Face to Face with Evil
It was too dangerous to lock Blackjack up anywhere on Earth. When a rumour started that he was being held in ADX in Colorado, Marines from a dozen different units surrounded the prison with IFVs, assault shuttles, artillery and hundreds of men and women holding phaser rifles. The unnamed Colonel in command spoke to the poor Fed-Sec Warden in charge of the ancient prison over subspace.
Release that traitor to us, or I'll blow this entire prison to hell within the hour.
Fed-Sec sent over their SORT (Special Operations and Response) Team to try to talk the Marines down, but it was 300 cops who were trained to face rioting prisoners against 300 battle-hardened Marines who had come ready for war.
"The hell does HQ expect me to do?" The SORT Commander said to me, "Ask them nicely not to blow this entire prison to hell? We're not trained for this. We don't have the equipment to fight the FMC."
When it was at last explained to the Marines that Blackjack wasn't at ADX, they left in perfect order, but the message was plainly clear. Just before he left, that unnamed Colonel turned and said one last thing me. A sentence, which has haunted to me this day, and words that I will never forget for as long as I live.
"Just make sure that the fleet remembers one thing, Pigeon. Blood will have blood."
Starfleet kept Blackjack in the only place out of reach of the FMC, in space. In the brig onboard the Sovereign, Blackjack was lying casually on his cot as I cleared the security scans for our interview. It occurred to me as I sat down at the jailer's desk that I had yet to see this man in person.
At the age of 42, Blackjack is almost what you'd expect to see from a hero, if you didn't know any better. He has short, finely-kept black hair, usually sleeked back. His brown eyes have a sort of steely determination about them. This is not a man who enjoys being questioned or second guessed. He wears a perma-stubble that covers up a few assorted scars on his face, hard-earned from service in battle. At 6" tall and weighing just under 200lbs, Blackjack is in great shape for his age, exactly as any other Starfleet Officer with a similar career would be. But that's where the quality ended. The odour reeked even through the forcefield. His cheap cologne mixed with the sterility of the brig, and a feint scent of whiskey spilled on his still torn uniform.
I discovered from Sovereign's CMO that Blackjack was a minor alcoholic. While his PT scores were still in the required annual retesting range, Susan was able to easily tell he had faked all his checkups over the last five years. And for someone facing life in prison, or worse, he was shockingly arrogant. When I first asked him to justify everything he had done, he gave me a sob-story about reluctant necessity.
"It's not like I woke up one morning and just decided to sell the Federation out," Blackjack began, with a calm and assured voice, "People who aren't out in space don't realize what goes on out there. Being in command means a hundred decisions a day, and hundreds, if not thousands, of lives betting on you making every decision the right call. Sometimes, you don't have the luxury of stopping to think about every possible outcome. You take the information at hand, and you make the best call that preserves the Federation."
I didn't buy that for a millisecond. I've seen after action reports from Dan with enemy torpedoes crashing down around his face. I've seen notes from some of John's toughest cases, where life or death is counted in seconds. Susan, Jean-Luc Picard, William Riker, Ben Sisko, Kathryn Janeway, and a hundred other Starfleet Captains all told me that no mission, no decision, is ever so critical that a Captain can't take the time to make the right call.
Blackjack sighed and kept trying to spin his fiction. "Gowron, he's a maniac, sure. An animal. Like all Klingons are. You have to keep the animal on a leash. For every idiotic move Gowron did, while I was out in space doing my thing, I kept him under control. If Command had just let me do my job, Cardassia never would have happened. We'd be ready for this war that's coming with the Dominion. I did what every Starfleet officer is expected to do, reporter. I made a call that saved lives. Full stop."
I was ready to throw in the towel right there. How could he sit there and lie to me? With everything we knew about what he'd done? All the deals, all the money changing hands. I asked if he could look Mike Bagsley in the eye and repeat that. And he started laughing. A sort of maniacal laughter that only the evilest or the most insane of men can possess.
"Alright, I can see you're a cut above the usual tabloid scribblers. You want the truth, Ms Hotshot? I'll give you the truth. I made a king's-fucking-ransom on the Kronos pipeline. Don't take that as an exaggeration. In three years, I had more money than God. I had more money than I knew how to spend. But don't worry, I tried to spend it."
He got up from his cot, slammed his fist against the wall, and laughed again. "I own Starfleet! I own the entire god-damned fleet! Hell, you can rightly say I own the mighty Federation! Do you have any idea how deep my pocketbook goes, little girl?! I've got reporters, lawyers, judges, admirals, council members, about a thousand names deep! I've got enough shit on everyone to take the entire Federation apart in a single afternoon! Everyone had their hand out for me! Everyone wanted to be a part of the legend called Blackjack! I bought and paid for this like you buy milk from the grocery store."
And he just kept laughing. "And you wanna know why I did it? Think about Matt Decker. Think about Ben Maxwell. Think about Micheal Eddington. These were real heroes! These were men who gave everything to Starfleet! And what did they get for doing what had to be done? A pat on the head, a jail cell, a wheelchair, forgotten by history and by the little people who have the sheer fucking audacity to call these men criminals!"
"I did it for me! Because I earned it, and I deserved to live comfortably after putting myself on the line for the Federation, time after time! And it was easy. I faked a battle with some shiftless Klingon General, and I was a hero, just like that. I butted heads with a few clueless members of the Admiralty Board, and your beloved Nakamura gave me my own chariot without anyone looking over my shoulder. They let this happen, and I was smart enough to reap the rewards!"
My spine had gone cold. Blackjack didn't just admit to everything. He celebrated it. Like it was prize to admit that he corrupted everything the Federation held dear. But he didn't stop. He made it far worse with his next words. He made me afraid.
"And you asked me about Bagsley? I should have let the Klingons gut him like a fish. You wanna know what I think about the Marines? A better dressed Wehrmacht. They bungle into a colony and stamp out the locals with guns and jackboots. What does that say about our noble and fair society? We should hang every last black beret from the nearest yardarm! Am I sorry that Bagsley suffered? Not one damn bit! I liked knowing he spent every hour in pain! I'd do the same to every last jar head in the Federation if I could!"
It was sick to hear. I was physically sick to hear this man, held up as the highest standard to follow, bring himself willingly down to a level of cruelty and barbarism that should have died in the third world war on Earth. And Blackjack just kept laughing.
Part of me struggled to maintain the role of an objective reporter. At that moment, I believed I could feel what the Marines felt after they learned that Blackjack was the man responsible for Mike Bagsley's torture. To hell with objectivity. I wanted to reach my hands through the forcefield and strangle him myself. I don't know what it was that stopped that me.
"What do you realistically think is gonna happen here?! You really think the fleet will convict one of their own? For this? I'll tell you what happens little girl. In a week from now, I'll be on Risa sipping fishbowls with a pair of Orion girls in my lap! Take that to the bank!"
The guards told me the interview was over. I left the ship that night full of emotions. Blackjack showed no remorse for what he had done. I sat face to face with pure evil that night. And I'm still not sure who blinked first.
─•~:~•─
