Ma'am, WTF?

Posted on 28 Sep 2014 @ 4:09pm by Captain Jonathan Holliday & Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm
Edited on on 29 Sep 2014 @ 4:41am

2,444 words; about a 12 minute read

Mission: Episode 06 - Legend of Souls
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 1, Lirha's Quarters
Timeline: MD10 - 1310 hrs

[ON]

John took a deep breath as he emerged from the turbolift. The review of the security feeds from Sickbay had shocked him, but had filled in a lot of the blanks left out by his own state of pain during the whole event. Sucking in one last deep breath of air he tapped the chime on Lirha's quarters, not knowing what state the Orion inside was likely to be in.

It was lunchtime for the commodore but instead of her usual meal in the mess hall, she had instead decided to return back to her small apartment to prepare a home-cooked meal. A light salad with some iced tea seemed appropriate to her, and she was beginning to prepare some lettuce and dressing when her door chime sounded. Siren was reading in the bedroom so Lirha knew it couldn't be her, and she looked up from her place in the kitchen towards the door to see who her visitor was. "Enter," she called out.

As the doors opened John stepped inside Lirha's quarters, taking a moment to look around at the furnishings. It took him a moment to realise that this could quite possibly be the first time that he had seen the inside of this room - something quite strange as he had been most places on the ship during his tour of duty.

The lights were slightly dimmed and it made it hard for the Captain to make anything out in the room as his eyes adjusted from the brighter lights of the corridor, but he could see the Commodore was certainly not in her living space - perhaps one of the side rooms, but John had no intention of going exploring without an escort.

"Commodore? Ma'am I need to speak with you?"

Lirha waved a large salad fork at him from her position in the kitchen behind the counter. "Over here," she said to get his attention from where he stood in the main living room. She briefly wondered what he needed to speak to her about and why it couldn't wait till after lunch, but being Galileo's captain, John probably had his reasons. "What can I help you with?" she asked.

John was surprised to see the Commodore having a fully working kitchen within her quarters. He had seen the requisition orders during the ship's last refit but without a need for his signature he had not paid an overly large amount of attention. Moving around the room until he came to rest nearer to the kitchen, the Captain wrung his hands for a moment with a hint of nerves before he spoke,

"Ma'am I think you and I need to have a talk - off the record - about what happened in Sickbay?"

"Sickbay?" Lirha was a bit preoccupied with her lunch-making at the moment and didn't recall being in the ship's medical facility for at least two days since the away team had returned to the ship. "What about it?"

Had John had a chair to fall off of, he certainly would have done. It seemed almost incredible to him that Lirha would manage to entirely forget pulling a weapon on another member of her crew. Taking a moment he thought how best to phrase his statement before clearing his throat.

"Specifically your rather...unorthodox response that involved a Type II sidearm?"

"Oh," came the Orion's simple yet surprisingly calm reply. She looked up at John for a brief moment while recalling the incident with the wheel-chaired doctor, then looked back down to the lettuce she was now chopping. "Yes. What about it?" she asked again. At the time of the confrontation, Lirha remembered sickbay being very disorderly and cramped. Emotions and tension had been high and the situation with Tuula had been less-than ideal, but fortunately no one had been dragged to the brig or removed from duty, and most importantly, Siren had been tended to and healed with expedited care. In her mind, the situation had simply been a result of the chaos and had eventually worked itself out without any further casualties.

"Well...aw to hell with it. Commodore Lirha Saalm - as Commanding Officer of this vessel it is my duty to inform you that a formal complaint has been lodged against you for conduct unbecoming of an officer, and for the misuse of a phaser during said misconduct."

John took a moment to catch his breath and to allow his words to sink in. There was an eery pause for a moment as he simply stood and looked into the eyes of his former Captain, hoping for something, anything to come out of them. Right now he didn't care if she burst into tears, or pulled another phaser from under the kitchen counter and aimed it squarely at his chest, either way he had to find out what had been going on aboard his ship.

Lirha stopped chopping for a short moment to look back up at John with raised eyebrows and a slightly-amused expression. "A formal complaint? For conduct unbecoming of an officer?" she repeated with incredulity present in her light voice. "Is this some kind of joke?"

"I wish it were." John replied, removing a PADD from the waistband of his uniform and holding it out for the Commodore to inspect.

"Fully documented and available here for your review - I...haven't yet decided what I am to do next however."

John knew he was in an awkward position. In order to take the complaint any further he would have to contact Admiral Hurin, something he didn't exactly take great joy in thinking about. Lirha had been his Captain prior to his command of the Galile, and to contemplate the idea of landing her in some rather hot water with her superiors wasn't particularly appealing to him.

"With all due respect Ma'am - you have been a little out of sorts recently."

Lirha took the PADD from his hand to briefly inspect its contents. After a short skim of the words, her amusement disappeared and it became clear to her that Commander Warraquim and Lieutenant Mott had gripe to pick with her, and she wasn't impressed by any means. With clear disdain for the complaint, she tossed the PADD aside to the back corner of her kitchen where it clattered against the wall then fell loudly to the ground. It was as clear a statement as any regarding her thoughts on the matter.

"John, in the past five days I have seen this ship become overrun with tribbles, had pheromonal experiments conducted on me by the ship's medical staff, lost a member of this crew on an away mission while also seeing my fiance critically wounded, and have also had to placate Gul Verrok and his people at every turn to keep them from interfering with our mission. And the icing on the pie," she wasn't sure if that was the correct Earth idiom but didn't really care at this point, "was being told to f--k off by some junior medical officer in sickbay when I asked her a simple question about Siren's medical status," she said with now-sharp and piercing green eyes trained on the captain. "So yes, I am 'a little out of sorts' right now. And I probably should have shot that doctor for her insubordination because it is now apparent she has no respect for the chain of command!"

Lirha slammed her salad chopping knife down into the cutting board where it permanently stuck with a loud thud before motioning back to the discarded PADD in the corner of the room. "And now you bring me this? Some juvenile complaint about my conduct?"

John was not exactly surprised at Lirha's outburst - he had always known her to be subject to her emotions before listening to her uniform. The Captain however was cut from a different cloth and simply remained stationary and blank-faced as he took the flack from various angles that the Commodore chose. After she finally settled down (and with some thanks that the chopping knife was out of her hand) the Captain stepped forward slightly before continuing.

"Commodore - with all due respect - I could have disposed of the tribbles a lot faster had you let me, and as I am sure you are aware your..relationship with Miss Hex isn't exactly in line with Starfleet procedures. The very fact that you allowed your emotional link to her to compromise your judgement in Sickbay is clear indication of that."

Holliday knew he was probably the only person on the ship (except for Siren of course) who would be able to say these sorts of things without ending up in a very sticky situation. Lirha had become a very dear friend to him since that moment they first met on Earth, and he hated knowing that she was allowing her performance to be compromised this way.

"Whilst Sickbay and it's staff will be at the receiving end of some words from Commander Blake - I felt that I was the best person to speak with you."

The commodore wasn't sure she liked being told that her judgement had been compromised. On second thought, maybe it had, but that was hardly the point in Lirha's mind. Had the medical staff answered her questions when she had first arrived in sickbay and had not copped an attitude with her, none of her reactions would have taken place.

"That doctor is lucky I did not shoot her," she simply reiterated to Holliday. "And since when did we start letting disobedient officers on board this vessel?"

"Since when do we start executing our own because they offer disrespect to their superior officer? Was there a regulation change I am not aware of?" John retorted, cocking his head as he waited for the Commodore's reply.

She seemed completely oblivious to the gravitas of what she had done, had the same idea been standard policy then John himself probably would have been shot dead many years ago the first time he had ever angered a superior officer.

"As I said ma'am - Sickbay will be dealt with - you on the other hand were my Captain, and are still my superior officer. I felt I should be the one to do this."

Lirha took a deep breath to calm herself then shrugged and returned back to her meal prep. She gathered her chopped greens in her hand and dumped them in a mixing bowl, then poured a bit of salad dressing in and began to toss the culinary concoction with a pair of tongs that had been laying nearby.

"If you wish to speak to Admiral Hurin and lodge this complaint against me, that is your prerogative," she said with a quiet voice. "However, given the current state of affairs aboard this ship and down in the mine, I would think we both have more important matters to attend to as opposed to some childish squabbling from the medical staff." If John wanted to spend the time and effort to oversee a complaint to her superior which would most likely go nowhere, it was his choice. Meanwhile, that same time and effort could be used to something more pertinent and productive, such as preventing the loss of Galileo at the hands of the tribbles.

"Meanwhile you will carry on aiming phasers at anyone who gets in your way? How long before I end up staring down the barrel next time I disagree with your decision?"

John was very quickly losing his usual composure - nothing he did seemed to get any sort of reaction from Lirha, nothing to signify that she might think she had anything wrong at all. It must have been the Intelligence background - spending all that time keeping secrets, finding out others it must have been a true skill to be able to hide yourself that well.

"Well...hopefully you have enough respect for me and the chain of command to not tell me to f--k off, yes?" Lirha gave him a small and private smile, the first of the conversation which she hoped would help alleviate some of the tension and put John at ease. If she hadn't made it subtly clear already, she wasn't very interested in the complaint he had brought to her attention and really couldn't care less how it ended. "And for the record, I would not have killed her. Starfleet provides various stun settings on their sidearms for this very reason."

John wanted to allow himself to relax, he wanted to take his CO's word for it and stop pursuing the conversation, but something inside him couldn't do it. He knew full well that her Orion nature made her rather aloof and uncaring towards things she didn't place a high value on, but a breach in protocol was still something Holliday had a hard time letting go of.

"Next time I will personally escort you to the Brig - no exceptions. We put this behind us and we get on with the mission. If you are going to pursue a relationship aboard this vessel then I suggest doing it in private. I will look after the crew, you look after your emotions - deal?"

John extended his hand in a gesture of friendship. He simply didn't have the resource to keep this fight going, and with other priorities he needed to know that the Commodore would keep her half of the bargain he was trying to strike.

Lirha didn't want to shake his hand, not after his threat to put her in the brig if she had to defend her fiance again while dealing with an overly-stubborn medical staff. And she didn't want to control her emotions...they were a part of her and had been her guiding force throughout her life. Right now, however, she simply wanted some peace and quiet while she ate her lunch, and it seemed that John was willing to leave the issue alone if she simply agreed to his terms. Silently weighing the pros and cons of the decision, she sighed then lightly clasped his hand and gave it a half-hearted shake. "Will that be all, captain?"

"For now Commodore." John replied, not waiting to be given his dismissal orders. He figured that as he had started this entire debate, then he was the one in charge, at least for now. Without another word the Captain headed for the door, and slipped through the doorway.

[OFF]

--

CDRE Lirha Saalm
Mission Advisor
USS Galileo

CAPT Jonathan Holliday
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

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