07-10-2024, 05:53 PM
==Still Security Office, Once again some time later==
==I thought to make a broadsword, for fighting on the field/
Much as I know the hammer is a nobler thing to wield.
For though us humble tradesfolk choose a quiet life/
The gods of war come to the door of the hammer and his wife.==
“Well,” Benjamin said as LCdr Rabb walked back in the room and began the laborious unpacking process, “what did you want to talk about today? Maybe discuss what they’re actually charging me with? What the prosecutors are saying?” Rabb had struck him as an intelligent woman who seemed to know her job, but he was getting a little tired of the tedious and seemingly off-topic discussions they’d been having.
“We’re getting there,” she said smoothly, sorting the padds into stacks once again. She had her hair up today, letting him see her tattoo more clearly. He wondered if she had actually been a Marine back before the corps dissolved, or if it was something different. She continued speaking before he could ask, though. “And to be frank, the prosecutors haven’t had much time to actually talk to me yet.”
Now that got his attention. “Doing what? Shouldn’t this kinda be their top priority?”
“It is,” she retorted, “but there’s enough going on with it that they don’t exactly have autonomy on the case. I did talk to them last night, for about five minutes, which mostly was him complaining that he’d been talking to practically half the departments in the Palais in addition to the brass at JAG headquarters in San Fran, and that as a result he still hadn’t had time to go through all the depositions and questionnaires his team had been gathering.”
Benjamin let out a slow whistle. He’d known it was a big issue, but here they were days later, and it was still tying up that many people and resources? How wide was this net being cast? And just how big was the hammer coming for him?
“But in the meantime,” she continued, “we’re going to keep going on our current course until such time as I get new information telling me we need to change.” Benjamin groaned and leaned back in his seat. She ignored him and continued “So today, we get to your Starfleet service.”
A padd was picked up from a rather large stack, and she started reading and summarizing. “So, sponsored to the Academy by one Captain Aitrus Colso, you were fast-tracked due to previous experience in the field.” She stopped and looked across the top of it at him. “I also see that you were enrolled in alcoholism rehabilitation as a condition of your enrollment, but your confession mentions running a still in the dorm.”
He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Yes, I did,” he said, “though the still was simply for personal use.” He stopped, but she didn’t continue, instead just crossing her arms across her stomach and tapping the padd on her hip, her look just boring into him. He cracked. “I know, I violated the conditions even then, but I had it in check, I really did. I didn’t get blackout drunk or anything like that; the schoolwork was challenging, and doing the accelerated program meant I didn’t have much room for error. It kept enough of my attention that for most of the day, I didn’t even want the drink.
“But at night…” He sighed, remembering just how dark those nights had been. “At night, I usually needed something to help quiet the thoughts careening through my head, let me sleep at all, much less in peace.” Standing, he started to pace through the cell. “I know it was wrong, and I knew then, but I didn’t… I couldn’t do it any other way.”
Rabb stood for a moment more, before nodding and bringing the padd back up. “Obviously weekends weren’t your forte either,” she continued, “as there are a few Drunk and Disorderly charges on here, though those at least dropped off after your freshman year.” Benjamin rubbed a hand sheepishly behind his neck as she kept going. “You graduated early, even from your accelerated course, and graduated with honors. I suppose that’s what happens when you stop drinking as much?”
“As much,” he repeated quietly with a huff. “But still drinking.”
“But at any rate you were shipped off to the Gettysburg,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard - though she saw her tap a note into her padd - “where you met up with one Midshipman Nathan Ramius, and became involved in a minor incident?”
At that one Benjamin chuckled. “Yes,” he said, “I immediately got quarantined and had to help my new department head interface with some 22nd century tech. Oh, and keep him from being shot as he attempted to leave the quarantine.”
Rabb chuckled, as well. “Always a good idea to keep your superiors conscious and unshot,” she agreed. “I do see here your excursion to the Pomn system happened at around this time, but we’ll just table that for now.” Benjamin raised an eyebrow, which she of course noticed. “Best to cover that when we get to the current mission and those charges, wouldn’t you say? Keep all of the relevant bits together?”
Benjamin nodded his assent. “If you say so, Commander,” he agreed. “So that would take us to Artemis?”
“It would indeed. There’s a note about a confrontation with a Mr Dayune at the commissioning ceremony, possibly involving the quartermaster?”
“You have good notes,” Benjamin said. “It wasn’t anything. At least, not anything major, and seriously that’s in your notes?”
She quirked a smile. “You’d be surprised what’s recorded these days,” she said, “and what can be dredged up when people are really looking. No incident reports or charges, obviously, but it is included as a pattern of behavior.”
Fortunately, she didn’t linger there. “Moving onto the Artemis properly now, I see you were assigned to the away team trying to recover several personnel from a survey expedition of a rogue planetoid near the old Pioneer Station.”
Benjamin shuddered, remembering revenant Borg drones, chaos below the planet’s surface, and the sheer terror he’d felt down there. “Yes, ma’am, I was.”
She looked up as she continued. “I see notes concerning some, shall we say, less than admirable behavior on your part, as well as Mr Ramius and a Lieutenant Price?”
He nodded stiffly, holding his head up through force of will rather than any actual spinal effort. “We were confronted with what was later termed ‘revenant Borg’, though they looked more like zombies to us at the time. And it was my first real taste of combat, first time face-to-face with an enemy.” He stopped, closing his eyes against the memory before the static buzz of his damn Ferengi-made eye helped him refocus and he looked at the former Marine again. “I’m not proud of my reaction, but when the Captain said to fall back, I simply broke and ran, and they came with me. Price, I think, was more panicked than I was, and though Nathan was certainly scared he at least fell back on some training to cover us. We pulled it together eventually, with the Captain’s help, though I don’t think Price was ever the same. She left shortly thereafter, I don’t know what actually happened to her.”
Rabb was quiet for a moment. “Combat and horrors like that are never easy to confront,” she said. “It’s easy for a greenie to break; what matters is what you do after that.” She let the words hang in the air for a few moments, before Benjamin nodded and she continued. “I do see that your CO did award you a commendation medal despite your initial panic, because you got back under control and managed to help the rest of the team break out fairly swiftly.”
“I did what she needed,” he said simply.
“Under great pressure and against your own reactions. Hence the medal.” She glanced back down to the padd before continuing, “Of course, after this is when the Battle of the Megasphere happened.”
That drew another shudder from Benjamin. “Yet another thing I don’t care to remember,” he said, turning towards the wall again.
“I don’t blame you there,” she said. “You were at the forefront twice, weren’t you? First leading the fighters and then on Artemis herself?” He nodded, not turning around, and she kept going. “A Cross of Gallantry, I see. Looks like you saved the ship?”
“Not everyone,” he said quietly. He couldn’t help but see the dead engineers he’d seen in the engine room, the radiation leak sneaking up on them so quickly and quietly and slaughtering them all. And then being caught, stuck inside the shielding that was deployed as he fixed it, with only the dead Vulcan chief engineer, L’Haan, for company.
“But as many as you could,” she said. “You did what you could, and at risk to yourself. Another deserved medal.”
“I’m not even sure where it is,” he said as he turned back around. “I threw it in a drawer and forgot about it.” He didn’t add that even thinking about the medal made him wonder why he was still alive when so many others weren’t.
“It’s with your other items,” she said matter-of-factly, “though it's been collected to go with your dress uniform when and if we wind up at trial.” She paced a step or two before adding, “I do note that you’ve still got the blanket L’Haan made, though, and that that one was found draped across a chair, as if it was well used.”
He didn’t respond, but she nodded as if he had and consulted the padd again. “I see here you were involved with a sting, removing several smugglers and drug traffickers from circulation and rescuing your ex-wife in the process. I also have a note that the arrests were for your old captain and his crew, all seemingly aligned with the Syndicate.”
Benjamin nodded. “Yeah, that was… that was a whole experience.” He started working at a wedding ring that was long gone, but dropped his hands. He’d finally come to peace with all of that, but it was all too easy to bring back up to mind. “I’m glad they’re in prison and that’s all behind me.”
Rabb nodded, pacing a few steps around the table as she continued. “Then you were off to the Delta Quadrant with Pathfinder. Founding the base at New Talax - helping to found that colony, in fact - and saving some reluctant Kazon from more of their own.”
Benjamin nodded, letting her gloss over the missions. The less said about the bat soup incident, the better off everyone was.
“Then back to the Federation for a classified mission at Mars, of all places,” she continued, picking up some momentum, “which seems to have been a spy hunt for what I am given to read, and then a recovery mission of a decades-old ship which turned into a rescue mission for Captain Crawford, and which you were incapacitated for most of.”
Benjamin nodded. Being exposed to some form of pathogen on the old Nebula-class ship, he sat out most of the rescue mission. The spy hunt, however, had been more interesting, though that had been more interesting from a technical perspective as he worked on Cardassian spy gear, trying to get into it to learn whatever they could.
“Which brings us up to the present,” she finished, and looked at him, arms crossed. “All in all, not a bad career, as far as these things go. Decorated and accomplished, though not unblemished.”
Benjamin let out a brief chuckle. “You can say that again.”
“Decorated and accomplished, though not unblemished,” she repeated, a devilish gleam in her eye as she turned and paced a step or two to the side of the table. “For the most part, its a career that would merit a promotion, rather than jail time.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, “I guess I ruined that one.”
“Maybe,” his lawyer replied. “We’ll just have to see how it shakes out. We’ll go over the incident in question next time.”
==And it’s sparks a’flying/
Passions strong/
I am the blacksmith singing/
The hammer and the anvil song.
—The Longest Johns, “Hammer and Anvil Song”==
==I thought to make a broadsword, for fighting on the field/
Much as I know the hammer is a nobler thing to wield.
For though us humble tradesfolk choose a quiet life/
The gods of war come to the door of the hammer and his wife.==
“Well,” Benjamin said as LCdr Rabb walked back in the room and began the laborious unpacking process, “what did you want to talk about today? Maybe discuss what they’re actually charging me with? What the prosecutors are saying?” Rabb had struck him as an intelligent woman who seemed to know her job, but he was getting a little tired of the tedious and seemingly off-topic discussions they’d been having.
“We’re getting there,” she said smoothly, sorting the padds into stacks once again. She had her hair up today, letting him see her tattoo more clearly. He wondered if she had actually been a Marine back before the corps dissolved, or if it was something different. She continued speaking before he could ask, though. “And to be frank, the prosecutors haven’t had much time to actually talk to me yet.”
Now that got his attention. “Doing what? Shouldn’t this kinda be their top priority?”
“It is,” she retorted, “but there’s enough going on with it that they don’t exactly have autonomy on the case. I did talk to them last night, for about five minutes, which mostly was him complaining that he’d been talking to practically half the departments in the Palais in addition to the brass at JAG headquarters in San Fran, and that as a result he still hadn’t had time to go through all the depositions and questionnaires his team had been gathering.”
Benjamin let out a slow whistle. He’d known it was a big issue, but here they were days later, and it was still tying up that many people and resources? How wide was this net being cast? And just how big was the hammer coming for him?
“But in the meantime,” she continued, “we’re going to keep going on our current course until such time as I get new information telling me we need to change.” Benjamin groaned and leaned back in his seat. She ignored him and continued “So today, we get to your Starfleet service.”
A padd was picked up from a rather large stack, and she started reading and summarizing. “So, sponsored to the Academy by one Captain Aitrus Colso, you were fast-tracked due to previous experience in the field.” She stopped and looked across the top of it at him. “I also see that you were enrolled in alcoholism rehabilitation as a condition of your enrollment, but your confession mentions running a still in the dorm.”
He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Yes, I did,” he said, “though the still was simply for personal use.” He stopped, but she didn’t continue, instead just crossing her arms across her stomach and tapping the padd on her hip, her look just boring into him. He cracked. “I know, I violated the conditions even then, but I had it in check, I really did. I didn’t get blackout drunk or anything like that; the schoolwork was challenging, and doing the accelerated program meant I didn’t have much room for error. It kept enough of my attention that for most of the day, I didn’t even want the drink.
“But at night…” He sighed, remembering just how dark those nights had been. “At night, I usually needed something to help quiet the thoughts careening through my head, let me sleep at all, much less in peace.” Standing, he started to pace through the cell. “I know it was wrong, and I knew then, but I didn’t… I couldn’t do it any other way.”
Rabb stood for a moment more, before nodding and bringing the padd back up. “Obviously weekends weren’t your forte either,” she continued, “as there are a few Drunk and Disorderly charges on here, though those at least dropped off after your freshman year.” Benjamin rubbed a hand sheepishly behind his neck as she kept going. “You graduated early, even from your accelerated course, and graduated with honors. I suppose that’s what happens when you stop drinking as much?”
“As much,” he repeated quietly with a huff. “But still drinking.”
“But at any rate you were shipped off to the Gettysburg,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard - though she saw her tap a note into her padd - “where you met up with one Midshipman Nathan Ramius, and became involved in a minor incident?”
At that one Benjamin chuckled. “Yes,” he said, “I immediately got quarantined and had to help my new department head interface with some 22nd century tech. Oh, and keep him from being shot as he attempted to leave the quarantine.”
Rabb chuckled, as well. “Always a good idea to keep your superiors conscious and unshot,” she agreed. “I do see here your excursion to the Pomn system happened at around this time, but we’ll just table that for now.” Benjamin raised an eyebrow, which she of course noticed. “Best to cover that when we get to the current mission and those charges, wouldn’t you say? Keep all of the relevant bits together?”
Benjamin nodded his assent. “If you say so, Commander,” he agreed. “So that would take us to Artemis?”
“It would indeed. There’s a note about a confrontation with a Mr Dayune at the commissioning ceremony, possibly involving the quartermaster?”
“You have good notes,” Benjamin said. “It wasn’t anything. At least, not anything major, and seriously that’s in your notes?”
She quirked a smile. “You’d be surprised what’s recorded these days,” she said, “and what can be dredged up when people are really looking. No incident reports or charges, obviously, but it is included as a pattern of behavior.”
Fortunately, she didn’t linger there. “Moving onto the Artemis properly now, I see you were assigned to the away team trying to recover several personnel from a survey expedition of a rogue planetoid near the old Pioneer Station.”
Benjamin shuddered, remembering revenant Borg drones, chaos below the planet’s surface, and the sheer terror he’d felt down there. “Yes, ma’am, I was.”
She looked up as she continued. “I see notes concerning some, shall we say, less than admirable behavior on your part, as well as Mr Ramius and a Lieutenant Price?”
He nodded stiffly, holding his head up through force of will rather than any actual spinal effort. “We were confronted with what was later termed ‘revenant Borg’, though they looked more like zombies to us at the time. And it was my first real taste of combat, first time face-to-face with an enemy.” He stopped, closing his eyes against the memory before the static buzz of his damn Ferengi-made eye helped him refocus and he looked at the former Marine again. “I’m not proud of my reaction, but when the Captain said to fall back, I simply broke and ran, and they came with me. Price, I think, was more panicked than I was, and though Nathan was certainly scared he at least fell back on some training to cover us. We pulled it together eventually, with the Captain’s help, though I don’t think Price was ever the same. She left shortly thereafter, I don’t know what actually happened to her.”
Rabb was quiet for a moment. “Combat and horrors like that are never easy to confront,” she said. “It’s easy for a greenie to break; what matters is what you do after that.” She let the words hang in the air for a few moments, before Benjamin nodded and she continued. “I do see that your CO did award you a commendation medal despite your initial panic, because you got back under control and managed to help the rest of the team break out fairly swiftly.”
“I did what she needed,” he said simply.
“Under great pressure and against your own reactions. Hence the medal.” She glanced back down to the padd before continuing, “Of course, after this is when the Battle of the Megasphere happened.”
That drew another shudder from Benjamin. “Yet another thing I don’t care to remember,” he said, turning towards the wall again.
“I don’t blame you there,” she said. “You were at the forefront twice, weren’t you? First leading the fighters and then on Artemis herself?” He nodded, not turning around, and she kept going. “A Cross of Gallantry, I see. Looks like you saved the ship?”
“Not everyone,” he said quietly. He couldn’t help but see the dead engineers he’d seen in the engine room, the radiation leak sneaking up on them so quickly and quietly and slaughtering them all. And then being caught, stuck inside the shielding that was deployed as he fixed it, with only the dead Vulcan chief engineer, L’Haan, for company.
“But as many as you could,” she said. “You did what you could, and at risk to yourself. Another deserved medal.”
“I’m not even sure where it is,” he said as he turned back around. “I threw it in a drawer and forgot about it.” He didn’t add that even thinking about the medal made him wonder why he was still alive when so many others weren’t.
“It’s with your other items,” she said matter-of-factly, “though it's been collected to go with your dress uniform when and if we wind up at trial.” She paced a step or two before adding, “I do note that you’ve still got the blanket L’Haan made, though, and that that one was found draped across a chair, as if it was well used.”
He didn’t respond, but she nodded as if he had and consulted the padd again. “I see here you were involved with a sting, removing several smugglers and drug traffickers from circulation and rescuing your ex-wife in the process. I also have a note that the arrests were for your old captain and his crew, all seemingly aligned with the Syndicate.”
Benjamin nodded. “Yeah, that was… that was a whole experience.” He started working at a wedding ring that was long gone, but dropped his hands. He’d finally come to peace with all of that, but it was all too easy to bring back up to mind. “I’m glad they’re in prison and that’s all behind me.”
Rabb nodded, pacing a few steps around the table as she continued. “Then you were off to the Delta Quadrant with Pathfinder. Founding the base at New Talax - helping to found that colony, in fact - and saving some reluctant Kazon from more of their own.”
Benjamin nodded, letting her gloss over the missions. The less said about the bat soup incident, the better off everyone was.
“Then back to the Federation for a classified mission at Mars, of all places,” she continued, picking up some momentum, “which seems to have been a spy hunt for what I am given to read, and then a recovery mission of a decades-old ship which turned into a rescue mission for Captain Crawford, and which you were incapacitated for most of.”
Benjamin nodded. Being exposed to some form of pathogen on the old Nebula-class ship, he sat out most of the rescue mission. The spy hunt, however, had been more interesting, though that had been more interesting from a technical perspective as he worked on Cardassian spy gear, trying to get into it to learn whatever they could.
“Which brings us up to the present,” she finished, and looked at him, arms crossed. “All in all, not a bad career, as far as these things go. Decorated and accomplished, though not unblemished.”
Benjamin let out a brief chuckle. “You can say that again.”
“Decorated and accomplished, though not unblemished,” she repeated, a devilish gleam in her eye as she turned and paced a step or two to the side of the table. “For the most part, its a career that would merit a promotion, rather than jail time.”
“Yeah, well,” he said, “I guess I ruined that one.”
“Maybe,” his lawyer replied. “We’ll just have to see how it shakes out. We’ll go over the incident in question next time.”
==And it’s sparks a’flying/
Passions strong/
I am the blacksmith singing/
The hammer and the anvil song.
—The Longest Johns, “Hammer and Anvil Song”==