Lies, Damn Lies, and Blackjack's Lies.
Its only now, nearly a year after everything that happened, that I can now start making the connections in my mind. There was no one decision that led to all this, reader. There was no one order, one choice, one day that caused all this.
It's a sum of the events that came before. In creative writing, that's called the climax. We're not there yet. We're on the building moments still. But now, hopefully, you're starting to understand how it came to this.
By the later half of the 2360s, it had become clear to Aki-Ojisan and others began to realize something: Blackjack's talents were being objectively wasted at the planning table, butting egos with Owen Paris and Vance Haden among others day in and day out. After some consultations, Aki-Ojisan called Blackjack Ashcroft to his office in San Fran two days before Christmas in 2367 and presented him two gifts. First, a promotion to full Admiral, OF-9 in Marine documentation.
As if his legend wasn't already high enough, Blackjack was now the youngest four-star Admiral in Starfleet history at 40. The second gift was a reassignment. Blackjack was removed from his position of as head of Starfleet Tactical and was given a "Discretionary Assignment."
What this means for my non-Starfleet readers is that Blackjack was – in spirit, if not strictly in letter – free to come and go as he pleased across the Federation. Ostensibly, Blackjack's official responsibilities were to identify outposts, starbases and remote starships with, quote, "notable deviancies in fulfilling training goals and expectations of compliance with doctrine as specified by Starfleet Tactical."
Given the fact that the assignment was "discretionary", it was left in Blackjack's hands to determine where, how and when his assignment could be considered complete.
To me, it seemed like a recipe for abuse. So, I sought clarification on the assignment from someone outside the fleet.
"It's not entirely without precedent," Naval Historian Howard Starks explained to me, "It was a common practice in the British Royal Navy in 19th Century Earth to send a particularly notable officer to distant stations, to shore up training and standards, organize new officers in their commands, or simply to remind the men that the Crown was always watching. It was an… unusual assignment for Starfleet. To be given such wide operational latitude indicates a degree of irreproachable confidence in loyalty and duty. Certainly, those terms applied to Thomas Ashcroft at one time."
With a detached runabout – the USS Mckenzie – serving almost like a chariot, Blackjack wandered the Federation for the better part of five years, causing celebrations and parties whenever he arrived at a particular colony or outpost, but for the most part, he was on his own, out of touch with Command in general.
He was required to submit mission reports on the first and the fifteenth of each month, but beyond that, no direct line was maintained with the stalwart Admiral.
"How did no one at command ever figure this out?!" Susan Markstrom said in shock, when I asked her to examine one of the usual messages that Blackjack would send to Starfleet HQ during his years alone, "Any first year Comp-Sci student could tell you this was written by AI, and that's not even running it through an analysis matrix, that's just at a glance. But assuming the message wasn't digitally checked… was no one even reading these damn things?!"
I asked her what she meant by that, and Susan continued to explain her disbelief. "Every one of these reports I've read. They're too perfect. For three years, Blackjack's crossed every T, dotted every I, used the exact amount of impulse fuel he'd need to get from point A to point B. Here, look at this one."
The report we're looking at is a personal log entry from Blackjack, where he talks about winning a sizeable pool after a round of blackjack with Vice Admiral Douglas Mitchell, who at the time was sector commander on starbase 188.
"Resolute put into Starbase 188 that day to restock on deuterium. I can tell you, for a fact, that Blackjack wasn't there."
The more I dug through the documents, mission reports, logs, the more that these little inconsistencies started to add up. For three and half years, I can't report in good conscience that Blackjack ever filed a single honest report of what he was up to during his three-year discretionary assignment.
What exactly was he up to? Keep reading.
─•~:~•─
