Misery and Insobordination

Posted on Tue May 29th, 2018 @ 2:26am by Captain Charybdis MacGregor & Commander Yuna Raza
Edited on on Thu Jun 21st, 2018 @ 1:51am

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Future Tense
Location: USS Victory, Deck 2, Security Shack
Timeline: 2285
Tags: Herod

Lt Commander Yuna Celes hated her job. No... it wasn't the job that was the problem, it was the Captain. The Captain of this damned regimented tincan of a starship that made her life hell, and then some. She sat back against her chair and wondered for the 50 billionth time about retiring. A trill her age could easily retire, secret one's self back to Trill, maybe even find a symbiote. Stranger things had happened. She recalled her life over the last 20 odd years.

Having bumbled from one assignment to the next. Never advancing beyond her current rank for one reason or another. Mostly it was insubordination. She was jaded. Jaded of the system, jaded with her job, and now more than jaded with her Captain. Jaded to the point where she told people where to go if she didn't like them, and generally they outranked her. Kinda sticky point when you tell your boss to go jump - it never puts you high on the promotions list.

Picking up the latest release of 'Federation News Network' she flicked through the news items until one in particular caught her interest.

'Bonne Chance Trio Alive!'

"Well colour me spotless..." she mumbled, bringing up the article. They were alive?!?

"Lieutenant Commander... last time I checked, it is customary for officers of lesser rank to stand when the Captain enters the room." She hadn't heard the door, she had been so engrossed in the moment, but sure enough, there he stood... the commanding officer of the brand new and nearly ready for launch USS Victory, one Captain John Herod.

He was something of a toad of a man... always smiling, but the smile never really reached his eyes. Or when it did, you could tell it was because he was thinking something that you didn't want to know, or he was belittling a lesser officer or dressing someone down for not standing on whatever protocol he had decided that needed to be enforced in that particular moment... though he was just as likely to wave it off next time so that he could somehow appear to be exercising his largesse.

She hated him. In the grey, colorless void that her career had become, she somehow managed to find it in her to hate him, because he was just the latest in a line of pinheads who had somehow curried favor to rise above, and gained themselves a nice big chair in the middle of the bridge where they would sit and be imperious until such time as some real crisis came up, then they'd look to someone else to fix it and take the credit, or people would die and they would look for somewhere to shift the blame.

That false smile was slipping a little. "I'm still waiting, Lieutenant Commander. Or was that... Lieutenant...?"

Belligerent, she stood, pushing her chair back with the backs of her legs. She glared at him... glared at him for disrupting the best piece of news she'd had in 20 years.

" I - APOLOGISE sir, I was occupied with a security matter." She lied through her teeth, knowing that he would see through it but not even caring in the slightest anymore.

He chortled a bit... an unpleasant noise that he made in the back of his throat. "Of course you were, Celes. Perhaps catching up on that backlog of paperwork that you still haven't finished, or those rosters you still haven't filled. You know we're due to launch in twenty-seven days, correct?" He began to pace in her office, looking at the walls rather than making eye contact. "And you still haven't even chosen your staff save for your master at arms. Why is that, Lieutenant Commander?"

The comment "Because you're a prick on steroids who apparently ate the last good captain he saw" formed in her mind, but she forced it back down.

" I apologize - SIR," she started, emphasizing the 'Sir' to appease him. "But this personnel list you supplied was inaccurate, it's taken longer than expect to sort through the available staff for rostering processes," She lied again, his paperwork was crap, but she'd sorted through it days ago, she just hadn't been bothered to submit her completed report.

That stopped him cold, and he slowly turned his head toward her, his second chin distracting her as he did so. "Are you saying that your inadequacies are my fault, Lieutenant?" He said it with a smile, and that smile was warming up as he got started, his voice rising with almost every syllable. "I just want to be sure here, are you trying to imply that the fact that you haven't done your job is somehow because of a failure on my part to give you the appropriate resources and information to do the simple, measly goddamn job that a brain-dead bureaucrat could do, instead of a supposedly veteran Starfleet officer?"

By the time he finished he was in a full-on shout, and spittle was flying from his mouth. His face was nearly as red as his uniform coat, and Yuna prayed that he would have a heart attack right there in her office.

" I am saying -SIR- that the personnel list was not formatted according to Standard Starfleet guidelines that indicate the person's preferred posting FIRST rather than what breast size they possess," Yuna retorted, relishing throwing this little pearl back in his face. The fallout was going to hurt - but the look on his face was priceless. Worth every second of the brig time she was about to serve and more.

The eyes narrowed and that smile returned... oooh, he was awfully happy now. Far, far too happy, in fact. He leaned across her desk, planting his considerable weight on his fists.

"I'll have you drummed out for this... insubordination, defamation of character, dereliction of duty... don't bother trying to resign, Celes. I'll have your skinny ass in a sling no matter what, so you just sit tight in your little office here and you wait while I contact the IG's office and cook up a nice little trail for you. I'll bet you'll be very popular in the brig, a girl like you..."

"Just try it, and the Federation Council will learn of your little mixup at Epsilon Alpha," Yuna threw her wildcard in. He knew that she knew what he'd done. She could go to the Federation Council and have him removed, but what would that serve? She knew she had him over a barrel.

He blustered and gasped for a moment like a landed fish, and it was a genuinely priceless moment. Yuna knew that look a man got when he wanted to move to physical violence, and he had it all right... but then he stood up straight, tugged down his uniform coat and stuck his finger into the turtleneck of his undershirt and smoothed it out. Then he pulled that finger out and wagged it at her with a sly smile.

"All right, Celes... all right. We'll play this your way today. And we'll just see what tomorrow brings, won't we?" He had nothing, but she knew the threat of the exposure of his incompetence wouldn't keep him at bay forever. All she had managed to do was hold on to the shitty job that she hated, working for a shitty captain that she loathed for another day, with a future that was more of the same. As he strode out the door, she sat back down, and the story on the monitor caught her eye once more.

Her skin tingled and her spots ached with the desire to get out of there. She'd won, for the moment, but sooner or later he'd have her cooked for her attitude and her lousy paperwork. There was only so much that certain incident could save her from. She looked back at the 'Federation News Network' report, and picked up her stylus.

"Dear Char, Fi and Selune..."

 

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