Posted by Civilian Joe Milligan (Bartender) in Main Sim -Briefing at the ready room

Posted by Captain John Tiberius Glen (Captain) in Main Sim -Briefing at the ready room
[snip]

This time Cross scratched her head for she knew Malone had been a science officer but now from his uniform she could tell he was the D’H of science.

‘’Hi there Lt ,did you get promoted? ‘’she asked ‘’In which case congratulations for you deserve it’‘.

In her own thoughts Cross did question why the Captain hadn’t shown up yet, cause usually he would be the first one present.........now concerned about the uncontrollable phenomenon that had inflicted Glen , wondering if it was happening again.

The Captain’s ready room was quickly filling up with the senior staff, the night NE’s on the bridge though said nothing about the oddity of having it there vs the far more spacious conference room a few decks below. But what did they know? They were just mindless and nameless Ensigns! Still with the brought in chairs there was enough to sit everyone on the senior staff it would just be a tight tight quarters and elbow bumping.

Max looked over to Ensign Schwartz and said, “Please take the comm. Notify the Captain in the ready room if you hear from the commodore again. We are expecting a call around 0015. If anything else happens, let us know. Thank you.” Max then stood up and walked into the Captain’s ready room. Max noticed all the officers who had already appeared. Max wanted to stand as he had been sitting for the last few hours. He was not use to sitting down being in Engineering. He only liked to sit a few minutes at a time as he would rather be up and moving around and looking at different things in engineering. He waited for the meeting to start.

‘’Ah Lt Mullins I think you have to squeeze in everyone is here except the boss,” Cross said.

“Well, this is so small, the Captain won’t have room to change his mind,” added Faith.

Dr. Cross then wondered if something had happened to Glen for this was so unlike him.
Truth was the CMO was worried about what no one else in the room had any knowledge off, with the exception of his niece’’ I think its best if I’ll go to the Captain’s quarters and check on him’’ and with those last words she stood up to leave.

Captain Glen didn’t think he was late (only everyone else was early) and he arrived with minutes to spare. Dr. Cross had had no need to worry; he wasn’t having one of his ‘turns’ but simply taking his time. As he door opened he found Dr. Cross there about to leave. “Have you forgotten something?” Glen asked her.

She was about to say ‘You’ but instead replied ‘’Just popping out for a bit of fresh air but since you’re here it will wait ‘’ with that Cross squeezed her way back to her chair with ‘sorry’ here and ‘excuse me’ there.

Captain Glen also wasn’t sure why the Lieutenant had organised it in his Ready Room either; not only were there no seats left, but there was barely any room left on the grass either. At least no one was ever going to complain that they hadn’t got to know each other at this briefing. He managed to squeeze himself into the room and made his way to front, wedging himself between the lectern and the wall.

The CMO was assessing him with the eyes of a doctor ,she came to the conclusion that he was fine probably catching up on lost sleep.

“Thank you for attending, and sorry to have got you all out of your beds,” Glen told them. “I’ve called you here because we have a full formal briefing with Commodore Stone at 0100 hours about our next mission. Lt. Mullins will now fill you in on what he knows so far… Lt. Mullins can you explain again to everyone, what you told me about the Star-Fleet Federation Colonial Outreach program and the Unity, please?”

Now she rolled her eyes ,imagine if everyone went to sleep at the same time and leave the ship floating in space ! About to say something her grandfather’s words echoed in her ear * Remember silence is golden* so instead she focused her full attention on what Lt Mullins had to say.

Max then stepped forward and said, “I was contacted by Commodore Stone during my watch. Here are the details which were provided, ‘You may or not know the colonial outreach division of the Federation and Starfleet oversees and tracks independent colonies that settle outside the Federation borders and usually what little to no contact with the Federation there after. Still in their interest of safety and in the hope that at some point they may decide to reunite with us the division keeps its eyes and ears to the ground when stuff crops up. About 82 years ago one such group went far beyond our then borders. Numbering nearly 15,000 some men women and children, all human they settled on a plant that they later called, Unity I. The system has since been labelled as Unity. Over the years they’ve only done the most bare minimal of trade. Family members at the time they left, or since, that refused to cut ties with the Federation and Starfleet were disowned, as were their descendants later on. Occasionally some of their own people leave the colony and either fall in with independent merchant groups or in much rare cases join the Federation and Starfleet. As a result these people sometimes are in contact with Unity. But over the past 6 months more and more reports have come in that these people have had no contact from Unity. As a result they finally reached out to Colonial Outreach to ask that a Starfleet ship be sent to check up on the colony and render assistance if needed, and if not then at least find out why they’ve gone silent for so long. We’re sending you what we know of Unity over the past 10 years, any other older information we find unlikely to be of any real use. I’m also readying some spare cargo on the station here, for the use of medical and food and such resupply, just in case you need it or want to use it as a gift or peace offering etc. Please have some NE’s in your transporter rooms stand by for receiving in the next 20 or so minutes. Please wake Captain Glen and inform him of these events, I will be gathering some other information of the region we have for a full formal briefing with him and his staff by 0100 hours this morning’” He then said, “It looks like we are going to need to help out and the Commodore will be contacting us again at 0100, which will be during this meeting, to provide some additional information. At this time, if there are any questions, please hold those until after our call with the Commodore at 0100. This is all the information I was provided at the time.” Max then stepped back and looked over at the Captain to see how he wanted to proceed after this information was provided.

“Thank you, Lieutenant for the excellent summary,” Glen said. “So, now we are just waiting for the comms call. You will see that the benefit of using this room is that no one is more than three feet away from the coffee machine and the bacon sandwiches. In the meantime, while we wait, does anyone have any questions?”

“I have a question,” said Faith, “well more of an observation.” Captain Glen gave her a nod to continue. “The Captain knows my background but some of you will not. From the death of my father, aged six, until my mid-teens, I was brought up on Eta Cassiopeia, also known as Terra Nova, among the community known as the Sons of the New Earth. So, I know about these kind of off-Sector, alternative-lifestyle communities, and I think I can speak with some authority about them. I think that Cara Meow, our ship’s Xenoanthropologist and Sociologist would back me up on this too, as we have discussed this subject before in private.” The Caitian was too large to get inside the Ready Room so gave a purr in reply from the corridor outside.

Faith continued, “Now Unity One may have made some friendly gestures to the Federation before all went quiet, but that shouldn’t be taken as an invitation by them to visit, nor will the other Unity colonies be likely to be as friendly towards us. If these communities had wished to join the Federation, then they would have applied to do so already. Instead, they have chosen to separate themselves from the rest of humanity. To them the Federation is a decadent, dominating, supra-planetary, quasi-government which wants to impose regulations and laws restricting what they can do. To them, this is more important than the economic and defence benefits that membership would bring them. In my experience, we will find them to be fiercely independent, have a dislike of the Federation and all its rules and regulations, and will likely maintain and hold great value on non-Federation standard languages, customs, and weights and measures. They will probably have a mistrust of science and scientists, could be religious, xenophobic, and hold other views that we might find quite archaic. They will most likely have bans of some technology that they feel would alter these values. Some may take this dislike of the Federation further. In the Sons of the New Earth all communication devices were banned, and any kind of new technology destroyed, and life there was very puritanical. No alcohol of any kind was allowed, no dancing, no musical instruments, and only the singing of hymns on the seventh day. This behaviour leads on to authoritarian governments taking hold, makes them very insular and inward-looking, illiberal, intolerant of other beliefs, and it can even become a cult.”

“Now we are going to sail right into their system, to all intents and purposes, outside of the Federation’s borders, without any back-up but in what is to them, essentially, a warship, promoting an ideology that they abhor. What could possibly go wrong?” added Faith.

Cross’s mind went back to Earth’s history ‘’ If it is a sort of cult then the people are oppressed have to abide by the rules imposed on them whether they want to or not ‘’ she stopped for a moment to catch her breath ‘’If the cult is based let me call it some kind of religion with its own rules, then the people would be even more reluctant to accept us due to the repercussions they’ll face, even if they want too be free from the clutches of their rulers .We have ample knowledge of suppressed dependence and oppressed subjugated such as by a tyrannical authority forcibly impose obedience and servitude controlled by cruelty and force .......... if so they won’t take kindly to us ‘’.

Captain Glen replied, “There has been no suggestion that these people are members of a cult. As the Lt. said, there has been contact over the years with people who have left Unity One and it is those people who have raised the concern about the people they left behind. I think Starfleet is well aware of the problematic nature of this mission, and I’m sure we will hear more from the Commodore at 0100 hours… I think that the fact that we are bringing supplies of food and medicine as peace offerings will help smooth out any worry they may have and I am obviously going to be careful about how we approach them. I very much doubt they could have had any kind of technological advances on their own, so our medical and agricultural advances from the last 85 years alone will be like magic to them. Hopefully, that will swing opinions to our favour, if they aren’t favourable already. We do need to be careful though, and appreciate that will be, as Faith said, fiercely independent people, who have deliberately left the Federation for whatever reasons. We are tolerant of all religions and faiths in the Federation, so that isn’t often that religious grievance that these outreach groups have against us. The group that Faith’s mother, my own sister, belonged to was probably unusual in that respect, but they had some practises that were clearly very strange and odd in whatever other society or religion you might live in. Often these outreach groups simply want to be left alone to make their own laws and not be dictated to by strangers from across the galaxy. Unfortunately, the galaxy is a big place, but getting smaller every day, and we cannot defend all the external groups from any threat races we might meet in the future. Imagine if we came across a militaristic race who wanted to expand their territories right up to the Federation’s present border, or even across it? Now that we have peace with the Klingons, and the Romulans appear to be withdrawing back into themselves, there is little appetite for new wars with new enemies, and we would very likely sign some agreement redesignating a zone between us as demilitarised, and even ceding some of these colony worlds to them, just as the Klingons with the Romulans. You can see how that could really raise tensions within such groups, so their best options are to join the Federation for their own protection, if they could only see that… As for us going across the border alone without back-up, well, that’s par for the course with the Merrimack. That’s what patrolling the edges of known space is all about. The Federation just doesn’t have enough ships out here… Any other questions?”

Cross remained silent ,though the fact that the CE was told that over the years they’ve only done the most bare minimal of trade. Family members at the time they left, or since, that refused to cut ties with the Federation and Starfleet were disowned, as were their descendants later on…raised red flags for the CMO.

Faith couldn’t keep silent. “Captain, that ‘technology and medicine’ part of your reply was doing a lot of legwork, but the fact is that we have told already that they they’ve deliberately minimised the amount of trading done, and that family members at the time they left, or since, that refused to cut ties with the Federation and Starfleet were disowned, as were their descendants later on. They won’t be that interested in our technology or else they’d have traded for it already. I do know the mentality of these groups; to them simple living, plain dress, and their religion and pacifism are more important than anything else. They value rural life and manual labour. Just our beaming down there will be enough to annoy them. We will not be welcome there!”

“I’ll certainly bring that up with the Commodore, but we have to find out if there is a problem and what that might be, and we need to physically go there to discover that,” Glen replied.

Cara said, “Captain, I agree with Faith entirely and we must show great caution, but as an xenoanthropologist I’m loving the chance to visit a 15,000 strong community that has been cut off for 85 years and to see how our modern way of life in general has increasingly diverged from theirs. It might be possible to observe them remotely from orbit using a variety of anthropological techniques, or to take down a shuttle like we did with the EP19 folks, or to beam down undercover in a remote place and pretend to be from another part of their world. The opportunity to study human behaviour, cultures, societies, and linguistics there is too good to miss! This could be like EP19 all over again!”

“Well, that is certainly possible, but let’s be clear that it isn’t our mission,” said Glen, and asked again, “Any other questions? Come on, there must be some other questions?”

Guy put his hand up. Despite him only being the door security, in the absence of anyone else, the Captain let him ask his question.

“I, I…” spluttered Guy. “…wanted to ask whether these renegades… if they don’t have modern technology, then they don’t have weapons or starships, so they aren’t really a threat to us. If they are pacifists too, they can be offended by our visit, get very upset and refuse to speak to us, make complaints to Starfleet and the Federation Council, but they won’t be lobbing any missiles our way? Obviously, the alternative scenario is that they got hit by something; a new threat race attacked them! I’ve heard rumours about empires beyond our borders we haven’t met yet! Or the wildlife on Unity One just suddenly turned nasty, or they were hit by some kind of plasma storm. Then we arrive at the planet to find no colonists, just parts of them… and a lot of blood! Maybe we should check into spatial anomalies and…”

Glen interrupted, “Thank you, Lt. Fleegman! As usual, your positivity absolutely shines through. However, you’d be correct, unless they’ve received arms from a third party they have no weapons to defend themselves, and that is partly why the Colonial Outreach Division will want us there… Now, we probably have time for one last question before the briefing begins…”

Some thing inside Cross snapped ,she stood up and in no uncertain terms said ‘’Shut up all of you , we are debating about what if and why including me ‘’she ran her fingers through her hair ‘’ I suggests we should wait for the Commodore and hear what he has to say first before jumping to conclusions and then we can decide on planning ‘’ .
She wondered if this was going pretty much the same way the last missions had been and wondered why it was always the Merrimack which was sent to find out about what this time ? Humans who decided to go back to the stone age or was it something more sinister.

Glen was worried by Miriam’s sudden outburst. It seemed out of character even for her. “I called this pre-meeting, Doctor, but the suggestion was the Commodore’s himself. I need to know the thoughts of my senior crew so that I can ask the Commodore or Admiral Baker the right questions. I doubt we will have very long on the conference call with him. This is all speculation, and for sure, we will discuss this further, and in more detail once we have more up to date and relevant information… Anyway, I think it is almost time now…”

The female doctor nodded ‘’Sorry Captain my bad’’ and sat down again ‘’Anyway is it not both beneficial and crucial to have the counsellor present?’‘.

“Do you mean that Joe Milligan should be here?” Glen asked. “I must admit, I hadn’t thought of it, but I have no objections. There isn’t a great deal of room left in here for him though!” Glen thought, All joking aside, and once this is over, I am going to have to ask Mullins why he decided to hold this meeting in my Ready Room!

“Could someone page him and ask him to attend please?” With the whereabouts of his current XO still unknown, Glen could use the advice of a previous Number One on this, even if he had retired from the service.

‘’I’ll do it Captain ‘’ she took out her cell phone =/\= The Captain needs your expertise as a counselor make your way to the ready room=/\=.

It would seem as if Joe had been waiting right outside the door. About the only thing he had had on his plate at the time was answering questions from D’Nesh which seemed to come at the rate of twenty a minute. She was like a dry sponge, thirsty for information. He did however come into the room with an expression of puzzlement on his face. He stood looking around the crowded room for a moment before finally turning to the captain and asking cautiously. ” Yes, sir captain you wanted something?”

“Ah! There might be some room over there?” Glen said indicating the galley/cupboard where Faith was serving coffee. “It was really Dr. Cross who suggested it. She thought that since most everyone else on the ship were crammed into this tiny room, it would be fun to invite you along too! …no not really!” Glen laughed, but no one else seemed quite as amused.

“It’s about our next mission,” Glen continued. “While we’ve been waiting for the official briefing we’ve been speculating a little. We are tasked with discovering what, if anything, has happened to an independent colony outside the Federation border. They are a group who have refused any contact with the Federation in the past, so we can be sure of a frosty reception if they have simply turned off all their communication devices. They may refuse our help in any case, but we are bringing medicines and agricultural equipment in case they need them. We do have some people with experience in how they think - Faith lived among such a group, and Cara, the ship’s xenoanthropologist has studied such groups, but the insight of a Counsellor might be useful. I think my time to ask questions during the briefing might be very short, so I want to be sure to ask the right questions, and your input into that would be helpful too. I could always depend on your insight as a COS and an XO to be useful.”

• Glen, CO

Joe scratched his chin and looked thoughtful for a moment. ” Well Captain all truth be told I would look for an ulterior motive in the fleet. I mean you have a group of people who want nothing to do with the federation and leave the federation wanting nothing to do with us. Wanting only to be left alone. ” Joe shrugged and said simply. ” I know it may come hard to many in the federation but there are some who don’t fancy us. I would say they have that right leave them be. If you’re looking for something psychologically wrong somewhere I would think that it might be in the upper echelon of our command. If on the other hand someone somewhere has some knowledge of a disaster of some sort with these people, we should go to our border and hail them. I wouldn’t think it would be too prudent to just go barging in where we’re not wanted. And we don’t know what sort of new friends they may have made.”

Joe Milligan . Barkeep / Counselor.

‘’I totally agree if that’s the case but we have to make sure it is and they are not being forcible,constrained and imposed to live in whatever way,degree or manner that might be.I guess its right that the federation wants to make sure these people left on their own accord in which case we should just wave goodbye and leave’’ .

Cross CMO.