Testimonies: Wallace & the USS Sunrise
Posted on 02 Dec 2023 @ 8:45am by Commander Calliope Zahn & Major Porter Wallace & Brek - Timeless Treasures Art Gallery
Edited on on 02 Dec 2023 @ 8:51am
Mission:
M4 - Falling Out
Location: OC, Diplomatic Conference
Timeline: M4 D6
1298 words - 2.6 OF Standard Post Measure
.:Testimony- Porter Wallace:.
Wallace shifted uncomfortably in the seat. It wasn’t the crowd of sitting dignitaries sitting before him that caused him angst, but the view screen that had lowered from the ceiling like some sort of death shroud. The Vulcan commander stood up and introduced it as the bridge recording of the USS Sunrise.
Subconsciously, he began to grind his teeth together. Had no one thought that maybe he didn’t want to see this?
—-
Commander Sajal Khan uncrossed her legs and stood up from the captain’s chair. “Mr. Po, can you identify the ship?”
The operations shook his head and made some adjustments on his panel, and shook his head again. “Negative, Sir. There’s nothing in the database.”
“Hail them.”
“No response. We’re detecting an unusual energy reading building up. Could be weapons.”
“Raise shields,” Khan hesitated for a moment. “Yellow alert.”
The bridge darkened and yellow lit up the panels.
“Open a channel. This is Commander Sajal Khan of the Federation starship Sunrise. We are on a peaceful mission, surveying systems in this sector. We mean no harm.”
—-
Wallace cleared the lump in his throat, “I was in my quarters when Commander Khan ordered us to yellow alert. At a run, I could cover the distance to the Marine Armory in about 30 seconds. I was only half-way there when the Pyrryx opened fire. The ship just…just. The vibrations were akin to something I’d experienced during the Dominion War, but that had been multiple ships firing on my ship.”
T’Sheng considered Wallace with an impassive glance. His service records were marred with violent behaviors and reprimands. But he didn’t look the part. Not anymore. The Marine they had in front of them looked more like a victim these days. He was the mere shadow of the man, a killing machine, really, that he had been. Sadly, due to this most people were fooled and tended to see him as a hero. He had, after all, survived a terrible ordeal whilst in captivity. It was time, she believed, to reaffirm who Wallace truly was.
“Major Porter John Wallace,” she started, unable to hide her contempt. “You have a long illustrious career. One where you have been confronted by many enemies. Some of them are renowned for their brutal and merciless fighting methods. I’m thinking, in particular of the Breen.”
“Yeah, I faced the Breen. A few times. Ground engagements were even affairs, but at least early on with those energy weapons, fights in space were a bit more terrifying.”
“Yes, thank you for this information, Major Wallace. You will have no problem recognizing, then, that you are indeed familiar with the Breen, their strategies and their devastating weapons.”
“On the ground, sure, but not in space, Commander. I was only on one ship when they attacked. And not on the Bridge.” He balled his hand into a fist. “So, I guess, I wouldn’t really know the details.”
“You would not know?” She repeated, slowly, as she stared at him. “Were you incapacitated, distracted or otherwise engaged, during your encounters with the Breen?”
He quirked an eyebrow, that question was strange for a Vulcan to ask. “No. I was with my detachment in the bay. The ship was only transporting us to a base so we could refit. So, I guess the only factual comparative statement I can make about being attacked by the Breen was the ship I was on survived a twenty-minute fight and escaped. On the Sunrise, by the time I reached the Marine Armory it was over. I just didn’t know it.”
T’Sheng left it at that. The conclusion was, after all, clear enough: Major Wallace, Marine Detachment CO and Mission Specialist onboard the USS Sunrise, had been ill-prepared to respond to a ruthless attack by a new enemy. An attack that could be said to bear resemblance to the modus operandi of the Breen.
—--
Po lay prone on his back, red blood streaming from the jagged neck wound where’d he been lay by the person who took his position. Two or three other bodies littered the Bridge floor, some groaning, others still. Sajal Khan was no longer at her chair, but had taken up a position directly behind the flight control station. “Direct all available power to our shields and engines. Get me engineering!”
“No one is responding…oh, no…” Olivia Bendnter, her XO, who’d taken over at ops sucked in a breath through her teeth. “Message from engineering. Matt Winetrout is dead. We’re starting to lose warp core containment…”
“Shields at fifteen percent!” Sydney Hightower called out from her tactical station. “We’ll lose shields if they hit us again.”
Sajal Khan grimly nodded. “Give the signal for all non-essential personnel to get to the escape pods.”
—-
“Shields must have fallen shortly after the order to prepare to abandon ship.” Wallace remembered the confusion in the corridors, the loss of the portside pods and everything that came after, but he found himself unwilling or unable to tell these people about being manhandled by his own first sergeant aboard the lifepod. The past eclipsed the present and the conference room faded replaced with Bolivar Titus’s telling Wallace to tell the sergeant’s wife he loved her. The hatch slid shut, Titus saluted, and the thrusters shot the pod away. When the memory faded, he was left gripping the arms of the chair, his heart pounding with adrenaline that had surged into his body. Frantically, he looked around to find someone at the conference who could give him permission to leave. No one moved and finally he just mumbled, “I think I need a break,” and dashed from the chair toward the door.
Wordlessly, Ambassador Gordon Stillwell moved to ring the bell and signal a recess. The mellow chime chased after the retreating Major who was already out of the witness seat like a shot. Gordon folded his face in his hands, but found the images from the projection still on the inside of his fingers. They were overlaid with many other memory reels of many other wars and skirmishes, each having left indelible impressions on his psyche.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat as others moved and spoke softly during the recess. Eventually a touch on the back of Gordon’s hand made him lower his fingers from his face. He blinked, unsure of his own eyes at first. An older Trill woman was beside him, her spots trailing up her shaved scalp. Her eyes were the same piercing steely gray-green as he remembered. She wore something like a loose desert robe, stitched with sunbleached white feathers. He remembered her in white when they’d last parted, a white dress uniform. She’d still been in Starfleet service back then. Admiral Madison Indri.
Gordon took her fingers in his own in something of a handshake meant to greet her, but they both stared through the years that grayed them.
“It never gets any fucking easier to see,” she whispered bitterly.
“I would never want that to be easy to see,” he replied.
Meanwhile, T’Sheng gathered her PaDDs and left the room looking as austere as ever. The footage shown to the audience had been difficult to watch and she would certainly not want her daughter to see even just a fraction of it. She wouldn’t, as a matter of fact, want T’Evara to even witness the agenda that she was observing. As far as she was concerned, the line that Admiral Harshman had decided to follow was cast in stone, and she would not depart from it.
