Comeuppance (part 3)

Posted on Tue Jan 20th, 2015 @ 12:16pm by Captain T'mpest Michaels & Commander Rylie Cattmor & Lieutenant Jensen Foster

1,017 words; about a 5 minute read

[CONTINUED]

[OLD]

Several choices of rebuttal came into Cattmor's head, but when she went to say any one of them, nothing came; they all sounded lame and weak. Instead she just chose to say, "Maybe so, and I don't know about you, but I've gone through my whole career without any incidents such as this. Even before I joined Starfleet after I was found adrift by the Eridani, the few times that there were, the level of damage was not this severe." Even while saying it though, it sounded like such a cop out, a convenient way to say no more, and she found that she hated herself for it. She generally wasn't the type to just give up on something because it was difficult... well, since the first time... "Maybe I just got lucky, I don't know."

[NEW]

Foster paused and looked between both women, while his gaze finally falling on Cattmor once more. "Well, if you don't feel comfortable enough continuing on working on our talents together, I won't press the issue." Turning his gaze back to T'mpest, he said, "What would you have us do Commander to try and remedy the questions from the crew that are bound to come up?"

"The holodeck suffered a catastrophic failure. One of the holo-emitters malfunctioned and caused a chain reaction," T'mpest said with a perfectly straight face, while Cattmor barely contained her own look of unconvinced disbelief, instead just closing her eyes momentarily and taking her gaze from T'mpest. "That is the official report," T'mpest went on. "As for continued experiments, if you do decide to go on with them, you are working on an assignment from me to develop a more advanced containment field." She owed Engineering a favor for this, as well as an Admiral in Starfleet who was an old friend of her mother's. "Choose one person from Medical. Doctor Quinn is already aware of your unique problems, so consider using her." she suggested.

Problem, Rylie thought... she'd heard a few words related to describing her telepathy over the years--talent, ability, quality, gift, curse, others... problem, she felt, was probably one of the worst, like she was a recovering addict or something. In all her time, even she hadn't thought of herself as having a problem. "But Commander, between us," she interjected motioning to Foster in his seat as well, "we destroyed the holodeck, and some of the adjoining spaces; what if next time, it doesn't stop there? What if next time, it's the entire deck that blows out, or worse the ship itself? Let's face it boys and girls, it's already proven to be a possibility. Do either of you want to take that risk?"

The momentary pause was almost deafening, like neither one was expecting any more. "That's not rhetorical," Cattmor finally stated, a little exasperated.

Looking to Cattmor with an almost withering expression, Jensen said, "Isn't that the point of our helping one another? To get a handle on our gifts," Jensen paused, arching an eyebrow pointedly at T'mpest for a brief moment, before finishing, "so we don't cause the destruction and damage we're capable of?" He didn't wait for a response as he continued on. "It should be apparent that things won't go smoothly, at least not at first or even the first few times. I think what Commander T'mpest has suggested should have been something we looked into before helping one another down on the holodeck. Maybe if we had we could have avoided the damage we jointly caused."

T'mpest nodded once, agreeing with Jensen's analysis. They needed to get control and if they could do it by helping each other, all the better. But they did need to think it through and take the appropriate precautions.

Calling their biological quality a gift once again, made the hairs on the back of Rylie's neck stand in sharp relief. For someone who did not have their ability, it may have seemed that they were a gift, but coming from someone like Jensen, who lived with the daily struggle as well, calling them a gift seemed hypocritical, and like he was attempting to appease the masses that everything was okay by saying something they wanted to hear. It felt like her throat descended into her lungs as a jumble of emotions washed over her.

Jensen winced in response to the emotional spike in the Frian woman. Taking a breath, he said, "But, as I mentioned before, that's only if you feel comfortable continuing, Lieutenant Commander." He wasn't going to push the issue if Rylie didn't want to continue. He simply folded his hands in his lap and waited for a response. He concentrated on blocking out the emotions that radiated from Cattmor, thankful that at least the third member of the meeting was of the species that repressed emotion; he could take a small comfort in that fact.

For the first time in the meeting, Rylie sat down on the seat next to Jensen, albeit sideways to face him directly. The thoughts in her head were a veritable jumble, all intermixed and flying at warp speed, but when she spoke, it was with a calm assuredness, "Lieutenant, by definition, if something doesn't go right, then something about it has gone wrong. I don't know about you," she said with a pointed glare, "but when my ability awoke, it did so in full force, and practically destroyed a city block on Athera. The size of this ship hardly compares."

"I know," she said after taking a quick breath, "I know that no-one is pushing this, and I thank you, both of you," she said bring T'mpest into the conversation again, "for helping. Commander, I know you're disappointed or whatever the Vulcan equivalent is, I just want to assure you that this won't happen again, and I don't want to be breaking another of my promises." She finished with a somewhat pleading look at Foster.

(To be continued...)

Lieutenant Jensen Foster
Chief Medical Officer

Lieutenant Commander Rylie Cattmor
Executive Officer

Commander T'mpest Micahels
Commanding Officer

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