Assignments

Posted on Thu Nov 3rd, 2022 @ 4:10pm by Ensign Mika Petrova & Lieutenant Dr. Daniel Brasken

Mission: In-Between (S1:E3-S1:E4)
Location: Sick Bay - CMO Office
Timeline: Mission Day 20 at 1000
3424 words - 6.8 OF Standard Post Measure

{ON}

Daniel brought up his next meeting on his calendar and his head tilt slightly at seeing a cadet's name. He had almost forgotten about this particular meeting as he hadn't been the primary on the assignment. Certainly he had reviewed all of the assignments that other officers had been handing out and making sure to see what was turned in. However, this particular assignment was a bit strange even though he approved of it initially.

His hands moved over the controls to bring up the file for Cadet Mika Petrova and transferring it to a PADD along with the list of assignments turned in previously. Everything about her indicated a driven individual if somewhat sheltered perhaps. Naive wasn't the right word, though he wasn't sure what was the right word. Though he still wanted to find out what she had come up with for a nebulous concept such as 'write about your fears' that had been assigned.

Mika had already been working in Sickbay as she kept watch first shift with the CMO. When it was her turn, she simply walked over to the open door and nocked gently on the frame.

"Is it time for our appointment, Doctor?" she asked, her fingers inadvertently going to her brown hair.

"It is. Come have a seat, cadet." Daniel motioned to the chair opposite his desk chair. He gave her a few moments to do as indicated before entering in commands to bring up the submitted paper to the monitors on both sides of the desk. "Go ahead and walk me through this."

Oh Gods, it was worse than she had imagined. He wanted to review the dreaded document with her in person. Her heart jumped into her throat and she developed a meek expression a few seconds before she pushed it away. Forcing herself to stand taller for the sake of looking brave, her already impressive bust became more prominent and the extreme curvaceous of a body only accentuated by the female uniform became even more obvious. She walked in, as instructed, and pulled up a chair for herself. Sitting in it, she put her knees together and sat like a princess, her eyes cast slightly down.

“I wrote about my fear of abandonment and my need for a strong male presence.” She said, her eyes flickering down in shame. She forced herself to look up at him. “I trust this paper will remain confidential as promised, sir?”

"That will depend entirely on you. I have no plans to discuss this with anyone and it would be a poor use of the trust of a physician to do so..." Daniel paused for effect as he looked into her eyes with a level stare. "Without a good reason."

Daniel sat stiff and unmoving, making sure to make as intimidating a figure as he could to put the cadet off as much as possible. She showed promise in her skills but he worried about how easily her confidence seemed to be taken from her. That was a bad thing in both the medical field and the Empire in general. Still though, explaining these things often didn't have the same impact as learning them for oneself and so Daniel was going to make sure the lesson was learned.

Mika swallowed hard, her pulse increasing and her lips parting slightly to take on more air. She had a natural instinct to get smaller when she was frightened, but she did her damndest to keep that impulse under control. Lifting her head, artificially searching for confidence, she cleared her throat, her tongue moving over her full lips unintentionally to moisten them.

“I hope you don’t have any reason’s Doctor.” She said, trying to keep her voice steady. “And, if you do, I’m sure I can allay them without the need of involving anyone else.”

"Very well then. Do continue, as I am looking forward to your report." Daniel leaned back in his chair just slightly, breaking the excessively critical demeanor by a hair to give the girl a little bit of breathing room.

“I’m not sure what else there is to say, sir. It’s all right there.” She said, not having relaxed at all with his ease, but instead crossed her arms underneath her chest. The position gave her able bust even more lift, but she barely considered it since the uniform wasn’t low cut.

"Cadet, if you want me to grade this off of my understanding of it and then make my recommendations that is your choice. Or you can drop the pout and do as you were told by a superior. Explain to me your fears." Daniel was not impressed by the young girl's attitude and wanted to make sure she knew it.

Mika started looking for an escape. Her eyes wandered to the closed door and the windows that lead to the sickbay. She had done well enough to be vague in her responses in the paper and to elaborate on the many details surrounding the nature of her fear and the psychology of thirteen year old girls. She wasn’t prepared to do that again with such an antagonistic judge. She looked at the doctor this time, right in the eyes. They were gorgeous and piercing; intimidating, to match his approach. She felt another bought of anxiety.

“As you know, Captain Petrov is my father.” She said, pausing there and underlining that point with a silent gaze, forcing herself to look at him. “When he fled the Empire, I was only 13. A pubescent girl who had just lost her father and knows nothing about where he is does not the most comfortable girl make. I’m afraid he’ll do it again. I’m afraid every man will do it, actually.”

"So you're telling me that your fear is that of abandonment? Yet you wish to join the fleet where the chances of that loss increases with every rank you climb?" His head tilt just slightly as he pressed the woman for information. The paper had been perfectly vague and at the academy would likely have won over a professor for being well thought out and detailed. Unfortunately for the cadet, Daniel was not interested in a paper that hit all the right technical aspects.

"Yes, I suppose you could put it that way." she answered, pursing her glossy lips. "Is there something wrong with my paper, sir? As far as I understand, it's well-structured and covered the bases on the topic required. I suspect that means I get a passing grade, doesn't it?"

"That depends. Do you want a passing mark, or do you want the best mark?" Daniel stared into her as he awaited an answer but then spoke again before she could. "That was why you were assigned this in the first place. You were unhappy with a grade and not being the best?"

“Well, yes.” She said with a frown. “I want to be the best, and I want the highest grades I can get.”

She looked at him, her dazzling eyes trying to read his own. Was ilhe after something from her.

“How can I get the best grade on this, sir?” She asked, her voice lowering subconsciously, as if she were afraid of being heard though they were alone in a closed off room.

"You can walk through your paper and explain it to me. The writing is technically perfect and the information is well researched." Daniel sighed at her response and shook his head. "I am not after an analysis, though."

Daniel stood and turned his back to Mika, clasping his hands behind his back as he looked past the blank monitor that was there as he continued. "The point, cadet, was to think about your fear and how you let it control you. More to the point, how others can use it to control you." He turned back around as he finished his statement, looking down at her from across the room.

Mika thought about it for a long while in silence, her mind turning to the implications of going into more detail than before about her problems and she didn’t like the concept. Exposing her insecurities to keep herself from being manipulated in the future was backwards and she suspected he was trying to get her under his thumb. Again, she considered going to her father, brother, or mother, but pushed the thought away again. She was hoping to prove she could handle this herself.

“No, sir.” She said, a lump in her throat. “The paper will have to be a good enough explanation of my deepest, darkest worries. But, if you don’t mind, I would still very much like to get an A. Is there something else I can do to get my grade up?”

Much to her dismay, she'd signaled something she wished she hadn't again. In situations like this, it was difficult to ignore her greatest weapon: she was intensely attractive. Perhaps a little flirtation could go a long way? And who knew how far she was willing to go to get what she wanted. She pushed her nerves away and offered a more demure look: a bit more sultry for her vulnerable. Perhaps he would take notice.

Daniel sighed and shook his head but couldn't help but keep a small smirk off his face. This was exactly the type of response he expected from the young woman and also what he was trying to bring attention to. "Mika. Stop it."

He took his seat again and looked at her for a long several moments as he tried to pick the right words to try and get through to her. She was intelligent and attractive and in a position of power that would make her nothing but a target once she entered the ranks of the Fleet and if this was her reaction then she would end up being taken advantage of constantly, or getting a lot of people killed in the attempt. While this might be amusing to watch elsewhere, they still had to consider the limited resources of trained officers where they were.

"I am not trying to sleep with you. That is not how I work and certainly not with the added danger of your family hanging over it." He paused to gauge her reaction.

"Do you see how easy it was for me to get your into this position though? All I had to do was hint that you weren't the best and here we are. This exercise was to get you to analyze yourself, think about what you are good at and what you are not. Why it bothers you so much so you can get a hold on it and not be taken advantage of." He paused and tapped on the PADD that displayed her paper on it. "This does not indicate that you did this thing. This feels like you were trying to tell me what you thought I wanted to hear."

“I find it more interesting you were so confident I was offering to you something I’ve never offered to anyone before.” She said, a slight bite in her tone which he would have found surprising in her. “You we’re very quick to presume I was propositioning you, hoping to gain what is rightfully mine through study through self-abatement. You were ready believe I would do something like that, and with all due respect, it says more about you than it does about me.”

She cleared her throat, her heart racing but her delicate face resolute. “This has nothing to do with being a good doctor. If it was, I would be passed this stage. In fact, we’re we back in Imperial Space, I would have already been commissioned at the top of my class by now. I have preformed in an exemplar fashion in my studies and in my daily duties in Sickbay. I have had no complaints, no missed or late reports, and no one has walked all over me or manipulated me into doing anything I didn’t want to do.”

She narrowed her eyes then, looking at him.

“I’m not going into the details of my interior life with you any further than I already have, sir. I don’t trust you and I don’t wish to divulge my feelings to you. Perhaps I’ll reconsider if you take a turn and write me a list of your fears.”

"Interesting? I wish I could say anything about your response here was interesting. Instead I see a small woman used to getting what she wants because of her station or what people might be able to get from her by the ever so subtle suggestion. Always, of course, measured so that she can deny that is what she was trying to do." Daniel looked at her, unmoved by the posturing that she was attempting to do.

"I do not care about your fears. I care that you know what they are and that you actually spent time analyzing what they were. Instead I have a paper that reads as someone attempting to give what is expected rather than putting in the effort of self analysis to know what actually scares you so that you can know how to address these fears and not allow someone to figure it out on their own and then surprise you with it and thus put you on the defensive."

"I do not care if you want to use your body to get what you want from people. It is done often enough and is entirely your choice. However, you had best be using your mind to understand what it is people want from you that you can better assess what it is you are giving up in trade."

"I'm not sure what this has to do with the alien surgery course." she said, snipping a bit more than before. "That is the course this paper concerns after all. This has all been a complete farce and has nothing to do with the required material. No one in the academy is forced to do anything like this accept in a Discipline Inspection context. I was hoping you, as the reviewing officer, would see reason, but it seems clear that's not going to happen."

Her jaw was set; her foot was tapping. Mika was showing a side of herself no one ever saw. She sighed, her stress obvious.

"Concerning the coursework related to surgery, I've done an excellent job. I'm not shy about that, because it was very important to me. The fact that you are considering tanking my top-of-class grade because I don't want to discuss my feelings with you is completely ridiculous." She said, her voice raising slightly. She pulled her arms under her chest defiantly. "It's not fair, sir."

"You don't even hear the words you're speaking, do you, Cadet? You are so worried about being defensive that you cannot see when someone is actually trying to help you." Daniel rubbed at his eyes, shaking his head just slightly before looking at Mika again. "Fair never had anything to do with this and for someone such as yourself likely rarely will. This particular lesson had nothing to do with your previous course and was an attempt to teach you something outside of medicine after seeing your response to the original marks on your paper."

"People will try to take advantage of you and if you are set on being stubborn and only focused on what is right in front of you then it will be more the easier to accomplish. If you refuse to step back and think beyond yourself then you will be doomed to either be reliant on your family to climb or be resigned to live a life of being unknown because others will use you to climb over."

"I hear what you're saying." she said, her voice a bit colder. "But I'm not letting you walk over me right now. Perhaps I'm stronger than you think, sir."

"Do you hear what I'm saying or are you too busy nursing a bruised ego and are trying to leverage what I've just told you?" Daniel stood and put his hands on the desk, leaning forward slightly as he fixed Mika with a measured stare. "Forget the paper. Forget your grades. I never had any intention of penalizing you in that regard, but I had to make you think that I might. That was all it took to affect you. I can pull up the security video to show you the act you put on for me while you thought it might."

Daniel shook his head and stood up straight. "You know what, forget it. Until you check that attitude then you can stay in the academy and continue to write papers for the whole trip back to Earth. You are dismissed, Cadet."

“No.” She said simply, her delicate features turning quickly into a resolute frown. He was right in one thing: she couldn’t see past her commission and her grades, and she wasn’t going to give up now. Whatever lesson he was trying to teach her wasn’t received or understood. She couldn’t think with this threat looming above her head. She understood that was a problem, but it wasn’t one this was helping her to fix. “You can’t do this to me. I’ve worked far too hard.”

Her anger was obvious, but as her eyes started to well with tears, she forced them back the best she could. Despite her efforts, they started rolling hot down her cheeks. She looked at him with a look she hadn’t given anyone in years. It was near hatred.

“No one is going to walk over me or keep me from this goal. Not even you.” She said. “I’m not going anywhere until you approve my class completion.”

"You were dismissed, if you have no other studies and want to stand there for your off time, fine." Daniel then ignored her and brought up his calendar, flipping through his appointments before then opening up files to review on a series of patients.

Mika didn’t know what to do. If she had been on Terra at the Imperial Academy, she would have gone to the Dean to report this process. But the closes authority to the situation above Brasken was the XO. Her brother wasn’t likely to be even handed, and she pictured the Doctor convulsing on the floor from a surge from the agonizer. She wanted to avoid that. Unfortunately, the tears she’d been crying hadn’t stopped and she suspected they wouldn’t be stopping for a while. She was angry, and ashamed to leave. The worst part, however, was that she felt as if Brasken was writing her off as a waste of his time. As he directed his attention away and started to ignore her, that same insecurity they had just been discussing reared it’s ugly head. She knew it was there and, in a moment of trepidation and uncertainty, simply looked down at the floor, remaining, but saying nothing. If she went to Andrei like this, he would blow the good doctor out of an airlock.

Daniel gave a nod as files finished opening on the PADD that sat atop his desk before standing and picking it up. Without acknowledging the cadet he strode past her to continue about his duties with a simple command. "Computer, lights off to my office." The lights quickly blinked out and the computers locked down to a slowly rotating image of the seal of the Empire.

Mika didn’t react as he stood, turned off the lights, and exited. She had been treated like a little girl before, but she’d never been treated like a dog. Yet, despite her status as the daughter of the Lord of Russia, she didn’t seem to have a prideful response. Her tears flowed more freely and, with the doors being closed she gave into sighing and audible crying for the next few minutes. After she was able to calm herself, she decided her next steps. Her father and brother were too risky, as was her mother. She would have to seek help from someone else she trusted. She turned and moved out of the office, moving toward the sickbay doors, ignoring the fact that she was on duty.

OFF