"The Incident"

Posted on Tue Sep 3rd, 2024 @ 6:15pm by Captain Samuel Woolheater

Mission: Season 6: Episode 5: A church beyond heaven
Location: DECK THIRTY-TWO
Timeline: MD01
565 words - 1.1 OF Standard Post Measure

[ON:]

USS ELYSIUM – DECK THIRTY-TWO – END OF WATCH

It had been a long day. It was very late now. The deck was quiet. Private Christopher Corelli finished his patrol duty station and signed off at his end of watch. The newly promoted Marine XO and 1st Platoon CO was driving the physical fitness improvement tests and a few people were falling behind. One of those Marines, falling behind, was Private Christopher Corelli. For three days now, Corelli came in dead last on the three-minute mile, with full pack and gear in combat armor. He wasn’t getting any faster at it either. He was also blowing his target accuracy and, as a result, the 3rd Platoon was suffering with lower scores.

On the same night that he stood end of watch, he signed off on the computer, returned his sidearm to the armory and was heading back to his berth when, from the darkness of the nighttime deck, he was jumped.

His attackers, Private Nupert and Corporal Hadden, stunned him with a date rape drug that was hard to detect in the bloodstream after just a few minutes. They stuffed a green sock in his mouth and gagged him. Then they put a bag over his head and took him to the junction “W-23” where there was a gap in the sensor grid. When Elysium was damaged from the quantum filament, this section never got the sensor grid restored. There were simply too many more important areas that needed fixing. When the blind spot was discovered, it was carefully forgotten to death.

They dragged Private Corelli to the “W-23” gap where they beat him with their fists, their boots and a section of their bunks that could be removed and formed a one-meter section of pipe. “You’re bringing down the score dipshit!”, “Get your shit together or wash out to Security. You understand you POS!” “Fuck you and fuck the XO.” “You’re WEAK! There is no place for you here! Get it together or get out. Maybe better to just get out!” They said to him. Close to his ear so he could hear but not so loud that anyone else would hear.

Corelli did not recognize their voices; they were using voice modulators to mask their voices. They wore balaclava masks to hide their faces. The beating went on for seven excruciating minutes. Nupert and Hadden poured all their rage and all their frustrations out on him. Their anger at the Commodore, their frustration at being stranded; all of it. It was virtually impossible that no one heard the incident. But no one came to his aid. When the two were tired, the picked his battered body and dragged it away from junction W-23 and back to the mess hall where they were able to dump him unobserved.

For over an hour, Corelli laid there in a pool of his own blood before he felt strong enough to get on his hands and knees and crawl and then stagger to the Marine medic corpsman on duty. He was treated immediately for blunt force trauma and the Sergeant-On-Duty was informed.

“Don’t let him out of your sight corpsman” the SOD said.


[OFF:]

Captain Samuel Woolheater
“Saepius Exertus, Semper Fidelis, Frater Infinitas”
Division VI, MARDET 62nd Company "Spartans"
Marine XO, 1st Platoon CO
=/\= USS ELYSIUM - NCC-89000 =/\=