A joint(ish) Log with SpaceDaisy playing the part of Emily Reed, shortly after the conclusion of the Klingon Diplomatic Mission. This log takes place on Odyssey Station
Emily frowned at Sully’s suggestion she was “running up his tab.” Even more at the fact he seemed to be holding himself responsible for what happened to her former crew.
“I paid for my own drink, thank you very much. If you want my help then I’ll give it to you, but on one condition. I want to have a conversation about what you just said first. You do that and I’ll do some digging in medical.”
Sully kept his focus on the cups in front of him, tucking his rubber ball under one and shuffling them with a careful and deliberate motion.
“Huh? Oh sure I guess. Kinda already have a therapist but I’m not gonna like, say no.”
She had expected more resistance, but then she didn’t know him all that well. He always seemed to keep his distance from her. “I don’t want to give you a therapy session. And I don’t know anything about what happened to the bomber, yet anyway. But I do know what happened on the Paris and I think you need to know.”
Without looking up, Sully increased his pace with the cups. “Look, Emily, before I say this you gotta know I like you a fair bit, so I say it from a very caring place. I already know what happened on the Paris. I’ve been reliving that day pretty consistently.”
His eyes narrowed as he pretended to focus more and more on keeping track of the rubber ball under the cups, and Sully continued.
“But I’ll hear you out.”
“No,” Emily replied her eyes dropping to the glass in her hand, rolling it nervously between her fingers, “I don’t think you do.”
She leaned back against back of her seat in the booth, and drew a long breath, “The Paris was testing a new drive that had been in development. I’m not an engineer so I don’t know all the details, but I do know that if it got out what we were doing it would have broken a treaty or two…”
“Yeah, see I knew that already. Some kind of Quantum drive. Before I joined the illustrious and glamourous world of Command, I was an engineer. Only thing I don’t have are the original plans for the engine, which I wanted. I was going to recreate the thing, scale it to fit an escape pod or a shuttle, and send you back. But I can’t get the plans, so that fell through.”
Sully reached over and grabbed a handful of snacks off his plate, then resumed shuffling the cups.
“Ten more seconds on the bridge and I would’ve figured it out then too. But before I could put two-and-two together the thing cracked like some kind of Quantum Egg and all the Time Yolk went spilling out and killed everybody. Then I find out my guys found you in a stasis pod or whatever. Miracles upon miracles.”
Sully took a deep breath and stopped moving the cups, leaning back in his seat, and looking down with something close to admiration.
“So, where’s the ball?”
Reaching out, Emily rested a hand on top of the cup to her right, but she didn’t lift the cup or move her hand. “That’s not the whole story. Haven’t you wondered why I was in stasis to begin with? The drive went horribly wrong, we all know that, but I was already in stasis otherwise I’d be just like all the rest of them.”
“If re-reading the mission report a half a hundred times serves me right, you were ordered in by your Captain, once things went pear shaped.”
Sully gently took her hand from the cup and tilted it over, facing her. The empty cup clattered against the table and he moved his hand back to the middle cup, doing the same. Once again, the cup was empty. Finally, he turned over the third cup, which was also empty.
“You should know better than to believe everything you read by now, sir.”
She picked up the last cup to see that it too was empty, then setting it back down on the table she looked back at him, “I was monitoring some work on the drive a few days ahead of the test, mostly the safety of the engineers doing the work because of the possibility of radiation leakage. We had warned the scientist heading up the project about some concerns but he didn’t listen, he didn’t want to listen. There was an accident. Both engineers died, I don’t even know why I’m not dead too. I should be, a few times over.”
Emily looked down into her drink a moment, twirling the glass and watching the ice cubes spin, thinking back to it silently for a moment before she finally spoke again, “It’s easy to falsify mission logs. Especially when someone doesn’t want it to get out that they covered up the fact the drive had serious problems and pushed forward recklessly anyway.”
Apparently desperate to change the subject, Sully chimed in. “Yeah well the only person in my view who should be dead is the guy that tried to kill us with a bomb. But that’s the thing. I’ve had weeks to stew on this and I can’t find anything. No autopsy, no medical record, no report of any casualties that are unidentified.”
“My original thought was somebody with access fudged the records. But I couldn’t find any evidence of any records being fudged. Nothing deleted. Nothing altered. Then it hit me. There’s no evidence of anything being altered or deleted because there never was a record of this guy.”
Sully pointed down at the empty cups.
“No ball. No body. Someone on this station is Section 31 and they let the guy go. Disappeared him right out from under us.” As he spoke, Sully became visibly more and more upset.
“I need you to do me a favor. I know you can’t be the spy, so I feel comfortable telling you all this. But you can’t bring any of it to anyone else. No one in your department, no one in your group of friends, nobody. Once I flush out whoever did this I’ll…” He stopped, as if he hadn’t thought that far ahead.
She arched an eyebrow at his sudden hesitation. “I’ll look into it for you, and I won’t say anything. Because I think for once you need to stop carrying the responsibility alone. And because you saved me, you and Johnny and Elianna. I’m grateful, and it’s the least I can do.”
Swallowing the last gulp of her drink she stood up, “That said, I wish you could see you aren’t alone Sully, you don’t have to try and save everyone. It wasn’t your fault what happened on the Paris, it was ours.”
“It wasn’t anybody’s fault.” Sully lied, nodding to bid Emily farewell and to indicate that he’d be staying for a little longer to finish his thoughts. She smiled slightly, seeming satisfied at least with his answer and walked back into the crowd, leaving Sully to himself.
With a flick of his wrist, Sully reproduced the rubber ball and placed it in front of him on the table, turning it with his thumb and pointer finger.
“Now it’s just you and me, sweetheart.”