Ensign Juliet Banks – The Rung Bell
Juliet Banks
((OOC: As always, this is IC only! Much love to you all. This is again largely a reaction sim, as IC Juliet is not comfortable speaking a lot in this environment or pushing it forward.))
((Conference Room, Deck 1, USS Khitomer))
The conference room was vibrating with tension. Every assertion from the Admiral and her offsiders was another stone cast into water, ripples rushing outwards and intersecting in complex interference patterns, as people reacted, looked to others for their reactions, reacted some more. Juliet could interpret almost nothing of what people might be feeling, everything being overwhelmed with tension both professional and personal.
Ayemet: You expect us to help you? Why would we do that?
Tori: Because if you don’t, you die. :: beat :: Not all of you, not all at once, but most of you soon enough. :: Beat :: Mostly pointless deaths fighting pointless battles. If you don’t like the sound of that, then open your ears.
Zerva: My hearing is just fine thank you. ::beat:: So we either help you or die? That’s not a lot of options. I have a job to do as we all do. If I am meant to die then that is because I’ve done my duty as a Starfleet Officer. Do you realize how many temporal violations just sitting here having this conversation we are all breaking?
oO And the hell of it is that that particular problem is unfixable now. Just knowing is itself a breach, since people will inevitably act differently in the wake of that knowledge. One cannot unring a bell, and so forth. Oo
Juliet gave in to the inevitable and started chewing on a nail.
Any: Response
Michaels: ::To Tori:: Miss, unless you desire to become a Cassandra... and if you do not know what that means, I am certain that Admiral Lacy can explain it... you may wish to consider the need for trust. Your male companion's... Kael is it not? I assume you were not named after Superman... Your companion's "answer" to my question has convinced me that there is a great deal you are not telling us. Whatever your reasons, it does give the impression that you do not trust us. That leaves us :: beat :: that leaves me little reason to trust you.
Ohnari: ::stern:: Lieutenant Michaels that was entirely unnecessary. Do not insult them. While this is a lot to take into account..I am sure there is a sense of urgency on their part, considering what was the timeline Admiral? A week's time? A little desperation is understandable.
Juliet’s brows gathered in confusion.
oO It… didn’t sound like Lera was insulting them? Pushing for information, yes, but she wasn’t being rude, was she? Oo
Zerva: Insult them? ::beet:: We have shown them nothing but hospitality. They have been hostile since they arrived. Especially your s… ::bitting his tongue as hard as he could, causing it to it bleed::
Charles: With respect, Lieutenant Zerva has a point. We’ve brought them on board, assigned them quarters and included them at this briefing instead of interrogating them in the Brig. We could all face consequences for breaking the Temporal Prime Directive, and they aren’t exactly being forthcoming.
Shayne / Ohnari / Kael / Tori / Admiral / Any: Response
Zerva: ::stumbling on his words:: Y-yes sir. Apolo- ::clearing his throat:: I’m sorry everyone for my outburst.
Admiral: Lera has a point. We haven't told you everything, because we—I didn't want it to cloud your judgment. Starfleet principles aren't worth much anymore, to us, any more than Napoleonic principles are worth to you. ::to Tori:: Another European conqueror, with a much better reputation.
Unbidden, Juliet’s gaze snapped to the Admiral. Starfleet principles weren’t worth much to them any more? Then why were they here? They wouldn’t get Starfleet’s people and ships – and phasers and technical expertise – without Starfleet’s principles attached.
Hobart: Might as well tell us.
Admiral: Might as well. After the raid, Khitomer and newly-promoted Commodore Shayne were tasked with organizing the search for the Alliance launching point. Khitomer, Ronin, Renown, Lowell, and Cadence were all deployed, but it was Khitomer that got lucky. Or unlucky, as it turned out.
Shayne / Any: Response
Admiral: We followed a lead to an uncharted system, just a series of letters and numbers on a star chart. They saw us before we saw them. The battle was brief. We crashed onto an L-class planet. Survivable—for a while.
Richard: :: Taking notes again :: I kind of would like more info about that. Maybe we could focus on preventing loss with this foreknowledge of how things will go. Before we jump the gun and start assassinating innocent people. :: He looked up from what he was writing down :: Because, again, just to confirm with everyone. ‘The entire facility needs to go.’ sounds an awful lot like kill them all.
Harford: It is, Richard. That’s exactly what they are suggesting.
Banks: ::softly:: Which is a war crime.
She didn’t feel any less sick with tension for having said something, but at least she’d unfrozen. Hard on the heels of the comment, a thought floated up from the turbulent waters in her mind.
The Ouachita trio had taken pains to convince them that the Tholian Quartermaster was a singular being, a unique phenomenon who had to be stopped before he could devastate the Alpha Quadrant. Arguably, that might justify breaching the Temporal Prime Directive? Juliet felt pretty uncertain on that score, but you could make the argument, at least. It was a Prime Directive for a reason, but stories abounded of captains who broke the big important rules and were hailed as heroes rather than disciplined for it.
But why did that necessitate war crimes? The same argument that potentially justified breaking the Temporal Prime Directive absolutely undermined the claim that they had to wipe out a whole facility full of unarmed prisoners of war.
It rather felt like Admiral Lacy was trying to have it both ways.
Juliet definitely didn’t feel up to raising that right now, though, given the atmosphere in the room. For starters, she wasn’t confident she could make it sound anything other than accusatory. She wasn’t entirely confident she could make the connection clear outside her head at all.
Any: Response
Admiral: Between the battle, the impact, and the nearly three weeks it took for Starfleet to find us, less than half the crew survived. Those that did were pulled off the line.
Richard: :: Looking down again :: So let's avoid what we can. Who can go over the crash, the events leading up to and after. So we can work out contingency plans? I’d be happy to drop by your holding cells to talk later if that is easier. It sounds like we will be going to the place where we crash anyway, if it’s an Alliance strong hold.
Zerva: Good suggestion, Ensign. We should cover every possibility.
Any: Response
Admiral: That was the beginning of the end. They knew what they'd taken off the board, and hit DS33 hard and fast. Within a few months, the Federation gave up all claim to the Isles. But the Alliance was never going to stop there.
Zerva: ::whispering:: Holy crap.
The Federation left the Isles… wait. Didn’t Lacy say earlier that this Tholian had conquered the quadrant? As the truth of that settled, Juliet realised she had entirely failed to give that statement the attention it warranted. And one conclusion of that- Juliet was speaking before she could think better of it.
Banks: ::addressing Lacy:: Admiral, you’ve alluded several times to no longer being in touch with Starfleet or the Federation, and just now you disavowed Starfleet principles. Of which force, then, are you an Admiral?
Truthfully, she didn’t have any particular suspicions, but it seemed like the kind of thing that ought to be on the table – since apparently everything else was.
Admiral / Any: Response
Zerva: I don’t mean to beat upon a dead horse here ::to the three:: You took a lot of risks coming here to tell us all of that to us. As was pointed out before, what if this leads us to a time paradox? One we are forced to repeat. One where the very actions of being here started this whole thing? There are many examples among the dozens of logs from other starships that this very thing has happened before.
oO There was something the Admiral said about the singularity affecting the temporal… ness of this situation – something about changes sticking? I don’t understand what she meant by that, or at least how it contrasts with a normal time travel situation, if there is such a thing. I don’t think I want to ask, though; it seems like more information that none of us should actually be in possession of. Oo
Charles: The Temporal Prime Directive has already been violated six ways to Sunday. ::glares at the interlopers:: Whether or not we believe them, or trust their motives, the cat is out of the bag now.
Any: Response
Zerva: I would rather not know my own fate in your timeline, thank you.
Any: Response
Lieutenant Matthews sighed and addressed the Captain.
Charles: Captain? With respect, I think this briefing should end, Sir. We need time to evaluate the information we have been given and discuss the ramifications for our own, present timeline, crew members.
Juliet found herself nodding in agreement.
Shayne / Any: Response
Charles: We need to discuss it, for us, for Starfleet now. Not for them, Captain, and I feel having all three of them here is an unstable element in a risky and unpredictable situation. I hate to have to point it out but several of your higher ranking staff are… coming across as emotionally compromised.
Harford: To that end, Sir, I would like to review and possibly redo some of the scans taken upon their arrival. ::looks at Ohnari almost apologetically:: I don’t want to call anyone’s professionalism into question, Sir, but I do think a member of the Medical team who has not just met their son should be given the chance to confirm Doctor Ohnari’s assessment.
Juliet quietly winced at the situation, feeling for Talia, Amelia and Commander Dewitt all over again. To be confronted with your potential children from the future made real in your present, and to have to be on the other side of a divide from them… that was a lot to ask of anyone. And Lieutenant Dewitt, for that matter – Juliet had never properly met her, but she really didn’t look like she was having a good time at all.
Shayne / Kael / Ohnari / Any: Response
Charles: Are you hiding four pips on those clothes of yours? I said Captain, not Kael.
And… back to tension strangling the room.
Charles: You can’t be considering this so-called… plan, Sir? It’s embarrassing that this is the best they could come up with.
Kael: Response
Charles: Kid, I will slap you back to the future myself.
Shayne / Kael / Any: Response
Harford: Captain, if I may? ::pause:: Lieutenant Matthews isn’t wrong, Sir. Surely there is an alternative. Please give us, your crew, the chance to find one. I have to believe that you wouldn’t have gathered us all around this table if you weren’t looking for solutions and an open discussion.
Juliet found herself appreciating the doctor’s efforts at de-escalation.
Shayne / Admiral / Any: Response
Harford: From what we’ve just been told, Starfleet was unaware and taken by surprise. That means that just giving us this information has already altered things. We have the chance to get ahead of whatever is coming and with an advantage that we didn’t have before. Which means that it is no longer certain that things will turn out the way they did for your future.
And back to chewing on a nail again. There was simply no way out of this bind that Juliet could see. Had the Khitomer not been involved in the upcoming events they now had knowledge of, it wouldn’t matter; they could merely refrain from intervening. But given that they knew details about their own futures, that was it, it was a done deal. Anything from this point forward was changing the timeline, because their selves in the past of the Ouachita Trio hadn’t had any of this knowledge.
Hell, just the existence of the singularity being open and connecting present and future was probably enough to mean that irrevocable change had already happened. Was that sufficient justification to throw restraint to the wind and act however they pleased? Or was this… more like a pair of tights; the hole’s there and you can’t mend it, but if you don’t tug on the fabric too hard you won’t get a ladder?
What a mess.
Shayne / Admiral / Any: Response
Harford: I don’t know what the solution is, but I know that I cannot condone mass murder. I took an oath to do no harm, and at the end of it all, I am a Doctor first. I won’t be a part of it. I’ll stay in Sickbay, I’ll patch you up, but if their plan is the one we're going with, I’d rather turn in my pips.
Juliet caught her breath as a tiny flame kindled, a spark caught in tinder. She didn’t realise she was nodding in agreement.
Shayne / Admiral / Any: Response
Tag / TBC
((OOC: dialect clarification: “ladder in your tights” = “run in your stockings”.))
Ensign Juliet Banks
Ops/Comms Officer
USS Khitomer – NCC62400
K240206JB1