| Author | Message | ||
     Captain Daren |
"This is Not My Beautiful House" ---------- The turbolift doors opened and Captain Daren stepped onto the Bridge on Deck Nine. Several stations had been undergoing repairs for the last few days, but much of that was done now. Nearly every affected station, including the Helm console had to have its command pathways restructured in order to prevent a possible recurrence of the event that injured Lieutenant D’Rall so severely. As he looked at the new consoles, Daren only saw scars. Scars to very deep old wounds that would likely never heal. He wondered what, if anything, continued to linger beneath the surface. “Cap’n on Deck!”, someone from a far off station announced. Commander Velorna Tal stepped up to him from the Command Dais and handed him a PADD. “Sir.” Daren took it but continued staring at his Executive Officer. She too was a scar. Deeper than anything he had encountered before. A scar of betrayal stretched across the working relationship they shared. He looked deep into her eyes and saw that they burned with Romulan fury. He finally took his eyes off her to glance at the PADD she had given him. “I’m sorry, sir.” Tal managed to utter as he read. “Hmm?” Daren continued to read. “I’m sorry, that I’ll have to kill you again!” When Daren looked up in surprise Tal again had a PPP to his chest. She poked him with it causing him to fall back, and she fired center mass… Daren gasped for what he felt like would be his last breath, and was stirred awake. The stars of M64 filled his bedroom with their murky light. These stars never did seem to shine as bright as those he was used to sleeping under in the Milky Way. He sneered at them when he realized he had only been dreaming. The situation with Commander Tal was beginning to weigh heavy on his soul. For once, he really had no idea what to do. She had been subverted time after time before his eyes. She had been used against him and others in order to further an alien struggle for control of all reality. He was unsure how to proceed, but he needed to make a decision. In the direct aftermath of the loops he had decided to keep Tal on a restricted level of duty, maintaining her current rank and position as Executive Officer. He wrestled with the possibility that she had been cosmically compromised. The future was uncertain, and there was every possibility she could be subverted against him again. Perhaps next time they would be unable to simply undo the resulting catastrophe. As he went about his normal routine before reporting to the Bridge for the first time that day, Daren weighed the problem. He realized there was no conceivable way he could hold Commander Tal responsible for her actions during the loops. It was the classic problem of killing the messenger. Tal was not in control of her actions, and that much was clear to him. He fixed the commbadge to his chest, and checked its placement in the nearby mirror. It was time to take a gamble, again. He adjusted the Starfleet emblem and buffed out a smudged area of the gold trim. Commander Tal would be completely reinstated, with the Captain’s apologies. The future, their future, was increasingly uncertain, but there could be no more second-guesses. He needed his Executive Officer, and there would not be any further replacements. If whatever thread-spanning entities decided to come back, there was nearly nothing he could do to stop it anyway. He sure as hell wasn’t going to let them plan the outline of his Senior Staff. Daren tapped the newly shined commbadge: “Daren to Commander Tal, meet me in my Ready Room in 45 minutes…” ---------------- Captain William Daren Commanding Officer (IC) USS Coronado NCC-97901 Sim Executive Officer http://www.jestertrek.com/coro2400/bodies/depts/command.html#co |