The Thin Green Line

Posted on Thu Sep 24th, 2026 @ 3:19pm by Captain Samuel Woolheater & Commander Rin

Mission: Season 6 - Episode 8- The Price of Home
Location: USS Elysium - Intelligence Blister
Timeline: Before the Diplomatic Reception
3311 words - 6.6 OF Standard Post Measure

[[ Deck 32 - MXO's Office]]

[ON:]

Feet on the edge of the table, Sam leaned back and read the PaDD in his hands. Sam had read the Marine briefing twice. The first time as an officer. The second time as a man trying to figure out how the hell he was supposed to do all of this with the Marine resources he actually had. The list was extensive: Assassination. Abduction. Sabotage. Organized assault. Extremist activity. Galatonians. Thaih'ea. Hostile Lonians. Criminal groups interested in Erebus. Civil disorder. Normally, any one of them would be enough to keep Security busy and SFMC on standby.

Then there were the contingencies.

Power loss. Transporter denial. Blocked docking access. Communications disruption. Delegate extraction. Boarding. Hostages. Mass casualties. Evacuation under fire. Woolheater had Marines. He did not have that many Marines.

Which was why Captain Samuel Woolheater walked into Intelligence Blister carrying a PADD instead of pretending the problem could be solved by putting another fire team on standby.

He found Commander Rin. "Commander. You got a minute?"

Rin nodded. "Follow me to my office."

She led the captain to the back of the blister to a short hallway and then to her office. She dropped into her chair behind her desk and motioned toward another chair for Sam.

Assuming she did, Sam handed her the PADD. "We've got assassination, kidnapping, sabotage, Galatonians, Thaih'ea, Lonians, extremists, organized crime and civil unrest on the threat assessment." He paused. “And we've got a Marine detachment that's backing up ship's Security, covering this...” Sam gestured toward the PADD. “...and doing it after already taking losses.”

Sam indicated the PADD between them. "I can plan for all of it. I can't put people everywhere." His expression became more serious. "So I'm not here for the official threat assessment. I've read it." ::A beat:: "I'm here to listen to yours." Sam leaned slightly against the edge of the table. "What scares you?"

Rin accepted the offered PaDD but did not look at it. Instead, she kept her gaze on Sam. "First, let's pair that list down. Galatonians will come in hot. We'll see them a light year away. Leave them to Starfleet and station security. You'll have plenty of time to get into place to repel a possible boarding action.

"Second, Lonians have had their feelings hurt. There's little for them to gain here without looking petty. Hell, there's plenty more for them to gain if they chose to cooperate on this endeavor.

"Third, assassination. We're too diverse a group to be significantly hampered by assassination. Even if they took out the Commodore, that wouldn't stop us. If anything, it would embolden us. If they took out, for example, the chief of engineering, we have plenty more perfectly capable engineers to continue the project. If someone wanted to take us out in that sort of direct manner, it won't be on an individual basis. They'd aim to take a group of us out. So more concern when a bunch of us are gathered, but still not high on my list of possibilities. Would make more sense for someone to target Elysium itself.

"Fourth, kidnapping. More effective than assassination. You can often get much more by threatening to kill someone than from actually killing them. You can also get all sorts of information out of a kidnap victim. That means providing security for a few of our people as necessary, with the understanding that we are stretched thin. We are all Starfleet. We're all expected to have some level of ability to defend ourselves. People shouldn't travel alone. That doesn't mean they need to travel with Security or Marines.

"Fifth, extremists. Who made this list?" Now she glanced down at the PaDD, seeing what information had actually been included in the threat assessment. "Tell them to come back when they have some extremists in mind. That's not a helpful category."

"Now the bigger worries. Sabotage. This will be a monumental issue once construction begins. At the moment, my biggest concern with it would be an attack which would take out large numbers of people or Elysium itself. Someone could also certainly try an even larger attempt at sabotage which would affect the station, but that is primarily in the hands of our hosts.

"Next, the Theih'eans. They're my biggest concern on that list. They are certainly willing and capable of doing everything I've just listed, and they have a lot to gain from it. We're about to break their monopoly on intergalactic travel. On the plus side, just about everyone hates them, although I'm sure there are plenty of people willing to set aside disgust long enough to gain some benefit from a secret alliance."

Rin tossed the PaDD onto her desk. "We are a couple thousand people on a starship a very, very long way from home. We have no backup, no government, no one coming to our rescue. We are strangers. We have strange customs. That scares people because they can't predict what comes next with us. They have no data. We are an unknown quantity. And we came rolling up in a very powerful ship trying to convince people to join a project that will reshape this corner of the galaxy.

"If it was me, if I wanted to tear this project apart, I wouldn't act against the Elysium. I'd fuck up everyone else's shit and let them wonder why the Elysium crew hasn't been touched."

Sam didn't answer. For several seconds, he simply looked at Rin. His eyebrows rose. His head tilted slightly to the right. “Well... shit.” It slipped out under his breath before he realized he'd said it.

Sam leaned back in the chair and drew a slow breath through his nose. He let it out just as slowly. His thumb moved absently along the side of his index finger while he worked through what she'd just told him. The longer he turned it over, the worse it got. The damn TH's wouldn't need a fleet. They wouldn't even need to touch Elysium. At least, not at first. They could just sit back and sharpen the pitchforks and get the torches ready for the mob that would follow them.

It was stupidly simple. Don't attack Elysium. His brow furrowed. Hit somebody else. Another small movement of his head. No....hit everybody else.

“Jesus." The word came out quietly. Sam looked away from Rin, toward nothing in particular. His attention wandered across the LCARS displays lining the Blister, streams of intercepted traffic and intelligence feeds scrolling past. Half of it he understood. The other half was Rin's particular brand of witchcraft.

He could see it now. Not the whole thing yet, but enough pieces were beginning to fit together that he didn't particularly like the picture they were making. “Power station goes down.” He wasn't really talking to Rin yet. “Somebody poisons a public replicator or food supply. A delegate gets grabbed. Bomb goes off in a market.” His eyes narrowed. “Somebody takes a shot at one of their officials.” Nothing connected. Nothing obvious. Nothing that pointed toward Elysium. Sam's jaw shifted slightly.

He ran his fingers through his short hair. He realized that if this went down then every time something happened, Elysium remained sitting there untouched.

“Oh, shit.” Sam went still. There it was. Now he understood. His eyes came back to Rin. “Don't touch us. Hit everybody around us.” He sat forward now, leaning towards her desk. “And every time something happens, we're standing there untouched.” Sam stared at the deck between his boots for another moment. “Pretty soon somebody asks why.”

A faint, humorless smile touched his mouth. He gave a small nod. “Then somebody else asks why.” The smile disappeared. “And eventually nobody gives a shit whether there's evidence. We're the common denominator.”

That was a different kind of fight. “They don't even need to touch us at first. Forget fish and guests stinking after three days, we won't last three hours. And the more we deny it, protest, start waving evidence around...” Sam shook his head. “...the more somebody's going to wonder why we're trying so damn hard to prove it wasn't us.”

Marines could secure a corridor. They could protect a delegation, reinforce a checkpoint, retake a compartment. Sam could put Marines between frightened people and somebody trying to hurt them. If it came down to it, he could put a rifle against something he could identify as a threat.

This? This didn't give him anything to shoot. Sam sat with that realization for a few seconds longer before finally looking at Rin again. “Okay. You got my attention.” A slow nod followed. “That's what I needed.” He rubbed his palms once against his thighs and sat back. “So if that's their play, my job isn't covering every possible target.” Another shake of his head. “I couldn't do that anyway.”

He gestured toward the discarded PaDD. “I need Science to tell me what parts of that gate actually matter. Not what's expensive. Not what's difficult to replace. What three or four things get hit and the whole goddamn project stops.” He looked back at Rin, "I can meet with N'vok, we'll need Security support as well. So much for shoreleave." Sam paused. “Do we tell anybody that we have this as a contingency? They'll think we've gone bonkers.”

He looked directly at Rin.

Rin tilted her head slightly sideways as she considered the person sitting across the table. The gesture had no functional purpose. A year ago, such a gesture would have been foreign to her mannerisms, foreign enough someone might suspect they were talking to a Changeling or other doppelganger. So would her use of 'fucking up people's shit.' She still delivered it with the stoicness of a Vulcan, but even Vulcans had their personal quirks. And this was Professional Rin. Sam had seen a very different side of her on Niea IV over dinner with her and Blackford.

"Contingency?" she asked. "Are you suggesting we plan self sabotage in the case of the above scenario? That was not, in fact, my suggestion, although that's kind of brilliant and I'm slightly disappointed the thought hadn't even crossed my mind."

Sam blinked and cocked his head to one side like a German Shepherd. “What?”

For perhaps two seconds he simply stared at Rin. “No.” His eyebrows climbed. “Commander? Pffft!, no. I'm not proposing we blow holes in our own ship.” He leaned forward and pointed toward the discarded PaDD. “I meant do we tell them. The Zypherans. The Varn. The Ael'ven. Everybody involved in this thing.” His hand opened slightly. “Do we tell them somebody may deliberately start hitting them while leaving us alone specifically so they'll start wondering why Elysium isn't getting hit?”

Sam sat back again. "You really think I'm that batshit crazy?" "So...no...I think that they'll think we are that batshit crazy if we go spouting off, Hello. We're the heavily armed strangers who just arrived in your system. We'd like to warn you that if somebody starts blowing up your shit while nothing happens to ours, that's probably because somebody wants you to think we're responsible.

“Tell them beforehand and we sound paranoid as hell. Tell them afterward and it sounds like we're making excuses.” He looked at Rin. “That's the contingency I meant.”

"Ah," Rin acknowledged simply. "Well, I'm not planning on blowing holes in our own ship either, but I don't see a point in bringing my concern up to the other powers. 'Just to let you know, if someone starts messing with you but not us, it's totally not us,' is possibly the galaxy's worst attempt at an alibi."

She handed the PaDD back. "Sam, we have spent almost a year alone. We are used to doing things alone. When there's a threat, we've dealt with it, because no one was coming to our rescue. That is no longer the case. We are on someone else's incredibly well defended station, which is a center of trade for a lot of very important powers, and we are suggesting something that needs to be as valuable to them as it is to us. We don't have to do everything ourselves. You don't need your marines everywhere. As you've said, make plans, but we need to remember how to work with allies too."

Sam accepted the PaDD and turned it once in his hands. “Yeah. I agree.” He paused. “But, Commander, that's not what we have yet.” There wasn't any challenge in his voice. If anything, he sounded thoughtful. “We've got hosts. We've got interested, maybe supportive scientists and engineers. Maybe. They can be helpful and they can be self-serving. They may share with us and they may not. Right now...we've got people talking to us. We've got people interested in Erebus. Maybe we're building allies.” Sam nodded toward the intelligence displays beyond her office. “But nobody's sat down with the Colonel or Security Chief Richardson and said, 'Here's our security force. Here's what we're covering. Here's what we'll cover for you. Here's what happens when somebody starts shooting.' ” He spread his hands slightly. “Until that happens, they're not assets I can put on a board.”

For just a moment, his mind supplied another image. Crewmen in body bags. Security and Marine. Too many of them. People who had been alive when the mission began and weren't anymore. Sam leaned back in the chair with that sense of balance that he had. “That's not me saying we have to do everything ourselves. I'm sitting in your office because I already know we can't.” A faint smile touched his mouth. “And I'm very interested in anybody who wants to help carry the rucksacks for a while.” The smile faded. “But I deal with what's in front of me. Right now, what's in front of me is Elysium, how to augment and support the ship's Security with the Marine assets we have left, and whatever support has actually been committed from our hosts. Everything else is a conversation we still need to have.”

He glanced down at the PaDD, “So maybe that's part of the plan. Find out who our partners actually are. What they're willing to protect. What they expect us to protect. Who's talking to who when something goes sideways.” He looked back at Rin. “Once somebody tells me, 'We've got that door, Captain,' I'll happily stop putting Marines behind it.”

Sam was quiet for a moment. “Y'know...over the past year, I've gotten better at trusting people like you.” His brow furrowed. “Intel officers, I mean. Hell, Intelligence itself.” That earned the faintest hint of a smile. “You promised me once that you would never knowingly send Security or Marines into something blind. Sacrifice on a whim or a hunch. That you'd get us the best intelligence picture you could before somebody had to walk through the door.” His expression grew serious again. “You've kept that promise.”

Sam looked down at the PaDD in his hands, his thumb moving once along its edge. “I've held you to it, too. Every damn time.” He looked back at her. “And it means a hell of a lot more to me now than it did a year ago.” A pause. “I'm tired, Commander.” There wasn't any self-pity in it. Just fatigue. “I am tired of putting people in body bags. I know you are too.” He drew a breath and let it go.

“So no. I don't need another fire team.” He lifted the PaDD slightly. “I need information. I need coordination. And if we've finally got people out there willing to stand part of the watch with us...” A small nod. “I need to know who they are. That's why I trust you now more than I did a year ago. Because...you've been there with us the whole year. It's your ass too if the Intel is bad...or good. I suppose, yeah, I'm thanking you."

"I had forgotten that conversation. I'm glad I was able to live up to my promise, and thank you for holding me to it." Rin sat back in her chair. "We do need Intel and lots of it. Would you let me embed a a couple Intel crewmen with the Marines? I divvy up my people among the other departments, information gets funneled back to me for analysis and then reshared in briefings."

Sam's eyebrows rose slightly and he grinned, “Embed Intel with Marines?” He considered it, turning the idea over for several seconds. A year ago, his first thought probably would have been that Intelligence wanted somebody looking over the Marines' shoulders. Someone there to verify what color of crayons they actually ate. But after a year on Commander Rin in the same "trenches" and with just as much to lose as anyone else...that wasn't his first thought now.

His first thought was that Rin had just offered him exactly what he'd walked into her office looking for. “Yeah.” Sam nodded slowly. “Actually, yeah. I like that. I'm liking it a lot..." Then his expression grew a little more serious.

“One condition. If they're embedded with us, they follow the Marine chain operationally.” He held up a hand slightly. “I'm not trying to steal your people. They're still Intel. They report to you, they do the job you're sending them there to do, and whatever they collect comes back to you for analysis.” A beat. “But if I tell them to move, they move. If a platoon commander tells them to get their ass behind cover, they don't stop to call the Blister and ask permission.”

A faint grin returned. “Fair?”

"100%. They will not get in the way. I'll give you people with more combat background."

He leaned forward again, forearms resting against the edge of the Intelligence Officer's desk. “Let me run it past the Colonel. Azhul will have to like it too. Embedding Intel personnel with our people is her call.” A faint grin appeared. “But I'll tell her I think it's a damn good idea.” Sam glanced through the open doorway toward the Intelligence Blister beyond.

“Your people get closer to what we're seeing on the ground. Spartans get somebody close enough to the intelligence picture to tell us when the weird little thing they just saw isn't actually a weird little thing.” He looked back at Rin. “And instead of everything going Marine to Security to Intelligence, getting analyzed, briefed, sent back down and finally reaching the corporal who actually needs it...” He made a small circular motion with one finger. “Maybe we cut a few steps out of that.”

He sat back in the chair, “Especially if this turns into the kind of fight you just described.” Sam looked down at the PaDD she'd returned to him. That had been the problem when he'd walked in here. Too many threats. Too few Marines. Too many places he couldn't possibly put them. He'd been thinking about where he needed bodies. Rin had reminded him that sometimes the better answer was knowing where he didn't. “Yeah,” he said again, quieter this time. “I'll talk to the Colonel.”

Woolheater tucked the PaDD beneath his arm, "Anything else you can think of? Just let me know?

Rin nodded. "Just...keep the self-sabotage idea to yourself. Plausible deniability and all." The faintest of smiles played at the corners of her mouth, hinting that she was joking. Probably. Maybe. It was very faint.

"Copy that, my lips are sealed." Sam stopped at the doorway and looked back at her. "Thanks, Commander. I'll get with the Colonel and let you know." And with that, Woolheater departed the Intelligence Blister.

[OFF:]

Commander Rin
Third Officer

&

Captain Samuel Woolheater
MXO, SFMC
Spartans Company