| PHD #312: Feisty Marine Is Feisty |
| Summary: | Vandenberg asks an alert-status-fatigued Khloe for some advice on how to deal with the chain of command. |
| Date: | 04 Jan 2042 AE |
| Related Logs: | (unknown) |
| Players: |
  |
| Ready Room - Deck 7 - Battlestar Cerberus |
|---|
| With the hatches at the rear of the room, the walkways on both sides slope down towards the dais at the front of the room. The stadium seating forms a partial semi-circle around the speaking podium and provides enough seats for all three hundred members of the Air Wing. The walls are adorned with the patches of each squadron aboard and their mottos stenciled in white lettering above each one. Behind the podium is a set of large LCD screens that can display any matter of material from reconnaissance to maps to gun camera footage. |
| Post-Holocaust Day: #312 |
Later on in the afternoon, the light is on in the Ready Room when there aren't any planned briefings or whatever it is that the Wing uses this room for. Bu one particular individual needed TV's. Large ones. And this room has them. Vandenberg is up at the front of the room trying to futz with a remote. She's managed to get the screen to display the recon photos of the Cylon Foundry but little else. Apparently her technical aptitude does not lie in the audio/visual arts.
Khloe comes in quickly. Condition Two has her perpetually in her flight suit these days, and the circles under her eyes and the faint paleness to her complexion implies she's been on duty more hours than off. But, far be it for Captain Khloe "Poppy" Vakos to complain about duty. No, she's living, breathing duty. So focused on her duties, in fact, that as she walks in and heads straight for the whiteboard, she completely misses Natalie fiddling with the recon playback. A marker gets uncapped and the Knights SL begins jotting down a new wing rotation, presumably to keep the never-ending CAPs fresh.
Vandenberg is preoccupied on her own with pressing buttons on the remote to no success. She even tries waving the thing at the screens while pushing buttons. The things people do when outsmarted by electronics. She doubletakes up at Khloe and waits until the woman seems like she's finished with the markering of the Board. "Hey, sir? Do you know how to zoom this thing in? I've been messing with it for like ten minutes and I can't get it to work. Lend a hand to a Marine in distress?" She's got a little bit of a croak to her voice, the bandage still taped to her neck.
Khloe looks over, surprise in her eyes. "Frak, I must be tired," she mutters, eyes clenching shut while pinching the bridge of her nose. "Didn't even see you, Lieutenant. Sure." She caps the marker, setting it down at the base of the whiteboard before crossing over to her side. "You must be on light duty. How's the neck?" She takes the clicker from her and begins fiddling with it herself. "Hmm. You managed to change a lot of settings. I'll reset it back to standard."
As Khloe approaches, Vandenberg straightens a little. Its impulsive - either to the rank or the person. Though one might get the impression than Natalie doesn't have much concern for a rank. "Thank you, sir. Didn't realize I had screwed it up so badly." There's a stiff nod. Her neck probably still hurts a little. "I'm cleared for full duty but not quite one hundred percent. Working past it. Doesn't do me any good to sit in a bunk bitching about a frog in my throat. Trying t-" She coughs a few times, turning her head and clearing her throat. "Sorry. Trying to make heads or tails of this operation Pewter seems to think is so great."
Khloe doesn't seem too bothered by rank at the moment, either; other than her language, there's no aggressive, confident posture from her. She just looks tired. She pushes buttons, scrolling through menus and the like. "Well, the idea of capturing a working foundry is important for the fleet. Think about how easily we could replace missing gear if we had a manufacturing plant. None of this cobbled-together crap that the deck usually gives us." And, done. She resets the footage to index 'zero'. Handing the remote back to Vandenberg, turning it in her hand like she were handing her a knife hilt-first, she says, "Here you go."
"Owe you one. Thanks, Captain." Vandenberg takes the remote back and looks up to the photo on the screen. "That's exactly my thinking, sir. It'd be fantastic. Replenishing Vipers, ship armor, getting new weapons produced to replace destroyed stuff? Its fantastic." The Lieutenant shakes her head and looks back up to Khloe. "But Pewter wants us to blow the damned thing up. After looking over the memo that crossed my desk, its apparent that A) Pewter doesn't seem to understand ground operations and B) he intends to have us blow the place up. Our operations objectives are 'Gather Intel' and 'Demolitions'." Vandenberg does not sound impressed. Its not a lot to go on. In fact, its almost nothing.
Khloe frowns a little, but shrugs. "There's not much you can do when the old man makes a decision, other than voice your concerns to your superior officer and let it slide," she offers. She continues to scowl, but looks throughtful, rather than disapproving. "It could be he's worried about Cylon technology some how… polluting… our tech? Maybe, who the frak knows. But that's why they wear the heavy brass and we say 'how high' on the way up."
Vandenberg makes a very unladylike grunt and looks back at the screen. She aims the remote at it and the thing finally zooms in. Praise the Gods. "Oorah," she whispers. "Could be a lot of things. But yeah, I guess there isn't much point in speculation. His choice. Think I should file something, sir?" She aims her eyes back at Vakos. "I'm not sure how to go about it, even if I do. Our Major isn't really..ah-" Natalie takes a breath and thinks of how to word this. "She isn't very good at forwarding information. Either direction. I've also taken a hit in credibility, sir. My Doctor took it upon himself to inform Command and Major Willows that I was refusing treatment when I was not. That resulted in a personal letter from Pewter informing me that I would be charged if I continued to 'misbehave'. Have any advice, sir?"
Khloe folds her arms across her midsection, more of a gesture of 'doing something with her arms' rather than just have them hang there, as if their weight might just pull her down. Her eyes squint a little too, as if that helped her understand Natalie's tangent. "Well, uh," the Captain begins, frowning at her lack of articulation. "I don't know how things work in the Corps, but if your superiors say you're doing something wrong, you're doing something wrong. Whether or not it's legitimate is up to you to decide, and whether or not you're ready to risk your rank or career over something that can be solved with a greater effort to seem like you're in compliance." She shakes her head a little. "Sorry, that doesn't sound very helpful," she admits, mainly to herself. "Probably just tired, is all. Can't brain."
"Well that's the thing, Captain. Doctor Adair is not my superior. He's not even an officer. Just a Doctor who didn't bother to ask a patient what was wrong. I was going to have him arrested but a Raptor jockey talked me down." Vandenberg flickers a smile but there isn't any humor to accompany the expression. "I think the idea of blowing this place up is patently bad. There's ways to reduce risk to ourselves. Is it worth my rank? Sure thing, sir. I'm not my pins. I'm a Marine, sir. I will be a Marine until the day I die. They can't order that out of me." Nor can the Corps really afford to go throwing people out with her experience.
"They might not be able to take the Marine out of you, Lieutenant, but they can force you to wear an orange jumpsuit and force you to pick vegetables in the hydroponics freighter until the day you die," Khloe says, voice getting a hint of an edge to it. "I don't like your attitude. And as far as Adair's attitude, I don't know him, but wasn't he a civilian drafted into Sickbay, more or less? He probably has an overblown sense of worth. Most doctors do. So unless he's some higher rank's pet, bust him the next time he gets uppity with you, is my advice."
Vandenberg lifts a hand. "I'm not sure what you don't like sir, but I'm more concerned with getting something pushed up the chain. They won't toss me out of the Corps and into the brig for something I didn't do. If anything, they might kick Adair into the ground for what he did." She's not trying to get into another argument. "Suffice to say, he was in the wrong and I will be speaking to him. But if there is someone you would suggest I speak with for a protest, I'd appreciate it, sir."
Khloe shakes her head. "I think, maybe, I'm getting too deep into a problem that should be best handled internally. But if you have a problem with your commanding officer, you can go over his head, or you can consult with someone in your group that does this sort of… frak, whatever. Legalese. Regulations due to rank. Chain of command. I've never had to do it so I'm not sure." She huffs out a puff of air upwards, blowing a few strands of hair out of her face that have worked their way free of their braid-like prison. "Gods, I don't know, Lieutenant. Really. Just… glad I could help with the playback." Retreating Khloe is retreating; something about the conversation, or perhaps her fatigue, is making her less resilient than usual. She's clearly uncomfortable in her own skin right now. She takes a few steps back, intending to head back over to the whiteboard.
"Aye, sir. I'll figure something else out I guess." Natalie dips her head slightly. "Thank you again for the help. Be careful out there, Captain." She watches the woman back off towards the board, eventually looking back to the facility with a frown. Vandenberg is visibly troubled by all of this. Its all over her body language and the look in her eyes. Something has really unnerved her about this whole thing.