Not Pleased

Posted on Fri Apr 15th, 2011 @ 6:18pm by Lieutenant Lianna Vanders & Captain Benjamin Byrne

Mission: Kingdom Come
Location: Captain's Ready Room
Timeline: Backpost - Shortly after end of 'Bug-Eyed Bogies'

Li approached the Captain's Ready Room, while trying to control her anger, and pressed the doorchime.

"Come," Benjamin said, dropping a piece of loose bulkhead that he had found lying on top of his desk onto the floor next to it, trying half-heartedly to clear a working space until the engineers had time to deal with the damage the room had taken.

Li entered and spoke, "Captain, what the hell dose Starfleet think they're doing?"

Frowning, Byrne turned to his chief of security. "What do you mean, Lieutenant?" Benjamin wasn't aware of anything new coming from Starfleet, at least not onto the Endeavour; long-range communications were still offline, as a result of his patching of the array to send out their distress signal.

"I order my people to sweep the ship and shoot any of those bug-eyed bastards, in order to find some scientists!! Hovering over one of them. With orders from some damn Commodore, telling them to take them away for study!!" Li stated. "With all due respect Sir, we've spent the last seventy-four hours being slaughtered by them, and now they want to study them?!?" Li noted. "They should all be shot dead!!!"

"The orders to put as many of the creatures as we can into stasis was my order, Lieutenant," Benjamin replied, his voice becoming more steely. In the short time the woman had been on the ship, he'd learnt that a curt tone was often the best, indeed sometimes the only way to get through to her. "The creatures are unknown to Starfleet, and further study of them is necessary to better understand them, and devise better methods to protect us from any further outbreaks."

Li sat down. "You don't know how mean these things are. What if another intelligence begins influencing them, they'll begin slaughtering people again, and next time, we may not be able to contain it."

"I was here, Lieutenant!" Benjamin reminded her, watching as she took a seat uninvited while he remained standing. "I fought them with you, remember? It was my crew they attacked, no-one is closer to the issue of what to do with them than myself. But we are part of Starfleet, and you need to remember that. As a Starfleet officer, your duty is to pursue exploration and scientific discovery in a peaceful manner first and foremost. Causing death is the very last option to you. I am stretching even that mandate by ordering any more of these creatures that exceed our stasis capacity to be spaced."

He paused, allowing the emotions of anger that this particular officer always seemed to be able to stir up in him to settle down, before moving to a place behind his desk. "The creatures are brain dead. When their Queen died, it sent an intense psionic pain through the mental link the bugs shared. They have no consciousness, no higher brain functions; their brain only works in the most basic capacity required to keep the body alive. They are no threat to us anymore. Stop acting as if they're suddenly going to jump up and take off someone's head."

Li sighed, "And if another influence starts turning these things into killing machines again?"

Benjamin decided to take a different tack. "Would you not rather us be properly prepared? Armed with proper knowledge on their species, we could better defend from them in the future, if we were to come across another instance of them."

Li nodded, "This still seems like something that can blow up in front of us Sir. But alright. However, I'd like to submit some suggestions for the Containment Facility that will hold those things. It will help me sleep at night Sir."

"Well, you've got until we reach Starbase to get them written up, then you can give them directly to the new overseer for these creatures," Benjamin told her. "If that's all, you're free to go, Lieutenant."

--------------------------
Captain Benjamin J. Byrne
Commanding Officer

&

Lieutenant Lianna Vanders
Chief Tactical/Security Officer

OOC: This is a backpost