Starship Armstrong - Season 3

Part 17 - Mitzner's Card Game (IV) (Solarin's Story)

"I want three cards," said McAfree.

"You can't have anymore cards," said Mitzner.

"Oh okay can I raise?" she asked.

"You said you know how to play," said Mitzner, narrowing her eyes.

"I do," said McAfree. "I'm going to raise."

Everyone except Wagner called.

"Let's see your cards then," said Mitzner.

"Full house," said McAfree, flipping hers over. "Queens and 10s."

She won the pot.

"Did she just double bluff us?" asked Gul. "What do you call what just happened?"

"Someone else tell a story," said Takahashi. "I lose slower that way."

"I might as well get this over with," said Solarin. "I actually have a story from way back in the early history of the Armstrong. Some of you might find it interesting for the historical context."

McAfree sat down low in her chair. Lieutenant Solarin was going to tell a story that had "interesting historical context"? She was already bored. Painfully bored.

-Solarin's Story-

This was back during the early days of Foundation involvement in the war, when I was an Ensign. The Captain was a Commander at the time and the XO. It was before even Lieutenant-Commander Mitzner was on the crew. We were originally an exploratory vessel until the Magellan-class was drafted into the army en mass after the orbital bombardment of Antarctica. This was right around the time the Huxley Foundation was being taken seriously as a threat by the other belligerents.

Well the Captain of the Armstrong at the time was a man named Saburo Ivanov. Lets just say he ran a bit of a tighter ship than Captain Littlecrow. Everyone was chaffing a little under his excessive strictness and Commander Littlecrow, as the XO, had been trying to convince him that loosening up would have a measurable positive effect on morale. She had been completely unsuccessful.

For obvious reasons the sentiment among the rest of the crew was sympathetic to Commander Littlecrow's position and not the Captain's. In fact we went a step further in our philosophy. We believed that not only should the Captain be persuaded to loosen up, but that it was justifiable at this point to loosen him up by force. If ever there was a man who desperately needed a metaphorical pie in his face it was Captain Ivanov.

So the prank conspiracy was born. The first thing our new cabal of shadowy plotters had to decide was whether to take Commander Littlecrow into our confidence. We knew she supported our aims but we were worried she would object to our methods. She has never been an "ends justify the means" kind of person.

I argued that she was too valuable an asset to ignore. The magnitude of the prank we could pull with the cooperation of the XO was so much greater than the magnitude of the prank we could pull without her that it justified the risk of her ratting us out to Ivanov. I was able to persuade most of the others and so we went to the Commander.

We met with her at her quarters, privacy mode engaged, and laid out our basic manifesto for why the Captain had to be pranked. She reluctantly agreed to help. More she was resigned to it. She realized that the Captain had created a situation where this kind of thing was inevitable. If she was involved at least she could make sure nothing went too far.

That was what she said. That was certainly the impression she wanted to give. But at the brainstorming sessions she was the craziest one. I don't remember all of her ideas but one of them started with knocking the Captain unconscious, putting him in a spacesuit, and then spacing him. It *started* with that mind you. The rest involved a tractor beam and an asteroid field.

We settled on something less likely to get us all tried for mutiny.

During the night shift we went onto the bridge and removed the command throne. Then we set up holoprojectors to create a holographic command throne that looked completely identical to the original.

So Captain Ivanov reports for duty the next day, goes over to his throne, sits down, and falls straight through.

He. Was. Pissed. We had it on video, he started freaking out and screaming at everyone, who just ignored him and went out their duties. Commander Littlecrow tried to calm him down but he was having none of it. He was out for blood.

So the Commander tells him he's right. The crew is worthless and unprofessional. He'd be better off without them. And so the entire crew, who were actually also holograms, disappear.

I suppose he didn't follow the brilliant symbolism because he starts screaming at the Commander, really over the line stuff that could have gotten even him in trouble. He figured out right away that she must have been in on the prank.

The Commander remains calm, tells him that he's right. He doesn't need her either. He can fly the whole ship by himself. And she disappears. Because she was a hologram too.

So Captain Ivanov was left alone, in an empty bridge, yelling at no one.

"Did it work?" asked Takahashi.

"Oh no," replied Solarin. "If anything he just got worse."

"Are you kidding me right now?" asked Mitzner. "That really happened? The Captain never told me that story."

"She probably didn't want to give you the impression that she sanctions those kind of shenanigans," said Solarin.

"Well she was right to fear that," said Mitzner, "because I now believe she sanctions those kinds of shenanigans."