Escape from Mount Tarin (Part 2 of 3)

Posted on 25 Jan 2025 @ 8:08pm by Commander Morgan Tarin & Ensign Mimi & Lieutenant JG Hovar Kov

2,802 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Episode 20 - Reconstruction
Location: USS Galileo-A - Deck 5, Holodeck 1
Timeline: MD 06, 1146 hrs

Previously, on Escape from Mount Tarin (Part 1)...

Mimi stopped walking. "You want me to repeat everything I told you two hours ago? What you already knew about?" She asked her. "So the Chaplain knows everything and you hope he can start to work with me about it all?"

Tarin's hazel eyes tightened and facial expression steeled at the rebuke. She stepped back down the hill several paces to stand in front of the shorter Nekomi. "Don't you ever question my motives, Mister Mimi. Answer my question." The words formed with an icy tonality not forgiving of repetition. "Describe how the Klingons who discovered your world decimated your colony."

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

'So much for discussing the plans for my wedding' Mimi thought. "They killed our leader Hikay by slashing him in the back with a bat'leth. After that I was running for my life, there was shooting, people being stabbed and slashed. Then fire came from the skies and there ships opened fire from orbit as well, killing more of us and blowing up almost all the buildings in the colony." She stared past Tarin at Hovar as she spoke. "After I was rescued I was told there were bodies that had their tails cut off. Battle trophies from their 'battle' with a few hundred aliens who only wanted to live and to trade." She gulped down several big breaths, her panting not conducive to also speaking fast.

A long moment of silence followed the somber tale. "The Klingons massacred your colony," Tarin finally replied. It was Starfleet record. She looked at Hovar then pointed to the large Klingon. "Did they resemble him? With cranial ridges and ribbed nose bridges?"

Hovar's soul trembled as to the description of what happened to the Ensign's kin. Hovar was born and raised to do the same, and there was nothing about that story that surprised him. However, instead of feeling understanding towards the Ensign's people, he felt disgust with his own Captain. Throughout the climb, Hovar had held his tongue. However, this line of questioning, this whole exercise, made no sense. Everything that was happening made no sense. They shouldn't be on the side of a volcano surrounded by death and mayhem if they were going to do this. They should be in the Counselor's office, under the most careful of supervision, under the least stressful of circumstances. This wasn't a trust exercise, this was madness.

"I did not have time to take in their facial features, I was too busy running for my life." Mimi replied. "But yes, most of them looked similar to our Chaplain."

"Then Mister Kov, here, is your enemy. It's a simple deduction." The small group broke through a final piece of bedrock before quickly pacing toward the summit with mere meters in front of their apex. Tarin was the first to arrive and de-shouldered her heavy ruck sack from her torso onto the ground. She watched the remaining two members of the cadre also arrive. "His species is the same one which ravished your home world and committed atrocities. Yet here he stands, unjudged by the crimes of the Empire," she gestured to the large Chaplain without making eye contact with the Father.

Tarin then reached down into her pack then procured a Type 2 hand phaser from the ruck sack. "Come here, ensign. Take this weapon."

Eventually reaching the summit Mimi immediately dropped the heavy pack letting out a groan as the weight was removed, grabbing her canteen she poured a little over her face before taking a generous swig hoping this time to not pass out from heat stroke, she was feeling a little better this time around but not by much "Why do you have a phaser in your pack?" She asked clearly very surprised at what was happening.

An expression of unconcerned annoyance briefly rippled across the captain's lightly-freckled facial features. Why wouldn't I? was her silent reply to the extraneous query. "I said take this weapon. That's an order," she forcefully repeated.

When they made it to the summit, Hovar looked around and he was getting ready to go down when he listened to the conversation between the Captain and the Ensign, and for reasons unknown to everybody, there was a type two phaser in the hands of the Captain. Worse still, the Captain ordered the Ensign to take a hold of the weapon. There were words such as 'enemy' and 'unjudged crimes of the Empire' that flowed, and this confused the Klingon for only a moment. But then, the Klingon's ability to guess the situation started to work, and he did not like what he was guessing.

Mimi found herself stepping forward slightly, not wanting to disobey an order from her Captain, as much as the order made no sense. "Why?" She asked, her body was still focusing the majority of its attention on regulating her temperature leaving less effort for higher brain functions.

"Because I gave you a command and as a Starfleet officer, you will obey it." Tarin's patience was being pushed to its already-short limit and the longer the ensign delayed, the more her temper simmered. "Take this phaser. I won't repeat myself."

Still breathing heavily Mimi stepped forward and extended her hand to take the phaser. "You are trying to get me to shoot Lieutenant Hovar?"

Tarin ignored the question then pointed to a relatively flat piece of earth atop the summit approximately twenty meters in distance from she and Mimi's position. "Father, stand there and face the ensign."

Hovar chuckled as he saw what was being presented in front of him. Tarin, a Star Fleet commanding officer, was ordering another Star Fleet officer, to presumably shoot Hovar. A subtle laugh came from the Klingon, followed by a louder laugh. After a brief shake of his head, Hovar took off his rucksack, setting it next to him. As ordered, he moved to the point where he was ordered, kind of. He placed himself at the very edge of the summit. A relaxed smile appeared on his face as he put his hands behind his head, interlocking his fingers. He was not going to make this easy for the Captain.

Moving behind Mimi, Tarin placed a firm and controlling hand atop the smaller Nekomi woman's off-shoulder then pointed with her free arm to the chaplain. "I want you to shoot Mister Kov in the center of his chest," she matter-of-factly ordered. "Now."

"Why?" Mimi asked, though she still gripped the phaser tightly. "So I can prove you right, that I am actually a racist, bigot, cold blooded killer."

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Those words were spoken by Hovar, who was listening to the discussion between his life and death, and to be fair, it was very intriguing. Did Hovar blame the Ensign for how she feels about him? No. Was this the appropriate venue to deal with such feelings? No. Taking a deep breath, Hovar recalled the verse: to give up all he has and take up his cross.

"Captain?"

Hovar's eyes locked with hers.

"All you are doing is convincing the Ensign that she is no better than the Klingons who butchered her family, no better than the people she hates, and that it is just as good as if she pulled the trigger. In that respect, you are a better Klingon than I am."

Looking back at the Ensign, he smiled warmly as he gently told her something that had been in his head since she told him what happened.

"If this is the price for you to let go of your hate, I pay it willingly."

And with that, Hovar looked up into the heavens momentarily, kept his hands behind his head, and began to lean back into oblivion closing his eyes,

"Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit."

The Nekomi's flawed question and the chaplain's psychological interpretation - both were two meters wide left of the target. Mimi had proved her bigotry time and time again, evidenced by Captain Saalm's logs and debriefs Tarin had read of the Galileo crew's brief 'stay' on Kreanus, to the duel to the death the young woman initiated with Captain Keh'G during a recent diplomatic event under her own watch. And Kov? They were just beginning to dip their toes into the River of Blood on the path to Gre'thor.

"Do it," Tarin spoke into one of Mimi's large black-furred ears.

Part of Mimi wanted to press the firing stud, partly to see if Tarin had even given her a phaser that was even charged or not disabled in some way a causal look wouldn't show, maybe the holodeck safeties were on, maybe they weren't, she couldn't know either way for certain.

"No." Mimi eventually said after a few seconds. "I told the Chaplain when I first met him I had no, in his words 'wrath' against him but I do not trust Klingons. The Klingons on Kreanus were the enemy." She glanced over to Tarin knowing she likely had a good idea where she was referring to "So I did what I could to help the crew and paid a price for it, when they became...... not the enemy I tried hard to follow my orders and not get into trouble with them, three of them attacked me, so I defended myself. They pinned me down and tried to cut off my tail like one said he had done to my people. I only survived that because they were stopped by another Galileo officer." She paused for a moment to take a very deep breath as her body was still trying to regulate heat through making her pant, not easy whilst also trying to talk.

"I asked many times to not be at the diplomatic dinner with the Klingons, you said you knew I had problems with Klingons but made me be there. Keh'G was in charge of the group that killed an entire colony of my people, he made that clear right in front of me, me the only survivor of that colony, more than a hundred of my people died at his order. I think anyone even you Chaplain would want to take revenge in that situation, I have read of your 'blood oaths' and fights between houses that have gone on for decades and longer. There was no way I was going to let that stand without an answer, so I attacked him." She threw the phaser at Tarin's feet. "I have no reason to attack this Klingon but I have my reasons to not trust him, yet."

Hovar, while he was slowly leaning back, stopped as he listened to the Ensign's declaration, hearing how much the Ensign was innocent, misguided, but innocent. It caused him to laugh softly, but then he shook his head in complete disappointment. His disappointment then turned to anger, and Hovar the Priest looked at the Captain with disdainful eyes, his voice filled with disgust. It was then that Hovar remembered that he was in the Holodeck, and he wasn't sure if the safeties were off either.

"Forcing an innocent to kill another innocent in cold blood. Only the most cowardly of my kind would stoop to such barbarity."

There was one way to find out!

"If you are that committed to see me fall in the name of Ensign Mimi's family like a lamb to the slaughter, let it be done according to thy word."

With that, Hovar tossed himself over the ledge of the summit, taking the absolute fastest way down the 5-mile trail.

Tarin's hazel eyes narrowed to mere slits while her head cocked to the side in bewilderment. "Really?" Her arms raised high then fell back to hips, palms slapping against her thighs with blatant exasperation. This was the solution the chaplain had decided was the correct avenue to solve an interpersonal problem? "Computer, end program." Her now-exceptionally dry inflection instructed the both the holographic imagery and matter conversion subsystems to deactivate. The rocky, barren and cloud-filled backdrop of AR-187 shimmered then disappeared along with the ruck sacks donned on each of their backs - and the Type 2 hand phaser at the ensign's feet. The summit of the large hill they stood upon was replaced by the holodeck's smooth black and yellow-checkered pattern. Instead of falling to his death, the junior lieutenant rolled over on his side several times before coming to a rest near the room's far wall.

"If you have a death wish, Father, you should have told me sooner. I can have a Class 9 probe modified for you then launch you into the nearest star much more efficiently," scolded the captain who walked up to his form with her hands firmly settled atop her hips, unimpressed.

Hovar, who had crashed into said wall, only raised himself to a sitting position against the wall, like someone who was just relaxing in the face of adversity. In a way, he had a relaxed smile on his face.

"If you wish to threaten me with cold blooded murder again, Captain, then you and I have a lot of work to do."

Hovar took a deep breath as he closed his eyes, recalling everything that transpired.

"There is no mistrust between Ms. Mimi and myself. In fact, she is quite honest. She asked me to respect her boundaries, and I shall respect them. Perhaps, down the line, she will be more friendly. That, however, will be for her to decide, and I respect her all the same."

Hovar's eyes then opened, gently locking onto the Captain without a care in the world.

"As for you, from what I have seen already, I have my concerns. Hard, imperious, you look down upon us from the Captain's chair, thinking yourself as God, placing it upon yourself judge the crew and strike down the sinner, being the ultimate decider of life and death. You accept the bad theology that aboard their ship there is nothing outside of the Captain's control. I think that somewhere you forgot your humility, what it means to smile, what it means to be, dare I say, human."

Blinking a few time, Hovar shifted himself a little, offering her a seat.

"You also forgot that I am a priest."

He motioned to Ensign Mimi for a brief moment.

"If you do not need her anymore, let her be on her way in peace. I am ready to hear your confession."

It was a rare occurrence when Tarin was left speechless and for several long moments her discerning mind attempted to make sense of what the chaplain had just spoken - both directly and indirectly. She was not a woman to entertain nebulous concepts of theological morality, but in some respects Kov was correct. In many others he was sorely lacking. "If a holographic phaser constitutes a 'cold-blooded murder' attempt on your life, then you're softer than a tribble's bottom." She snapped her head back to the Nekomi then returned its orientation to his. "You claim there's no lack of trust between yourself and Mimi but she explained as much in her very own words moments ago. What you want to believe and interpret is at odds with objective reality, lieutenant. And you need to fix that, immediately." Iciness in her voice then crystallized as she continued.

"As for me, like you so eloquently described? I'm the captain of this starship which means the buck stops with me. I'm the final authority on this vessel and the one responsible for the well-being of all those under my command. Of course I decide life and death...with every decision I make. That's my burden and this is the Pleiades Cluster, not some Risian retreat in which to proselytize select moral values when they're convenient. People die out here. Starfleet loses starships in these sectors on a quarterly basis. That's the risk of exploring the frontier. I don't want to have to write letters to any of this crew's families explaining how I killed their son or daughter. And the two of you are getting in the way of that." Tarin flapped her hand up into the air with an obvious lack of patience. "A lack of trust between any of Galileo's crew jeopardizes our integrity and it's my job to fix that. This is my ship. My orders, my prerogative, uninfluenced by your god's or anyone else's higher power. Am I clear, chaplain?"

To Be Continued...

[OFF]

--

CMDR Morgan Tarin
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo-A

LTJG Hovar Kov
Chaplain
USS Galileo-A

ENS Mimi
Deputy Operations Manager
USS Galileo-A

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