RP Log: Heated Emotions and Command Decisions
| Roleplay Log | |
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Location(s):
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Stardate:
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| 2024-09-03 12:09 | |
- Executive Officer's Office <USS Kestrel NCC-97802>
- Not as elaborate as the Ready Room, this small office does provide the XO a private space to conduct meetings and for paper work. The primary feature of the office is a wooden desk with a high-backed chair behind it. Upon the desk is a desktop terminal. To the fore of the desk are two additional chairs.
- Upon the opposite bulkhead from the desk is a viewscreen, in direct line of sight from someone sitting behind the desk. The carpeting is a soft beige with the walls matching in a slightly darker tone.
The door chime at Out sounds, "*be boowoop*"
You knock with 'Come in.'.
Lieutenant (jg) Cross arrives from Deck 3 - Forward Corridor.
Worthington is seated at his desk. When he sees who comes in, he makes to stand, decides better of it, and remains seated. "What can I do for you?" he asks, trying to maintain his professional, stoic demeanor, but there are signs of it slipping.
Cross storms into the office as soon as Worthington gives the all clear. She walks up to the desk, and practically slams the pad on his desk. "You read it I presume," she says, the pad containing the autopsy report. "She blood well bled out sir. We could have saved her," she says, her tone tightly controlled.
Worthington tries hard to control his tone as he replies, "You think that was an easy call for me to make?" he asks. "You know better than that, of all the time we've served together. That was the damn hardest decision I've made in my whole damn life. I just couldn't risk the entire mission, ship, and the other 25 people on the Napier. You saw what that storm did to everyone in it. How many people is it worth sacrificing to save one person? How many funerals would you like to be attending right now?"
"She should not have gone out alone sir," Emmelline says with a shake of her head. "You had to send her out there, to find them. Point," she says with a nod of her head. "But you sent her alone. You saw, the whole time through the damn viewscreen," she goes on, "both she and I struggling. And how difficult it was when that soldier got blown away. You came out at the last bloody minute. it was a bad call from start to finish sir. From lettig her go out there, to how things bloody well ended. Hauser should have gone back in with the vorta," she continues, "done whatever it is they were doing to get the power going, and we could have gone out and looked. At least tried."
Worthington considers, and thinks for a moment. "You know, if you weren't concerned, if you didn't think about what could have happened, what we could have done differently to save her, then I would be concerned for your humanity," he says. "I've been thinking the same thing since we got back here, wrestling with all of it. I saw Eiessa, I saw her waving you off. Sending her out there wasn't easy either, and I'm not sure if having another person would have helped. You saw what happened to the jem'hadar first? You know how strong Dominion soldiers are. Nature doesn't give a damn. It certainly didn't for us. It's honestly amazing that any of us survived at all. You almost got killed yourself, getting blown off your feet like that. At least you weren't hit by flying debris. In fact lieutenant, you are damn lucky to be alive right now."
"My surviving is hardly the point," Emmelline says with a shake of her head. "I knew you had to send her out there. She was the only one who could possibly find them in that damn sand storm. But you shouldn't have sent her out there alone. That was a bad call start to finish sir, and I don't care if you write me up for saying so," she says with an emphatic shake of her head. "We could have gone out and looked. We had the time. it took hauser and the vorta an age to get the power going again. We had the time. We could have tried. She bled out," she sasy smacking the pad in front of Worthington. "She bloody well bled out! Do you have any idea what the implications of that is sir? It means she could have survived. If we hadn't abandoned her on that godforsaken planet."
Worthington nods. "I know the implications," he says. "Consider this though. What are the implications of say, the executive officer and one of the only doctors getting blown off and knocked down in a sandstorm, rendered unconscious, the Napier's airlock open?" he asks. "It wasn't about the time constraints at all. It was about survival. Pure, primal, uncaring survival. That is what nature does to people in the end, when exposed to it for long enough." He pauses for a long moment. "I will place myself in judgement of my superiors, and regardless of my fate, I will cary this for the rest of my life. If you wish to beat me up to vent your feelings, I would accept that."
"You are a senior officer," Emmelline says disbelief registering in the way she speaks. "You are supposed to rise above that natural instinct as you so call it. That uncaring want for survival. You are supposed to look out for those under your command. That is part of the damn job, no matter how difficult," she says with a shake of her head. "Oh no," she says with a huff, "I am sure your superiors will think you made the right decisions. No doubt, for starfleet you did. And you can sit with that I'm sure," she says with a shake of her head. "Because part of command is losing people. What I also hope you sit with however sir, is the knowledge that she didn't have to die. There was another way. REgardless of how slim you might have thought it was. You left one of your own out there to die alone, and it needn't have happened."
Worthington raises his voice, slightly. "You're right. I am above that. I am in command. I do have to look out for everyone under my command. I had to look out for you, for Ky'iel, for Ryu, for Nolan, for Jessica, and for all the Dominion people on the ship as well. Being in command means you no longer have the luxury of caring about individuals in the same way. I think," he says, "Triage is easier. You get to see what's right in front of you. Command deals with a lot of intangibles. If you ever make it to command, and you have to make a command decision, you will understand all of this, and the burden of it all. The fact of the matter is, Emmaline, I couldn't afford to lose anyone else. Including you. I could not narrow my focus to one individual, and by doing so, sacrifice the lives of everyone else, no matter how badly I personally wanted to. Ask anyone who has been forced to make a decision like that, and you will get a similar answer. That's the first time I've ever left someone behind. Don't you assume you know what is going through my mind right now. Only the naive would think that what I did was easy. You're better than that."
Cross takes in what Worthington says to her and shakes her head. "It was senseless sir. Senseless and pointless, and it needn't have happened." As Worthington goes on about the burdens of command and, and of looking at the bigger picture, she shakes her head. "You lose the importance of the individual sir, looking only at the bigger picture. There was a way, for both. We could have gone and looked. Maybe the results would have been the same. Maybe we wouldn't have found her, and we would have wasted time looking for her while Hauser and the vorta were working together. But we'd have at least tried. In your zeal to ensure the survival of all as you put it, and your zeal of looking at the bigger picture, the individual got lost. In a way that should have never happened, start to finish."
Worthington shakes his head. "And while you focus on the individual, you do not see the bigger picture. Maybe we wouldn't have found her. More like, maybe we both would have died, Napier would have been left without a doctor and commanding officer, and everyone on that ship might have died," he says. "That's the whole bloody point. Bloody hell. How do you not see the implications of that?" He pauses, and sighs. "There is a time when the risk is absolutely warranted, and there are times when it pays off. Then, there are times where the risk only serves to get everyone killed. When you think you are ready and can command an away mission and a starship more effectively, by all means, become a line officer. Prove me wrong. I would have been overjoyed had we all made it out. You have an absolute right to be angry with me, and I alone get to bear the burden of the decision I made. I think it would do us both good to seek an impartial perspective. We are far, far too close to this, both of us. You have no idea how much this has hurt me. None at all. Until you do, I don't think you are qualified to judge me for what I did. You can be angry with me, you can punch me in the face, you can scream obsenities at me, but until you have, as humans would say, walked a mile in my shoes, you cannot judge me."
Cross opens her mouth as if she's about to say something, then closes it. She sighs, makes a huffing noise, opens her mouth once again, then shuts it. "I'm sure," she finally says, "in the eyes of starfleet you made the right decision. After all, you came back with valuable intel, and the prospect of more intel, if that dominion ship survives five days. What is that compared to the life of one security officer. So I'm sure," she says with a wave, "they will commend you on your command decision. And I do see what you mean. About the larger implications. What you don't seem to realize though, is we didn't even try. We didn't even consider trying. You just called it a lost cause and off we went."
Worthington shakes his head one more time and sighs again. "What you don't understand, Emma, is that I did consider trying. Every second I was standing on the bridge, watching the jem'hadar, I considered whether or not I should be out there. I saw it all. I knew that the prospects were low. I saw groups of people getting blown around, blown apart, knocked over by debris, and getting lost from one another in the raging storm. I had a lot of time to consider this lieutenant. A lot of time. When Eiessa went down, when she was blown away by the storm and knocked in the head by that falling debris, when she intentionally waved off your assistance, when she didn't want anyone else out there in the storm, when the debris started slamming and moving the shuttle more severely, yes I had time to consider. I weighed that decision, and it wasn't about the damn intel. You can think what you want. The bottom line is, I was looking right at you in that airlock, and thinking about everyone else on that fracking shuttle, everyone whose lives depended on everything going right and quickly. I don't have the luxury to play the heinsight game. I can't sit there and run all the scenarios 100%, and come up with just the right plan at the right moment every time so that everyone survives and comes out unscathed. Command isn't that rosey." He pauses for a few moments. "That storm nearly called all of us a lost cause lieutenant. We're lucky we didn't crash on takeoff. We came close a couple of times." He pauses again. "You said what you came to say, and I don't think having the same conversation over and over again is going to help either of us. Not right now, not so close after... Not now."
"No, I don't think anything will ever make us see eye to eye," Emmelline says with a shake of her head. "You did what you thought best, and perhaps I will never understand that. You needn't have the perfect solution, but all I wanted was for us to have tried. To not have just left her there deserted on that godforsaken planet," she says with a shake of her head. "But then I don't suppose you'll understand that either, because in your mind, it is the many over that of the few. Such vulcan logic," she says with a frown. "Of course, I will leave you to it.." Snapping off a salute, she's out the door.