Post-Mission Report

Posted on 25 Apr 2013 @ 11:55am by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm

2,796 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo - Deck 1, Captain's Ready Room
Timeline: MD 04 - 1530 hrs

[ON]

Sitting in her ready room while tapping her green fingers against the desk, Lirha was not happy. She reviewed a PADD in front of her which contained the after-action details of one of the recent survey teams sent to Rojar I, then tapped her commbadge. "Lieutenant Panne, report to my ready room." she said flatly as she continued to scan the document which contained various injury reports and shuttlecraft damage logs.

Maenad was still asleep on her couch, resting after the rough morning she had had. Talking with Liyar afterwards had helped to calm her, and the massage he had given her with the telepathic link had numbed the pain. Kohl had given her painkillers, but they weren't working as well as she thought they should have. But, then again, she had a very low tolerance for pain. The captain's message awoke her. She stretched, forgetting that it hurt to stretch, and winced.

Slowly, because to do otherwise would hurt too much, she got up and redressed in her uniform. She went to the bridge with initially robotic steps, but moved more fluidly as she got closer. A few minutes later she was in the captain's ready room. "Captain," she said. Maenad was gaunt and rigid. Beneath her eyes was purple and she looked paler than usual. She looked like she had the flu.

Lirha watched Maenad enter the ready room and noticed that she looked rather fatigued. She had suffered a few injuries during the away mission according to the logs, and the captain felt a twinge of sympathy for her. "Please have a seat." she said politely. "How are you feeling?"

Maenad gave a tired laugh. "Fine," she lied, pulling a chair and sitting down. Normally she would cross her legs, but she chose to simply bring her knees together and clasp her hands in her lap. It was freezing in here, she thought.

Giving a small nod, Lirha sank back in her chair and crossed her legs. "I am pleased to hear that your injuries are not severe, and hopefully you will recover soon enough. In the meantime, please tell me what happened out there. I have read through the various reports and logs of the mission, and I have a few questions."

Not severe, Maenad repeated in her head. If she hadn't raised her arm to protect her neck and face, she would have been killed. Surgery was all that removed bits of shrapnel and glass from her body. Kohl had to carefully maneuver her uniform to get it off because she was impale with pieces that had pinned her clothes to her body. The captain was right, though; it could have been worse. She was moving around. She would be normal within a few days.

"I am only in one piece because of Mister Kohl's expertise," she made sure to commend him. "We were conducting an orbital survey of the planet," Maenad started. "I detected a concentration of debris in orbit, which was rare for a planet of this size. I thought it might have been from some of the powerful volcanic discharges, but it was hard to tell," she smiled lightly. "There was too much debris and some of the pieces were too large to have been blasted that far up by a volcano. The only theory that made sense to me was that a moon had collided recently, within the past few years." Maenad closed her eyes for a second before continuing. "Mister Darius said he could get us closer, so we could get a better view of the surface. I knew that if he got us too close we could get hit by an unpredictable volcanic eruption. I told him to be careful, and he was. But..." she trailed off.

Maenad shivered and then winced from the pain in her shoulder. "Darius spotted an eruption a few moments into our low-level survey. Apparently he couldn't avoid it. Rhodes increased the shields, but one of the RCS thrusters became clogged and malfunctioned before he could." Maenad swallowed, remembering her imagination going out of control. She thought they were going to crash into the molten surface and burn to death. "Darius struggled to regain control of the shuttle. We hit something. Something exploded above the pilot's seat. I shielded my face at the same moment part of my console overloaded. Rhodes managed to get us back under control despite a leg injury, and Darius successfully landed the shuttle"

She blinked several times, remembering what had happened to her. "Debris from my console penetrated my shoulder and arm, and part of my back. My right hand was badly burned. My uniform was destroyed. I blacked out, I think. Kohl performed a crude surgery, but I was able to get back into things quickly enough." Maenad sighed. "We had to go outside to do the repairs. Darius knew exactly how to fix the thrusters, which he was able to do with the assistance of Mister Rhodes," she recalled. "I collected mineral samples."

Maenad decided to leave out her criticism of no one telling her that Lamar had overheated, or that he had neglected to inform anyone that his suit was malfunctioning. Without his expertise, it was possible that they wouldn't have gotten the repairs done as quickly. "Darius' suit malfunctioned unexpectedly and he nearly passed out, but he was fine. We took off and returned to the ship. I received surgery in sickbay immediately after arrival." She smiled, thankful to be all right considering what had happened. She could have been killed. "I would like to submit commendations for all three of them," she said.

The captain listened to the science chief recount the events of the away mission then compared her version with the data logs she had been looking over. They seemed similar enough, but one glaring admission gave Lirha cause to probe even deeper. "You are welcome to submit the proper paperwork to Command Holliday if you wish to reward the members of the away team." she replied with a nod. "However, I must ask...if your team discovered potentially problematic concentrations of debris at high orbit, then why did you knowingly take the team closer to a lower orbit which would most likely contain even higher concentrations of debris?" she asked.

Maenad visibly frowned. Was she being interrogated? "There wasn't a potentially problematic concentration of debris in high orbit," she said. "Darius knew that we were looking for evidence a large crater that could have been caused by a moon collision. He said he could get us closer, which I interpreted him to mean he didn't see a problem with it. He's an experienced pilot and I trusted his skill. I didn't think that if he weren't skilled enough he would have offered to take us lower." Yes, she thought. I took us closer to knowingly get us all killed. I wanted to die. She struggled not to roll her eyes at the captain's attitude.

Lirha raised an eyebrow at Maenad. Was she giving her attitude? She hoped she wasn't, for her own sake, but the manner in which she was being spoken to was questionable. The Orion captain was not a person who dealt with insubordination well, nor disrespect for the chain of command. "So you noticed concentrations of spacial debris, and did not feel that it was potentially problematic to a shuttlecraft away mission?" she attempted to clarify. "And then ordered the team to get even closer?"

"It's not that I didn't feel it was a problem," Maenad replied, "It wasn't a problem." What part about that didn't she understand? "High orbit consisted of fine particles and ash, things the size of pebbles. A planet that small doesn't have large debris fields because its gravitational pull is too weak. When Darius offered to take the shuttle lower, I thought he did so because he was confident in his piloting ability. None of us anticipated what we ran into. But, like I said, I trusted my crew and Darius' confidence in himself."

The Orion rubbed her green forehead in frustration. "Unfortunately, Miss Panne, it apparently was a problem, as evidenced by the thruster failure and subsequent emergency landing which injured several of my crew, including yourself." she replied, then took a long stare at the blue-collared woman in front of her. "Despite what you may think, we are not here to argue semantics and I am not here to start placing blame just yet. Rather, I am attempting to procure as much information as possible about your away mission. You state that no one could have anticipated any problematic debris, yet sensor scans of the surface tell a different story. They showed high levels of volcanic activity which were erupting their contents into low orbit." she said, then pulled a PADD out of her drawer with the shuttle's sensor readings and set it on the table.

Whatever Lirha's agenda was, Maenad caught her mixing meanings. She hadn't said that low-orbit wasn't a problem; she said that high orbit wasn't. Maenad shook her head slowly. "I know that," she said. "I just told you that I knew that, and that Darius said that he could handle it. I had to no reason not to trust him." She paused for a second, tilting her head. She felt like a prisoner. "Are you trying to accuse me of something?" she asked quietly.

Hadn't she just said that she wasn't placing blame on anyone? Lirha sighed. "Lieutenant, I just told you that I am not here to start placing blame just yet." How many more times did she need to repeat herself? "I am simply asking questions, and getting defensive is not an appropriate response."

Maenad sat back and down at her knees. Her shoulder was acting up again, she could feel. A swelling, throbbing pain was building on her shoulder blade, which had been impaled with a piece of metal. It was healed, but it was still hurting. And the entire manner in which she was being questioned she found insulting. Lirha was trying to find contradictions, she could tell. If she had had the sensor data from the beginning, why hadn't she said so? To see if she would say something different? Maenad winced. She brought a hand up to her face, pushing on her eyes with a thumb and two middle fingers. She was crying, and she wanted to stop it before tears started streaming down her cheeks. The captain could accuse her of incompetence in addition to being a liar and a bad leader, she thought. She sniffed, but still held her hand where it was.

The Orion captain watched the scene unfolding in front of her with a bit of bewilderment. Is she crying? she wondered after watching her former lover cover her face and sniff. A plethora of emotions ran through the captain as she attempted to discern what was happening. Lirha knew that Maenad was a very opinionated person from her previous Starfleet record and personal experience with her, but she had never pegged her as being emotionally fragile. Perhaps it was a front to conceal her vulnerable emotions? Lirha didn't know.

Looking down towards the table and the silver PADD, Lirha slowly stood from her seat and moved into the chair which was next to the science chief. "Maenad..." she said quietly after a long moment, "I am not placing you at fault here. I am your friend but also your captain, which means that it is my job to ask questions." she added, then put her green hand on the back of Panne's neck and began to stroke the exposed skin above her collar. "Off the record, I still care about you a great deal. And it makes me worry when you almost get yourself killed on an away mission."

Lirha's touch had an instant calming effect on her. Her mom used to tickle on the back of neck to calm her as well, which now just made even sadder. She wanted to be a little kid again with her mother there to comfort her, lightyears away from her responsibilities and critics. The skin on the back of her neck was the most sensitive and, when some people touched her there, it was one of the most erogenous of her body. "Only when off the record?" she asked quietly, wiping her eyes. She sounded like a pouty little girl who refused to be convinced.

Crying was always an embarrassment, especially here and now. But she hurt both mentally and physically, and there was nothing she could do about it. She thought back to the turbulent shuttle descent, the exploding console, her brush with death. It was only a few hours ago. The captain could have been organising her funeral. The thought darkened her mind, but the tickling on her neck kept her at ease. Eventually she smiled a little and put her hand on top of Lirha's on her neck. "If I had known," she said more fluidly, "I would not allowed Darius to take us down," she assured.

At that moment, Lirha felt so much sympathy for Maenad that it began to bring up old memories of when the two of them were together. They had parted ways on bad terms, but the captain still had many suppressed feelings for the woman which were now beginning to bubble up at the surface. Seeing her friend, Chief Science Officer, and former lover in so much distress make her upset, and she could only think of one (Orion) way to calm her.

Putting her green fingers gently under Maenad's chin, she tilted it upwards to that they were finally looking at each other, then let out a soft breath and leaned forward to press her lips against Maenad's and give her a tender kiss. The fingers on her other hand played across the science chief's skin and gently stroked it with affection.

Lirha had always had a way of touching her, but Maenad was too washed out to react. She couldn't believe that Lirha had done that. Were they still off the record? "I..." she whispered, but had nothing to say. She was upset, in pain, angry, and now she felt guilty. She couldn't return Lirha's affection. She wanted to kiss her back, but she knew Lirha still had feelings for her. To do anything else would be to offer mixed feelings, which she could not do. She sniffed. "I didn't mean to cry," she offered, returning Lirha's gaze. "I have a lot on my mind."

Leaning back in her chair, the captain was relieved to see that her efforts to calm the lieutenant had worked. At least, to some degree. "Yes, I can see that." she replied. "However, I would be lying if I said it did not concern me. I need to know that you can push those feelings away in the line of duty and not let then interfere with your work. I am not implying that they have, but it is my duty to look after all of my crew, including you. Perhaps...if you are struggling, a few counseling sessions would help?" she offered.

"I am not struggling," Maenad told her. "I've just had a rough day." She sniffed again and wiped at the corner of an eye with the knuckle of a finger.

"Very well then." Lirha replied and stood from her chair. "I will be keeping an eye on you over the coming days to make sure that this is indeed an isolated incident, and I will speak to the other members of your away team to gather more information. In the meantime, go back to your quarters and get some rest. Dismissed." she said.

Maenad stiffly got up from her seat and made slowly made her way to the door, her head down and her long arms dangling by her side. She felt awful; ashamed, humiliated, disrespected, incompetent. She felt like the object of a a framed investigation. She also felt guilty when Lirha had kissed her, and didn't think it was fair of her to take advantage of her weakness like that. Lirha treated her physically well, but her emotions were cold. Conceited, even, she thought. To Lirha, she was just pretty and nice to look at. As she reached the door, she could feel tears swelling up again. She wiped them away on her sleeve before stepping out onto the bridge, to protect whatever sliver of dignity she thought she had left.

[OFF]

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CAPT Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

Lieutenant (JG) Maenad Panne
Chief Science Officer
USS Galileo

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