Doctor to Doctor

Posted on 24 Jun 2017 @ 4:47am by Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Captain Amber Austin M.D.
Edited on on 26 Jun 2017 @ 3:54pm

3,056 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Episode 15 - Emanation
Location: Earth - Starfleet Personnel Complex, Starflleet Headquarters
Timeline: MD 04, 1300

ON:

Austin had just finished with one interview for the day and was headed to the next, the Commander and CMO of the Galileo. She was particularly interested in speaking to her as Austin wanted to get a feel for the medical well being of the crew as well as ask a few questions about certain members of the crew that were injured.

Austin had summoned the Commander and was headed to the interview room which the CMO should be occupying. As she reached the doors they swooshed open and she entered placing the PADD down on the table and looking over the top of her glasses to the woman before her.

"Good after noon Commander, I am Captain Amber Austin of Star Fleet Personnel Command. I will be handling your debrief after the Galileo incident. This is all regular and routine were just here to figure out what happened." she finished as she moved to the other side of the table and placed the PADD and drink down.

Allyndra stood as soon as the door opened. While she was not in dress, she had made sure that the uniform she was wearing was neat and every little regulation of placement was correct.

"Captain, pleased." Allyndra remained standing unless told otherwise or the captain took a seat.

Amber motioned to the seat across from her at the table. "Would you like some refreshments Commander?"

"No sir," Allyndra replied. She was a bit uncomfortable using the generic sir. It was a cultural thing and it showed a little in her voice. She took the seat and sat on the edge as though she was before the mother of the house. All that long formality came flooding back.

Amber grunted and nodded to the Commander. "Please call me Amber or Ms. Austin, I'm not here to convict you off anything I'm here to glean from your recollections a more perfect image of what happened to the Galileo. Now, breath and relax and take me to the beginning."

"To summarize, I was working medical when we received an distress call from a freighter that was listed as lost in the nebula. It was very faint and so the captain decided to investigate. At some point deep into the nebula several Klingon war ships decloaked and with little warning opened fired. We took damage rapidly though we tried to escape at least from the maneuvers I felt in sickbay. Assault teams of Klingons began to board even though their ships continued to fire upon us. At some point as I recall the admiral had been severely hurt and I had made my way to the bridge. I hit my own head and things are a bit fuzzy from that point until we got to Kreanus. As I recall the ship was severely damaged and the warp core had been breached. I decided that we needed to eject the core but to also take advantage of the resulting explosion by concentrating the remaining shields and utilizing the explosion to both blind the Klingons and push the ship into the nebula. The core exploded too close to the ship. I can only surmise that something had gone wrong with the ejection sequence or the cute. The ship was ordered to be abadoned at that point. It was chaotic in the extreme."

Amber nodded and her stylus skipped across the PADD "To your knowlage, did you or any of the senior staff object to going into the nebula? If so, whom and what objections?"

"There was discussion that the signal matched a freighter that was long presumed lost many years back. Why and how they might have survived that length of time was brought up. In the end, as I recall it was to proceed but with some caution." Allyndra cocked her head. "At best I think we thought maybe someone might have used the freighter as a lure for piracy. We never thought that the pirates would be a renegade Klingon fleet."

"What precautions did command take to safeguard against an ambush?"

"As I mentioned, at the time I was in sickbay so was not privy to what was discussed on the bridge. However, the ship went to yellow alert. I presume the standard protocol of having the shields at the ready, higher sensor sweep though the nebula would interfere with that. I do not believe weapons were made ready."

Austin nodded and she looked down at her PADD "Walk me thru what happened in sickbay after the klingons attacked?"

"We began to receive reports of injured. Klingon teams boarding and indiscriminately attacking personnel with no regard to status of injury or even surrender." Allyndra really did not want to say what went through her mind but there were plenty of others that knew her orders and if she tried to cover things now it most likely would come up. House Mother always said, "Truth is primary. Deceit does not win the favour of the gods." Allyndra looked at the captain and said, "Several impacts and blasts to the ship including a call from the bridge, continued sweeps by the invaders that fired upon the injured it became apparent to me that the Klingons had no intention of being honourable in any way. I prepared several hypos containing Nehret syndrome and placed them in medkits. At that point I took a kit, my assistant chief got a kit as did any other medical personnel that were present. I left my assistant in charge of sickbay while I made my way to the bridge to attend wounded."

Amber was nonplussed as she nodded "Thank you for being truthful. Was the Nehret deployed?"

"By deployed captain, I will take that as were any of the hypos used on a Klingon. The answer is no. In fact, by the time we got to Kreanus, I was the only one with a medkit that still had such a hypo in it. I turned it over to the administration there. As near as I could ascertain the rest of the medkits were lost during the hasty evacuation and presumed destroyed with the ship. The administration on Kreanus was not aware of any until I brought mine to their attention."

Amber nodded and made some notes. "After the loss of the ship what happened?"

Allyndra felt a little relief that there was no further inquiry into that aspect of things, at least for now. "What crew was remaining took to life pods. I was in one and could see the saucer and main section has separated. There was an explosion of the saucer section. I am guessing that Lirha and some other person had set the self destruct. People in the life pod suddenly were transported away and other calls came in of the same thing happening. The Klingons were transporting people out of the pods. I was left alone in several linked pods and decided to try to send a signal by pulsing the pods output together. Sort of like a LED flashlight, one LED is not that strong but link a whole bunch of them it gets very bright. I am guessing at this point that even so the signal was still not enough to get out of the nebula." She took a deep breath again. Thinking back, how she had hoped to call for help but it had proven worthless. "I finally put on a comm and said there was one person left. Then I was transported to a Klingon ship that several others were on and crammed into a too small a cell. At some point there was an escape attempt and a fight broke out with the guards. I tried to get everyone to calm down as we were in no shape to fight with many injured but I think tensions were just running too high. I did use a hypo but with an anesthetic on a couple of the guards. As I recall we did get an agreement to get some medkits and supplies back to treat wounded. That was it until we got to Kreanus."

Amber nodded and her stylus danced across the PADD. "What wounded where there and how were they treated?"

"Shall I just say everyone. They ranged from severe damage and broken bones to bumps and bruises. As far as treatment, the medkits were emergency only and thus one could not treat much. It was about as basic field medicine as one could get. After we were transferred to Kreanus, the medical facilities there helped a bit but power and supplies were again extremely limited and then we got all the other Fleet along with colonists as well to handle." Allyndra shook her head. "I can only just say it was the blessing of the Twins we managed to keep most everyone alive and on top of that crew was required to work in the facilities and then we were fed the most worthless of basic sustenance. Our Nekomi, Ensign Mimi was almost nothing but skin and bones and would have not made it without me replicating meat from the medical replicator. I myself lost quite a bit of weight as well."

Amber nodded "And how did this effect the moral and mental health of the crew?"

Though Amber was a superior officer, Allyndra could not help but make a sound that was almost a snort. "Is that question for real sir? Moral and mental health was about as low as you could get. It was found out that some of the Klingons beside being abusive were also interrogating some of the personnel. It was roughly at that point that I got together with Commander Ban to make a united front and we went to the Romulan in charge of the colony to protest. That was when I revealed that I had a hypo still of Nehret and gave it up. While that caused some consternation, I noted that the beatings and especially the clandestine interrogations stopped. It was also at that point I brought Commander Ban up to speed that I was asking Galileo personnel to appear to be cooperative as possible. Two fold, one was to appear that we were working for the good of the colony and thus lessen the problems the crew were experiencing and the second was to learn as much as possible about the workings of the place and start a slow sabotage. The later gave crew a purpose which helped in my opinion. The idea was to hasten the failure of the systems such that the colony would have to choice but either call for help or be abandoned."

Amber pulled her glasses down her nose and shook her head "Quite a real question. It helps me judge how the crew was reacting." she looked at the PADD and then back at the commander "Now tell me how the crew worked to sabotage the colony?"

"Nothing too overt mind you, and the equipment there was already failing, one could see that. The whole place was nothing much above a bunch of second rate salvage for the most part. Anyway, subtle things, a bit of extra sand in the water facility to screw up the gearing and filters. An extra short in a replicator, more just irritations mind you since we all still had to live there but I think enough to start putting that 'we have to do something soon' into the minds of the administration."

She nodded "And what did they do, or did they not have time to react to the sabotage?"

Allyndra shrugged, "As far as I know they did not detect anything amiss other than the usual failing equipment, though perhaps it pushed them to set their timeline a bit earlier to handle the return of Korag to the Cronos. When we did depart it seemed to be rather hasty. Commander Ban and I were meeting periodically and he did not seem to indicate that the administration was any wiser to the slow sabotage."

She nodded "Very good, now walk me through your reasoning for authorizing the usage of the virus."

"After the ship was attacked and disabled there was a signal of surrender. The Klingons kept firing and then boarded and did not seem to care if individuals surrendered or where injured. While I realize that Klingons are aggressive in nature and by culture there is usually an overarching idea that one fights with honour. There was not honour in what they were doing, thus if they were not going to fight with honour neither was I." Allyndra said the later with a bit of defiance.

Amber nodded "And their lack of adherence to the conventions of war relieved you of a Star Fleet Officer's oath to the laws of the Federation." Amber sighed but quickly returned to her matter of fact tone "Walk me back through what happened during the battle."

Allyndra looked pointedly at the captain but just took a breath. "If you could call it a battle, it was really a surprise attack, savage and without any sort of mercy. The same applied to when the attackers boarded, savage and no mercy. It made me mad, upset, and all I could think of was trying to protect my patients and surviving crew at that point with any means necessary. At that point in time, I was House Mother, just as I am Mother named of House Warraquim. As such one protects one's House and those in it by any means necessary." Allyndra did not know if the captain had any ideas of Akkadian culture, probably not, and even those that tried to study it might not know, but it was true even though it might have been one of the downfalls from long ago.

Austin nodded "You were working to preserve the lives of those entrusted into your care. I can appreciate that. Now tell me, what do you know of the implants that were found in the crew?"

"Very little I am afraid. I was unaware they even existed until an emergency surgery was required to remove one." Allyndra did not want to get the admiral in any further trouble but best be honest here anyway. "The admiral seemed to know about them, she had to help deactivate the malfunctioning one. I am not aware if she knew how many had been implanted and I did not ask. They were definitely Romulan in design and placement seemed to me to be for controlling an person via delivering extreme pain and if necessary disabling an individual. I will assure you captain, that if I had known about them while on the colony there would have been an official protest and I would have ordered the crew to cease cooperation in any form."

"How many crew had the implants put in to your knowlage?"

"One, the one I removed. Due to the circumstances there was no time to check the rest of the crew. Hopefully as they have been processed through StarFleet medical they will have been scanned. I have had one done and do not have one but then again I was not interrogated." Allyndra looked puzzled. "At the time, I could not fathom why not as supposedly as far as the crew knew I was the senior most surviving officer. The fact that Kreanus had taken the admiral and was keeping her in cognito perhaps now explains that. As to why they selected whom they did is still beyound me. Perhaps they just did not know what or how to handle one of my kind. As I mentioned they seemed to have not beamed me out of the pods until I attempted to send a coordinated distress signal. It is the most logical thought I can come up with at this time, sir".


"Please detail the procedure you used to remove the implant and what your first impressions of the implant were."

"First off, the admiral, that is Lirha Saalam, had so sort of device to help deactivate it. I suspect that removal prior to that would have resulted in some sort of very painful to fatal process. Once it was deactivated I then proceeded to extract the device. The attachment area was mechanical to biological interface and was deeply embedded in the lower spinal region approximately L1 through L4. As to impressions, the implant had the hallmarks of Romulan manufacture. As to the purpose, considering its placement and size, best guess was that it was a pain device designed to give an individual excruciating pain. In fact that is what brought it to my attention in the first place. It had somehow malfunctioned and was causing extreme pain the patient. What that was for was either to control an individual or elicit information via pain. I am going to hazard the former as there are more effective ways to obtain information and the placement would also serve as a sort of paralysis device, hence control."

Amber nodded and her stlyus danced across the PADD as she made notes. "Thank you." she looked up over her glasses and nodded "I think that will be all for today. I shall make my recommendations to the Admiral and I appreciate your helpfulness in this matter." Amber stood and then looked back at the commander "Please do remember that you are to have no contact with your former crewmates without express permission from the Admiral. You are free to go now."

Allyndra made a tilt of the head before getting up. She made the proper come to attention and salute before leaving. It was not the admonition to have no contact with her crewmates that currently sat in her mind but contacting her home. She would put in a request with the Admiral and if that did not work then it would be to the diplomatic corps.

Amber returned the salute and began doing the workup of her report and recommendation to the Admiral. She took her cup of tea and PADD and headed out of the room to her office her mind already composing the response to the questions she knew the Admiral would ask.

[OFF]

--

Amber Austin, M.D.
Captain
Starfleet Personnel Command
Starfleet HQ
[PNPC West]

Cmdr Allyndra ilm Warraquim
Second and Chief Medical Officer
formerly of USS Galileo

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