The author wishes to express thanks to anyone who may read his story and encourages them to leave reviews, comments or even flame it hard. As with any who try their hand at publicly expressing an idea or story concept, all feedback is important and welcome.
Disclaimer: I do not own SeaQuest, Star Wars, nor any other sci-fi or fantasy series, movies, comics, cartoons or news items used in this fiction as they belong to the creators or broadcasters or publishers who put them out for consumption by the public.
*** A message of thanks to "00oo" for following my stories and marking me as a favorite author.
*** A message of thanks to "Mekh'Iis En'Ghae'rhon" for following this story.
SeaQuest
His Honor, Mister Mayor Lucas
Chapter 3; Changing of the guard
Captain on deck
(SeaQuest – season 1 opening theme)
Thursday, 20th February 2020; 08:00am
UEO Flagship SeaQuest DVS 6000; Bridge
Australia, northern coast, Darwin City harbor – UEO military sector
Eugene Darby, brand new captain of the UEO flagship, made his way through the clamshell doors, past the four marines on guard and relieved the poor ensign who had conn all night after the day of internal war and bloodshed the ship's crew had suffered. The 24 year old junior officer was burnt out after being on edge all night as the carrier group G.H.W. Bush had pinged them on sonar and laser range-finders every hour on the hour. The unspoken reality of just how much hurt would rain down on them if they missed a call was poisoning the atmosphere as bad as if a dirty bomb had exploded in the vents.
The 38 year old canadian sailor wasn't afraid of the Bush or her escorts. Unlike many who had or would eventually sit in this chair, he had clean intentions and a stable, sane mind with no political ambitions whatsoever. That in his opinion meant he had nothing to feel towards the seamen of the carrier group but satisfaction in the presence of such steadfast allies to guard his flank while his people got their bearings and sea legs back in working order. The other thing that helped with ignoring the big ships above was that he had spent all his adult life in the canadian coast guard; not the biggest or most armed outfit on the waves. They were equal to the RCMP or the FBI in that they were federal police, not military.
As such, everybody in that particular branch of service in Canada and the USA too, rapidly got used to being outgunned and out shipped by everything painted fleet grey. It was just a fact of life at seas that the cops were not as armed or as big as the regular militarized Navy. What had set Eugene apart from his colleagues amongst the other captains of the CCG was that he didn't hide his scorn for the fact their ships were so poorly armed and defended that bloody 50 foot long Swiftboat river patrol boats could take them on and win. Even against their capital ships coming in at 500 or 600 feet in length. It was a nonsense and Darby was never shy about saying it publicly. Some agreed with him, but always silently as wanting more or/and bigger guns and (gasp of anguish!) missiles aboard CCG ships was seen as heresy against the doctrine of the 'friendly, helping hand' of Canada at sea.
The Coast Guard admiralty had been gently and very discretely nudging him to realign his views with the publicly stated doctrine of the organization. The problem was that too many bureaucrats and elected officials spread across the provinces and Ottawa actually agreed with his position for the brass to take declarative action against him. Instead they 'rewarded' his 18 years of service with an international promotion and shipped him to the UEO as part of Canada's human participation quota.
The new commanding officer sat in chair and wiggled a bit to fit himself nicely to the plush cushions before taking the written report of the night's activities. At least the thing was built solidly and comfortably like a captain's chair aught to be. He thought back to the brouhaha that had led to his being sent away from the CCG and into the clutches of Bill Noyce as Head of Fleet Assets. Not that he thought it disagreeable to be posted where he was. A bit more leeway in choosing his place would have been nice though; he would have preferred a smaller surface ship, well removed from all the diplomatic sucking-up. But, it seemed he had been 'chosen from on high' if some of the rumors that filtered around him at breakfast were true.
Lucas Wolenczak, pasty little albino cockroach that he was, had been data-mining and vetting Darby since he joined the UEO two years ago. The kid had been 14 years old at the time but already in a position to feed Noyce information and affect the placement of critical officers and resources across the entire UEO game-board. He had done that specific consulting job since he was 10 years old. Eugene did not know how to feel about that mental nuclear bomb.
On the one hand, the kid's record was a magistral example of what a young, honest, loyal patriot who served his home nation should look and feel like. His work ethos and attitude were splendid and his performances made captains around the American, Canadian and European militaries salivate in envy.
On the other hand, Lucas was an acknowledged High-Lord Grand-Master hacker; a supposed 'white hat' hacktivist who never hacked anything unless it was to help society or gather evidence for police to convince companies and private persons to stop acting in an immoral way. The kid had never used his hacking skills to extort money, rob banks or commit industrial espionage. That wasn't to say he never made a buck off his skills, on the contrary. The teenager had accomplished several very lucrative contracts for the World Bank and associated banking networks, investment brokerage firms and stock exchanges across the planet. His adaptive security programs were rumored to have tripled the security factor of the New York Stock Exchange transaction hub about three years ago. For a price tag estimated at some $20,000,000 USD. And that was peanuts compared to what the World Bank was rumored to have paid out for his services in tracking down money laundering schemes last year.
Which meant that his records had several dozen pages of severely redacted, blacked out informations about the contracts he had accomplished for the NSA, CIA, FBI, ICE, CG & CGIS, USNI, NCIS, and several more policing and security agencies tied to the DoS, DoJ, DoD, Pentagon and the Military-Industrial-Complex. Some of the stuff he was supposedly involved with could raise your hair, turn it white and make it fall out in raw unfettered fear in one go if you were ever cursed with the pay grade and security clearance to read the actual detailed list.
The runt had started his collaboration with the M-I-C at the precocious age of 5 years old. Not by accident. Willingly. With his eyes open and clear. Darby wanted to cry, curse and ultimately shoot the fat rat bastard who had allowed this travesty of humanity to happen. A child! A 5 year old child abandoned by his parents and society fell into the hands of the government and became this!
But he couldn't and he wouldn't, even if given the chance. For good or ill, the fact was that America was sick to its core and needed a dose of strong medicine applied right to its heart and soul at the same time. Darby's home country of Canada, unfortunately, was starting to exhibit many of the same symptoms its southern cousin had. And that was the blasted situation they had on hand. Lucas was altogether their hope of a better brighter future, the toxic yet life-saving chemotherapy they needed and at the same time the only medic competent enough to administer the damned suppository where it would do the most good.
Damn it to fucking hell but this was gonna hurt like a sunburn blister on an eyeball!
Carding a weary hand through his short brown hair, Darby wondered about the corruption in the UEO and NATO alliance executives. It took a pretty naive neophyte to think that replacing the old UN by the UEO had washed out and expurged the corrupt and criminal elements for good. Firstly, the member nations themselves had not really changed their military or diplomatic personnel affected to external collaboration. Then the NATO alliance had been completely unchanged, so its corruption and criminalities remained unchallenged, hidden from view as always. The UEO's inception had simply forced many old actors in the game to change their uniforms and rank badges but not their methods or ideologies. The new players didn't give a damn, they were either honest or corrupt and would stay that way, period.
And that was the where & when Lucas Wolenczak became vital for the police agencies and militaries of the Alliance. The boy had understood this even in infancy and worked to conceive a mathematical predictive model that was usable to determine who would favor the immoral or illegal decision rather than the loyal one given set parameters. In other words, it allowed you to pre-profile actively your soldiers, officers, agents and bureaucrats to see at which levels of bribery, threat against their family or government interventionism they would start to willingly detach from their allegiance and become 'rogue' or self-radicalize towards violence.
That scared the hell out of anybody aware of the project. With good reason. It put in direct immediate jeopardy the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty' and replaced it by 'we think you may, so we keep you away' thus allowing for cleaner, more efficient governance and institutions. At least that was the postulate behind all the profiling and predicting. It still felt like the 'Big Brother' phase just before everybody becomes a Borg drone with implants spiked a little everywhere in them...
Darby was certain that the usefulness of such a predictive profiling system could easily be justified against terrorists and foreign combatants that were already identified and being tracked. The capability to predict who they would contact, meet, recruit and plan attacks with was indispensable but it was not a miracle either. The whole program depended on the most unreliable and perfidious source of information in the universe to base it's math on: living beings. The fundamental truth was that live entities were not stable nor reliable for prolonged periods of time. The basic most important part of life was surviving to chaos and actively adapting to changes.
The second most basal problem with live entities was their inherent dishonesty. Some would lie by ignorance and not even know it. Some lie because it helps family, friends or the company they work in to keep their job. Others would lie to get an enemy in trouble by falsely accusing or exaggerating ordinary comportments to make them look suspicious. Children lie because adults told them to, because it helps friends with something or because they fear the reactions of adults who dislike hearing the truth when it differs from their beliefs or creed. Then you have the false confessions tortured out of innocent prisoners by felonious guards. The manufactured anonymous tips created by scandal-hungry media. The list doesn't end...
Lucas made a good, mathematically sound piece of cybernetic engineering, Darby would give him that. It could be helpful in a lot of settings like helping a clinic evaluate the risks of relapse in patients who undergo withdrawal and sobriety therapies. It can help track and foresee school problems in students that live in poor or dangerous families. There were good points about this system. But even Lucas himself set a full chapter of foreword, warnings and limitations about what it could not do and why.
Still, the system had been instrumental in choosing Darby, Dirnova and the other new crew members for their new assignments. They should be flattered for the trust they were given. Instead they both felt creeped out at the sheer volume of data the kid had mined through to get his prognostics about them. Privacy was not a right anymore, and not even a luxury for the rich either. It was the new sin, the new sedition; 'why do you want to do that in secret?' had suddenly become the new poisonous question asked by schools, employers, police, government... The USA is the 'Leader of the Free World' they said when he was a kid. Now, it was only true if you didn't actually want real freedom and never made the treasonous act of asking for yours to be respected. Free World indeed...
Captain Darby sat squarely in his chair, tablet in hand, wondering what his first full day as commanding officer would bring. "Hope it wasn't like yesterday." Lighting up the tablet he saw the first report and groaned; Lt. Manilow Crocker had died peacefully in his medically induced coma at 02:37am during sleep shift. "Fuck. Noyce was gonna be a bitch all day."
New cop on the beat
(SeaQuest – season 1 opening theme)
Thursday, 20th February 2020; 08:00am
UEO Flagship SeaQuest DVS 6000; Security chief's office
Australia, northern coast, Darwin City harbor – UEO military sector
US Marines Corps colonel Lyra Dirnova was not amused. The 36 year old woman was in fact spitting rusted bent tacks. They only had around 85 full time sailors on the boat, with less than 20 being security specialists. They had compartments with four beds each for many more than this but the sacred cow of all governments (Tax Payer) didn't feel like sharing it's holy milk (money) with the UEO to the point of having the ship at full capacity. In point of fact, it wasn't just Wolenczak whose departments had been understaffed or completely shuttered out; it was half the ship in that situation. She was supposed to have an entire group of artificers to handle the nuclear ordinance but she had only two guys and they were split between doing full time maintenance in the fusion core with the occasional monthly look-see around the ICBM's and mark 10 torpedoes. They were a fully armed and enabled boomer but without the guys that make sure the missiles do their 'booming' elsewhere than parked in their silos. Crud!
She was supposed to have at least three full squads of marines to patrol the ship at all times so she could deploy one per shift. Given the 1,000 foot length and five storeys of the boat, it meant 12 guys on the beat and that really wasn't much at all. The reality before her eyes: she had one and a half squad for patrol duties, no more. Six guys per shift to patrol the whole tub on each shift. And forget patrolling the aqua-tubes or the maglev maintenance shaft! Those were simply watched remotely by cameras and sensors which would beep if there was a need. In other words, the guys supposed to watch those areas had not even watched anything; the monitors were never set on those channels as nothing happens there anyways! The idiotic lazy bums had trusted the computer system to warn them in case of a problem!
The bloody brig next to the armory was never manned unless a dimwit sailor was forced into it because he couldn't mind his manners or get to his shift sober. Thankfully, even with a limited amount of alcohol aboard available to the crew during meals, it was usually at shore leaves that the behavioral problems would happen and not out at sea. According to the logs, the few months of active service had not seen a single sailor in the brig but there were plenty of notes in the security logs put in by Bridger or Ford about Lucas Wolenczak and his supposed indocility and undisciplined attitude.
Dirnova could not believe her eyes when she read the digital logbook pages. How anybody in his right mind could ever think that these pieces of crap would float in front of the Formal Civilian Contractor's Disciplinary Commission (FCCDC) let alone the Court Martial of the UEO Forces was beyond her. It was to put it mildly, a compost heap of trash, broken vanities, swollen egos and patently false accusations that would never survive the first glance of a minimally honest investigator.
How in God's own Good Name was it the kid's fault if the bloody aqua-tubes didn't have signage placards in them? He didn't make that decision and couldn't change that protocol unless the ship's master or the admiralty told him. And even then; when exactly was he supposed to have the time and equipment to print and then install the bloody 300+ waterproof glowing signs they wanted in the pipes?
Or this little gem: Westphalen accusing the kid of being 'generally disrespectful, dis-gracious, ill-mannered, ill-bred and prone to acting out of his station as an under-aged minor of lesser stature with vitriolic aggressiveness against his betters in science, society and life' as witnessed by Nathan Bridger and Jonathan Ford. On at least two dozen occasions. And they just copied the same text, accusations and supposed proof at each time. Do note that the young man's version of events was not noted in the reports as protocol dictates. Neither were any recordings of the cameras and microphones despite all acts reproached having occurred in the sea-deck, med-bay, science offices or – snort! - the bridge which all had several hundred surveillance systems active all day and night.
The three bastards had manufactured a generic accusation aimed directly at the teenager's reputation and social position by the way of profiling and exaggerating his youth and nothing else. They spewed poison and didn't bother to put in a single film or corroborating testimony other than their own. Right there, that disavowed the complaints as the LAW does not allow somebody to be both the accuser and the corroborator. Furthermore, since the accusations were written in the logs without the chief of security notarizing them or taking into custody all evidences and further witness identities, it made each pronouncement immoral, illegal and a cause for Court Martial against Bridger and his two minions.
No wonder the Brass in Washington DC hadn't wanted her to look too closely at the schedules, logs and evidence bins when she took over. It made everything a lot clearer to the eyes. Bridger, Ford and Westphalen had been entrenched in a vendetta against Lucas since each set foot aboard. Their little civil war had obviously been sponsored by some religious fanatic in DC who held some sort of public office in the DoJ or DoD to give them the cover they needed. No wonder Bridger had started asking for 'special powers for the use of manly christian disciplinings' over Lucas to beat him into servile, silent compliance while his rebellion was in the planning stages.
Captain Bridger had genuinely thought he would be granted those illegal powers which would then be made semi-legal by the verbal glitter-dust of some officious little bastard back home. Ergo; they had a Jesus-freak in a hidey-hole who used his government job to apostolize christian crap all over this case to bury the fact they were essentially enslaving a child. A child who also, by the way, happened to be not only innocent but the whistleblower warning them Bridger and minions were going bonkers.
And that was the real reason all those fake complaints were made: as a diversionary tactic. Since they were in the digital version of the logs, not the paper one, they could be shown off-ship to anybody, like a sympathetic faithful juvenile court judge, to justify Bridger's demand for exceptional powers and leeway over the boy. With a prefabricated presentation and a selected audience of dishonest accomplices, nobody would care about the missing evidence, lack of by-standing witnesses or the completely inexistent defense from the child targeted by the conspiracy. The fact that the child would most certainly not be allowed to have a lawyer at the audience, represent himself, or even send in a brief was a mere detail in the big picture of screwing the LAW and morality of the land.
Bunch of cowardly fuckshits, the lot of them. Bridger obviously wanted to have penultimate control of the boy's media access and social platform activities during the gearing-up segment of his little scheme. Everything in the logbooks was written to suggest that letting Lucas use media or phones unsupervised was an invitation to catastrophe. They had also wanted to sequester him in 'cleansing hallowed meditative solitude' to remove immoral, ungodly and un-American influences from his life. Basically, they wanted him put in the brig or a locked stateroom, completely quarantined from the crew and world at large, his entire reality reduced to whatever Bridger said or showed. Like a guru in a cult. Like the blasted Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, The Family of Jesus, and hundreds of other sects that prayed on children for free slave labor and sexual exploitation.
Well, there wasn't any two ways about it. She had to compile all this lurid mess then show it to the admiral. Washington and New Cape Quest were his patch, not hers. There wan't no way she was gonna tango with 4-stars and 5-stars. No way! Her mamma did'na raise no bumpkin idjiot!
As for the state of the department and the ship's security; she would have to wait and see what the new budgets and crew affectation looked like. Nothing to do about that on her end but send up the report and pray.
There was a strong knock on the door of the office. Looking at the person through the view port, she smirked and ordered the man to come in. "Lieutenant Brody, welcome to your new assignment. I was just about to start an investigation into some unlawful activities by Bridger, Ford and Westphalen before they escaped. You take this batch and I will take this one. We have until lunch to make a crude estimate for presentation to the admiral. Oh, and how was your trip here? Uneventful, I hope?"
The 27 year old man shook his head at the colonel's abrupt manners but then shrugged it off in good humor. Bah! Jarheads; what can you do about 'em?
Techno-babble and stuffs
(SeaQuest – season 1 opening theme)
Thursday, 20th February 2020; 08:00am
UEO Flagship SeaQuest DVS 6000; Computational Analysis Department
Australia, northern coast, Darwin City harbor – UEO military sector
Junior lieutenant Eleanor Henderson, communications and signals specialist. It had a nice ring to it, if she said so herself. The 24 year old woman looked around the small, desolate room and sighed in unhappiness at the state of things. Her new boss, communications chief Timothy O'Neil, was being promoted to second mate as soon as could be practical to accomplish. Which meant a few weeks at best as they now needed a new chief engineer since that was the job the old 2nd officer had held along her bridge job. It seemed everyone on the bridge crew's permanent rotation cumulated two or three jobs systematically. Man! How did they do it?
And now, the young woman was in the dumps, trying to make sense of the mess she had walked in. NOBODY had ever held the post of Chief Computer Analyst before now. Or rather, the guy who held the title, one Lucas 'whiz kid' Wolenczak had been given the title, job and responsibilities but never the access or tools to do the job right. Like the office. Lonny had actually surprised the captain and admiral this morning when she ran into them at breakfast. She had looked up the ship's roster last evening to see where she would be affected until the switch-over on the Bridge was permanent. According to her assignment forms, she was to report to the Computational Analysis Office for briefing and pre-posting training for about two weeks before her first bridge shift as the ship's new chief of comms. An incredible promotion and career advancement at her young age.
Except neither Darby nor Noyce had seen a CA office anywhere in the manifests, rosters or blueprints of the ship. They had to ask Ben Krieg, the quartermaster about the room to find out if it existed. It did but had never been used since Ford didn't want to allow Lucas any privilege of function, position or rank while he could avoid it. The situation became endemic when first Westphalen arrived aboard and threw a wobbly about immature children having an office when her prize pupil, some young 22 year-old doctorate student she brought with her like a camp follower, didn't have one. The fact Lucas held two departments and several projects on the side didn't make the woman any easier to reason with. She had lodged a formal petition with the FCCDC based on nothing but ageist bigotry, jealousy and spite. The room was therefore sealed until the committee rendered a decision.
This was then sidelined by Bridger confirming that Lucas could use the 'shitpit' as a workspace just like most senior officers used their cabins as offices. He even tried to strong-arm the FCCDC into writing a formal letter of agreement to this effect when they showed signs they were in fact siding with the teenager. When he heard that, he called somebody in Washington who exerted influence and had the debate thrown back into an appeals process reputed to take at least two years even for the easiest and most menial items. The only use the room had was as a dumping bin where Bridger and his accomplices threw those electronic parts, program discs and paper documents about the CME or CCA jobs, position, department management or new regulations that they didn't want Lucas to have access to.
Keeping the young man in the dark about the changes and codes he was supposed to follow was a rather basic and transparent tactic to make him look incompetent and irresponsible so as to destroy his reputation in case of an investigation. It held, for about three weeks, and then it was the senior officers who were under fire for not helping the teen adjust to the necessities of his many jobs in a military context. Boy that must have made Bridger and Ford cringe in fury when their little misdirection backfired in their faces like that!
A knock on the open door had Lonny turn around and face the two new comers. It was the other newcomers to the ship's permanent crew: yeoman Myrna Themis, cybernetics engineer, and ensign Lisbeth Ohnohura, a servers & networking technician. Both young women had been dragged to court martial by the JAG for diverse offenses that had either been thrown out by subsequent investigations or had been so greatly reduced as to not even warrant a suspension. In either case, Lonny would have some interesting partners to work with, even though they would nominally be subordinate to Wolenczak in the Computational Analysis Department's roster.
"Hey girls! Welcome to the second pit of Hell. The first one is where the Boss lives right now and we get to empty that out too! After this one. Eventually. Glad to meet you! How was the trip over from the Bush?"
The two new crew members looked at Henderson with deadpan expressions, not certain what the girl ate to make her so bloody chipper at this hour of the morning. They both silently hoped she wouldn't be this hyper by the end of the week or they'd be having words...
No sick leave when you're Boss
(SeaQuest – season 1 opening theme)
Thursday, 20th February 2020; 08:00am
UEO Flagship SeaQuest DVS 6000; Med-Bay, ICU #1
Australia, northern coast, Darwin City harbor – UEO military sector
Lucas Wolenczak was feeling crabby, tetchy, bitchy and a great many other things ending in 'y' that he wasn't thinking clearly enough to spell out right away. Give him a minute or two and he'd get to it.
Frowning one sided just doesn't have the same effect as a good two-browed frown, the boy thought as he glared at his two new workers while fighting through the haze of barely-legal pain management drugs, antibiotics calibrated for a blue whale and several doses of what he could swear was medical marijuana THC extract from Canada's BC Gold. And yes, having gone to Stanford he had experimented a few times and the benefits of eidetic memory meant he could easily differentiate the tastes and effects of several types of green joy even five years later. Yeeesss, he'd been 11 years old at the time. But, it was a learning experience and he needed to know the feeling of intoxication to spot a spiked drink or food item to avoid being hurt or kidnapped.
Focusing his one good flint-blue eye on the two reprobates in front of him, he studiously ignored the doctor from the Bush Carrier Group that was processing the change in containers attached to his bladder and bowel catheters. Besides, the 21 year old female nurse fiddling with the IV bottles was much better looking and closer to his age than the 57 year old grey-headed male anyways.
Using his tablet to emulate his voice, Lucas addressed the two master divers he had acquired. "Piccolo and Williams. Both straight from the good cares of the JAG. By the rebound of courts martial and having enjoyed some of our great nation's armor-plated hospitality in Leavenworth. Both wrongly accused. Both wrongly tried by judges who were lied to by the prosecutors who were sponsored by one admiral McGillivray of the UEO Navy's Department of Experimental Sciences and Applied Technologies to do so. We are still at this point trying to find both the motives and the admiral himself as he as taken an impromptu retirement without cashing out his pension. Or leaving an address. Anything to add?"
The two young men shook their heads in unison, intimidated by the sheer amount of pipes, wires and bandages that wrapped around the moving mummy in the extra-wide bed. The kid was younger than them by a decade but neither would hold that against him. Not after they saw the reports and certainly not after the tandem reaming out given them by Hitchcock and O'Neil at 06:00am sharp this morning right before breakfast. This was the Chief of Mammal Engineering and their new supervisor for the foreseeable future. They were warned clearly about his age, his mind and his temperament. They also got special personally delivered messages from the very mouths of admiral Noyce and captain Darby about what kind of cooperation was expected of them or they would get acquainted with colonel Dirnova's newly revamped security team post-haste.
Now Piccolo and Williams may be young and hot headed, but they weren't idiots, let alone inbred redneck idjiots from the deep old south in the bog. They knew full damn well who had data mined their cases, compiled the proofs, found witnesses and demonstrated the cameras and microphones in the rooms had all been tampered to insure a verdict of guilt by whomever heard the cases. They had been set up to swing high and short but it was the little guy in front of them that saw the ruse and fought for their freedom. And got Noyce to back them up in front of JAG too! No, these two weren't gonna give the kid a hard time. Well, maybe not at first. Once he was back on his feet though, they'd have to show him their appreciation for his efforts...
Lucas just felt a wave of dread go through his entire body as he saw the weird matching smirks on the young adults and groaned in dismay. He'd gone and brought two more 'Ben' aboard and put them in his department. He was so screwed...
Rolling wounded
(SeaQuest – season 1 opening theme)
Thursday, 20th February 2020; 08:00am
UEO Flagship SeaQuest DVS 6000; Med-bay, CR #1
Australia, northern coast, Darwin City harbor – UEO military sector
Katherine Hitchcock, newly minted 1st mate, Ex-O and all around 'Boss of the Boat' under the captain was huffing and puffing her way through the laborious ordeal of transferring to her wheelchair after having finished with the bathroom facilities. She took a few seconds to catch her breath and grumped at her lack of upper body strength. That had never been in the requirements for the engineering positions she had accepted! Ah, damn! Well, no use bitching about it now. Plastering on her semi-detached, professional face with the fake pleasant smile, she opened the door and rolled back into the room proper.
Marcus Shan, the ship's bosun, was sitting in his own wheelchair next to the bed and happily munching on the remainders of her cold toast and cheese slice as if they hadn't fed the poor boy – man – this morning. Humph! What was it with men and food? Ben was the exact same way. Wheeling her way to the side of the other semi-valid sailor, she extended a hand and grabbed the cup with the rest of her coffee. At least, the thick lidded plastic cup had kept the important part of breakfast warm and pleasant for her enjoyment after the mediocre experience in the washroom.
"So commander, I was thinking – Munch! - What will we do today? - Crunch! - I mean, it's not like I can go around the ship telling people to look lively in this condition. - Munch!" Shan asked between bites of purloined toast.
Kathy pursed her lips in dismay at the fact she had no idea herself when the answer came in the form of a JAG lawyer that came from the carrier group early this morning. The older gentleman introduced himself politely in a low, warm voice and shook hands with both wounded before revealing the reason for his presence. He needed to take the depositions of all the wounded in order to process the injury compensation claims so they could have their full pay and benefits as well as adjusting their special medical compensation for having been victimized in the line of work by acts of terrorism and treason.
Both wounded sailors looked at the pile of paperwork and wondered if Bridger had indeed been so kind in not killing them after all.
Take it easy, man!
(SeaQuest – season 1 opening theme)
Thursday, 20th February 2020; 12:00pm - noon
UEO Flagship SeaQuest DVS 6000; Med-bay, ICU #1
Australia, northern coast, Darwin City harbor – UEO military sector
Admiral William Noyce was not laughing. No, he was definitely not laughing at all. Despite the hilarious situation and the conditions for much garrulous bombast having been assembled, he was most certainly not laughing out loud at the poor teenager as he was being fed what amounted to syrupy paste through the pipe in the side of his throat. The look on Lucas's face was downright clowny as he experienced some of the taste by the way of air bubbles pushing the odor up to his mouth, making him burp it out and into his nose. Apparently, the stuff was foul and should not be used on kids, even those in a rehab clinic against sucrose abuse. There really was such a thing as too sweet in life!
After his second dose of liquid sustenance of the day had been given, the poor kid was raised a bit so he could see his visitor without having to strain his neck. He had undergone another bout of surgery between briefing his two new divers and now. He had in fact just awakened from the general anesthesia when the nurse with the bio-diesel bucket had come in. Honestly! They could have filled him up when he slept and avoided him the feeling and taste of this granulous slurry.
Doctor Saritsatva walked in, tablet in hand, while conferring with her colleague from the Bush Group about what surgeries Lucas needed to undergo next and when. They were both surprised to see the admiral this early in the day.
Meetha took the lead: "Namaste, admiral Noyce. I trust the night has brought you peace? Our three patients are going along much better than we had any right to anticipate. The fact that Lucas can in fact be conscious enough to think clearly and manage some of his non-physical tasks is a lesser miracle of Vishnu's grace at this point."
The old sailor nodded somberly at the female medic. "What was he operated for this morning? Anything grave?"
Meetha pursed her lips in thought, then sighed despondently. "At this juncture, it is all grave for him. But some things, even those that do not threaten his life, must be tended in an orderly fashion or the rest of his healing will not happen properly or leave handicaps. As for this morning, we needed to adjust the metal bracings outside his skull and jaw, then we did some preventative mouth work to remove the last teeth fragments that were still inside the gums but useless. These would have eventually rotted and developed infections that could have compromised the recovery of all the other injuries. And since he was under the general anesthesia anyways, we took care of everything we could around his head all at the same time. The arm and ribs are already completely done and mending as predicted. The last real unknowns left are the eye and swelling of the diaphragm. The brain swelling is already reduced noticeably and progressing well from the indicators we have."
William snorted in good humor at the gentle teenager's predicament. "I always knew he was a hardheaded runt but Janet never believed me. Well, ha! I was right!"
The hindu doctor smirked at his pronouncement and asked sotto voce "Will you be telling her that or will I?"
Noyce glared at her malevolently for destroying his poor, harmless fun like that. It wasn't everyday that he could get one up on his wife's motherly instincts when they ran rampant.
The voice coming from the speakers interrupted their friendly banter. "If you are both done exploiting my weakened state for you personal pleasures, mayhaps we can proceed to more constructive activities instead? But please, don't feel pushed into it by my opinion. I'm just the county fair's weirdo of the week exhibition; we all know my opinion doesn't count for real."
Noyce and Saritsatva were both quite impressed by the vocalizer's ability to reproduce the young man's voice and linguistic mannerisms. It even sounded like he did when he was peeved and affected a snobby, stuck-up attitude. Even the fake self-deprecation and passive-aggressive tones were well pronounced and came out naturally. Not that either of them thought it in anyway funny... It was just professional admiration for the exploit of producing such an important piece of technology that would help mute or blind patients who needed a read-aloud system...
Yeah, alright, it was hysterical, the way the poor kid was managing to throw a wobbly at them without even making a real effort at it. - Snort! - Teenagers! Always moody and tetchy...
William waved away the doctors and sat besides the boy, on the right side of the bed so his one good eye could track him without effort. "So, I hear you chewed out your poor new divers before they even got a good look at you. Impressive way to take charge of the team. I could almost make you a commander just for that one." Noyce spoke out, amused by the boy's determination to handle his two departments, no matter his present situation.
Lucas' voice came from the ceiling, softer but firm; "They are good men, admiral. A bit hot blooded, perhaps, but good people with a strong character and a need to show that goodness to others. They both had rough childhoods, with harmful households and no community support to be had. SeaQuest will be their community from now on, and I will be the responsible, stable adult they need to help determine their growth and their professional stance from now on."
Noyce smiled widely, satisfied that the more he spoke, the more Lucas sounded as sane, stable and deeply reliable as he had always been. The injuries had not robbed them of the most important, vital piece of the coming plans. The US President had been apoplectic last night when he had heard about the grievous injuries suffered by the child during the traitors' escape. Now, they had the first good news in a long time, not that Hitchcock's and Shan's health didn't matter. It was simply that the president had elaborated a scheme that hinged on Lucas being mentally healthy enough to express himself in public and be credible when he did so.
Taking a deep breath, William ordered his thoughts before he could speak of the very delicate subject. Turning around he gestured at the two marines stationed at the door to close and secure the entry until he came out. Facing Lucas again, he could see the boy's right hand going around the touchscreen tablet, giving the systems the orders needed to secure the room and close down all surveillance equipments thus entombing them in anonymity.
"All right, Kiddo; Now I have to ask this." Noyce spoke slowly as he passed his tongue over his lips, trying to figure out a way to get into the subject. "Have you ever thought about going into politics? It's a good way to serve the People and a good career, if you have the platform and the backing."
The teenager gave the admiral the gimlet eye with the only functioning one he had and grunted in disbelief. At his age? He was 16 years old! WTF would he want with a political career? He had a pair of departments depending on him with about a dozen research projects that he should now be able to start up since Bridger wasn't here anymore to stop him from using the stations, cabinets and office space he was renting from the UEO aboard ship. And all that didn't take into account his company that made the gaseous displays and many other consumer objects; he still had to manage that too along the way. Where in the bloody blue blazes did the fat rat bastard see any time for politics in there?
Seeing the completely fake wan smile and patently nauseating solicitous attitude of the older mariner, Lucas could only snort in anxiety about what other bolt from Fate would smack down on his poor undeserving head. This would not end well for him.
O'Neil's new headache
(SeaQuest – season 1 opening theme)
Thursday, 20th February 2020; 13:00pm
UEO Flagship SeaQuest DVS 6000; Main Engineering
Australia, northern coast, Darwin City harbor – UEO military sector
Senior lieutenant, soon-to-be lieutenant-commander & 2nd mate, Timothy O'Neil was not a happy sailor, no he was not. And the admiral was gonna hear 'bout this. How in tarnation were they supposed to work honestly like this?
The injured sailor laid his aching head on his shaking hands, resting on the large command console he was in the process of validating post-refit. It was among many that Bridger's men had ripped apart to keep them from getting the boat back under control easily. Now it was brand new; rebuilt according to designs and a set of parts built by Lucas that had been rotting away in a hidden, locked room, not even wrapped or tagged properly.
Treasonous curs!
Tim had never before taken the time to do a systematic search and survey of the ship's internal space. As every other man aboard, he had trusted the admiralty and the Ex-O to do the right thing when they sent her to drydock for a retrofit and new mission statement that included research labs, civilian contractors and private company reps staying all year long aboard. The officers and enlisted men had expected the civilians to have better living quarters and private offices because they would be charged for it a rather heavy price.
This had been confirmed by all of the newcomers, including Lucas when he had arrived and then been promptly set aside by the drydock's commissioning crew. He threw a monumental fit when first Ford, then Bridger, set him aside like last week's trash and told him to accommodate himself of the shitpit he was consigned to or get off the boat. The usually mild mannered, gentle teen had pulled out the contracts, invoices and proofs of payments sent & received to prove his claim. He was owed a private stateroom in the senior officers' area and a private – secure - enclosed office to house and work his classified projects for the militaries of the USA, NATO and the UEO as these were the reasons that he was aboard. All of which had been denied or set aside for later arguments by the two top officers as if the young man was either lying or hallucinating. And they had very vocally made many assertions to that effect, in front of the crew, in the logs and in every electronic communication they had with anybody.
Ford had said at the time that there wasn't the place, no matter what the EUO said about the boat's internal specs. Bridger had then said the same, but with some threats that Ford did not have the rank or clout to make. Weeelll, it so happens that old man Nate didn't have the power for it either. It had all been glitter-dust to get the crew off the scent and stop asking the questions they should have gotten answers to before the ship even powered up the fusion core.
Timothy had spent his morning since 07:00am touring the ship to become more familiar with its inner workings as the fundamental job of 2nd mate was the inspection of the mechanical and technical departments. He needed to become much more aware of the departments and the people in them, not just the communications people as in the past.
As it stood, the chain of command stipulated that the 1st mate / Ex-O had responsibility for security, weapons, the quartermaster's services, the administrative services and generally backing-up the captain. Kristen Westphalen, the chief of science, was in charge of the UEO's list of projects for both military and civilian researchers and also supervised the company reps, excluding Lucas.
Joseph Levine was chief of medicine and answered to either the Ex-O or the captain. Lucas as chief of Mammal Engineering and Computational Analysis answered the 2nd mate or the captain. Neither situation pleased Westphalen and she had complained long and hard about it, and the captain actually agreed with her. BUT the admiralty had set this hierarchy in stone and neither Levine nor Lucas wanted to budge, to Bridger's great anger. The old man had felt his power over his ship was being usurped by the UEO admiralty with such fine-tuning of the administrative structure.
All in all, the trio of criminals had done as much damage as they could in the few months they had each been present onboard. Ford had been passable as a manager and commander until Lucas and Westphalen joined the crew roster, then it became open war. The male officer had taken instant, deep dislike against the boy and sided with the female doctor at every chance he got to destroy his reputation or waylay his projects, equipments and work product. Ford was particularly stubborn about giving out orders verbally, never in writing, and then bitching publicly about the work not getting done.
On the only occasion that Lucas had done work without a written 'work ticket' the commander had tried to bring him up on false charges of damaging the UEO Navy's property, accessing restricted areas without a valid permit and espionage for having held or seen classified materials without the security level to do so. Fortunately, admiral Noyce was watching the ship's messages with UEO Central and intervened to regularize the whole mess and serve Ford with a formal written reprimand for his idiotic behavior.
Westphalen constantly tried to snoop into the projects and work product that Lucas had to handle despite the fact she had neither right, rank or clearance to do so. Her authority was over some civilians and specific military because they were low-level people and had severe protocols and restrictions to follow to get the work done and delivered on time to the UEO's testing labs.
There was NO connection between her and Lucas, not even a 'dotted-line' rapport of officious or customary authority, despite all that she, Ford and Bridger had tried to install such. Lucas had two independent, government-funded departments and all his projects were done PRIVATELY on his own money, materials and time. Since he was not financed by the UEO and didn't get any subsidies, bursaries or other monetary help, then the ship's executives had neither say nor power over his work unless it threatened the safety and functionality of the ship. Lucas only had to show his station and office to the 2nd mate or chief of security for monthly inspections and that was that.
And that was the situation that O'Neil faced now after his damned morning. Bridger had been so rabidly against letting Lucas have any autonomy or good reputation of any sort that he tried many times to overturn the whole contract, going so far as to deny the boy the cabin and office he was supposed to have. The former captain had claimed that the UEO made several mistakes; the compartments noted in the contract were either not ready as the refit job wasn't finished in those areas or they didn't exist as the reconstruction had redone a sector of the structure.
In plain language, Bridger was lying his face off to keep Lucas in the shitpit where Ford put him and tolerated no one to object or suggest alternatives. Even just letting the kid sleep on one's couch had been motive for getting a written reprimand for fraternization against the rules. Snort! Could the geriatric crud be any more transparent about his paranoid delusions?
And then there was the real kicker: the parts, the work products, the blueprints and programs... All the stuff that had been hidden, squirreled away into locked rooms whose identification plates had been removed. Several cabins and offices that were free had been placarded and then been set in the ship's billeting system as either not-there, damaged, out-of-order or just plain erased when they could get away with it. Those secret locked rooms became the reason so many civilians had angrily written home to their companies to start complaints for breach of contracts and refusal to honor the 'secured & confidential lodgings' clauses of their agreements with the UEO.
Ford had started the depravity, then Bridger too, had used these out of the way rooms to hide or waylay anything that came aboard that they didn't like or wanted to make disappear. They had a hidden locked room for every type of thing that irked them: physical mail, computer programs, blueprints & chemical formulae, tools, parts from the UEO's manufactures, and of course, anything that Lucas ordered for use by his two departments, his company or just for his personal needs. They hijacked, detoured and stole for about eight million dollars worth of programs and parts just from Lucas. Another million from three dozen other people in personal effects. And the ever-popular 31 million dollars of spare parts, tools and software's that should have gone towards finishing the blasted retrofit while at sea.
Bridger didn't want the ship finished according to the UEO sanctioned plans. He didn't want anybody telling him what to fix or how since it was his design, his build, his brain-child. HE would make the decisions, the plans and then guide the repairs – nobody else. Ever. It was now apparent that the man had not been stable in a long time. He had even stowed away medical equipments and pharmaceuticals, out of Levine's reach as he didn't trust the man who was too close and friendly with Lucas for his tastes.
All morning long, Timothy walked around all five decks and found room after room that had been locked with plastic placards indicating 'work in progress' or 'danger' or 'reserved'. More than 22 compartments in all. Even on a boat of SeaQuest's girth, that was a whole bloody lot of sealed, unused square footage. And nobody had been aware. Not even Benjamin Krieg who was quartermaster as he never checked those closed rooms as they were supposed to fall under the purview of the chief engineer as part of the mechanical maintenance roster.
Each of the cursed 22 compartments had been slowly filling with stuff, spider webs and dust. Several offices promised to important contractors or departments would finally become active. All the personnel who were promised an individual or corporate cabin would be getting it by the end of the week at long last. The sea-deck would finally be allocating its work stations and offices according to the agreements signed, not by who Westphalen, Ford & Bridger favored anymore. And the four 'shitpit' maintenance rooms would all be turned back into simple machinery closets instead of the impromptu out-of-the-way punitive barracks they had been converted into by Ford while they were still in dock.
O'Neil raised his head and looked at the paper blueprints with its list of software's. This had been made almost six months ago by Lucas, before he came aboard the ship. It was an innovative design to replace the old console by a better, more efficient and secure system. He had manufactured the parts at his company's workshops in San-Francisco before coming to New Cape Quest in Florida. This was supposed to be his first major contribution to the ship and be installed in the first week aboard, followed by others all around the ship, including the bridge. It never happened. Ford took one look at the person who made the equipment and locked it up in a yet-unassigned cabin, away from Lucas, and then promptly blamed the kid for not supplying the parts or doing the install as he was slated to. The man's hypocrisy was outmatched only by his twisted, sick desire to dominate and hurt Lucas for no reason they had ever been able to discern.
Pivoting his chair completely around, the new 2nd officer addressed his captain, chief of security and the two newbies for the Computational Analysis Dept. "It looks good from what I can see. One down, about another 62 consoles and devices to identify, test and put in place. IF we don't find a few others hidden in the ventilation pipes or the cesstanks on deck-E."
Darby grunted his understanding. The whole mess stank to high heavens and then Noyce would want to get involved. At least they still had a group of SeaBees aboard to help with all the search & install they had to speed-process before the ship was finally truly in shape to sail without escort.
Darwinian theories
(SeaQuest – season 1 opening theme)
Thursday, 20th February 2020; 13:00pm
UEO Flagship SeaQuest DVS 6000; Deck-A – moon-pool (sea-deck)
Australia, northern coast, Darwin City harbor – UEO military sector
Seaman 3rd class Anthony Piccolo was in a bind. His new workmate, Edward Williams wasn't any help either, the scurvy dog...
Pfffooot! And another blast of wet air right in the face. Poor Tony passed a hand over his face, trying to dry himself while also glaring at the oversized piece of flapping, squealing sea life in front of him. Eddy was quite helpfully laughing his head off from a safe distance away. Traitor!
The dolphin. Yes. A bloody grey and white, 7 foot long, squirmy, squealing dolphin. A juvenile bottlenose, if the resident veterinarian was to be believed. Tony didn't care at the moment. What he cared about was the fact he felt like he would never be dry again as long as he had this job.
Squeee! Hrweee! Eeee! The sea mammal went, shaking his head sideways rapidly, almost angry at something the two humans didn't understand.
"Oy! What are you doing with Darwin?" A loud voice called out from the far side of the moon-pool, catching the attention of all three sentients.
The dolphin launched upwards, spinning around to land face first in the water for a plunge to the bottom of the pool that took him upwards in a curved pass right next to the new arrival. Surfacing with a wide splash of water, the mammal chittered excitedly at the human male with a clear familiarity.
"Okay, okay, buddy! Just let me get the machine up and running. I ain't Lucas, I don't work that fast." The officer walked around the pool, letting his hand trail in the cool sea water with the dolphin following him like an eager child begging after a treat.
Piccolo and Williams saw the man was in his thirties, caucasian with a tanned complexion, short black hair and green eyes. He seemed at ease around the pool and its inhabitant as he looked over the setup along the way. Coming to the 'front' of the pool, he put his thumb on the scanner of a locking cabinet and took out a large yellow handheld device with a black antenna and raised keypad. Closing the cabinet again, he brought the device over to the two seamen and gestured for them to come forward.
"Okay newbies, this here critter is your best friend from now on. The alternative being a brassed-off teenager with a lot of friends in the admiralty." He spoke with a smirk and easy disposition. "Oh, and I'm Ben Krieg, lieutenant and quartermaster for this boatload of flotsam. This – he points the mammal – is Darwin. Now, Ensign Darwin here outranks you and is your secondary Boss after Lucas, capisce? The way to speak with your new mini-boss is this nifty invention by the good graces of the medium-boss, the vocoder. You activate like so... And then slide your badge here in this slot and then the access PIN by the keypad, and voila!"
Turning towards the playful, smiling dolphin, Krieg asked "Heya Darwin! How's it going buddy? Have you eaten anything today?"
Before the stupefied gaze of the two sailors, the dolphin nodded vigorously its massive head and answered in plain english spread around the entire sea-deck by the wall-inset speakers. "Ben-friend. Yes. Darwin eat. Darwin hunt fish! Many! Many! Gooood fish! Lucas where? Lucas water. Work too much. Need water. Lucas play water. Make Lucas happy again."
The two flabbergasted sailors could only stand still in complete shock at their first sight of a clear case of inter-species communication with verbal language. Like any child born and raised in North America, they had been taught in school about the mental capacities of many animals to understand some words and react. Dogs, horses, several types of birds, and especially gorillas and chimpanzees had been explained at diverse moments in classes about biology, ecology and the animal kingdom. And every sailor that was enlisted heard about the old dolphin training programs from the cold war era.
But nothing could prepare them for this. This, the technology involved, was second only to finding extra-terrestrials from outer-space that can communicate intelligently. The two young men walked closer to the water's edge, a movement that brought the attention of the mammal and human to them for just a second before Krieg delivered his sad message.
"I'm sorry pal. Lucas was injured yesterday. It's bad enough that he can't move for a long time. He will come to you as soon as we can help him move again. I know he is already trying to connect the room he's in with the cameras and speakers to be able to speak with you anywhere he can. It will take a few days but he'll get it done."
"Lucas-friend hurt? Bad hurt? Bridger not help Lucas? Why? Pod help pod always! Why not help Lucas? Where Bridger? Darwin splash Bridger! Darwin not happy! Lucas-friend-pod hurt! Why?"
The upset sea mammal stood up half-way out of the water, vertically with his large head shaking and bobbing every which way in emotional turmoil at learning the very basics of the past day as Benjamin tried to explain what happened and why. Not that the poor man had a whole lot to go on.
"So you see Darwin, it's because his son was killed the way he was that Bridger became angry the way he did. He stopped caring. He lost his faith in our pod. He began to see us as enemies, as sharks, and attacked us for it. Ford hurt Lucas, but Bridger allowed it. The bad shark-people left our pod and now we are trying to heal."
Darwin was now floating listlessly, listening raptly, trying to understand the way that Ben explained things. The older human was not Lucas but he was the second most gentle, most patient human to interact with Darwin aboard the ship. Even though his attempt to speak dolphin was funny like shrimp trying to swim away from him when he fed. Poor two-legs; he tried so hard to help...
"Darwin bite Bridger. Bridger-shark hurt friend-pod. I will not accept. Lucas pod-mate to Darwin. Water and wind tell me this. Darwin take care of pod for now. Human-Levine come Darwin. Tell me what hurt Lucas. Darwin find greenies to help Lucas. Eat greenies and get better again."
Ben was at a loss. The dolphin rarely spoke so much with anybody other than their teenaged genius so he didn't have a clue what this was all about. Well, that's not true: he could understand maybe 60% of what was said. The sea-dweller was actually rather clear in his meanings, it was only a few specific concepts that were not translating well. Plus the smirky smile on his snout that made Ben feel as if the big fish was laughing at him all the time they were together.
Running a hand through his short hair, the officer answered "Okay fish-face, I will get Levine to come talk with you. He should have time when lunch is over. Now; these here are Piccolo and Williams. They are now part of our crew and will work with you until Lucas is back to his old self."
Turning to the reality-shocked humans, Krieg snorted in humor and told them "Like I said, here's your new mini-boss. Take care of him right or you'll wind up in med-bay real fast. The surest way to piss off Lucas is to hurt Darwin. It'll be a slow and messy way off the boat for you if you do that."
The two scared nods were quite amusing to behold. Giving a last wave to his non-human friend, Ben decided to go back to med-bay and see the little guy. Maybe him and Noyce would be done and he could finally see him in person to get the truth of how bad it all was.
Dumb politicians! Oh, yeah, that's me now...
(SeaQuest – season 1 opening theme)
Thursday, 20th February 2020; 13:45pm
UEO Flagship SeaQuest DVS 6000; Med-bay, ICU #1
Australia, northern coast, Darwin City harbor – UEO military sector
Ben walked into the waiting area of the medical sector with a lot of angst, doubts and self-loathing swirling inside of him like warm acid, burning and corroding everything inside as it moved. He sighed out softly, still not able to process mentally, let alone emotionally, what had happened to their littlest friend at the hands of people who had taken oaths to protect everyone aboard.
Running a hand through his short black hair, Ben wondered what Lucas would be like. He had been doped up for almost 24 hours straight and undergone several surgeries already. According to the nurse he had spoken with at lunch in the main mess hall, he had even held meetings with the Brass and his two new divers. Humph! Trust the tetchy little runt to not know when to take it easy! Even when laid out on his back, knocking on Death's Door, he still made the rest of them look like lazy bums.
Swallowing passed a sudden lump in his throat, Krieg wondered just what changes the boy's personality would have suffered. He had been a gentle-souled kid, with soft manners and caring, altruistic emotions towards practically everybody he met. Injuries to the head tended to alter the mind, but betrayal could destroy a soul, creating a monster. Ben hoped Lucas's soul had survived intact.
Girding his courage, the 33 year old man walked to ICU-1 and, after identifying himself to the two marines on guard faction, knocked playfully on the door jamb to announce his presence. Not that it was necessary, the door was open, well in sight of the patient who was slightly raised on his bed. The one blue eye visible in the bandage covered head swiveled comically in a teenaged eye roll and a synthetic voice emanated from the speakers in the ceiling: "Come on in Ben, the big bad admiral slunk back to his den to torture innocent souls at his leisure while I stew in my juice over the barge of crud he dumped on me."
Advancing carefully as he looked over the wires, tubes and support poles all around the bed, Benjamin made a face at the choice of words his friend had used. Lucas was obviously still upset about things from yesterday, but Noyce had to go dump more on him to boot. What was it with the people from DC and NCQ that they couldn't grasp the simple concept of 'enough'?
"Okay Kiddo; what was it the big bad baldy beach ball wanted to foist on you now?" the adult asked with a bratty attitude and a satisfied smirk when the teen actually coughed out some laughter through the hole in his throat. 'Hummm that must be weird to feel...'
Using his good hand, Lucas typed on his tablet: "I'll get you for that one Ben! Making me laugh like that! Don't you have any pity on the poor sick kid? You're mean, you are! I'll tell Kathy on you, see if I don't!" The boy expressed with a silent attempt at smiling despite the metal fixtures around his mouth and skull. It looked weird in an 'Ouch that must hurt' kinda way, but at least the kid was trying and seemed to have kept up his good spirits some.
"Oooh! You'll tell Kathy! What could she do right now, anyways? She's laid out like you. Not much of a threat, you know..." the lieutenant goaded the boy.
Lucas' answering smirk wasn't comforting the older man. "Well, with her wheelchair she could run you down and leave skid marks in your puurrty widdle face you're so proud of, then we'd be a matching set" the teen joked back "or she could use her new position as Ex-O to have you redo all your inventories manually. Without any help from anybody. Who knows? She part of the 'Brass' now, and nobody really understand how those people work in their heads."
Ben dropped himself gracelessly on the stiff plastic chair near the bed, in view of the boy's good eye, and made a face as he thought that one through. "You're right! I hadn't thought about it. Kate's gone and made herself a Big Head now. Wonder what she'll be like, all orderly and proper from now on. She was already stiff as a wooden board, I don't see it improving any..." The older male blinked interrogatively at his bedridden friend when he saw the wide, lopsided grin on the exposed part of his face.
"Is that any way to speak of your new superior officer, lieutenant? I hear colonel Dirnova's revamping her brig, maybe you'd like to help her? Hummm, from inside the cells, to tell her how uncomfortable they are? I'm sure she'd be appreciative of your efforts." Sounded the playful voice of a clearly amused Katherine right behind Benjamin's back.
The man startled so badly he had to catch himself on the bed frame to avoid falling to the floor and placed a shaking hand to his heaving chest, hoping to still his runaway heart. Glaring mightily at his ex-wife's smirking face, he settled back in his chair, wondering how in tarnation the woman had become so proficient with that wheeled contraption that she could move silently like that. And now Shan was rolling in too! What was this, a 'Survivors of Bridger's Revolt' convention?
"Hey guys, nice to see you rolling around. And somewhat conscious as well. I thought you'd both be knocked out by the meds by now." the voice from the ceiling welcomed them.
Marcus snorted, amused at the kid. "Nah, you know Meetha keeps the good stuff just for you. We had the cheap generic leftovers that Levine could scrounge after she went through inventory to make certain her poor little kid wasn't missing out on anything. Only the best for our little blond cutie-pie, ain't that right Kate?" the ship's bosun ribbed him back good and hard.
Hitchcock shook her head despondently: "After all the years of service, the training, the sacrifices and getting shot, kidnapped, tormented and spoken down to by macho pigs, you'd think I rated better than some Tylenol and a cold compress to take home, but no... The fragile, delicate little porcelain genius is more important and had to go first..." Kathy piled on right alongside of Shan's own joke.
Ben was now shaking with laughter at the horrified face Lucas made. '1, 2 and 3...' he thought as he counted down the time it took his pal to reboot his mind to type out a reply to those clearly exaggerated or humorous statements. The kid really didn't know how to distinguish jokes when he was the one receiving them.
The voice from above sounded again, this time with a clearly aghast tone to it: "I am most certainly not weak or fragile! And dammit all: I ain't delicate! As for Dr Saritsatva giving me the better stuff or handling me before others, well the woman simply has an astute sense of priorities. She clearly understands you couldn't make the boat float without me to hold your hands while you work." the teen completed with a shit-eating grin on the visible side of mouth.
Kathy and Shan were protesting loudly the sideswipe at their competency and worth when Lucas added brattily "At least you actually work for me to need to hold your hand during it, unlike some others who just stand around waiting for the job to do itself by some miracle of technologies not yet invented."
The two wheel-bound sailors guffawed at the expense of Benjamin who was now defending his work product and capacities against the unexpected attack. Damn, the blasted little runt! Even in agony he managed to make an ass of his older friend!
After a few more minutes of laughing the humor out of their systems, the people calmed down and began the usual hospital small talk about injuries, treatments and the lacking bedside manners of doctors who treated them like cars on the blocks in a chop-shop. Lucas, pointing at his multiple tubing's, called dibs on the comparison to a botched oil change, much to the amusement of the other three.
"Hey Luke" Ben asked with a smirk, knowing just how much his friend did not like his name getting shortened or changed "What did Noyce want that has you so steamed up?"
Taking a long, difficult breath, Lucas replied gloomily "He wants to steal my soul and sell it a piece at a time on the black market like in the time of slave auctions. Is that clear enough for you?"
Marcus frowned and replied for the group of adults "It can't be that bad! Besides, its obvious the guy likes you and trusts you something weird for anybody in any Intelligence Agency. He wouldn't do anything harsh, not after Bridger and Ford."
"Come on Lucas" Katherine said in her most soothing voice, trying to coax the teen into confiding to them what ailed him "We can't help or support you if you bottle it up inside and don't give us a chance to understand the problem."
Swallowing hard, the teenager nodded weakly, trying to remember not to move his damaged neck and spine too much. "The orders come from the White House. Even if Noyce thinks its on the outer perimeter of crazy, we don't have any choice about this. There are new orders coming down the pipes and we will have to adapt or leave. But, one way or the other, it will happen and the way things are done and controlled on board will never be the same."
Ben frowned in concentration, trying to figure out what exactly his young friend could have coming at him that would be so terrible. Given his injuries on one hand and his exalted genius on the other, there wasn't a whole lot that could be asked of him that would be that bad.
The synthetic voice sounded again: "The President has been contemplating the command situation aboard for several months now. Since about six months before we left drydock, in fact. He was keenly aware of the tensions between career military personnel, civilian hirelings and contractor reps. Then I came aboard and things got weird in a bad way. Well, because of all that tension and the power struggles and the lack of adaptation from the sailors to the new normal, the POTUS had an idea."
Lucas went silent to let the collective groan pass. Yes, the President's style of commandment wasn't the best thing in the world and his ideas tended to be thrown around like spit-wads, but he was the Commander-in-Chief and this was his new directive, so...
Lucas took a good three minutes to organize his thoughts and type out the phrases in a cognizant way so the less scholarly people could understand on the first go. Not that the baseline concepts were hard to grasp. The underlying logic of it all, though... Well, it was President D.J. Trump who'd come up with it so there would be plenty of loopholes and backdoors to find and exploit in due time.
"The President has come to the conclusion that the SeaQuest is simply too much power and responsibility for a single man alone to carry on his shoulders like the other boats of the US Navy or the UEO Forces. Honestly though, compared to an aircraft carrier, I don't see how we're worse but he's the Boss and he pays for it, sooo... Anyways, the Man had this brilliant idea to treat the SQ like a municipality rather than a simple navy boat. This means he intends to establish a permanent Ship Council composed of the career military department heads on one side and elected civilian councilors on the other side. The Leadership would then rest on the newly elected Mayor while the Captain would be relegated to being just an executant, like the Ex-O, 2nd Officer and so on down the line."
"The only real changes would be in the security and medical departments. Security would become like a municipal police system with boosted add-ons and would have a more complex task in how they relate to the citizens aboard. The med-bay people would be split down the middle between military medics and civilian medics, with some legal spaghetti verbiage in the descriptions of the tasks and authority chains that Noyce hasn't shown me yet. On those two fronts, I can foresee a lot more trouble than with the commandment of the boat or deciding where we sail next."
"Also, the good Mister Trump is pushing the UEO to accept that the electoral process be opened to each and every Sentient Being aboard the ship for the purposes of either presenting themselves to the open council positions or voting. That means that the intention publicly stated by the Oval office is to abrogate unilaterally, for SeaQuest only as a testing group, the minimal voting age and the species-based restrictions with the purpose of allowing me and Darwin to vote. In my case specifically, Noyce has warned me that the White House has basically ordered that I present myself for the Mayor's job right at the first election."
The open-mouthed fish-like gaping of disbeliefs was funny for about a minute before Lucas began to feel some irritation about it. WTF? Did they think he was too young and immature to hold the job down? Did they really feel like he couldn't do better than Stark, Bridger or Ford, despite that anybody who didn't turn out a traitor had essentially passed the bar of success already? What the Hell were these so-called friends of his thinking about now?
Lucas was sinking into a good and proper funk when Marcus guffawed out loud, breaking the paralysis that held the other two. "Hey guys, we have the newest member of the 'so useless they promoted him to the top so he's out of the way of the working guys' league for a friend! Who knew he'd get recognized for his full value so early in life!"
The explosion of laughter that followed had Lucas wish he could still cross his arms over his chest and pout properly. Having only one mobile arm and less than half a face just didn't produce the same effect as a good two-armed, fully frowned pout. Damn this shitpit of a crud's life, anyways!