#; there are times when men in good conscience cannot blindly follow orders. / la'an & batel

[ltnsingh]

@cptnbatel asked: you don't need to.

" I do, " La'an pressed, regardless.

In the wake of the Cayuga's decimation by the Gorn, a single unit comprised of their hunters, hell - bent on wiping out an entire populace to brutally further their own, the number of survivors — whether they'd avoided being slain by the untamed younglings themselves or the remnants of the ship they'd once served on burning up on entry into Parnassus Beta — had sunk, heart - achingly, into the single digits.

Where those left behind enumerated few, those lost, gone before they'd even reckoned with the shock of invasion and mass slaughter, still made themselves known in the vast, deathly - silent spaces left behind. Spaces that, soon, would be filled with green crew, transferred in from other ships, distant starbases: places untouched by the phantasmal, dried, years - old blood La'an could still sometimes make out under her own fingernails, or the smell of it, fresh and spilled in nauseating abundance, on too - newly set concrete.

" I have... experience with surviving the Gorn, " she offered, like the shrill of their snarls didn't run her blood cold, or simultaneously flint a deep - seated spark of contempt in her. In all technicality, that rang true on more than three discordant occasions. But the very first, when she'd still been young, helpless to save her family or herself, helpless to do much more than accept her impending demise in the name of her capturer's archaic ritual beliefs — that had been a living hell that almost nothing, for a time, could have expunged from her, mark of Cain and all. " I want to be where I can help. "

[ltnsingh]

@cptnbatel asked: i am unwilling to risk anyone's life but my own on this occasion.

Maybe that was the epitome of what it meant to be a Starfleet captain: To be courageous. To possess a willingness to self - sacrifice for the crew, for the good of the ship, for the federation and its legacy; The readiness, despite the inclination shared by the majority of humankind, toward self preservation and fear, to risk one's own neck to save others — and to uphold Starfleet's ideals until the bitter end.

If staring down death was an obligation Captain Batel was meant to bear, La'an's ought to have been obedience. But she couldn't simply stand back and acquiesce to her insinuation. Not when there was another way.

" Respectfully, Captain — unless you're explicitly ordering me to stand down, I'm afraid I can't let you do this on your own. "

[ltnsingh]

@captainbatel asked: “ Hide. Hide now. ”

What she'd wanted — dreamed of, even, in nearly every cold - sweat inducing nightmare she'd had of the Gorn and their mother ship — was to open fire; But she'd known better than to defy Captain Batel's orders. Known better than to presume she'd ever survive a solo standoff against the very race that had annihilated the USS Puget Sound and sliced open each member of her immediate family, one by one, from sternum to groin. Known that that, in the midst of what had so rapidly become a lawless hunting ground, they'd need any advantage they could grapple for.

That advantage, could La'an call it that, began and ended with the first obscured, dark corner she'd been fortunate enough to stumble upon, a fallen barricade of alloy grate — and the phaser rifle she'd clutched to her chest.

" I've secured a place to hide, captain, " she affirmed, a whisper both rife with raging impudence and cold, bone - deep fear. While the crackle of her comms barely pierced the dense noiselessness, it was still enough to threaten to run her blood cold. " Captain Batel, do you read me? "