80307.18
Concurrent with The Best and Worst of Times
-=Office of the Chief of Security, USS Serendipity=-
The time he had spent in Sickbay was now merely a fading blur in his mind, and Keiran O'Sullivan was glad of it.
He remembered enough of the severity of the pain of his injuries to know that he had no desire to remember it all.
Though not technically cleared to return to active duty, he found the still and eerie silence of his quarters to be unbearable. As tired as he was he could not sleep, and so decided that no harm could be done by simply catching up on a wee bit of paperwork.
He believed wholeheartedly that the best thing for him was to get back to work, as soon as possible.
Sitting quietly in his office, O'Sullivan leaned back slowly and propped one of his massive, boot-clad feet up against the edge of his desk. He was out of uniform; dressed in blue jeans and a plain button-down shirt, his combadge casually shoved into one of his pockets just in case.
He rocked gently to and fro in his chair as he finished tapping out his incident report concerning the retaking of the USS Gauntlet.
Not that there was much of it.
He'd missed a great deal of the event, after all. He'd been summarily shot by now ex-Starfleet Admiral Dylon Spangler, and what was worse, it was his own damned fault.
He'd allowed it to happen, because he made the most basic, stupid and often fatal mistake that every first year security cadet is so vehemently warned against.
He allowed himself to become distracted.
Tossing the completed report aside, such as it was, Keiran rubbed his eyes and then his bearded chin as he crossed his legs, finally resting both feet atop the desk.
He closed his eyes and remembered how he'd thrown a livid fit outside earshot of the others after Zanh announced that she was going on the Away Mission to secure the much larger, rogue vessel, Gauntlet.
Bad enough that she had already gone over to the Executor and almost gotten herself killed trying to save that sullen little brat, Cristiane. He should have been the one to go after the errant Ensign, but she'd had the unmitigated gall to call for his beam-out against his will and without any thought to her safety or respect for the office that she held, damn her.
He thought back to the conversation that proceeded their departure to the Gauntlet, and wondered if Zanh would ever look at him the same way again. He may have crossed the line, but he honestly felt that he was only doing the job he'd sworn to do, whether she liked the way he did it, or not.
-=Flashback=-
As the soon to be Away Team loaded up on weapons, the Sera's Chief of Security approached his Captain.
"A moment of yer time, please, Captain Zanh. Privately." His tone was such that Zanh knew it was not simply a polite request. He was demanding her attention.
Now.
"All right." Everything around them was activity and chaos, and so she looked for somewhere close by that would afford them a little seclusion. "In here."
He followed her into the adjoining room, which was actually an empty supply closet. Zanh called for the lights, and O'Sullivan waited for the door to close behind them. The space was disconcertingly small, a couple meters each way wide and long. Keiran tried to keep his mind on task, momentarily thrown by being in such close quarters with the Bajoran.
"Permission to speak freely, Captain?"
"You're going to either way and we both know it." Zanh responded, "Go for it."
"What the bloody hell are you doing? You've already taken target practice on one Admiral this mission, are ye wantin' ta add to the collection? Maybe you plan to stuff 'em and mount 'em on the wall side by side? Are ya gone in the head? Cop on!"
Zanh's eyes warned he'd gone too far, and she folded her arms defensively over her chest. "You done?"
"Just startin'. You should not be goin' aboard the Gauntlet. Let us handle it. Stay here where you belong. It'll be more of a danger to the team if you go."
"I don't believe that. My first duty is to protect this ship and this crew. If I thought I was endangering them by going, I'd stay here." Zanh argued. "You forget that I'm Temporal Investigations every bit as much as you are or ever were, Lt. Commander, and I'm only going to remind you once. If the records are right, I have far more experience with this type of thing than you do. So your objection is noted but overruled. File a formal grievance when we get back, if you feel the need but I'm going and that's final."
She turned and took a step before his words gave her reason to stop.
"Ever buried your commanding officer?"
Zanh was not expecting the question, and stared at him in reply. He repeated it.
"I asked, have ya ever buried one of your commanding officers, Captain?"
Zanh looked at her boots. She'd been to the funeral of many a fellow officer, but never one directly commanding her. "No."
"I have, and I don't ever want to be doin' it again." O'Sullivan's tone implored her to reconsider. "Especially not," he paused. "Not you, Sir."
"Keiran, we'll be fine." She insisted. "We've got them outnumbered. Besides, you and Blane will have my back."
"Captain?" TC Blane called from outside, rapping on the closet door. It was nearly time to go. "Everything all right in there?"
"Just fine. On our way." Zanh replied, effectively concluding the exchange. O'Sullivan frowned deeply, his jaw clenched in frustration.
"Damned stubborn woman." he growled to himself, "Going to be the death of me, someday."
-=End Flashback=-
Returning to the present moment, Keiran cursed himself as he reviewed what had actually happened aboard the Gauntlet.
The greatest danger to the team, and to himself, had not been that Zanh Liis had come along. It had been that he had refused to accept the fact that at the end of the day, she had the experience needed to look after herself. He'd gotten so hung up on it being his job, and his alone to protect her that the moment of distraction had almost made that one mistake his last.
He wondered what she'd say when he saw her next. He was told she'd come to see him in Sickbay, but try as he might he couldn't remember what, if anything, had been said.
Sighing and rising from his chair, he went to the replicator. "Iced tea, sweet." He requested. Taking the beverage back to the desk with him, he noticed that his comm was blinking. The message contained a request from the Captain that all of the ship's comm traffic logs be checked against the Spec Ops and TI databases for any 'code words' or other signs of suspicious activity.
Keiran closed the message and addressed the computer. "Computer, run complete scan of incoming and outgoing transmission logs, beginning stardate 71215.0 and using security analysis protocol O'Sullivan pi seven one."
^Processing.^
He began conducting routine, random checks of the logs himself as he waited for the computer to finish its task.
-=Two Hours Later=-
^Scanning complete.^
"Results?"
^Suspicious log activity has been confirmed.^
"I have really got to fine tune that program," Keiran said to himself aloud. "Redefine the parameters. Too many accidental hits coming up every time I run it." He believed that the so-called suspicious log activity was purely coincidental, as unwitting crew members had sent messages which innocently contained words which, when used together with a certain frequency, imitated code terms used by either Temporal Investigations or Special Operations.
"How many instances were logged?" He asked the computer now.
^One hundred and seventy seven segments of traffic have been converted to text and flagged.^
"Display them, one by one." He leaned forward in his chair and began the tedious task of sorting through the paragraphs the computer displayed. He didn't want to read any more of the crew's personal communications than was necessary; still he had to be certain that he looked at each one well enough to determine that they were just personal correspondence.
He was on message segment twenty-two when something caught his eye. It wasn't simply the use of the words "Mother" and "Rigel" in the comm log which bothered him. It was the name of the person who had initiated the incoming message.
Captain Angela Nolan was on a Starfleet security watch list- and had been for some time, due to seemingly suspicious behavior. Use of those words in a message from her to one of their own was definitely reason for O'Sullivan to become concerned.
"Computer, display the name of the recipient of this message?"
^Unable to comply. Message recipient name has been deleted.^
"Display entire message, then?"
^Unable to comply. Original message logs have been deleted.^
"Damn." Keiran whispered. Off duty or not, this was a matter that he would have to investigate more fully himself.
"Right, then, it's time to start recompiling data fragments."
Lt. Commander Keiran O'Sullivan
Chief Security Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012