Posted by Ensign James Franklin (Engineer) in CNS’ Office, Boarding Eval

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Royal Sinclair (Counselor) in CNS’ Office, Boarding Eval

Posted by Ensign James Franklin (Engineer) in CNS’ Office, Boarding Eval
Posted by… suppressed (21) by the Post Ghost! 👻
((Snip))

James found himself chuckling along, somehow… Gratefully. “Well, Sir, that’s a damned good fake, I appreciate it. If more Starfleet Doctors had coffee this good, I’d be a lot less worried about these check ins..”

-Franklin, Eng

Sinclair smiled a conspiratorial smile. “Well I’m not a doctor, at least not yet, so you can relax. And I’m almost as new here as you are. Looks like we are both still getting used to our new lots in life.”

Sinclair, CNS

Franklin nodded amiably. “I reckon so, Sir. Hopefully changes for the better…” He took another sip of coffee, and tried to still his mind. “I guess I figured I’m the probie, and everyone else has been settled a while.”

-Franklin, Eng

Sinclair shook his head. “Look, you may be an Ensign now, but you have more experience than to be that naive. Every ship has new people on it all the time.” and he chuckled slightly. “It just so happens that you and I are some of those people.” He then looked at the Engineer and said “So let’s get to it. How are you adjusting to the new rank?”

Sinclair, CNS

Franklin stared into his coffee for a long moment. “It stings, Sir. But I have to bear it. Every time I put the uniform on, I remember.” Unbidden, flashes came and went. Faces, klaxon alarm tones, coolant vapor, screaming, the ringing he always got in his head during transport… Debris bits colliding with the hull of a starship sounded like rain, if you didn’t know any better. With an effort of will, he pulled himself out of it. Blue eyes lifted, and went back to the medal in it’s case. “It’s funny, Sir… if I’d been just a little quicker, things would be so different.”

-Franklin, Eng

“How do you know that for certain, Mr. Franklin? We humans don’t possess the ability to see alternate timelines. If you had been faster, why would that be definitively better? What if the outcome would have been worse?”

Sinclair, CNS

Franklin’s blue eyes rose up to meet Sinclair’s. There was a mixture of emotion in them… Fear, Sorrow, Regret, but there was anger there too. A deep, slow-burning anger that very rarely bubbled up to the surface, but remained simmering none the less. Franklin’s eyes dropped again before he muttered his answer. “I guess I can’t (Cain’t) be certain… But I don’t think I can imagine how it could be any worse. Sir.”

-Franklin, Eng

Sinclair looked at him for a few long moments and then said “Tell me about what happened. I read the report. But you and I both know that those things are… vague… when it comes down to it. So you tell me your version. And yeah, I know it’s painful. But try to.”

Sinclair, CNS

Franklin took a long sip of coffee, using the motion to try and stop the tremors now threatening his large, calloused hands. He’d both hoped for and feared a moment like this. However, something about Royal Sinclair made him believe the man would take his words into consideration, not just brush them aside in favor of what that damned report said. His blue eyes focused on the deck beneath them, but that’s not really what he was seeing. After a few breaths, he began to speak.

“I served aboard two ships before I transferred to the Wyvern. The Belfast and the Olympic. The chief on the Olympic was a mentor to me, and she taught me just about everything I know about engines. When the Wyvern needed a new Chief Engineer, Tam thought I’d be a shoe in for the job, and sent my file over there without telling me. A couple weeks after that, I was offered the posting. I was young, and excited… I went. It was everything I wanted, Sir.” James paused and took a smaller sip, wishing there were bourbon in the coffee.

“The first few months went by fairly easily. Then one day we came across a distress signal. A cargo transport had been attacked by raiders. She was in pretty bad shape… There were survivors, but the warp core was throwing off an odd kind of radiation that made it difficult to get proper sensor readings, or lock onto anyone with the transporters. I jury rigged the systems so that we could at least beam over to a different area of the ship.” Franklin had slowed down a bit. Having trouble finding the proper words now and then. Clearly he was half present, half somewhere else, trying to lock out the worst parts while remaining vulnerable… “The plan was for myself and two Engineers to lock down the Core problems so that the Doc and his folks could evacuate the rest of the ship after they’d done what triage they could in the mean time. Everything went according to plan at first. We had plenty of time until the raiders came back…”

-Franklin, Eng

“Take your time, Mr. Franklin. No rush here. Just tell me as you can.” Sinclair said, his voice calm and non-judgmental.

Sinclair, CNS

He nodded and continued, closing his eyes. “The raider got off a shot or two before the Wyvern managed to cripple them. The Cargo ship’s core was further damaged, and began to go critical…” He was obviously seeing it all inside his head, eyes squeezed shut. “Lt. Winters and I were able to adjust the containment field around the core just enough so that the radiation wouldn’t block the transporter beams… but the circuit wouldn’t close, so we had to hold the system together manually. Wyvern got the survivors and medical staff off the ship, but one of the field emitters blow out. I told Winters to get out, that I’d lock it down myself… But she wouldn’t leave me. I rigged the other emitters to compensate for the field integrity, and we ran for an escape pod. Just as we launched, the core overloaded and the cargo ship blew up. We were too close and caught most of the blast in the pod. When I woke up in sickbay, they told me we’d been too close to the cargoship, and we hadn’t been able to beam Winters out of the pod… Just me…”

-Franklin, Eng

“She sounds like a great woman, Mr. Franklin. What about her was most appealing to you?” he asked after a brief pause.

Sinclair, CNS

Franklin sighed and shook his head.

“She was brilliant. She was amazing. She should have survived, and I should have been the one who didn’t make it back. There’s no other way to put it.”

He was silent for a moment.

“If I’d had a few more seconds, I could have adjusted the pod’s integrity field. I had my hands on the panel… If they hadn’t pulled us out right at that moment… She might have lived.”

He fought the tears.

-Franklin, Eng

(Le Bump)