ten_fwd | [Brig:] Security Announcement

Current Location: Deck 33: Room #5244, Brig

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[Brig:] Security Announcement

It's not very often a passenger is taken to Deck 33, and for good reason. Deck 33 is where the brig is located.

Should a passenger make an inquiry to one of the computer terminals, or access the directory on their PADDs, the locations of three passengers will be noted as 'BRIGGED' in bold font, with the following statements:

MACK GERHARDT has been taken into custody for breaking quarantine, entering a restricted area, and engaging in disorderly conduct. He will be brigged for three days assuming he cooperates with the officers in charge.

KHAN NOONIEN SINGH has been taken into custody for disorderly conduct and the assault of another passenger, following an enforced stay in Sickbay. He will be brigged for two days assuming he cooperates with the officers in charge.

DYLAN HUNT has been taken into custody for disorderly conduct and the assault of another passenger, following an enforced stay in Sickbay. He will be brigged for two days assuming he cooperates with the officers in charge.

There are officers standing guard outside the brig, as well as one stationed inside. The men are celled separately by forcefield to prevent further incident, and while it looks and sounds like there is no barrier between their cells and the room at large, there is no crossing-over until the forcefields are lowered. Visitors are allowed entrance after they check in with the guards on duty, and no one is allowed to be alone with the prisoners.

[ooc: Open visiting log for the brig. All security personnel are NPCs and should be treated as there in the background unless they're called on to answer questions or engage with other characters.]

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"He found me."

It's not a boast. If anything, it sounds like an accusation. When he turns back to face Pike, there's plain hatred in his eyes, in the curl of his fingers. "Myself and my crew, asleep and adrift."

He stalks forward, eyes narrowed. "Tell me, Admiral, what do you know of John Harrison?"

An abrupt shift in topic, perhaps, but one that was vitally important. It would date the Admiral, give Khan context for their little talk. For what he was going to reveal to the man.

Pike took the tone of the whole conversation to be an accusation at this point. Obviously, Starfleet and more specifically, Section 31 did something to Khan or someone Khan was close to, and this was his opportunity to remedy that.

But as Khan moved forward, Pike didn't even flinch, though he could use a chair, as he sensed this discussion was going to take quite a while.

"Nothing as far as I know," Marcus may have mentioned a commander by that name in passing, but nothing about it stood out to Pike.

"Before the archive bombing, then." It's tossed out as an afterthought, Khan clasping his hands behind his back as he surveys the Admiral. It's odd, talking to a dead man. Particularly one that you had killed, personally. And he didn't even know it yet.

Time to remedy that.

"Your friend Marcus has been holding my crew hostage to force my service to Starfleet. The weapons and warships he's been presenting you? Are mine. The intelligence from Qo'noS is mine. Commander John Harrison is a fabrication."

The whole offhanded comment was strange to Pike. The word bombing was not something anyone should use casually. "The Archive Bombing?" He questioned, "What the hell are you talking about?"

The rest of it took a minute to sink in. Alexander Marcus was basically keeping a hostage. Pike knew the mandate for Section 31, he knew where he got their name, but this was completely uncalled for. Chris planned on letting the 'fabrication' part of all this go for now. He'd come back to that later.

"How many?" Pike was a ship commander for the better part of two decades. If his crew was held hostage by someone, regardless of their state, he'd do everything he could to get them back.

"Seventy-two." Khan's voice is icy. "All that's left of my family."

His crew was everything. The last of the Augments, his brothers and sisters.. They'd trusted him, and he'd let them into Marcus' hands. Marcus was keeping more than one hostage - he had seventy-two, and one augment captain willing to do anything to keep them safe. Khan doesn't break Pike's gaze.

"In your near future, the Kelvin Memorial Archive in London is going to be destroyed. Marcus is going to tell you all that Commander John Harrison has gone rogue. That he's declared war on the Federation and needs to be put down."

He scoffs. "And all of you will believe him."

"How many did you start with?" The tone of his voice was one that said he knew what losing crew members was like. Twenty plus years in the captain's chair would do that.

Pike thought back to who would be in a meeting that would take place if something like the Kelvin Archive was destroyed. None of those people, regardless of whether or not Marcus was their superior officer would let that fly and even if the rest of them did, he wouldn't and most likely Jim Kirk wouldn't either.

"So, Marcus lied to us. Or will lie to us," he hated time travel. "And we all believed the lie."

"He's been lying to you for over a year," Khan replies, finally stepping away from the barrier. There's a defiant tilt to his jaw, a current of ill-hidden rage behind his eyes. He looks ready to snap at any moment, shoulders tensed and spine rigid.

"Marcus used me to prepare for his war. He's been militarizing Starfleet right under your noses, with your approval."

He finally gives in to his need to pace, prowling the edge of the barrier. "We were eighty-five when we left Earth. When Marcus found my ship, seventy-three."

Twelve lost to cryotube failure. They were 20th century technology, ancient by modern standards. It was a miracle that more hadn't been lost, but Khan hadn't had time to grieve for his dead comrades - not with Marcus ready and willing to leash him like a dog.

Not only had Marcus been lying to Pike and everyone else in Command for over a year, he'd been lying to the entire fleet, which, in turn, made Pike lie to years' worth of Academy Classes while he spewed whatever party line he was given during all of those recruiting speeches. All of it didn't sit right with Pike, and it certainly didn't work with the 'humanitarian and peacekeeping armada' that the 'Fleet made itself out to be.

"Militarizing is one thing. We need to do that with Klingons, Romulans, and whatever the hell else is out there. Something has to protect this part of space. Doing what he did to get it? That's...." he shook his head once "....that's unforgivable."

What's more is, Marcus was a ship commander himself. He knew how most commanders felt about their crew, how they had to feel about their crew to be effective and he exploited all of that.

When Pike spoke again, he was genuinely apologetic, "I'm sorry that you lost them."

Khan wants none of Pike's apologies; they're worthless to him, and there's no use in apologizing to the dead. Augments have long - and perfect - memories. Khan doesn't forget, and he certainly doesn't forgive. Not where his family is concerned.

"Save your platitudes, Admiral," he growls. "Your Starfleet is responsible for my family's deaths. They survived Marcus's machinations only to be killed by Commander Spock."

Something hollow and dark is eating at his heart, and Khan doesn't care enough any more to even bother to fight it. The smile on his face is humorless, vicious, and his words are doubly so. "So I responded in kind."

By ramming a starship into the rotting edifice of Starfleet's supposed morality.

Pike didn't view what he said with any sort of insincerity. He was genuinely sorry for the loss of Khan's crew and all of the feelings associated with it.

Chris never thought that Spock was a killer, despite what Khan and Nero said about him. As far as Pike knew, Spock tried to be a good person, not one that murdered people.

But that look made Pike raise his guard again, something about it said he didn't want to know the question that he was about to ask."And how did you do that?"

"I think you know, Admiral." Because if Khan was willing to attack others here, injured and lashing out over his sudden arrival, what must he be like when he's in full control? When he's just found out his family has been killed?

"I always thought it strange that after an attack - say, a bombing - all of your senior officers would gather in one concentrated area. Daystrom presents a rather tidy target."

All the heads of Starfleet, right there for him to cut down.

Pike would have been in that meeting, which also meant that if that bombing happened and if that meeting was called, he would be one of the ones that was attacked.

If he was at 100% the likelihood that he'd get out of a fish in a barrel situation such as that would be decent enough, but since he wasn't, well he could fill in what probably happened to him.

"That wouldn't mean you won."

"I didn't."

He knows this. That had never been the plan. Daystrom hadn't been about victory - it had been about taking down as much of Starfleet as he could, cutting off the head of the snake. Khan isn't the type to quietly roll over and accept his fate. Backed into a corner with no chance of winning, he'd taken the path of mutually assured destruction.

"But neither did you." He means Starfleet in general, but it's equally true of Pike personally. How does it feel to meet your future murderer, Admiral?

Pike got the implication and his stomach dropped to the floor. Sometime, in the near future, he is murdered by this man.

"As long as you didn't."

The idea of his death didn't scare Pike. He'd been living with that as a possible outcome of his life in space since he enrolled in the Academy. He wasn't sure what he'd feel if he was actually dying. But the idea wasn't as terrifying as it could be.

Bu the idea of someone like this person destroying something that, regardless of Marcus' leadership was designed to do something good, was scary. Who knew what would happen to Earth and the rest of the universe if that were to happen.

"My victory would have been me taking my crew and leaving Earth." For good, in all honesty. Earth had changed, yes, but they were as much strangers there as they had been in their own time. And with the Federation's laws banning genetic augmentation, it was clear that Earth had thought the same.

"Instead they became hostages, and then were executed. My crew was taken from me. Seems only fitting that I take Marcus's from him."

Marcus's crew, in this case, being everyone in Daystrom. Truth be told, he wanted to dismantle all of Starfleet, watch it burn to the ground. If they were too blind to see that they were commanded by a slaver intent on provoking a war that would cost billions of lives, then they didn't deserve the power they had.

"And why not just hurt Marcus? Why take the rest of us with him? Most of the people in that room had no idea that Section 31 existed. Let alone any of this. I can assure you no one but Marcus knew about that."

Of course Pike was trying to insert logic into something that didn't have anything sensible involved.

And as of a few minutes ago, Pike's opinion of Marcus changed dramatically. He wasn't the officer he'd made himself out to be when Pike enrolled in the academy.

"Like you had no idea? Or do you think that putting blind faith in Marcus somehow absolves you of his crimes?" Khan moved closer to the barrier, all but snarling at the other man.

"You put Marcus in power. You looked the other way so you could all keep your consciences clean, and my people died for it."

To Khan, everyone in that room had been responsible for propping up Marcus's insanity. The number of people that Section 31 employed was proof enough that they did know. No one would be able to move that many people, that many resources without attracting attention.

"Everyone in the Fleet, or at least everyone that has an officer's rank knows about Section 31. They're in the charter. What I didn't know, and what I think no one knew, was what he did to you and your crew. If I had, and if most of the people who would be in that meeting had, we would have stopped it."

Pike was irritated to say the least. And he wasn't going to dignify the rest of it with a response.

"But you didn't." Khan wasn't a man who dealt in 'what-ifs'. He dealt in fact, and the fact was that every single person in that room had helped Marcus in his cause, knowingly or not.

"The leader of your organization committed an act of war. Whether or not you knew or approved of it is irrelevant - it happened."

"It happened. But, why is disrupting Starfleet's organization something that you aspire to do?" He knew the why. Revenge.

"What about that act makes you better than him?"

Revenge was a not-insignificant part of it, yes. But separate from that was Khan's disgust for Starfleet's moral posturing, their claims of peace and freedom while they let their shadow division run rampant. It was, perhaps, foolish to feel betrayed by the future - but they had left Earth in the hopes that things would, one day, be better.

Instead, humanity had proved to be just as corrupt as they had in his time.

"Because the rest of your precious Federation deserves to see just how corrupt Starfleet really is." He shook his head, teeth bared. "Because Starfleet destroyed my entire species, and you would deny it as the actions of one man."

It had never been just Marcus.

"And one man formed your opinion on an entire organization? Are you too narrowminded to believe not everyone thinks like he does? Some of us, hell, almost all of us, try to make the universe a better place than when we entered it? Because it sounds to me, you're doing exactly the same thing you accuse us of doing."

In fact, in some ways, Pike could see how Khan and Marcus were relatively similar. Down to protecting the thing they loved the most.

"One man and the team of scientists he let cut me open, the agents that dogged my every step, the crew building the ship you didn't want to know about, the officers who approved the resources to keep his project funded..." Khan bares his teeth, a silent snarl. "Yes, Admiral. One man."

Compare him to Marcus again, Pike. You won't like what happens.

Pike just shook his head a bit. Trying to introduce sense into this situation wasn't going to work. So he's going to give up.

"I would think about that before you go attacking someone else. Then maybe the captain of this ship," the tone that he said 'this ship' said that if it was Pike's ship Khan wouldn't be allowed out of the brig at all, "will consider letting you out of the brig."

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[Brig:] Security Announcement

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