A Serious Conversation

Posted on Thu Nov 12th, 2020 @ 6:32pm by Taryn Stephenson & Colonel Sehan t'Varis

1,388 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Chapter II: Spreading our Wings
Location: Commander's Ready Room, the Raven's Claw
Timeline: 238701.11

As soon as the briefing had concluded, the Claw had departed from Drozana and made the jump to warp. Not long after, Raven had left the bridge in Subcommander Kaiae's capable hands, and retreated to her ready room. After the unexpected escalation of tensions during the briefing, she would have to deal with their tactical officer. Urgently.

With a sigh, she pressed the intercom button on her console. "Lieu-" She stopped herself. "Taryn, to the commander's ready room at once." All this drama was the last thing they needed, and especially now.

Taryn did not respond verbally to the call summoning her to the commanding officer's office. Instead, she made her way there and knocked on the door, without waiting for an answer before entering. Taryn made her way up to the desk, standing around two feet in front of it.

"You asked to see me?" Taryn said, her arms folded across her chest.

Raven looked up. "Surprised you turned up this quickly. You know why I called you here." She indicated the chair opposite her. "Sit. And explain to me what in whatever deity's name went on in your head when you pulled that drama during the briefing."

Taryn chose not to sit.

"Well, Rogers makes no effort whatsoever to hide that she had every intention of stabbing me in the back on the away mission so she could have part of my share. You're supposed to be able to have some degree of trust in one another, but that's not an environment I can or will work in. I'm not going to make any demands because I haven't been here long enough to be in that position, so I've offered you the option of withdrawing my contract, take it or leave it" Taryn offered.

Raven shook her head. "You know that that is not how this crew operates. There will be no backstabbing here, no matter how much you two hate each other. This is not some ragtag pirate band, this is my ship." Her voice was slowly rising, evidence that she was struggling to contain her temper. "I am a commissioned officer of the Tal Shiar. I have no loyalty to that rank, or to the Empire it comes from. Only reason I even have it is blatant nepotism. But that commission, and the fact that we have several Romulan officers as part of this crew, makes us a privateer vessel. And with that come certain expectations."

She stood and walked around her desk, now directly in front of Taryn. "Expectation one, there is a chain of command on this vessel. At the top of that chain is me. Then come Kaiae, for the Romulans, and Ash Rogers for everyone else. Then the department heads, and so on. We wear rank insignia and go by ranks to signify our place in that hierarchy. When you signed up to this crew, you signed up to that."

She grabbed the rank badge that Taryn had left in the briefing room from her desk. "Expectation two, discipline. We do not have shouting matches and fistfights in the briefing room. We discuss things like professionals, and if there is an issue that needs to go up the chain, we take it there calmly and professionally.

"And lastly, expectation three. Cooperation. We are one single crew. When we have a mission, we all work on that mission. We are professionals, not some amateur mob. We leave our personal feelings in our quarters, or in the mess hall. You and Rogers don't like each other, fine. I don't give a fuck. I hired both of you to do a job. She knows that, and understands that. And as much as she would want to shoot your insolent arse out of the nearest airlock, she would never do that, for two simple reasons.

"Alpha, she knows that you are useful to this crew, as long as you focus and do your damn job. We need a tactical officer, that is why I hired you. Beta, she knows that if she pulls a stunt like that, she herself would be going out of the same airlock moments later, and I would personally throw her. Have your personal differences on your own time, not when you are serving as part of my crew, on my ship, being paid with my latinum."

The colonel shook her head, and leaned against her desk, looking at the woman in front of her. "Your offer of resignation is denied, Lieutenant Taryn. You will do the damn job I pay you to do, and you will leave your petty bullshit out of it. If you want to quit, you can get yourself and your shuttle off this ship once we finish our mission. Until that point, the shuttlebay remains locked. If you cause a problem on the mission and endanger the crew, I will happily pull the trigger and solve the problem. Am I making myself sufficiently clear?"

Taryn nodded. "First off, if you want me to stay here and do the job I'm paid to do, then you can drop the Lieutenant. However, I understand your ultimatum perfectly, and I'm now going to give you one of my own just so you know where we stand. If any of your crew step out of line with me again, then I will deal with them with whatever course of action I see fit. You and your crew would be very wise not to underestimate me, Sehan t'Varis"

Raven couldn't believe the audacity of what she had just heard. Still almost sitting on her desk, she reached back behind her, and pulled out her plasma pistol. With a smirk, she played around with it for a moment, before speaking again.

"I don't know if you are brave, or stupid. Maybe both," she finally said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "But if you ever talk to me or any of my crew like that, I will turn this thing up to full power and turn you into a smouldering heap of ashes sooner than you can say 'Prime Directive'." She looked Taryn in the eye and casually put the pistol on her desk, but kept her hand around the grip. "Do your job. After this mission, get the fuck off my ship. You don't want anyone to call you Lieutenant? Fine. But I have had just about enough of you, Taryn. I forgive a lot, but I have little tolerance for continued bullshit. And here's some friendly advice. Next time you hire on to the crew, read the damn contract before you sign it. Report to your station on the bridge at 0600 tomorrow morning. And get the fuck out of my office."

Taryn removed the disruptor from its holster and dropped it onto the floor next to her.

"You know what, I'm tired of your threats Raven, and I don't like being kept in suspense. Shoot me now and nobody will ever know. Go on. You know you want to. Think of it as stress management, or living out a secret fantasy" Taryn said, goading Raven into shooting her.

The colonel moved her hand off the pistol, and shook her head. "What did I say about discipline, and being professional? That would be an entire waste of ammo. And I was not threatening you. I was warning you. I don't do threats, they're a waste of time."

"That statement tells me all I need to know about what you and your crew think about me. I will do my job as agreed in the contract I signed, which will be terminated at the end of the mission once I have been paid. Unless I am required on the bridge, I am to be left alone. You will instruct others to do the same or believe me, I will kill them" Taryn said.

Before Raven had a chance to respond, Taryn picked up her disruptor from the floor, placed it in her holster and left the room. Lennon aside, Taryn no longer cared about what happened to this crew, and would gladly see all of them fail in their task. Taryn knew that unlike the rest of the crew, she could fall back on her shuttlecraft to escape if failure was imminent.

RSS Feed