snark heavy with exhaustion.
Doctor Corduke had been in and out of surgery for quite a while now and while he had stabilized his patients, he was worried about himself. He might have been good at what he did but he wasn't the young man he used to be and so marathon surgery sessions weren't as forgiving as they had been when he was a new Lieutenant looking to show the CMO he knew his shit.
Calliope felt a little relief. Although Corduke was sarcastic as a rule, she expected if things had gone genuinely south in the Operating Room, he would have been more somber.
"Sorry." She presented her empty hands, free of Chicken Parm and shrugged apologetically. "Everybody pulled through?"
Duke looked away as if she was of no importance. "Your call cannot be completed as dialed, please deposit one chicken parm sandwich," he answered glumly, letting that hang on the air for a moment before heaving a sigh and sitting up. He drew his hand across his exhausted features, "Everyone pulled through," he said solemnly. "All except the Doctor. It's touch and go there, still," he grumbled.
Calliope felt a knot deep inside of her stomach unwind. "Thank you." She said, partly to the doc and the rest to the universe at large. "I just had soup, but I could follow it with an entree. Can't go losing the doctor. Your office?"
Duke gave a dramatically flippant wave towards his office before sitting up fully. He slowly turned to swing his legs off and then with a roll of his shoulders, shuffled off the bed, trudging after Calliope, rolling the knot out of his neck.
"Two of my patients are still not all out of the woods, otherwise I'd be passed the hell out in my tiny quarters," he went on as they went into the CMO's office. "Also, remind me never to take a posting on a Nova. Ever," he added.
“Could be worse. You could ride with Stanton and take turns in the bunks,” she teased as she followed him to his office. “Thanks for taking my request,” she added once they were inside, “There’s a lot of good up and coming talent, but I needed some experience on the crew.”
"Well. I won't lie. Not all that much to do on OC while Theseus gets repaired," Duke replied flatly. "Doctor Llwyd has enough monkeys in his zoo right now, he doesn't need me adding to the noise," he added, stepping to his temporary chair and dropping into it. "Besides. Best night's sleep I've had since my girls were born," he chuckled.
He could have used another good night's sleep but with the limited staff that they had brought along, it wasn't a good idea to leave the Sick Bay with multiple touch and go patients. While he had every faith that they would pull through, he didn't have that same level of faith in the staff that would have to tend to them if things went sour, at least until he got there and he knew that those first few minutes would be precious.
The staff wasn't without use, not by a long shot, but he was the only Doctor among them. Pathfinder shouldn't have left without a more substantial medical team and really needed a dedicated Physician, or at least one that would leave their post on OC whenever the ship left. So for now, he would just make due with the team of nurses and techs and try to cat nap where he could.
The office was big enough for a lead staff meeting in the department, but that wasn't saying much, considering the limited size of the staff. It was still properly outfitted with a replicator and Calliope made use of it, ordering chicken parmesan sandwiches for the both of them, and some iced tea besides. She carried it in a couple of turns to the desk and brought a chair up alongside.
"How old are they now? Your girls?"
"Two going on twenty," Duke smiled tiredly back, "My wife won't let me do the test, but I'm fairly certain they're half Tasmanian Devil," he added, taking his sandwich gratefully. "Always keep you on your toes, that's for sure... and awake..." he threw in for good measure. Wonky as his nap had been, it was some of the best sleep he'd had in about two years and nine months.
While biting into her sandwich, Calliope tried to remember if she had known Corduke was married, let alone that he was a new father. For some reason she'd pegged him as the type to be on his third marriage and rocky going at that. Maybe she'd misconstrued him as having been flirty over cocktails at the party earlier that year, down on Obsidian. But she had thought he had something of a reputation whispered about him too.
"Next patrol run I'll put your name in the hat again," She said as she finished chewing. "Give you another break."
"Oh I'm sure it'll be risking divorce to go off ship again. You have no idea what we went through to get stationed together..." he shook his head, his trademark smirk shifting away as he remembered how distinctly uncomfortable that had been and how close it had all come to crashing down. It hadn't exactly been an easy start for their relationship and every complication along the way, especially in those early days, shook things far more than they really should have.
"Besides. I need to be minding the shop on the Theseus. Not that this hasn't been fun. But. Duty, or some crap like that," he mumbled in the end, taking another bite.
Calliope busied herself with making a dent in the Chicken Parmesan. She decided his complaining about the kids was mostly blowing smoke. He joked about the missus threatening divorce, but something in his demeanor told her it wasn't a real scare. He might have been down that road more than once before, but things weren't so shaky now. She wondered if one day she might be equally nonchalant about what she was currently going through in her domestic life.
As she finished polishing off half the sandwich, Calliope wiped her hands on a napkin. "You must really love 'em. Making the whole shared assignment thing happen. Not easy, working that out." She did actually know that much, personally. Even that hadn't been enough. But she didn't think anymore that there was anything that would have been 'enough' to make it work. Near or far, Lance wouldn't have been there with her. She wondered if there was any of the hope that Walker held out for, that Lance would decide to work on himself and reach out to her. That maybe the hold up on the divorce papers was really about love and not about his own ego to feel in control of some part of the situation... leaving her indefinitely in an orbit of his life that made him feel things were no different than they had been before.
Calliope looked distant for a moment before shaking back to the present and picking a loose crumb that had fallen beside the plate. "Who would you recommend I rotate into the job?"
"I'll talk with Captain Callum," Duke replied pensively. "If he's not willing to let one of the junior Doc's rotate with you, I'll have a word with Doctor Llwyd on the station. He might have some greenhorns that need a little seasoning."
Talking to Lachlan was something he hadn't done much of since he'd gotten back, other than to offer his report on the goings on. The skipper was buys with other things, and simply didn't have the time to spare for anything more. Not that they were particularly close.
Duke hadn't come back to the Fleet willingly, in fact, as unwillingly as it was possible to be. He'd served his time, worked his way through the medical track and had retired a happy man to a tropical backwater. He'd been content to sip his tropical drink, get sandy toes on the beach and live in relative squalor (by modern standards). That was until Hobus went boom. The astrophysical fallout of which turned his tropical world into something completely different and, being close enough, into a refugee camp. He might have been retired, but his Starfleet cred was enough to get him on the first Starfleet transport dropping supplies. From there, he'd been able to hop a ride with an old friend, and back into the Fleet for a career resurrection.
Starfleet had been happy to have him back, rotating him straight into active Fleet where he'd rotated a few times, met his wife and finally landed in a stable posting on the Theseus. It wasn't the tropical vacation retirement that he'd initially wanted, nor could he convince Courtney to give up her career for it. So here they were, serving actively in the Fleet together, raising their girsl in that environment. It was hardly the worst place to raise children - but a little nerve-wracking considering that the Theseus was a battle-ready vessel. Not a generational explorer.
She frowned. It would mean taking on a more junior officer in the role. She would have to find another way to staff someone with experience. "Oh well. I'll see what Llwyd thinks about the staffing. It'll probably be a couple weeks in dock anyway. We banged her up real good."
"If the ship's going to be going out more often than not, have you considered asking Captain DeHavilland to assign an officer permanently?" he asked, "When I was thirty, a few years out of my residency and itching for my own Sick Bay I'd have pounced on this posting. Even if it was on a Nova trolling the ass-end of nowhere," he chuckled tiredly. "Get one with an ounce of extra ambition clever enough to realize they're going to be under the Admiral's nose, you'll have a list of takers to choose from."
"I don't know what happens with any long term assignments. Mine included. I'm going to have to hazard the topic again with her, in any case."
"Well you have my vote of confidence," Duke smiled as reassuringly as he could. He knew more than he probably should have about Commander Zahn's ongoing issues, having been involved and consulted on a fair bit of it along the way. But regardless of that he'd come to trust her judgement and felt no qualms at all about following her lead. "I've said as much in my logs," he added truthfully.
Calliope put her napkin over the remains on her plate. "Thanks." She wasn't really sure what anyone had been saying about her, but Llywd and Duke were at least kind enough. "Maybe they'll let me start fresh. I don't know. I just want to get back to work. I could see myself commanding something like this. But I need a longer chain to run on. Maybe in some other Task Group where my reputation doesn't have to follow me."
"You seem to be building a perfectly fine reputation where you are," Duke shrugged.
She smirked. "I guess I can't get too far from myself, anyway."
