The Rabbit Hole Goes Even Deeper

Posted on 23 Jun 2017 @ 9:00am by Vice Admiral Colin McDermott & Chief Petty Officer Crispin Snow
Edited on on 23 Jun 2017 @ 3:47pm

3,716 words; about a 19 minute read

Mission: Episode 15 - Emanation
Location: Earth - San Francisco, Starfleet Headquarters
Timeline: MD 02, 1400

[ON]

"Petty Officer Second Class Snow:" the message that had arrived in Snow's email had begun.

"The Board of Inquiry into the loss of USS Galileo requires your presence for an interview in Room E-1201 of Starfleet Headquarters at 1400 local time. Report to the board in your Class B duty uniform, unarmed. You will be depositing your PADD outside, and may be subject to search for surveillance devices.

"For the Board,
Commander James Aronson
Starfleet Personnel Command"

The room itself was standard, annoyingly so. There were no windows. The brightly lit room had a table, behind which Vice Admiral McDermott sat, flanked by two other officers, as well as a lone chair for the interviewee. Security personnel stood outside the door.

It was to this that Crispin Snow was summoned.

He arrived promptly, and neatly pressed. The security guards outside the door admitted him to the meeting room, and Snow took in the carefully neutral expressions in front of him. "Petty Officer Snow, reporting as ordered." He waited for instruction to sit.

"At ease, Petty Officer. One moment while I finish setting everything up," McDermott replied. "Computer, begin secure recording and transcription of Galileo Interview Two, subject Snow, encrypted at SEABASS protocol under authorization McDermott Tango Omicron Five."

The computer beeped and replied, "Recording and transcription begun."

With that, a human female (in a uniform with command red trim, wearing the pips of a Commander) who was sitting at the table spoke. "Petty Officer, before you sit. Please state your rank, name, service number, and last position of assignment for the record."

"Petty Officer Second Class Crispin Snow, Uniform Charlie Five Three One One Seven Four Six. Operations officer, USS Galileo".

At Snow's response, the Commander nodded. "Computer, verify identity of claimed individual against Starfleet biometric records," she ordered. The computer beeped. "Identity verified: Petty Officer Second Class Crispin Snow, Starfleet Service Number Uniform Charlie Five Three One One Seven Four Six, confirmed."

To that, the Commander nodded. "Petty Officer, please raise your right hand. Do you swear that the evidence you shall give in the matter now under investigation shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?"

"I do." So far, so easy. Anything else was likely to be a lot harder.

"The witness has now been sworn in. Petty Officer, you may sit. Admiral, you may begin," the Commander intoned.

"Thank you, Commander. Petty Officer, starting from the departure of USS Galileo from Celes III on 13 December 2390, please tell us what you recall of the events leading up to the destruction of USS Galileo," McDermott began.

"About seven days after leaving Celes III we intercepted a distress call originating from the Paulson Nebula. We were under the impression it was a very old call, the ship in question, the SS Recluse, had been missing for years. Due to the nature of the nebula, sensors were going to be severely impaired. I spent the next few hours helping the science team refit the sensors to increase performance. About twenty four hours after receiving the call, the Admiral sounded general quarters prior to entering the nebula." Snow paused, in case the panel had questions.

McDermott nodded. "And what did it turn out to be? The Recluse, or something else?"

"A bit of both." Snow replied, so far the hearing was going very smoothly. Long may that continue. "Turned out it was Recluse. But she'd been commandeered by Klingons. and they'd brought friends. I know just from the issues we had with the inertial dampeners red-lining that there were some sort of evasive maneuvers. I don't know the details. We took some hits, and I was acting as damage control, trying to keep the circuity working. Then we got boarded by Klingons."

"Boarded?" McDermott looked surprised. "I am presuming the Galileo had her shields up. Am I correct?" Or had the Galileo's command staff made an error that basic?

"Not by that point. As I said, we'd taken several hits, and had lost shields. I was working on relaying some EPS conduit to replace what had been burnt out when the Klingons arrived. I was on deck four at the time, but I understand there were multiple entry points." In the early days on Kreanus, he'd spent more than a few nights talking with various survivors as they'd all tried to make sense of what had happened, piecing together the whole story.

"Understood. So the Klingons managed to board, and I take it the fight didn't turn out well, but how close of a fight was it?"" McDermott inquired, leaning forward.

"I really don't know, sir. But the security team was pretty much taken down. Commander Wiggins didn't make it. Commander Wyatt nearly died. All of the others were very badly injured. I believe they killed most of them." The Starfleet people were on home turf, fighting for their life. It had given them the much needed edge. It was ultimately futile, but they couldn't have know that at the time.

"Nobody besides the security team had training or ability to defend against hostile boarders?" McDermott asked. "I don't mean that aggressively, but if there's a gap in Starfleet's training, we need to know that."

"We're a science ship, sir.," Snow shifted, balancing his urge for total candidness with the need to not cheek the brass and settled on the career preserving path. "Filled with technicians and theorists and academics. And even if we weren't, everyone was busy trying to hold the ship together long enough to either get away, or to launch the lifeboats before it all went south. Until the abandon ship was sounded, everyone I was working with kept at their post, and let security do their job. If we hadn't the chances are the whole ship would have broken up under us a lot earlier."

This got no reaction from the Admiral. Only another question. "And so the Klingons had boarded you and were, it sounds like, killing all who stood in their way. At what point was the decision to abandon ship made?"

"I'm not exactly sure, sir. I wasn't on the Bridge. But we had just jettisoned the warp care and had it explode fifty meters off our aft keel. There wasn't much left of us at that point. The Admiral made the announcement about thirty seconds after that." Not being up there he had no idea if the decision had been made sooner and it took a while, or Lirha had held on till the bitter end. The hushed conversations he'd had afterwards had reached no conclusions.

"I understand. And what was the atmosphere like after that, in terms of the crew's reaction? Obviously some fear, maybe some panic, but was it an organized evacuation or, well, not an organized evacuation?" Unspoken: Did Galileo go down with dignity and an orderly evacuation, or was it a pell-mell rush for the escape pods and every being for themselves?

Snow thought about. Yes it had been crazy with half the ship non functional but, "I'd say orderly. Everyone who wanted off, got off. We had no gravity at the end, which made it tricky for some, but we got there. I was able to collect my room mate's dependent. Dr. Voutilainen even managed to pick up her pets and secrete them on her person."

McDermott is nodding along until the mention of the pets. Then he stops. "That evacuation sounds almost leisurely in pace. How quickly did it happen?" He asks. "Also...everyone who wanted off? There were people who didn't evacuate when ordered to?"

Snow shifted, crossing his legs so his left ankle rested on right knee. "Once the order was given, I don't think I was on the ship longer than two minutes, and I wasn't the first off. Or the last. I wouldn't call it leisurely. But Galileo is small. Was. You're never more than a deck and a few feet at most from a lifeboat." He moved on to the second questions, "As to the other thing. You understand that I'm getting this third hand, after the fact. But I was told the Admiral Saalm intended to go down with the ship, and one of my officers, Ensign Alexander, stayed with her to trigger the self destruct."

This gets a nod. "And yet the Admiral obviously didn't die. Do you know for a fact whether the Galileo was actually destroyed, or could we be dealing with a ship the Klingons managed to stop the auto-destruct on?" McDermott asked.

Snow considered. They had all seen it from the escape pods. "We saw her go. From the escape pods. She was already half gone. It was just to make sure the computer core was gone." He thought some more. "I guess in an infinitely diverse universe its possible they could have stopped it. But I'd stake my life on her being destroyed. I think the Kreanans tried to salvage it though. They can reuse just about anything that can take a molecular bond."

"That worries me, Petty Officer. But if the computer core is gone, that makes our worries a lot fewer," McDermott replied. "Now, let's talk about once the pods launched. Tell me what happened then."

"The Klingons beamed us all aboard. I don't know if they tractored any of the lifeboats, but most of us were beamed onto a Bird of Prey, and taken to their Brig. They had two large holding cells and squeezed us all in. It was cramped and it was smelly." Snow remembered the conditions. it was possibly an understatement, especially at the end of the four days they had taken to get to the exo-planet itself.

"I can imagine. So the crew is taken aboard the Bird of Prey. And then?"

"The Klingon General came to grandstand. To be fair I don't really recall what he said, but Dr Warraquim spoke for us. HE agreed to let us have medical aid, let us have basic supplies. Over the course of the next few days, several of the crew were singled out for ... intense questioning. " Snow remembered it all to vividly, the attempts to keep people back. "They took Dr Voutailenen. The Assistant Head of Ops, Lieutenant Khoroushi. Greg Mitchell from security, and the pilot, Ensign Derani. They all came back...damaged." Snow's eyes had gone colder than his name, and his smooth pleasent voice, and comfortable, feintly smug air seemed to be covering something far more unpleasent.

McDermott wasn't one for euphemisms, not in this case. "They were tortured?" He asked, directly. "Petty Officer, I don't think you're intending anything untoward, but it does us no good if you aren't direct and clear about what happened. If you can, describe how they came back damaged, how they were damaged."

"I've not spoken directly about it to any of them, sir. I assuming it was torture, but if you want the truth only they can give it to you." Snow shifted in his chair. It seemed so long ago now. "They all came back with burns somewhere or other, probably from a pain stick. There were cuts and bruises on their wrists, and marks on their necks, looked like they'd been stabbed with some sort of needle. Dr Voutailenen came back unconscious and didn't come round until we got to the medical facilities at Kreanus, such as they were. Noah, Lieutenet Khoroushi, had a burn on his Adam's apple the size of my palm and couldn't talk."

"I see. What more can you tell me about your time aboard the Klingon vessel?" McDermott asked.

"Very little. They left us alone, other than that. Rations were thin, but we made do." He wasnt going to mention the tribbles. Unleashing those two had been amusing but he wasnt go to drop Tuula in it. "We yended the wounded as best we cpuld, tried to piece things together, speculate on what they wanted and where we were going."

"Okay. Keep going, then; the idea is that I need to get from when the Galileo was lost to when you all returned back to Federation control aboard the Chaka, and you need to fill in the blanks with as much detail as you possibly can," McDermott explained. "Don't leave anything out, no matter how minor. We've had seemingly absurdly minor things completely change the course of investigations before."

Snow paused. It was a very long story. He wasn't sure he could even summarise. He could only give as much as he could remember, so he began.

"They took us to a planet, one without a sun, a barely functioning ball of ice that only had an atmosphere because the ice had frozen over it. Somehow, the original settlers had managed to bore a tunnel down to the core, which was just about barely warm. And we were taken in via that tunnel. I didn't know it at the time, but I saw it when we left.

"When we reached Kreanus it was obvious from the very beginning that the whole place was built of spit and sawdust. It was a patchwork of a dozen different styles and systems scavenged from failed ships and whatever flotsam and jetsam they could find. And it was very very cold. We were taken to the colony commander, and I know that she, Medara, I don't recall her full name, had an argument with Ko'raH. She apologised for his actions, but said we couldn't leave. She hoped we would help build up the colony.

"Over the next few days we met up with other Federation people who'd been marooned there, and got to know the colony. Most of us helped out where we could. If anyone tells you they used us as slave labor, they're lying. There wasn't any compulsion. But the work was very very dull, breaking up ice for water, or stripping down dead vessels for parts and spares.

McDermott nodded. "This went on for a few months. How come nobody tried to escape, to get back to Federation control? You're taught in your initial entry training upon joining Starfleet, in boot camp, that's job one if you're held by hostile forces. You don't just survive, you're supposed to attempt escape if at all possible."

Snow reached out to the jug of water on the table, and poured himself a glass, to give himself time to chose his words carefully. "We were all carefully watched. Access to working ships wasn't permitted. I believe our pilot managed to get into a ship just to check it was functioning and this got the man supervising her into a lot of trouble. And there was a small fleet hovering just outside the planet too. They would have blown us up before we got half an AU. It seemed the best way to get away would be to do as they want. We knew from the beginning they needed us for something, so we bided our time."

"OK, fair enough. Keep going on with the chronological tale, then." McDermott asked.

"We'd been there maybe ten days? I admit I lost track of time a bit, when we were all brought together, and Dr Warraquim, who was our ranking officer, introduced us to the ranking Starfleet officer on Kreanus, Commander Ban, and told us that our mission was to go to Qu'onos and negotiate with the Klingon High Command. Apparently Klingons have been raiding into Federation Space looking for General Kora'H. We were supposed to ask them to stop. If we agreed, went to Klingon Space and negotiated a cessation of hostility, we would be permitted to go home."

"OK, keep going." McDermott nodded.

"So we all got on the Klingon ship, Duja'Q, which was when it was revealed that the general who was to command the mission wasn't Ko'raH, but Lirha Saalm. I've not spoken to her so I don't know how she survived, but prevalently she did. She survived, and was working with the Kreanans."

"Oh? Do you have any reason to believe she was coerced or under duress?" McDermott asked.

Snow sipped his water. He was just a petty officer. He hadn't spoken to the admiral directly. "Speculation. We were all under duress. And she wpuld have lost her ship, crew members, and," he paused again. This was starting to skirt areas he had no rights to discuss. "And i dont know if it was due to injuries, or thr Kreanans decided to take thongs into their own hands, but she lost her babies. That would traumatize any woman."

"Indeed it would, Petty Officer. Now, a more specific question. Not all that long after the timeline says the Galileo crew got to Kreanus, a Starfleet ship, the USS Sentinel, was attacked in the vicinity of the Paulson Nebula. Can you help us shed any light upon it?" McDermott asked.

Snow froze for a small moment mid sip, then put his glass down. "Not our finest hour." He wasn't going to lie to an Admiral with more pips than any other person he'd ever met. "We were responsible for that. Though I'm not sure what I can tell you as I wasn't on the bridge. But to be fair, they did shoot first."

"....I see." This is obviously not what McDermott expected to hear. "Do you know if your crew made any attempt to communicate with the Sentinel?"

There was only one answer to that. "No, sir, I do not." Things had been tense on DuJa'Q after they had attacked one of their own, and no one had really talked about that shameful episode.

"I see. Do you have any idea why it was done?"

"As I understand it, we were trying to sneak past, and they kept chasing us. There was a fault with the cloaking device, so they managed to lock on. We were just trying to avoid them." Which was the absolute truth. the last thing any of them had wanted was to have to fire on their own people, "The Romulan's had disengaged the communications system, so talking wasn't an option. I managed to get fifteen minutes to look at it on the voyage, to try and get a message out, but the whole thing was so jury rigged, double blinded and protected, that without knowing what was what I would have certainly alerted the Klingons and the Romulan watchdog. And possibly blown up the entire ship."

"Good to know," McDermott replied. "You couldn't have used the ship's running lights or something though? Old-style morse code is, after all, still taught in the Academy for a reason. Not meaning to be accusatory, mind, but...Let's just say that 'why didn't you break out any means of comms you could think of' is a necessary question to my mind."

SNow sipped at his water again. It was a good question. given how many brains had been on the ship, someone should have thought of it. Why hadn't they? "At the time, we were busy trying to maintain the shields and fix the cloak. Its easy to say we could have done more with hindsight, but at the time, we were all just scrambling to get away before it all went pearshaped."

"Fair point. Like I said, though, my job to cover everything someone who needs to read the inquiry report could think of," McDermott noted. "Now, OK...I've heard from previous interviews about a mutiny aboard that Klingon ship. No word about who was mutinying against who or why. Obviously, if there's a mutiny aboard a ship crewed even in part by Starfleet personnel...that is of concern, let's say that much. Can you give me a bit of insight?"

"I don't know much myself, I'm afraid. I know that the Klingon XO we'd been assigned, Chorag, was the ring leader. His loyalties were actually with Ko'raH, rather than Kreanus. But not all Klingons were with him. Ambassador Varro and I were in engineering at the time, and when some of Chorag's men came to take engineering, we got a welcome rescue from some of the other Klingons." Snow poured some more water. "As far as I know, only one of us was involved. I understand that Chorag managed to bring the pilot in on it. How or why they went to her, I don't know. But I doubt she went willingly."

"Good to know. Especially letting us know she might have been under duress." McDermott reassured the Petty Officer. "Now, is there anything from the rest of the journey - from the Klingon ship to the Romulan ship, until you all were picked up by the Chaka - you can tell me?"

"There's nothing really to report. The Romulans were waiting for us. They'd engineered all of it of course, but we weren't really there long enough to do or learn anything of interest." Snow finished his glass of water, they had come to the end, though he knew the admiral had barely begun to scratch the surface of everything that had happened in the last few months.

"Fair enough." McDermott looked down at a PADD where he'd been taking notes, and tapped on it a few times. "OK then, Petty Officer. Thank you for your cooperation. We're done here. The no-contact order remains in effect until you hear otherwise, however. Until we've worked out the counterintelligence implications of this whole situation, your security clearance has been suspended - you'll be working on unclassified logistics matters at Starfleet Command. Hopefully, that'll be temporary, until the investigation is completed and the next steps have been decided upon. You may feel free to move about Earth, but if you leave San Francisco, you need to tell Starfleet Security so they can track you down if needed, and you may not go off-planet. If you have no questions, then, you're dismissed."

Snow stood. Being assigned some low value, low responsibility, work was absolutely fine with him. He was in no rush to get back to high stakes tasks right now. "Yes, sir, thank you sir." He came to attention, held it the acceptable long second, and then turned smartly, escaping into the cool spring afternoon.

[OFF]

--

VADM Colin McDermott
Chief of Starfleet Personnel
Starfleet Command

PO2 Crispin Snow
Operations officer
[PNPC Derani]

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