Face to Face

Posted on 27 Dec 2015 @ 5:15am by Commodore Harvey Geisler & Commander Jillian O'Connell
Edited on on 02 Jan 2016 @ 6:45pm

2,125 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Rude Awakening
Location: Interview Room Three
Timeline: MD 9 || 1230 hours

Jillian was wrong. The chair she sat in was far more uncomfortable than the lame excuse for a bunk in the brig cell. The low back was stiff and unwilling to yield to the pregnant woman. She found it unwise to persist, but it was just as impractical to negotiate with her unborn child.

She did not fear what was about to come. In fact, Jillian had no idea what was coming. Her hand possessed only one card, one unplayable card. Captain Harvey Geisler was not a Consortium agent. Convincing him of that would be a monumental task.

In Turbolift Two, Harvey kept his gaze fixed on the doors in front of him while he examined his hand. First, he had the facts. Multiple sensor logs showing the O'Carroll violently attacking medical convoys and the casualty lists to supplement the charge. He also had Flight Recorder footage from Alpha One, Commander Walsh's bird, demonstrating the O'Carroll's swift disabling of the convoy itself, striking immediately at vital areas to disarm and strand the vessels.

In his other hand... he had speculation, figments of rumors planted by Commander O'Connell, wife of the man he was trying to hunt down. A man who Harvey had less than favorable experiences in the past. Antagonistic simply wasn't the word. Harvey had always been going in one direction and Zachary in the other, and on occasions their paths would cross.

He surmised Jillian would describe it as a matter of two egos colliding. Harvey would agree to that. And, of course, he was not surprised that she'd finally united with him in marriage. In fact, he was surprised only that it took this long. Harvey had not been interested in sex or other desires of the flesh. Zach and Jill were fellow engineers, and plenty more in common. She was here in the Gamma Quadrant of her own accord.

But Harvey still felt responsible. It was he that introduced Zach to Jill. That was not of his own accord. Harvey was forced to take a remedial Engineering course in his sophomore year and rather than look to his roommate, Zach, Harvey turned to a tutor in the class. Zach had to track Harvey down to deliver a message (which Zach later learned that Harvey was purposely ignoring) and that's when he'd met Jill.

The turbolift came to a stop, depositing Harvey on Deck 15. Despite his ill regard for the Commodore, Harvey bore no ill will against Jill. She'd always been kind to him. Which is why he had a very hard time believing that she was indeed Consortium. Between the rumor and his own memory, Harvey felt something was missing from the equation. Why would she turn her back against Starfleet in the first place?

And why would she lie about the convoy? What did she have to gain by doing so? Was it a tactic to stall?

As he turned the corner and saw the entrance to the detention ward, he let both the voices of doubt and confidence war in his mind.

Jillian had finally resigned in the battle with the chair. She decided to stand in the back of the room, far away from the door. With her enlarged belly, it was physically impractical for her to make any sort of escape attempt or force an altercation.

It was no surprise when the door finally opened and Captain Geisler stepped inside the room alone. She was no Betazoid, but she could see in his eyes his struggle with doubt. Jill would speak first. "Thank you for your hospitality, Harvey."

First name basis again? Harvey thought, wondering if he should enforce protocol in the room. He tongue left little to debate. "I wish I could say it was good to see you, Jill."

She nodded. "Come to officially charge me then? Or do I get to share my side of the story?"

Harvey did not immediately reply. His eyes instead wandered down, fixating for a moment on the rather sizable bulge in her abdomen.

"Eight months along," Jill explained immediately. She'd shared this information with others from Harvey's crew today and she knew it'd be highly unlikely that he would have asked for that little detail. "And it's a boy."

"Alison and I wanted kids," he muttered. His eyes turned to shock for a moment once he'd realized what he'd shared.

"You?" Jill fired back in solemn surprise. "Stone Cold Geisler married?"

Harvey frowned. "Widower, actually." That was a story for another day. He approached the table and set five isolinear chips on the table, one for each of the convoys the O'Carroll's crew attacked prior to their incarceration. "The evidence is pretty clear, Jill. Quite damning too. I just need to know who was in command. You or Zach?"

She nodded, recognizing his need to hide behind the facts and avoid everything else. Jill would not let it go. "Where were you when D.S. Eleven fell?"

He'd sat behind the table now, refusing to stand toe to toe with her and increase the tension unnecessarily for her. After all, it was bad for the baby. "It's complicated." And it was true, for the Mystery of the Golden Stars and it's solution was quite a complex puzzle. Not enough time was in this interview to cover it.

"We were escorting the USS Hopkins back to Starbase Unity," Jill explained, slowly moving back towards the table. "Medical relief mission in dangerous territory. I'm sure you know the drill. We were less than an hour away from Unity when our Transceiver Array went on the blitz. I was in Engineering when it happened, and the next thing I know, my Assistant Chief has a phaser pointed here." She instantly covered her son's head, or what she thought was the head. The child within her moved, causing a tiny hand to gently touch her own.

"Needless to say, the Consortium mutiny was quickly taken care of, thanks to Lieutenant Wul. He's a Betazoid, and somehow sensed a massive attitude change in several individuals on board."

Harvey leaned forward, placing both hands on the desk and clasped them together behind the isolinear chips. "You mean to tell me that those with empathic training can easily determine Consortium spies?" He smiled. "Do you actually expect me to believe that?"

"It's true--"

"Bullshit, Jill."

Jill locked her gaze on Harvey's eyes for a moment, deciding that this avenue wasn't going to get her very far. "I know it sounds hokey. But there's a lot about the Consortium no one knows. Where they came from? How they infiltrated Starfleet? What their real objectives are? Except we know that they are after any flag officer or Captain is aware of and willing to resist the true Consortium cause."

"Which includes Zach. Who is, as you say, still loyal to Starfleet."

"That's right." Jill pulled out the sorry excuse for a chair and sat down in front of him, doing the best to keep his gaze. "We are not Consortium."

"So what does that make me?" Harvey asked. "Consortium then?"

Jill shook her head. "My Chief of Security believes you are still loyal to Starfleet."

"Is that why you surrendered?"

"I surrendered because I didn't want any bloodshed."

"You fired upon and disabled three ships in a medical convoy today, Commander. You disabled several of my starfighters." Harvey picked up a yellow isolinear chip from the table and grasped it firmly in his fist. "And if we hadn't intervened when we did, there would have been bloodshed. I've seen the O'Carroll do it!"

Jill's face went ashen white. "No..." she said. "That's not what we did at all. Yes, we confronted multiple convoys. And, while each one contained some medical supplies, there would stock piles of torpedoes and phaser rifles. Gavara is a perfect staging area for the nearby sectors and Terlexa knows it. We were forced to disable those convoys. Each one received minimal damage, and the cargo was retrieved via transporter. Not even in the worst circumstance was a sould injured! We made sure of that."

"But if they were Consortium, why not kill them? Why not apprehend them?"

Jill leaned forward, placing both palms facedown on the table as she did so. "My assistant chief engineer had been my friend for five years. The Chief Medical Officer had been aboard that ship for three more than that. We were good friends. But, when the moment came, they both turned on us and tried to kill us. Only eight people died on the O'Carroll that day. They were a mix of rank and race, and we knew them well, except that they had orders to try and kill us without charge."

Leaning back in her chair, Jill continued, "If the O'Carroll only had eight agents, how many are really on that convoy? One per ship? Two? Or maybe the convoy is commanded by a single operative? Or maybe it's the Quartermaster on each ship that really knows what's up?"

"And why not have your Lieutenant Wul detect their Consortium programming?" Harvey countered. "If he found it aboard the O'Carroll, why not the convoy?"

"The change was instantaneous, then," Jill explained. "It was easy to detect. Think of life in general. The best empathic mind on Betazed took years to locate the Argolis Killer. And the perp lived two doors down from him. Just how is my Lieutenant supposed to make those connections so quickly?"

Looking at the yellow chip still in Harvey's hand, Jill gently lifted her right hand and touched the side of it. "May I see your... damning... evidence?"

Harvey kept his gaze locked on her for a moment. Then he inserted it into a slot on the table. Part of the white surface became illuminated to display the recording. Harvey watched Jill's eyes as she witnessed the O'Carroll ruthlessly strike each convoy ship. Fire billowed from each explosion as other sections besides the propulsion and weapons arrays were impacted.

And when those eyes looked up to meet Harvey's, she hoped he would sense both her shock and resolve. "This recording is falsified. I could go into vast detail into how, but I suppose that doesn't matter to you."

Harvey merely nodded. He did not care how, nor was he sure that he believed her. "My Assistant Security Chief says you told her this convoy is carrying weapons."

"It is," Jill sternly replied. "That's why we are here at Gavara in the first place."

"Then why does Terlexa not send the Agamemnon? Or the Brazil or the Freedom? If she means to confront Cameron at Unity, then why hide it in convoys?"

"Because she's looking for Adislo. And the Scorpio, the Unification, the Arizona... Anyone who knows the truth. As far as the Consortium-controlled assets are concerned, Adislo and Cameron and anyone who associates with them is a cancer. Terlexa knows Unity is wounded, and knows it's defended. She wants to make sure her borders are secure before making a run on Unity. Making subtle movements beforehand, however... Hell, even a good Risk player does that before taking out a fellow player."

She reached out and grabbed Harvey's free hand. "Check the convoy, Harvey. And check your own ship! Once you learn the truth, your life and the lives of your crew are at risk. Someone on this ship is with the Consortium!"

Harvey pulled away, stood up and backed away from the table as his chair clattered to the metal floor. There was a level on honesty in her eyes, a level he'd seen in two other women. The one he once married, and the one who occupied a nearby cell. "We've already found our agent," he lied.

"Mackenzie Kos, yes." Jill thought of the weeping woman who she'd already spied in a nearby cell. "I've never witnessed a Consortium agent beg for forgiveness or grieve the way she does. Are you sure you have your person?" She dared not imply there was more than one. Harvey should be smart enough to assume that on his own.

Captain Geisler remained still for a moment. Then he stepped forward and removed the isolinear chips from the table and the reader. He approached the door, but froze just before he could trigger the sensor. Harvey hesitantly turned to face Jill a final time as if he were trying to again size her up and validate the last few minutes. He came in looking for answers, and now he was leaving with more questions. Already he missed the Golden Stars.

Jill watched Harvey swiftly turn and leave. She leaned back in the chair from hell, closed her eyes and sighed. "Please Harvey," she muttered. "See the truth. Before it's too late."

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