OSI Interview: Staff Sergeant Rhiannon O'Connor

Posted on Tue Apr 30th, 2019 @ 11:19pm by Staff Sergeant Rhiannon O'Connor & Special Agent Mathew Richards & Special Agent Mark Badger

Mission: Interlude 1
Location: Cheyenne Mountain: Project New Dawn (Conference Room)
Timeline: Current

"Welcome, Sergeant O'Connor," Matthew said, skipping the formalities. "Please, have a seat and relax. This is just going to be a friendly conversation for the time being. At the moment, there's no need to worry. Just be as honest as possible, alright?"

"Yessir," Ree replied. She took a seat at the table. "What would you like to know, sir?"

"Straight to the point and no bullshit," Matthew said. "I like you already. Okay, let's start with your activities before the mission. After you found out you were going, did you communicate with anyone outside of Project New Dawn about the mission, or maybe just tell an individual you were going out of town? Did you post something like that on a social media platform? Facebook? Twitter? Anything like that?"

"Nope," Ree said. "I'm really careful about what I share on Facebook and what I Tweet. I don't even really like Twitter. And besides, I can't share the really interesting stuff I do, so when I do share things on Facebook or Twitter, it's usually something boring. And I don't tell anyone my schedule. The only thing I've told people is that I may have to go away on a moment's notice and be away for an unknown amount of time, and that only to my parents and close relatives."

"Great," Matt said. They'd checked everyone electronic footprint, so he knew Ree was telling the truth about her communications via email, phone call, text, and social media. "And you didn't talk to anyone in person about it?"

"As far as I can remember, only people cleared to know," Ree said. "There wasn't really a whole lot of time between when General Wolf dismissed the briefing and when we went through the gate."

"Thank you," Matt said. "That's what we thought." He looked at Mark and nodded.

"Sergeant O'Connor, I'm going to have you go through what happened once you left on the mission to when you got back. Straight forward, don't concentrate on one particular element, we'll ask if anything needs clarification, okay? In the meantime, can Johnson get you anything? Beverage, something to eat?"

"No thanks," Ree said. "I'm hyper enough without drinking extra cups of coffee and the way Mama doles out the vittles I don't need much outside of meals, either. So, ask away."

Mark repeated his request to the Staff Sergeant for a verbal summary of the events of the mission, then they waited while she did the recap. "Did you have any reason to suspect the CDC people weren't real?" Badger asked. "Before or after Corvus brought it up?"

"Not really," Ree said. "I mean, it was kinda weird, them showing up like that, I guess. But by that time I was, Crow and were both not ourselves. I mean, it was kind of hard to tell with Crow--Sergeant Corvus--because he can be a real doofus when he's trying to prove his not a doofus at normal times, but yeah, now that I think about it, he was even worse. And I--do I have to give you details about my behavior? It's kind of embarrassing. I know people think I'm a spaz now, but I was worse before I joined the Air Force, and that's about where I was mentally by the time the CDC folks showed up. Or I guess I should say the bogus CDC people. What was up with that, anyway? I got a good look at their gear. If you asked to swear in court how certain I was that was real US government issue medical equipment, I say--well--I'd say pretty damned sure. The General is sending some SFs to go gather it all up later this week. You guys should send somebody, too."

"We are," Matt said. "So it wouldn't surprise you then if I told you they actually were once Epidemic Intelligence Service Officers with the CDC?"

"No shit?" Ree said. "I mean, yeah, I'm surprised, because, you know, how the Hell did they get there? But--no. I looked at their stuff. I'd swear it was the real thing. They used to be CDC?"

"Yep," Matt said. "But they all disappeared within the last decade and they've all been presumed dead until now...well, now we know they're dead, but we still don't know what they've been up to since they disappeared. So, you, Shae, and Corvus were interacting with the kids at the gate after the rest of the team when to the altar, right? While you were there, was there any gate activity to suggest that someone was sending or receiving transmissions through the gate, prior to Sergeant Corvus reporting in to PND? Did you have any communication with anyone through the gate during that time?"

"Well," Ree said. "I was thinking of ordering pizza for everyone, or Chinese, cuz Shae likes Chinese, but I figured we were a little out of the delivery area--sorry! I nervous and when I get nervous I'm act like a wiseass! No, I didn't call anyone, none of us three did, none of the kids, and the gate was closed until we called in."

"Where you present when Asher stated Wolf wouldn't send anybody else through the Gate until the problem was resolved?" Badger asked.

"Yup," Ree replied. "What of it? And actually, what what Major Asher said was that Wolf would trust us to solve the problem and that he wouldn't expect Wolf to ask, and definitely not order, people to go to P3X-842 just to die. He didn't say that Wolf wouldn't explain the situation and then accept volunteers. That's probably what the Major probably thought had happened when the bogus CDC folks showed up."

"Sergeant," Badger said, "If I wanted you to provide conjecture, I'd ask for it. Now, is it fair to say you've served with Major Asher for a long time?"

"I got accepted into 24th Special Tactics squadron about two years ago," Ree said. "I did something tremendously stupid in Afghanistan, and instead of dying, I got a Bronze Star, a promotion to Staff Sergeant, and an invitation to join 24th STS. I did some operations with Major Asher, he was a Captain then, and with Sergeant Hassan and Sergeant Mantelli. General Wolf, he was a Colonel then, he commanded the 724th STG, which the 24th is technically under, so I knew who he was, too, though of course, he was a Code Six, Code Seven now, and I'm just an E-5, so it's not like we were best buds or anything. Besides, 24th STS spends most of it's time with JSOC. Uh, so I guess the short answer to your question is that I served with Major Asher for about two years before we came over here."

"In the time you've served with Asher," Badger asked, "Have you known him to be careless or distracted?"

"No, sir," Ree replied. "But then again, the teams he led when I worked with him in 24th STS were all military, all with similar training, and we all trained together regularly. If it had been the Major, Hassan, Mantelli, and me, everything would have gone off like clockwork, because we all know how to do our jobs and we know we can count on each other. The Major wouldn't have needed to be everywhere at once. In this case, he had me, who he knew, but then he had Corvus and Hawk who were pretty much unknowns to him, then he had four civilians, one of them was Doctor Andrews, who on our first mission went totally off the rails, so he had serious trust issues with her. We'll get better with time. I know you said no commentary, but I'm not going to just give you yes or no answers with no explanation. If you want to write me up for insubordination go right ahead. My record can take the hit."

"Easy, Sergeant," Matt said. "You're record can definitely take the hit, but why go through all of that? Continue, Mark."

"First, Sergeant, I said no conjecture, not commentary. Which I get the feeling you'd explode if you couldn't do and second, I'm not military so it's not insubordination. Obstruction, maybe, but not insubordination. But back to the topic at hand, you're saying any issues with Asher not discovering the ruse of the CDC people comes from him being spread too thin?"

"Yes," Ree said. "In my opinion, yes." What an idiot. All OSI agents go by Special Agent, even the Commissioned Officer Agents and the Enlisted Agents. How the fuck am I supposed to know which one he is? Isn't that the whole point of going by Special Agent? So no one knows if they outrank one of the military agents or not, or whether a civilian agent's GS rating is higher or lower than their military rank?

"We've also heard testimony that suggests Staff Sergeant Corvus may have known more than he let on. Considering that he waited to tell Major Asher his suspicions, that he allowed himself to be taken out of combat before he could 'reveal' his discovery to Asher and convoluted events with his lies to you regarding the medical situation, do you feel we should be looking harder at him for the source of the leak?"

Rhiannon rolled her eyes. "No," she said. "Stuff unfolded--more like collapsed--very quickly. The fake CDC docs arrived, Shae ran off, Major Asher walked three of the fake CDC docs down to the camp, we told him Shae had run off, he went to try and bring her back and left us in the hands of 'Captain' Valenti and the other two doctors. THEN Jeremy interacted with the doctors and THEN he began to suspect there was a problem. Somewhere in there I ran off and Valenti had to send Jeremy to bring me back, because I was all hyper-emotional from the regression infection. Then there was the wolf attack. Then Jeremy hatched and acted out his dumbass plan with the wolf bite and the antibiotics and shooting holes in the CDC people's tent. Then the Major showed up to talk to Jeremy because Jeremy had asked him to come down when the wolf attack was over. Then the Major and I had to figure out what the Hell Jeremy was talking about, because he wasn't being clear at first, then the Major had a chance to mull over what Jeremy told him, which he did quickly, and decide that the CDC people might be Jaffa. Then he was trying to figure out how he was going to neutralize them without killing them, since we weren't 100% sure what we were dealing with, with one of his shooters down and the other three spread between the camp and the Altar. Then Andrews did whatever she did. Then we got taken out. So Jeremy only had the chance to tell Major Asher about his suspicions right before we got KO'd."

"That clears things up a little bit, thank you, Sergeant." Badger said. "Your CO and teammates are very lucky to have you around. Is there anything else you can think we should know that we haven't yet talked about."

"Nope," Ree said. "Uh... do you need anything else? Or can I go? Sir."

"I'm good, Richards?" Badger threw it back to the supervisor.

"I'm good," Matt said. "You're dismissed, Sergeant."

Ree nodded. She started to leave, then stopped to say something before she made her exit. "We may give you guys at OSI a hard time and I know that we can get really defensive sometimes, but we appreciate that you guys are watching our backs. We may grouse about it, but we appreciate it."

Matt smiled. "Thank you, Sergeant. We'll keep that in mind."

Ree nodded, then left the conference room.

"Anything you need to bring up before we take a break, Mark?" Matt asked after Ree had made her exit.

"There is not enough coffee in the world to get me through writing these reports," Badger said, gathering the files and putting them into his bag. "What do you say we grab some lunch before heading back to the Dungeon?" Badger stopped. "Or, since we're inside a mountain, would it be a cave?"

Matt chuckled and gather his stuff. "I don't know," he said. "What do Badgers live in?"

"Well, this desert Badger is worried he'll never stop living in deep drifts of snow," Mark said, slinging the bag. "But, holes, usually. Nasty tempered little things living in holes. Let's go find Brick then see if the kitchen staff is going to weep when they see him come through the chow line again."