Fiction Fragment Friday
I’m not going to lie this week was harder to write. I thought earlier in the week about how I was looking forward to the next chapter and then remembered the bomb I dropped in the last. I struggled for a bit on how to have the characters react. This isn’t one of the strongest parts to this story as it is another transitional piece. That said I do think it sets some things up nicely before actually bringing Lumsdon back into the story.
When presented with bad news you need to allow yourself time to process and internalize before you can think rationally, and plan your reactions. Life in space rarely gives you that opportunity since bad news is frequently delivered in the form of emergency. This time however I had tasks to complete on station before I could address the issue. That meant nothing but time to think about what it meant that Victor Lumsdon was returning to the Oddity.
I knew how Elaine Van Eisenburg thought. Lumsdon returning to the ship would hurt morale, but he was still in my chain of command so the most he could hope for was undermining my efforts. That wasn’t a strong enough reason for her to pull strings like this. She didn’t like doing anything for only one reason when she could accomplish multiple goals. That left one obvious move for her to be making. Lumsdon wasn’t just on ship to be a thorn in my side he was going to be a spy. That also meant this was just her first move.
By the time I returned to the ship I had processed my shock and had gotten my anger under control. That was important because I was not ready for the general crew to see how upset I was. Despite thinking I had my expressions under control the moment I stepped on the bridge Miss Southerland saw right through me.
“What’s wrong sir?”
I was a bit taken aback. “What makes you think anything’s wrong?”
“You’ve got a lot of facial expressions. Some of them funny, some of them strange, but that one? That one I haven’t seen since your third week aboard.”
I smiled. “You are more observant than I gave you credit for. Here I thought you spent most of your time lost in that novel of yours.”
“Well…. I actually finished that one and started on a new one.”
“Have you submitted it to any publishers?”
“Submitted? No, no, it’s not anywhere near good enough for that.”
“You’ll never know if you don’t try. What’s the worst thing that could happen? They don’t publish it. It’s not being published now.”
“I guess I never thought about it like that. Hey, wait a minute you changed the subject on me. You’re good.” She smiled, but gave me a stern look.
I sighed and looked around the bridge. Pablo wasn’t on duty so there was no one to overhear. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but everyone will know in the morning. HQ assigned us a first officer.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. We don’t need one, but that shouldn’t… Wait that’s not it is it? It’s not what. It’s who.” She tilted her head looking at me. “The last time you had that expression was when… No they wouldn’t… Lumsdon?” Her look of shock had to pale in comparison to my own.
“How in the world did you figure that out?” I wasn’t surprised that she could figure out that the appointee was the problem, but the leap to it being Lumsdon astounded me.
“Forget that. Chief Burton must be pissed.”
“She doesn’t know yet. No one does.” In that moment I felt guilty for telling my pilot before my own senior staff. “I was just getting ready to call a meeting.”
I moved to head to my office and barely heard her call after me. “Sir.” It was quieter than I had ever heard her be.
“Yes Miss Southerland?”
“This is just a setback. The crew trusts you and this is not an easy crew to give that.”
I just nodded before heading into my office. I shot a message to my senior staff asking them to join me as soon as possible before sitting down at the head of the table. I took those next few moments alone to get my thoughts in order. This was the first emergency meeting I had ever called and I was hoping it would be the last.
“What’s up boss?” Chief Burton was the first to arrive.
“Have a seat. I want to wait until everyone is here.” We sat in awkward silence until Pedro and Chief Louise arrived. Once everyone was seated, I stood and hit send on the message I had prepared. It was a copy of the note from headquarters.
“Thank you all for joining me on short notice. As you will see in the notification I just forwarded to you, we have a new first officer starting at 0900 tomorrow morning. It’s Lumsdon and I have reason to believe he isn’t just being sent here to be a thorn in my side. We need to assume he will be reporting and twisting everything that happens onboard back to home office. Before I go on, I want to open the table up to your thoughts and concerns.”
“How is this going to impact our new organizational structure?” I was not surprised that would be Pablo’s first concern since he was the one who proposed the changes.
“It doesn’t. Unfortunately, he will outrank all of you, but I’m not giving him a single direct report. It’s not much, but that’s my first mitigation step.”
“Sir you know this is going to be a huge hit on morale.” Chief Burton was the next to speak up. “Some are going to be scared, but he had his people that are going to feel empowered again. Even just walking around the ship spreading his negativity is going to have an effect.”
“I realize that and I’m going to rely on all of you to help counter it. You are closer to your people than I am and in the best position to keep things running smoothly. Part of that is going to be how you message this to you people. We have made a lot of progress in my first few months aboard and I don’t plan on letting anyone undo it.”
“With all due respect sir, you need to be the one to tell the crew.” Chief Louise leaned forward. “They aren’t stupid. They know all the change around here is because of you and that you were the one that got him kicked off the ship to start with. They need to hear this from you to know that you are on top of it.”
“What exactly am I supposed to say? I can’t talk poorly about an incoming officer or share with them the political positioning that led to this.
“It doesn’t matter what you say as much as it is you saying it. Keep your face out there and make sure they know they are not being cut off from you.”
I sighed. “Ok I’ll draft up a ship wide communication, but I want all of your feedback before I send it. I think you should all know though that while I’m limiting the damage he can do Lumsdon is going to be my responsibility again. That means something to me. It means I need to try and get through to him.” I looked around at all the shocked faces. They thought I was either insane or naive, but not even Chief Louise was willing to say it out loud. “We have enough damage control to do for now, but you each have more history with this man than I do. I want to know everything there is to know about him. What does he love, what does he hate, and why does he feel that way?”
Pablo looked up at me. “Sir I hope you don’t mind if we prepare some contingencies for worst case scenarios. I do hope you are successful, but I would like to have a script that disables his system access with the press of a single button.”
“I both expect it and do not want to know what they are.” I thought for a moment. “Do you have a script ready to disable my access?”
“Not that you know of sir.”