How To Piss Off A Gunny

Posted on Fri Apr 29th, 2022 @ 4:12am by Captain Calypso Skyie & Gunnery Sergeant Reishi Hijani

Mission: Pirates! (Or Yo Ho Ho And A Bottle Of Yum)
Location: Ready Room

Calypso Skyie was reading over the most recent personnel shifts that were being required when she stormed in, a medium sized woman in all green whose face was screwed up in outright rage and fury. There had been no polite knocking or pressing of annuniciator, one moment it had been quiet, the next boots were slamming onto the ground as she stomped towards her.

The Marine Officer's sword in her hand was held out and unceremoniously dumped onto Cally's desk as the Japanese woman's face turned even redder than it had been, "I hope you're happy with what you've done, Captain Skyie. I thought better of you."

For her part, Cally looked at the sword and knew whose it was and she reached out, but stopped before she'd actually touched it, "You don't understand, Rei, I had no choice."

"You had NO choice?" Rei snapped at her, "No choice other than to take her insignia off in front of CIVILIANS? In front of STATION security? To shame her that way? You could have brought her back here, talked to her, worked things out. Like a Marine." She sneered at the Skipper, "This makes me ashamed that I saved you, twice."

That hit Cally like a fist to the gut. Reiishi Hijani and she had a history, both when she'd been shot down. Once was in a shuttle where she'd lost her whole company she'd been transporting, the second was from a fighter. Both times Rei had been there on the ground with her team, doing SAR operations, "Gunny, I can't tell you why. It was a barfight, she knew what she was doing."

"And you did what you had to do, huh?" Reiishi shot back, "Did you know she left me her sword? She left me a LETTER telling me to do better than she did? She SAVED Faith from probably dying, she saved that civilian for sure! Then she does something minor like getting in a fracas, and you just kick her out. No court martial to defend herself, no deal to give her one more shot? Just, gone."

The Gunny turned and marched two steps before spinning back around, "You know, I told her you were one of us, CAPTAIN Skyie, a Marine like us. I was wrong. You are now just one of the Starfleet weenies, one of THEM. They corrupted you, Calypso, they changed you and you're no longer the person you were."

The Gunnery Sergeant didn't even give Cally a chance to interrupt, "I've talked to Colonel Helemere and he's agreed to take me and my troops off of Chimera since he doesn't have an officer to assign to us. We debark in two hours."

"No." That was the first word that Cally had to say, "You need my signoff to do that, Gunny, you can't just pull your unit off the ship."

"It's already done, Ma'am," Rei scowled as she pointed at the sword, "Lieutenant Markova left me that and I give it to you. Look at it whenever you realize you've made a mistake, Calypso. Whenever you find that you needed us, because the cost of betrayal of your own, especially when there were better options, is more than you want to imagine."

Calypso could only watch as Rei left the same way she'd come in, words failing her because she literally couldn't tell Rei that it had been Nat's own idea to do it this way. She, Alex, Nat and perhaps a handful of Intelligence officers knew of the plan, and it had to stay that way.

It had to, for Nat's sake.