LtCmdr Jovenan – Guilt is felt most strongly by the innocent
Jovenan
((Bridge, USS Artemis))
Starfleet values the preservation of life. The rules by which its officers and enlisted operate demand them to use the least amount of force necessary to accomplish their task and to protect their lives and those of the others. Even more preferable than stunning or disabling their opponents, however, was diplomacy. Jovenan, sitting on the Captain’s chair that felt far too large for her, had tried to talk with the Orion destroyer and when that failed, ordered Ensign Cole to shoot to disable. Even when the Orions were clearly intending and attempting to kill them all, she felt regret that some of them may die because of her commands. However, the Artemis had now been rendered more vulnerable than during the entire interaction. If the fightercrafts or the transports were to reach the Artemis, the Orions had a chance to overpower them from inside and outside, not to mention what would happen if the D’Kall’s Revenge got their weapons back up. It would be a slaughter. As much as she hated the fact, Jovenan couldn’t see a way out without admitting that they were fighting for their lives in a battle, where the steady escalation of the use of force was quickly reaching its climax. Sadly, not even Starfleet could fight all their wars with kind words and a handful of less-lethal phaser shots.
Jovenan: Security to General Quarters 3, prepare to raise to General Quarters 4. Dispatch security team even to the vented areas, with appropriate protective equipment. Tactical… Shoot to destroy.
Cole: ::pivoting to the security consol:: Dispatching two manned teams across the ship, doubling those on deck 5. ::turning back to tactical:: Let’s steer this storm.
Firing proficiently, Ensign Cole managed to control the approach of the fighters. Jovenan heard the security officers enter the bridge as demanded by the alert status, but she ignored them for a while, instead watching as the Artemis phasers managed to penetrate the shields of the attacking crafts and one-by-one destroy them. Jovenan blinked rapidly as the viewscreen was lit up by the exploding crafts, engulfed in large balls of fire. Some cultures wrote stories of victories in battle, sang songs of heroic slaughter of their enemies. The Edo did not, and if they once did, they were long forgotten, but even they valued the triumph of justice over crime. Had she expected to feel something else but fear and remorse watching the crafts burn and take the pirates with them?
Cole: ::frustrated:: One transport made it through, their approaching an airlock on deck 5.
Gnai: This reads thirty boarders on the remaining transport!
Katerina 'Kat' Udesky: ::nods at Gnai:: Confirmed ::to Jovenan:: Emergency Forcefields Deck Five, Standing By.
Thirty boarders. Thirty professional Orion pirates who were likely not hijacking a ship for the first time. The Artemis defenders still had a numeral superiority, but destroying was far easier than maintaining. It hadn’t taken many people to take over the ship before, and rarely had it happened without regrettable losses. The Orions only needed to reach some of the critical areas of the ship, overpower the security posted there, and they’d be able do massive damage to the ship and its crew. One of them was the bridge.
Jovenan: Phasers, everyone. Heavy stun. Please, if you have any ideas how to stop them…
Jovenan turned to the cat on the XO’s seat. Normally, that seat would have been taken by an experienced officer, an advisor and assistant to the person on the central seat. Now, Jovenan didn’t hear a word of wisdom coming from the seat. She just saw a poor animal who might become an innocent victim of a war it didn’t understand and had no part in.
Cole: Could we use the EPS to overload the lighting where their boarding to go off like a flash bang? The disorientation might make it easier to contain them.
Gnai: That would also disorient and blind the security teams fighting them off…
A metallic sound echoed through the hull to the bridge. Jovenan figured it was the transport craft attaching itself to one of the open airlocks, forcing the connection and creating an opening for the boarders to enter. A security team would rush to the site to halt their advancement, but thirty against a team of – what, two? The first responders would be doomed. Jovenan shook the thoughts out of her mind. They had to give the defenders a chance.
Jovenan: Unless they take cover before the overload and use the opportunity to stun the confused attackers. Ensign Cole, coordinate with the security teams. Use forcefields, EPS overloads and isolation barriers to split up the attackers to manageable pockets.
Cole: Response
Braga: =/\= Security team to Bridge… Sir, I.. I don’t know what to make of this. =/\=
The security officer’s voice had a peculiar tone to it. Jovenan might have understood fear, determination, even excited frenzy at the heat of the battle, but the confusion in his voice didn’t match what she would have expected.
Jovenan: =/\= Bridge. What’s your status, security team? =/\=
Cole: Response
Katerina 'Kat' Udesky: ::tapping inputs:: Remaining Orion Fighters have bugged out ::to Jovenan:: They’ve formed up with the destroyer ::confused::
Cole: Response?
Eren th'Chaorhith: ::looking at the MSD:: Shields, eighty-one percent and rising.
Jovenan acknowledged the reports with nods while waiting for the security team to give them further information. LtJG Gnai and Ensign Tho’Bi appeared to be engaged with their respective investigations.
Tho’Bi: Woah.
Braga: =/\= We’ve managed to subdue the Orions. There were only a handful of them that were armed… Commander, I can’t exactly understand what’s being said, they’re all talking too fast… but most of these “boarders” aren’t even Orion! =/\=
… what? The transport had emerged from the Orion destroyer, carrying a party of attackers that… weren’t Orion? Had the Orions employed some other species as their mercenaries? Had the destroyer not been under the command of the Orion Syndicate after all? The report from the security team had done little but confused Jovenan as well.
Jovenan: =/\= What are they then? Security team, report, who are they? =/\= ::to bridge crew:: Check the internal sensors, see what’s happening down there.
Cole: Response
Tho’Bi: ::to Jovenan:: The probe. It wasn’t shot down.
Braga: =/\= ::background noise on comms:: Oh… Oh no. Commander, one of the aliens speaks Klingon… They’re not here to attack us at all, but prisoners that they had aboard the D’Kall’s Revenge. This is just a distraction! =/\=
Tho’Bi: ::to Jovenan:: …it hit something.
Gnai: He’s right, sir!
The bridge crew and the security team had given Jovenan two very concerning reports simultaneously, and she didn’t know which one she should concentrate on and respond to first. She wasn’t given the opportunity to consider the options first, either, as the image in the viewscreen begun to change before her eyes. For a moment, the space itself appeared to warp and ripple, until the darkness had to give way for a shining metal. Another ship appeared, also Orion by design, clean, new and deadly in appearance. The D’Kall’s Revenge had a companion after all.
Shotiri: =/\= Federation Starship Artemis, once again, you demonstrate an extraordinarily callous disregard for the lives of non-Federation individuals as you eradicated transports that were fleeing from the wanton destruction of their ship at your hands. Is this show of force supposed to intimidate the inhabitants of this system into joining your ranks, lest they suffer the same fate? ::scoff:: As defenders of neutrality, we Orions will not stand for it. The Shotiri demands you power down your phasers, and retreat from this moon. =/\=
The voice was the same that had – seemingly – spoken from the D’Kall’s Revenge. The destroyer… had it been a ruse as well, the entire ship? How much of this all was fake? The Klingons on the lower decks were real. Were… were the other transports real, or were they also ruse, and if so, did they also have…
The cat leaped away from the XO’s seat and darted away. Jovenan didn’t follow it with her gaze, instead slumping back on the chair. Her body felt heavy as the thoughts were forming in her mind. One transporter had Klingons aboard. Did the other transporters have Klingons too, those transporters the Artemis destroyed? Did… did she order the killing of innocent people?
Tho’Bi: ::nodding to the cat:: okay.
Eren th'Chaorhith: ::looking at the MSD:: Shields at eighty-four percent and rising.
Tho'Bi: Confirmed.
Innocent people. Did it matter that the information at had seemed to justify her order to shoot at the transporters, if in the end, innocent people had perished? Legally, it was all murky, there’d have to be an investigation or a court-martial to determine the course of the events; the faceless figures of the judges staring down at her were gaining shape in her mind. But regardless of the verdict, could she really continue her career, knowing what she had done? She had heard of stories, captains and commanders who had by accident or negligence had civilians or their own crew killed; even if not found guilty, those were stories of broken people. Everything around her felt fuzzy, as if the surfaces and the edges had lost cohesion, and she would slip through the seat and vanish into the darkness, yet she didn’t.
Tho'Bi and Eren th'Chaorhith: ::in unison:: Hroas shre'lexi, Hroas zash'lu'xia, Hroas lex'thu'laan.
The Andorian chant droned in Jovenan’s ears. In her mind, she had already lost everything. Her boyfriend and other friends had perished on the Moonbase, she had ruined her career, would lose her home and job on the Artemis, never again look into the mirror and see anything but a murdered staring back. If she didn’t continue, the Orion ship would rob her of her life and those of the crew. But she couldn’t possibly lead them. An option rose to her mind: declare herself emotionally compromised, remove herself from the command, and surrender the bridge to whoever was the ranking officer present. Many cultures considered it cowardice; Starfleet regulation would judge her for doing so. Still, it would have been a greater error to let the ship be destroyed or fall into the enemy hands because of her inability to lead it. Her mind wandered, and she stared the viewscreen with blank expression. Where would she even go, a criminal like her?
Gnai/Cole: Response
She just needed to know.
Jovenan: How… Lieutenant Gnai, how many people were on the other transports, and what were their species?
Gnai: Response
The figure disturbed Jovenan, and she had to support her head by pressing the fingertips of her right hand against her temple and the side of her face. She had to force herself to consider the other part of the report and pull up the readings using the interface integrated to the Captain’s chair. The lifesigns were incongruous, like copies and ghosts of a single beating heart. Silently, she pressed a few buttons to remove the inconsistent readings from Gnai’s scans. Almost all of them were fake.
Jovenan: Spoofed. The lifesigns weren’t real, the other transports didn’t have a single Klingon prisoner aboard. ::sigh:: We’ll have to figure this out later. Ensign Cole, have the security move the Klingons to quarters somewhere and confine them there. We’ll sort them out when we’re out of danger.
Cole: Response
The relief made Jovenan feel physically weak, as if her body had started to think she had managed to outrun a predator and shut down. Mentally, she was still confused, but no longer drowning in guilt or self-pity and looking for a way out for herself; she would take the Artemis with her to the end, hopefully a bright one. The Klingons, whoever they were – prisoners who took the opportunity to flee in the chaos to this one transport craft, perhaps – were the least of her worries now.
Jovenan: Ensign Tho’Bi, what did you say about the probe? What’s happening on the moon?
Tho’Bi: Response
Jovenan nodded and looked at the new Orion ship again. It would likely not go down as easily as the previous one. If – and she was again clinging onto the if – the away team had all died, then they had little reason to refuse the Orions’ order and leave the moon’s proximity. But if even one of them had survived, she’d have to make a choice between keeping on fighting, possibly losing the entire ship, and abandoning the survivors. She looked at each person on the bridge, the cat included.
Jovenan: Options, please. I should welcome your insight into what course of action gives us the best chances.
Cole/Gnai/Tho’Bi: Response
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Lieutenant Commander Jovenan
Chief Science Officer
USS Artemis-A
E239911J11