by William Lindsay
101021.1930
A Few Days After The Ultimate Risk
-=USS Serendipity=-
101021.1930
A Few Days After The Ultimate Risk
-=USS Serendipity=-
Like a sore animal after a very long and painful day, the Serendipity had finally limped home. Finally once more in orbit of the Earth, the TI ship having dropped her off some distance away to let her travel back on her own power, officers and civilians alike breathed a sigh of relief.
For some the Earth was either a first or second home. For others it was just a nice place to visit. For all though it was solid ground; a safe place to which they could return to stock up on supplies and to enact their well-needed repairs.
For William Lindsay though, this time, it was something more. When he last left he did so in the knowledge that he would not be returning to his post as Director of Temporal Investigations. He hadn’t much time left in his scheduled six months anyway, but he was certain that no one got to lock down the entire department and then let a ship as dangerous as the Poseidon get away without being at the very least asked to step very far to the side during the ensuing investigation.
Frankly, Will couldn’t give a damn about the position anyway. There was too much responsibility, too many restrictions, far too much paperwork, and very few ways an honest man could have any fun with it. The quicker he could get back to being Captain William Lindsay: Jumper Extraordinaire, the better.
Besides, there were far more important things to be concerned about. By his actions, the man he respected most in the worlds could so nearly have been killed, and more importantly to the man himself he almost lost his wife in the process. As much as William Lindsay may have seemed to some as the type of man to embody the saying; ‘out of sight, out of mind’, some things he simply didn’t forget and this was definitely one of them. He knew it’d likely be a while, if ever, before Keiran forgave him fully for what had happened.
As they walked together towards the Serendipity’s transporter room, the silence from the Irishman was a different kind than just his naturally quiet manner. It wasn’t angry; it was just an unusual brew of personal worries about the woman he loved, and all the completely usual questions they brought.
Will could surely think of many things to say to give him a reason to speak up; at least three of them each involving one of the more voluptuous female saints, and one of them involving all three, but for all the good it could do to get the man to relax once in a while, it just wasn’t the time for that now.
“I’ll bet Liis’ll be glad ta be gettin’ her crew back in ta one piece again,” Will suggested, merely making conversation.
“Mostly one piece,” Keiran replied; explaining the remark though his mind was clearly still on his wife. “Lieutenant Ryn has been offered a chance at what she’s callin’ the ‘dig of a lifetime’ on Trill. So she’s already on her way there. We’re also losin’ Mellice from security. We’d barely pulled into orbit before we got an Admiral by the name of Harris on subspace. He didn’t say what but apparently he’s got some important top secret mission, and Mellice’s the only man who’ll do.”
Will nodded, suspecting the two of them would not be the last to want to take the chance to transfer off ship while they were here at the Earth. The truth was that for all but the truly fortunate, life in Starfleet rarely involved standing still.
“At least the Alchemy’s back in her bay,” Will added, again trying to make some attempt at small talk.
Keiran nodded his agreement but said nothing, leaving them with another moment of silence as they arrived at the transporter room door. Suddenly Keiran stopped in his tracks and Will turned to see what was wrong.
“William, this won’t take long, yeah?” he asked eyeing the door. Even though Tucker Brody was no longer on board, and she’d officially returned to duty this morning, Keiran was clearly still not happy about the idea of being apart from Liis.
She’d asked him to come along here to ‘keep William from making any more trouble’. In truth she had to know that once the Sera broke orbit it could be a while before Keiran and Will saw each other again, and so if there were some things that still needed to be said it was better they be said now.
“Not long,” Will replied. “I best just run meh eye over the place. See how much progress Andrews made ta getting her up and runnin’ before he left.”
“I’ve studied the preliminary reports. Accordin’ to them the lockdown’s been basically completely undone.”
“Aye, but one thing they didn’t mention was the state of the bottle of Romulan ale I left in meh desk. They’re a bloody valuable item nowadays, ya know?”
Keiran offered no real response to the remark, and Will once again considered whether bringing up those saints wouldn’t be the worst thing. Of course, he knew enough of the Catholic faith to understand that there was one woman for whom he’d only need to so much as question her virginity to get a response.
Will was in fact entirely prepared to do just that, a marked irritation entering his features that Keiran was so much in his own head, before something inside him once more told him this just wasn’t the time for it. He breathed a slight sigh; apparently one in frustration, yet that irritation was nowhere to be found in his tone when next he spoke.
“How’s she doing?” Will finally asked, softly so as to make sure no one overheard him.
This was followed by a long pause on Keiran’s part, leading Will to question whether he’d even be getting an answer. He soon found though that Keiran was just carefully considering what he should and for that matter could say.
“She’s makin’ progress,” he finally responded, knowing it was the best thing you could say after an ordeal like Liis went through. She had made progress to the point where the trio of judges; Liis, Keiran and Doctor McKay, all felt she was ready to be back on her bridge. There was still a long way to go though.
Will nodded that he understood, and then sighed, realising that his friend had things he needed to be doing right now, even if that just meant staying nearby just in case, instead of spending the time with him.
“Wish her well for me,” Will finally added. “Tell, her I hope to get back to see ya before you break orbit.”
“Aye, I will,” Keiran replied, nodding to his friend. A sudden uneasiness overtook him, and he ran his hand over his beard in a thoughtful gesture. “Tread lightly, William.”
Will grinned. “What fun is that? You know me, O’Sullivan. Where angels fear to tread, I dance.” Will’s voice faded as he continued down the hall on his way, still talking. “And dance, well too. With the most beautiful woman in the room in my arms.”
Keiran couldn’t help but smile as much as his current mood allowed. Some things never did change.
-=Transporter Room Three=-
Will stepped alone through the transporter room door.
Looking up and seeing him Crewman Parrish quickly began to work the console.
“I have your coordinates already loaded, sir.”
A slight grin curled at the corner of Will’s lips.
“That eager to get rid of me, are ya?”
“No, sir,” Parrish answered, hoping his actions hadn’t been misunderstood. “I’ve just received the correction, sir.”
A look of confusion passed over Will’s face, indicating that he’d made no such request.
“What sort of correction would that be?”
“Just a small one, sir. Approximately seven metres from the previous coordinates.”
By Will’s reckoning, that’d be just enough to place him outside of his office instead of in. Apparently someone in TI, likely whoever had been left in his chair, had decided that his travel plans needed a little bit of a tweak.
While he could have gotten himself beamed to the original coordinates anyway, ‘unauthorised’ transports into Temporal Investigations had a way of causing people to overreact. For seven metres it really wasn’t worth it.
Moving to take his place on the transporter pad, Will nodded to Parrish.
“Energise.”
-=Headquarters of Temporal Investigations, Earth=-
Soon he found himself rematerialising in the office of the Assistant of the Director of the department of Temporal Investigations. Though he’d not really thought of it before he’d arrived, Will now spared a thought for what had happened to the woman who’d last occupied this office. It was funny how quickly so much anger you have for a person when you’re looking at them can just turn to sadness when they were gone.
His thoughts were quickly, or at least outwardly, replaced as he realised she’d been replaced as well. Behind her desk now sat a far younger woman. Will immediately observed that she was the type of woman who’d have made doing his job a hell of a lot harder and so smiled at her accordingly as he approached.
“Captain Lindsay,” she said, though it almost sounded like it’d been meant to be a question. How she said it wasn’t disrespectful. Her tone however was purely and unenthusiastically one of business, suggesting to Will that she might not have been as much fun as an assistant as he thought. His smile diminished slightly with the realisation, then even more as she lifted a box from under the desk and placed it in front of them. Sticking out the top, there was the unmistakable neck of his bottle of Romulan Ale.
“What’s all this?” Will asked as he pulled the box towards himself, and started rummaging through it. It appeared that the entire personal contents of his desk had been emptied into here.
“Of all the bloody cheek…” he complained under his breath.
Evidently whoever had been selected to run the place in his absence had made themselves right at home already. He’d expected they’d at least wait until he’d officially been unofficially asked to step aside before they started redecorating.
Were he here Will knew Keiran would have seen the plan forming in Will’s head to give the new man a piece of his mind, and given this person was, even if just temporarily, the new department head, he’s also have suggested that was a bad idea.
*Y’ve got yer things. We’ll get back to the ship now, yeah?* he could almost hear Keiran’s voice prompting him.
“The Director specifically asked that I invite you and Commander O’Sullivan to see him while you’re here,” the young woman said, her tone giving no indication as to why. “Is the Commander not with you, sir?”
“He specifically asked to see both of us?” Will asked curiously. He understood why the new man might have wanted to see himself but what he’d want with Keiran was less certain.
“Yes, sir, the Director’s instructions were quite clear.”
“Aye, well I’m afraid I’m all he’ll get. O’Sullivan’s not comin’.”
The young woman looked a little worried, evidently not too happy about the idea of her new boss not getting what he wanted. It gave Will pause to wonder just what type of man he was, and fear as he knew one man who could inspire just that type of fear in an assistant.
Curious, but with a bad feeling about what he’d get when that curiosity was satisfied, he placed down his belongings and moved in quickly the direction of his former office. Will didn’t bother to knock as he pulled open the door.
It was then that is bad feeling was turned quickly from disgust to outright rage with what, or rather who, he saw sitting behind his desk.
It was none other than the slight smile, distinctive nose and shining bald head of Admiral Jonas Vox; a pile of paperwork having already formed in front of him.
The last time anyone had seen Jonas Vox it was Keiran when he was being led away in handcuffs for his actions which had caused the Cascade that, until recently, Tucker Brody had been using to torment his wife. Were he here, Keiran would have done his best to hold his tongue because he knew if he let it loose it’d say something he’d regret. He’d have clenched his fists for much the same reason.
Will however often fell a little short of Keiran’s level of restraint.
“What the bloody hell are you doing here?!” He unceremoniously demanded, marching his way towards his old desk and almost knocking off the African violet plant that’d now taken its place there.
Vox pretended not to notice Will’s shock or frustration, just leaning back into his chair comfortably.
“Time off for good behaviour. So they tell me,” Vox answered as close to cheerfully as he could manage. The man looked a little older but sounded almost rested after his time away. “I don’t remember any of it, of course.”
The last time Keiran had looked upon this face he’d described him as a defeated man, but now most cuttingly of all Vox was actually smiling. Evidently the resequencing that followed his six- month sentence, now cut short, had been completely successful; likely in removing not just the memory of the sentence but even the crime.
“So, that’s it, is it?” Will scoffed. “Yer little vacation’s just over and yer back the same place ya always were.”
“That’s right,” Vox answered smugly, sounding as though six months away from the demands of power, and the headaches of Zanh Liis, had if anything just relaxed him. “I was told you helped out around here in my absence, Captain.” His tone was juts mildly disapproving; as if to say Will wouldn’t have been his first choice for the position but he seemed not to work out too badly. “I just thought you’d like to know that the department’s in good hands.”
Will scoffed, knowing exactly what happened to the agency in Jonas Vox’s hands. That was when the corruption ran wild; the same corruption that he’d been brought in here to stop, and which he wondered how long it’d take before Vox began to build up again. Thinking of this was when Will remembered something which he’d hoped would have put if not Jonas himself then many of his comrades still unexposed under lock and key for a very long while.
“What about the file?” Will asked, his tone indicating he didn’t expect he was going to like the answer.
Jonas raised an eyebrow, feigning confusion.
“What file is that?”
Will’s eyes did not move from Vox as he slowly and firmly spoke each word, so Vox could have no chance to later claim to have misunderstood this.
“It was taken from a PADD a man by the name of Jamieson gave ta me. It was locked but it contained a hell of a lot on the corruption in this department.” Will made a point of ensuring Jonas was really listening to what he said next, leaning in a little closer over the desk. “I already launched a formal investigation to crack it open when I was sitting in that chair.”
He’d also kept a copy, backed up to the Sera’s computer, though he thought it best to keep that little bit of information to himself.
Vox’s expression did not alter with the news.
“Oh, that file,” Jonas replied, clearing his throat and pretending just to have remembered. “Don’t worry about that. We’re certainly working on it. I’ve chosen just the people for the job.”
*I’ll bet you did,* Will thought, certain that by the time they got to see it no one Jonas wanted protected would have their name showing up anywhere on that file.
Will was now prepared to turn away and storm out in disgust but there was another question he needed to have answered.
A look of curiosity crossed Vox’s face as he was counting all the differences in Will’s demeanour to the last time he remembered seeing him. He wondered if the reason for his time away hadn’t been something to do with him. More likely though it’d been something to do with Zanh Liis; very little trouble in his life had ever not been related somehow to Zanh Liis.
“Ya said you wanted to see Keiran too,” he mumbled, his words unusually stilted, as inside he was thinking not just of all the pain this man had caused to Keiran and Liis but, on Keiran’s behalf, remembering what he’d done to the entire crew of the USS Perseids.
“Yes, I did,” Vox answered, contemplating the way Will was addressing him. “Actually I was looking through his file before after I heard his name come up. I was curious. There doesn’t appear to be any record of his current assignment…”
Then in an instant Will’s anger seemed to slip away and in spite of himself he was smiling. The speed with which it happened was quite disarming to Vox and it showed.
Vox didn’t know, but now Will did, that all his knowledge of the Alchemy Project really had been resequenced away, just as they’d promised it would be. The entire first year of its operation would be gone from his memory. Maybe in time he’d figure it out, but this meant right now he wouldn’t even know which ship Liis and Keiran were on, let alone that she and O’Sullivan had married. For once the mighty Jonas Vox couldn’t interfere in their lives. For once he was the one in the dark.
“He retired,” Will answered still smiling, and in terms of Temporal Investigations it really was accurate.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Vox said in surprise that Will would even say it; believing that no one ever really retired from Temporal Investigations.
“Ya shouldn’t be. He’s never been happier.”
“Yes…” Vox was clearly confused, not liking this feeling that Will knew something important that he didn’t. “Well I’ve got a lot of paperwork to catch up on. Tell O’Sullivan though that if he ever wants to return to active duty, he knows where to find me.”
“Aye,” Will answered in a way that made Vox firmly believe Will knew Keiran had no intention of ever seeing him again. “I do.”
Captain William Lindsay
Jumper Extraordinaire
Temporal Investigations
Jumper Extraordinaire
Temporal Investigations
NRPG: Bravo, Captain Lindsay- and thank you again for keeping the ship afloat while I’ve been so sick this year. We couldn’t have made it through without your hard work and dedication. Thank you. ~ZL