Echoes
Posted on Sat Jan 20th, 2024 @ 6:40pm by Caithlin t'Leiya & Lieutenant Gunnar Arnason
Edited on on Tue Mar 26th, 2024 @ 1:27pm
2,780 words; about a 14 minute read
Mission:
Crossed Wires
Location: t’Leiya Family Home
Caithlin stared into the crystal glass of blue liquid like it had the answers she sought and knew were unlikely to be found. The jacket of the suit she’d worn to the town hall session earlier in the day was draped across the back of a nearby chair, leaving just the pants and the silk blouse underneath; both by this point deep in the night somewhat rumpled. In point of fact, most of the rest of the household was already asleep; leaving her to mull the situation she’d somehow gotten herself into.
"It went that well?" Gunnar asked wryly, coming to sit heavily opposite as if carrying more than his own weight. It was momentarily forgotten though on observing Caithlin. He'd seen that posture before - a privilege in many ways for an outsider such as himself to see such unguarded moments, much like having pass codes and permission to simply arrive as he had, though in other senses he was not so much an outsider than a sort of adopted member of the house or family retainer. Honestly, for all his fascination with other cultures and study of Romulans, how he fit into the ex-pat remnants of a Great House was still unclear. But he was grateful that he did, tonight in particular.
“No one died or started a riot; so that puts it ahead of many things. People were…understandably unsettled. They want answers I do not have, and guarantees no one can give. It’s only natural unfortunately that in such situations, fear and uncertainty and anger focus on the available target.” Caithlin sighed. “It was in truth somewhat the plan - to provide what information and guidance could be and; while also allowing for a forum for hopefully preventing that discontent from boiling over; or providing us at least with knowledge of what would otherwise simply be said behind one’s backs.”
Exactly how she had managed to offend the universe enough to inherit such roles in such times from not only one but now perhaps two dead men was beyond Caithlin; except to admit to herself that she could not in good conscience see such a gap and not stand in it when called to; regardless of the price. She eyed Gunnar appraisingly - this was somewhat late for him to arrive unexpectedly, and though she wasn’t yet perfect at reading humans, he seemed…tense.
"No riots is a good thing," he agreed wearily. "I for one appreciate that you've stepped into a breach here to help diffuse that potential. There have certainly been more ...incidents... from short tempers turning up at the hospital." He shook his head, expelling a breath that was almost a sigh. "We all want answers, and unsettled may be putting mildly." It certainly was for him since Luka's disappearance bore too much resemblance to when he'd been abducted, triggering memories he'd much prefer to forget. "But that's no excuse for taking it out on people."
“Anger will and must be released somehow and somewhere, once it exists.” Caithlin shrugged her eyebrows up and down. “While perhaps a rather juvenile solution, the shouting is still far more conducive to maintaining good order than many of the alternatives.” One eyebrow rose slightly, and she reached over to grab another glass and put on the table for him near the open bottle already there to the side. “What sort of incidents have turned up at the hospital you say; and how frequently?” She frowned slightly in weary calculation-and-concern as she considered how to approach that aspect if needed.
"You sound like Nikedoros," he said, taking a small pour from the offered bottle. Despite his greater body mass, he had nowhere near Caithlin's tolerance for Romulan ale. "She keeps telling me that I need to be more comfortable expressing anger. Once she even handed me a stack of ceramic plates and told me to smash them." He chuffed a short laugh at the memory. "But bar fights, domestic rows, people just snapping and throwing punches or throwing things - which are the kind of incidents that we've seen increase; not dramatically, but enough to be outside the norm..." he took a sip of the ale, savoring the momentary burn, "...I think I'll stay uncomfortable with going that route."
“Of punching your neighbors? It is generally ill-advised, yes. Smashing plates…Well. You may indeed wish to consider that, or something similar.” Caithlin’s eyebrows shrugged again sanguinely. “If you simply consider yourself uncomfortable with breaking things needlessly, do not think of it as breaking things - think of it perhaps as fixing something. I believe if my sister were to comment on the tactic she would lean on ‘energy can be neither created nor destroyed’.”
It occurred to him that given vulcanoid tempers, smashing inanimate things might be a good strategy, but his own temper ran considerably cooler. "I see the utility of having an outlet to bleed off pressure. In terms of fixing things, I've also been told to think of it as draining an abscess or treating edema. For me, to use Ali's law of energy, I'm more inclined to keep it in balance, or redirect it toward constructive ends." His head tipped a moment as he thought about his success in that regard, or lack thereof. "Granted, I've walked two dogs enough that they're sacked out on my bed. Which is good for them, but... well, I'm here."
“Something disturbs you, now more than before.” It was, for all the leading tone, as much a statement of seen fact than an inquiry on Caithlin’s part.
There was nothing of a question there really, so Gunnar simply nodded. He had not necessarily come here to discuss it, particularly as it was after all primarily a Starfleet investigation so disclosing results to a civilian was not necessarily approved, but given what Caithlin had taken on, she of all people should know the latest. "you heard me say 'two dogs'. We found Haechi today. She's okay, but there was blood on her fur." He took another bracing swallow of ale. "The Captain's and also another man's... a Starfleet officer who is listed a deceased."
“Deceased since when?” Caithlin frowned tightly; finding dead men’s blood on things generally meant either they had died in said spot and time; or someone had put it - either a cloned sample or a genuine stored one - there to muddy the waters; or the man in question had faked his death previously. The first of the list was simply ordinary, but either of the latter was near-proof of malicious actions.
"Almost a year." Long enough that Luka shouldn't have come into contact with his blood by simple proximity, which was what kept raising alarms in his mind that if voiced to most people would sound paranoid. Which perhaps explained why he had found himself on the path to his Romulan friends' home tonight. Anticipating the next question, he added. "I only got the preliminary forensic report tonight. I don't have details on him or his manner of death yet, though I have submitted a request."
“What about Haechi herself? Was she injured? How much blood was there?” Dogs, Caithlin knew, could be much like sehlats or set’leths - willing and determined to defend their owners to the death. “If she was in relative good condition and the amount was not excessive, it may mean whatever happened happened very quickly, too quickly for her to react.”
"As I said, she's okay - none of the blood on her was hers." Understanding where she was going with this, he nodded. "So that's likely. She's overall a friendly dog, but yes, most dogs will defend their people if they can." He wasn't sure whether to take heart over that or not. There's been blood caked in her fur, but she hadn't been covered in it. But that was not conclusive. "She wasn't soaked in blood, but what was in her fur was old, dried, and after a day of wandering ...wherever she had been wandering... a lot may have flaked off and fallen away before we found her."
“Possibly yes. Though in only a day, perhaps not so much as to not still make its seemingly limited amount useful conjecture. Yet, there was none in the house, correct?” As she spoke, Caithlin rose and flipped a hidden panel near the replicator against the nearby wall, scanning through a status readout on various household security measures around the building and the property. Tal had checked them earlier in the evening, but given the situation, she suddenly felt the need to check them again.
How had she not been given a briefing? He needed to discuss what was and wasn't to be made known to the public with Sofia, but he trusted that nothing he told Caithlin would go further than the other adults in the house. "There was blood in his house," Gunnar corrected. "Not enough to think anyone had bled out, but a pool of it on the floor. The analysis on that showed a mix of the Captain's blood and another that couldn't be identified, even by species." That last still particularly disturbed him; he'd gone over every explanation he could think of, and now new and more disturbing possibilities were rising in his mind. "Someone from outside Federation databases. There are ways of masking one's blood to avoid trace, but most would have made it impossible to confirm the Captain's."
If one was watching very, very closely, you could seen the split second Caithlin’s hands froze before moving again at ‘couldn’t be identified even by species’, and her next words were the ones one would expect from any Dominion War veteran of any of the galactic powers. “I assume attempts to identify species included ruling out shapeshifters?”
"It wasn't Chameloid blood." He thought a moment, realizing he'd answered only for species of shapeshifter he was most familiar with. Caithlin would have meant another, and having been a child during the Dominion War, he hadn't considered that one, but there were enough older officers that should have, especially after they'd sent it out for further analysis. "I assume when we elevated the data for analysis beyond colony resources that that would have been considered. Though it was fluid blood... don't any bits cut off Founders turn to the viscous gel form of their natural state?"
“Yes.” She closed the panel and paused, thinking. “Well. While they are alive at least. When they are deceased, it is still viscous, but no longer…mobile. Still. If it was a true liquid that makes that unlikely.” She sat back down and downed the last of her glass, but didn’t move to pour herself any more. “Which means a true unknown.” It was clear from her inflection that Caithlin did not actually find that to be a positive vs the alternatives. “Any ability to run comparisons to or rule in or out those crazy creatures the girls encountered in the caves?”
He shook his head. "We didn't have DNA traces for those, but most life native to Haumea has some base characteristics and the DNA we could extract from the mixed blood pool did not share those." Not getting anything back from any database was frustrating on so many levels. In this day and age it shouldn't be possible. Unidentifiable DNA was something he might expect on a starship on an exploration mission, not a colony. Anything from outside had to arrive by transport, and the Colonel had covered those bases. At least for normal types of transport... the thought chilled him, and he took another swallow of the ale, letting the burn warm and recenter him on the present. The situation had him stressed, having nightmares and flashbacks again, so small wonder past experience was suggesting wild ideas of what was happening now. "I'd feel a lot better about this if we could at least figure out where the attacker came from, even the level of species origin would be something."
"Yes. Though I will say that exactly what is or is not 'native' to a planet can be...complicated." It was an understatement, really, from someone whose now-gone homeworld was not actually the point of origin for her ancestors at all. "Which also does not assist in narrowing the possibilities." She eyed him appraisingly again, before asking what would have been a foregone conclusion for most of her life, but definitely was not with Gunnar. "Are you armed?"
His brows lifted, surprised. Maybe he shouldn't have been, but he'd thought she would have known the answer to that by now. "No. Nor do I intend to be. Being armed wouldn't have helped when I was abducted. And it wouldn't have helped in any of the - " He stopped. There were things that happened that were not on the record, and certainly not for civilians. "I have my medkit. I could knock someone out with a hypo if I had to. I'm more effective with that than any concealed weapon."
"So." Caithlin sighed, not surprised but just exhausted. "You have one potential weapon." She didn't discount the use of the hypospray; the array of things which could be used as a weapon were vast, after all. But to only keep one item for your own defense was reckless. "I strongly suggest that you add at least two more items that could be used similarly. More, if possible. Exactly what they are matters less than that there are backups."
Gunnar contained a sigh. She meant well; it was her way of showing concern and he was touched by that. A woman who had lost so much - her peope, her Empire, her entire homeworld - had no cause to care about one human more or less (even one helped with the kids). It didn't mean he was going to change his position on carrying, but he wasn't inclined to be as adamant about it as he might be with others making the same sort of suggestion. "A medkit includes more than one ampule, and there's a scalpel for emergency use." Not that he would ever use it to kill, but there was no need to say that.
“Don’t store them all in the same spot. And a second injector stashed somewhere is good, as the ampoules are useless without a means to administer.” But even as she said the words, Caithlin knew that unfortunately if it came to a fight, the odds were grim; at this point as the girls aged, his martial arts skills had possibly fallen even behind Ieliene’s, let alone the rest of the adults; and more to the point, he had a fatal hesitation to strike with the ferocity necessary against many opponents. “Not to discount that the best defense often is backup. Kalahaiea’s room is unoccupied, if you would perhaps prefer to relocate for the time being?” It would serve multiple purposes for that matter; adding another adult watchman to the household and potentially therefore protecting everyone else, as well.
Realistically, he was in the Starfleet housing complex, which had its own security, but he also knew the Romulan opinion of Starfleet security, so once again Gunnar found himself touched by her concern.
"It's a generous offer." It really was, especially given that she knew he would be of little help in fighting off any threat. On the other hand, he was a medical officer, and if there was an attack of some sort, that wasn't nothing. While he knew accepting might be feeding into a mentality of 'here inside these walls we will outlast them', his own inclination ran the other way: Luka should have been safe inside his walls, and if he had been taken with so little alarm or evidence... If anything got in here, at least if he was here he'd know what happened. "I appreciate it, and I'd be glad to take her room, as long as you don't mind me bringing the Captain's dogs. I'm watching them. Until he gets back."
“That is fine. I will get Tal to help you go collect your things.” Less so really that Caithlin didn’t think he could carry whatever it was he might bring, really, and more that she doubted anyone should be walking alone at the moment if at all avoidable.
"Thank you." Gunnar inclined his head in approximation of Romulan show of gratitude. "I'll try to keep the dogs quiet so we don't wake the kids when we come in."
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