Messner's inner thoughts..

[messner 0]

Raolin Messner was astonished to hear Van Roy tell him what had happened back on the Qob, how Narn had triggered a secret hoojimawatcha and blown the ship to heck and the crew to this reality.  This made things quite complicated, if Narn and Rhoz were both guilty of such disasterous and illegal activities.  Messner ran down the dwindling list of command figures..

 

Bch - Klingon

Kawalas - Klingon

Narn - criminal

Ramjep - Klingon

RHoz - criminal

Messner....

 

Okay, Messner is the next highest ranking starfleet officer not under suspicion of being a party to blowing up the ship.. just have to go find him, since he's in charge, technically..  A few moments go by.  Holy crap!  That's me!

Messner started to panic.  He'd never been in command before... of anything!  He had gotten quite comfortable as an assistant in the security department, and in fact counted on it.  He was perfectly fine with risking his own life, but making decisions that would determine the fate of others... that was a whole different story!

 

Part of Messner wanted to run.  If he just cowered somewhere then someone else could decide things, and Messner wouldn't have to worry about it.. he wouldn't have to do anything except accept what came about.

Plus, it was obvious that Rhoz did not take him seriously.  And if RHoz decided to TAKE command, Messner was not sure he would be able to stop him.  Besides, Rhoz knew far, far more about engineering and temporal mechanics than Messner hoped to ever know half of.. maybe it would be better with Rhoz in command, anyway...  But RHoz had seemingly broken Federation law by participating in the construction of that illegal engine, which resulted in this situation in the first place.  However knowledgeable and capable, he was apparently also capable of ignoring regulations and the safety of the crew for his own purposes.

This settled it in Messner's mind.  Those who had risked everyones lives and caused this mess could not be trusted not to do so again.  Especially since soon the ship was going to blow up and they didn't have time to squabble and figure out details.

Messner toiled over his lack of knoweldge and experience, trying to figure out how he could possibly succeed now that he'd made up his mind he must lead.  After much internal conflict and much time sitting in the captain's chair, sweating, he decided he was just going to have to get advice from people who knew what they were talking about and decide based on his principles and on weighing consequences, without realizing that that's what commanders usually do anyways.