For The Greater Good

Posted on Wed Aug 3rd, 2016 @ 11:06pm by Captain Charybdis MacGregor & Lieutenant Commander Selune
Edited on on Wed Aug 3rd, 2016 @ 11:07pm

0 words; about a 1 minute read

Mission: Taking Chances
Location: USS Bonne Chance, Deck Three, Officer's Mess
Timeline: 2265

After visiting with Fiona in Sickbay, Charybdis realized that she hadn't eaten since that cheeseburger on the bridge, and after all of the stress and strain of the day, she really just needed something solid inside her. She decided that the officer's galley on Deck 3 was a good bet... in theory it wouldn't be that occupied at this hour, and with Patrick on an away mission she likely wouldn't be getting that much sleep tonight.

She strode into the galley and looked around to see if she recognized anyone. The snow-white furred Caitian was sitting alone with her head resting on the table, her hair pooled across her face with what looked like a cup of tea left cooling to the side. That was a pretty rough first day... I should check on her and see if she's okay. She got her dinner from the dispenser, and moved in on Selune's table.

Looking up at the sound of someone approaching Selune took in the sight of her commanding officer and wondered idly if she was about to receive a reprimand for the numerous scrapes and dents her earlier maneuvering had scattered across the ship, not to mention letting the pirates demolish the weapon systems. Offering a weary smile she gestured towards the opposite chair before arranging her hair into something less chaotic and sat up somewhat straighter.

The Vulcan Lieutenant waved dismissively. "Please, Lieutenant... at ease, at ease. We're off duty and it has been one hell of a long day. Let's just sit and relax for a few... slouch, let your hair down and relax kitty." She smirked out a smile with upraised eyebrows and flopped down in the seat opposite the Caiitan with a sigh, then crossed her eyes to look at an errant lock of hair in her face before she blew a gust of air out of the corner of her mouth to push it away.

Languidly arching back and stretching her body Selune slowly forced several small muscles back to life before letting a soft sigh as her hair drifted back across her face, looking back at her new companion unable to hold back the grin that bubbled forth. "Next time you want me to do something like that, I'd appreciate a few minutes warning and a cup of coffee," she said with a tense laugh as the pressure of the day once again caught up with her, "especially on my first shift."

"Honestly... Selune, right? Honestly I would prefer not too many days like that myself. That was officially," she said, raising her coffee cup in salute, "my first real day in command of the Bonne Chance. So I don't know if this makes it any better for you, but you definitely weren't alone up there." She smiled close-lipped and left the cup upraised.

Casting about wildly for a second before finding her lukewarm tea and pasting a solemn smile across her face she mirrored the Vulcan's toast, "To first days," she intoned quietly.

The lieutenant took a sip of the coffee, made a face and set it down. "I'm trying to learn to drink it black, but... euch." She looked across the table at the feline humanoid appraisingly for a few seconds, raided her left eyebrow and cocked her head slightly to the side.

"You did some amazing piloting up there today Lieutenant... I'm putting you in for a commendation when the Captain gets back," she said quietly. "Between you and the chief engineer, you saved the ship today, and everyone aboard."

Selune froze for several seconds as her mind tried to deal with the sudden shift in her own perception before she shrugged with what she assumed was the nonchalance of a pro, "Oh, well... you know... all in a days work," she stated casually, her body giving off all the signs a Caitian would recognize as blushing.

"As you like. Well, we've still got a few hours left until we arrive at the rendezvous point on the border where we'll be waiting to reconnoiter with the away team's shuttle... I'm not likely to get any sleep tonight, so I may as well put on a clean uniform and take another shift on the bridge, I guess." The voluptuous Vulcan stood, never having touched her plate. "Guess I'll see you around, Lieutenant."

There was a moment of hesitation as Selune stared into her tea before looking back to Charybdis a small smile leaking through her features as her false bravado cracked, "Th.. thank you for stopping by," she replied quietly, "I'd have never realized that was your first command." The moment wallowed for a second and she shrugged weakly as she lost her footing, "You did great," she managed before retreating back into the depths of her drink.

The statuesque scientist cocked her left eyebrow and tilted her head at the same time, then grinned out of the left side of her face... it was mildly disconcerting to watch but it did make her look intensely curious. "You don't know anyone in this command, do you? You've spent the entire time you aren't on duty in your quarters because you came from a small ship and this is one of the biggest in the fleet, and it's a little overwhelming... am I right?"

Selune blinked in surprise as she stammered a reply, "How... how do you know...?" she asked, trying not to sound as bewildered as she felt. The pressures of being new and alone in an unfamiliar place mixed with what she felt was the expectation for greatness attached to being assigned to one of the Federation's flagships reaching up and threatening to drown her.

"Personnel files. I read everyone's personnel files... they are in the ship's computers and I devote a little bit of time every day to reading everyone's files, particularly the bridge crew and my own department. Plus I have near total recall. It's the pointy ears thing, remember?" she added, flicking her delicately sweeping eartips.

"People make all sorts of assumptions about me because of them, then when I smile they assume I must be a defective version. Agamemnon, right? Survey duty?" She slid back down into the seat opposite the white-furred alien and popped a tater tot in her mouth. Might be a conversation here after all...

Nodding silently Selune let her mind drift back over the last few months, "It... really wasn't anything special. Fly here, drop a team there. But a few months with the same 20 people..." she paused as a slightly haunted look flickered briefly across her face before gesturing to the room around them, "It's a bit of a change," she quietly conceded.

"USS Antares, crew complement of 19 including me, flying freighter duty for four years... I know how you feel. And then this... I shared a closet with 4 other crewmen and we slept upright in astronaut bunks. And now my quarters are bigger than the bridge!" the science officer said with a cheerful laugh.

Selune let out a small giggle, shaking her head as she glanced around the room, "This place is so luxurious by comparison... I can almost forget it's a starship," she grinned wistfully to herself, "I remember how clever I thought I was when I convinced the Captain to let me use the shuttle as my room," pausing as she put on a gruff voice, "Only if it's ready to fly the second we need it," she mimicked.

The stacked science officer laughed merrily at that. "Oh my gosh, I wish I had thought of that! I spent four years threatening to eject some of the crew with the cargo just to get some damn elbow room on the ship, and I empirically proved I could do their jobs... which meant they had less to do and I was still stuck living in a closet!"

"They never told me when I signed up that they were going to try cram us into boxes smaller than a comfortable chair," Selune muttered as she began idly tapping her fingers against the table following her long lost tune, "Still. I have no idea how I got this assignment. It still feels like someone messed up and sent me by mistake."

The blue-clad lieutenant smiled warmly as she popped a few more tater tots into her mouth. "Would you really like to know the answer to that?"

The Caitian hesitated, curious but caught off guard by the directness of the question before she slowly nodded.

"Part knowledge base, part personnel file. In your case Selune... may I call you Selune, or do you prefer to be called something in particular?" the alien waited patiently with upraised eyebrows for the answer.

"Of course," she replied smiling, "I've had a few nicknames over the years but Selune is fine. Sure beats 'Oi, You.'"

Laughter again came from the Vulcan, and she nodded. "Charybdis, but people have begun calling me 'Char', and I don't object- it is shorter. At any rate, in your case, first we lost 60 percent of the crew to a spatial anomaly. Some were displaced in space, some were displaced in time. We even had someone from another ship show up here... we're still not entirely certain what it was, we just figured out what was happening and how to get away from it. Doctor McKenzie and the sickbay staff and I were the only senior officers around for that one... we even lost the captain in command at that time."

"So you were part of a scramble to repopulate the Bonne Chance... she needed nearly 250 crewmen in a hurry, and they needed to be good enough to man one of the pride of the fleet vessels. You might notice you are surrounded by ensigns, JGs and lieutenants- that's why. Most were drawn for this duty because their ships could spare them, they weren't already senior staff."

The shock was clearly painted across Selune's face as she took in the fate of the last crew, taking in a long sip of her cooling tea as she tried to imagine what it had been like before she focused her attention back on her new colleague.

"The other reason is because they needed crewmen young enough to be flexible... to be able to adapt to all new conditions and overcome them quickly. In this case, they picked those who excelled at their jobs and were being wasted wherever they were. Scientists far too versatile to be aboard freighters, engineers wasted keeping shuttlecraft maintained, navigators who could hit a barn with a photon torpedo from orbit. And..." she added with a mirthful grin, "pilots who could fly a Constitution class starship backwards through a minefield successfully and keep their heads while doing it."

"In short, Selune, you're here because Starfleet knew you were that good. Your last command said so- you should read your evaluations sometime. And your scores were off the chart- you're a rare talent as a starship pilot. If you aren't careful, you may just end up sitting in one of those big chairs yourself one of these days schooling someone who is not as good as you are with those controls."

The scientist settled back and finished off her tater tots. "That's why you're here, Selune. Because we needed you... and because you earned this chance to show the galaxy what you can do. And I could be wrong, but it looks like you are off to a pretty darned good start."

The silence slowly stretched between the two of them as Selune took it all in before something deep in her mind reminded her she should say something. Awkwardly bringing herself back into the present and running a hand through her thick hair, "Well, it's not everyday that some half crazed genius comes up with a way to throw an asteroid field at someone. Would be rude not to do it right, for their sake?" she finished with a wink as the memory of thousands of small asteroids striking the pirates shields flared bright in her mind.

She shook her head slowly as the memory brought back the days events, "Still... I can't help feeling bad for them," she murmured.

"The Nausicaans?" Char asked gently.

"Their captives..." Selune took a deep breath trying to force back the emotions clawing at the back of her mind before replying to Char, "A base that size... who knows how many people could have been there."

The science officer looked down at the table. "I wish I had a good answer for you... something nice and pat and simple like 'Nausicaans never keep captives or slaves' or 'I'm sure everyone aboard that vessel was guilty of something'. I'd very much like to believe that was true, Selune, but I won't lie to you and try to convince you of that."

Charybdis looked up at her, violet eyes leveled. "But they lured us in and attacked us, and you heard him... they would have killed us all or sold us as slaves, or worse. And how many vessels had they done that to already? How more would they do it to in the future? I would have preferred we ferreted them out and freed their captives- there are a pair of Kolari women in the brig right now who might be slaves, I don't know. I'll wait for the Captain to return to decide their fate, along with Lieutenant Andurean- these are his people and his culture."

"But they did not give us that luxury. Instead, we had to fight to save our ship and our crew, and in doing so we wiped them from the stars. If it bothers you at night that maybe someone onboard that ship was innocent, all that I can offer is this... how many lives of our shipmates would it have cost to free them? And with us not given that opportunity, who made the call to destroy them all?"

Selune looked up, her misty grey eyes meeting the Vulcan's violet before she nodded a small firm nod, "I understand the situation as well as anyone else on the bridge," she paused searching for her words before stumbling on, "and for what little it means I think you made the right call. More than that, we were lost if it wasn't for your actions."

"My orders, our actions... we saved our ship today. But the responsibility is mine... so you sleep well knowing that as a Starfleet officer you did your duty, and upheld your oath today. Our shipmates will go on to explore strange new worlds, and those raiders won't bother anyone ever again. You did what was right- you followed just and lawful orders, Lieutenant... be proud of that."

The emotional Vulcan raised her cup once more. "For the greater good."

Selune paused again before sighing then matching the toast she raised her cup, "For the greater good," she quietly echoed.

 

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