[LCDR Matthew Harmon - First Officers Quarters]

Harmon entered the Commander’s quarters precisely five minutes after the time he had been invited for. He was still wearing his uniform, having not bothered to change as he was busy working and compiling reports. That and it made him a little more presentable and overdressed for this occasion.

Unsurprisingly, his suspicions had been proven correct, though that word seemed a little reductive to him as he based his hostility towards the Alliance on data and experience, not speculation, gut feeling, or optimistic naïveté. He hadn’t come to gloat, however. For all her many faults and failings, the Commander has admitted she was wrong. His aim was to get her to listen to his advice this time. Rubbing her mistakes in was far to easy and in this case unproductive.

“Ma’am,” he said curtly as he entered. “I was going to bring you some wine, but I recall you don’t drink,” he said. He figured she was expecting him to come grinning and declaring ‘I told you so’ but he had decided to remain as courteous and polite as he could bear to. Throw her off guard a little.

“You know, you Yanks really ought to try rugby some time,” he said indicating towards the screen at the game. “Your football is weaker than your bear.”

Tag Judith Eastman

[LCDR Matthew Harmon - First Officer's Quarters]

"Indeed," Harmon said cautiously as the Commander made her sports analogy. He took the chair as directed, it was quite comfortable. Fortunately, she wasn't one for small talk and they quickly got onto business. He sat back in his chair and contemplated her question for a moment before answering. "I see a few possibilities. Vasser may simply have underestimated how seriously you would take Banks' actions. The sabotage was relatively minor, and we're still running forensic analysis on the Computer systems to determine what they accessed. Another possibility is Banks went a little rogue and was not acting on Vasser's orders. I don't think that is very likely, however. Perhaps Vasser didn't give her any clear specific orders and effectively gave Banks a blank cheque. Then there's the more obvious scenarios, Vasser just really wanted to win, and or this was an attempt at inflitration and espionage," he explained the most likely scenarios. "As for what she thought she'd gain, it's hard to speculate. I don't know her and the way she operates well enough yet. If I had to guess, beyond winning, it might have been a distraction from something else. It seems like a bad move if her goal was intel, we probably wouldn't have found Banks anywhere near as quickly if she hadn't planted those devices." 

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Tag: Judith Eastman