| Differing Views |
| Summary: | Stavrian and Barclay have differing views on the rights of humans. Karthasi does her best to mediate. |
| Date: | 12 February 2041 AE |
| Related Logs: | None |
| Players: |
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Galley Deck 9 - Battlestar Cerberus
Behind the two hangar decks, the Cerberus' Galley is the largest room on the ship. Nearly half the size of a football field, the eating area is made up of long lines of stainless steel tables that can be folded up and placed against the wall for larger events. Individual seats are the standard military issue, boring and grey with lowest-bidder padding. The line for food stretches across one of the shorter sides of the room while the kitchen behind works nearly twenty-four hours a day to produce either full meals or overnight snacks and coffee for the late shifts.
Just by looking at him, it's impossible to say that there's a possible bomb threat to the entire ship and that he's looking into it. It is with long but relaxed steps the Master at Arms enter the galley, moving into the line to grab his food. Everything is stacked on the tray, with idle habit as he studies the people in here and makes no particular hurry, despite what hunger he might have. He's always scrutinizing those around him, and his environment - but it's done with a deceptive laziness so few would point at him and say that he's observant.
Karthasi seems to have recently finished a meal, tray turned perpendicular to its usual arrangement, a mug of tea still inhabiting the space in front of her, as well as a lithe volume bound in a dusky blue fabric, hard cover, and a notebook into which she's cautiously transcribing some text. Whoever else had been eating at her table has fled, and her tea's no longer steaming, so there's really no guessing how long she's been sitting there, one leg crossed over the other, back hunched in a bad parody of posture as she sends her soul down into whatsoever it's doing.
Stavrian is edging through the line himself, tray slid along the metal rails in search of edibles. The section of the galley that had been scorched in the bizarre electrical incident is still roped off, in the process of repair, and he makes no attempt to go that way once he's got his things together and a cup of tea to top it all off. Avoiding the worst of the crowding at this table and that, he finally sets his tray down across from and to the right of Karthasi, cautious not to knock into her books or her neglected tea. "Sir? You mind?"
Barclay picks up his tray and looks around for a seat - his gaze falls to the chaplain and the physician and an eyebrow quirks up. That's just a too good opportunity to pass up, so shortly after Stavrian asks for a seat he moves over, nodding respectfully. "Sirs," he says, raspy voice carrying a certain lazy charm to it, "got a seat left for the copper too, ey?" And the accent - Aerilon, mixed in with some traces from all sorts of accents.
The tray itself isn't enough to keep Greje from her considerations of the text. Her head, however, snaps upward at the words, then to the side at the other request, speechless, a moment, as if she was surprised to find out that she wasn't the only person in the room. "No, of course," she finally speaks up, polite and mild as usual, "Please, do sit, Jesse. Master Sergeant, please. Have a seat." She tucks her notebook on top of the page she'd been transcribing, letting the book go and picking up her tea, the pages flopping shut as she does so. She takes a sip. "I hope that everything's quite alright?" she goes on to ask, timidly.
Stavrian is on his way into the chair as Karthasi gives her blessing, softly scraping the floor as he scoots in. "Fine, sir, thanks. Working lunch?" One of his black brows lifts, and his chin indicates her transcribing. His attention lifts when Barclay's voice joins up to make a trio, hand settled on the fork he was about to pick up. "Always, Master Sergeant." A moment, then he ventures, "You wouldn't be Barclay, would you?"
Barclay sets the tray down, sits down, and immediately starts sorting out his food with butter on his bread. Like any marine he's intent on eating once he sits down to do it - who knows when that next meal will come. "Thanks," he nods to the chaplain. "Aye Sir, that'd be me. Master Sergeant James A. Barclay - brand spankin' new on board. And you, Sirs?" He smiles congenially at both. "Everything is about as it can be expected. Never a dull moment."
"How are those who were admitted into Medical after yesterday's incident?" Greje goes on to wonder, pinpointing the source of the anxiety in her voice. "I do hope that no one was injured too badly," she goes on, lowering her voice just a little bit before she resumes, to Barclay, "Greje Karthasi. Sister Karthasi if you like. Otherwise, feel free to call me Greje," she assures him. "I head up Ecclesiastical Services aboardship." That being the end of her own introduction, she takes another sip of tea, then looks back to the book. "Heraclitus. I keep thinking that if I write the words myself I'll come to some grand insight as to whatever he was on about," she tells them both with a little smile. Heraclitus was well-known for his short but nearly undecipherable sententiae about Gods, the Universe and Everything.
"No deaths, sir." Which is Stavrian's way of being optimistic. The JG's lunch is a plate of salad that lacks dressing - light and dark greens, tomatoes, and carrots all chopped and thrown together in a mishmash of color. Her comment about Heraclitus makes the corner of his mouth twitch as he stabs his fork tines into his food. "Improved way of understanding the knowledge? He'd be proud, sir. Just repeat 'Plato was wrong' over and over, maybe it'll help." He crunches into a bite of salad, lifting his chin to Barclay. "Junior Lieutenant Jesse Stavrian, PA-C. I've got some cross-training coming up with my medics and your boys, Master Sergeant. We'll be seeing more of each other very soon."
"Nice to meetcha both," Barclay says one introductions are over. "Call me James or Jimmy in here, ey," he suggests - one of the few places where formality isn't as strict. "Heard about the incident. Been a lot of bad luck around the place lately - wonderin' if it's nerves and tension making people make mistakes," he muses, without too much seriousness to his words. "I got a bit of a religious conundrum meself actually, Sister," he then says, turning an intent stare at her. "But I'll look yer up later on that." His own plate has every sort of meat he could get hold of. Needs his proteans. "Oh right - that name I know well. You're looking over our prisoner too, aren't you?" he asks of Stavrian, looking curiously at him. He tends to not linger with his looks at one person though - he often lets that gaze roam, taking in others in there and studying their interactions.
"I get enough of repeating 'Plato was wrong' while I'm reading Plato," Greje tells Jesse, lifting both brows in an expression that might be meant to be comical. "I'm afraid that a new genre is no answer to the literacy fallacy. Oh?" Is all she can say to Jimmy's mention of a conundrum, since no details are mentioned. "My office door's always open," she makes the offer, which is more true in spirit than in fact. Sometimes it is closed, after all. As it is, presently. But when she's there, it's open. Or at least unlocked. "That's good to hear, Jesse," she adds, perhaps taking the status report more optimistically than she should. "Are they allowed visitors, yet?" she wonders.
"Aye," Stavrian replies to Barclay, once the mouthful of salad's been chewed and swallowed. "Myself and Lieutenant Aurelia. We'll be down this evening." He has a distinctive accent himself, Sagittarian. Some find that back-of-the-throat pronunciation grating. His fork drags once more through his salad, and blue eyes turn back to Karthasi's, and hold there. "They may be, sir. You'd have to ask the attendings." The lettuce on his plate crunches on the fork tines, and he spears a tomato slice to hold it all in place. "Are they planning on having a blessing on the ship before we depart, sir?"
"I'll send you something to look at, sister - the conundrum is not personal as much as professional. Need the opinion of an expert on religion - and hard to find someone who's more of one than you, ey?" Barclay says, a faint grimness to his tone of voice. This is not something he takes lightly, not at all. "In fact," he notes, "maybe you'd like to come down to the security hub? The prisoner we're talkin' about here - she's got a strong faith. She'd probably appreciate talking to you - and she's refusing to eat and I don't wanna have to force-feed her," Barclay says, keeping his voice low. He nods to Stavrian. "You let me know if she needs to be put on a IV and I'll be having her moved to medical right away, with a marine guard."
"I haven't heard anything from command along those lines, Jesse. I'd assumed the ceremonies to be broadly secular," Greje admits. "I will, however, be taking haruspices before we depart," she lets him know, before her attention's snapped up by the description of the prisoner. "Of course; I'll come straightaway," she tells him. "What did she do to be so imprisoned?" she wonders.
"If she's Sagittarian or Gemenese, that's not a good idea," Stavrian tells Barclay, his light eyes coming back up to regard the Master Sergeant. "Moving her to medical, that is. A hunger strike is a non-violent protest, and she still has patient's rights to her dignity. So long as she's considered capable of making her own decisions. I'll offer her liquids and monitor her, but unless an order comes from the CMO I will not support force-feeding." He glances at Karthasi, giving an approving nod to the notion of a priest talking to the woman.
"We're looking into some suspicious behaviour," Barclay simply tells the priest, without dragging up the specifics here and now. In between talking, he's eating efficiently. He glances at Stavrian, smiling lopsidedly. "I'll be blunt Sir. What'd look worse - having someone die of a hunger-strike on board, or keeping them alive long enough to send them back to civilian authorities? This ain't no hunger-strike. She's trying to kill herself. She's not protesting anything - she wants to die. But she's not dying in my brig, that's for sure - unless the CMO says otherwise."
"How odd," Greje confines herself to remarking, with almost excessive mildness of tone, her eyes drifting slightly unfocused as she considers the few things she's heard about the case so far. She doesn't go on to ask further questions, perhaps just astute enough to have gotten that 'not here' hint from Jimmy. "I was just considering this remark from Heraclitus on death," she goes on, opening up the book once more, "Perhaps the two of you would be willing to lend a fresh set of ears to the sentiment that the Lords become mortal through…" she slows down, the translation becoming muddled as the language gets dense, "living the deaths of the mortals… and that the mortals escape death by… dying the lives of the Gods."
"When did human rights become based on what looks best for the cameras?" Stavrian gathers more plain salad onto his fork, tines staying down in the dwindling mountain of romaine lettuce and spinach. "I doubt you'd want to go down as someone with a reputation for torturing civilians anyway, James." The bottom of his fork makes a small swing Barclay's way, to punctuate that. "The /only/ way her rights can be taken from her is if she's judged incompetant by the psychiatrist. Frankly…" He glances at Karthasi and exhales quietly. "I pray she can unburden herself before it has to come to that. No spirit should be in so much anguish." It's not exactly sympathy in his voice. Hard to tell what it is, but whatever the name for it, it's unbending. A piece of carrot's gathered, making a tricolor kebab of veggies, which he then crunches down on. Chewing on that and Greje's words at once, not answering right away.
"I'm not worried about my reputation. I'm worried about the safety of those on board this ship - which she is threatening," Barclay notes, focusing on finishing his food. He remains as congenial as before. "Would appreciate it if you didn't twist my words around, Sir. I've gone out of my way to make her comfortable. I called you in soon as it was clear she wasn't eating. I've informed all commands. People are scurrying all over the ship because of her actions, but she's been treated more than fairly. Nobody's laid a hand on her, and there's been no torture, unpleasant treatment or mal-justice. So - why don't you let me do my job, and I'll let you do yours, aye?"
"While… it is necessary to understand that Polemos is the element common to all things, and that Eris is Dike…" Greje speaks up quietly, quoting another thought of the twisted-minded philosopher, "Perhaps the mess is best left a place of coming-together rather than tearing-apart," she suggests with a meekness that sounds as though she's prepared to be summarily dismissed. "I will put in a request for permission to visit with the prisoner… and I'm sure that nothing unseemly is happening or will be allowed to her. She sounds quite troubled. Perhaps we will be able to help her." She lifts her mug only to find it devoid of tea, a fact which she seems to have forgotten since the last time she tried to drink from it.
Stavrian replies to Barclay, looking at the man's face now. "Twist what words? I'm not talking about how you've treated her so far. I've got utmost faith that you have her best interest in mind along with the ship's. But you brought it up how things will look -" he points out, "- and so, that's the other side. That is how it /will/ look if she's force-fed against competant wishes, truth or not. And I don't want that on you any more than I want her death." The defensivness Barclay served him is absent in the JG, his voice staying quiet and factual. His eyes shift back to Karthasi. "I hope so, sir."
"And, I'm wondering what it'd look like if we allowed someone to die while there's a significant unknown threat to the entire ship, threatening the lives of every man and woman on board - because something she did, something she might still disclose if kept living," Barclay responds with equal factualness. "If she being alive can save the lives of thousands - would you hesitate, Sir? I wouldn't. I've done it before - but the other way. Killed one to save hundreds. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. You're just seeing one side - I'm trying to see the side of thousands in this." His eyes have narrowed significantly - some sore spot was hit by the young medical. He now stands, picking his tray up - he's done eating. "Sister - I'll make sure someone will wait for you. I'll also send you that video to overlook. Have a nice day, sirs," he says and nods courteously at them before he turns and heads off.
"Flux and fire," Karthasi whispers. Of course nobody had paid any mind to her suggesting the two leave off arguing, but, then again, she could have asked it of them outright instead of throwing more Heraclitean philosophy at them. But that's simply her manner. And now she's enchanted, watching the mad Ephesian's theory go straight into practice, barrelling straight into Empedocles on the way. Strife and love. The heartbeat of the universe. She wonders at it a moment before, half-waking, "Ah— of course," she tells Jimmy, even if she has no idea what video he means.
"You're not listening, Master Sergeant," Stavrian says as the man moves off. Not that barclay heard it, which doesn't sound it bothers him terribly much; he might just be used to it. "Have a good evening." He gets up the last bit of salad onto his fork and chews on it, looking back at Karthasi. "I don't think it's -that- dramatic."
Karthasi stares, blank-eyed, at Jesse for a moment, finally just shaking her head slowly, "I… what?" she asks him, uncomprehending, requesting context with a manifestly apologetic countanance.
"Nothing, sir." Stavrian puts his fork down and picks up his water, setting the empty cup too on his tray. "I should get back to work, if you'll excuse me." Starting to stand, he looks down at her once he's on his feet. "I'll probably see you around the security hub tonight. I'll pray for Hermes' help for your speaking with her."
"Hm," Greje makes a quiet noise in agreement. "Thank you, Jesse," she goes on. "I should go and see about this video," she decides, slipping her notebook out from between the pages of the text and closing the blue-covered volume as if that would clear her head of Heraclitus' distracting influence. "Good day," she adds, by way of a farewell, moving to set her empty mug on her long-deserted tray, to gather her books under one arm and her tray in her other hand, bussing it along at a brisk enough pace.