By Keiran O'Sullivan
80406.16
Concurrent with The Last Dance
-=Starfleet Command: San Francisco, California=-
80406.16
Concurrent with The Last Dance
-=Starfleet Command: San Francisco, California=-
As O'Sullivan waited for Admiral Vox to appear, he wondered how things had gone so far off course.
A short time ago, he had been closing in on Breaux and his female companion, whoever she may have turned out to be, just outside the Russian Tea Room.
The next thing he knew, he was in a back alley behind the building, flanked by two people in plain clothing who informed him that they were with Starfleet Intelligence.
They were there to prevent him from interrupting a meeting that Admiral Vox had arranged inside the restaurant, they said. They continued speaking in hushed tones, asking Keiran to accompany them, quietly. They further explained that the operative inside the restaurant had two uniformed guards with her, but that she had no knowledge of the plain-clothes detail watching over her as well.
Keiran had reached for his weapon, believing they could be associates of his target from the wrong side of the law. He laughed softly, and informed them that he would be going nowhere with them voluntarily, let alone quietly. . .
-=Flashback=-
"Admiral Vox said you'd say that," The first agent, a tall blonde woman smiled at him smugly. "That's why he wanted us to ask you, how are the nightmares these days, Keiran? Have they returned?"
Keiran's jaw set.
"All right." He raised his hands, allowing them to take his weapon. "I'll go with you."
"Now, just tell us who you're working with, so we can call them off as well." She requested.
"I'll tell that to Admiral Vox," Keiran replied. If he was about to be killed, or worse, by imposters who had somehow obtained knowledge of a key phrase that was supposed to engender trust, he would fall alone.
-=End Flashback=-
They had been telling the truth, and Keiran was now back in uniform and waiting for his chance to find out what the hell was going on, and who had found out about Breaux before he had, and what they had done with the information.
The massive door to the Admiral's office opened slowly, and Keiran saw Vox standing behind his desk. He beckoned Keiran in, and gestured for him to take a seat.
"I'd rather stand, Sir, if it's all the same."
"As you wish." Vox replied, taking his chair. "I know you well enough to know that you are doing a very good job in holding back your temper, Keiran," Vox fired the first volley. "And your tongue."
"Damn it, Admiral, I had him. I had him, dead to rights. Why?"
"Captain Nolan is already in custody," Vox looked up lazily from his computer screen. "A deal will be made, with her and Breaux."
*Bureaucratic bullshit. . .* Keiran thought as he ran his hand through his bristly, cropped gray hair. "Are you serious? How do you deal with a man that,"
"A deal," Vox repeated, "has already been offered by this point, and if Commander Lair does her job, it will be accepted and soon she and Avery will be standing where you are now."
"Lair?" Keiran was truly bewildered now. What the hell did Lair have to do with this? She was the ship's previous chief engineer, and she and Breaux seemed to have become good friends, even before he had recently saved her life. But was she mixed up in this Maquis business as well? "What has she got to do with anything?"
"She was going through last minute procedures, preparing to officially transfer command of the Engineering department to Breaux," Vox explained. "Purging the last of her old data files from the system. When she was trying to sweep away the final fragments and leave him with a clean slate, so to speak, she discovered remnants of a message she didn't recognize. It had been hidden, inside her own database and contained only portions of words. Encrypted."
He rose from his chair and began to walk around the room, surveying the level of moisture in various potted plants. "One thing you must know about Commander Lair, Keiran, is that you can never, ever leave her pieces to a puzzle unless you want her to put them together, and provide them all. She's tenacious, and she will not rest until she can find any missing fragments or force the pieces she has into a finished image that will make sense to her."
Keiran simply listened.
"Lair searched the Engineering database entirely, and found more fragments. She was able to reassemble them into enough of a picture to understand that Breaux was in trouble, that he was in league with the Maquis and, she feared, may not be working alone aboard the Serendipity. She was unsure of what to do, but she knew that she had to do something.
"Concerned for the safety of the ship and the entire crew, she disembarked, quietly, and came to me. I did a little checking and discovered that you had been asking around about message fragments that you'd come across on your own in ship-wide database sweeps." Vox sighed heavily. "You and Lair, both of you, nearly blew an operation that we'd been working carefully for five years, watching Breaux and Nolan. You and your damned nit-picking security protocols, and Lair and that twisted brain of hers."
"Sorry." Keiran said, nearly crowing the word.
Vox would have chuckled softly at the man's response, but this was no time for jokes. The truth was, that they had very nearly missed out on apprehending Nolan because of all that had gone on.
"Fortunately, we were able to place Lair where Breaux expected to find Nolan, but that left us with a problem. You, and whomever you were working with, if anyone." This brought Vox to his next question. "Who were you working with?"
"Dalca was running back-up on a shuttle craft," O'Sullivan replied, "Cristiane was disguised as a Bajoran and working with me on the ground."
"We need to find them. Call them off. Allow Kellyn to bring Breaux here without further impediment."
"All right." Keiran gestured toward the Admiral's computer, asking permission to use it, and Vox nodded. Within moments O'Sullivan had established a link to Dalca, who was still scouring the globe looking for him.
He was a bit concerned when Dalca said that Dane had gone silent and not been heard from since- but Keiran knew that if nothing else, Dane was a child of the streets, and he could get out of many a situation that others could not.
"Take the loaner back to the Lionheart, then head home." O'Sullivan instructed Dalca. "The operation is now out of our hands."
[Understood. What about Cristiane?]
"I'll see to that. O'Sullivan out."
Vox signaled his approval, and Keiran wandered back from behind the Admiral's desk and folded his arms.
"So what happens now? If I'm allowed to ask."
Vox moved to a cabinet, and removed an elaborate crystal decanter. He poured some of the dusky liquid within, and then moved toward O'Sullivan with the glass. "You still take your Scotch neat?"
"Aye. Many thanks." O'Sullivan replied, throwing the drink back in one gulp. He knew that it was meant to soften him up, meaning that he was not going to like what he was about to hear.
"If Breaux takes the deal, he will remain on the Serendipity. He'll be transferred from Engineering to Medical, as he had already made that request before this was all going on - and that position will allow us greater freedom in the future to use him as we see fit."
"You're letting him stay!" Keiran's fingers tightened around the glass. He was so angry that for just a split second, he thought about crushing it.
"Wouldn't you rather have him right under your nose, Officer O'Sullivan, where you can keep an eye on every single move he makes?" Vox offered, stepping forward and refilling the glass which still hung mid-air in O'Sullivan's gigantic hand.
"No! It's too dangerous!" Keiran objected, slamming the glass down and walking away.
"For the ship, or for Zanh Liis?" Vox asked plainly.
Keiran's gaze remained unchanged despite the Admiral's attempts to provoke a response from him. "For The Alchemy Project."
"For the Project. Of course." Vox expression told Keiran that he already knew better, and Keiran thought back over the years he had known the man, and all that Vox knew of him.
"It's not safe for her or the crew either. You can't do this."
"We have to do this." Vox insisted. "It's safer to keep him where he can't go around us, and has to work for us."
"He should be in prison."
"He's more of a danger in prison. You know that the Maquis is well connected, wherever you go. Insidious, pervasive. We can't escape it until we dismantle it once and for all. The best way to do that is to take men like Avery Breaux and use them to our advantage, not wasting that potential by putting misguided people who could be returned to the proper path in prison."
"Can he be turned?" O'Sullivan was doubtful.
"He'll turn, or he'll end up dead. The line he's walking has only two possible outcomes."
"Deliverance or damnation." Keiran concluded, thinking that though he walked a different course, it was one with a similar, short list of potential destinations.
"He'll determine the outcome by his own actions. I'm sorry that your operation went on so long. If we could have done this another way, we would have. But we knew Breaux would bolt if he got a sense anything was off- and with you pursuing him, and him spending all his available energy worrying about being tailed, it allowed us to move Lair into position."
"You did what you had to do, Sir."
"Thank you for your understanding." Vox approached Keiran, taking stock of him. "Can you live with this?"
"Don't have a choice, do I." It was a statement, not a question.
"No."
"Then, I thank you for your time, Sir. If there isn't anything else,"
"There is one more thing." Vox looked at O'Sullivan sideways. "The flashbacks. They've returned, haven't they?"
Keiran reached past the Admiral and picked up his discarded Scotch, draining it quickly before speaking again. He moved away and sat heavily down onto the couch opposite them. His head fell into his hands.
"How much do you remember?" Vox pressed.
"I remember enough." Keiran exhaled slowly. "Enough to recall every intricate detail of her face. Enough to know that it is her that I remember," he paused. "It's not my imagination, is it? Tell me. Tell me I'm not crazy."
"You're not crazy."
"I wish I could believe you."
Vox poured himself a Scotch now, and he sat down beside O'Sullivan on the couch. "I've known you how long, Keiran? Two decades of linear time, and how many outside the established line?"
"Too many to count, Sir."
"Then you have to trust me. You're not crazy, and it is Zanh Liis that you remember." Vox placed a hand on O'Sullivan's broad shoulder. "I'm sorry that the procedure failed. Again."
"You promised me that they wouldn't come back this time. That they'd blocked the memories once and for all." Keiran lamented, bitterness woven through every word.
"Medical science has done its best. You knew that there was a chance it could fail." The Admiral's tone reflected his own sadness that things had turned out this way. "This assignment was the litmus test. This is why we didn't permanently place you on the Sera from the start, in case they came back and we had to pull you out. For your own good, and for hers."
Vox continued looking upon Keiran with sincere sympathy. "I'm sorry. There's just so much they don't understand about memory reversion and resequencing." He swirled the last of the whisky in his glass. "It must be so hard, remembering."
O'Sullivan stared blankly ahead. "The hardest part isn't remembering. It's looking at her, and knowing her so well that I know what she is going to say before she says it." He looked at the floor. "and knowing that she doesn't remember me."
Vox set his now empty glass down. "I should reassign you. Today."
"No." Keiran stood up. "You can't."
"I have no choice," Vox shook his head. "I had my doubts after I heard that you threw a fit when she wanted to go aboard the Gauntlet. Did you even have your memories back at that point?"
"Not as such, no, and to be truthful, I don't think I have them all now." Keiran answered honestly. "But please, Admiral, I'm asking. Don't reassign me. Attempt another procedure, anything. Just don't," he implored Vox with his eyes.
"They can't do another one, it would kill you and you know that."
"There are worse fates than death."
The two men sat in silence for a long time before the Admiral spoke again.
"Keiran, she does not remember. Her life is entirely different in this timeline. Things can never be what they were."
"I know that."
As soon as the words were spoken, both men understood them to mean that while he may know it, he still didn't accept it.
"Can you serve with her? Under her command, without overprotecting her to the detriment of yourself, and the ship? To the detriment of the Project?"
"Jonas," Keiran droned, all emotion disappearing as he realized that he was a man with nothing to his name but the shards of a fragmented past, no present to speak of, and a highly questionable future. "I can't serve anywhere else."
His words were nearly drown out by the sound of the nearby communications terminal beeping. Vox sighed and rose to answer.
He was rather irritated when he saw that the incoming transmission was from a local law enforcement agency, and had no idea why they could possibly be interrupting his important conversation.
Until.
[This is Detective Tenk, NYPD,] The man on screen informed. [We have a young man in our custody who is insisting that you will want to know of his whereabouts.]
Keiran's ears perked up. He bolted across the room, coming to a stop over Vox shoulder.
"What did he say his name was?" The Admiral inquired.
[His identification says Jardin Ethos, but he insists his name is-]
"Cristiane." O'Sullivan interrupted. "His real name is Dane Cristiane."
[That's what he's claiming.] Tenk grumbled, seemingly disappointed. [Well, you might want to send someone to fetch him, Admiral.]
"Where is he now?" Vox hated to ask.
[He's in jail.]
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Lt. Commander Keiran O'Sullivan
Chief of Security
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
Lt. Commander Keiran O'Sullivan
Chief of Security
USS Serendipity NCC-2012