A shot in the dark

Posted on 19 Mar 2012 @ 5:15pm by Lieutenant JG Drusilla McCarthy & Captain Jonathan Holliday

4,268 words; about a 21 minute read

Mission: Episode 00 - Pre-Deployment
Location: USS Galileo - Holodeck 1
Timeline: MD06 - 1800 hrs

Dru sat back in her seat, rubbing her eyes which felt tired from staring at PADDs all day. As the young Counsellor tilted back her head, closing her eyes, she went over everything which had happened in the last 24hours. As her thoughts turned to Will, Dru couldn't help feeling a mixture of worry and of excitement. She was worried about the slight hostility she picked up their session and his reluctance to open up. Her excitement was over the challenge she would face to get him to open up, it was a chance to get her teeth into something and would stop her dwelling over Lihra.

Lirha was another item on Dru's mind. The more she thought about their kisses, the more wound up and frustrating. She felt

As Dru allowed her eyes to close she realised she needed to unwind. Being as wound up as she was right now, she wouldn't be able to help anyone requiring counselling or even just advice.

Suddenly an idea came to mind, only a few days ago the XO had told her his favourite way to relax was time spent in a holodeck shooting phasers, he had even offered to show her a programme. Dru smiled to herself as her hand went up to her commbadge. An hour spent blowing things up....what could be better then blowing things up to relieve stress.

=^=Counsellor McCarthy to Lieutenant Commader Holliday; Would you be able to spare an hour to show me one of your phaser shooting programmes? I've some free time now if I'm not imposing on yours.=^=

Listening as his combadge chirped up, John was rather impressed that the young lieutenant had decided to take him up on his offer of some additional training. He had been on his way to the holodeck of his own accord to get in a little sparring practice before his next bout with his chief science officer, but the offer to demonstrate his visual acuity with a phaser was as good an offer.

=/\= sounds like a good offer to me Lieutenant. I'll meet you there =/\=

A short walk separated him from the holodeck and he was soon inside, the familiar yellow glow of the holo emitters ready to entertain their guests.

"glad to see you took me up on my offer Lieutenant."

Dru looked up and smiled warmly at John as he walked in. The last time they had met, the Commander had seemed extremely stressed, Dru was looking forward to getting the opportunity to see him more relaxed. She liked him, saw in him a strong strength to have gotten where he was in his career.

"Well Commander you recommended this for a good stress relief and that's something I could do with right now. Any warnings or such you need issue me with?" Dru pushed herself off of the wall she'd been leaning against and made her way over to Johns side.

For a moment it was scarily easy for John to decide to spill his emotions onto his chief counsellor, his natural defences quickly reasserted themselves and simply refused to allow it to happen. His recent personal developments with his father had been weighing rather heavily on his mind, but for now at least, he decided to keep it under wraps.

"Apart from the fact that my trigger finger is feeling more than a little itchy and I've been meaning to get my phaser on the range for the past few days, I think I'm ok, how about you?"

"Outside of what I previously mentioned nothing really. I can point and shoot a phaser with confidence, just expect me to miss more times then I hit the target. Don't stand too close incase I singe something." Dru grinning across at John, already starting to feel the tension inside of her lift.

"Feel free to gives me pointers, I won't turn the phaser on you for offering to help." As Dru came up beside John she looked at him with a soft smile, "So what programme have you got to foist on me?"

"I thought we should start off with something simple rather than overwhelming you this early on with something like a recreation of one of the land battles from the Dominion Wars - the phaser range of this ship is probably more suited to a learner than the Battle of Betazed"

Heading over to the panel adjacent to the large holodeck doors, John quickly pulled up the database of holodeck programs in the memory banks of the Galileo before he saw one he was familiar with. Pressing a few controls the criss cross design of this holodeck was quickly replaced by the standard Starfleet phaser range - a black background with a large circular dais mounted on the end of a long metallic walkway leading from the door. On the dais was a small pedestal topped by a pair of type 2 phasers and a pair of rifles.

"Remember this program from your academy days lieutenant?" John enquired as he headed back up the walkway to join his companion on the platform.

Dru rubbed the back of her neck as she realised ever tim, whenever John moved close she literally had to tilt her head back to look up at his face. It's occasions like this she hated being so short. As she looked around her she felt a broad smile on her face.

"Doctor Twitchy McSkittish. That's the memory this place brings. Remind me to tell you about her sometime." Druu shook her head as the memories came flooding back. "Our old instructor loved our class. I think we were the reason he turned grey at such an early age."

Dru moved to take off her jacket, preferring not to not to contend with the confinement of it while trying to shoot a phaser. As Dru rolled up her sleves she moved over to look at the phasers and rifles, "I think I should be fine with the phaser but a rifle? Can't say I've ever handled one. The joys of being a counsellor, we are trained to use our mind, not our brawn."

Looking down at the collection of weapons, John smirked as his eyes locked onto the compression rifle on the bench. It had been a while since he had handled one himself, and he was relishing the chance to get reacquainted with an old friend.

"You'd be surprised how useful these things are, when I did survival training on Andoria, this meant you didn't go without heat, food, or light...plus the power cell lasts a darn sight longer than in the type 2's. We'll start off small though, care to choose our weapon madam?"

Dru weighed up her choices, keep with what she knew or take a chance, "Well you know what, let's live a little. If your up for the challenge and the holodeck safeties are on, why don't we give the rifle a try? This is meant to be abit of fun after all." Dru turned and grinned up at John, enjoying the feeling of freedom and ease she was feeling.

"And Madam? Just don't lapse into Little Lady." Dru said the last part in an exaggerated deep Western American drawl.

"I'll try my best lieutenant" John replied as he picked up one of the rifles, deftly deactivating the safety switch and activating the power cell. The weapon gave a slight audible hum as it powered up. Taking a moment to look down the weapon sights, John aimed it down the range, as if targeting some unseen object in the black background. After pausing for a moment, he lowered the weapon, heading over to the control panel on the dais handrail, and tapped a few commands, which after a moment, caused the holodeck to produce a large spherical target a short distance away.

"I tought we'd start small - a stationary target to get you used to that thing."

To demonstrate his point, John quickly raised his own rifle to a firing height and squeezed the trigger, releasing a small orange sphere of phaser energy which quickly hit the target. As it impacted, the target flashed from white to a shade of blue to confirm the impact.

"Give it a try. These latest rifles don't have a habit of lurching to the left like the last generation, they're pretty much point and shoot now"

Dru watched the commands John entered into the rifle carefully and watched as he lined up and absorbed the kick back from the shot. Waiting for him to step back, Dru moved over to position herself infringing of the target, before lining up her shot, she threw John a weary glance over her shoulder. "Do you think you could just all me Dru? I'm here to use this as relief from a stressful few days. I'm Dru in my counselling sessions and I'm Dru in my personal life, I'm only Lieutenant when formality calls for it."

Dru moved her attention back to the rifle, activating the power cell and replicated the commands she had watched John enter, positioning the rifle at firing height, Dru then braced her legs and pulled the trigger. Within a few moments she realised the weapon had not fired. "What the..." Dru looked down at the weapon, keeping it levelled at the target incase there was a delayed discharge.

"Well Dru" John said, making an extra effort to use her first name as requested, even though it still felt very much out of place to him. That said, a lot of things on this mission was likely to force him out of his comfort zone at least a little.

"You might have gotten a little more success from the rifle if you remembered to unlock the safety catch" he pointed delicately at the small red light illuminated on the side of the weapon.

Dru looked down at the light and blushed deep red before laughing, "I did warn you I'd be abit silly around these things."

Dru thumbed off the safety and again lined up the rifle at firing height, once again bracing her legs and pulling the trigger. As she watched the ball of energy leave the rifle and hit the wall above the target. "Hum...well I guess at least I got it to fire and managed to get it to fire at the direction of the target."

Dru thumbed the safety back on and turned around to grin at John.

"Well, it could have gone a lot worse - at least that was in the same general direction. Try tucking it closer to your shoulder this time, you're overcompensating for the recoil and it's throwing off your aim. Go ahead, give it a try, if it works out well we can try something a little more challenging"

John was relishing being able to act as a professional mentor once again. Although he had not enjoyed working with the senior management at the Academy, he had definitely gotten a strong sense of satisfaction out of getting the best results for his students.

Dru picked up the gun, leaving the safety off and positioned rifle as John had indicated. As she held the rifle tighter against her shoulder and mimicked taking a shot she spoke to John, "Like this?"

Dru found she was enjoying this, she had never been good with weapons but she felt she was doing well today, dispute the incident with the safety lock. It made her feel proud of herself, made her feel she had a focus for her mind, something to achieve.

"Perfect, your stance is pretty much how I taught my students to be, now just make sure you line the two sights up with your target, and squeeze the trigger slowly. There's a nasty habit with some first year cadets to breathe in as they fire, all that happens is you end up throwing your targetting off and you hit a wall rather than the target."

During his tenure at the Academy, John had pretty much seen it all, from forgetting to remove safety catches, to forgetting to actually insert any kind of power cell into the rifle. It was worrying sometimes, that these cadets would be expected to defend the Federation where some classes could only just about fire a phaser if they used their combined aptitude. That said by the end of the first semester, John and his fellow staff members had managed to get even the worst class at least firing in the right direction.

As Dru lined up her sight she took a deep breath in and out to regulate her breathing to prevent automatically breathing in. As she squeezed the trigger she then moved to automatically place the safety back on. As she watched, the energy ball hit the target only slightly off centre.

Dru stared at the target in silent shock. Never before had she picked up on something so quickly. She turned around to John with a grin on her face, "Wow......You are some miracle worker Jonathan." Dru stepped back to let John step up, still staring at the target in disbelief.

"A teacher can only teach as well as his student can learn. I'm impressed, there wasn't much room for improvement on that shot....lets try something more complicated....a moving target."

Smirking to his companion, John leant over to the console again and entered a new set of command codes. As he did, the target sphere shrinking to only half its original size, and began to move around at considerable speed, pausing at random intervals before moving off in another direction again.

"This is an old program, they developed it when the NX class were in service, but its still a good one. Basically, track the ball, and shoot!"

To demonstrate, John picked up his own rifle once again, and fired at the target, striking it on its top edge. As he did so, the sphere reacted by moving to a different location, allowing the commander to turn and fire once more, hitting the sphere almost as well as he had the last time.

"The trick...is to anticipate...where it's going!" He called out as the sphere moved a third time. This time, John fired...but hit nothing except empty space, the holodeck responding with a distasteful noise indicating the failure of the objective, and the sphere quickly dissipated back into nothing more than photons in the void.

"Dammit!" The commander exclaimed rather more loudly than would have been expected. Rage bubbled up from within some unseen reservoir inside of him, and without warning he cast the phaser rifle at full force over the side of the platform, disappearing into the abyss below for the computer to dematerialise. Turning his attention to the panel, John formed a fist with his right hand, and struck the railings with all his strength, teeth gritted, and panting heavily though clenched jaws.

As Dru watched the sphere, she didnt have a notion how she was going to handle this target practise. As John missed his last shot, Dru turned around with a smile on her face to gently tease the Commander but the smile disappeared as she witnessed the anger on his face and the punch to the railings.

As Dru watched the scene play out infront of her, she moved to grab John by both arms, suddenly realising he was a danger of hurting himself, holodeck safeties or not. The force he has punched the railings with wou;d normally have easily broken skin. Watching John's breathing Dru started to speak with him in an authoritive voice, hiding the fact she was worried about why he would change like this, it wasn't his character to do so.

"Commander. I need you to look at me now. I need you to take three deep controlled breaths and I need you to focus on me, focus on my voice."

For a moment, John forgot who he was, why he was here, and what exactly it was that he was doing, the pain in his hand hadn't even registered yet with his brain, for now, he just stared down and over the wall at the black abyss ahead of him, as if it was threatening to swallow him whole, unrelenting, unending, just....darkness. Right at that moment, he was truly alone, nothing else in the universe mattered to him, or even existed. A cold, desolate place that did nothing more than strike fear into his heart, and terror into his soul.

But then, a voice began to break through, there was something familiar about it, yet still distant,he could hear his heartbeat pulsing through his ears, as if his whole body was taken over by this rhythm, before eventually, he began to breathe. As that air surged into his lungs, he felt the world around him begin to return, begin to coalesce and take shape around his fragmented emotions, until eventually, the voice began to ring clear in his ears, and the pain in his hand began to make itself known.

"I'm...I'm ok lieutenant...don't worry about me...I'm just a sore loser....erm....I apologise...I think that's enough practice for one day...I must be short on sleep or something"

Embarrassment quickly leapt to the forefront of his emotions, the first of many that were going to surface over the next few minutes, and least of all did he want to convey any of those to another member of his crew. For now, he was satisfied with retreating to the comfort of his quarters with a hypospray for the pain in his hand, and a strong drink.

Dru maintained her hold on John's arms worried he might try run and realising that something was wrong. If the result was this burst of anger, the young counsellor was worried what more damage he might do outside of a safe environment. "You wanna tell me what exactly is going on Jonathan?" Dru continued to look him directly in the face, softening her features as she tried to establish eye contact. She knew he wouldn't open up as long as he viewed her as someone he was in charge of.

As he took in her words, John's first instinct was going to be to rebuke her for her use of his name rather than his rank, afterall, as far as he was concerned, they were still on duty, and there were still certain principles to obey. But the sight of her eyes staring into his very soul seemed to be enough to relieve him of any command structure he still envisaged in his mind.

"Its nothing...really its nothing....I just got some news from back home ok...guess I'm not taking it as well as I should do..."

After a moment, he sighed deeply, before shaking his head and thinking back onto that earlier comm call that had done so much damage to his emotional state.

"My old man's on his way out....ordered me to stay on board....the funny thing is, I hate the guy, I mean....I really hate the guy....so why should I care what happens to him?"

Dru slightly loosened her grip on John's arms but maintained the contact, feeling he needed some connection to keep him grounded. Realising John was looking for answers aswell as understanding Dru tried to figure out how to approach this.

"Because at the end of the day no matter how angry you are at him he's your Father, the man who helped give you life." Dru paused for a moment to allow John to absorb this. "When did you find out?"

"Last night...I got a subspace message delivered through to my quarters....suffice to say...it wasn't the best news I've ever had....I thought that a trip to the phaser range would sort out my emotions...seems to have done the opposite effect."

Rubbing his temple once again, John put his back to the metallic handrail that made up the wall of the dais, and allowed his legs to slowly buckle under his own bodyweight, tumbling slowly to the floor, his back sliding down the surround like a droplet of water along a solid surface, until he felt himself come into contact with the floor. Sitting with his feet slightly apart, he rested his hands on his knees and contemplated his situation

"Sorry to spring this on you Lieu--Dru....sorry...not quite getting the hang on the first name term stuff"

Dru took her hands off of John's arms as she felt him buckling, she could see he still had some control of his movements and he'd only pull her down with him otherwise, Dru wouldn't have the strength to hold him up.

Dru smiled softly at his words, "Stop looking at me as a crew member your in charge of, look at me as a friend given that is what a counsellor is."

Dru lowered her body to the floor next to John, taking his hand to satisfy herself he hadn't done extreme damage before letting it go again. Dru folding her legs under her as she did in her counselling sessions, she always found herself more at ease in this position.

"Tell me about your Dad, and not just the stuff that makes you feel angry, tell me of what you view him as."

"Whats there to say? When I was a kid....sure he was great...I looked up to him you know? But...damn he never approved of me wanting to join Starfleet....said that no son of his was going to be in a military organisation when there were so many openings in the science academies....that was the last time we spoke properly"

It was true that the decisions of John's formative years had led to some rather explosive confrontations between him and his father, and he had often found himself heading for the nearest transport ship to escape, but every time he thought he had managed to get away, he was dragged back in.

"Even when I was promoted to Lt Commander he refused to see that I'd made something of myself....that I'd stepped out of his shadow....I just wanted him to be proud of me I guess....and I never got that."

"But yet he has never disowned up, he still continues to initiate contact with you?" Dru paused for a moment to allow John to digest this,"What was he like as a father when you were a child? Was he attentive, affectionate?"

"He was....demanding. Always leaning on me to go the extra mile, learn the extra subject...I guess...in a way....he pushed me towards Starfleet - if I was going to better myself...I couldn't find a better place in the quadrant to be. He was always attentive....up until then...after I told him I wasn't going to stay in a lab for the rest of my life...he became distant..."

Dru paused for a few moments, trying to digest what John was saying and turn it into something which may help. "If he's so set against Starfleet do you think he blames himself for you joining? You say as a child he continuously pushed you to better yourself. Maybe his anger isn't with you, it's with himself but he directs it at you as he doesn't know how to fix a situation he blames himself for?"

Dru turned to look at John, at the end of the day she didn't know his father or the full situation, maybe her analysis was wrong but it would help John think beyond both his and his father's anger.

"Its possible....to be honest I've never taken the time to psycho-analyse myself...if I did I guess you'd be out of a job...I think....I think I'll go see him once our mission is taken care of...maybe he can set the record straight after the past decade...give me some sort of closure, for both of us"

Dru frowned slightly uncertain how to word the next part, "Don't leave it that long. Send him a sub space communication in the next day or two, you initiate the contact with him, remind him that at the end of the day you love him and will be there for him through this, it will break the ice."

"I'll take it under advisement Lieutenant" John chirped up, his barriers slowly reforming as he began to reassert himself. It was strange, this time spent discussing a problem that he never really thought was particularly complex, was indeed making him feel a little better.

"I might just take you up on your offer....now....I promised you a phaser lesson....and I'm not about to disappoint...would you humour me with continuing this exercise?"

Dru briefly laid a hand on Johns arm, "Just remember I'm here 24/7, if you don't like the idea of talking just remember this is my job. As you said if be out of the job if people did talk to me to analyse situations. My door is always open Jonathan."

Dru stood to her feet and grinned down at John, feeling she might have somewhat helped and still feeling the energy from her success earlier, she held out her hand to help him to his feet, "Sounds good to me, but I'm standing well away from you, I'm not taking any chances you miss and decide to fire at me." Dru playfully winked to show no harmful intent behind the comment.

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