Title : The Window
Author : Rob Morris
Series : The TOS-based AU, The Ancient Destroyer Cycle
Type : Character piece
Part : 1/1
Characters : Willard Decker, Admiral Teresa Bunson of Admiralty Hall
Rating : PG13
Time-Setting: Admiralty Hall, then Starbase Omega, 2275
Summary: What happens when one makes a moral stance in a system where the inherently immoral have now taken command? Will Decker learns the harsh answer.
The Window
by Rob Morris
EARTH, ADMIRALTY HALL, 2275
He was just a lieutenant, that he knew. Starfleet had always been a hierarchy, and it still was, even if that hierarchy had been seemingly subverted at its topmost tier. But Will Decker knew what the word insult meant, and he felt that he had endured several.
Ilia would surely hate him, though even if they had permitted him time to say goodbye before leaving Delta Prime, he was not at all sure he could have. The movement had been abrupt, the SP's nearly rude rather than merely firm in their sense of duty, and the trip had all the feel of a kidnapping. Now, made to wait for days in unused cadet quarters and made to wait for hours more in the main lobby of the Hall itself, his patience was at an end.
So it was then that Rear Admiral Teresa Bunson emerged, and this was not by chance. Visitors to Admiralty Hall were thoroughly scanned on hundreds of levels, and their metabolic rates were monitored constantly. The officials at the Hall liked reminding visitors of their place, and letting them sweat and their blood pressure rise did just that.
"You're on time, Lieutenant. That shows good breeding."
Breeding, Will mentally mused, was something Bunson would know quite a bit about. While every woman of high rank caught silent and whispered grief from some neolithic idiot about how they achieved their position, in Teresa Bunson's case, the idiot was a genius, and the chauvinist a teller of truths. A bare modicum of talent was as nothing compared to how often she bared herself to the right people. She was hard to humiliate, her extorted users found, and when she did not like her activities, she repeated a mantra once given to her by an apparition of the late Order-Master John Gill : Its About Power.
"Admiral, why was my cultural mission to Delta Prime terminated with so little notice? Is there trouble along the Deltan border with the Klingon Colonies?"
Which would frankly be amazing, both knew. The Klingons had rare respect for the hard-living, pleasure-by-any-means Deltans, and they knew that the epicureans could become warriors with little nudging. If it meant life at an extreme, Deltans were there before anyone else. As it had been for Will with Ilia.
"Questioning orders, Mister Decker? Here's a random thought : Your father's friends aren't here. Assignments don't get appealed, anymore, so why ask about what can't be changed?"
How, Decker wondered, did this loathsome, cadet-using creature end up mere inches from the side of the Grand Admiral? And how had a genocidal discipline problem like Commodore Cartwright skipped over virtually everyone else to assume the Grand Admiral's office?
"I meant no disrespect, Admiral. But all this suddenness does make me think there might be an emergency, somewhere."
"Understood, Mister Decker. But get used to this new Starfleet. The endless channels and redundant checks have been, shall we say, dispensed with. Things will tend to happen quickly, from here on in. Starfleet personnel must be mobile, and mobile you shall be. But in a way, you were correct. An emergency has occurred, and your career is on the line because of it."
Will felt like gulping, but did not.
"An action I took? Or one I failed to take?"
She smiled the very smile his mother warned of when she begged Cadet Will Decker to stay clear of Bunson.
"More like an opportunity to get ahead, Will. Certain people are Starfleet's born elite. Yourself. Junior Presidential Liasion Harriet Janeway. Commander Robin April, aboard the Essex. We even once made a similar offer to Captain Kirk's young nephew, prior to the tragedy, of course."
Will now smiled.
"What about Aaron Sisko?"
Bunson lost her smile.
"Admiral Cartwright's nephew had something of a breakdown, tied to the loss of his family. We sent him to play with his model ships on Utopia Planitia. Unless you plan to join him, I suggest you drop the sarcasm, Lieutenant."
Through Lem LaForge, yet another family alumnus of Robert April and George Kirk's proteges, Will knew that there had been no breakdown. Aaron Sisko despised his uncle, as did most decent people. The shipyards had been his choice.
"You spoke of an opportunity, Admiral?"
She smiled anew, thinking her game had been resumed.
"Two opportunities of highly differing value, Mister Decker. One gives you a path to possibly join this Hall as a peer within ten years. It would be a rough one, to be certain. But demonstrate your value to us, and it will be as sure as the fact that we're both here."
"And the other path, Sir?"
Her mouth turned down.
"Do I look like a sir? Because the late young Mister Kirk never made that error during our… interview. He was enthusiastic for a thirteen year old."
With Will declaring that the single slimiest thought he'd ever encountered, he kept on.
"Protocol, Admiral. All superiors are sirs, regardless. Now what about the other path?"
Bunson punched a few keys on her computer terminal.
"Thank you for reminding me, Mister Decker. I just undid that absurd regulation regarding 'sirs'. Now, the other path would leave you in command of your own starbase, straight off, no waiting. Though, I'm afraid, with much less mobility. Upwards and otherwise."
Will tried to move carefully, but it would do him no good. This trap was too well constructed.
"Where would the first path take me, Ma'am?"
She pulled up an image of Starfleet's flagship.
"Tactical Officer aboard the USS Enterprise. Commander Sulu will be sent back to the helm/nav console he has shown consistent talent for, and the Edoan and The Caitian currently infes--currently assigned can go back wherever they came from."
Again, Decker tried to negotiate this unmarked minefield.
"Such a change may ruffle some feathers, Admiral, our orders aside. What in this could one day recommend me to much higher office?"
Thinking she had piqued his interest in advancement, Bunson moved forward.
"We in the Hall absolutely treasure the resource that is Captain James T. Kirk. No other face or name makes the Klingons, Kzinti, Romulans and Orions stop their anti-Human scheming dead in the water. But such talent should not travel the stars unregulated. Kirk being Kirk has of late circumvented many of our more subtle efforts to get an independent picture of life aboard his command. We need a living window into his world, and that of his crew, legendary for their personal loyalty to him. Mister Decker, we need you to be that window. Starfleet never knows how to react to the man who is, we have to admit, our best captain, despite his many documented idiosyncrasies. Give us that reaction time, Mister Decker. Like any prodigy, Kirk has shown the kind of precociousness that makes us concerned that he will one day cross that fabled line. But you can be the braking mechanism that stops this."
Will now actually felt like he might faint. He now felt he had no choice but to speak without any art save that of common courtesy.
"Admiral, from what I'm hearing, you wish me to replace an able officer and displace two others with no cause. You wish me to do this that I may spy on Starfleet's greatest Captain, because he, in keeping with his reputation, has tumbled to your implanted spy devices. You don't think you could survive actually removing him, and you still find him useful for now, so instead you seek to undermine him, boring from within."
Instead of becoming angry, Bunson merely steepled her fingers, elbows on her desk.
"Your answer, Mister Decker?"
Rather than engage in pointless invective lost on this bigot, Will gave a simple reply.
"Consider me starbase-bound."
Dismissive yet barely concealing her anger, Bunson keyed in the assignment.
"I thought you had the enthusiasm necessary to move up in the galaxy, Mister Decker. Sorry to see that I was wrong."
Will grabbed back his assignment disk.
"Maybe if I were thirteen, Admiral."
When he had left, Bunson threw her chair across the room. After calming slightly, she ordered special modifications made to Decker's quarters at the unnamed starbase.
A week's journey was spent on a pre-programmed ship. Decker could not see out of it, nor were sensors allowed to operate inside it. Will's widowed and eternally worried mother could not be contacted to inform her of his assignment. Will felt odd, and so asked a question of the transport's commander.
"Are we under cloak?"
"Not precisely, Commander. The sector surrounding the Starbase, however, is under a form of cloak. It doesn't violate the treaty of Algeron because the base is far enough away from all the hostile borders, and is non-mobile. At least we pray that it never gets mobile."
Will shook his head.
"Don't people in the surrounding sectors notice the chronoton spike a cloak that large produces?"
"Aye, sir. But some clever folks from a hush-hush branch of intelligence provided a cover story about a naturally occurring warp-free zone. For those that probe beneath that, there's a conspiracy-nut story about old tests done on the Omega Particle. Those that probe beneath that--weelll, let's just say that they get put under one last cloak. This is deep domain."
Decker had barely heard the man use the word 'Commander'. His promotion to LC didn't make any sense. The Hall was vengeful, and Bunson was their point. So where was their vengeance? The ship docked, and Decker found himself inside the only Starbase he had ever seen with no windows. Checking in with his new XO shed no light on this.
"Your quarters are the only place with any windows here, Commander. Who'd want to look at that thing, if they could avoid it?"
This had to be part of the Hall's vengeance, Decker thought. He still had no clue as to almost everything vital to his assignment.
"What's our complement size, Lieutenant?"
"Fifty, Commander Decker."
Will's eyes went wide.
"Fifty?! They build a top-secret, full-sized starbase and staff it with only fifty people?"
The man shrugged.
"That's life on StarBase Omega, sir. As Lucas’ farmboy hero once said, if there’s a bright center to the universe, this ain’t it. On the off chance anyone finds us and attacks, they could never get it away before support arrived. Of course, if it ever awakens, it wouldn't matter if SBZ had twice a full complement."
Decker checked sensors.
"Mister Nejev, why I am scanning an object roughly the size of this base located directly anterior to our general location?"
Nejev seemed confused.
"Because we all gave the Hall the wrong answer, sir?"
Tired and now irritable, Decker retired to his quarters. The one chef, formerly a top graduate of the best French and Tellarite schools assigned to HQ, begged Will along the way to make as many special requests as possible.
"Some place."
Will's quarters were absolutely spacious. A high door for a tall man, a kitchen area enough for coffee and toast, and a couch well away from his bed, big enough for the companions he likely wouldn't find there.
"And there's the view that gives the room with a view its name."
Bored now as well as tired, he pulled away the overly-ornate, overly-thick actual draperies with the drawstring. He looked out, and suddenly he was no longer bored.
"Oh, My God."
It was a hell of a view, to be certain. Straight into the mouth of hell itself. It ate up every single micron of the view, and only by putting one's face against the window could one see the upper lip. Will's eyes teared.
"Dad. I still miss you, Dad."
Now he would be closer to his dead father, Matt Decker, than they had ever been in life. Occasionally, strong searchlights would illuminate the interior, and it would look like Will always imagined it looked as it swallowed first a crew, then its captain, then their starship.
"Makes sense, I guess. I mean, where else would they put something as potentially dangerous as..."
Will closed the drapes, and ended the first day of a very strenuous five-year command by giving the colloquial name of Starbase Omega's very onerous burden.
"...The Doomsday Machine."
Lieutenant Commander Willard Eric Decker had stood up to Admiralty Hall, but not without paying a price as large as a hundred starships.
Author : Rob Morris
Series : The TOS-based AU, The Ancient Destroyer Cycle
Type : Character piece
Part : 1/1
Characters : Willard Decker, Admiral Teresa Bunson of Admiralty Hall
Rating : PG13
Time-Setting: Admiralty Hall, then Starbase Omega, 2275
Summary: What happens when one makes a moral stance in a system where the inherently immoral have now taken command? Will Decker learns the harsh answer.
The Window
by Rob Morris
EARTH, ADMIRALTY HALL, 2275
He was just a lieutenant, that he knew. Starfleet had always been a hierarchy, and it still was, even if that hierarchy had been seemingly subverted at its topmost tier. But Will Decker knew what the word insult meant, and he felt that he had endured several.
Ilia would surely hate him, though even if they had permitted him time to say goodbye before leaving Delta Prime, he was not at all sure he could have. The movement had been abrupt, the SP's nearly rude rather than merely firm in their sense of duty, and the trip had all the feel of a kidnapping. Now, made to wait for days in unused cadet quarters and made to wait for hours more in the main lobby of the Hall itself, his patience was at an end.
So it was then that Rear Admiral Teresa Bunson emerged, and this was not by chance. Visitors to Admiralty Hall were thoroughly scanned on hundreds of levels, and their metabolic rates were monitored constantly. The officials at the Hall liked reminding visitors of their place, and letting them sweat and their blood pressure rise did just that.
"You're on time, Lieutenant. That shows good breeding."
Breeding, Will mentally mused, was something Bunson would know quite a bit about. While every woman of high rank caught silent and whispered grief from some neolithic idiot about how they achieved their position, in Teresa Bunson's case, the idiot was a genius, and the chauvinist a teller of truths. A bare modicum of talent was as nothing compared to how often she bared herself to the right people. She was hard to humiliate, her extorted users found, and when she did not like her activities, she repeated a mantra once given to her by an apparition of the late Order-Master John Gill : Its About Power.
"Admiral, why was my cultural mission to Delta Prime terminated with so little notice? Is there trouble along the Deltan border with the Klingon Colonies?"
Which would frankly be amazing, both knew. The Klingons had rare respect for the hard-living, pleasure-by-any-means Deltans, and they knew that the epicureans could become warriors with little nudging. If it meant life at an extreme, Deltans were there before anyone else. As it had been for Will with Ilia.
"Questioning orders, Mister Decker? Here's a random thought : Your father's friends aren't here. Assignments don't get appealed, anymore, so why ask about what can't be changed?"
How, Decker wondered, did this loathsome, cadet-using creature end up mere inches from the side of the Grand Admiral? And how had a genocidal discipline problem like Commodore Cartwright skipped over virtually everyone else to assume the Grand Admiral's office?
"I meant no disrespect, Admiral. But all this suddenness does make me think there might be an emergency, somewhere."
"Understood, Mister Decker. But get used to this new Starfleet. The endless channels and redundant checks have been, shall we say, dispensed with. Things will tend to happen quickly, from here on in. Starfleet personnel must be mobile, and mobile you shall be. But in a way, you were correct. An emergency has occurred, and your career is on the line because of it."
Will felt like gulping, but did not.
"An action I took? Or one I failed to take?"
She smiled the very smile his mother warned of when she begged Cadet Will Decker to stay clear of Bunson.
"More like an opportunity to get ahead, Will. Certain people are Starfleet's born elite. Yourself. Junior Presidential Liasion Harriet Janeway. Commander Robin April, aboard the Essex. We even once made a similar offer to Captain Kirk's young nephew, prior to the tragedy, of course."
Will now smiled.
"What about Aaron Sisko?"
Bunson lost her smile.
"Admiral Cartwright's nephew had something of a breakdown, tied to the loss of his family. We sent him to play with his model ships on Utopia Planitia. Unless you plan to join him, I suggest you drop the sarcasm, Lieutenant."
Through Lem LaForge, yet another family alumnus of Robert April and George Kirk's proteges, Will knew that there had been no breakdown. Aaron Sisko despised his uncle, as did most decent people. The shipyards had been his choice.
"You spoke of an opportunity, Admiral?"
She smiled anew, thinking her game had been resumed.
"Two opportunities of highly differing value, Mister Decker. One gives you a path to possibly join this Hall as a peer within ten years. It would be a rough one, to be certain. But demonstrate your value to us, and it will be as sure as the fact that we're both here."
"And the other path, Sir?"
Her mouth turned down.
"Do I look like a sir? Because the late young Mister Kirk never made that error during our… interview. He was enthusiastic for a thirteen year old."
With Will declaring that the single slimiest thought he'd ever encountered, he kept on.
"Protocol, Admiral. All superiors are sirs, regardless. Now what about the other path?"
Bunson punched a few keys on her computer terminal.
"Thank you for reminding me, Mister Decker. I just undid that absurd regulation regarding 'sirs'. Now, the other path would leave you in command of your own starbase, straight off, no waiting. Though, I'm afraid, with much less mobility. Upwards and otherwise."
Will tried to move carefully, but it would do him no good. This trap was too well constructed.
"Where would the first path take me, Ma'am?"
She pulled up an image of Starfleet's flagship.
"Tactical Officer aboard the USS Enterprise. Commander Sulu will be sent back to the helm/nav console he has shown consistent talent for, and the Edoan and The Caitian currently infes--currently assigned can go back wherever they came from."
Again, Decker tried to negotiate this unmarked minefield.
"Such a change may ruffle some feathers, Admiral, our orders aside. What in this could one day recommend me to much higher office?"
Thinking she had piqued his interest in advancement, Bunson moved forward.
"We in the Hall absolutely treasure the resource that is Captain James T. Kirk. No other face or name makes the Klingons, Kzinti, Romulans and Orions stop their anti-Human scheming dead in the water. But such talent should not travel the stars unregulated. Kirk being Kirk has of late circumvented many of our more subtle efforts to get an independent picture of life aboard his command. We need a living window into his world, and that of his crew, legendary for their personal loyalty to him. Mister Decker, we need you to be that window. Starfleet never knows how to react to the man who is, we have to admit, our best captain, despite his many documented idiosyncrasies. Give us that reaction time, Mister Decker. Like any prodigy, Kirk has shown the kind of precociousness that makes us concerned that he will one day cross that fabled line. But you can be the braking mechanism that stops this."
Will now actually felt like he might faint. He now felt he had no choice but to speak without any art save that of common courtesy.
"Admiral, from what I'm hearing, you wish me to replace an able officer and displace two others with no cause. You wish me to do this that I may spy on Starfleet's greatest Captain, because he, in keeping with his reputation, has tumbled to your implanted spy devices. You don't think you could survive actually removing him, and you still find him useful for now, so instead you seek to undermine him, boring from within."
Instead of becoming angry, Bunson merely steepled her fingers, elbows on her desk.
"Your answer, Mister Decker?"
Rather than engage in pointless invective lost on this bigot, Will gave a simple reply.
"Consider me starbase-bound."
Dismissive yet barely concealing her anger, Bunson keyed in the assignment.
"I thought you had the enthusiasm necessary to move up in the galaxy, Mister Decker. Sorry to see that I was wrong."
Will grabbed back his assignment disk.
"Maybe if I were thirteen, Admiral."
When he had left, Bunson threw her chair across the room. After calming slightly, she ordered special modifications made to Decker's quarters at the unnamed starbase.
A week's journey was spent on a pre-programmed ship. Decker could not see out of it, nor were sensors allowed to operate inside it. Will's widowed and eternally worried mother could not be contacted to inform her of his assignment. Will felt odd, and so asked a question of the transport's commander.
"Are we under cloak?"
"Not precisely, Commander. The sector surrounding the Starbase, however, is under a form of cloak. It doesn't violate the treaty of Algeron because the base is far enough away from all the hostile borders, and is non-mobile. At least we pray that it never gets mobile."
Will shook his head.
"Don't people in the surrounding sectors notice the chronoton spike a cloak that large produces?"
"Aye, sir. But some clever folks from a hush-hush branch of intelligence provided a cover story about a naturally occurring warp-free zone. For those that probe beneath that, there's a conspiracy-nut story about old tests done on the Omega Particle. Those that probe beneath that--weelll, let's just say that they get put under one last cloak. This is deep domain."
Decker had barely heard the man use the word 'Commander'. His promotion to LC didn't make any sense. The Hall was vengeful, and Bunson was their point. So where was their vengeance? The ship docked, and Decker found himself inside the only Starbase he had ever seen with no windows. Checking in with his new XO shed no light on this.
"Your quarters are the only place with any windows here, Commander. Who'd want to look at that thing, if they could avoid it?"
This had to be part of the Hall's vengeance, Decker thought. He still had no clue as to almost everything vital to his assignment.
"What's our complement size, Lieutenant?"
"Fifty, Commander Decker."
Will's eyes went wide.
"Fifty?! They build a top-secret, full-sized starbase and staff it with only fifty people?"
The man shrugged.
"That's life on StarBase Omega, sir. As Lucas’ farmboy hero once said, if there’s a bright center to the universe, this ain’t it. On the off chance anyone finds us and attacks, they could never get it away before support arrived. Of course, if it ever awakens, it wouldn't matter if SBZ had twice a full complement."
Decker checked sensors.
"Mister Nejev, why I am scanning an object roughly the size of this base located directly anterior to our general location?"
Nejev seemed confused.
"Because we all gave the Hall the wrong answer, sir?"
Tired and now irritable, Decker retired to his quarters. The one chef, formerly a top graduate of the best French and Tellarite schools assigned to HQ, begged Will along the way to make as many special requests as possible.
"Some place."
Will's quarters were absolutely spacious. A high door for a tall man, a kitchen area enough for coffee and toast, and a couch well away from his bed, big enough for the companions he likely wouldn't find there.
"And there's the view that gives the room with a view its name."
Bored now as well as tired, he pulled away the overly-ornate, overly-thick actual draperies with the drawstring. He looked out, and suddenly he was no longer bored.
"Oh, My God."
It was a hell of a view, to be certain. Straight into the mouth of hell itself. It ate up every single micron of the view, and only by putting one's face against the window could one see the upper lip. Will's eyes teared.
"Dad. I still miss you, Dad."
Now he would be closer to his dead father, Matt Decker, than they had ever been in life. Occasionally, strong searchlights would illuminate the interior, and it would look like Will always imagined it looked as it swallowed first a crew, then its captain, then their starship.
"Makes sense, I guess. I mean, where else would they put something as potentially dangerous as..."
Will closed the drapes, and ended the first day of a very strenuous five-year command by giving the colloquial name of Starbase Omega's very onerous burden.
"...The Doomsday Machine."
Lieutenant Commander Willard Eric Decker had stood up to Admiralty Hall, but not without paying a price as large as a hundred starships.
