Lt. JG Alix Harford - A Doctor’s Dilemma Pt 2: The Burden of Knowing
Meri
((Conference Room, Deck One, USS Khitomer))
oO What is fair about this? No one asked us if we were alright with meeting you. Oo
Luckily Doctor Harford had gotten much better at keeping her inside thoughts inside, or she was still anxious in a crowded room. Either way, no one could hear her disgruntled mental comments and that was just fine with her. She did wonder how many of the others felt the same though. Charles for certain, Ayemet judging her reaction, but who else?
Admiral: We are your legacy. I'm Imogen Lacy, who you all call “Ginny.” Forty years from now, give or take, nobody does that anymore. This is Tori Semara, my best science expert, carrying on the work of her mother, Amelia. This is Kael Ohnari-Dewitt, our… technical specialist. ::clears throat:: We've come to hold back the tide in the war against the Alliance.
Ayemet: Not your responsibility. You can’t just go around changing history to a version that suits you. :: beat :: More sympathetically: I know something of the Sheliak, but what will happen will happen. WE can’t change history to our liking. How many misguided people have tried to do that?
Zerva: ::raising a brow:: I concur with the Counselor.
Hobart: A lot of folks want to make history. We only call them misguided when they fail.
Charles: With respect, Sir, making history is one thing. Changing history is something else entirely.
Harford: It isn’t even history for us, yet. It’s all of our futures you're attempting to change.
It felt pointless, like her voice was just one of many, but how long could she sit there and say nothing at all?
Shayne / Korras / Any: Response
Tori: This isn’t about likes and dislikes. This is about lives. More than you can imagine.
And there it was again, the Physician’s oath. The imperative that drove her personally and professionally. The sanctity of life. But where exactly did her purview extend to? Didn’t she have a duty first to the lives of those she served with, the ones directly in front of her? There was more than one reason she didn’t fancy herself a soldier. Alix could face a lot of gruesome things, but the choice to put some at risk to save others? It was one she would have to wrestle with and so she resigned herself to listen and to take cues from those around her whom she trusted.
Dewitt: ::at Tori:: Have we lost the Isles?
Tori: Venthis, Emisa III, Theta 122… I’ve lost track. Planets they can’t even use. Simply, they hate carbon life. :: Beat :: We lost all contact with Starfleet over a year ago, and with Alliance ships crawling over the Isles, we have no reason to believe they haven’t kept pushing further.
Kael: Captain. It’s not just the Isles. That’s just the starting point of what happens. The Admiral and Tori :pause: They have a plan that could change all of that.
Shayne / Korras / Any: Response
Admiral: The Lattice Alliance was, at this moment, losing. It may not feel like it to you, but they are. They were spread too thin, and cracks were forming. I saw classified reports that units were beginning to turn on each other. That's why, a week from now, they're going to raid a POW camp on Alpha Trionus II.
Zerva: ::beet:: What?!
Richard: :: Pulling out his tricorder and opening a notes app :: POW camp, Alpha Trionus two.
Ayemet: To what purpose?
Ohnari: A week?! That is all the time we have before...what, all out invasion?
Zerva: A week is barely enough time to prepare.
Charles: A week is no time to prepare. I mean, how long would it even take us to get there? Let alone prepare a defence plan.
A heavy weight began to settle into the core of Alix’s being. War. And a week. Turning tides. POWs. None of this was something she was built to face. Stitching wounds, packing guts, transfusing blood; the aftermath of battles, that she could face, but she did not envy those like Captain Shayne, or Charles, those whose job it was to think tactically and make the big decisions about where to fight and who. Her head swam as she focused on the information they were being given.
Shayne / Korras / Any: Response
Admiral: They used overwhelming force, and it took six months before Starfleet figured out where they launched from. No survivors, orbital defenses completely destroyed. High ranking military official was the target, but that wasn't what mattered.
Ayemet: You can’t be serious.
Hobart: Lieutenant.
Dewitt: What matters then, Ens… Gin… ::quietly:: Admiral?
The way Chief Dewitt tripped over his own words caught Alix off guard. She had expected him to be emotional with regards to his own child, but had apparently failed to take into consideration that this Admiral might be someone important to him. If he was finding it hard to separate the woman in front of him from the woman who was somewhere on the Khitomer doing her job, likely unaware, then who else might be emotionally attached to Ginny? Who else might be swayed by the words of a stranger because of their fondness for a woman who hadn’t yet become her? The questions never ceased and they were beginning to be too much for Alix to reconcile.
Admiral: A lowly quartermaster, a Tholian. Captured at the Siege of DS33, he proved to be a… unifying and stabilizing figure. Eventually, Supreme Leader. Unified the alliance, and conquered the Quadrant within a decade.
Zerva: From a year ago on Frontier Day?
El’Heem: Great man theory? You want us to kill baby Hitler?
Michaels: History is full of examples where a single strong leader dies and another rises up to take their place.
Richard: Even if you took the leader out before they rose to power. You haven’t done anything to stop the situations that are occurring right now to have set them up. Who is to say someone else doesn’t slot right into place. If assassination is your goal here I mean.
Zerva: It would be a derelict of my duties as a security officer if I didn’t bring this up. We were all taught about this at the Academy. We’ve all heard about the Constitution-class starship Captain who had at least 17 violations alone. Not to mention the Intrepid-class starship that first traveled in the Delta Quadrant with their own share of time travel problems and that's just two captains.
Charles: We’re already breaking the Temporal Prime Directive by discussing this. We were from the minute we let them onto the ship, or out of the Shuttlebay.
And there was another elephant in the room addressed directly. Starfleet had regulations about this very situation, and with reason. In medicine, the rules existed to prevent malpractice, unnecessary risk, and a host of other moral conundrums so that the integrity of medicine wasn’t subject to the whims of every nut job with a scalpel. This was no different.
Any: Response
Tori: Sorry - who’s Hitler?
Hobart: Somebody worth strangling in the crib.
Any: Response
Ayemet : Hitler was a 20th century dictator who was the leader of Germany on Earth. The war against him cost millions of lives.
El’Heem: What made ::pausing:: uhh makes this…Tholian so formidable?
Tori: He speaks fluent Sheliak.
Zerva: ::raising a brow:: How is that possible?
Any: Response?
Part of Alix, the snarky, sarcastic, bratty part, considered explaining linguistics and neural pathways to the Security Officer, but she realized that was her own desire to cope and left his rhetorical question on the table. Instead, she spoke up with her own question. Looking at the woman who had unnervingly similar features to her friend and neighbor, Alix put on her most professional smile and kept her voice even.
Harford: More importantly, why is that important?
Tori: You have to understand that, at this time, no member of any species has ever learned the Sheliak language. Even telepaths can’t understand them. It's part of what their sense of superiority is built on. But Tholians being imprisoned side-by-side with Sheliak created a unique environment for one to learn the language. His book will be the first published in their language by an alien to their culture. He will be the first non-Sheliak to deliver addresses in the language. Factor in his radicalization during his imprisonment, and he’s going to become a force of uniting hatred the likes of which this quadrant has never seen.
So it was less about the language barrier and more about the ability to bridge the gap between two nearly unstoppable forces whose hatred for the Federation rivaled one another. See? She did read the briefings on the war. She just didn’t retain most of them.
Tori: Tholian and Sheliak units don’t combine outside of Federation prison. It’s possible there will never be another like him.
Michaels: That is possible. But, it is not impossible that there will be several more like him. Based on what you said, every Tholian or Sheliak in that prison is a candidate.
Ohnari: While I can understand how dangerous an extremely charismatic opportunist can be...how are we certain that this particular Tholian is the linchpin?
Admiral: Because of the dramatic change in fortune upon its rise. The Alliance simply… got better at choosing battles, supplying its forces.
Zerva: ::muttering mostly to himself:: And they weren’t already?
Any: Response?
Michaels: I have a question. ::beat:: A two part question. ::beat:: I confess that I do not understand the equations and engineering around time travel or inter-multiverse travel. I will concede that your version of the Ouachita is capable of both. You could have travelled to anywhere in space and time. Why did you pick this place, in a nebula that makes detection difficult, and this time? If the quartermaster is the critical individual, why not travel to DS33 during the siege, where there were numerous dead Tholians, and kill him there?
Kael: Traveling through time ain't like dusting crops! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova, and that'd end our trip real quick, wouldn't it?
Alix glanced to her right as Charles shifted and caught the way he looked at Kael Ohnari-Dewitt. He didn’t trust him, or didn’t like him, or both. Then again, maybe he felt the same disdain for the extremely perilous situation that she did. It was as if they were all caught in a web spun of glass; a forceful thrum on the wrong strand and it would all shatter around them. A fitful tug on another, and it might swallow them whole.
Zerva: ::shifts in his seat muttering:: Like we're supposed to know you can travel back in time in less than 12 seconds.
Ohnari: ::snapping:: Kael. Give the Lieutenant some grace, we're all just trying to come to terms with...::her hands gestured to the trio:: and how it came to pass.
There it was, that particular tone was one Alix was familiar with from her own mother. This was precisely what worried her the most. She both hated the thought that Talia was internally twisted in knots over meeting her own child, and also fearful of the impact it might have on her decision making. How could she trust the most Senior Medical Officer on board to be thinking clearly if she was being guided by maternal instinct? Would Doctor Ohnari be able to step out of her own feelings to put the safety of the crew first? Alix knew she probably wouldn't be if the child had her father’s eyes or her sister’s auburn locks. Biology was too hard wired for that. Anthropologically speaking, it's what kept babies from being abandoned, an overwhelming urge to protect that piece of yourself made new in the next generation.
Banks: To clarify: you’re saying that your ability to travel back in time is constrained, and there are only certain places or times you can successfully travel to?
Tori: Yes.
Admiral: The singularity we created in the nebula. It’s the only way any of this works. It limits where and when we can go. ::beat:: It also pins the timeline together. Any changes made before the singularity collapses in the next fifty-two years will stick. ::a glance to Tori:: Or so I'm told.
Dewitt: So what is the exact plan, then, Ginny?
Admiral: You misunderstand. It's not just the one I want to kill. The entire facility needs to go. It's the only way to stop the raid for sure.
Richard: :: Head tilting to the side in confusion :: I really hope you mean ‘evacuate the facility’ and not ‘destroy it all’ because the later is such a stupid plan.
Zerva: I have some security concerns regarding that. What you’re proposing is like using an entire can of bug spray just for one fly.