Posted by Lieutenant Commander Ever Zeanar (Chief of Psychiatry) in SB 157 Zeanar’s Quarters Avoiding the XO

Posted by Commander Dira Myqian (Executive Officer) in SB 157 Zeanar’s Quarters Avoiding the XO

Posted by Commander Dira Myqian (Executive Officer) in SB 157 Zeanar’s Quarters Avoiding the XO

(snip)

The simple answer was too much happened. The records on the matter were very clear though and that’s where she would begin. Dira exhaled. “Well, we were answering a distress call from a mine on an asteroid and we couldn’t make contact, except that as a telepath I could pick them up. So I was sort of a homing beacon for the away team. We had to take a shuttle because the magnesite was obscuring sensors and the explosion had shifted the asteroid’s orbit. We had only two hours to effect a rescue before the asteroid would fall into a gas giant. Our first officer became a liability after he misjudged the landing and crashed us.” Dira had to fight the urge to roll her eyes, even after all the time that had passed. “Afterwards he was rattled and kept making bad decisions so I was forced as the counsellor to remove him from duty. As the next ranking officer on the team, that put me in charge and we then proceeded to rescue the miners. By the time we made it back to the shuttle the ship had sent another shuttle and we were all able to make it back to the Calypso and tractor our damaged shuttle back.”

Listening and sitting silently, Ever’s only response was a raised eyebrow. How could a seasoned and senior officer make such a horrendous mistake as a simple shuttle landing? Though it was not a routine event, the landing should have been manageable without incident. And then to continue to make inadequate decisions because his nerves were “rattled” to the point of being removed from duty, sent a large red flag. Not many first officer’s who found themselves in that situation would just hold their hands up and step aside to be relieved of duty. And particularly not by the ship’s counsellor. More than likely, such a situation would be career ending or at least, ensure any opportunity at the captain’s chair would be nonexistent. Something else was under the surface of Myqian’s story. Ever wondered how much the woman would reveal of that day and how much she had omitted from the official transcript or at least, had taken creative liberties. 

Myqian shook her head. “As you can imagine, the XO was not happy about my decision and demanded an investigation. He declared it mutiny, insubordination at best. But he put the lives of the entire away team and those miners in danger, and having previously been his therapist I understood his reactions to be overreactions. The more he tried to display competence, the more risk he was willing to put everyone in and someone was going to end up dead. As I was confident they would, they deemed my decision to be the right one and our XO was actually put on probation afterwards. But like I said, afterwards I had a lot of reflecting to do and something on that mission shifted in me. I needed to understand and explore it better.”

Commander Myqian, XO

Bump

There was the body language again. Shaking her head. Possibly disbelief. Whatever had happened, from Myqian’s perspective, she seemed to believe her decision had been the right one. To her credit and probably relief, Starfleet had agreed with her. Making that stand could have been disastrous and not only ended her own career, but Myqian could have been sent to a penal colony for a very long time. “The shift being liking making the tough calls and taking control? Having a god like need to have the power to make life and death situations? Have you lost someone close to you and felt powerless to prevent a death?” 

Zeanar, CoP

Dira burst out laughting. She just couldn’t help it. Okay, so they were playing it this way. Given the circumstances, Zeanar could very well have her record open in front of her while they spoke and Dira certainly didn’t think that the COP was the kind of person to go into a command level eval blind and without ever having at least skimmed a person’s file. The complicated questions that shifted to another probing question on a topic that was related but tangential was a common technique and one they both would recognize immediately. But still, she had been a therapist long enough to appreciate the tactic. er eyes all but said ‘I see what you did there- you can’t fool me’. “Well, for starters, there’s no aspirations of being god-like over anyone. We therapists already have a significant impact on people’s lives, and I don’t believe in power over people. It’s antithetical to my own personal beliefs.”

Her dark eyes gazed at Ever, dissecting the comments and flow of conversation. While they were clearly focused on Dira’s eval at the moment, she of course knew that Ever understood that Dira herself was evaluating Ever’s role as their COP simultaneously. It was the only way this brief conversation was going to work. “I could feign ignorance on your part and assume you haven’t read my file, but while it is absolutely a possibility, I highly doubt it. So for the sake of transparency, I will say that I have no problem talking about Paige, if that is where you want this conversation to go. And as we both know grief is a funny beast, it can be dormant for ages and then without warning leap out and overwhelm someone. Do I have those moments? On occasion. And I will always miss her and have regrets about how she died. But it’s been ten years and I’ve done the work. I wrestled with the hard questions and after a time I’ve found peace with it all. The truth is that had it been otherwise, Paige and I would, in all optimistic circumstances, been married right now. Maybe we’d even have kids too. But that’s not how my life went, and while I held back in my personal life for awhile, the grief and fear of ‘what if’ doesn’t control me.”

Commander Myqian, XO