Month 11, Day 8
1034 Hours
Drake MacGregor
Next to him, Smitty sat quietly, only showing his impatience
when he occasionally picked an imaginary piece of lint off his pant leg.
On the other end of the line, Lt Tall Bear sat perfectly
motionless. He might have fallen asleep with his eyes open, he was so still.
But Tall Bear would never be so disrespectful as to fall asleep at a meeting
called by his captain.
Jane finally closed her eyes and took a deep breath. And then
she spoke, her voice raspy with emotion. “I’ve had several communications with
Fleet Headquarters,” she got out, her hands balled into fists. “As a result, we
are on our way to Q’lorn, where I’ve been ordered to turn Lt Cmdr Winthrop over
to the local Fleet personnel, who will convey him to the Q’lorn Fleet hospital
for further medical and psychological testing.” She took another deep and
shuddering breath, let it out slowly. It didn’t seem to help.
Drake leaned to one side of his chair and crossed his legs. “I
take it they didn’t like my report on his... condition,” Drake stated.
“They not only didn’t like that, they didn’t like anything we
sent them!” She pushed her chair back, paced a couple times behind her desk
before she managed to sit down again. “They said that MacDowell has a history
of filing sexual assault charges against higher officers, so they didn’t
believe any of that. Then they stated that if Winthrop was self medicating for some
condition missed by you and your staff, then they would get him all the help he
needed before reassigning him.”
“Oh, black space,” Drake muttered. I thought my professional reputation was better than that.
Smitty opened his mouth, ready to say something angry, but
apparently changed his mind and closed his mouth.
Jane turned her attention to the NAmerind, and cleared her
throat before speaking. “You, Mr Tall Bear, will temporarily serve as my Chief
Security Officer for the next 6 weeks, until we rendezvous with the Blaze,
where our new Security Chief will join us. I would have preferred promoting
you, but they declined to let me do that.”
“Thank you, sir. For the thought.” There was no hint of anger
in his voice, but the news must have been galling.
“It means I’ll need access to you, so change your sleeping
habits,” she said bluntly, and sighed in exasperation. “In the meantime, make
copies of all the reports, holograms, photos, everything of evidentiary value
about this incident. I’ve already sent copies to Headquarters, but no doubt
they’ll ‘misplace’ them. Send copies with Winthrop when we drop him on Q’lorn,
put copies in the security files, and put the originals in some deep hiding
place that only you have access to. Same with you, Duck, with his complete medical
file.”
For what purpose?
“We can do that, but then what?” Drake asked. “Sooner or later, one of us will
leave this ship, either transferred out or retired or something.”
“You take the original files with you,” she stated. “Just
remember to keep in touch with your old captain, in case I see an opportunity
to make use of those files.”
“She was right,” Smitty muttered.
Jane’s eyes flashed with anger as she turned her attention to
him. “She was right,” she agreed. “I thought we were past this kind of
cover-up, in this day and age, but that little slip of a girl from a backwards
colony knew exactly how things would go. It’s enough to make my blood boil.”
“There’s got to be something we can do,” Smitty stated,
sitting forward.
“I have friends,” Jane stated, “and I’m pretty sure Winthrop
has some enemies. I’m hoping some carefully placed words in the ears of
like-minded people might bear fruit. And, if I hear he’s being reassigned after
a few weeks of medical and/or psychological treatment, I will lodge that complaint again, right up the chain of command, if
I have to.”
“Is that wise, captain?” Smitty asked, his brow furrowed with
concern.
“Wise? Possibly not. But women in the Fleet are supposed to be
equal to the men. And that young lady hasn’t been treated ‘equally’ since she
entered the Academy. There are a lot of women in the Fleet, some of us in the
upper echelon, who won’t think that such treatment is ‘okay’. Because it
isn’t.”
Drake frowned thoughtfully before he offered any help. “Jane,
I have some friends in the medical field. They all profess women are equal, and
some of them are women. Do you mind
if I spread a few words of my own?”
She considered that for a few moments. “It can’t hurt. As
long as you’re sure you can trust them. And if you’re discreet.”
“I wouldn’t mind saying a few words in my friend’s ears,
either,” Smitty offered.
“I know your heart’s in the right place, Smitty, but Winthrop
is security, supposedly with a medical problem. There wouldn’t be any logical
reason for you to get involved in it.”
“I beg to differ!”Smitty declared. “The person who was
attacked was communications! I am fully convinced that women are every bit as
capable as men, and I am outraged, absolutely outraged at this kind of treatment of one of mine!
She considered him for a long time. “Smitty, when you
discovered she was in the brig, you assumed she was in the wrong,” she reminded
him.
He looked stunned for a moment. “As I might do with anybody
who showed such a willingness to fight as she did when she first came aboard.
Now that I know she truly was defending herself, I’m blood-thirsty enough to
wish she’d done more damage to her attacker!”
“If you want to express outrage on her behalf, I suggest you
study her personnel file from before she came here. And I mean all the sub-sub
files, too. Piece together what her life was like on the tugs. You’ll have
plenty of outrage to talk about.”
Again she turned to Tall Bear. “As for you...”
“Captain, as the investigating officer, I don’t think I
should be discussing the case with any of my peers.”
“Exactly,” she agreed. “But if the subject should come up,
you might let some interesting tidbit slip out. Completely by accident, of
course. Or not. Whatever makes you comfortable.” She sighed and stood up,
fingertips on her desktop, a sure sign she was dismissing them. “And that,
gentlemen, is probably all we can do at this point. MacDowell is off tonight,
I’ll ask to see her and break the news to her just before the end of B shift
this afternoon. I assume she’ll want to be with friends this evening to help
her get through it.”
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