80819.14
continuing from part one…
-=USS Gauntlet, in orbit of Betazed=-
"My, my. Goodness gracious me, Zanh Liis. Let's not say things we don't mean." Fen gently grasped Zanh's shoulder and attempted to pull her back a meter or two from Vox, who stood his ground where he was.
"Oh, I mean it." Liis viciously slapped his hand away. "Sincerely."
"But if you kill the Admiral and go to prison, who is going to save Carrick O'Sullivan and neutralize the Cascade?"
"Jesus Christ, Jonas, you started a CASCADE?" Zanh shouted, her head falling into her hands. She now ignored the Admiral and turned her attention to Fen and Tred. "What happened, exactly, and why can't a Jump Team fix it?"
"We can't possibly pull another team from their assigned Guardianships to fix this," Fen explained. "Their efforts would be sloppy, haphazard at best. They'd be distracted. Their attention divided, believing they were being taken away from their real work in order to clean up someone else's mess." He couldn't help but glance in Vox' direction as he spoke the last three words with irritation.
"What has this to do with me?" Zanh inquired. "My career is over. I can't Jump again. I'm told I'm to be brought up on charges."
"Pffffffft." Fen swatted at the air in an exaggerated 'go on' gesture. "Have they ever been able to dream up the charge against you that will stick, Zanh Liis? You're too careful."
"I try to be. But then, my mentor taught me to be." Liis cast her eyes low and away, until she raised them slowly again to the envelope on the desk. "He was always just that. So careful."
"Yes, we know.” He looked at her gently, and with genuine sympathy for her obvious pain. That was unusual for a TEMA Agent, Zanh noted. They were taught, and taught again, not to ever feel sorry for their operatives, no matter how unkind Time or Fate may be to them.
“Look. Here's the deal." Tred interrupted, cutting to the chase in an uncharacteristic show of brevity- only doing so because this was one situation that could not be rewound to reset a doomsday clock that was only ticking in one direction.
"This has to be fixed in the here and now. You have the people with the skills to infiltrate, and then extricate Carrick from the unfortunate predicament he got himself into because his father didn't go to find him. What's more, Keiran isn't quite..."
"What?" Liis' eyes widened, the smallest glimmer of hope lighting them up once again. "Not quite what?"
"Well, he's not…quite…dead."
"Not yet." Fen qualified."But that clock is ticking as well as we sit here wasting time. He is a man, he believes, with nothing left to lose in this lifetime. People who believe they have nothing to lose and that they will soon end up dead have an uncanny way of making that a self-fulfilling prophecy."
"There's still a chance?" Liis grasped Fen by the belt, lifting the small, round man right up off the floor. "Tell me what to do, and I'll do it."
"You have to operate entirely with the technology of this time, and without any help from us and…" Fen warned. "And, ow. Could you just, please?"
He pulled at Liis' hand until she finally let him go, and then tugged at his pant-legs at thigh level to free the impingement now causing him pain of a very personal nature.
She sighed, plunked heavily down into the nearest chair, and held her head in her hands as she listened.
"You. Blane. Cristiane, and Steele." Fen elaborated softly. "Perhaps one or two others. You will be given a set of coordinates that include the last known whereabouts of Carrick O'Sullivan. Then, you go in and get him."
"If I do?"
"Then we cross our fingers and hope for the best." Tred replied honestly.
"This is The Department of Temporal Investigations!" Liis protested. "We don't hope for the best! We fix! It's what we do."
"Hmm now where have I heard that before?" Tred sighed. "In the case of a Cascade in progress as far as this one is, Zanh Liis, all we can do sometimes is hope."
“And if I don’t?”
“If you say no,” Fen hated to resort to guilt tactics, but believed that knowing as he did how Zanh felt about the O’Sullivans this was not guilt. It was heartfelt motivation. “If you say no the son suffers the same inevitable fate as his father.”
Liis couldn’t accept that.
She raised her eyes to look at Vox. "What have you to say about all of this?"
"To you?" Vox snarled, "Nothing." He knew he would answer for his actions- for circumventing the code, for twisting the young and impressionable minds of Steele and Cristiane to serve his desire for revenge. He would definitely pay for all this, somehow.
Vox moved toward the envelope on the desk and reached inside.
He pulled out O'Sullivan's ring, and he stared down at it regretfully. Keiran was a man he both admired and to the best of his capability, cared about. He hated the thought that any of O'Sullivan's Jumps would be one-way trips.
“I swore, I would never,” Liis’ eyes glazed over with regret, as she watched Vox analyze the crest of the ring. “Never, go back to work for you people.”
“You’ve been working for us all along, in your way, Zanh Liis. You only wanted to think you weren’t.” Tred said sympathetically. “You know that.”
Liis nodded.
She did know.
“But you can’t ever Jump again. If you do you’ll be an unstable element. That’s what’s happened to poor Captain O’Sullivan. He carries memories that no Agent was ever supposed to have to work with, or against. That is why, if he doesn’t abort the Jump, he will fail.”
“Captain?” Liis felt her lips tug upward involuntarily at the thought. Somehow, the sound of that rank and his name was still disarmingly new to her despite the fact that Dane had mentioned to her already that Keiran was now commanding his own ship.
“Yes, Captain Zanh.” Tred said softly, emphasizing Zanh’s own rank. “The Admiral was right to take your compass, it is too dangerous now for you to keep it, because we can’t ever ask you to Jump again. But what we can ask of you,” he paused, “what we must ask, and are asking of you, is for you to help us right here in this moment, to stop the continued degradation of the timeline before it’s too late.”
“And if I do, then,”
”Then you really will be as ‘done’ with TI as anyone who has ever worked for them, can be.” Fen promised.
*I have heard that before, * Zanh Liis thought. *One and done, how many times have they dangled that carrot before me. * It seemed truly unfair that they had found yet again the perfect incentive to get her to cooperate.
She marveled at the fact that this time, however, that incentive had nothing to do with Jariel, or with Salvek.
“Before you think you’re doing us too much of a favor if you consider taking on the job, remember, Zanh Liis. Someone you care about very much-“
“You don’t have to tell me that.” Liis snapped. “I know that.” She sighed, and ran her hand through her hair, tucking it back on one side.
“I can only speak for myself. You’ll have to convince the others on your own.” Zanh warned. She would not sign her officers, for that is what they still were in her heart- not even Dane up for something this dangerous unless they were fully willing themselves.
*Half-hearted help does more harm than good,* she thought.
“Believe me, you won’t be able to hold Cristiane back.” Tred assured her. “He’s tormenting himself at this very moment in your brig, Zanh Liis. Praying in his fashion for a chance to redeem himself. To you, to Blane, and most of all, to O’Sullivan.”
“This could do the job,” Liis observed. Her professionalism had now kicked in, fired by that still, small, smoking ember of hope that Keiran might yet live to see his son again, if nothing else.
“Admiral Vox, it is time to call that meeting,” Fen instructed. “Blane is about ready to turn the Alchemy into a hood ornament for the Gauntlet if that’s what it takes to get your attention. Take pity on the man, already.”
Jonas Vox placed the ring he still held back into the envelope. He only agreed because he knew there was no alternative. “Very well.”
He held out the envelope toward Zanh once again, but Tred stepped between them, intercepting it.
“Um, yeah, thank you we’ll be taking that now.”
He handed it to Fen, who seemed afraid to touch it.
“You didn’t…you didn’t open the letter inside and read it, did you Zanh Liis?” He bit his lip nervously as he awaited her response.
“No,” she answered honestly.
”Good. Very good.” Fen sighed with relief. “It’s a letter you were never intended to see.”
“And the other things?” she inquired.
“Hopefully, someone else will have use of them again when all of this is over.”
“God,” Liis whispered, reaching up and twisting a strand of her hair in the absence of her earring chain. “I hope so.”
-=/\=- Zanh Liis
Pressed into Service
Aboard the USS Gauntlet