by Zanh Liis
80111.01
Immediately following At First Sight
--=Captain's Ready Room, USS Serendipity=--
80111.01
Immediately following At First Sight
--=Captain's Ready Room, USS Serendipity=--
The doors parted unexpectedly and a very tall, rugged looking man with a neatly trimmed beard and closely cropped hair came rushing in.
He turned his back toward the assembled group, hurrying to block the progress of a second man, whom Zanh recognized immediately.
"I told you, lad, the Captain is busy and you have to do that later."
"And I told you that I have to get to my secondary shift and I can't come back to do this later and if. . ."
"MR. CRISTIANE!" Zanh raised her voice, and both men stopped arguing abruptly at the sound and snapped their heads around. They stared at Zanh in surprise. Dane's mouth hung open wide as he gaped at her in disbelief.
"You'll catch a fly, son, shut your yap. And, just stand there a minute, don't move." Liis turned her attention to the gigantic man in the security uniform. "You must be Lt. Commander O'Sullivan."
"Aye, Captain. I apologize for the interruption, this was not how I had planned to first make your acquaintance."
"Is quite all right, Keiran. In fact, if you gentlemen would all excuse me a moment," Her eyes never left Cristiane as he stood glaring at her from across the room. "I'd like a moment alone with the Ensign."
"I'll be right outside." O'Sullivan warned Dane as he walked past, "Mind that, you."
Without a word, Vox and Salvek followed the security officer from the room, and as soon as the doors closed, Zanh put her hands on her hips.
"Look at you. Getting arrested. Performing community service," She shook her head, her voice heavy with disgust. "I take a chance on you, stick my neck out for you, and this is how you repay me?"
Dane's eyes flashed pure hatred, and he set down the supplies he had been carrying to clean the lizard's cage - again - and marched over to her. He did not stop until his face was nearly pressed against hers.
"You. You did this to me."
"I did what to you?" Zanh folded her arms, and actually leaned closer to him, not backing down an inch as he attempted to intimidate her. "Gave you one shot at getting out of the hell you were living in? Gave you a chance to own your own soul, for the first time in your life?"
"You sold my soul! Just as surely as if the devil himself had purchased it from you." His eyes narrowed down to slits. "What did he give you in trade for me, Zanh Liis? Whatever it was, I hope it was worth it."
"You ungrateful little," Liis began, but she stopped. "What did I get for you? Nothing but a headache that is destined to haunt me the rest of my days. Or maybe not. Vox is ready to throw you back out into the gutter. Should I let him?"
The two stared for a moment, so intensely at each other that the tension was palpable.
"If you were a man," Dane whispered hatefully, "I'd show you what I think of the chance that you gave to me."
"Don't let that stop you, little boy. But I warn you, you'll only get to hit me once. Then your next view- when you can open your eyes again- will be of the interior of the Sickbay of this ship after I am through kicking your ass all over it."
He was standing so close she could feel his breath on her face. She didn't flinch.
"Are we clear, Mr. Cristiane?"
Dane huffed and turned his back on her. He stared at the floor. His tone changed, and he sounded truly distraught.
"You should have left me where I was. Why didn't you just leave me where I was?"
"For what purpose, Dane? So you could die a prostitute? Listen to me," Liis' demeanor changed as well, entirely different now from what it had been a moment before. "Sit down. Just sit still a minute, and think before you say anything else."
Cristiane slumped into one of the overstuffed chairs and held his head in his hands.
As Zanh stared at him, she remembered the day that she had made him the offer that he now seemed to regret accepting, so bitterly.
--=Flashback: Two Years Ago, DS23=--
Zanh's bags were packed. She made her way through the station's Plaza, headed toward the airlock at docking ring C3. Beyond that airlock, the USS Thermopylae waited, to ferry her back to Earth to face court martial, and charges that were based on purely circumstantial evidence.
At first she hardly recognized the familiar young man, as he walked past her, his face was so distorted. He'd obviously taken a severe beating at the hands of someone, and Zanh just wanted to know who.
"Zacha?" She called him by the name he'd given her when she met him at Epicure to begin with and he'd started selling her information. The name he'd taken 'professionally' as a teenager.
"What happened to you?" Zanh was truly horrified by the battering he'd received.
"It's nothing," he was ashamed. He couldn't believe he'd let it happen. That he'd let it continue until it got so bad that it resulted in this.
"It's not nothing, you're half dead. Who did this to you?" Zanh pulled him into a quiet corner of the Plaza. She frowned deeply as he groaned involuntarily as he moved. "Broken ribs too?" She whispered sadly. "They nearly killed you. What, did you owe someone money?"
"No." Dane answered truthfully, his eyes empty of emotion. "One of my clients. They, enjoyed roughing me up."
"Roughing you up? That's an understatement. I take it that you didn't file any charges, either?"
"How could I?" he asked, laughing bitterly. "What I do is illegal, the law won't help me."
"No, but I will." Liis grabbed hold of his arm. "You're coming with me. I can't leave you here."
"What do you mean, going with you? Where?"
"They've ordered the evacuation of all the civilians, Zacha. The situation on the station is too unstable. You have to leave. Do you have enough money to book passage?"
He looked away.
Zanh sighed. "All right. This is how it's going to go. We're going to Earth. When we get there, I'm going to introduce you to the people that I work for. I think that you may have a shot at being recruited by them."
"Starfleet?" He laughed, and it hurt, so he groaned again. "I'm not officer material. Besides, the Academy? At my age?"
"You're age? You're just a kid. How old are you anyway?"
He didn't answer.
"Look I don't care, then, what you do when you get to Earth. I'm certainly not going to push you into a life you don't want. I went into this business with both eyes wide open, or so I thought,"
Her eyes and her heart still held in derision the men who had recruited her, making TI sound like the simple solution to all of her problems when in fact, it created worlds more than she'd ever imagined.
"I promised myself that I would never personally recruit anyone to take up this job, because I'll tell you truthfully, kid, it's like living in Hell. But at least I've been able to do some good. I hope, anyway."
"You'll take me all the way to Earth?"
"If you'll promise to at least hear what my employers have to say," Zanh replied, "Then you can go, without question. The choice will be yours."
With his only other option being arrest as a vagrant once the station's civilians were all evacuated because he had no way to leave, he felt he had little choice.
"Let's go. I'm going to miss my ride if we wait." She put her arm around him and helped support his weight as he stumbled along beside her.
"You're not dying, Zacha." She admonished him. "So you have to stop acting like it's a foregone conclusion that you're going to be dead in the morning."
They rounded the corner and got into a lift. As it started to move and he trusted they were truly alone, he looked at her sideways.
"Dane."
"Sorry?"
"I'm nineteen years old," he confessed softly, "and my name is Dane."
--=End Flashback=--
"You didn't have to take the job offer, you know." Liis spoke finally. "You still don't. You can go your own way, you can do whatever the hell you want. But you've seen now, at least, what a life can be. Very different from what you started out with. And yeah, you got a bad deal in the beginning. You didn't deserve to grow up on the streets."
Zanh moved toward him, slowly, and with great effort as the last of her pain medication wore off and her back began to spasm. She leaned a hand against his shoulder as he sat, motionless, in the chair. "You don't deserve to go back there."
"It's over, Zanh Liis." He sighed. "Vox is through with me, he told me so. Once I finish up my community service, I'm done here."
"Or, I can have you assigned here." She offered, "You can watch, and learn."
"Learn what?"
"How to be a man."
"From you?" He laughed incredulously.
"Yes, from me. I'm a hell of a guy." The last traces of the fondness she felt for him vanished from her voice, and she turned deadly serious once more.
"Yes, Dane, you're through. This offer is the end of the line for you, and I had to stick my neck out once again to make this last chance possible for you." She shook her head.
"I don't think I'm going to regret it, I know I am." She let her words hang in the air a moment before continuing. Then, she warned him.
"I'm the only hope you've got if you want to have any kind of a Starfleet future, whether it be with TI or not. You could get a position somewhere on a nice, quiet ship. Comfortable for the rest of your days as a crewman running a transporter or something, if you do this right. Or, you might even win back the chance to return to the TI training program and finish your apprenticeship.
"But at this point, the only option you have besides the street is to sit at my communications station, and answer all of my phone calls."
"You're not serious!" He stood up and literally stomped his foot once. "Not even security? Come ON." He stormed to the door. "I don't have to listen to this."
"So don't."
Liis turned away and shuffled back to her desk. She took the spy glass that TC Blane had given her out of its case, and set both case and glass down in the very center of the surface.
She angled them just right, so that they were visible from every point in in the room.
Dane stopped at the door, waiting for her to beg him to change his mind. He quickly realized as she ignored him, however, that Zanh Liis didn't beg anyone, to do anything.
"Go on, get out." Zanh called at last. "Easier for me this way. Don't let the door hit you on the way out."
Dane grit his teeth. "I hate this. I hate my life."
"Then choose a different one." Zanh challenged him, examining the stained glass on the wall instead of his expression. "Or don't. But one thing is for damned sure. I felt trapped into a life with TI, like I had no other choice. I will never do that to another living soul. The choice has always been yours."
Dane sighed and walked back toward her. "I screwed up."
"Yeah, you did. But you can fix it, if you will just learn a little humility, already."
He stood before her, unmoving. "Communications."
"As a start, and only a start." She wanted him to understand with crystal clarity that she would pull no punches this time.
"You'll work a second shift, every day, in a rotating variety of departments so that you will learn what every member of this crew is responsible for in their daily duties. You will be more exhausted than you have ever been in your life. I will work you like a dog, and then for my own amusement I will assign you any other extra tasks I see fit."
She lowered her voice and continued. "You will beg for time to sleep. You will cherish every bite of food you have the opportunity to eat. But one thing you will not do is smart off to me, because if you do, I will end this, and you really will be finished. Do you understand me, Ensign?"
With no viable alternative, Cristiane decided he may as well at least give it a try. Besides, he thought, if he was able to charm her as he had done in the past, it wouldn't really turn out as bad as she was threatening.
"I'll do it. Whatever you say."
"That's the smartest thing you've said all day. Now, go get a haircut."
"What?"
"Haircut. I don't expect you to shave your head, but I expect it to be over the ears and above the collar. That's an order."
"There are other members of the crew who are male and have hair longer than mine," he objected, "much longer!"
"They have earned the right. You have not." Liis growled. "Get out. Go do it, now. If you do not have a haircut the next time I see you, I will shave it all off myself."
He grumbled as he moved to the door, "I suppose the earring has to go too." He always wore a single, small gold hoop in one ear.
"Yes."
He scoffed.
"But, if you show me that you can do your job and show respect to your superiors," Zanh snarled, adding "and at this point I consider the kitchen staff to be superior to you in the chain of command of the USS Serendipity. . ."
She paused, "then permission to wear that earring will be the first right you win back. Now get out before I change my mind, and toss you off of my ship. Go."
He turned his back toward the assembled group, hurrying to block the progress of a second man, whom Zanh recognized immediately.
"I told you, lad, the Captain is busy and you have to do that later."
"And I told you that I have to get to my secondary shift and I can't come back to do this later and if. . ."
"MR. CRISTIANE!" Zanh raised her voice, and both men stopped arguing abruptly at the sound and snapped their heads around. They stared at Zanh in surprise. Dane's mouth hung open wide as he gaped at her in disbelief.
"You'll catch a fly, son, shut your yap. And, just stand there a minute, don't move." Liis turned her attention to the gigantic man in the security uniform. "You must be Lt. Commander O'Sullivan."
"Aye, Captain. I apologize for the interruption, this was not how I had planned to first make your acquaintance."
"Is quite all right, Keiran. In fact, if you gentlemen would all excuse me a moment," Her eyes never left Cristiane as he stood glaring at her from across the room. "I'd like a moment alone with the Ensign."
"I'll be right outside." O'Sullivan warned Dane as he walked past, "Mind that, you."
Without a word, Vox and Salvek followed the security officer from the room, and as soon as the doors closed, Zanh put her hands on her hips.
"Look at you. Getting arrested. Performing community service," She shook her head, her voice heavy with disgust. "I take a chance on you, stick my neck out for you, and this is how you repay me?"
Dane's eyes flashed pure hatred, and he set down the supplies he had been carrying to clean the lizard's cage - again - and marched over to her. He did not stop until his face was nearly pressed against hers.
"You. You did this to me."
"I did what to you?" Zanh folded her arms, and actually leaned closer to him, not backing down an inch as he attempted to intimidate her. "Gave you one shot at getting out of the hell you were living in? Gave you a chance to own your own soul, for the first time in your life?"
"You sold my soul! Just as surely as if the devil himself had purchased it from you." His eyes narrowed down to slits. "What did he give you in trade for me, Zanh Liis? Whatever it was, I hope it was worth it."
"You ungrateful little," Liis began, but she stopped. "What did I get for you? Nothing but a headache that is destined to haunt me the rest of my days. Or maybe not. Vox is ready to throw you back out into the gutter. Should I let him?"
The two stared for a moment, so intensely at each other that the tension was palpable.
"If you were a man," Dane whispered hatefully, "I'd show you what I think of the chance that you gave to me."
"Don't let that stop you, little boy. But I warn you, you'll only get to hit me once. Then your next view- when you can open your eyes again- will be of the interior of the Sickbay of this ship after I am through kicking your ass all over it."
He was standing so close she could feel his breath on her face. She didn't flinch.
"Are we clear, Mr. Cristiane?"
Dane huffed and turned his back on her. He stared at the floor. His tone changed, and he sounded truly distraught.
"You should have left me where I was. Why didn't you just leave me where I was?"
"For what purpose, Dane? So you could die a prostitute? Listen to me," Liis' demeanor changed as well, entirely different now from what it had been a moment before. "Sit down. Just sit still a minute, and think before you say anything else."
Cristiane slumped into one of the overstuffed chairs and held his head in his hands.
As Zanh stared at him, she remembered the day that she had made him the offer that he now seemed to regret accepting, so bitterly.
--=Flashback: Two Years Ago, DS23=--
Zanh's bags were packed. She made her way through the station's Plaza, headed toward the airlock at docking ring C3. Beyond that airlock, the USS Thermopylae waited, to ferry her back to Earth to face court martial, and charges that were based on purely circumstantial evidence.
At first she hardly recognized the familiar young man, as he walked past her, his face was so distorted. He'd obviously taken a severe beating at the hands of someone, and Zanh just wanted to know who.
"Zacha?" She called him by the name he'd given her when she met him at Epicure to begin with and he'd started selling her information. The name he'd taken 'professionally' as a teenager.
"What happened to you?" Zanh was truly horrified by the battering he'd received.
"It's nothing," he was ashamed. He couldn't believe he'd let it happen. That he'd let it continue until it got so bad that it resulted in this.
"It's not nothing, you're half dead. Who did this to you?" Zanh pulled him into a quiet corner of the Plaza. She frowned deeply as he groaned involuntarily as he moved. "Broken ribs too?" She whispered sadly. "They nearly killed you. What, did you owe someone money?"
"No." Dane answered truthfully, his eyes empty of emotion. "One of my clients. They, enjoyed roughing me up."
"Roughing you up? That's an understatement. I take it that you didn't file any charges, either?"
"How could I?" he asked, laughing bitterly. "What I do is illegal, the law won't help me."
"No, but I will." Liis grabbed hold of his arm. "You're coming with me. I can't leave you here."
"What do you mean, going with you? Where?"
"They've ordered the evacuation of all the civilians, Zacha. The situation on the station is too unstable. You have to leave. Do you have enough money to book passage?"
He looked away.
Zanh sighed. "All right. This is how it's going to go. We're going to Earth. When we get there, I'm going to introduce you to the people that I work for. I think that you may have a shot at being recruited by them."
"Starfleet?" He laughed, and it hurt, so he groaned again. "I'm not officer material. Besides, the Academy? At my age?"
"You're age? You're just a kid. How old are you anyway?"
He didn't answer.
"Look I don't care, then, what you do when you get to Earth. I'm certainly not going to push you into a life you don't want. I went into this business with both eyes wide open, or so I thought,"
Her eyes and her heart still held in derision the men who had recruited her, making TI sound like the simple solution to all of her problems when in fact, it created worlds more than she'd ever imagined.
"I promised myself that I would never personally recruit anyone to take up this job, because I'll tell you truthfully, kid, it's like living in Hell. But at least I've been able to do some good. I hope, anyway."
"You'll take me all the way to Earth?"
"If you'll promise to at least hear what my employers have to say," Zanh replied, "Then you can go, without question. The choice will be yours."
With his only other option being arrest as a vagrant once the station's civilians were all evacuated because he had no way to leave, he felt he had little choice.
"Let's go. I'm going to miss my ride if we wait." She put her arm around him and helped support his weight as he stumbled along beside her.
"You're not dying, Zacha." She admonished him. "So you have to stop acting like it's a foregone conclusion that you're going to be dead in the morning."
They rounded the corner and got into a lift. As it started to move and he trusted they were truly alone, he looked at her sideways.
"Dane."
"Sorry?"
"I'm nineteen years old," he confessed softly, "and my name is Dane."
--=End Flashback=--
"You didn't have to take the job offer, you know." Liis spoke finally. "You still don't. You can go your own way, you can do whatever the hell you want. But you've seen now, at least, what a life can be. Very different from what you started out with. And yeah, you got a bad deal in the beginning. You didn't deserve to grow up on the streets."
Zanh moved toward him, slowly, and with great effort as the last of her pain medication wore off and her back began to spasm. She leaned a hand against his shoulder as he sat, motionless, in the chair. "You don't deserve to go back there."
"It's over, Zanh Liis." He sighed. "Vox is through with me, he told me so. Once I finish up my community service, I'm done here."
"Or, I can have you assigned here." She offered, "You can watch, and learn."
"Learn what?"
"How to be a man."
"From you?" He laughed incredulously.
"Yes, from me. I'm a hell of a guy." The last traces of the fondness she felt for him vanished from her voice, and she turned deadly serious once more.
"Yes, Dane, you're through. This offer is the end of the line for you, and I had to stick my neck out once again to make this last chance possible for you." She shook her head.
"I don't think I'm going to regret it, I know I am." She let her words hang in the air a moment before continuing. Then, she warned him.
"I'm the only hope you've got if you want to have any kind of a Starfleet future, whether it be with TI or not. You could get a position somewhere on a nice, quiet ship. Comfortable for the rest of your days as a crewman running a transporter or something, if you do this right. Or, you might even win back the chance to return to the TI training program and finish your apprenticeship.
"But at this point, the only option you have besides the street is to sit at my communications station, and answer all of my phone calls."
"You're not serious!" He stood up and literally stomped his foot once. "Not even security? Come ON." He stormed to the door. "I don't have to listen to this."
"So don't."
Liis turned away and shuffled back to her desk. She took the spy glass that TC Blane had given her out of its case, and set both case and glass down in the very center of the surface.
She angled them just right, so that they were visible from every point in in the room.
Dane stopped at the door, waiting for her to beg him to change his mind. He quickly realized as she ignored him, however, that Zanh Liis didn't beg anyone, to do anything.
"Go on, get out." Zanh called at last. "Easier for me this way. Don't let the door hit you on the way out."
Dane grit his teeth. "I hate this. I hate my life."
"Then choose a different one." Zanh challenged him, examining the stained glass on the wall instead of his expression. "Or don't. But one thing is for damned sure. I felt trapped into a life with TI, like I had no other choice. I will never do that to another living soul. The choice has always been yours."
Dane sighed and walked back toward her. "I screwed up."
"Yeah, you did. But you can fix it, if you will just learn a little humility, already."
He stood before her, unmoving. "Communications."
"As a start, and only a start." She wanted him to understand with crystal clarity that she would pull no punches this time.
"You'll work a second shift, every day, in a rotating variety of departments so that you will learn what every member of this crew is responsible for in their daily duties. You will be more exhausted than you have ever been in your life. I will work you like a dog, and then for my own amusement I will assign you any other extra tasks I see fit."
She lowered her voice and continued. "You will beg for time to sleep. You will cherish every bite of food you have the opportunity to eat. But one thing you will not do is smart off to me, because if you do, I will end this, and you really will be finished. Do you understand me, Ensign?"
With no viable alternative, Cristiane decided he may as well at least give it a try. Besides, he thought, if he was able to charm her as he had done in the past, it wouldn't really turn out as bad as she was threatening.
"I'll do it. Whatever you say."
"That's the smartest thing you've said all day. Now, go get a haircut."
"What?"
"Haircut. I don't expect you to shave your head, but I expect it to be over the ears and above the collar. That's an order."
"There are other members of the crew who are male and have hair longer than mine," he objected, "much longer!"
"They have earned the right. You have not." Liis growled. "Get out. Go do it, now. If you do not have a haircut the next time I see you, I will shave it all off myself."
He grumbled as he moved to the door, "I suppose the earring has to go too." He always wore a single, small gold hoop in one ear.
"Yes."
He scoffed.
"But, if you show me that you can do your job and show respect to your superiors," Zanh snarled, adding "and at this point I consider the kitchen staff to be superior to you in the chain of command of the USS Serendipity. . ."
She paused, "then permission to wear that earring will be the first right you win back. Now get out before I change my mind, and toss you off of my ship. Go."
---------------------------
-=/\=- Zanh Liis
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012
-=/\=- Zanh Liis
Commanding Officer
USS Serendipity NCC-2012