Periphery, Part 1

Posted on Thu Sep 25th, 2025 @ 7:13pm by Lieutenant JG Jean-Baptiste Dorsainvil & Lieutenant Ryan Keel

2,159 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Peril at the Unification Accords
Location: The Portside Glow, Deck 10
Timeline: MD008, 2030 Hours

The Portside Glow hadn't changed in three days. Same soft amber sconces, same too-long wine list, same drift of perfume and aftershave in the air. Someone had set a jasmine-scented candle too close to the bar rail. JB could smell it over the citrus oil that clung to the bartender's hands.

He stepped inside anyway.

There was no music tonight--just the swell of voices and glass, a wet laugh from the far table, the soft clunk of chairs adjusting under elbows. It was the kind of place people brought dates they were still trying to impress.

He walked to the bar and touched the exact spot where his glass had landed two nights ago. His thumb moved over it like a man trying to read Braille.

The bartender glanced over. "What'll it be?"

"Blueberry Bluenose Spritzer?" JB asked, almost hopeful.

The man blinked. "That one's not in my lexicon, I'm afraid."

JB smiled faintly. Of course they wouldn't know that one. "Just blueberry wine, then. If you've got it."

He waited, one elbow against the bar, thumb tucked beneath his fingers like he might've been holding something small and invisible.

He wasn't tired, just very restless. He couldn't settle himself enough to read in his quarters. Nor could he sit still. He'd walked out with no direction, just a tightness in his ribs that refused to name itself. His body had known where it was going before his mind caught up.

And now he was here, at the scene of the crime.

Wrenleigh Reed, freckled and self-possessed, had sat there, her fingers looped around a wine glass like it had belonged to her. They'd had a breezy conversation that began with a greeting in French, and found it's way through literature, geography and family ties. It had ended with a beautiful song and chivalrous escort to the door of her quarters.

Twenty-four hours since the beach on Barisa Prime. Her palm on his chest, the hush between their breaths louder than the tide. They had walked the Orange Crescent Beach, shared an wonderful meal by the sea, and gave in to something intimate and wordless, right there on the beach.

The bartender placed the glass before him.

JB took it and turned. The room was full--every table occupied. A few people looked-up, just long enough to register that he wasn't who they were waiting for. There were seats at the bar, of course--the ones he and Wren had occupied. Empty now. And untouched.

He stood for a moment with the wine in hand, the scent of blueberry and old oak floating into his nostrils. He took a sip. Sweet, and a little tart on the back of his tongue.

Then he just stood there, caught between the bar and the room, unsure whether to look for a chair or leave altogether.

Looking up from his table, Keel caught site of the Security Officer standing awkwardly at the bar, scanning the room for an empty table. Signalling he was done with his meal, but not the table, Keel got to his feet and closed the short distance between him and the barely-shorter man. 'A penny for your thoughts, Lieutenant,' he said in a quiet, assured voice. 'You're looking for a table, yes? You're more than welcome to join me if you're not waiting for someone?'

JB turned his head just enough to take in the voice beside him. The man appeared roughly the same age, clean-shaven and broad-shouldered, and sporting the burgundy uniform of someone assigned to the Diplomatic Detachment. He held himself squarely and while his expression seemed welcoming, there was slight brashness to his tone.

"A table, yes," JB said quietly. "I'm not waiting on anyone."

'Follow me then,' Keel replied as he turned on his heel and led them both over to a table. As they sat, he extended a hand, and spoke confidently, 'Lieutenant Keel, Chief Diplomatic Officer. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mister ...?'

"Dorsainvil. Lieutenant Jean-Baptiste Dorsainvil," JB answered, taking the man's hand and gripping firmly. "But people tend to just call me JB."

At the break of their handshake, they seated themselves opposite each other, JB gently placing his blueberry wine in front of him. "Chief Diplomatic Officer?"

'That's right,' Keel flashed a smile, feeding an order into the table pad. 'I'm thankful the Astrea had an opening for the position - we're not as common in the Fleet as would be ideal.' He shrugged, and elaborated languidly, 'it's an odd position I'll admit, a lot of us are paired with ambassadors. But here we have more of a roving brief to interface with local power networks to keep the peace.'

Keel looked the man up and down. 'Could I venture to say you're in the Security department?'

JB nodded once. "You'd be right." He lifted the glass and took a slow sip before adding, "I'm Xalanth's second." He took a sip of the blueberry wine--tart and tasty. "It's all new to me, though. I came out of Intelligence and spent most of it planetside. This will be my first time serving aboard a starship."

He set the glass down carefully, his fingertips trailing the stem. "I remember seeing you at the mission briefing a couple of days ago. I imagine the conference is keeping you busy."

'Pretty busy,' Keel smiled, pleased at the amount of work that kept him occupied. 'For a bunch of people who pride themselves on the controlling of their emotions, Vulcan delegations are surprisingly prickly, and pedantic to a fault when it comes to itineraries. The Romulans, even the Unificationists are a proud bunch. So a lot of screen time and follow-up memoranda.' He leaned forward, acknowledging the server who brought him his beer, and said, 'but tell me about your work - the Intel stuff, was it a big shock to do the move?'

Smiling faintly at the the question, JB traced a thumb along the condensation gathering on his glass.

"Intel teaches you a lot," he said after a moment. His tone was easy, almost offhand, but there was still some hardness at the edges, like rocks hidden beneath silk. "I was an analyst--behind a desk, mostly. Though, at some point, I realized the version of me I'd have to be to keep climbing ranks wasn't one I particularly liked."

He considered his words--no mention of Bryn'kal Three, no mention of Admiral Spyvee and his puppetry, no mention of a failed attempt to transfer to Strategic Operations. No, he'd keep those skeletons hidden at the back of the closet for now. Captain Johansen could know. Maybe even the Executive Officer. But there was no need to recount his failures to just anybody.

"Don't get me wrong," he went on, glancing up at Keel, "I don't regret the work. Most of the time. But after my last assignment, it was time for a change. I put in for shipboard duty, and somehow--Astrea." He took another sip of the blueberry wine. "It's not exactly what I expected," he went on, setting the glass down gently.

His eyes flicked over to the bar--briefly. To the pair of empty stools. Untouched since two nights ago.

"But it's already become more than I'd hoped."

He glanced up at Keel once more. "What are you drinking tonight?"

'Just a Centauri beer so far. Nothing so fancy as your wine,' Keel smiled. 'So you moved in the opposite direction from me - from the desk to the field, so to speak.' So as not to appear to be taking the piss, he elucidated. 'I spent a lot of my service in Starfleet with the Marines - signed up during the war.'

He shrugged, an a casual gesture masking the intense feelings he had about his past work. 'About a decade in I decided that talking out problems was probably better than trying to shoot at them.' Keel was interrupted by a server who put down a tall pint glass of beer in front of him. Perfect amount of head, glass already beading sweatily with condensation. 'Ah,' he said with satisfaction. 'To new friends,' he offered his glass over the halfway mark of the table.

JB lifted his glass halfway, the base cool against his fingers. The toast caught him a little off guard--not because it was unwelcome, but because it had been a while since someone had called him friend this early in the conversation.

"To not shooting," he said, almost wryly. Then he clinked his glass gently against Keel's and took a sip.

The blueberry wine had opened up by now, warmer than before, the tartness mellowing into something round and steady. He let it sit on his tongue a second longer than necessary before swallowing.

"I respect the shift," he said after a pause. "Marines to diplomacy isn't a small leap. That's not just a change in job description. That's a change in doctrine."

'I just figured it was better to stop wars from starting, rather than having to fight them to a conclusion.' He smiled sadly, and shrugged. 'Personally I'm not sure that the Dominion War could have been averted - that's when I signed up,' Keel said by way of clarification, 'but I'm hopeful future wars can be averted with the work we put in with our allies.'

Jean-Baptiste nodded slowly, eyes dropping to the swirl of his wine. A memory surfaced: a war room, a dozen heads bent over a map they weren't allowed to keep, debating whether three hundred thousand lives on Adeles Two were an acceptable loss for what Starfleet Command had called strategic advantage. He blinked the memory away like it was just smoke in his eyes.

"I was too young for the Dominion," he said. "My cohort caught the tail-end in textbooks. But the wars after... I watched the briefings come in. Sat-in on some debriefs. Also coded some of the footage. War's not always about winning, is it? For me, it was sometimes just about surviving the version of yourself who had to make the call."

He looked up then, the lines under his eyes making him look older than he was, but only for the briefest of moments. "So yeah. I get it."

The table pinged as the server brought a small dish of olives and spiced nuts, set them down between Keel and JB, and vanished again without a word. JB didn't reach for them. His hands stayed wrapped around the glass like it was grounding him.

"Tell me something," JB ventured. "You've done the ground stuff. And now you're trying to keep people from repeating it. Do you ever wonder if you've just traded one kind of a battle for another?"

Looking in to his beer for a long moment, Keel looked up an nodded, 'yes.' His face broke into a rueful smile as he shook his head. 'You'd think a generation of leaders who came through a war would understand the need for cooperation and a peaceful solution to tense situations. But so many of them, especially out here on the periphery, push to the breaking point.' He shrugged, his expression turning serious, 'and you know, I get it. Not everyone is privileged enough to be a Federation member and have access to a post-scarcity economy. It's rough out here, and they need to maximise their own advantage and look after their people. I just ... wish people didn't have to push it to the point they're a button-press away from nuking their opposition more often than not.'

JB listened, weighing Keel's words. Out here, privilege was currency all its own. He knew it, even if he didn't name it.

He let his glass turn a half circle on the table, the rim catching the amber light. "I hear you," he said. "And I can't say I envy your side of it. At least when things go wrong in Security, you now they've gone wrong. In diplomacy, it sometimes takes years before you know whether you've won or lost."

He thought for a moment, then let the next words fall without much ceremony.

"I was here two nights ago," he said. "Sat right there, at the bar." He tipped his chin toward the pair of empty stools, still untouched. "I met someone from your department."

Keel glanced over to the space indicated, a quizzical expression crossing his face for a moment before he looked back to JB. 'It's a small department,' Keel replied, allowing his features to relax into a smile. 'Not many people to meet. I hope you're bringing it up because it was a pleasant encounter, not one I have to write them up for.'

JB smiled. "Nothing like that," he said, the thought of that night fading back into its own private compartment.


~tbc~

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