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Wilson' _expression_ did not show much, but she suspected that it did show
that she disagreed with this. Then again, she had said as much to K'Tael at the time, so this should not be news to him. However, she kept this to herself for now. Colin frowned slightly, but held his tongue, at least until asked to do otherwise by the Admiral. As the leader of the military end of the operation, he had at no time felt overwhelmed. the Centurian *was* the back-up, and he had felt that his crew had had the tactical situation well in hand. He did not understand why K'Tael felt otherwise. t'Llhweiir's eyes grew as cold as obsidian. While Smallwood was as much a suspect as anyone else in this room--it would not be the first time that a flag officer had been a co-conspirator with such activities as the Brotherhood, it was inappropriate for a lower-rank officer virtually to accuse him of this--or of gross negligence for putting intentionally putting Fleet officers at risk--without overwhelming evidence. She held her silence, though, to see how Smallwood reacted. The tone and implication of the Security Chief's answer was not lost on Smallwood. That much was evident when he leaned forward, focusing on K'Tael as if he were the only one in the room. "While I don't feel the need to justify my orders to you, Commander, ", he started placing emphasis on the rank. "I will answer your question. I made the decision not to send additional aide becuase I believed that the Centurian, with a well trained and highly discliplined crew under the command of a highly capable and experienced Captain and command staff, could handle what amounts to civilian militia. I also had to weigh the fact that even though this mission was need to know only, and only trusted personnel were assigned to it, information got out somehow. Just who could be sent. Who could be sent to assist you, and be trusted to not fire upon you, the Centurian, or the other escort craft? The answer, Commander K'Tael, is that there was no one. If Starfleet personnel would leak information that would allow an ambush to be set up on their fellows in arms, then it is not unreasonable that somebeing in Starfleet would think nothing about openning fire on one of their own. Does that answer your question sufficiently?" Smallwood's tone betrayed his feelings of annoyance that a subordinate would think it proper to question his authority and loyalty in such a forum. K'Tael was bold indeed. "Do you have some evidence to suggest that Admiral was acting criminally or incompetently?" t'Llhweiir asked coolly. "My intention at bringing this up is not to mar the Admiral's image or reptuation or to challenge his right to make decisions. My understanding is that we have been asked to this Briefing to bring forth our perspectives of what happened out there and why. Things went very bad out there, and it does not necessarily reflect on the direct actions of anyone in this room. We have a leak, that is clear. I have more experience with the Brotherhood than anyone else in this room, and I am concerned at the fact that requests and reports of officers on the scene did not seem to be taken into account with what was happening. The cover of the mission was already blown and we were ready for the picking if the Brotherhood had planned adequately. The Centurian is a wonderful ship with a wonderful commanding officer and crew, but she is not the largest of ships, if you don't mind my saying, Captain," said the Klingon as he looked toward Fitzgerald. "What was to say that a larger starship was not going to appear. I don't know about you, but the starship that appeared was much larger than I thought the Brotherhood had access to. To put it simply, we got lucky out there, sirs." Ariel had been quietly listening to the conversation. She was
surprised to hear K'Tael bring these types of concerns up in front of the whole
group. It was the type of conversation that normally took place one-on-one
in the CO's office. She wondered if the Klingon would be keeping his
position for long.
(response?) AJ
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