Deal With the Devil

Posted on Thu Jun 21st, 2018 @ 2:23am by Captain Charybdis MacGregor & Commander Fiona McCray
Edited on on Thu Jun 21st, 2018 @ 2:23am

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Future Tense
Location: Starfleet Command, Rear Admiral Tom Jones' Office
Timeline: 2285
Tags: Jones

The interrogation was to be a bit different today. Apparently they were trying something new.

They had come for her from her quarters first thing in the morning, even before bringing her breakfast. Char never understood why Starfleet considered breakfast to be such a small meal, but between the stress of the past few weeks, taking her meals intravenously for a few days and then the limited diet she was on, thanks to them bringing her meals with preset portions- which irritated her for some reason- she appeared to have lost a few pounds. Her support garments fit poorly and her uniform was actually a bit loose all around. She couldn't be positive but she might have dropped as much as eight kilos in the past few weeks.

She was hungry all of the time, but she'd endured that before. Mostly it just made her irritable.

So when they came for her before she had even had her breakfast, that got her morning off to a rollicking good start. Perhaps today was the day that they would transfer her to the brig, or perhaps a firing squad. She had confessed to being a spy, after all. And a monster... genetic manipulation and augmentation was outlawed in the Federation, and those that were discovered were banned from serving in Starfleet.

Or perhaps today would be a game of trying to get her to implicate her friends and give Starfleet leverage over them. She had signed an amnesty document for them, but there were always ways around all of that. She couldn't see a point to it... but then, she couldn't see a point to a lot of this.

Truth be told she was miserable. She hadn't seen her friends in days and she worried if they were all right. Starfleet was now a closed book for her... they might keep her decoding Romulan transmissions or something in a basement somewhere, but her days of roaming the stars and seeking out new life and new civilizations were officially over. At least in committing career suicide she might have saved her friends, but internally she felt awful. She had nothing to look forward to, nothing to do, and the pride that she had built in herself and her career was in a shambles, though she was still somehow trying to stay positive and imagine that there might still be something to look forward to in her future.

Scylla certainly didn't think so. Charybdis calculated the odds and they were pretty low. Char was just very, very unhappy, but she was keeping her head up and standing tall. The alternatives did not appeal to her at all.

When the route to the interrogation room changed as she followed her escort, she was unsurprised until it took them along a clear-paned wall that showed the outside world, while Starfleet enlisted personnel and officers passed her and her Security escort by. Her anachronistic uniform drew a number of odd looks, and she smiled and nodded as she passed people, which got her even more odd looks. She had forgotten just how humans, even Starfleet, tended to react to her the first time they encountered her, but she wasn't going to hide her nature any more than she could hide her pale blue miniskirted uniform, which it seemed was no longer in vogue. Which also made her sad, though the new uniforms did look rather smart.

She took in the view of Earth outside which she hadn't seen since arriving on Earth while she had the opportunity. She could see the bustle of Starfleet Command, and the famous Golden Gate Bridge. The uniforms had changed and so had much of the technologies, but it was still the green hills of earth, and it still made her smile. If she was going to meet her end, at least it would be on the planet that she had embraced as her home, rather than the swamps of Romulus or the dry deserts of Vulcan.

Her mood had already brightened considerably just from seeing the outside world when she was ushered into not another interrogation room, but an office... a rather nice office, actually. The sign on the door had read "Rear Admiral Thomas Jones, SFI" before it had slid open, and behind the desk was her interrogator, in his duty uniform. He stood as she entered, then nodded to the security personnel to dismiss him. As he came around the desk, he gestured to the chair in front of it as he sat on the edge of his desk, clasped his hands together and smiled at her.

The smile actually made it to his eyes this time. That just made her nervous, and her brows knotted up to the point that they practically touched at the bases as she looked up from beneath them.

"Relax, Char. You mind if I call you Char?"

In point of fact she did mind, she realized, very much. her friends had called her that, and she had embraced it as a sign of affection when they shortened her name or called her 'Chary'. This man was not her friend and she had the distinct impression that he was going to direct the course of her life in a remarkably unpleasant direction in the next few moments, and idly vital points began making themselves known on his anatomy to her. Her muscles tensed slightly... not for action, but in preparation.

None of this was lost on Rear Admiral Jones, but he continued smiling like a used shuttle salesman.

"No sir, Admiral, if you like. Feel free." It came out flat and emotionless, and she kicked herself internally for showing her hand.

"You represent rather a unique problem to us here at Starfleet, Char. You're a spy. But you're also a meritoriously decorated officer. We gave you three the Starfleet Distinguished Service Medal posthumously- seemed like the right thing to do. And to be frank, you really were a pretty damn good officer... twenty years ago you were on the fast track to a command of your own. And you'da gotten it too, if ya hadn't up and 'died' on us."

Opening his hands he began to walk slowly back around his desk. "But then lo and behold, here you are again, miraculously survived and ready to resume duty when we find out what the heck- you're a Romulan. And that would be the end of it right there, cept for a few things."

"Hell of an officer. And we've tried it a half dozen ways til Sunday, but you really are loyal to Starfleet, and to those friends of yours, the ones you came in with. Said a lot about you that you were so determined to defend them, and not just cause they're friends- but because you're their commander. And it looks like when the chips are down, that's one inventive mind you've got up there, and you won't hesitate to use it. Cool, calm, dedicated, responsible, a little crazy but with the smarts to back it up, and you inspire a little loyalty in people."

The rear admiral stood behind his desk and leaned on his fists. "That's what we look for in starship captains."

Of all of the things that he might have said in that moment, that was in none of the possibilities that she was considering internally, and the voices in her head all turned in unison, all stunned, and the fragmentation of her psyche that would have begun soon promptly halted, and the potential for greater fusion suddenly became possible. He gave her a good ten seconds to let that settle in before he eased himself into this chair once more.

"So here's the deal. We have a Constitution 'refit' class coming off the line from Utopia Planitia in about a month. Now ordinarily I'd make you go back to the academy and relearn everything that you missed in the past twenty years, but apparently you and yours are all particularly exceptional... so instead, I am gonna assign you to four days leave- McCray's mother is breathin down my neck so hard I can smell what the woman had for dinner last night. So go and see and do what you gotta do and then report to the USS Victory, relieve the current captain, one John Herod, and assume command. That'll leave you with about three weeks to learn all of the systems of a ship twenty years more advanced than your knowledge base, handle any problems, get the crew roster straightened out and get her underway."

"Now here's the catch." He leaned forward and folded his hands before him.

"One- you and your crew keep this whole 'Romulan' business to yourselves. Nobody ever needs to know that a fallen heroine of two decades ago was a Romulan defector and that she hoodwinked both Vulcan and Starfleet. Makes us look kinda incompetent, and we don't need any help with that, thanks. I'll need signed statements to that effect, under penalty of treason, blah blah blah."

"Two- you'd damn well have that ship out of the shipyards on time. You're so damned impressive, so impress me. Show me what you've got. The current commanding officer hasn't impressed anyone. Show me why you're a better candidate for the job. And get him outta there, then do damage control."

"Three- your assignment is gonna be the crossroads... out Khitomer way, where the Romulan Star Empire and the Klingon Empire butt up against one another and both of them park their fences on our backyard. It's dangerous, it's hostile and there is a lot going on, even when we aren't actively at war with either of them- which right now we are not. And your job is going to be to patrol the spacelanes, do your surveys and your supply runs and your humanitarian missions, while you keep an eye on those sneaky bastards. Apparently you know a little bit about cloaking technology... welcome to the crossroads, where the only ship that won't be cloaked is you."

An eyebrow raised at that, and her head tilted slightly. "Is that last statement an order, Admiral?"

A half-smile crept across the canny craggy-faced officer's countenance. "About the ship being cloaked?"

Slowly she nodded her assent, and he actually grinned a little... a lopsided grin only on the left side of his face.

"No... no it is not," he replied with a bit of a secret smile.

"My crew comes with me... I am still responsible for them. If they wish reassignment then that is their choice, but otherwise they accompany me about the Victory."

"Done."

"I will promote them as I see fit."

"Your prerogative."

"I will modify the ship as I see fit."

"Again, your prerogative."

"Women's duty uniforms now come with the option of pants or skirts, I saw in the hallway?"

"Choice of the officer."

"I follow the traditional chain of command, though of course you will contact me for specific purposes because you are Starfleet Intelligence and you need an enforcement arm out there that can be stealthy as well as overt." She expressed it as a statement rather than a question, and he nodded with a shrug. She understood the unspoken, and that was encouraging in this matter. He was almost starting to like this girl.

"I will have the rank to accompany the title?"

At that he opened his desk drawer, pulled out a silver object with three gold bars within it and tossed it to her, which she fumbled and managed to catch by clutching it to her still-prodigious bosom. He stood, and she stood as well as he offered his hand, which she took and shook with a smile.

"Welcome back to the fleet, Captain Charybdis."

 

RSS Feed