A wolf in sheep’s clothing Part 13

Posted on Thu May 23rd, 2024 @ 8:05pm by Lieutenant Evelyn Steele & Commodore Finchley Kerr

Mission: The missions never over.
Location: Captain’s Ready Room

Eve arrived on the bridge carrying a PADD in her hand, but not the PADD that Finchley was going to be expecting. Making her way over to his Ready Room she pressed the door chime waiting until she heard a call to enter. Stepping in she walked across to his desk.

“Captain...” She placed the PADD down on the desk. “That’s not what you’re expecting. It’s my full evaluation of you, do with it as you please. I doubt very much if Admiral Brown will provide me with the information he promised me anyway.”

Finchley sat in his chair, which was parallel to his desk, staring at the blank wall in front of him.

"Why don't you just tell me what it says Lieutenant" he replied in a monotone voice.

“If you insist Captain” Eve nodded. “It is my opinion that you are an obsessive-compulsive personality, you need control and order. You are a perfectionist, which tends to makes you inflexible. It makes you aggressive not just towards others, but to you yourself as well. You not only punish others when something goes wrong, you punish yourself as well. You need things to be exactly as you require them, any deviation and your aggression is plain to see. All in all it makes you perfect for Admiral Brown, someone who is relentless in their determination to get the job to done, and to hell with all else no matter what the cost...Sir.”

"Yes, that sounds about right..." Finchley said, sounding far off.

“You might not like it, but you’re stuck with me Captain, which you obviously knew all along.” Eve sighed. “Brown promised me information on my mother’s disappearance, but that’s obviously never going to happen.”

"Mhmmm...stuck here...your mother.." Finchley vaguely answered, still staring distantly at the wall.

“With all due respect Captain, snap out of it!” Eve stood hands on hips. More of a pose expected of her mother. “I’m sure there’s plenty more of those nasty comments you can throw at me.”

"You know what today is Lieutenant?" Finchley asked, finally turning his chair round and facing her, "It's the second anniversary of Admiral Brown telling me I was to form Purple Squad. Not that I had a choice, I was told to form it, Brown made sure I had a complete understanding of what it was I was doing...forming a highly trained kill squad. He told me that we were a 'specialised unit', go anywhere and do anything at a moments notice, all directed by him. He gave me several dossiers of Officers and Non-Comms and I had to choose seven people to form the squad. The most common denominator we all had was we were already on 'death row' as it was once called, but the one thing we all had in common was that our crimes had originally been instigated by one person, the then Commodore...Commodore Brown. We were all SFI, under his Command group, following his orders, but what we didn't know was that during the Dominion War, he was waging his own private war against them. He was getting Intelligence reports and using all of us to further his own career. My crime, I was sent to Rangor to kill a prominent High ranking Cardassian Officer who was negotiating a treaty with the planets government officials. I got in, found out where the meeting was taking place, set charges to blow the building and sent blew it to kingdom come. In reality, it was a citizens forum meeting, and I killed over a hundred adults and children...I was a decoy for the real kill squad, the real meeting they attacked was a hundred miles away. Brown used me, then had me arrested when I returned for 'disobeying orders' and 'attempted genocide'. I was drum head court marshalled and sentenced to death, no appeal...well, there was little point, it was my word against his, and you can imagine as a simple Commander, his word would be taken over mine. When he later spoke to me in my cell, he gave me a simple choice...form Purple Squad and do his bidding, or be hanged. There was another incentive, not only would I be put to death, but so would my family. I chose the former, but when I got round to meeting the team, they all told me the same story, join the team or die and have our families killed. You see, you think I'm a megalomaniac, I'm nothing, Browns the real deal. I do what I do, I've become what I've become because of him, I love my family far to much to see them killed, but it's been at a terrible price, I've lost my identity, who I was, what my hopes and aspirations were. If you believe for a single second I do what I do because that's 'just me', then you couldn't be further from the truth. I've lived every day thinking about those I killed, and I've watched as the people I chose to form Purple Squad die as a consequence of my orders on missions nobody in their right minds would take on. Well, it stops here and it stops now...I've planned what to do next...I'm going after Admiral Brown."

Eve stood looking at her uncle, every word he’d said was the truth, she’d sensed no deception at all. “I believe you. The first time I set eyes on Admiral Brown he came to see my father, I overheard them having a very heated conversation, and I made the stupid mistake of trying to defend my father the only way I knew how. I tried to get into his head, but at the time I wasn’t trained for it. My father had no choice but to hand me over to the Admiral, as you know invading another’s mind is considered a serious crime. Instead of punishing me, Brown made me his personal high level telepath, trained to do whatever he wanted. Hence why he sent me here to evaluate you, to make sure your loyalties are where they should be. I want to help, but we have to get my father to safety first.”

"No, if we take Brett off of the USS Denton, Brown will know we're up to something" Finchley replied, "it's to much of a coincidence that both you and I are on this ship and suddenly my brother, your father, goes AWOL. Don't worry though, I know his XO and the CIO, I can get messages through to them to protect your father. Listen, I'm no saint Lieutenant, and I'm not asking for yours or anyone elses help, this goes tits up, I'm dead...well, technically dead a second time...but for what it's worth, I'm sorry about what happened in my quarters. You were right, Karadis meant a lot to me, her death has hit me much harder than any of the others..."

[Sickbay]

"Oh...my...GOD!!!" the nurse at the duty station shouted.

"What?" her colleague asked.

"The cryo chamber...look!" the nurse answered, pointing to her screen.

The second nurse got up and had a look, she couldn't believe what she was seeing, "Contact the Captain, quick!"

"Captain Kerr, this is Sickbay, please get down here quickly, you're going to want to see this...it's the cryo chamber..." the duty nurse shouted into the COMM's.

[Ready Room]

"Kerr here, what's happening, with the cryo chamber?" Finchley asked, but there was no reply.

Finchley was up and out his seat in a flash, running towards the door.

Eve was right behind him, now she knew where they stood she wanted to help but right now she wanted to know what was happening in Sickbay.

[Sickbay]

Finchley ran in through the doors, and seeing the duty nurse asked "What's happened with the cryo chamber?"

"Nothing to the actual chamber itself Captain, but look!" the nurse answered, pointing to her screen.

Finchley hurried over and looked himself, but all he saw were flat lines, "What am I looking at, are you kidding me, they're just flat lines, recording no activity!"

"Just wait Sir, you'll see it" the nurse replied.

Finchley waited, and waited, then suddenly...a blip. He couldn't quite comprehend what he was looking at, was he dreaming?

"But that's...that's cardio activity, that's a heart beat, how can that be?" he asked. Looking round at Eve, he asked, "How can there be a heart beat, she's been in the cryo chamber for nearly forty eight hours, and there's not been anything?"

Eve couldn’t help but smile. “Redundant organs! Every organ in the Klingon body has a backup, there’s an extra set of kidneys, an eight-chambered heart, a third lung, a secondary brain stem, plus an extensive and hardy skeletal structure.” She grinned at the shocked nurses faces. “They drummed it into us in Anthropology studies at the Academy. It looks like Karadis isn’t ready to give up the fight yet.”

"CRASH TEAM NOW!" Finchley shouted to nurses, then turning grinning he looked at Eve, "SHE'S ALIVE EVE...SHE'S ALIVE!!!!"

The nurses opened the cryo chamber and slid Karadis out and onto a trolley. Quickly, they had her on a biobed, attaching medical leads and recording devices to her body.

Finchley suddenly realised they didn't have a qualified medic onboard who could treat Karadis, as she was the qualified medic. Then he had a brain wave, "Eve, you know about Klingon biology, you're the closest we have to a doctor, can you stay with Karadis and help monitor her, I have to send a mayday?"

Eve looked at Finchley in both surprise and horror. “I’m not a Doctor Captain...” She looked at Karadis remembering all the times Karadis had said she’d covertly protected her. “Alright” she nodded. “Just...be fast!”

Finchley sprinted from Sickbay to the bridge. As soon as he came out of the turbolift, he saw Kilbane and said," Punch it Kilbane, we have a medical emergency, it's Karadis...I can't explain right now, just get us into Federation space pronto, we'll be meeting a medical ship" and he was gone to his Ready Room.

Once inside and had opened a channel to SFIHQ, he told them what had happened and that they required a medical ship to rendezvous with them ASAP. Closing the channel,he came back out and said to Kilbane, "Still can't explain, have to dash, fill you in later" and was gone.

Back in Sickbay again he finally slowed down and took a breath. He stood next to Eve,and as he looked at Karadis he said "I still can't believe she's alive, I guess that's stubbornness for you."

“Then that makes two of you Captain, both as stubborn as each other.” She ran a scan paying particular attention to the site of Karadis’ original injury. “It’s amazing she’s alive given the damage done, it goes to show just how strong the Klingon body is. Might I suggest you sit down with Karadis once all this is over, and tell her exactly what you need her to hear.”

~Sassy~ Finchley thought to himself at Eve's first comment, ~she's learning~

"She's always been a fighter" Finchley said, "but emotions, either taking about her own or someone talking to her about their own, has never been her strong suit. However, that said, she's going to be incapacitated for a little while, so she won't exactly be able to run away from me, so I may give it a try."

“Good” Eve nodded as she picked up a hypo and pressed it to Karadis’ neck. “Just some pain relief, she’s not going to be awake for a while yet but I’d like to make sure she’s comfortable.

"Right, we have six hours before we rendezvous with the medical ship, if you're up for it, I'd like you to have a chat with Jara, find out why she betrayed her people and what the Klingon's offered her in order to betray them" Finchley said, "Don't worry if you're not up to it though, I don't want you pushing yourself to hard to soon after what happened with Tk'Lar."

Eve nodded. “My senses are good, but I won’t be able to read her mind. I have strict instructions from the nurse, I’m not allowed to over exert myself until I have medical clearance. As we don’t currently have a Doctor that’s not going to happen anytime soon.”

"No,I don't want you to read her mind, just get a sense of whether she's telling you the truth" Finchley replied, "You see, I get the fact that someone could do what she has, but to watch as your people are basically enslaved whilst you're living the high life...that's just cruelty. Whatever she was offered, it must have been something big, something that she was desperate for. There's something else though, whatever it was, she must have known the Klingon's would back her up."

Eve nodded. “Some people will do anything for the right incentive, question is did she do it for herself, or is there a different motive behind it? No doubt we’ll find out.”

"I think we can leave it to the nursing staff to look after Karadis just now, why don't you go and talk to Jara, I'm going back to my Ready Room, there's more planning that's required if we're going to bring Brown down" Finchley said.

Eve nodded. “Aye Captain” With that she headed to speak with Jara.