All Good Things... (Part 2 of 6)

Posted on 21 Oct 2017 @ 12:34pm by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Rear Admiral Harold Doolittle & Rear Admiral Nathan West & Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Commander Marisa Wyatt & Ensign Miraj Derani & Ensign Mimi & Chief Warrant Officer 3 Greg Mitchell & Edward Bauer
Edited on on 21 Oct 2017 @ 12:41pm

2,825 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Episode 15 - Emanation
Location: Earth - Starfleet HQ, JAG Complex
Timeline: MD 21, 0947 hrs

Previously, on All Good Things (Part 1)...

Commander Hedra sat down next to Lirha, and gave her attention to the chair, waiting for the real battle to begin.

When Hedra had finished, Doolittle made some notes on his PADD, then nodded slightly to Goldstein.

"Commander Goldstein, if you are ready, you may call your first witness."

Rachel stood and said, "Prosecution would like to call Ensign Mimi."

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

Mimi inhaled sharply she hadn't expected to be called as the first witness. Standing she made her way to the witness stand her tail twitching nervously as she walked.

Once the ensign had taken the stand, the bailiff stood before her.

“Do you solemnly swear or affirm by whatever religion, belief or creed you hold sacred that the testimony you give in these proceedings shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" he asked.

"I do." Mimi said nodding, she looked at Lirha hoping for some reassurement.

Rachel watched the feline humanoid. She had read up on the ensign. She also noted her glance toward the admiral on trial. She was going to make her stick to just straight answers as much as possible. There was obviously still loyalty there.

Rachel waited until the ensign was sworn in and chief judge gave her the go ahead.

Rachel made her way over to the witness chair and nodded and smiled. "Ensign Mimi, good day. I know this is a somewhat overwhelming but please realize you are here to help justice be done no matter what the outcome is. Take a breath and let me know when you are ready."

Shuffling in the chair a little Mimi got comfortable and took a deep breath. "I am ready Commander."

"Very good. According to deposition," Rachel turned to the panel, "depositions 31 through 35, sirs." She then turned back to Mimi, "You were working the sensors on the Galileo as she entered the nebula is that correct?"

"I was at a back up station as the Ops chief was manning the Ops station, I was working a few sensors and damage control as there was a lot of stress on the hull from the nebula."

"Very good. Could you please walk us through your recollection what transpired please up until the destruction of the ship."

Mimi took a deep breath. "We went into the nebula after getting a distress call from a ship called the Recluse Sensor range was low because of the nebula. We sent out some probes and soon after we found the ship. We were just about to dock with it when our communications became jammed, I could not find the source." She paused for a moment.

"Admiral Saalm called for red alert just before we were hailed... by a Klingon from the bridge of the Recluse telling us to surrender. The Admiral would not and told the Klingon he was going against the Khitomer treaty. We picked up a few Klingon ships around us and then they started firing. We lost aft shields quickly and a few shots later the engines and main power, we had to eject the warp core then we were boarded. They continued firing and the whole ship came apart. That is when the Admiral ordered abandon ship."

Greg listened closely as the Ensign retold the story of the attack on the ship. His mind raced as he remembered the Klingon boarding party that had killed his men and severely injured others. "Damn Klingons...", he whispered to himself.

A nearby security officer glanced his way, and Greg turned his attention back to the court.

"Thank you ensign. You say you picked up Klingon ships surrounding the Galileo, was that before or after the order to surrender?" Rachel asked.

"It was after we were hailed by the Klingon, they were cloaked but we picked them up." Mimi answered.

"And once they were detected what did the Admiral do then?"

"She tried again to get the Klingon to tell us why he was in federation space."

"So the ship was surrounded, and no place to maneuver. Did the admiral attempt at any time then to make contact with the attackers?"

Mimi shook her head. "The Klingon closed the channel, he was not going to talk anymore, then his ships fired on us."

"I see thank you." Rachel looked toward the panel, "you will see in exhibit marked 'tactical ratings of nova class and bird of prey class' by Captain Richards a noted expert in the field."

Doolittle nodded slowly as he scanned the document. He had commanded a Nova-class a number of years previously and Richards had, for a time, been one of his XOs and was definitely had an excellent knowledge of the class.

West watched the exchanges so far and noted on his PADD what had been said and what he had taken from it. He also noticed that Captain Austin was making notes with her PADD.

Rachel turned back toward the feline ensign. "Now then Ensign Mimi let me jump ahead a little bit. After the capture of the crew you were taken to Kreanus. What was your function there?"

"Trying to live." Mimi said, "I was in the sickbay a lot because of the Klingons and there was not much food that my body could....take? after I got better I helped in sickbay and tried to stay away from the Klingons."

"It says here that you also functioned as a 'runner'. Would you tell the court what that entailed?"

"That was my main...duty." She began "My species are very fast runners and I can hear, see and smell better than humans. I passed messages between the crew, mostly the CMO and Commander Ban."

"So you went most places, did you at any time during your time on Kreanus ever see the admiral?"

"No." Mimi replied. "Not until we walked onto the Klingon ship Du'jaQ did we find she was alive, it was a shock to us all."

"And tell the court how the admiral presented herself please."

Doolittle suddenly leaned forward in his chair and indicated that he wished to speak. Addressing Goldstein he said "Counselor if I may interrupt with a question for the ensign for just a moment?"

Rachel nodded and stood back, "Of course sir, please." The panel here could ask questions as they saw fit in addition to handling any challenges, it was what made a martial court different.

Doolittle then turned his focus on Mimi. "Ensign do I understand you correctly? Are you saying that Admiral Saalm made no effort to contact her crew and appraise them of her status during the entire time you were on Kreanus?"

Mimi turned to look at Doolittle "Not that I know of, Sir."

Doolittle frowned a bit as he made a note on his PADD. "I see..." he said obviously not happy with her answer. He would have thought that in all that time Saalm would have at least attempted to contact her crew. "Ensign, please continue by answering Commander Goldstein's question..." he said, once again sitting back in his chair.

"She wore Klingon clothes." Mimi started. "Told us to call her General Saalm and had one of those Klingon dog things as a pet."

"Klingon clothes? A shirt, a skirt? or was it a uniform or akin to a uniform including a rank sash?"

"It was like a uniform. Big boots, pads on her shoulders. And a......" She wasn't quite sure what a sash was so really had to think how to describe what she had seen. "Piece of cloth and metal over her shoulder and down her body, it had badges and things like that on it."

"Thank you ensign, no further questions at this time," Rachel went back to her side to see if the defense counsel wished to cross-exam. She had two more key witnesses to call to help support the reams of depositions taken from the crew.

Crap, this is not going well , Greg thought. While the trial had only just started, he could see the prosecution was trying to paint the Admiral as something that he felt she wasn't. Greg had only interacted a few times with her, but he was on the ship long enough to know that she did a good job keeping them safe. He thought back to the things that Wilson and Rivetti had told him about what had happened, and wondered if there was a way to untangle from this mess.

"Damn it." Greg mumbled, then rested his head in his hands.

The other officer looked back at him again, "I'm sorry?"

"Nothing. Forget it." Greg was technically not supposed to be here, because of a conflict of interest. But he didn't want to abandon his teammates.

"Counsel for the defense, do you wish to cross-examine the witness?" Doolittle asked.

Saalm let out an annoyed huff to both herself and the commander seated next to her. She didn't want to fault the young Nekomi ensign for her recollection of events, but she also knew some of it was only a half-truth. She'd chosen her uniform to display both traditional Klingon and Orion dress, and it hadn't resembled the standard silver-plated KDF armor that was traditionally worn. Yes, she'd instructed her crew to address her as 'general' and yes she brought her targ pup on board with her...but Snuffles had been with her for many months aboard Galileo as well. She didn't like the way she was being portrayed as some vigilante commander with more loyalty to the Klingon High Council than to her own people.

The Ktarian nodded to her opposite number, then stood, "I do, sir," she replied, waiting for a nod from the bench for herself to proceed. When it came she said, "Ensign Mimi, perhaps you could tell us a bit about your relationship with the admiral? Would you say you are a close personal friend? Close enough to know, for instance, that that Klingon dog you mentioned, was, in fact, the Admiral's pet targ, who'd been on the Galileo longer than you?"

"That was snuffles?" Mimi said surprised she hadn't recognised it, before the Duja'q she'd encounter the targ only once and it smelt so bad to her keen sense of smell that she'd avoided it.

"So you don't know the Admiral well enough to recognise her own pet, one I am given to understand was walked frequently around the Galileo." Hedra made a face that indicated quite clearly that she thought Mimi was an idiot. "To move on, in the days following your rescue by the Chaka, or in your time on the Aerilith, did Admiral Saalm confide the entire details of her captivity with you?"

"No, all I know is that she was transported off the Galileo just before it was destroyed."

Hedra smiled. It was patronising and cold. "So, despite not being close to the admiral, despite not being confided in, despite admitting you only know she was transported off Galileo before its destruction, you know everything about what happened to her from that point, to confidently assume that she didn't try to contact anyone on the crew before her reappearance on the DuJaQ?"

Mimi cocked her head to the side. "I do not understand. I said that if she did I did not know about it.

"Why would you know about it, Ensign? You just admitted you couldn't tell her beloved pet from a random dog. You're obviously not close to her."

West raised an eyebrow and tapped out a comment that would go the Doolittle. It read: "Admiral, the prosecution is a bit over zealous, it looks like were trying to railroad Saalm. Warn her. N.W."

Doolittle read West's comment, then replied in text. "Point taken. When defense is finished with Ensign Mimi I will call for a recess and issue a warning when we reconvene."

"I have not talked much with the admiral, most of the time it has been on duty so there was no........ small, talk?"

Then Hedra changed tack suddenly. "You don't like Klingons much, do you, Ensign?"

Marisa hoped they would not follow this line of questioning. She was intimately aware of what Mimi thought of Klingons, and the problems she had on the Duja'Q.

"Objection sir!" Rachel stood. "Badgering, argumentative and speculation. The witness' personal feeling of Klingons is irrelevant, the line of questioning has been argumentative and is badgering the witness."

"I'm establishing that the witness may have prejudicial beliefs that would make any testimony to Admiral Saalm's actions or inactions unreliable. And that she obviously has no relationship with the Admiral to be able to speculate. " Hedra replied calmly.

Mimi waited patiently while the panel discussed the objection, the objection made sense to her.

To Alexandra, the question gave no relevance to what the defense counsel was trying to prove. The ensign's feelings towards Klingons could not be linked in correlation to seeing Admiral Saalm in a Klingon uniform. Personal feelings to the Admiral aside, she felt the ensign had truthfully and factually stated to her knowledge what had transpired. No contact had been made to her or mentioned by any other crew members in the passing of message to her, the supposed messenger. Therefore she had every reason to believe contact had not been made.

The objection however, should have been pointed towards relevance, therefore to her the objection was moot.

Doolittle turned off his microphone, then turned to speak with the other members of the board. After a brief discussion, he activated the sound system again and addressed the two counselors. "After discussion, we believe that defense counsel's opinion may have merit, therefore the objection is overruled." He then instructed Mimi "Please answer the question Ensign..."

"I do not like Klingons, they came to my species' colony, and killed everyone they could find. I would have died soon after if a Starfleet ship had not rescued me." Mimi answered. "Now I am alone with almost no way of finding my real home again."

Hedra nodded, "So if your commanding officer chose to adopt the cultural trappings of a species you despise, it's not unreasonable to expect you might feel betrayed? Resentful even?"

Rachel made a few notes. This was not the only witness that she had that would attest to the matter of the admiral in Klingon dress that resembled a uniform. Besides there was several debriefings that had become depositions that backed it up. This little move to the defense.

Mimi thought for a few seconds. "Maybe, but I thought this could have been part of a plan of some sort, she needed the Klingons to work with her and this was a........way to get them...... on her side."

"You speculated on her motives." Hedra confirmed. "You hadn't seen her until this point, and you didn't discuss it with her afterwards. So beyond the basic fact of her appearing in a Klingon uniform, you have no idea why she was wearing it." It wasn't a statement.

"One last question, Ensign. What uniform were you wearing, at the time?

"The uniform I wore on the Galileo was still good to wear, the Klingons gave us an older Starfleet uniform to wear too." Mimi replied.

The defense counsel glanced briefly to the bench then turned back to Mimi. "So you wore what you were given." She looked to Doolittle. "No further questions, sir."

"In that case, Ensign, you are dismissed."

Mimi stood and left the witness stand, she felt ok, she knew she'd answered the questions as best she could though she did feel bad for not recognising snuffles as the targ Lirha had with her.

As Mimi left the stand, Doolittle looked at his chronometer. It was just a few minutes shy of 1000 and he thought it a good time for a recess. "It is almost twelve hundred hours," he said, "and I believe it is time for a break. We will reconvene promptly at 1015 hours. Until that time..." he added as he picked up the gavel on the bench before him, then banged it down, "...we are in recess."

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

RADM Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

LuAnn Lovegood
Counselor
[PNPC Sandoval]

Lieutenant JG Marisa Sandoval
Former Chief Counselor

Commander Aren Ban
Executive Officer

Lt. JG Eelim Galan
Security officer
[PNPC Varro]

Ambassador Soral Varro
Diplomatic Officer

Cmdr Allyndra illm Warraquim
Medical Officer

Rachel Goldstein
JAG
[NPC Allyndra illm Warraquim]

Nesh Saalm
Civilian
[NPC Derani]

Ensign Miraj Derani

Commander Czarien Hedra
JAG
[NPC Derani]

Nathan West
Rear Admiral
Head of Starfleet Intelligence

RADM Harold Doolittle
BUPERs
Starfleet Command

CWO3 Greg Mitchell
Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo

ENS Mimi
Operations Officer
USS Galileo

LTJG Amaranai Franklin
Security/Tactical Officer
USS Galileo

CMDR Scarlet Blake
Instructor
Starfleet Academy

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