The Happening (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on 29 Jun 2017 @ 8:45pm by Rear Admiral Lirha Saalm & Rear Admiral Harold Doolittle
Edited on on 29 Jun 2017 @ 8:46pm

2,790 words; about a 14 minute read

Mission: Episode 15 - Emanation
Location: Earth - San Francisco, Starfleet HQ, Doolittle's Office
Timeline: MD 08, 0959 hrs

[CONTINUED]

"Survivor's guilt..." Doolittle said with a knowing nod. "I had to deal with that myself on one occasion in particular." He was thinking back to his time aboard the Conrad. They had wound up in combat against some renegade Orions and his CO had been killed. She had not only been his CO but they'd had a long friendship that had started during their academy days. "Have you sought counseling to help you deal with that?"

Counseling. There was probably a healthy dose of that which she would eventually need to deal with, but circumstances hadn't afforded her such a luxury as yet. "No," she plainly replied, locking her green eyes on the other rear admiral. "I've been busy with other priorities -- getting my crew back to Earth, alive."

"You did a good job of that I have to say..." Doolittle admitted. From everything he had read and heard, her methods may have been somewhat unorthodox but she HAD succeeded in bringing many of her crew home. "Once you gave the abandon-ship order, how did that go? Was it orderly or more or less every person for him-or herself?"

As much as the gold-collared admiral's insight might have seemed like a fleet line, or a mandatory acknowledgement of her struggles, Saalm took it to heart for what it was worth. Her biggest fear had not been that of her initial failure to keep Galileo alive, but rather to not fail again in the face of adversity. The Orion held his eyes for a short moment and nodded with appreciation.

"I was on the bridge when I gave the order," she explained with a quick shake of her head. "I can't assume it was orderly...the shockwave from the warp core detonation almost tore us apart. We were too close. What was left of my ship was a hazardous environment for anyone still on board. Multiple hull breaches, ruptured conduits, atmospheric failure..." She fiddled with her thumbs again in her lap. "The officers still on the bridge did their best to get to the lifeboats on Deck 1. I don't know about those below decks. But they were -- are -- all Starfleet-trained, and I know they acted in the best manner."

"Conducting an abandon-ship is never easy even under the best of conditions," Doolittle agreed. "And I would hazard to say that doing it while in the heat of battle would be...disorganized...to say the least." He hesitated for a long moment, trying to decide the best way to ask the next question on his mind. He knew from what she had said earlier that she had been unconscious during the time after the crew had abandoned the Galileo, but perhaps she had been told anything that may have happened afterward.

"Tell me what you know about the time after the lifeboats had been ejected from the ship. Did anything untoward happen? How many were recovered and by what method?"

Everything that Saalm initially knew of the interim period was second-hand knowledge passed down to her by Medara. And even after she'd slowly recovered on the colony, she hasn't been allowed any contact with her crew. The little bits of information she'd managed to source had come from less-than-reliable colonists who'd she bargained favors for in exchange for information about those who'd served under her.

"I know only what Commander Medara told to me, as well as the small pieces of information I was able to obtain from within the colony. Then later, when we were brought together again as a crew, I learned more." The Orion cast her gave up and to the side in a thoughtful manner while she tried to recall all of it. "One of the Kreanan vessels that attacked us was responsible for salvaging the Galileo crew. They used transporters to beam them from their lifepods and onto the ship to take them to the colony. That was...how I was rescued as well. By transporter."

Saalm promptly continued. "Several of my crew claimed they'd been tortured under the oversight of the Klingons aboard the warship that ferried them to the colony. Medara only made passing mention of it, and that was only when the threat of official diplomatic complaints was levied. Later, once I'd been reintroduced to my crew, many of them corroborated the story. Out of the fifty-one that were on board Galileo when she was lost, I counted forty-three that eventually made it back to Earth." Eight too few.

"I was about to ask how many of your crew were lost but you just answered that, so lets move on to something else. How long were you and your crew held on Kreanus?"

Shaking her head to indicate a bit of difficulty recalling, Saalm did her best to give an accurate timeline. "Twenty days, I believe. Perhaps more for me, possibly twenty-one or two."

"During all that time, did anyone make any attempt to escape? You realize that is the duty of any member of Starfleet that is being held against their will?"

"I am sure some of the crew became disillusioned by the situation on the colony. But I was not with them, and I do not know if any such attempt was made," she started to answer before adjusting herself in her seat and looking pointedly at Doolittle. "Admiral, you must first understand the circumstances of the colony. It is a rogue planet with no sun or any other nearby stellar bodies; it lies deep within the Paulson Nebula...a nebula that by all purposes has such strong EM interference that Captain Picard once used it to evade Borg sensors in 2366. Even Galileo -- a Nova-class vessel with the most sophisticated sensors designed exactly for the purpose of charting such phenomena -- could not safely navigate within its confines. Kreanus is a hidden world and will remain so for a long time. Even if someone could somehow commandeer a starship or a shuttlecraft, they would not know how to escape; they would be limited to sub-light propulsion and not know which bearing would properly orient themselves. They would be an ant in a grain silo trying to find its way to daylight with no antennae. There was simply...no where to escape to."

"I see..." Doolittle took a moment to digest what she had just told him about the rogue world. "I suppose the conditions in the nebula would make escape rather difficult at that." He studied the PADD he held for a moment before turning his attention back to the woman in front of him. "Tell me about the encounter with the USS Sentinel..." he said slowly.

And so the question was asked. The one that Lirha knew would probably ruin her career. Her eyes fell down to the tabletop for a brief second before looking back up. "We'd been instructed...requested," she corrected herself, "to help assist with political friction between Kreanus Colony and the Klingon High Council. We were given a Kreanan K't'inga-class battlecruiser and told to infiltrate Klingon space and arrive at Qo'noS to negotiate for an end to hostilities between the High Council and the Kreanans. Along the way, when we were nearing the Neutral Zone, USS Sentinel detected our presence. I ordered our battlecruiser to first evade them, but when that was unsuccessful, we were forced into combat with Captain Matis."

"Please explain if you can how you were forced into battle with the Sentinel." Doolittle was careful to try and keep his tone as neutral as possible. After all it was his duty to go into all this with an open mind and no preconceived opinions. "Were you attacked by them?"

Where to begin...and how best to explain it, she silently pondered. "I suspect our vessel had been sabotaged," she started, "but at the time we were unaware that our primary deflector array was leaking trace amounts of anti-proton particles. Our stealth had been compromised and our presence was detected by Captain Matis' cruiser. We tried adjusting speed and heading while at warp, but he had a steady bearing to our position. We could not hide anymore, and as you know, an Akira-class is a much larger and faster starship than out K't'inga was. That meant we could not flee, either."

Saalm paused and recalled the encounter in the Beta Tauri system. "We received a broadband hail from Captain Matis instructing us to power down and reveal ourselves. But that was also not an option if we were to complete the mission we'd been assigned. My first officer and second officer devised a plan to use a nearby star system to confront Sentinel and discharge the excess anti-proton particles through our deflector array to blind Matis' sensor arrays and allow us to escape. That required a close encounter."

She lightly shifted in her chair once again and reached up to push a stray lock of dark hair from her green cheek and back behind her ear. "With Sentinel closing on us, we dropped out of warp in the Beta Tauri system. He repeated his hail to us demanding our surrender and that we reveal ourselves. We -- I -- maintained communications silence, and then he fired high-energy burst torpedoes on our position that revealed us and compromised our cloak. At that point I had no choice but to engage him and discharge our modified anti-proton beam on his vessel."

"So you're saying that the Sentinel fired on you first?" Doolittle wanted to be sure he had all the facts straight concerning the encounter between the Klingon ship and the Sentinel. "Who gave the order to return fire?"

"Sentinel fired on us with a low-yield photon torpedo salvo to expose our battlecruiser, yes," she verified. "I then gave the order to disable their deflector array and impulse engines to allow us to escape."

"So what happened after you returned fire?" Doolittle asked. For a Starfleet captain to attack a Starfleet ship without just cause unless his - or in this case, her - situation was deemed to be due to extenuating circumstances, they could be facing some extremely unpleasant times. "Please walk me through that.'

"We took heavy fire while closing to discharge the anti-proton burst. I'd ordered shields to be reinforced until we could blind their sensor arrays. Once we accomplished that, Sentinel's targeting scanners were useless. Our battlecruiser's attack pattern took us directly astern of Captain Matis' starship...this allowed us to fire into his impulse exhaust manifolds and disable their sub-light engines." Saalm quickly remembered the means by which she was able to accomplish the feat. "I ordered our disruptor frequencies to match those of Sentinel's shield modulation. It was not difficult to retrieve the modulation from the Starfleet uplink."

"One final question - If you had it to do over again, is there anything you would do differently and if so what would it be...?" Then he sat back and waited to see what her answer would be.

It was a question that Lirha'd long pondered during many recent sleepless night. And in the process of doing so, it'd taken her to a dark place full or regret, shame, and remorse. She didn't want to have to answer any of it out loud, or even entertain the thoughts she privately held.

"I cannot answer that, admiral," she answered with a definitive shake of her head. "Everything could have been done differently -- and yet nothing could have been done differently. I've...tried to make peace with myself for the orders I gave and the actions I took to get my crew home alive. None of us are Q so it serves no purpose to assume such a temporal condition could exist. I made the decisions I felt were the best at every moment in time." She took a soft breath and looked down to the silver table in front of them.

It was the answer he had been halfway expecting - and truth be told, probably the same thing he would have said had he been in her shoes. The truth of the matter was that nothing could be changed and he accepted her answers for what they were - the telling of what had happened both leading up to the destruction of the Galileo and the events afterwards.

"Before we're finished here, do you have any questions or anything you wish to add?"

"No," she was quick to reply, "but I assume you will remember in your official report that I -- as captain of both Galileo and DuJa'Q assume full responsibility for the actions of my crew? As well as their conduct while they were detained on Kreanus Colony." The last thing she wanted was for one of her officers or NCOs to suffer for any transgressions during their time in captivity. At the end of the day, she was responsible for all of them.

"That is duly noted," he said as he continued to add to his PADD. "I know I said earlier it was my last question but I do have one more thing to ask which has absolutely nothing to do with this investigation. I had occasion to speak to your sister Nesh and found her to be a very mature and articulate young lady. I know she has submitted her resignation to the Academy but my feeling is that it would be a definite loss to Starfleet to lose her. Do you think there is any possibility of getting her to rescind her resignation?"

Lirha's eyes widened slightly. "Mature and articulate...?" she repeated, wondering if Doolittle was referring to the same woman. All that aside, however, the older Orion understood the gist of the man's statement. "It's possible, I suppose. Maybe. But if we're being honest...between the both of us...much of it will depend on the official judgement for my actions." There was only so much a request for influence could take a person before the organizational bureaucracy overcame it. Or so thought Lirha.

"In that case I'd say we're done here, Admiral..." Doolittle said as he stood and extended his hand to her once again. "Just remember that you are to not speak of anything we've discussed here with anyone else and if anyone tries to question you about these proceedings with you, then you are to report them immediately to myself or one of the other admirals."

"Yes, of course." Saalm shook the larger man's hand in reciprocation. "One request, admiral," she added. "I wish my crew to be free from any," what was the term? "social restrictions." Lirha looked candidly into Doolittle's eyes before elaborating. "We have all been through some of the worst circumstances any Starfleet crew member could imagine. Now that we have finally returned to Earth, we are not allowed to see each other or speak to one another -- the same people who we relied upon for strength and camaraderie to get us through these events." Her voice took a bit of an edge, one that was forceful and emanated her experiences of a commanding officer. "Protocols aside, you have gotten your answers and questioned all of us by now. Let myself and my crew spend time with one another. They deserve that much, at least."

Doolittle considered her request for a long moment before responding. "Personally I would have no objection to it with one caveat," he said, choosing his words carefully. "That would be that you impress upon your crew that there is to be absolutely no discussion about these happenings as this is still an ongoing investigation. I also suggest that you broach this subject to the others involved in this investigation for their approval as well. If you need to, you may tell them that I have no objections to it." Then, taking his seat once again, he added "If you have nothing else to add, then you are dismissed."

"I agree to your terms," the Orion answered. "But as for this 'investigation'," it was the first time the official term had been used, "I have already approached you with my request. I will leave it in your domain to relay to your fellow investigators."

With finality, Saalm rose from her chair and tugged her pant legs down. She cast a final neutral glance at Doolittle before heading out of room, and departed unceremoniously with a simple soft wish of the door.

[OFF]

--

RADM Harold J. Doolittle
Starfleet Bureau of Personnel
Starfleet Command

RADM Lirha Saalm
Commanding Officer
USS Galileo

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