Lieutenant Ras El'Heem - Flexing a new muscle Pt. 1

[Ras El'Heem]

((Deck 6, Isolation Room, USS Khitomer))

 

The room had thickened with heat, and it began to feel humid underneath his collar despite his inability to perspire. The weight of the conversation pressed onto his shoulders, souring further with each exchange between Richard and Tori. Their words carried bite and though Richard’s standoffishness towards Tori had its merits, its edge felt indecent here, especially with Tori laid out on the biobed, helpless under the glow of the monitors and completely out of her element. It wouldn’t be long until it’d escalate.

Matthews: Oh, wait, question. How many attempts at time travel did you make? Sorry, just clicked that made it sound like you had to take a few cracks at it. If you were, why the heck did you settle for using the deadly radiation method?

 

Richard’s jabs had taken on a hint of disgust he had never heard in his usual sarcasm. Ras turned his head towards him and whether Richard caught it or not, the look on Ras’s face carried a clear message, “ease up.”

 

Tori: What, a slingshot maneuver without a mathematical savant?  Try to fight through to Bajor and find the mythological time orb?  Find a friendly Q?  :: Beat :: Ras, you said it.  We're desperate.  Our resources and manpower dwindle every day.  The only thing we're rich in is Sencha.  It's everywhere in the Isles.  Emitters are easy to pick off of dead ships, no matter whose they are.  Besides, the rest of the engineering and flight control problems are easy to solve in comparison to the causality problems a Hobart Hole just swallows up... :: A long beat :: If you're willing to take the radiation.  :: A shrug :: But that's daily life in the Isles for you.

 

Ras leaned on the edge of the bed, took a deep breath filled in an attempt to dilute the cortisol that his heart was pumping around.

El'Heem: Alright. Alright. ::casting further scorn in Richard’s direction:: so, this couldn’t have been your first attempt, right?

 

Tori: We did test, but the payloads were all massless.  :: Beat :: Electronic and subspace signals only - much simpler in a lot of ways.  Maybe we could have sent a communication back in time, but would you have believed it?  Would you have acted?  Would a different crew who's never heard our names?  You're all having a hard enough time with us here in the flesh.  Can you honestly say it wouldn't have just been deleted?  :: A heavy sigh, then an unhappy murmur. :: Maybe if I knew about mom...  :: Shaking her head, cutting herself off, and speaking up again :: We spent a long time on this, found as much as we could about other attempts to change history.  As far as I can tell, a big change in history needs a big action.  We can't expect action from you if we're not willing to take it ourselves...  That's why we came.

 

His face scrunched up slightly. The logic wasn’t all that sound. Ras was a man of science, hell the entire fleet was, even if your posting didn’t spell it out. There was no need for acts of faith if even a small number of individuals were at risk. Saving lives was what Starfleet did. That was the entire job, whatever bureaucracy tinted their orders, that was it. Then again, maybe the Admiral’s perception of it had warped and Tori and Kael and all the other Free-Isles-Something-Or-Others could only remember the Federation’s retreat. Maybe they needed less to instill trust in their saviors and more to see it themselves to believe it. It spoke a great deal more about their character and conditions than it did about Starfleet.

 

Matthew: :: Turning to look away from Tori when he said :: And a chance for you to see your mom again? For Kael to see his? No judgment here for wanting that.

 

That caught him off guard, and it was below the belt enough to do his best to ignore it. And he did so in an effort to keep Tori’s short fuse from getting shorter, but his own patience was wearing thin. 

 

El'Heem: So…guerilla insurgency was your best bet? Why not go to Starfleet command with this?

 

Tori: I don't know.  The Admiral's numbers suggested Starfleet has it in their power to win right now with a decisive offensive.  Do you think you could convince Starfleet command to mobilize a fleet to Alpha Trionus?  Would they commit that fleet to fight there and keep fighting, no matter how many ships or lives it costs both sides?  It would be a bloody victory followed by tense, hateful, watchful peace, but victory and peace nonetheless.  Would it be worth the lives of your friends and officers you've never met on all those ships?  How do you weigh them against the prisoners?  Don't forget these Tholians and Sheliak hate you, and will only hate you more for every life you take - combatant or otherwise - making it all the bloodier.

 

There it was again, that rising seethe that crawled up her throat when she spoke of the Lattice Alliance, that black, living thing made of rage and memory. Ras could almost feel it radiating from her, like the heat from a burn. It clouded her judgement, muddled the sharpness of someone as smart as her. Maybe that was why their plan was so half formed. They were guided by hate, and not tact or logic. Not by a hand actually trained in evenly matched battle, but one repeatedly slapped away whenever it dared fight back. Hate was a poor architect. And she was still just a child. Albeit one who had stared too long into the machinery of war and come back with pieces of it still grinding inside of her.

 

Matthews: Yeah, sure, I play games with an admiral every Thursday night. Just let me call them up and ask for a favour, starting a war is so easy.

 

The claws were out now, and the bitter cattiness curdled into something small and mean and petty. Ras had never seen Richard hold a grudge like this. He’d misplaced his sense of proportion and gotten lost in his own thicket of anger. Hate for the travelers. Or was it time itself that he hated? For what it did to him?

 

El'Heem: ::through closed teeth with restrained annoyance:: Ensign. Easy now.

 

Matthews: :: Turning to Ras ::  Ras, you know my default setting is sarcasm, and frankly there’s not much more of a way to answer that sort of request. :: Turning back to Tori :: I thought the goal was to avoid a war. Don’t tell me you’re giving up now and just going to push for starting it earlier. Again, this time travel experiment could have just been a time travel subspace message if that was the case.

 

Childish. The whole premise. It was an oversimplification of the task before them. And Richard knew it, too. Ras saw the flicker in his eyes. Subdued fire. He was poking the bear. To illicit something out of her. It couldn’t be anything else because his words were traps.

 

Tori: Seriously, Ensign? :: Beat :: It's almost like there's a reason that isn't the plan we proposed.  You asked what else we considered, that's an option that would save lives, but you're right.  It's bad.  I never said it wasn't.  That kind of sarcastic dismissal of what I'm saying isn't helping the case you'd have listened to a message.

 

They both quarreled like…

 

El’Heem: Children…

 

Matthews: Honestly, I was guessing that was a no. Otherwise, you’d just be sitting the Khitomer up to go straight into battle. Seems counterproductive to saving your friends and family. If we’re going to do anything, I say we be sneaky about it. There’s a lot to be said for subterfuge. Because, yeah, call me a sap, but I don’t think it would be worth the lives of friends or people I don’t even know. :: He shrugged :: And I’d like to think that if I ever get taken prisoner, I’d be treated well, or as well as a prisoner could be treated. Do onto others and all that.

 

Ras raised a brow, looking at his compatriot in the corner. Was he just going to move on petulantly like he was innocent? That fake calm masking his voice…was it not hate but disgust? Still, he’d walked himself back from the ledge, and attempted to move the conversation forward. Not gracefully but how could he be upon the thin ice under his feet?

 

TAGS/TBC

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Lieutenant Ras El’Heem

Science Officer

USS Khitomer (NCC-62400)

K240106RE3