Caretaker - Part I

Posted on Thu 22nd Feb, 2018 @ 2:09pm by Commander Mikaela Locke
Edited on on Thu 22nd Feb, 2018 @ 5:06pm

846 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: A Phaser as Deadly as a Candlestick
Location: Deck 11 - Main Operations / Commander Locke's Office
Timeline: Shortly after 'A Bird in the Hand'

[ON:]

Mikaela Locke sat at the command station of main operations. She didn't have to be there. Andrew Eberstark was on duty and was overseeing station operations, but she just didn't feel like being cooped up in an office, alone with her thoughts. She had had misgivings about Drake leading the away-mission to apprehend the murderess fleeing the station, but when she expressed them he had simply - and quite forcefully - overruled her. The steel in his eyes, and inability to see reason, concerned her greatly. 'What other unreasonable decisions might he make?' she wondered to herself, 'And what might the consequences of those decisions be?'

"Sir?"

She was brought back to the moment by the Vinvocci ensign manning the main operations communications console. "Yes, what it is?" she replied, realizing that she didn't know the officer's name.

"I've got a priority one message coming in from the Gaius Marius."

"On screen," she replied immediately, already standing and walking towards to the main viewer.

"Sir," the communications officer called her back. "Lieutenant Perry is advising that you may not want to take this in public."

Locke's stomach knotted uncontrollably. For a few seconds, she remained rooted to the spot. There were very few reasons why Perry wouldn't want the main ops staff to here a regular mission update - and none of them were good.

'What the hell's happened?'

She kept her emotions hidden, as she stood from her command chair. "In my office," she advised the comm-officer, already heading out of ops.

A few moments later, the face of the station's security chief appeared on her desktop monitor, and she could tell by her demeanour that, whatever the mission update was, it wasn't good.

"What's going on, lieutenant?" she asked urgently.

Isabella sturdied herself and fixed her uniform. She knew she was nervous about telling the news, but couldn't figure out why. She had delivered notifications, before, but never for her commanding officer.

"Commander, before we began, I need you to secure this line." Isabella said with a deathly serious tone in her voice.

"Computer, secure this channel," Mikaela commanded, without further reference to Perry, "Authorization Locke-Delta-Two-Three-Alpha-One."

"Voice authorization confirmed," the computer replied, "Channel secure."

The knot in Mikaela's stomach tightened as she nodded back towards Perry. "Go ahead, Lieutenant."

"The Colonel is dead Commander." Isabella paused for a second or two, not quite knowing what Locke's response would be.

Mikaela froze. She knew it was bad, but she couldn't have imagined just how bad. "W - What happened?" she eventually managed to stammer out, her voice barely a whisper.

"Honestly, it happened so fast, I didn't even know what had occurred." Isabella paused again, trying to replay the blur of those fleeting seconds in her mind. "We boarded the shuttle as planned and found the female suspect we were looking for. Then all of a sudden...." Once more, Isabella paused, but this time, she knew she paused because she actually felt something in the pit of her stomach rising. Never before had her commanding officer been subjected to such violence in her presence. Never before had she felt like she didn't do enough to protect someone, her commanding officer specifically.

"She stabbed the Colonel through the throat. There was nothing we could do to save him."

Mikaela took a deep breath. A wave of emotions flooded over her: Grief, anger, frustration, sadness, loss - all in a deluge that rose up from within her and took all of her years of training to keep in check.

'The mission,' she told herself, trying her damnedest to keep composed, 'The priority is the mission.'

"Did you manage to apprehend the killer?" she asked, her voice still quiet and weak.

"Yes ma'am." The security chief responded. "She is secured and behind a force field as we speak." Isabella could see the distress on Mikaela's face and that only made her feel worse that she wasn't able to save the Colonel. "Ma'am. I'm sorry I didn't do more to save the Colonel. I didn't mean to fail him or fail you in this way."

Mikaela offered a weak smile. "It's not your fault, Lieutenant..." she offered before trailing off, just as her internal monologue finished her sentence. 'It's mine.'

"Get back to the station. I'll contact SCIS and get them out here as soon as possible."

"Yes ma'am. We should arrive back at the station within the next couple of hours. Perry out."

Perry's face disappeared from the screen and Mikaela Locke finally allowed the tsunami of emotions that had been welling up inside her to burst out from her.

In one smooth motion she turned from her desk, grabbed at her chair and hurled it, without restraint, into the corner of the room. Suddenly feeling like her legs could no longer support her weight, she collapsed to the ground behind her desk...

And she sobbed.

[OFF:]

 

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