If You Could See Me Now

Posted on Mon Dec 15th, 2014 @ 1:49am by Commodore Kathleen O'Shea & Sergeant Paul Potter

It was suppose to be an easy assignment, the man thought as he rode the lift to the Operation Center. He had been sent to this base to inspect the Marine Units assigned to it and how they were working together with SCE.

That assignment went out the window when he found out that the Marine Commander was not on the base and that left him to have to see what the hell was going on. The lift slowed down for moment before it stop and the doors parted to show the Operation Center.

He looked around the room before walking to the center of the room where it appeared several Starfleet personnel stood.

"Commodore O'Shea?"

The group parted a bit revealing a short woman with vibrant red hair, who looked up from the monitor for just a moment and held up a finger, indicating that he should wait a moment. Looking back at the monitor, she studied it quietly for another moment before addressing the assembled team. "Here...this corridor looks the safest for now. Load up and make your way to the Harding Cache Station as quickly as possible. EM-COM blackout procedures. We don't want to attract any attention." She shut down the screen and stood back. "Let me know when you are ready to depart."

The group disbursed and exited the Operations Center quickly, leaving O'Shea and the Major pretty much alone...unusual for their given location. She walked over and extended her hand. "Major, and unexpected surprise. What may I do for you?"

Snapping to attention, "Major Paul Potter, I was assigned by Starfleet Marine Corps HQ to do a Inspection on the Marines assigned to the base."

Pulling her hand back, she quietly studied the man for moment. "Well...that could be a bit of a problem. A large number of them, including the troop CO, have already departed for Taranok. We are working on backup and logistics to support their action now, but it's slow going." She read the mans reactions quickly, feeling the confusion flow off him. "You have absolutely no clue what I am talking about, do you?"

"No ma'am," Paul replied as he looked at her, There goes my easy assignment.

Kathleen walked over to one of the consoles at the Security Station, indicating that he should follow. Once there she quickly pulled up the pitiful tactical summery that they had to date. "This is all we know at the moment. Something...most likely a terrorist attack of some type...has cut off all communications with Taranok IV. We did manage to pick up some broken traffic from the initial team we sent there to investigate, and from what we could actually understand from the garbled mess that we could hear, it would appear as if some type of combat action is occurring within their zone of influence."

"We had a diplomatic courier on planet at the time as well, and from a brief contact that we had with the pilot, it would seem to corroborate that hypothesis. The Marine CO went with the first team to coordinate their response. He took 46 Marines with him. Nothing has been heard from them since they went in system." She blanked the screen at turned to face him once again. She looked like she hadn't slept in a week. "We went ahead and sent in a response management team yesterday, and have other assets moving into position to respond as well. We are going on the premise that something has occurred on a sufficiently large enough scale to warrant a humanitarian aid response in addition to a military one."

"So Intelligence has not provided anything on what happened," Paul asked as he looked her, "Who is the Executive Officer of the Marines?"

"Jason Cortez is the XO. And no...it's not an Intel issue. It's a comms issue." She typed in a few additional commands, bringing up several windows simultaneously. "We are working to set up some remote relay station at these three points, which hopefully will restore at least basic communication. It's hard to coordinate a response when you are unable to even talk to your on-scene personnel to know what their needs are."

Paul looked at the screens for a moment before taking a deep breath and thought, I should have stayed in my damn bed and told James I wasn't taking this damn assignment.

"Commodore, in accordance with General Order Thirty since you can not get into contact with your teams I would like to request permission for the Marine unit of this base to handle the matter," Paul replied, "Ma'am, with all due respect, Starfleet is not trained for something like this for what I am hearing. Let the Marines handle it."

"The Marines are taking the lead on combat operations, however there are other aspects of our involvement, including a full medical and rescue team response, and the Corps of Engineering team has been tasked to perform numerous projects as well." She reached over and changed the screen. "We are activating several of the regions cache station for logistics support. Additionally, we have a sizable fighter wing here that will be supporting all Marine operations."

Paul looked at the screen for a moment, "What are the RoEs?"

"As for now, if it shoots at you, shoot back. If it looks like it will shoot at you, shoot first. If it looks like it will hurt anybody, kill it."

"Understood, Commodore."

-------------------------------

Commodore Kathleen O'Shea
Commanding Officer
Starbase 80

Major Major Paul Potter
Marine Battalion Commanding Officer
The 7th Marine Expeditionary Force