"Snapped"

[OdileCondacin 0]

The desktop was cleared in a single, sweeping blow.

 

Padds clattered to the floor, and a half-finished raktajino splattered on the wall. Token knick-knacks hit the same bulkhead and shattered, exposing the mindless carvings into the surface that they'd been placed to conceal. Somehow, seeing the gouges just incited the flames searing through the Xenexian, and with force, she slammed one hand into the desk, her jaw trembling with rage.

 

The dull throb the move caused didn't have enough sway to cut through the rouged haze in her mind, and numbly, she slumped between her desk and the chair behind it.

 

This was a nightmare.

 

Why, why, why in the names of every god she'd ever been taught to revere, had she been assigned as department head? It was shockingly, painfully -- no, agonizingly obvious that she wasn't thought competant for the role. She was just some handy substitute.

 

Yes. That was what she was. A stand-in; a substitute for what they'd been lacking come disaster-time. And why, why the hell had Harper picked her? Gods be damned, why didn't she just pick Driscol from the start -- the precious little Academy graduate who seemed to know everything about science, scientific matters, organization, leading a department, giving orders?

 

Maybe then this day would have gone better. Their little Selshan evil baddie would have stayed an evil baddie in everyone's minds, Driscol could have commanded the department as he goddamned saw fit, and Odile...

 

... Odile could have stayed a petty officer. Oh, who the hell was she kidding -- she still was a petty officer. She was treated as such, wasn't she? The lack of respect in her department was palpable. And when they got back to civilization (which, given their current success rate all around, wasn't a definite), O'd'yl would be more than likely back to Petty Officer.

 

Maybe she'd be lucky and they'd even boost her to First Class.

 

She stood up, paced now, over the rubble of her mangled office, hearing an occasional crushing noise from some broken object under her boot as she traversed the deck-plating.

 

It wasn't as if Harper would be interested in putting in a good word for her now. Asking her department for recommendations -- now there was the first opportunity for a laugh she'd had all day. Yes. O'd'yl of Condacin can't lead. Of course you don't want her as a senior lieutenant. You don't want her in Starfleet at all, actually. She wanted to support a terrorist who killed a shipful of people.

 

Yeah. Her future career was so fracked now that she felt serious need to come up with an alternate plan for the future.

 

Grozit.

 

Pacing only was doing so much good, and that inner, lingering fury was... starting to build again.

 

That stupid, impertinent, malevolent prick -- calling her incompetant in front of her own people. That idiot. If she hadn't possessed the lingering shreds of sanity that'd remained (and there was a majority-part of her that told her she still should), Driscol would have been in the infirmary with a stab wound.

 

Time to deal with that. Jerking her chair roughly to the computer terminal, she slammed her fingers against the controls, typing up a brief, acrid summary of events that'd transpired, firing it off to Day a minute or so after she'd started writing it.

 

So he was an insubordinate, scheming, malevolent fool who apparently thought he'd do better at her job than she. On a normal day, she could accept it. But on top of the rest of the day's stressful debacles... there was still the horrible, horrible pit in her stomach.

 

Harper was going to hate her. No -- scratch that. Harper already did. And this concerned Odile far, far more than she'd ever admit. Going on without the only long-term friend she'd managed to hold onto -- being at odds with her, no less! -- terrified the Xenexian.

 

O'd'yl felt tremendous, horrible guilt for Noleph. Guilt stemming from the fact that he was going to a death sentence, and there wasn't a damned thing she could to to stop it.

 

Noleph, who, despite any assertion she'd make otherwise, despite all the atrocities he'd committed, sounded more like a Xenexian than anyone else not of her species that she'd ever met. Noleph, the terrorist, who she identified with to an uncomfortable level after a brief conversation. Noleph who terrified her by sounding out the rationales she'd have easily made herself were it Xenex at risk.

 

Condacin was shaking, leaning into the cool of the bulkhead in hopes that the chill of metal would pierce through to her temper.

 

Gods be damned. Every last one of them. Every last wisp of deity that had put her in this situation. Let them burn in the hells they ruled over.

 

Odile was blind for a long moment, the inferno of wrath taking hold. Bruised hand curled around her dagger, she lashed out at the wall, driving the blade against the unresponsive surface again and again.

 

Something again snapped, this time literally, and dazed, Odile took a step back.

 

Her knife.

 

It was broken, snapped between hilt and blade.

 

Dropping the cracked bronze hilt, shocked, she stepped back, back towards the door, and breaking into a stride, all but ran.

 

But O'd'yl of Condacin knew -- she couldn't run forever.

Edited October 12, 2007 by OdileCondacin