Concerns of Conscience

Posted on Sun Nov 11, 2018 @ 1:56pm by Fleet Captain Rhea Kennit & Lieutenant Cassandra Kennings

688 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Plaga Navis
Location: Captain's Ready Room
Timeline: Takes place prior to the strike team to break Torrence out of the prison

Cassandra, padd in hand and uniform freshly pressed, walked up to the Captain's ready room and braced herself. She rang the chime and stood back.

Kennit had been working on her upcoming cover, and had just finished painting her fingernails a rich dark black color. Using a tool to set and dry the polish, she called out “Come in!”

As the doors opened, Cassandra walked in and held out the padd. "My report on Chief Summers," she said.

Looking at her nails a moment, a light touch here or there to confirm the polish was set and dry she waggled her fingers at the chair before the desk and took the padd. “It’s been so long since I had to slip into an undercover role I almost forgot how to do this. I’m amazed I didn’t spill the stuff all over the carpet.”

Looking at the report, her eyes widened at the size of the document. One eye brow raised, she indicated the padd with a nod as she asked, “That much to write about?”

"That's the abridged version," Cassandra said, sitting down. "Captain, she needs to be taken back to Alpha Quadrant. There are facilities on Starbase 174 for her with specialists who are trained in Personality Dysphoria. Even though one of those personalities is artificial, it's the closest analogy I can come up with. Her conditioning is breaking down. Her true, Romulan self is starting to bleed through, and because it isn't properly aware of the situation and she isn't integrating this situation into her psyche, it's going to cause more and more outbursts. Her attempted manslaughter in Sickbay isn't going to be an isolated incident for long, I'm afraid."

“There is no holding area suitable other than the brig, and I doubt that would do much toward maintaining or stabilizing her mental state.” Kennit answered. “Nor can I send her back with a reduced crew on a runabout. She cold snap and kill those sent with her, take off with the runabout, is there anything which can be done to help stabilize her for now?”

"She needs to have her alternate self begin to communicate with her original self. Right now, they are separate and distinct, and one is virtually unaware of the actions of the other. If she wishes to bring her current values and feelings back to her former self, she needs to convince her former self to acknowledge how she feels. Right now, her former self is a bit murderous towards us. I've also included Doctor Anderson's formal protest at allowing her to walk the ship freely. She's still rather sore about her head nurse almost being killed. As I said, that's the tip of the ice berg."

She sat back and sighed. "If we encourage her to remain acting human, the deterioration will happen faster and the outbursts will be more violent. However, she's afraid to let go, because she believes she's real. How do you tell someone 'sorry, you're not real, time to go.'?" In her mind, we're asking her to give up her existence, even if it's fake."

“I can assimilate her, handle her dual personality rather swiftly.” The Captain remarked. “It would fix the problem and make her far more... manageable.”

"I'll assume that's a joke," Cassandra said, sternly. She shook her head and sighed. "So we can't send her to the proper facilities with people who can give her the intensive care she needs, and we can't keep her. A rock and a hard place."

“So that’s a ‘No’ to the sure fire way to correct her mental issues then..” Kennit drawled. “Okay. I don’t have any other suggestions. My area of expertise lies along a different path. I can not and will not leave her aboard the Victory while we are engaged in the retrieval mission on Heouron. She’ll have to go along where a close eye can be kept over her activities however, if she attempts to sabotage or otherwise cause a negative result on successful completion of the mission objective.. she will be dealt with on the spot.”

***

 

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