Lying Low

[Owen Matthews 0]

Caine watched Toni, the Ryder-Presit informant she and Owen had dug up, disappearing back into the shadows of the alleyway in which she had met him. She did not let her bearing relax until his footsteps had vanished even from her Vulcan capacity to hear. Toni had provided them with a lot to chew over, but they could hardly discuss it here. She didn't count it impossible that they could be being watched, to see how they would make use of what little factual information he had told them.

 

She glanced at Buddha, who had been standing silently listening to the exchange. "Charming boy," she said easily, jerking her head to indicate the departed gun-salesman. "All that talking's dried my throat out and I need to get off my feet. Let's get out of here."

 

Buddha nodded and led the way out of the alley. “Any particular wishes as to which watering hole you wanna try out this time?” He had a hard time hiding that he was ticked off. They didn’t really have any information other than a warning to stay out of the business. This job was turning out to be more tedious than he thought.

 

"Easy, Buddha," Caine murmured under her breath, hearing the aggravation in his voice. "Closest we can find, far as I'm concerned," she added aloud, starting to move along the street quickly, flicking her eyes sideways to note the team that she had left to monitor the interchange starting to pull back and follow along a little behind.

 

Owen knew they should report their information, as little as it was, to Agincourt but they also had to be careful. It wouldn’t be unusual for Toni to have them followed to make sure they really were who they pretended to be. This meant that contacting the ship right now might give them away. If that happened it would became increasingly difficult for anyone to gather information. So they would have to lay low for a while. If that meant going to a bar Owen was more than willing to make the sacrifice. For him, lying low usually meant spending hours in a ditch or some underbrush, exposed to weather conditions that could range from scorching hot to freezing cold. A place with lots of alcohol and some women definitely beat that.

 

“Proximity sounds like a solid base for making that decision,” he said, half teasingly. “I think I saw one just round the corner over there when we came down the road.”

 

Caine smiled. "I can always count on you to know the location of the nearest watering hole, hmm?" she answered, quirking an eyebrow up dryly. Quickening her pace, she moved on ahead of him, listening behind her for any sounds of footsteps as she scouted ahead and soon saw the bright flashing lights that in all cultures indicated the sort of spot they were looking for.

Caine eyed the sign for a moment with her head cocked, trying to translate the alien scribble on the bar's sign, then glanced at Buddha and seemed to be trying not to laugh. "It's a Rihan expletive. This planet really does have the classiest air, doesn't it? After you." With a wave of the arm, she turned to gesture him inside, taking the opportunity to glance behind him and look again for pursuit. She saw nothing. But then again, the whole idea of pursuit was that just because she couldn't see them didn't mean they weren't there.

 

“We should try and fit in as much as possible. Get drunk and tell JoNs we sacrificed ourselves for the mission,” Owen said with a wide grin, entering the bar. It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dim light.

 

"Yes, and I'm sure she would appreciate just how great that level of sacrifice was," Caine said dryly. "We're supposed to be lying low, you know, now more than ever." Approaching the bar, she quickly ordered them two drinks -- ones with a bit less of a kick than their earlier brews during the search process, and gestured Owen towards a table in the rear of the bar, where they wouldn't be overheard and could see everything going on.

 

Owen took his drink from Caine and looked at her in mock dismay. “You’re no fun, Junior. But I guess you’re right. So let’s see, we got some time to kill and we can’t get drunk or into a fight with the locals.” He rubbed his neck, suddenly slightly nervous about the prospect of spending time with Caine just sitting there and talking. So far they hadn’t had time to get to know eachother. They’d either been on some assignment or in the gym trying to beat eachother up.

 

Caine glanced sideways at him and grinned. "Indeed...patience, Mr. Matthews, patience. You'd make a poor Vulcan, you know." She sipped at her glass as she settled down into a seat at the table, wincing at the sharp taste. "Center yourself, calm, cool, collected. Discipline, Buddha, discipline." She cocked her head to the side and then smirked. "Then again, they're also pacifists, so you can see how well I'm doing at it."

 

“Oh yeah, I’m a sniper, I hide and wait for the best moment to pull the trigger and then I try to get away as fast as possible. I have almost 30 confirmed kills. I’m good at this pacifist thing you’re talking about.” Owen took a sip of his drink, put the glass back down on the table and contemplated the clear liquid for a moment before going on. “Did you grow up on Vulcan?”

"Yep. Child of a scientist if you can believe it...there was a time when I could recite pi to 500 places and do orbital mechanics calculations without a computer." Caine chuckled. "My blood is fifty-percent egghead. Scary thought, eh?"

 

“Wow, Caine, I had no idea. How did the security thing happen? Weren’t your parents disappointed?” Owen knew his questions were somewhat personal but he was genuinely interested and he was pretty sure Caine would let him know if she didn’t want to pursue the subject.

 

Caine shrugged slightly, tossing back another gulp of the low-quality liquor. "Disappointment is an emotional response," she said dryly. "Of course, I think my father thinks I'm bat-scat insane, not that he'd say so out loud. But he -- and my mother -- both expected me to do something that served the greater good, which is what I damn well hope I'm doing. Because it turns out this is what I'm good at." She smiled. "Mother had a bit of an argument with him, from what I could hear through the door, after I told them I wanted to go off-world. Telling him the galaxy needed people out there who were protectors and not dumb as bricks. Funniest argument I ever heard; he never broke his Vulcan cover and she was stomping all over the room. She was a sharp one when you got her going."

 

“Sounds like she was insinuating that most of us ‘protectors’ are dumb as bricks.” Owen said that with a bit of a grin. He knew full well that he couldn’t keep up with Caine when it came to sciency stuff. But he was convinced of his abilities as a marine and as far as he was concerned that was all that counted. “So you joined Starfleet instead of the Vulcan Science Academy. It takes guts not to do what people expect of you.”

 

Caine's grin widened. "I'm sure she hadn't the faintest idea what most Fleet Sec officers are like, except those in the diplomatic corps, who, I can attest from experience, really are often dumb as bricks. As for guts..." She rolled her eyes slightly. "I think I was just a teenager absolutely certain that she was right about everything. But I don't regret it." She caught Buddha's eyes and tilted her head back against the back of her chair. "I think you'll agree...if there's anyone in the galaxy who knows 'the needs of the many' better than us, I'd like to see 'em."

 

“I won’t fool you, Caine. Most of the time I don’t get Vulcans. All this lack of emotions is creepy. Though it’s also weird to see a Vulcan smile.” He shrugged and finished his drink. “Do you ever regret leaving?”

 

"No more than anyone else does, when they leave home to become something, I'd imagine," Caine said, matching his shrug and letting her expression turn more serious. Finishing off her own drink, she set down the empty glass and folded her arms, looking at him curiously. "How'd you get into this business?"

 

Owen leaned back in his seat. “I come from a family of marines. Both my parents are in the corps, so were my grandparents. I grew up on various ships, always moving with my mom when she got a new assignment.” He smiled as he thought back on his childhood. “Sometimes she’d take me to the gym and, well I didn’t just watch. Technically I went through marine basic way before I officially joined the corps. My sister and I were something like the battalion’s mascots.”

 

Caine quirked an eyebrow up. "That'd be an exciting childhood." She reflected that this went a ways to explain some of Owen's devil-may-care nature; growing up surrounded by a dangerous profession tended to make it just a part of life. There were pros and cons to this that she could think of, but she couldn't deny it had probably been a unique experience. "So it was just a given, eh?"

 

“Somehow I guess it was. Though my sister didn’t join the corps. She decided to go stay with my grandparents on Earth when she was 14. She finished school there and went to College. She was a teacher. A teacher with kickass hand to hand combat skills.”

 

"I can think of numerous situations where that might come in extremely handy," Caine said dryly, though her tone softened somewhat, hearing the continued past tense and recalling that his family's deaths still hung very recently in Buddha's memory.

 

Owen shrugged. “I guess. I didn’t get to see her often since I got assigned to the Gideon. You know how it is.” He wasn’t really sure whether he wanted to talk about his family. Though talking about his childhood wasn’t too bad. What really made him feel bad is that he hadn’t even gotten leave to attend his family’s funeral. His parents, being marines themselves, had understood but it felt wrong somehow.

 

"Yep," Caine nodded. "Takes up your time, that's for sure." Owen's eyes were shifting around and she could tell that he felt uncomfortable with the topic, as if they were edging close to a precipice. Rather than pry, she quietly allowed the subject to drift elsewhere as she flicked her eyes around the dimly-lit room. A disagreement of some sort was slowly making itself known up by the bar, and as the area began to grow more crowded, Caine couldn't help drumming her leg gently against the floor in mild discomfort at the automatic cramped feeling it began to engender. "I'll be glad to get out of here," she muttered. "Sounds from what Toni said that there's something more going on here with those ships than just the usual hijacking; we may have a bit more hunting to do."

 

“Whoa, Junior, if I didn’t know any better I’d say you’re nervous. Relax, there’s nothing we can do tonight. If we do more poking just now people will get suspicious.” As if to underline his words, Owen stretched out his legs and leaned even further back, slouching in his chair.

 

"Not nervous," Caine said, stilling the twitching of her leg and letting herself slouch back as well, putting her feet up on the edge of the table. "Just getting on towards wondering what's gonna happen next."