Calm Before the Storm

Posted on 15 Apr 2022 @ 6:43am by Commander Scarlet Blake & Commander Morgan Tarin

3,130 words; about a 16 minute read

Mission: Episode 18 - Cold Station 31
Location: USS Galileo-A - Deck 2, Captain's Ready Room
Timeline: MD 10, 0440 hrs

[ON]

"Commander Blake, report to my ready room."

The acting captain's summons went out to the first officer with barely any inflection in her dry voice. Their starship, USS Galileo, was approaching its final waypoint and only a half hour remained before the vessel dropped out of warp near Cold Station 31. Morgan stood at her desk with the chair pushed behind her, leaning over in front of her small LCARS terminal to scroll through the updated statuses of the away team personnel and their support craft.

It took a few minutes for Blake to arrive, pressing the chime before moving in when getting the go ahead. She knew they were getting close to their destination. However, the plans seemed firmly in place. She hoped vaguely that perhaps there was more information available. "Captain."

"Have a seat." Tarin's instruction was quieter and less forceful in tone than she usually presented. Subtle differences in her body language revealed a different nature to the conversation they were about to have. She stood up straight from her console and looked at her first officer. "Raktajino?" she offered, moving to the replicator.

Blake moved for a chair, glancing across the desk. The ex-counsellor could sense a change in her, but she knew better than to try and second guess anything on the Galileo. "No, thank you. I'm more of a straight Earth coffee kind of person."

Morgan silently processed the pseudo-request then spoke to the replicator. "Raktajino, strong. Coffee, black." The two beverages shimmered then materialized. She clasped one in each hand then returned to her desk and handed Blake her offering. "I want to apologize to you, commander," she revealed while taking her place her chair.

Blake's usual poker face was ruined by the way her eyebrows lifted with her surprise. Whatever she had expected when she walked in, that hadn't been it. "Captain?" she said it as a question, not wanting to make assumptions.

Taking a sip of her caffeinated beverage, Morgan spoke in plain terms to the first officer she'd been serving with over the past five days. "Do you remember our conversation in my office on Regula I when I gave you Galileo's new orders?

"I do," Blake said quietly as she looked down into her coffee. She wasn't one of those incredibly rare people with a photographic memory, but she remembered that conversation pretty much in full.

"I said some questionable words to you. Possibly out of anger." Morgan reminded, sipping her raktajino again while considering how best to phrase her feelings. "You immediately rejected my assignment to Galileo as a new commanding officer...without qualifying your remarks. I believe you simply said 'it's a terrible idea'." She displayed a judgemental and honest expression to Blake. "I'm not used to that. And I considered it juvenile. I expected more from the famous Scarlet Blake of USS Galileo."

Morgan looked down to her mug and slowly twirled it with both of her hands before looking back at Blake and continuing. "But none of that excuses the way I judged you because of your parents' sins. That was...also juvenile," she shook her head with private disgust at herself. "I made assumptions about you based on my own prejudice - on my own parents' experiences and stories of the Maquis. I never thought I'd meet an actual descendant of their faction in my lifetime." The reality was still difficult for her to accept.

"In the five days we've served together here, you've proven yourself a capable first officer. The crew looks to you for guidance and you have the ears of the ship. You never questioned any of my orders, no matter how unorthodox they might have seemed to you. I've never seen that before in any senior officer..let alone an XO," Tarin confessed.

The acting captain took another small drink of her raktajino. "So, I apologize for threatening you; for the way in which I judged you without knowing you. I should have known better. Been better."

It was a lot to take in, and the words rendered Scarlet silent for a few moments, while she gave them the proper due care they deserved. "Well you're wrong about one thing at least...I've never been famous for anything," she finally replied, the corner of her lips quirking with dry humour. "It...means a lot to hear that, Captain. More than you can know, so...thank you."

It was Blake who consulted the ripples in her coffee that time, shaking her head slightly as she thought back on what had been said. "I was angry too. And I should have been clearer in what my objections were, that was a fault of mine. Sometimes, I'm so used to toeing the line I keep too much of the thought to myself." She let the silence hang there...she'd expand on it if she wanted her to, but she didn't want to rake the topic up again if she'd rather bury it.

"Since we're being honest with each other...indulge me. You have permission to speak freely," replied Tarin. "What upset you? Was it a question I asked in your debriefing? Captain Saalm's reassignment? Your mission at Latari?"

"Perhaps a little of all of it," Scarlet nodded slowly, looking to her with the bluntness of it. "I considered it a bad decision to send our ship and crew out so soon, especially to something that has bad news written all over it," she shrugged lightly at her assumption. "It had a familiar echo. Our previous debacle also started as an investigation into why we hadn't heard from our people. I don't expect this to have a happy ending. I think this crew needed their full break, for the sake of their mental health after what they went through. But, if Starfleet was determined to send them out, it seemed foolhardy to me to send them out with a Captain that didn't know them. It's one thing to send out a crew already under strain when they have a Captain that knows them, who has the experience of working with them to know just how far they really can push them before they break. For the Captain under these circumstances to be someone who doesn't have that familiarity? It makes it even more dangerous. However...that decision wasn't yours, so it was irrelevant all the same."

Tarin listened with full attention while Blake spoke. In the end, she judged it a legitimate enough assessment -- yet not one without several leaps in logic and assumptions, she privately surmised. There was something else to the XO's confession which lingered in her cortex. Many seconds of silence passed. The acting captain sipped her raktajino again then set the mug back down on her desk. "Do you believe in Starfleet and its mission? Truly believe in the reasons why we're out here in space?"

Scarlet took a long breath, looking to the viewport with a slight frown as she thought on the blunt question. It wasn't the kind of question to just sling a thoughtless answer to. And she wasn't the kind of person to lie about it, no matter who had asked. "I suppose it depends what you think the reasons are," she said quietly. "And I've heard plenty of different interpretations. Do I believe in the journey? Forging allies? Protecting those who need help? Yes. Yes, I do. Does that mean I agree with all their orders and decisions? No. But I don't have to."

The acting captain smirked. "We're not androids. Of course we won't agree with everything." She leaned forward in her chair. "During this ship's last mission, you were asked to carry out General Order 24 - to destroy all life on a planet. Twice. And this crew...actually did it. I think that's a first in Starfleet history." She fiddled with her drink again. "It's not your commitment or duty I'm curious about."

Morgan continued her train of thought. "I'm not sure how much of my file you've read or what you extrapolated from it. So let me tell you about myself," she prefaced. "I was born on Earth. New York, Manhattan. Both of my parents are career Starfleet officers, now retired. They were diplomats who bounced between planetary and starship postings." She revealed a small smile at some of her earliest memories. "I spent some of my childhood on board this old Excelsior-class with them; the Independence. Then returned to Earth a few years later when they were transferred back to the New York embassy. I finished school there then applied to the Academy in '72. 'Family tradition' and 'career trajectory'...I remember hearing those words over and over and over..."

Leaning back and crossing her legs, she continued the story. "I was enamored with Starfleet by that point. My counselors told me I'd be the best in my class and I'd be 'wasting my future' if I didn't apply. 'Morgan, you'll be a captain of a starship one day' they said." She paused and looked at a random object on one of the ready room's shelves. "Do you know what happened during my first year at the Academy?"

Scarlet shook her head but chuckled all the same, taking the chance to sip her coffee as she leant back to get more comfortable. "Although, it sounds like it may have been a short, sharp shock?" she hedged her bets.

Tarin's eyes narrowed and her hands visibly clenched her drink. "War. With the Dominion. The Jem'Hadar pushed through the wormhole and captured Deep Space Nine in one day. By the end of my second semester, Starfleet was taking catastrophic losses along all fronts. Entire fleets destroyed. The few ships that survived combat retreated just to be scrambled back into combat a month later." She bit her bottom lip and glanced to a piece of Captain Saalm's memorabilia mounted on the ready room's wall. "Many of my senior classmates were shipped out to the front before they'd even finished their training. Most of them were killed in action by the end of the year. Starfleet simply needed more personnel and couldn't replace their losses in time."

"A baptism by fire...." Scarlet said quietly as she crossed her legs, resting back to listen. Perhaps it was the Counsellor in her, but she found that the less she said, the more someone else spoke instead. It had been a scathing time for Starfleet. They were still feeling the wounds of it when she had joined up not long after.

A frustrated expression crossed Morgan's features while she shook her head in reminiscence. "All of my childhood fantasies and hopes...my dreams of exploring strange new worlds and some day becoming the next James T. Kirk? Gone in an blink of the eye. It was doubtful Starfleet and the Federation would even exist in a year's time." Her hazel eyes returned to Blake. "The intricacies of the Federation charter didn't matter. My existential beliefs didn't matter. Survival was the only thing we cared about. By any means necessary."

"And it worked," Blake replied evenly, shaking her head slowly with a slight frown at the corner they'd been forced into. There were always moments in history that changed the direction of any institution, government, organisation. But none quite so savage as the war had been. "You survived, as did Starfleet and the planets they fought to protect," but nothing went back to what it had been after a beating like that.

Morgan took little console from the XO's reply - not that it was necessarily meant to comfort her. That chapter of her life had come and gone and was a closed door in an otherwise unremarkable career ever since. "I survived because I was lucky. Too young and untrained to be put on the front, and I just happened to be in one of the right buildings when the Breen attacked San Fransisco."

The acting captain dismissively shook her head then sipped her drink before continuing."That's not the point, however. Whether I lived or died isn't relevant anymore." She set her mug back down. "What I'm trying to say, is that even in Starfleet's darkest hour, when we strayed from our path...I never lost my belief in the Federation or what it stands for. I need to know that you - as my XO - share that same sentiment. Because if you do, then the methods to achieve our goals are justified even if we might not always understand the reasons. I don't know what you'll find on this cold station and I haven't served on this starship for more than a week. But I can sense the cynicism in some of this crew from a kilometer away. And if those emotions can't be controlled, it will do great harm to our mission here."

"I think some people are having difficulty adjusting to the more...'military style' regime," Blake replied honestly, shaking her head lightly as she set her cup aside. What Tarin had told her made a lot of sense in terms of her command style. "You have a science vessel on your hands. PT drills, critical inspections, unexpected calls and meetings at all hours...it's not what people necessarily expect on a science ship. Many of our people here weren't formed in that crucible of war. On a science ship, they expect more of that other type of Starfleet you were talking about."

Blinking at Blake with a confused expression, Tarin stayed silent for a short moment. "'Military-style'?" She started to process the XO's explanation with incredulity. "This is a Starfleet vessel. PT and inspections are part of our duty as Starfleet officers." She tapped two of her fingers on the desk. "And if I have to wake someone up in the middle of the night for a mission briefing, then they damn well better get out of bed and report to duty." She let out an audible huff which supplemented a growing frustration in her eyes. "Do you disagree?"

"If you have to, then you have to," Scarlet agreed with a slight shrug, thinking how best to put it. "I suppose it comes down to how urgent something is, and can it wait for the next briefing, only you can judge that, of course. PT and inspections are part of the role, yes. And for someone like me, well I'm biased. I was shaped by the marines. But for many specialists, PT will be a supplement to their craft. It will be something they keep on top of enough while concentrating on their vocation, rather than it being important enough to regiment their day around. An engineer will always put their research and continuing maintenance first, and a science officer is going to be engrossed in their field. So long as they can keep up to the minimum, that's what matters to them, because it's supplemental to what they do.

"And with the inspection...we've always had them, of course, but some of the things that were pointed out and criticised seemed...minimal in actual impact. What you've told me, about your background, it makes sense that you have those high standards around discipline, but a lot of the people on a ship like this...they're explorers and academics at heart, not soldiers with a specialism. There's a reason we had a separate marine corps...."

Blake paused, shaking her head slowly before lifting a shoulder in another half shrug. "You're in command, you will command as you see fit. But it would be remiss of me as your First Officer not to offer an opinion on the crew's circumstances."

Tarin's eyes tightened. It wasn't that her XO's opinions weren't warranted or valid - or even justified by the reasonings behind her statements. She simply didn't agree. Throughout her career as a fledgling XO until her current position as a temporary commanding officer, she'd always treated each crew member with the same decorum and held each one of them to the same expectations. To do otherwise would foster a culture of privilege and resentment. She sensed that wasn't what Blake was attempting to challenge, but the notion that the crew of a science vessel should be treated differently than the crew of a ship of the line was...preposterous to her.

"Your concerns are noted. Your honesty is appreciated," acknowledged Tarin through a tight-lipped mouth. She took a deep breath then exhaled and leaned back in her chair. Her fingers intertwined and settled on the desk in front of Blake. "I didn't ask you to come here for suggestions about how to manage the crew. But you volunteered anyway and I respect your initiative. We have a job to do now; a cold station to investigate. My concern isn't if someone is annoyed with PT or thinks the ship's inspection was unfair. No, my responsibility is to protect this starship and make sure all of you accomplish your mission and safely return to Galileo. Then, if we return to Regula I and have time after that, we can debate the merits of how best to command a starship."

"Of course," Blake nodded firmly as she watched her with an even gaze. She had no desire to rock the space boat before a mission. The Captain could use the advice as and when she saw fit, she didn't need to hammer it home. "Whatever you might think of this crew, they'll get the job done."

Giving a single nod to the XO's confirmation, Tarin drained the last of her raktajino into her mouth then pushed the mug aside and stood up from her chair to indicate the finality of the conversation. "Get your teams to the cold station and recover its personnel. Bring all of our people back, alive, by whatever means necessary. Including you. Do you understand?" Her severe stare lacked any subtlety, levity or jest.

Blake mused on the order for a moment. It was a promise that was out of her power and control to commit too. No matter how much she wished otherwise. "Understood," she finally replied, deciding the response was the best she could make.

"Good luck, Number One." Tarin sincerely meant it. "I'll see you when you return to Galileo. Dismissed."

Blake nodded as she pushed herself up, heading out with a brisk stride. A mysterious research base...AWOL personnel...limited intel...a shadowy tail...the dice were loaded against them. She hoped she could follow Tarin's order.

[OFF]

--

CMDR Morgan Tarin
Acting Commanding Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Saalm]

CMDR Scarlet Blake
First Officer
USS Galileo-A

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