Well That Was Unexpected - Part 1

Posted on Thu Aug 8th, 2024 @ 8:27am by Captain Paul Griffon & Lieutenant Scion

786 words; about a 4 minute read

Mission: Rescue Interruptus
Location: CO's Ready Room
Timeline: MD1, 1655

ON

As soon as Scion returned to the ship, she backed up the scans and information she gathered on the planet to her office computer so she could continue to track where they were going. When that was done, she wrote her report on how the assignment went and copied the report and the data to a PADD. She needed to report what she and Lieutenant Murphy found and what she'd done to track those she believed were the middlemen in a larger crime organization as soon as possible. If she was mistaken, she still had recordings of the men and women running out of the building and she still had the tracker reporting where the local authorities could pick them up.

She verified that the captain was in his ready room and headed for the bridge. Five minutes later, she rang the chime.

"Enter", came the captain's voice and the door to his office slid open.

Scion stopped in front of the captain's desk and held out the PADD. "Sir, here is my report on what Lieutenant Murphy and I found on the planet."

Griffon took the PADD and motioned for her to sit down. He read it over and then set it down on his desk.

"So, what do you recommend we do next?", he asked.

"From what little I saw, the children who are homeless will resist being integrated. At least at first. It's my belief that if they have a place where they can sleep and get food, and have access to computers, they'll come around. Right now, they're just trying to survive and won't trust the local authorities. That's not the real problem. The looting the lieutenant stopped appears to be part of a larger organization. I don't know if it's colony-wide or just that area, but I tagged people running out the back of the building as the lieutenant restrained the ones taking things out the front. As I said in my report, I didn't stop them because I felt that tracking them to their base of operations would do more for reducing crime than arresting a few middlemen. I don't know if the organization is local or if off-worlders are taking advantage. The trackers should help with that. If they're colonists, then the information should be turned over to local authorities. If they're from off world, it may take more investigating. I contacted the local authoriti8es to pick up the looters restrained by the lieutenant. For the others, a day or two of monitoring should give us enough information to know how to proceed. I'll leave that decision to you, sir."

"Well, continue monitoring the looters", Griffon said. "And get those kids some food and shelter. Never know what they can tell us once they don't have to worry about living or dying."

"Yes, sir." She already planned to talk to one of the colony officials about the kids, but having the captain's support would make it much easier. "I have several ideas I can present to the colony officials that should help with that as I was once in a similar situation."

"I had almost forgotten that part of your background", the captain said. "I seem to recall, when I first met you, you had just nicked my commbadge after I set it down for a moment."

One side of her mouth quirked up in a smile. "Well, one has to stay in practice. And you did get it back. I haven't done that in, oh, at least six months--and that was because a security officer fresh out of the Academy said I couldn't do it without him noticing." The half-smile turned into a grin. "I gave it back to him before I left the room."

Griffon snickered a moment and then his eyes had a far-away look. A moment later, he fell forward, face-first into the desk. His head bounced once with a thud, sending his teacup to the floor, where it shattered, and he didn't move.

Scion tapped her combadge. "EMH to the captain's ready room. Medical emergency." Then she checked his vitals. She couldn't find a pulse. She looked at the teacup, but didn't touch it. That would have to be examined.

The EMH appeared and started to say the stereotypical words of, "Please state the nature..."

It then stopped and said, "Oh. Please step away Lieutenant."

Scion nodded as she moved away. She closed her eyes for a moment. The first officer needed to notified. But first, she sincerely hoped she was wrong.

He ran his medical tricorder over the captain, looked up and said, "He's dead."



A Joint Post By
---
Captain Paul Griffon
Commanding Officer

&

Lieutenant Scion
Chief Intelligence Officer

 

RSS Feed