Commencement

Posted on Fri Jan 20th, 2023 @ 7:02am by Lieutenant Commander P’rel M.D & Commodore Jacob Kane & Commander N'Garzi Zora & Marcus Blake

Mission: Wrath of the People
Location: Starfleet Academy - Auditorium
Timeline: MD-03
2003 words - 4 OF Standard Post Measure

The academy hall was filled with maybe 150 cadets, plus a few dozen support staff and tutors. A lot of fresh faces, Kane noted. Cadets always looked so young and so green.

Beside him on the podium, Kane noted the presence of three Starfleet officers: a Commodore and two Lieutenant Commanders, who seemed to represent the senior teaching faculty, at least for this class of graduates. There looked to be a large entourage around the guests of honour, however. Representative Blake he recognised. And he had some awareness of the man's running mate - Admiral Nerak, formerly of the Romulan Galae. He'd heard the buzz about a former Romulan Star Empire official now in the potential running to hold a political office in the Federation. Nerak would be the first, if elected.

Zora sat in the crowd, eager for the Captain's speech. She had offered to help him practise but in true Kane style he had insisted that "he had this". It had been a while since she had been on these grounds and she was relishing the opportunity to catch up with some old friends and colleagues at the banquet later, maybe she'd be able to convince Jacob to mingle a little too, though she was sure she knew the answer to that already.

P'rel, in her traditional Vulcan robe, stood at the rear of the large hall; it wasn't that she was particularly interested in the commencement ceremony nor the Captain's speech itself, but she did know that Bennett would be here. Captain Bennett, her old handler, ally, nemesis...depending on which hat suited him best that day; his son was starting this year and it would be a virtual guarantee that she would be able to bump into him here. He was full of information she needed. The occurrences out in the ninth fleet operations area, the warnings, clones, clues and trails all led back to a chronic level of senior corruption - and if there was one person who could help her it was Bennett. She had managed to stow a tricorder in her robes against the security protocols, a risk to be sure but a necessary one; she had to give the device to Bennett to be sure he could collate everything with her.

Kane's speech wasn't a long one. Nor was it filled with fluff and anecdotes. He kept it simple: a reminder of what the Federation stood for. He quoted Admiral Ramirez' famous speech from the Four Years War. The only thing I fear is losing the dream of the Federation; compared to such a loss, I do not fear any enemy we yet face. He stepped down to a ripple of applause, taking a moment to accept the approval of the audience before Representative Blake was announced to share his own comments.

Passing the Representative as he passed, the man shook Kane's hand and paused just momentarily to comment in his ear before he moved to take the stand.

"Poignant," Blake murmured to him. "You made that hard to follow." Kane wasn't sure whether he was just being kind or not. Typical politician.

P'rel stood with the others and clapped as Kane's speech concluded; she eyed the man whispering into his ear and her eyes then fell to Nerak; the former Romulan Admiral turned Federation politician. If ever there were a shoe-in for so-called elected office it was this man; the Federation would be falling over itself to have a former Romulan flag officer elected to office. As the hall resumed their seats, P'rel stepped out from her aisle seat; now was a good time to look for Bennett.

Gripping his PADD tightly in one hand, Kane started to move towards his seat near the others, clocking the cryptic sort of look Nerak was giving him as he passed the Representative.

What happened next was a blur.

He felt the heat first, then the concussive force of something knocking him backwards.

His ears were ringing. There was a smell of something in the air...smoke?

Zora, like the rest of the audience, was rocked by the blast. Even from this distance, towards the back of the room, she had been lifted out of her seat and onto the floor, though luckily nothing felt broken. Her first thought was of Kane, did he survive the blast or would he be among the named casualties only remembered by a plaque?

Pushing a chair off of her upper body, P'rel blinked rapidly with confusion; the lights were dim and the remaining ones were illuminating a thick haze. She sat upright and looked at the crater which had been the stage. The Captain. Where was the Captain?

Opening his eyes, it took a few seconds for him to be able to focus on what was happening. There were people running in all directions. And screams. And...blood? Half the podium was missing, mostly where the rest of the political entourage had been. Representative Blake was on the ground nearby, unmoving.

Crawling to his feet, Kane staggered, looking to see if there was any explanation for what was going on, or a way of somehow helping.

Rushing forwards and taking athletic leaps that only a Vulcan could manage, P'rel raced past the dying and wounded to get to Kane. "Captain!" she called, desperately trying to get to his side to check for life. As she skidded to a halt next to him, her fears were thankfully allayed by his confused blinking, his eyes darting around trying to process what had just happened. Transporter whines could be heard all around as medical and security beamed in, and a distant evacuation klaxon sounded.

"Captain...Captain?" He wasn't sure who was calling him. Someone was knelt beside him. "Are you all right?"

"What...?" he croaked.

"There was an explosion. You are injured." P'rel informed him, placing one hand on his chest to lightly push him back down. He was trying to stand and she had no idea if he had injuries requiring him to be still. Pulling the stowed tricorder, she flipped it open and scanned him; no serious injuries. "You are concussed and have several broken ribs. We should leave immediately, there may be secondary devices."

Kane grabbed hold of his intelligence officer as she helped him up. Focus was slowly returning. Muffled sounds started to become clear again. "Representative..." he gasped, lurching to the side of the fallen human. Kane's finger on his neck located a faint pulse. He was still alive.

"Captain! Now!" P'rel urged, pulling at Kane's arm to remove him from Representative Blake. They had to get out of the hall, quickly.

"Hold up!!" Boots on the ground, sounds of movement, and a set of gold uniforms swarmed over the scene. Starfleet Security had responded fast. Things were happening in a blur.

"Commander!" One of the security men had found Kane's PADD and was showing it to the lead officer. "This looks...like a detonator."

Multiple eyes went to the somewhat dazed Starfleet Captain. The screen was cracked, but was locked onto a final image of some sort of remote detonation code. It hadn't been there when Kane had been holding it, but he wasn't sure he was going to be able to explain that.

Zora, now on her feet, had spotted the Captain but was confused why he was being surrounded by Starfleet security. Maybe they were safeguarding him, getting him out of harm's way. She rushed towards them.

"Lock him down." The Security officer growled.

P'rel and Zora met eachother's stare - equal parts panic, confusion and a fierce sense of protective loyalty to Kane. P'rel was shoved aside as two more security officers pushed past and drew their phasers, surrounding the Captain.

Hands grabbed Kane's shoulders, pulling him away from Blake's side. He barely had time to lodge a protest when he heard the whine of a transporter and he was whisked away from the scene.

Zora couldn't believe her ears, did they really think that Kane had something to do with this...attack? Surely this was a sick joke? Though in her heart-of-hearts, she knew that Starfleet didn't joke about things like this. She locked eyes with P'rel, "we need to leave, now!"

"Wait!" replied the Vulcan, seeing a green bloody hand poking from beneath a horrendously twisted and crushed ceiling bracket which had crashed to the stage. "The candidate!" she called, diving towards the debris and pulling the tricorder out again. She opened the medical scanning beam and directed it through the twisted metal and cracked wood. "What...?" she questioned in a confused whisper, these readings....shouldn't have been possible - not unless Nerak was...; as she turned to speak to Commander Zora her action was interrupted by someone snatching the tricorder from her. Her attention snapped back around to the culprit; a security officer with Lieutenant Commander pips.

"This isn't operational issue. Use this instead!" he bluntly told her, shoving another tricorder at her of the exact same specification. As soon as he had intervened he was gone, beamed away with her tricorder. The data she had wanted to show Bennett would be largely useless without her biometric readings; and a single attempt to access it would render the device utterly useless. That in itself posed a problem. What she had seen on that first scan of Candidate Nerak...shouldn't have been possible.

Breaking from her momentary consternation, she returned to scanning Candidate Nerak - the readings, they were gone. The tricorder she had been given had been rigged. Other medical staff rushed in and flooded the area around Nerak, forcing P'rel to step bacl. Taking two steps over another mess of bodies debris, P'rel grabbed Zora's arm and shouted into her ear above the background chaos; "I am a Doctor, I should remain here!"

"They took Kane," Zora shouted back as though the Vulcan didn't know. "They think he had something to do with this, they'll come for us next. We need to leave."

P'rel wheeled around and surveyed the sheer carnage before them; smoke, bodies - not complete in all cases -, twisted structural apparatus and lumps of chair, floor and ceiling. All just the hazy backdrop for an operation unseen since the Antwerp bombing in 2372; scores of medical personnel began beaming in as injured were beamed out, a significant contingent of heavily armed Starfleet security officers were still streaming into the decimated hall. P'rel noticed, oddly, that all of the security were Starfleet; not a single Federation nor civilian security officer was anywhere to be seen - exceptionally strange for San Francisco.

Zora of course was right. Something was very, very wrong - and if Kane had been targeted then it stood to logical reason that other senior officers could be next. She turned to Zora to meet her earnest look, yet over her shoulder a man caught her attention first. Captain Bennett - looking far more human than she'd ever seen the cold, almost emotionally dead, man; he was panicked, there was fear across his face - he jerked his head off to the side before himself making a rapid exit.

Returning her attention to Zora, P'rel gripped her arm to emphasise what she was about to say and looked her straight in the eye as if their eyeballs themselves were locked in a tractor beam; "Nerak. Don't lose Nerak. I will be in touch when I can". A final squeeze on Zora's arm as a form of 'say nothing, goodbye', and P'rel hurried across the hall and joined a stretcher bearing team carrying a wounded human from the hall. Whatever it was that had begun, it would be down to the crew of the Athena to exonerate their Captain.

Zora watched as the Vulcan left, knowing in her heart that she needed the freedom to do what she did best. Not wanting to hang around much longer she turned and made her way out of the hall before she was arrested too.