Ensign Kudon - Mission Report

[Sal Taybrim]

((Main Engineering, USS Narendra))

 

After informal debriefings with Galven, Taelon, and other members of the science team, Kudon went to Main Engineering to record his report for the mission, as Galven had requested.  He sat down at a station, further away from technicians currently on duty, so that he could have a bit of privacy.

 

Kudon: Computer, record Engineer Officer Ensign Kudon's mission log, Stardate 239706.22

 

In the mission recently completed, I was assigned with Commander Galven, Lieutenant Bailey, and Ensign Taelon as a team to be responsible for neutralizing Death Fog, which was stored on Vanokth II.  We were further charged with rendering the Death Fog's production facility nonoperational, in order to make the production of additional deadly gas impossible.  Prior to deployment to the planet, here on the Narendra, Ensign Taelon had developed unique Death Fog neutralizers known as Breathers.  I had programmed the Breathers with an algorithm that in pre-deployment testing showed remarkable success at using statistical analysis to detect the Death Fog, using a modified Kalman Filter, specifically an Autoencoder.  When we beamed down to Vankoth II, the algorithm was successful in detecting the presence of Death Fog in two locations, one at the southeast end of the compound and one at the north end.

 

Kudon paused here, feeling the disappointment of the words he had to utter...

 

Unfortunately, while the area of the Death Fog's dispersion was likely accurate, the algorithm failed to be able to fully determine the Death Fog's density and therefore it was impossible to tell which location was the storage facility and the production facility.  Based on pre-deployment testing, this should not have happened.  I will analyze the data later, hopefully with the help of Ensign Taelon, to determine why it failed and if it could be improved for future chemical detection.

 

Kudon paused to breathe again, as his mind shifted to the fighting that took place.  The fear that had gripped him during battle had proved overwhelming, but he would have to save that for his personal log.

 

After we had detected where the gas was at least, we were discovered by several cult members and a major battle ensued.  Commander Galven had ordered that only non-lethal force should be used.  While this was respected by all of us under his command, it was not respected by a non-cult member Klingon named Asoq, who killed a significant number of Molorians, using both a rifle and a dagger.  Little is known about this Klingon, but he claimed to have broken free from cultists who had interrogated him under torture.  His severely disfigured face certainly lent credence to his claim of torture.  He helped lead all of us into the compound, although Ensign Taelon and myself initially, followed by Commander Galven and Lieutenant Bailey. 

 

He wondered if he was remembering all of this correctly.  So many events had happened so face and the fear he had felt certainly may have interfered with his memory.  To the best of his knowledge, the report was correct so far in the events, but was it correct in order?

 

Ensign Taelon, Asoq, and I sent a Breather into the production facility's pipe system with the goal of using it to trigger an explosion that would melt the release valves of the Death Fog.  The idea of melting the valves was Ensign Taelon's.  It was my idea to use a Breather, based on the possibility that connecting the algorithm to the Breather's gas scrubbing mechanism would allow it to separate out the silicon and platinum chloride of the Death Fog, ideally triggering explosive chemical reactions from unchained silicon and organic compounds in the air of the vents.

 

When Commander Galven and Ensign Bailey rejoined us, our plans had to shift because of a countdown breach in the reactor core at the compound.  Commander Galven, having been severely injured, ordered Ensign Bailey and myself to reach the outside of the compound in the hope of finding our fellow officers in the team rescuing Lofsha, the kidnapped Klingon Commander.  Once we were outside, an explosion was triggered, but it is very unlikely that it was caused by the Breather.  Before the explosion, Bailey and I were transported aboard the Klingon ship qulCha’par...The success of this last Breather in isolating silicon or triggering detonation is unknown...I hope to study this further...

 

He had to stop there, not just because it was the end of the story...surely more details could be added, but he felt further disappointment not knowing whether his algorithm had worked in the chemical reactions.  Kudon was in a variety of ways disappointed in his performance.  His algorithm had worked at detecting the Death Fog initially, but it underperformed expectations.  And he had no idea if the second use of the algorithm in triggering an explosion had worked at all.  Then it crept into his mind again how his fear in battle had rattled him so much, leading him to overestimate the chances of success and not think through all the consequences of his decisions.  This had come out in a sudden burst of a sort of confession to Galven down on the planet.  He wanted to process of all his feelings about this in his personal log, but right now it was all too much.  Kudon closed his eyes and took two minutes to do Vulcan meditation.  He opened his eyes and left engineering to find some distraction.     

 

NT

 

Ensign Kudon

Starbase 118 Ops

Engineering Officer

O239703K10