Small Greatnesses

Posted on Sun Feb 21st, 2016 @ 10:58pm by Lieutenant Commander Michael Darwin & Cadet Senior Grade Chance Conradi & Jackson Banning V & Senior Chief Petty Officer Edana

Mission: Further Challenges

Having left Li at her quarters, Darwin had returned to the Security Offices, where he'd showered away the remains of the Archadian lake and donned a uniform. He'd consulted with Gilroy, caught up on the various reports, including one from Carter on the Kohana, and been briefed about Oralia's condition. Finally, Gilroy had told him to go home and get some sleep. Neither of them mentioned Li or the state Darwin had been in when Jackson and Gilroy had found them on the planet. Darwin was thankful for small favors.

Arriving home, Darwin shed his uniform jacket and the rest of the uniform followed in short order. Naked, he lay in his bed and stared at the ceiling; after the broad open skies of the planet, it felt confining and close.

It was sometime later that his door chime rang, pulling him from his dreams. It seemed this wasn’t the first time it had rung either and soon rang once more.

He woke, surprised to find that he'd slept at all, then hurried to find pajama pants before answering the door. “Ed, hey,” he smiled as she came into his living room. “Long time, no see, or so it seems.”

“Several days.” She smiled back at him. “How are you sleeping beauty? And more important, no offense, how is Li?”

“Li is... about as well as you might expect,” he said, turning away from Ed to go to the replicator. He stood in front of it for a long moment, unable to think of what he wanted. Finally, he ordered just a glass of water. As he picked it up, he realized that he'd gotten a bit of sun; he was tanner than he'd been. He turned back towards Ed and asked, “How were things here?”

“Relatively quiet,” she answered. “Suresh had Farco and me go search Lazan’s quarters and some interesting things came to light. I suspect one of them might explain Marat’s and Owain’s strange memory gaps. Farco also discovered that Isha was Li and that Lazan was reporting to her. Suresh was amused. As for the interesting thing, I found a case with a hypospray and some unmarked vials. Turns out, it was an inhibitor of a rather strange sort.”

Darwin thought of Li and whether she needed a shot of inhibitor. “What does it inhibit? Memory formation?”

“The one mention of it is from Voyager’s logs,” she replied. “A reverse of that actually. It is used by the Ramurans to inhibit the hormone that makes people forget. It seems Lazan was keeping a big secret.”

“So he could make people - or himself? - remember things? That's a weird thing to have around.” He moved to the couch and fell into it. He gestured for Edana to join him.

She sat down beside him, facing him, and ran her fingers over his shoulder as she continued. “No, they naturally give off a hormone that makes people forget they were ever there, forget they ever met them. Apparently, even computer databases lose any information about them, which is something you might want to look into. See if there are any oddities in the brig logs around the times that Marat and Owain had their issues. It would allow Lazan to come and go and do whatever he liked if he was off the inhibitor and no one would ever recall him being there.”

“Oh,” he grunted. Her touch had him thinking of things that had nothing to do with memories, Marat and Owain or the brig. He pulled her into his lap and kissed her. “Let's forget about work for a bit,” he suggested, pulling her skirt up.

“Does that mean you missed me?” she teased him. Her fingertip traced a path down his chest, then back up. “You still feel sun-warmed and smell like the outdoors. Maybe you should take me down there to that spot sometime.”

“We can go to Archadia whenever you'd like,” he said, avoiding promising to take her to Shangri-la. “We stayed at an inn on the beach.” He was growing more intense about getting her skirt out of the way.

“Sure, anytime you want.” She rose up from the sofa and slipped the skirt off the rest of the way. “Welcome home, Dar.”

Thinking something close to nothing, Darwin pulled her back onto his lap and made sure neither of them formed any coherent words for awhile. Later, he suggested dinner out and took Edana to Lao's then walked her home.

Upon arriving at her door, she seemed a little surprised. “Here? You want to stay here for the night? I thought you didn’t like sleeping in the Pit.” She had normal Fleet quarters but had a roommate, so it was rare that Ed stayed there, especially not with Darwin.

“Ah... Well, actually, Ed, I want to sleep alone tonight. I've kind of been ‘on’ for the past few nights - and days - and just need my own bed.” He hoped she wouldn't take that wrong.

“I get it,” she nodded. “To be honest, it’s been that way here too. Suresh is already climbing the walls with Six gone and I can only take so much without wanting to bind and gag him and leave him in a corner. There’s a few things I need to check on anyway, with Farco.”

“More Lazan stuff?” He couldn't help it: he was both curious and worried.

“Yes. Frank is due back tonight. He was on a ...disposal run...Lazan. Payback for skimming way too much of Suresh’s resources….for a very long time. We’re meeting him later.”

Darwin's mind reeled. A disposal run? There would be no evidence that Frank had done anything illegal, though. He rubbed a hand over his face. “Be careful,” he said. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

“I will.” She kissed his cheek, then slipped inside and closed the doors.

Darwin headed home, thinking on what Ed had told him. Instead of going home, though, he detoured towards Piper. There was one very important person he hadn’t checked on since coming back: Oralia. Entering Piper, he was quickly directed to where the families and friends of the assimilated officers were waiting. Chance was there with Jackson; both looked stressed and tired. He looked through the window to the containment field and frowned at the sight of his boss asleep on a biobed. “How is she?”, he asked.

“Better’n the rest at the moment,” Jackson answered. He clapped Darwin on the back. “Good to see ya again so soon. Earl came out a bit ago and said Oz was doin’ well. They got everything out, hardware-wise an’ now, filterin’ the nanites from her bloodstream. He said that she was the easiest because, for some reason, her system was beginnin’ ta reject the implants. They aren't sure why yet but it kept ‘em from gettin’ too fused with the rest of her.”

“Really? Where is Ignatius? Are they working on her, too?” He felt completely out of the loop, despite having read the reports earlier - he realized now that he hadn’t actually read them. He’d hit key words and moved on without retaining anything. How many other reports had he done that with?

“She’s down in Science bein’ worked on now,” Jackson informed him. “Oz should be out in a coupla days. They wanna keep her once everything’s done just to monitor her and make sure it’s all good.”

He recalled reading that, though he wouldn't have if Jackson hadn't said it. “I'm glad she's going to be okay,” he said, reaching over to Chance and patting his shoulder. It was then that something else came to mind, something Gilroy had told him. “And you, Chance, I hear congrats are in order.”

Chance grinned and nodded. “Yeah, what with everything happening, we decided not to wait.”

Jackson looked from Chance Darwin to Chance, trying to force his tired mind to keep up. Nothing enlightening came, however. “Congrats for what?”

Darwin’s brows rose and he looked at Chance. “You two haven’t told him... oh, well, he does have other stuff to worry about, doesn’t he?”

“Just a little,” Chance agreed. He looked at Jackson and said, “Eli and I ...we got married. On the same beach where you and Oz did.” He smiled at the memory and the connection.

It took a second or two for that to sink into Jackson’s addled mind but when it did, he smiled ear to ear. “No shit! Really?” He wrapped Chance in a tight bear hug. “Well, welcome to the family son.”

Chance laughed and hugged Jackson back. “Thanks! Eli wanted to tell you, but with Oz... he just didn’t have a chance.”

Darwin, grinning, was happy for them. “I’m going to go check on Kendrick,” he said. “I’ll see you two later.”

“I’ll be here till Ophelia runs me off,” Jackson answered, then looked back at Chance. “That’s wonderful. I know Eli’s prob’ly floatin’. He at the Nexus already?”

“Yeah. They’re a little short staffed, with you and Vic both out. You knew about that, right? That Vic went off on a ‘purchasing run’?” He doubted Janice’s story about that and had the feeling Vic was involved in something else.

“Yeah, that I was told about.” Jackson left it at that. Vic’s current whereabouts were another whole can of worms that couldn’t be opened with Chance, at least not yet. “I owe Jan a big one. If Oz is doin’ okay tomorrow, I’ll come in. She’ll be sleepin’ by that time anyhow.”

“I don’t think Jan expects you to come in, Jackson,” Chance said. “But it might help you think about something else for a little while. Besides, Mom and Dad will be back here in the morning. If anything happens, they’ll call you.”

“That sounds good.” Jackson turned to look back through the window where Oz slept now. “Hey, I’m starvin’. Wanna go get somethin’ to eat?”

“Yeah. A back table at the Nexus or something else?”

“Oh hell no. I want dumplings,” Jackson answered. “I’ll bring some back too. We may actually tempt Oz to eat.” He turned away from the window, wrapping his arm around Chance’s shoulders. “Let’s go.”

“If anything can get her to eat, Lao’s should work. Well, that and let her get hungry enough. This one time, when I was little, I tricked her and Thad into eating cardboard...,” he laughed and as they walked out, he told Jackson the whole story. What he didn’t know was that, if Oz were around to hear the story, she’d have corrected him: she and Thad had known it was cardboard and only pretended to eat it.

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Lt. Commander M. Darwin
SCPO Edana
Jackson Banning, V
Cadet Chance Conradi