XO to the Ready Room

Posted on Sat Oct 12th, 2024 @ 2:41pm by Captain Rylan Gray & Lieutenant Commander Harrison Knox

2,868 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: The Quasinon Gambit
Location: Captain's Ready Room, Deck 1, USS Thunderbird
Timeline: MD003 - 1500

After reviewing the data accumulated by the away team, including their communication logs, Rylan requested his First Officer to join him in his Ready Room. He sat behind his desk, cup of Yorkshire tea cradled between his hands and Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata playing softly in the background, he was reading through the materials forwarded to him by Starfleet Command; the mission was relatively straightforward, after a stop at Starbase 821 to pick up personnel, they'd be heading onto their next assignment. One that, hopefully, had a better result than the last one.

The last thing Knox had wanted after getting checked out by medical and cleared for duty after the abysmal away mission was to have to look into his Commanding Officer's eyes, meet the gaze of his friend, and admit to having failed him. He stood outside Rylan's Ready Room and straightened his uniform with a swift tug before pressing the door chime. Does this get any easier? thought Knox. The answer was a reverberating and resounding no. His inner voice was quick to remind him that the mission had failed, but all members of the away team made it back alive. This job did get worse, today he was fortunate with failure.

Still, that offered him very little comfort as he strolled cautiously into the Ready Room. He waited until the doors were squarely closed behind him. "Well, that was like kissing a dead mudcat," he prefaced and approached Rylan. "Tell me your first away mission as XO went tits up on a Tuesday too," he added seeking some comfort.

"Tell me what happened," Rylan said as he rose from his seat, tea in hand, and moved over to the armchair on a raised platform to the left of his desk. He gestured for his First Officer to take the sofa. "You want anything to drink?"

"Not nearly anything strong enough that I can have while on duty," Knox stated. "Tea will be fine. Whatever you'd recommend," he added as he prepared to answer the more important question that had been presented to him.

What happened it echoed in his mind. "Where the hell do I even start?" He shook his head in disbelief and took a seat on the sofa. "I tried to stick to the mission, keep focus on objectives. We just were met with obstacle after obstacle. It caused delays, and I'm not sure. Maybe if I were more reckless we would have made better timing."

Rylan ordered a second cup of Yorkshire tea with a teaspoon of sugar; once it was ready, he brought it over to Knox. "And the reason you didn't attempt to make contact with the Bajorans once you were on the planet," he asked as he sat in the armchair and picked up his own cup of tea. The expression on his face, neutral enough to those that didn't know him well, spoke of a more than casual interest.

"If you were Bajoran, Ry, how would you react to Starfleet Officers notifying you that they were closing in on your position in a Cardassian facility that let's face it, the Bajorans were not there to take in the nostalgia of the facility. Would you have remained still and waited for the Federation to reach you," Knox said crossing his arms.

He looked at his friend who in this case was also his Commanding Officer. "What was it you always said...something about not tipping your hand?" Harrison's expression was mixed. "They had the place like a mine field, a maze of dangerous. Letting them know we were there too early could have spooked them. Worse case? Gave them time to set up an ambush."

"What they wanted," Rylan said, taking in the crossed arms, the defensive posture, "was their freedom. They were slaves. I suspect, given how they escaped, they were protecting that ship they found from the Cardassians. What I expected from you was an attempt at contact. Let them know that you were there to help, render aid, and that our ship was there to protect them while they did so."

Knox admired and respected Rylan both as a friend and in the moment at his commanding officer, but there was a certain discomfort worn into the expression on his face. A little easier said that done thought Knox. "You know I am not a fan of the Cardassians or what they did to those people, for decades, Rylan. Decades of oppression. I wanted it to be successful and I wanted to make contact with them, but we were already in waist deep."

Lieutenant Commander Harrison Knox made a fist and plowed it into his other open hand like a baseball zipping through the air into a catcher's mitt. "It's the god damn politics of it, Ry. Was it the Bajorans that reached out to us to protect the ship they found? No. No, it was not. We were there because of Gul Zelar and their Bajoran rodent problem...no offense to the Bajorans, but that seemed to be how the Gul and the Cardassians were viewing the situation."

"We were not there to render aid to the Bajorans, to help them in whatever they were doing. Protect them? Maybe. Perhaps, protect them with our presence. If we did not take on that mission, the Cardassians would have handled it themselves, and given their history...it would have been a massacre. We aren't the heroes of this perverted period of time. We're pawns in a game of chess. I may have screwed things up down there, failed you and failed the mission, but I'm not looking to be the catalyst to something worse. We can't be caught do anything against the Cardassians, spying on them, defending Bajorans, none of it."

"The Cardassians requested our aid according to treaty guidelines," Rylan said. "I think they would have preferred we not be involved at all. Those guidelines presented us with an opportunity to render aid, to attempt contact, with a people who have no reason whatsoever to trust us. Our failure to do so, to even speak to them, lost us an opportunity, a chance to take a step on a new path between the Federation and ourselves." Rylan sighed as he looked at Knox. "Don't let personal feelings get in the way. However the Cardassians might view the situation, that's not necessary how 'we' will view that same situation. We take advantage of the opportunities presented but we keep Federation goals in mind. No one else's."

Rylan hesitated a moment, caught by something that Knox said, and added, "We cannot, under any circumstances, spy on the Cardassians. It's tempting, I'm sure, but the treaty needs to happen, however we feel about it personally."

"Then you may not want to know that we took some files," Knox relied. "Not because of how I or any of us felt personally about the Cardassians. I know. You are not going to be pleased one bit about this, but something was not right down there. Something was off, and I could not accept that mission being a complete and utter failure." It was not Knox that had wanted to take the files nor his idea, but he did not prevent it from happening and he was not going to throw any of the away team under the shuttle. My team, my responsibility he had told himself. "We could destroy what was taken, but I know that does not excuse the action of taking them."

"So, are you saying that because you couldn't accept the mission being a failure and based on the slimmest of hunches, you chose to disregard the treaty and risk war with the Cardassians? Am I understanding you correctly," Rylan asked.

Knox felt the need to stretch his legs by walking a bit and leaning his back against a nearby bulkhead. "You know what I can't accept? Deception. Whether it be the Bajorans or the Cardassians, something was wrong there. I don't want to risk a war, Ry. I promise you that. I'm not trying to disregard a treaty."

"Did you have any evidence of wrong-doing, other than a hunch," Rylan asked.

"We've known each other for a while, a good while. Captain Walsh always taught us to trust our instincts especially when things feel off and going in blind," replied Knox. "The evidence is probably in those files. Did we have probable cause... I'm not sure, but I did not enjoy the death trap we were walking into."

Rylan sighed, fingertips pressed together as he leaned back in his seat and thought about the issue. The defensiveness was coming through, certainly, as was the lack of direct answers to his questions. The Bajorans set up booby-traps, probably as a defensive measure, while they prepared their own means of escape. Given that the complex was set to be destroyed, if they knew about that, the move made sense. Dangerous for the away team to proceed without contact but there was always negotiation. Contact. And that was the first issue. Failure to contact the Bajorans once they where on planet and past the ion storm interference. The second point, and disturbing to his mind, was the notion that a hunch and the notion that it would somehow make up for a failed mission, was enough reason to steal information from the complex. If the Cardassians found out, this could be problematic.

"That place was targeted by the Bajorans for a reason, Ry. Lay everything you know about the Cardassians, the Bajorans, and the Occupation out on the table" stated Knox. He wanted to be a good First Officer, but he knew he had put his Commanding Officer in a tough situation, but Knox had been sitting on information he received elsewhere, and that had a pull on his loyalties.

He looked at Rylan. "Bajorans have used guerilla warfare tactics during the Occupation and they are continuing to do so. That place had some sort of significance to be a target. There was pain and trauma in the air there."

Rylan fixed his friend with a hard look. "It was a mining operation and they were slaves the Cardassians 'forgot' to liberate. It wasn't a target and nothing suspicious was going in. They were slaves that didn't trust the Cardassians to rescue them. The facility was being destroyed because they were done with it. Just what did you think they were doing out here in the middle of nowhere?"

Now the look of frustration on Knox's face changed transitioning to a state of confusion. What the hell have I gotten us into he thought as he pulled his back off the bulkhead and cocked his head a bit. "MyCaptain said there would be more than meets that eye, that we needed to dig deeper for answers, not to trust the spoonheads on this. I had reached out to him, Ry. I wouldn't have done nothing stupid down there without reason. You know me. The Captain said she trusted me to find what we needed to expose the truth."

"I have no idea what you are talking about," Rylan said. But the deeper part of what Knox had said slid through his awareness. "What captain?"

"DeVane, Rylan, DeVane," shouted Knox as if the name was a cuss word. "Josephine DeVane. She was my mentor before Captain's Walsh. She introduced me to my Maddie" said Knox referring to his deceased wife.

He took a deep breath and tried to lower his voice. "When I got married my Ma and Pa weren't there, but Captain DeVane walked me down the aisle. She's the one that sponsored me, got me into Officer Training School. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for her."

Knox shook his head in disbelief. "Why don't you know any of this? Why did she tell me and not tell you?" Knox was more than confused now, he was being made to look like a fool and a bad officer. "This doesn't make a lick of sense," he added.

"No, it doesn't," Rylan said quietly. "Why would you contact this Captain Devane? And more importantly, when her information contradicted what I told you, why didn't you talk to me?"

Knox sucked his teeth for a moment, an audible noise as he was uncomfortable with replying. "She's always been like a mother to me. I served under her command for a while, Ry. At first I wanted advice but the advice led to her giving me information," explained Knox. "I trust the Captain. She has years of command experience, she's dealt with the Cardassians before. I thought the Captain believed in me, that I could do this."

"I see," Rylan said quietly and he did. Trust, it would seem, had to be earned even among friends but more importantly, Possum felt fine with discussing ship's business with this DeVane and following that advice rather than his own orders. This was disturbing both as a precedent for their future interactions and as an indication of where his former commanding officer's thoughts were. He took the time to think it through before he answered. Questions and possibilities lined up in his mind for later examination but first, to deal with Harrison Knox.

"She gave you bad advice," Rylan said. "And I'll take that up with her at a later date. But the point here is that the mistakes are yours. You failed to make contact with the Bajorans and you risked an incident with the Cardassians based on her erroneous read of the situation. You failed in your duty to me as your commanding officer because the first thing you should have done is come to me with her suspicions."

"You are not wrong, Ry, and I know I messed up. I really thought she would have read you in on her suspicions, but I should have gone to you to compare notes regardless." Knox looked at him and gave a firm nod. "I failed you. I don't blame you for wanting to find another first officer, but we know each other. You should know that I don't make the same mistakes twice."

"Your loyalties are divided," Rylan said. He straightened in his seat, pushing down the hurt and the concern, and did his duty. "I thought you were ready to be my First Officer but clearly, you're not. You need to take the time to figure things out for yourself. Who you trust. Where you want to serve. Who knows? Maybe you'd be happier on another ship. But the way it stands, I don't trust you and the regs are clear on this. Effective immediately, I am reducing you to Second Officer. At this point, its temporary, so that you can take the time you need to sort things out. But let's be clear. This can't happen again. If it does, I will have no choice but to remove you from the ship."

"It won't happen again" Knox replied and he was quick with that response. "I just want answers. I want to know why she said what she said, and I take responsibility for what happened. The away team was under my command. I shoulder what was done" added Knox. He stood at attention. "Captain, for what it is worth, I do trust you. I just let history get in the way of that trust."

"As do I," Rylan said. "But that's something we will do. Not you alone. Are clear on that?"

"Crystal, Ry," Knox said. He did want to get to the bottom of things, but doing it Rylan's way was probably for the best.

"And one other thing. I never want to hear you say 'spoonhead' again. All species this ship encounters will be treated with respect."

He nodded. Knox sometimes let his mouth get the better of him. "Diplomacy was always your strong suit. I'm sorry. I'll do better, Ry."

"I hope so," Rylan said quietly and while there was compassion in his voice, his expression gave hint to the bleakness within. "Computer, Lieutenant Commander Harrison Knox has been removed from the position of First Officer and will now serve as Second Officer."

"Noted," the computer responded. "Records have been updated. Lieutenant Commander Harrison Knox is now Second Officer for the USS Thunderbird."

"Please let the Bridge know that we're to set course for Starbase 10 immediately. You are dismissed."

Knox did not wince, did not permit the action to show the deep hurt he felt. He knew what was happening was protocol. It needed to happen. "Aye Captain" said Knox turning on his heels and departing the Ready Room back down to Second Officer.

Rylan waited until the door closed and a few beats after that, before reaching out through the comm system. "Trask," he said, "I need a half hour. Keep everyone out unless its an emergency situation." He waited for acknowledgement and then walked up to the seating area where he dropped heavily onto the sofa, leaned back, and closed his eyes.

A Post By

Captain Rylan Gray
Commanding Officer
USS Thunderbird

and

Lieutenant Commander Harrison Knox
Second Officer
USS Thunderbird

 

RSS Feed