Kelly leaned back in her chair feeling the weight of the pips around her neck. This was not the first time the pressure of being in command felt like a yolk holding her down. This would not be the last time either. It was just one moment in the career path she had chosen.

Her senior staff had held the ship together after the attack from the aliens had sent her to sick bay for a week but they were not the XO or the CO. Everyone had an opinion but only she and the XO were in command. The bubble of anger in her chest was not related to the crew or even the aliens. It was directed at Starfleet command and those that had placed the Atlantis in its current predicament.

While it seems so innocuous on the surface hindsight was 20/20. The closed-door meetings for Ian and the XO had set the crew up for a brief lapse in command structure when during the first contact with the aliens. If Ian had been free, Kelly would have taken him with her to the transporter room the night the aliens had arrived since they were directly asking for him. If Jen had not been sequestered in his own closed-door meeting with Starfleet brass off the ship he would have either been in the command seat or in the transporter room where his background with the Marines might have made a difference in the initial attack by the aliens. She vaguely wondered what that meeting was about which caused the XO to leave her ship besides it being a way to keep him incommunicado for the past several days. Kelly did not see him being a part of the coup by section 31 but neither did she see the officers placed under her nose for weeks that participated in it. If he had been a part of it, why would section 31 need to place a fake Andorian XO for Jessa to think was the actual XO? If Jen was a part of it, section 31 would have used him directly and been far more efficient in the promenade attack.

A hundred different variables with a hundred different possible outcomes but that did not matter now. He and Kelly were left with piecing together a plan and moving forward. Turning to the console, Kelly randomly punched buttons scrolling through all the data she had compiled to go over with him as she waited for him to arrive at her office. The XO was always punctual but right now there were a million fires to put out and only two hoses so she waited for him. Her request had told him to just come in when he found a moment so she waited for the door to slide open and her first officer to enter.

Kelly Bordeaux CO