Meeting in a Barn

Posted on Wed May 15th, 2024 @ 9:21am by Captain Ansel Benoit & Commander Jade Troconis & Lieutenant Commander Michael Ki & Lieutenant Gregor Morgan & Lieutenant Katherine "Kit" Vulpes & Lieutenant William Neil & Lieutenant Nicolette Riviere & Ensign Evie Forde

2,457 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: The Trafalgar Roll
Location: Barn- England 1805
Timeline: MD 1 21:00 Hours

It must have been the aspect of the combadges being close enough to communicate, that a meeting was set to happen in a nearby barn, under the cover of darkness.

Jade was quite grateful that she and Max had received the grainy call and a meeting place had been set. They had escaped from where they had been taken. Both she and Max were about to make their way to the ship. Now they are here with the others.

"Good to see all of you" Jade greeting those there, having a relieved expression.

A little bit aways there was the sound of a horse giving a soft nicker then the crunch of the animal settling in to eat its hay.

Ans entered, with Evie right behind him. "Thank God." Ans said as he came through. "I'm very glad to see you Commander. Anyone hurt?" he asked, looking around. "Hopefully the others will make it here if they can."

Nicolette entered, her confidence surging, being in an enclosed area, away from the open sea. She felt more like herself - a Chief Counselor - able to handle any problem, like a proper Brit, even if she was technically French. "I'm not hurt," Nicolette answered as she entered. "More confused as to why I'm in this outfit, why everyone keeps calling me 'lad,' and how we evidently ended up in the past."

"You get used to it... even if we both look nothing like boys." Evie joked a little at the lad comment Nicolette had made. They were dressed near enough in the same clothing. However, she was happy that the captain and herself had made it to this barn unscathed. Maybe someone else had more information that could shed some light on what was going on.

The door creaked as William entered and he looked around. Unfamiliar faces in unfamiliar garb greeted him. Of course, he had been new to the ship and had only really met the Captain who he thankfully now recognized in the dim light. "At least something works in this place."

The comm badge had chirped while William was outside so he'd managed to duck away to listen to the message without being accused to being a witch or something worse. "Any idea what happened? Or why?"

Jade removed her cloak in order to slip on her dress that she had held in her arms when she and Max had escaped from their captors. "I see you have gotten caught by the alien visitor as well. I'm Jade Troconis, Ansel's XO." her voice low and quiet. She wasn't going to be using the stays that came with her outfit. She prefered breathing.

William averted his eyes as Jade began to get into the dress and he looked to spy the captain. "Alien visitor? I'm not sure I get where this is going. Are we actually in the past or is this some shared halucination?"

Jade had a slightly amused look upon her face, she was rather glad though that she had the shift and petticoats that came with the dress. Things could have been even more embarrassing. Amalia came up to her and helped button up the dress for Jade.

"Indeed, what is this about an alien visitor?" Nicolette asked in a slightly demanding tone. "Share with the class, please."

Gregor and Avalina came into the barn at that point, and he glanced around at the ones gathered here. " Good I'm glad to see everyone made it here safely. I heard something about an alien? So what's the situation? " He asked.

Kit slid into the barn shortly after, passing the cloth sack--filled with several loaves of day-old crusty bread--off to another crew member to pass around. Soot smeared her face and arms, and the shirt under her uniform jacket also had soot smudges. She ducked into one of the pens, splashing water on her hands to wash off the dirt and grime.

Michael was in what passed as a Sick Bay aboard the sailing ship Victory when his comm badge went off. One of the other crew members asked what it was and in a rather stern voice Michael responded that it was a bird. He managed to get off the ship and respond to the comm. At the appropriate time he made his way to the barn and the meeting that had been called. Michael decided that since as the ship's surgeon he held rank on the Victory, it would be best for him to remain in uniform and travel.

When he arrived at the barn he stepped in through the creaky door and into the dim lighting. When he removed his hat he noticed the Captain and was glad to see him. With a nod in his direction Ki leaned against a post and scanned the rest of the crew for any visible injuries.

Ans tried to stand in the center of the room. He really didn't want to speak too loudly about this. "Only some of the senior officers were briefed before we found ourselves in this situation. We were visited shortly before we found ourselves back at Earth. The alien possessed talents such as those of a Q but he did not appear human and we do not believe he was a Q. He informed us that we either will be responsible for the death of his race or we already were. And he was testing us to see if we could discover how our action led to that outcome. He then vanished and the ship was flung through space and time and it does appear we are in England in and about 1805. That ship out there is the HMS Victory and I believe we are about to experience that battle of Trafalgar." He paused waiting for others to begin speaking again in case they had questions.

Gregor spoke up. " If I recall my history correctly, The HMS Victory was a one hundred gun ship of the line commanded by Admiral Nelson who died during the battle of Trafalgar. What I remember the most about the HMS Victory was that it was only fifty seven meters in length, about twenty meters in width and had a crew of over eight hundred souls, that's very cramped living conditions if you ask me. "

Jade then spoke up, "Not all of us are here from the ship, we are missing at least one other. Who knows where Commander Matthew Foster ended up. Which does concern me. How many of our people have been flung who knows where or are they predominately upon the ship."

Kit pulled the pieces of metal and portion of disassembled tricorder from her breast pocket. "I was able to break down some of the pips and melt them down into scrap metal. It may take me a while, but I'm hoping to boost the signal on my combadge. We may be able to get a signal to Commander Foster and some of the other crew members that are further away." She gave a quiet sigh. "With any luck, I might be able to get in contact with the ship."

William sighed. Time travel shit. He really was going to kick himself if he ever saw that future version again. "So the question is; do we interfere and change something, stop something from being changed, or do nothing?"

"I guess we just act like we normally would?" Evie threw out to the floor. "Who's to say we didn't change something already and the history we know is because of us... or maybe doing nothing is what sets us on course to wipe out this aliens people." she closed her eyes and rubbed them. "I love history, but I never wanted to be a part of it. Not like this."

Gregor shook his head showing some slight annoyance. " If this alien really wanted us to save his people that we were assumed to be responsible for their destruction, then don't you think he'd tell us what to look for if he or what not to do to start the cycle all over again. " He thought briefly. " Well Starfleet regulations are quite clear in this situation. One. We have a primitive pre warp society that could drastically change the course of our history if we interfere with the time line. And second. We don't have enough information to make a sound judgement call in this situation. For all we know this may be his enemies of his people and he wants us to mess up and destroy them."

Her voice filled with trepidation, Nicolette told everyone. "I can't get on the Victory. I can't. I won't. I have to stay here on land. I don't know why. I just...." She started to visibly shake.

Jade went over to where Nicolette stood and placed an arm around her shoulders. "Nicolette, deep breaths. Are you afraid of the ocean?" looking rather concerned towards the counselor.

"Any open water," Nicolette answered hesitantly. "Ever since I was born, apparently. My parents could not even get me to take swim lessons." She laughed shortly at herself before continuing. "You'd never know it for all the model ships I've built. I love ships. Funny, innit?" she asked, her British accent coming out more strongly.

"I understand your concerns." Ans spoke to all of them. "And I can't explain it. Ever since my conversation with Evie, I just feel that being on the HMS Victory is the right thing to do." Ans seemed not to notice that he had used her first name. "That doesn't mean that all of us have to be on there. I'm not going to make this an order, because let's face it I won't be your captain for 500 years yet, but I suggest that we face this head on. Why else would we be sent to this time period, in this place? I have no idea if what the alien spoke is the truth but I know that if we sit here and do nothing we will have wasted an opportunity not only to see history happen right in front of us but to possibly find a clue to get us back home."

Gregor spoke up. " Captain I agree that being tossed back nearly six hundred years in our past isn't what any of us expected. And I agree that if we just sit around here, then we'll never know if there is a clue or key action out there that will return us to our own time. But what I'll disagree with you on is that you are indeed our Captain and that the command structure needs to remain intact if we are to get out of here together. "

Gregor paused briefly. " I am both nervous and excited to be here at this point in time. My family's ancestral home is here in London. " He said. " In fact it is currently being built this year by my great ancestor Commander Lewis Morgan, He is the Executive Officer of the HMS Royal Soverign, Commissioned in 1786 and broken up in 1841. She was or is currently a one hundred gun three deck first rate ship of the line. So there is a chance that I might run into an ancestor of mine. "

Nicolette felt queasy and started losing color in her face. Something about the Victory made her very uneasy. Open water was terrifying. However, there was something more at play here. If she was ordered to go, or most of the crew went, she would have to find a way to be on that ship, despite her fears.

Jade glanced over toward Gregor, finding it interesting to his connection in this area. However she looked back over to Ans, "Ans, as what Gregor had stated, and I feel the others will agree, you are out captain and there isn't anything that will change for us. No matter what time in history we are in."

Amalia gave a nod in agreement, Avelina listened to the others as things progressed. She piped up, " I may not be part of the crew as it were, my being a civilian. However, I will echo the sentiments. You are the leader of this crew and that won't change."

Michael had been silent, and stoic while he leaned on the post and listened to what everyone had said. In his opinion he had the most work to do in the foreseeable future. If the Victory went to Trafalgar then the wounded would be immense, and he would have to patch them all up. How could he know who was meant to die, and who was meant to live? For the first time in what seemed like hours Michael spoke. "Our esteemed Security Chief has the right of it. Both the Prime Directive, and the Temporal Prime Directive apply here. You ask what can we do? Well, I can only approach this as a Diagnostician. You cannot diagnose something without information and at the moment we have no information. So, perhaps we all attend to our roles in this timeline and gather what information we can."

Ki paused for a moment as if what he was about to say weighed heavier on his mind than anything. "I will add this in terms of those aforementioned directives. I took an oath, one that supersedes any other, and one that is just as important in this time as it is in ours, the Hippocratic Oath. So, if Trafalgar is to where I am to be going, then I will patch up and save each and every wounded person that comes to my door." He stepped back to the post that he leaned on and wished for nothing more than a warm glass of sake.

William shrugged. "I think that makes the most of us going on board. We have a way to get aboard already without drawing suspicions? We might look the part, but we're all fish out of water right now and some of us are wearing that on our sleeves."

"Official orders or not Captain, what's the plan?" William asked with a bit of a grin, getting into the idea of the adventure before them.

Ans looked gratefully at all of them but his eyes lingered just slightly on Evie. "We board the ship at 0700 tomorrow. Get some sleep. We're all about to get a lesson on sailing."

Signatures:

Captain Ansel Benoit
Commanding Officer
USS Victory

Lieutenant Nicolette Riviere
Chief Counselor
USS Victory

PO1 Amalia Darcy
Engineer
USS Victory

Lieutenant Gregor Morgan
Chief Security
USS Victory

Avelina Morgan
Civilian

Commander Jade Troconis
Executive Officer
USS Victory

Ensign Evie Forde
Alien Archaeologist/Anthropologist
USS Victory

Lieutenant Commander Michael Ki
Chief Medical Officer
USS Victory

Lieutenant Katherine "Kit" Vulpes
Chief Engineer
USS Victory

 

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