“Ensign Rel, you were part of the covert operations conducted on Nasera II during the night of March 16, 2401,” the prosecutor opened as the flight controller took her seat. “While I understand that you were assigned to a different objective, what did you know of the plans and proceedings of the assault undertaken by Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Hall against the Nasera governor’s estate?”

“I knew of the general plan, but beyond that, not much,” Ensign Rel answered truthfully. “To be perfectly honest, besides timing, all we had were general plans. The reality is that, in the chaos of combat, you sort of set out in the right direction, and then you’ve just got to make it work.” As opposed to the others from the Polaris’ Hazard Team, Elyssia Rel’s tone was neither hostile nor confrontational. In fact, the Trill ensign seemed almost apologetic that she didn’t have more to share. “Plus, once operations got underway, we were out of communication as we crawled our way through the maintenance tunnels beneath Nasera City.”

“Yes, yes,” Commander Drake said with a flippant flick of the wrist. “Blowing up Lieutenant Commander Jordan and all that jazz.” His dismissive attitude over the death of a fellow officer caught Rel off guard. She hadn’t been part of the earlier proceedings. “Your colleague, Chief Petty Officer Shafir, already testified in regards to that clusterfuck, but on the matter of the assault against the governor’s mansion, tell us what you knew of that plan.”

“Well, intelligence had come to us that the Vorta commander responsible for the occupation had taken up residence at the mansion,” Ensign Rel explained. “That made it a high value target.”

“A target, yes, but to what end?”

“Come again?” Ensign Rel asked. She didn’t understand what he was getting at.

“The plan was to capture the Vorta,” Commander Drake gestured with his hands as if trying to pull something out of her. “But to what end? Once the Vorta was captured, what did the team plan to do with him?”

“A classic strategy in any battle is to decapitate the command-and-control structure,” Ensign Rel started to explain before realizing her unfortunate choice of words. “Sorry, that came out wrong… I didn’t mean to decapitate in a physical sense… just that the Jem’Hadar would be leaderless and without coordination.” 

“Yes, I’m sure it was just a slip of the tongue,” Commander Drake chuckled sarcastically in reference to her word choice. “After all, the Vorta wasn’t decapitated. He just had his brains blown all over the floor.”

Ensign Rel looked panicked. She was doing his job for him. “Yes, umm…” Ensign Rel tried to continue, fumbling her words a bit. Her lack of experience in a courtroom was very evident, but it also helped her come across as genuine. “The assault was to be carried out simultaneously with our attack on the planetary defense system’s control center in order to create maximum disruption for when the Polaris came out of warp overhead.”

“I gather, given the complexity and synchronicity required for success,” Commander Drake continued to press. “That you and your team went through a fairly detailed planning process for the operation?”

Ensign Rel shook her head. Hadn’t she just said the opposite? “As I already said, planning only gets you so far.” Her thoughts drifted back to when she and Chief Shafir found themselves alone under the command center, faced with an impossible choice. The plan had always been to press the detonator, but not while Lieutenant Commander Jordan was still inside. “At a certain point, you’re off script, and you’ve just got to do what you’ve got to do.” 

“Yes, of course,” nodded Commander Drake disinterestedly. He had a point to his questions, and it wasn’t an elementary education in the fog of war. “But there had to be planning beforehand, and while planning, did anyone ever mention anything about what they planned to do once they captured the Vorta?”

“No sir.”

“What about torturing it?”

“No, as I…” she began to say.

Commander Darke just kept the rapid-fire questions coming: “Or murder?”

“Absolutely not,” Ensign Rel insisted emphatically.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course! I would not soon forget if something so heinous was proposed!” Ensign Rel assured him, her face aghast at the suggestion. And it was believable too, courtesy of her apparent youth and naivete. Even if it wasn’t true. Even if she’d died at their hands once before. She would not soon forget dying on the floor of that lifepod feeling from the Chin’toka system. “I am a Starfleet officer. I swore an oath. We all did. We went to Nasera to defend the people – our people – but who would we be if, in that fight, we became the very monsters we fought?”

Around the room, her appeal landed, both with the audience and with the elder hearing officer presiding over the case. The seemingly genuine words of a willowy young woman with silky hair and fair skin were hard to ignore, and they believed her – just as she meant them to.

Commander Drake, though, was unmoved. He knew who Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Hall were, and he knew the sort of people they associated with. Even if this girl was fooling the others with her innocence charade, she wasn’t fooling him. “What about afterwards?”

“Afterwards?” Ensign Rel asked. “What do you mean afterwards?”

“I mean what did Captain Lewis tell you afterwards about what they did to that Vorta?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Nothing about torture or murder?”

“No sir.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes sir.”

The staccato of quick questions was meant to disorient, but suddenly, there was a shift in his expression, a maniacal twinkle of sorts in his eye. He was ready to deliver the killshot. “How about when you two were in bed?”

There was an audible gasp around the room. What had the prosecutor just charged? That the Serenity’s flight controller was sleeping with its captain? Ensign Rel looked like she was about to vomit. How had they… how had they found out?

Commander Drake’s eyes narrowed on the ensign. He was going for the jugular. “Did the Captain let anything slip during a moment of passion while you two were, shall we say, fucking?”

Ensign Rel lost any semblance of composure. She looked like she was about to break. She’d come to testify about a desperate battle, one where they’d lost half their team and almost the rest, but out of nowhere, the prosecutor had stripped her bare, exposing her most intimate and personal moments, moments unrelated to the events of the preferral at all, in a room full of strangers and colleagues alike. How did that even make sense?

“Objection!” shouted Admiral Reyes as she rose from the defense’s table. She could see the Ensign up there, stripped bare for all to see, and she felt for the young woman. It wasn’t fair. Not in the slightest. “Objection!” She wasn’t even sure what the basis for her objection was yet, but she knew she needed to stop it. “Objection!”

Commander Drake didn’t slow the attack. He didn’t care that Admiral Reyes had objected, and he didn’t wait for Captain Adler to address her objection. Instead, he just pressed the offensive, savagely and aggressively. “Did you know you were sleeping with a murderer?” His anger, now, was on full display. He was done with Captain Lewis and his goon squad. “A man who pumped the Vorta full of torture drugs and then shot him in the…”

“Ob-FUCKING-jection!!!” Admiral Reyes shouted furiously in a voice that commanded the attention of the entire room. She looked over at Commander Drake and shook her head. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Robert.” She’d once respected him so deeply, but now she just wanted to reach out and slap him. “This isn’t justice. It’s a fucking inquisition.” 

Commander Drake just stood there smirking. If Lewis and his goons weren’t going to play fair, then neither would he. Ensign Rel had slept with the enemy. That made her the enemy.

“What does how or with whom this fine young officer chooses to spend her off hours have to do with your allegations of war crimes?” Admiral Reyes spat at Commander Drake before she turned to Captain Adler. “I demand the prior comment stricken from the record, and frankly, I have half a mind to request censure of opposing counsel for falsely impugning the witness.”

“Objection,” Commander Drake countered. “Ensign Rel’s personal relationship with the defendant goes to her credibility.” He wasn’t wrong either. Not entirely, at least. Personal relationships could absolutely taint testimony.

Sitting up there on the witness stand in front of everyone, never had Ensign Rel felt more alone. She looked across the room, seeking something to stabilize herself. After a moment, her eyes settled on Captain Lewis. He just sat there, arms folded across his chest, unreadable as always. He never cracked. He always had a next move. She needed to be more like him. Her gaze drifted back to the presiding officer. “Your honor,” she asked as she recomposed herself. “With your permission, may I make a statement?”

“I think that would be appropriate,” Captain Adler nodded. He couldn’t help but feel for her. She was demonstrably not present at the governor’s mansion. She was not on trial, and as far as the questioning was concerned, she had been neither hostile, nor confrontational, and even if Commander Drake’s accusations were accurate, her violations of policy did not rise beyond administrative discipline. They certainly didn’t belong here. In this proceeding, she’d just been hit as collateral, and he was not a fan of his courtroom being used that way. “You may make a statement.”

“It is true what the Commander says,” Ensign Rel admitted, but she was going to turn an embarrassing situation into an opportunity. “Through the crucible of Nasera, the battle of the Ciatar Nebula, and the tragedy of Frontier Day, Captain Lewis and I have grown close, but that simply means I’ve gotten to see him in a way few others have.” She locked eyes with Captain Lewis. “Beneath his weathered skin and his cold exterior, Jake Lewis is a good man, a decent man, a man who has sacrificed every ounce of his being so that all of us, each and every one of us here in this room, and everyone across the Federation, can have a better life.”

“Objection!” interrupted Commander Drake. “Hearsay.” His gambit was quickly turning against him. He didn’t need the little girl pulling on anyone’s heartstrings.

“Goes to character of the defendant,” Admiral Reyes countered, parroting Commander Drake’s own words back at him. “Commander Drake can’t have it both ways.” She hadn’t expected this to happen, and she certainly would never have put Ensign Rel in this place, but she recognized this turn of events could end up working in their favor.

“The Admiral is right, Commander. You opened this door for Ensign Rel to serve as a character witness, so let’s let her speak to that character,” Captain Adler concluded. He would let her have her moment. “Please continue, Ensign.”

“The Captain, he never waivers, and he never cracks,” Ensign Rel continued as her gaze stayed centered on the man who, through the horrors of the past year, she’d begun to fall for. “He is an inspiration to each of us because, no matter the stakes, no matter the risk to life or limb, he will always do what is right.” She pulled her gaze away from Captain Lewis and addressed the room. “Does that sound like a man who would violate the very principles on which our great Federation is built, the principles he’s willing to fight for… willing to die for?”