seaQuest DSV
To Dare Cerberus - Book 1
by katirene (XMP) & Paula (APB)
The End of the Valley, Chapter 5
SeaQuest internal electronic communications
time: 2204
to:lucas_w
from: "Captain Oliver Hudson"[O_Hudson, capt]Mr. Wolenczak, you have until 1200 hours Zulu to be off seaQuest.
signed, O. Hudson, Captain.
SeaQuest internal electronic communications
time: 2204
to:lucas_w
from: i_adler, ltI want to thank you again for helping me back to my quarters last night. I promise you, I don't usually sleepwalk. I think this was because of all the tension yesterday. It's not often that you wake up to find you've been asleep for ten years. C.V. Ari Adler
Ari pursed her lips, letting out her breath in an semi-audible raspberry as she rearranged the toast fingers on her plate. Picking up the cup, she took a sip of tea and wrinkled her nose at the taste. Too sweet and milky. Generally, she preferred her tea hot, strong and straight, but her stomach felt queasy this morning. Not surprising after last night.It bothered her more than she wanted to show, that she was sleepwalking again. The last time she'd done that was just after the accident that had killed her parents and the twins. It was disturbing that she'd started again. Lucky think Lucas happened to be awake and saw her roaming around.
Except why had he been roaming around the boat at that hour, she wondered.
"Mind if I sit here?" a sweet sounding, unfamiliar voice asked. Gladly abandoning her own thoughts, Ari looked up to find a dark-skinned, rather pretty woman standing beside one of the empty chairs at her table. She looked around the half empty mess. It didn't escape her notice that the crew was segregating themselves into two distinct groups, old and new. From the look on the lieutenant's face, she had noticed it too.
Ari gave wry chuckle and gestured toward the seat.
"Be my guest. I'm Irene Adler, temporary head of sensor and sonar."
"J.J. Fredricks, subfighter pilot and temporary?" She sat and began to arrange her tray as she waited for Ari to answer.
"I'm still waiting for Senior Chief Ortiz to check in. It's really his department. You brought news of the Alliance advance, didn't you? You almost got yourself shot up, coming in under radio silence."
JJ shrugged the charge off negligently, lifting a fork full of eggs up to her mouth, followed by a sip of coffee.
"Captain's orders," she answered when she could. "And what makes you think this chief is going to come back. Word is that there haven't been any more mysterious appearances."
Now it was Ari's turn to shrug off an inconvenient comment. She nibbled on one of the pieces of toast, buying time.
"So where are you from, lieutenant Fredricks?" she asked.
"All over. I'm a Navy brat," the other woman answered.
"Me too," Ari answered, giving her a smile of fellowship. "My father was in subs."
"My father was a fighter pilot. My mom worked in the base hospital."
"Nurse?"
"EMT."
They began to compare notes on growing up in a military household, with one parent away on duty much of the time and the other a professional person. The missed school functions, the delayed celebrations. Ari had had her Uncle Paul to take up the slack of absentee parents, JJ had her Gramma Washington.
They were laughing together over a training mishap JJ was relating when Commander Ford appeared beside them.
"Excuse me lieutenants," he said, directing his words mostly at the newcomer. "Lt. Adler, may I speak with you for a moment."
Giving JJ a shrug indicating she had no clue what it was about, Ari followed him off to one side.
"Do you have any thing of a ... ahhh, personaln nature Ortiz's quarters?" he asked, looking around furtively and lowering his voice to avoid being overheard.
"Of course not sir," she answered promptly, visibly surprised at the question. "Why do you ask?"
"Good. Captain Hudson has ordered the effects of everyone who didn't return cleared out, and I..." his voice trailed off and he shrugged uncomfortably.
"Isn't that a bit premature, sir?"
"Maybe," he conceeded with a sigh, clearly not liking the order but not enough to make a fuss with the new command. "But we do need the room with all the new crew onboard."
"Have you assigned anyone to do Miguel and Kent's cabin?" she persisted. When he frowned, shaking his head, she offered, "Let me do it then. If someone has to go through their things, I'd prefer that it be me, not someone who didn't know them."
"That's not ..." he began to say slowly, but she interrupted, overriding his protests.
"Please, commander. That way, I can tell him where his stuff is when he finally gets here. Although," she grinned crookedly. "It would serve him right to lose it all, taking his time like this. Please sir."
She raised her chin, her eyes fixed on him in silent pleading. He found himself nodding, in spite of his doubts.
"Very well. If you think you're up to it, then go ahead."
"Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. I'll get to it immediately."
She spun on her heel and had taken a step back to her interrupted meal when he said her name.
"Lieutenant... Ari..." He wanted to tell her that the sensor chief wasn't coming back, that she should face up to the facts, but something stopped him.
"Sir?"
"Never mind."
"Yes sir."
Back at the table, Ari began to police her place, apologizing to JJ for running out on her.
"I'm sorry, I've got to go. We need to clear up some room for you guys. Maybe we can do this again sometime?"
"Yeah," the fighter pilot answered smartly, eyeing the almost intact toast the other woman was preparing to throw away. "Maybe we can have breakfast together, sometime. That'd be a change."
For a second, the sensor officer looked perplexed, then she followed JJ's gaze to the plate in her hand and her face changed. She laughed and shrugged.
JJ laughed briefly, then thought of something. Becoming more serious, she said, "Hey, Adler? About your boyfriend, Wolenczak....?"
"My boyfriend?" Ari echoed blankly. "Lucas?"
"Yeah, that's his name. Look, word to the wise. What he did really ticked the captain off. It'll make it a lot easier for you in the long run if he apologizes."
Feeling like an idiot, Ari repeated the key ideas, trying to make sense of what the other woman was trying to say. "Lucas, apologize to Captain Hudson? Why?"
Regretting the impulse that had caused her speak up, JJ shrugged uncomfortably.
"Well, granted, I would have done the same thing under similar circumstances, but the fact is, breaking out of the stockade, stealing a nuclear sub, finding Bridger and trying to take the boat away from the captain... That isn't earning him any brownie points, you know. All I'm saying is, suggest he apologize and maybe the captain won't be too harsh on him later. Ok?"
Feeling very thoughtful and more than a little confused, Ari agreed and walked away, wondering. Lucas, her boyfriend? Why would anyone think that? Before she came to any answers, she ran into the young man himself. Literally. As she started out the galley door, he barrelled in, almost knocking her over. Only a last second grab on his part prevented her from a rude encounter with the floor.
For a few seconds, he glared directly at Ari, before he realized who he'd run into. His face changed with comical rapidity.
"Ari? You should be more careful. Are you hurt?"
"No. I'm fine Lucas. You can let go, now. And I'll keep it in mind to be more careful in the future."
"That jerk Hudson ordered me off the boat."
The sudden change in topic took her by surprise. the blurted statement, she pulled him out into the corridor, out of traffic.
"Lower your voice," she hissed, looking around quickly to see if anyone else had heard him. She pushed him back out into the corridor, out of the way of traffic.
"You want to make it worse?" Quickly, she explained, "You're on Captain Hudson's black list, and that's not good. I just got told in no uncertain terms that if you want to stick around, you're going to have to eat crow and apologize."
"Apologize?" he repeated, his voice rising indignantly. "What for?" The last two words came out muffled around the hand that she placed over his mouth.
"For everything, you goon!" she whispered. "You made him look like a fool. And you almost took seaQuest away from him."
Lucas jerked his head away.
"He is a fool," he whispered hotly back. "And I'm not going to apologize for being right. Anyway, he can't kick me off seaQuest. I belong here."
"No you don't. Not anymore. Hudson is making this into a strictly military vessel, with a strictly military mission. You're civilian. If he doesn't want you here, you aren't here."
"Ridiculous!" he replied, trying to sound confident. But her words made him feel uneasy. "I'm the computer expert. I ... I know this ship better than almost anyone, other than the captain. Bridger."
"I know. Just think about it, please."
With an air of doing the petite, pretty woman a favor, he nodded. "All right. I'll think about it. How about keeping me company while I get something to eat, though," he added, gesturing toward the galley. Ari shook her head.
"I'm finished and I want to check on Darwin before I start cleaning out Miguel's stuff."
"Cleaning out... What? You've been assigned to crate his personal effects? They can't do that! That's ... That's cruel. How did you get assigned that?"
"I asked for it," she answered quellingly. Lucas ignored the unspoken warning.
"Then un-ask. Ari, you can't go through his things. That's obscene. Let me do..."
"Enough, Lucas!" she snapped, her eyes flashing warning sparks at him. "I will do this. I want to do this, for Miguel. He'd prefer knowing that I was the one to pack it up. I know the way he does things."
She started to leave, but Lucas grabbed her shoulders again, forcing her to remain.
"You have to face facts, too, Ari. Miguel's not coming back and it's time that you recognize that. Captain Bridger as good as told you he was dead."
Twisting away angrily, Ari didn't hit him although she found she wanted to. She stopped several feet away and glared at him.
"He told us that he didn't care about any of us, alive or dead," she shot back, her voice quivering with suppressed emotion. "Didn't you get that, Lucas? As far as he was concerned, it didn't matter if any of us were alive. He didn't tell me anything about Miguel. And I know he's alive. I know it because... Well, because!"
She took a deep breath, trying to regain control of her frayed patience.
"Lucas. You are one of my very best friends and I don't want to hurt you, but don't try to get between me and Miguel again. You wouldn't like what would happen." With another deep breath that was almost a sob, she spun around and escaped before he could find anything to say.
For several minutes, Lucas stood there, staring blankly. A crewman brushed past him, someone he didn't recognize, recalling him to himself. Shaking himself all over, he looked toward the galley door and shook his head. He wasn't hungry anymore. Turning in the opposite direction from the one the upset young officer had taken, he began to slowly walk away, thinking hard.
Hudson wanted him gone. Off the boat. But Lucas couldn't imagine a life away from seaQuest. She'd been his home for some of the happiest times of his life. Actually, when he stopped to think about it, she'd been more of a home to him than anyplace else he'd lived.
His father was a renowned engineer, devoting his life to finding and harnessing a cheap, safe energy source. His mother, a biogeneticist, had been too busy in the lab to deal with their only child. She hadn't even taken the time to carry him to term, having him removed from her womb at 7 months and transferred to an artificial one. When Hudson surprised him with the question of his birthday, it was the earlier, biological one that he'd given, even though he usually used the later date.
seaQuest was home. It was here that he belonged. Here his best memories were created, his closest friendships. He'd lost so much in his life, why did he have to lose seaQuest too?
Coming to his decision, he stopped in the middle of the corridor along which he was pacing and looked around, momentarily confused as to where he was. Orienting himself, he took off for the Captain's cabin, intending to get it out of the way before he changed his mind. He didn't want to leave seaQuest.
Chapter 6