What it means

Posted on 28 Oct 2018 @ 4:10pm by Lieutenant Lake ir-Llantrisant

887 words; about a 4 minute read

Previously, on "Launch Party"...

They say any party you can hear from next door is a party you don’t want to miss. This was especially true of the Galileo-A’s launch celebration, because this party was literally overflowing into the corridors outside the mess hall. The corridors were decorated identically to the mess hall itself: the overhead lighting was dimmed and was supplemented by red alert and blue alert flashes at irregular intervals. The furniture options were minimal, leaving room for adequate flow and dancing. Instead of furniture, there were overlapping wall hangings haphazardly stuck to every bulkhead: Tellarite fertility totems, Andorian weapons, Vulcan meditation mandalas, signage from Vega Colony, and even a mechanical bull. Like the decor, the music was a diverse overlap of several Federation cultures, including Vulcan trap music coming from the embedded communications system, Human dance beats from select LCARS companels, and Crewman Draia Thero singing Andorian punk classics on a stage in the corner of the mess hall.

The aggressive, clashing reverie of the United Federation of Planet’s diversity was a homage to Vega Colony. This was made especially evident by the servers wearing Starfleet jumpsuits from the 2100s to honour the original establishment of Vega Colony, back in the day. The servers' trays were filled with delicacies sourced from the replicator patterns of the most well-renowned restaurants in Vega City. If you asked the architect of this celebration, he would tell you he chose the UFP diversity of Vega Colony as the theme, because that was where the original starship Galileo ended its first mission. At least, that’s what he said to anybody who had been there. To anyone else, he added that Vega Colony was where Galileo had landed, dead in the water, at the close of her first mission.



[ON]

Lake ir-Llantrisant’s Personal Log, Stardate 68597.2

He told me a story, once. Andreus Kohl did.

This was back during the days we were intimate; when we thought everything would always go right. He told me about the first steps taken by the original USS Galileo. He told me of Galileo’s origin, long before I ever thought such things would be meaningful to me. I felt settled aboard Starbase 74, back then. Galileo was just another starship lost; I couldn't have imagined it would become my home. Kohl couldn’t tell me the details of what happened, not the precise details. Confidentiality and Starfleet Intelligence and all of those things prevented him, and he probably told me too much as it was. Kohl told me about his first mission aboard the ship, which was Galileo’s first tour of duty. He told me the mission was cloaked in secrecy, something about experimental technology and rogue Klingons coming to take the tech from Starfleet. The ship escaped the Klingons through the aid of the technology, tearing into the skies above Vega Colony.

Kohl told me about those first moments -- his first moments -- when he recognized he had survived the Klingons, had survived the dangerous transit. He was free falling, somewhere between the deck and the overhead in Sickbay. His head was throbbing and he didn’t know which way was up. Through the flashes of red alert and the emergency lighting, Kohl could barely make sense of his surroundings. There was a tornado of images crossing his field of vision -- a diversity of broken tools and equipment, patients from a multitude of Federation species and Starfleet departments, even Commander Blake, and LCARS emergency telltales shouting out from any subsystem that had survived better than the artificial gravity. Kohl told me of his first waking thought. Before he knew where he was, before he remembered his duty, Kohl told me he felt an overpowering urge to dance.

When Captain Saalm asked me to prepare a launch party for Galileo, to prepare a teamstart for the entire crew, I remembered this story Kohl told me. I remembered how this story made me feel, and that's how I wanted the party to feel. From what I've gathered from counseling the crew, I understand the Klingons and secrecy were responsible for the death of the old Galileo and I hoped it might be cathartic to remember a time when Klingons and secrecy had ended better for the crew. When it had gone right. I hoped it might be cathartic to remember Vega Colony, and the beacon of hope it offered to the crew at the end of Galileo's first successful mission.

I think... I think the party was well-received. I think I need it to have been well received. I need something to go right. I need this mission to be a new start. My assignment to USS Hathaway was harrowing enough. I was being haunted by the ghost of a space-sailor, which heralded the death of my ex-husband. And then on Schofield, I was lost on that strange new world... I thought... I really thought I was going to... I mean, I've been on dangerous missions before, but this was different. I was certain I was going to...

Nevermind. Time for something to go right.

Computer, end log.

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