JP: Captain Addison MacKenzie & Lt. Cmdr. Alexander Brodie - Picking The Bones Out Of It - Part 1
Addison MacKenzie
((Starfleet Medical Campus, Starfleet Academy, San Francisco, Earth))
It could have been so much worse; it was horrific…but it could have been so much worse.
The facts of the situation were still coming to light but it seemed the Borg had been able to splice aspects of their technology into still developing adults - typically under twenty-five years of age - and then activated that technology remotely.
Since the moment when the Chin’toka crew began to turn he’d barely had time to consider the wider implications. It wasn’t just the ships in the fleet…it was Earth too.
His first reaction was panic - his own daughter only being twenty-four but he knew she’d been out of the system for months as part of her final year studies - some remote mapping of the ecology of the Kaminar System. Once he’d been able to get to a console he’d found an equally panicked message from her to him - worried about what might have happened at the academy.
And that was when it hit him - the average age of students at the academy was well below that.
The main academic year had finished a few weeks prior but the campus never really stopped, he knew that only too well having worked in it for the majority of the last eighteen months.
Now here he stood, his favored long field jacket keeping the early morning chill away, in the wreckage of what was once a seat of medical learning. Marks on the walls…some phaser burns…others more visceral. The morning bay fog that had drifted in made the entire facility feel like a modern day Lovecraftian nightmare.
Then, as if on cue, he heard the footsteps, slow...considered. He turned toward their direction, as the figure appeared through the fog.
MacKenzie: Hard to tell where you are if you didn’t know what you were looking at, is it?
Brodie: I wanted to see it for myself…before the crews got in and started the clean-up.
He looked at the woman, Captain Addison MacKenzie of the USS Artemis. He’d not seen her in about four years - not since she’d transferred from the Thor to become the FIrst Officer on the Resolution. The extra pip suited her, and she still had that steadfast and steely look in her eyes, but those blue eyes seemed to shimmer a little brighter today…with a touch of red around the edges.
Addison’s auburn hair, pulled back in a tight ponytail, made a swishing sound against the Starfleet field jacket. The dark crimson shoulders of the jacket were a muted contrast to the surgeon-turned-commanding officer’s vibrant hair. The surgeon, who received her training in this very facility, now stood staring at the shell of a building that was barely recognizable to her.
She picked up a tricorder from a nearby instrument tray. It’s exterior was scorched, though it was intact - one of the few things in the immediate vicinity that was. She opened it, expecting the device to spring to life, but her face fell flat when the display remained dark. Defeated, she closed the device and tossed it to the ground, where it met the metal plating with a high-pitched clink.
MacKenzie: ::flatly:: So much for that.
Brodie: ::Looking at the fallen tricorder:: I know how it feels…
MacKenzie: I’d ask how things have been, but… ::gesturing:: I think I can imagine.
He was pretty sure Addison had an almost exact idea of how he’d been. She must have felt that squared…she was a commanding officer. She was responsible for all the souls on her ship…and the Artemis was a Luna-class vessel. He’d served on one himself, the ‘Oumuamua and, while they were solid vessels they were primarily science focused explorers, they weren’t the bruisers the Akira-class ships were.
Brodie: Oh you know…surviving…literally. It’s been a very strange few days.
He pointed down the corridor.
Brodie: To think that a hundred yards that way is my office…what used to be my office at least.
The two proceeded to walk deeper into the facility. Starfleet had condemned the building, but given the latest events, Addison didn’t have any trouble convincing herself that she didn’t care whether breaking the security seal was ethical behavior. The truth was, she hadn’t spent much time on Earth since her posting on the Veritas, but now that the Artemis was here and she’d had a chance to check in on her family in Boston and ensure they’d survived the attack, she’d somehow found herself being drawn to this place.
MacKenzie: I suppose we should be thankful that there are plenty of other institutions on this planet that can provide training for young doctors. I can’t see rehabbing this building as being high on Starfleet’s priority list…
Brodie: Probably not…although if this is anything to go by we’re likely to need a lot of medical personnel…
He left out the part which included psychologists and psychiatrists to work through the inevitable scars of what happened. An entire generation, near enough, subjugated and controlled against their will. No matter how brief it was - there was no escaping that.
The two stepped through an open doorway and into one of the lecture theaters…or was it a surgical teaching room - it was hard to tell.
Brodie: I heard a rumour Crusher will be taking over anyway…can’t say I hate that, and she’s already made some strides in dealing with the genetic legacy the Borg have left us.
MacKenzie: I suppose that will cement her legacy in history…
He brushed some debris and a broken PADD of the lectern.
Brodie: To be fair, it’s not her legacy I’m concerned about…it’s Commander Serala’s.
He watched as MacKenzie turned to him - his comment was pointed and deliberately so. Serala had taken all the risk for their plan to activate the Chin’toka without authorisation. Should someone come looking for a pound of flesh then a Commander was certainly a sacrificial lamb to cover a potential conspiracy between multiple senior Captains.
True, her actions were essentially piracy…but piracy that had most certainly turned the tide. Be that as it may, he wanted to look someone in the eye when he raised it.
MacKenzie: Well, we had information the others didn’t, and had to rely on our trust in each other. I have to believe Starfleet Command will see that for what it is.
Brodie: She did…and I’m hoping her trust in you and the others was also well placed.
Addison rocked her head from side to side.
MacKenzie: All I can offer is that there’s no question in my mind… but I also don’t think I know up from down any more as far as Starfleet Command is concerned.
TBC…
---
Captain Addison MacKenzie, M.D., Ph.D., FASFS
Commanding Officer
USS Artemis-A
Captains Council Member at Large
V239601AM0
&
Lt. Cmdr. Alexander W. Brodie
Counselor
USS Chin'toka (NCC-97187)
Writer ID.: A239005BM0