[center] [h3][b][color=00ff00]Jack Mallory, X.O.[/color][/b][/h3] [/center]

[quote=@Regime Goon]
[color=fff200]“Mallory, listen,”[/color] Itxaro began into her comm link, [color=fff200]“We are all playing nice here, but it is a very precarious situation. If you come out here waving your fucking guns around, it will [i]not[/i] end well. Meet us out here if you want, but for our sake, leave the goddamn goon squad behind.”[/color] 
[/quote]

"Itxaro," Mallory scowls as he switches to his headset, waving some red-faced crewman that had just ran into the bridge to stand by. "While it's great that the local chapter meeting of the Itxaro Fan Club has come to see you, nobody remembered to put it on the ███████ calendar!"

There was an expression from the Navy, 'you have the devil to pay'. He'd asked a Navy commander about that once at a conference, and was told that the 'devil' was the longest seam along either side of a wooden ship's keel, and to help keep the water mostly out of the ship, they would 'pay' or stuff the seams with lengths of tarred fiber called 'oakum'. Since the devil was the longest seam, it was cold and miserable work, spent mostly bent over while standing in cold, knee-deep sea water. And right now he wanted to put the both of them on the nastiest job on the ship. Like manually checking the waste piping for every toilet, sink, and shower for leaks. Daily.

"I am very ███████ aware just how precarious our situation is, here," he adds. "And before we have these ███████ fan club meetings, I want to make sure everyone is on the same ███████ page so we don't inadvertently wind up very ███████ dead or carnival attractions in ███████ cages for the rest of our hopefully short, miserable, ███████ lives!"

He knew he had a reputation in the ships he was in as being pious, and the other clueless officers and enlisted took great pleasure in trying to shock him. But when the service outfitted him with the recording system in his head, they had stressed to maintain decorum at all time, as his recordings could be used as evidence in a court-martial. Or in his case, a divorce. And profanity, they had drilled into him, did not reflect the service standards of professionalism. It was hard enough to be sent to study some painting in the ship's library while his superiors held meetings they didn't want to get back to headquarters. But if they never got back to Earth, there would be nobody to review the recordings making note of how many times he said ████ and trying to bleep it away, then have some sadistic upperclassman in the academy torture cadets with remembering that ███████████.

Captains set policy. Executive officers executed that policy and ensured the health, safety, and welfare of the crew. And ████ Itxaro and Vigdis if they didn't understand that.

"Bridge," he ordered. "Now."

His cold, hard eyes flicked towards the now pale crewman standing in the doorway. 

"What?"
"Ah, not that important," they smiled wanly. "Ah, I... uh, think I'm needed elsewhere."
"Then get there."

Mallory watched as they fled the bridge, then turned back to the displays. He'd hate to ask Ezra to shoot any of the locals if they tried to stop the two crewmen from returning inside, as that would make their situation worse, most assuredly. But his job was to ensure the safety of the crew.