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The Quasar Crisis (A Masterverse Prequel Story)
sander233
Member Posts: 3,992 Arc User
Update: I've figured out a workaround to the issue that was preventing me from pasting in entire chapters. The story goes on!
disclaimer: This story began as an entry for ULC: 9.3 "Infection" and then I decided to incorporate 9.2 "Old Flame." And then I got bad case of real life that sidelined me from writing anything for a while. But the cogs of creativity were still running in my head, and by the time I came back to this the concept had evolved to the point where it couldn't be contained by a ULC post - it would be too long even by my standards. And with character limit restrictions over here on the new forums? Fuhgedaboutit.
Fortunately though, the story concept I'd come up with was already broken down into parts, and part 1 was pretty much ready to go. The rest of the story will get released on a schedule of whenever I finish the next part/whenever I feel like writing it/whenever real life permits.
One final note: this is, as the title describes, a Masterverse Prequel story. It can stand alone in that it's not necessary to have read or be at all familiar with the Masterverse Arc in order for you to read and enjoy this story. However, if you have read enough of those stories, this one will provide some context for certain references made by certain characters at certain points along the arc.
That said, I hope you do enjoy reading this story and please feel free to comment on it. It is my pleasure to write it for you.
disclaimer: This story began as an entry for ULC: 9.3 "Infection" and then I decided to incorporate 9.2 "Old Flame." And then I got bad case of real life that sidelined me from writing anything for a while. But the cogs of creativity were still running in my head, and by the time I came back to this the concept had evolved to the point where it couldn't be contained by a ULC post - it would be too long even by my standards. And with character limit restrictions over here on the new forums? Fuhgedaboutit.
Fortunately though, the story concept I'd come up with was already broken down into parts, and part 1 was pretty much ready to go. The rest of the story will get released on a schedule of whenever I finish the next part/whenever I feel like writing it/whenever real life permits.
One final note: this is, as the title describes, a Masterverse Prequel story. It can stand alone in that it's not necessary to have read or be at all familiar with the Masterverse Arc in order for you to read and enjoy this story. However, if you have read enough of those stories, this one will provide some context for certain references made by certain characters at certain points along the arc.
That said, I hope you do enjoy reading this story and please feel free to comment on it. It is my pleasure to write it for you.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Post edited by sander233 on
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***/// note: The following events were reconstructed as best could be managed from crew logs and security holovids recovered from the computer cores of the USS Quasar-A. Certain gaps were filled in using logical deduction and where that failed, the author was forced to use imagination to deliver a complete account. This is not meant to serve as a cautionary tale or yet another warning of the dangers of space. It is meant simply to describe the Crisis aboard the Quasar as it unfolded and progressed through its various stages. And perhaps to be a reminder that, as the 20th century Earth science fiction writer Michael Crichton observed, when interacting with the natural world we will always be denied a measure of certainty. ///***
E x p l o r a t i o n
USS Quasar NCC-17787-A, Nebula-class
Uncharted planetary system deep in the Betreka Nebula
Stardate 48267.10 (2371.04.07.1148)
"Do you remember when we used to be explorers?" Capt. Frank Grimes wondered aloud.
"We are exploring," Dr. Joan Lange told him, "just within select mission parameters."
"These are the voyages of the USS Quasar," Grimes announced with grandiose inflection, "her continuing mission to seek out new strategic resources and determine whether they can be exploited by the Federation or denied to the Cardassians and the Klingons." Grimes sipped at his coffee.
"Well, that's what you get for being Starfleet's foremost expert on exotic materials science," Lange replied, raising her own mug of spice tea. "You've done pretty well for yourself, Frankie, I must say."
"Starfleet's certainly treated me well," Frank acknowledged with a shrug. Better than you ever did, was thought but not said.
"So, I admit it, I was wrong," Joan declared, seeming to read his mind. "But it is nice to see you again, for a little while." She smiled at him.
"Yeah, just like old times," the Captain muttered into his coffee. He wasn't ready to let go of the last ten years, but Lange was a civilian now, and assigned to his ship as a mission specialist by someone way above his paygrade, so there wasn't anything he could do to avoid her. The only way to get rid of her was to complete the mission.
"So what are we looking at here?" he asked, changing the subject as he poked at his computer terminal. "Marek, do we have scans of this system?" he called into his comm.
"Yes sir," the Vulcan first officer replied from the bridge. "Putting it on your terminal now."
"Hmm..." Grimes looked over the summary. "Three gas giants, one superjovian, two primordial rocky planets and an accretion disk orbiting a pair of proto-stars that'll probably merge and ignite in the next couple million years..."
Joan came around his desk to peek at the viewer. "Check out the gaseous composition of that supergiant," she told him.
Grimes read the spectral analysis. "Argonite and craylon?"
"In greater-than-trace quantities," Marek confirmed. "And significant amounts of duranium, tritanium and magnesite ores in the debris ring, with traces of rubidium and trellium-K."
"Jeez, if any of that is accessible, Star Enterprises would probably set up permanent shop here," Lange mused.
"Assuming also the stellar activity is stable enough. The supergiant happens to be the innermost major body in the system."
"Huh." Grimes looked at the radiograph of the baby binary star. It was pumping out radiation all over the upper end of the EM spectrum, with an undercurrent of ionizing radiation that would play havoc with shields and communications. "That could be problematic. Okay, bring us in to take closer scans."
"Our course is already laid in. How close do you want us?" the XO asked.
"As close as our shields will let us get," Grimes answered.
"Understood. We'll be entering the system in twenty-three minutes."
"Thanks, Marek."
"I'd better get out to the bridge," Joan said. "That planet looks like a real gold mine, but I want as much sensor data as we can get before we start prospecting."
"Okay." Frank watched her go. She was still just as attractive as she'd been when she left him; even more so, really. Her glasses and short hair made her look bookish, which he'd always found adorable. She'd let herself add a few kilos since resigning her commission, rounding out her figure in just the right places... and she was aloof as ever. He'd told himself - and Admiral Sander - that he wouldn't have any problems working with her. He'd been wrong.
He shook it off and returned to his work, looking over reports from the rest of the ship. The Quasar-A was a block-1 Nebula-class multi-mission cruiser with a crew of six hundred and forty-seven, plus civilian mission specialists and dependents. There were a lot of reports to go through. Tactical, Security, Engineering, Operations, and eleven different science departments, not counting Medical...
He got through three department reports and was working on a draft review of a paper on primordial microflora when the ship dropped out of warp. "Captain, we've reached the inner system," Marek called from the bridge.
"You might want to see this, Frankie," Dr. Lange added. "The view is... pretty special."
"On my way." Captain Grimes saved his work and got up. He chanced a look out the viewport but it had polarized to near opacity. He went out to the bridge and saw why. The viewscreen filtered and enhanced the EM overload and optimized it for the humanoid visible spectrum. "Oh, wow."
Joan gave him a half-smile. "I thought you'd like that."
The viewer showed the pair of white-hot protostars, still feeding on nebulous gasses, sending a flood of ionizing radiation through their swirling accretion disk. Orbiting closely - close enough to peel massive debris from the disk to add to its own rings - there was the burgeoning gas supergiant reflecting colors that defied description. "Things like this... are what make it all worthwhile," Grimes said softly.
"I'm glad you think so, sir, because that great view is probably all we're going to get." The operations officer, LCdr. Shania Beach, was often more of a realist than the Vulcan XO. "Shields are holding at this range, but transporting anything out of the planet or the rings would be..." She caught herself before she violated the Captain's policy of never using the word "impossible" on the bridge. "I don't see how we could do it."
"The Hale has metaphasic shields," announced the tactical officer, Lt. Sean McRobie. "Maybe that can get close enough to take samples."
"The shields are still experimental," Beach pointed out.
"True, and I'd rather not risk a shuttleful of my crew for some material samples," said Grimes.
"Changing perhaps the approach to planet in shadow with Quasar, could move closer?" The twisted-syntax suggestion came from L'loy, another civilian scientific advisor with expertise on a variety of subjects related to stellar formation.
"That's an idea, but it would not solve the problem of transporting material through our shields," said Marek.
"We could also modify probes to scoop material samples from the planet's atmosphere and rings," Dr. Lange suggested.
"That might work," Beach agreed. "We could launch them around the planet on a parabolic trajectory, then recover them with tractors. And since they'd already be modulated to our shield harmonics, we'd be able to bring them back to the shuttlebay without having to drop the shields."
"Some of that debris out there is almost as big as we are though," McRobie pointed out. "We might lose a few probes."
"Better than losing any of us," Joan countered.
"And I believe we can program the probes to avoid any debris large enough to cause damage, while still collecting useful samples," Marek added.
"Sounds good. Get on it," Grimes decided, "unless anyone has a better idea." He looked around the bridge. It seemed that no one did. "Alright, keep thinking of any other ways to extract material from this planet. If we can get at it, there's enough resources here to change the course of a war."
Shuttlebay 3 (Deck 21-E), two hours later
The first probe skimmed the planet's atmosphere but returned with only hydrogen and nitrogen and other common gases. The next two were programmed to dive deeper but they both hit unexpectedly thick boundary layers and burned up. The fourth had its shields re-tuned en-route, and got samples of the atmosphere layer where their sensors told them there was craylon and argonite, but none was found. The fifth returned the same results.
The next five targeted the planet's rings. Probe six brought back some rocky debris samples that were currently being examined by the Quasar's geology department.
Lt. jg. Ro'byr Shon watched the next probe slowly glide in, from behind the safety of the force field. The shuttle door closed and the grav plating in the vented section was restored. He watched the puff of vapor that indicated that atmosphere was being vented back into the space.
"Where's this one going, boss?" CPO Alan Benedict asked.
Shon double-checked the manifest. "Probe Seven... this one came from the rings, same as the last one. The sample container is going to the geology lab."
"Got it." Benedict waited, along with SSpc. Jaknos and Crewman Lewis Crane, for the L-T to indicate it was safe, before dropping the force field.
Shon checked the monitors. "Atmosphere restored... No radiological or biological hazards detected. Let's open it up."
The force field came down, and the three enlisted men approached the probe, still steaming hot from its trip through the harsh light of the baby suns. "Gloves?" Benedict requested, turning to Jaknos. The Bolian handed them over, and Chief Benedict put them on before prying open the access panel over the sample container...
The Chief coughed once and then slumped forward, his skin sizzling where it contacted the still-hot probe casing. Crane sort of gurgled as he collapsed to the deck, kicked once and then went still.
"What the hеll?" Jaknos looked back toward the L-T, in time to see the look of surprise on the Andorian's face as he clutched his chest and fell to the floor, striking the control console hard on his way down. "Guys?"
Jaknos pulled the chief off the probe, saw the burns, and dropped him. "Oh, f*ck." He ran to the L-T, checked for breathing or a pulse, and found neither. "F*ck, sh*t, f*ck..." he started swearing incoherently, in total panic, and did not notice when the alarms began to sound, or the force fields in the shuttlebay sealed him off from the rest of the ship.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
I n f e c t i o n
Bridge
"What's going on down there?" Captain Grimes demanded, seeing Biohazard and Contamination alarms light up on his system monitor.
"I'm finding out now, sir," LCdr. Beach answered, as she tapped her comm panel. "Flight, this is Ops. Report!"
"That last probe brought back something nasty, sir," the flight deck officer replied. "Three of my people just dropped dead. I've got the fourth locked down in Shuttlebay Three with the probe."
"I'm seeing biohazard alarms - I thought the bioscans were negative!"
"We can only scan for known biological agents, sir. Protocol says to treat any unknown incapacitating agent as a biohazard."
"Flight, this is the Captain," Grimes spoke up. "Are you certain your men are really dead?"
"Check internal sensors for yourself, sir. We have zero lifesign readings on Lieutenant junior grade Ro'byr Shon, Chief Flight Officer Alan Benedict, or Crewman Lewis Crane."
"Confirmed," Marek reported, checking the display.
"What about the survivor?"
"Senior Flight Technician Jaknos seems to be understandably worked up, but otherwise his lifesigns are nominal," Marek told the Captain. "Curious. There must be some component of his Bolian physiology that protected him while his Andorian and Human colleagues died."
"We'll have to figure this out," Grimes declared. "Advise sick bay, prep a level ten isolation field around an exam bed, and take same precautions in the morgue. Nobody crosses the field without a full EV suit. We'll transport victims as soon as Dr. Kubak is set up."
"Right." Marek efficiently relayed instructions to the medical staff.
"What about the probe?" Joan Lange wondered. "We should examine that as well."
"Agreed. Advise microbiology to clear a workbench and set up isolation. We'll transport the probe there."
Deck 14, Multi-purpose Laboratory 5 (Atmospherics / Gases)
"We've got some sort of organic suspension in these samples," Ens. Ritter announced.
Lt. jg. Xam Gori hurried over. "Hydrocarbon?"
"Don't think so," the young Moabite officer punched up the analysis results. "Spectrograph shows nitrogen content, but the computer doesn't have enough data to identify the molecule."
"Hmm, better hit it with an X-ray scatter beam," the Betazoid suggested.
"Right sir." The ensign spun off a sample of the greenish organic suspension and transferred it into the small-angle scattering chamber. "Firing X-rays... now."
For a moment, they had interesting results. "Looks like a crystalline structure-" Gori started to say. Then the SAS chamber flashed purple and the polycarbonate containment sleeve shattered. All thoughts of discovery were abandoned in an instant. "Get an iso field on that! Now!"
A green, aerosol mist floated out, past the force field, and began to disperse. "We've lost containment!" Jamie Ritter yelped, as she grabbed for her face mask. She took a gulp of clean oxygen and looked for the Lieutenant, who was breathing in the aerosol with a strange look on his face. "Sir! Your mask!"
"Do you hear that?" he asked nobody. "They're after us." He walked toward the door, stopped by the force field. He seemed surprised, and angry. "You can't keep us in here!!" he yelled.
"Sir, calm down, put the mask on," Ritter pleaded.
"You... you let them in!" He picked a beaker, smashed it, and advanced menacingly.
Jamie Ritter struck her combadge. "Security to gas lab! Security and medical!"
Deck 12, Physical Sciences Laboratory 4 (Geology / Inorganic Chemistry)
"Low-grade duranium ore, is all we're getting from this one," Ens. Camus grumbled irritably. "Silicates and sulfates make up most of the rest."
"What's that green stuff?" Ens. Russell asked the Tellarite. The millicam viewer showed patches of green that looked like paint spatters all over the rock samples.
"Dunno yet. I was about to scrape off a piece for the analyzer."
"It doesn't look natural, does it?" Erica Russell enhanced the view up to 440x. "Increase the lighting, would you?"
"Sure, I want a better look too."
An extra bank of LEDs came on, bathing the fluorescent green patch in extra light. Then for a second, it blinked purple.
"Did you see that?" Russell asked her colleague.
"Yeah, I saw it. Damned peculiar."
"I wonder what made it do that."
"Only one way to find out," Camus muttered, as he manipulated the remote probe and dug into the center of the mass.
The green patch turned purple again, and glowed brighter.
"I don't think it likes to be poked," Russell said. And then just for an instant, the containment field winked out. Russell's breath caught in her throat and she slid to the floor.
"Erica? What the hell-" Camus forgot about the strange substance he was poking at hovered anxiously over his Human colleague. And then suddenly all he could think about was his blinding headache.
Sick Bay, Isolation Ward
"Why do I have to be stuck in here?" Pitr Jaknos demanded.
"We need to keep you under isolation until they can determine what happened and figure out how to decontaminate you," the Caitian nurse-practitioner explained. Everyone called him "Oscar" as the vast majority of his shipmates found his real name to be unpronounceable. "You me be a carrier for whatever you were exposed to, even if you're not showing any of the symptoms."
"Symptoms, hell!" Jaknos exclaimed. "I'm not dead!!"
"And I intend to keep you that way," Oscar assured him in a soothing tone. "Please try to calm down, and wait for us to work this out."
Reluctantly, the Bolian sat down on the biobed. "Where's nurse Shandi?"
"Shandi works gamma shift, you know that."
"No offense, but she's better to look at then you are."
"You, know, I'm told most of my patients, males included, find me to be rather cute." The Caitian's tawny fur rippled as he smiled.
Bridge
It would be several minutes before the rest of the ship became aware of the containment failures in the labs examining the contents of probes 4, 5 and 6. As far as Captain Grimes knew, he was dealing with a single, tragic, isolated incident. So his orders were unhurried, and careful thought went into each decision he made, each intended to limit the spread of potential infection.
"Until we know what we're dealing with I want full quarantine protocols in effect," he said. He reviewed the video reconstruction of the deaths of his crew for the third time, emotionless. "It seems to be airborne. Once the probe's in microbiology I want that shuttlebay vented to space, and kept sealed off."
"Sir, the runabout Piedmont is still in shuttlebay three," LCdr. Beach pointed out. "Should I engage traction anchors and run decontamination procedures?"
"We have no way of knowing if our decon protocols will even work," Grimes answered her, rubbing his chin. "Remote-pilot it out to a distance of twenty-five hundred meters and take it under tow with a tractor beam... and get a torpedo lock on it. Load a photon torpedo in the aft launcher, set for minimum yield."
"That's an expensive piece of hardware, sir."
"And if we can't decontaminate it, we've already lost it. Carry on, Commander."
"Aye sir." LCdr. Beach tapped at her controls. "Microbiology, are you ready to receive?"
Deck 13, Life Sciences Laboratory 3 (Microbiology)
Lt. Paul Kedeshian checked the isolation field and the Waldo manipulators on the inside. "We're set up on this end, sir." he said into his comm.
"Alright," Shania Beach acknowledged, "transporting material now, stand by."
The confinement beam appeared, flickered, and came back in pulses. "Ops, you seem to be having some problems-" Kedeshian started.
"Yeah, we're seeing some sort of power drain," Beach said. "We're boosting the signal gain to compensate."
The transporter beam continued to fluctuate for a moment before finally stabilizing. Something in the nose of the probe glowed bright purple before fading. The rest of the on-duty lab staff came over to see what was going on as the matter stream coalesced.
"What is that stuff?" Specialist Broguiere wondered.
There was something oozing out of the sample access hatch. It was amorphous, and green. And it glowed.
"I don't know," Lt. Kedeshian answered. "It's our job to figure it out."
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Christian Gaming Community Fleets--Faith, Fun, and Fellowship! See the website and PM for more. :-)
Proudly F2P. Signature image by gulberat. Avatar image by balsavor.deviantart.com.
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
I had to take an extended hiatus from writing due to reality interference, but I will try to get this and a couple of other stories finished over here. I also want to get back into the ULCs.
I'm working on part three of this story now - look for that to drop sometime later this week!
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
D e t e c t i o n
Ship's Morgue, 1506 hours
"This is why we should have lab animals," Dr. Kruxti casually declared. "It would make it so much easier to experiment, determine whether the pathogen is biologically active, conduct vector studies-"
"Yes, well, we don't have any of your feather monkeys aboard," LCdr. Dr. Kubak reminded his Denobulan colleague, "and our science has evolved a fair ways beyond the need to sacrifice subsentient creatures to satisfy our curiosity."
"Except apparently, none of our science can detect this thing," Anthony Salimbangon, the clinical technician pointed out. "So we have no way of knowing if these bodies are still contagious, or if we're wearing these giant condoms for nothing." He stretched the fabric of his biohazard suit over his left bicep, and released it with a snap. The doctors were wearing identical garments, supposedly impermeable down to the molecular level.
"Identifying the means by which these people died will aid us in isolating the organism responsible," the Vulcan CMO assured the Human senior specialist. "From there, we will be able to calibrate our sensors and instruments to detect the organism."
"Look at this..." Dr. Kruxti had started to examine the dead Andorian, Lieutenant Shon. "That gash on his forehead - there's no blood!"
"Curious," Kubak murmured. "It crosses the external antenna vein, temporal artery, supraorbital and supratrochlear arteries and veins, and multiple minor capillaries."
"Exactly. A cut like that should bleed like hell!"
Dr. Kubak quickly looked over Shon and the other two bodies. "There are no signs of lividity, either. Blood would normally pool in the lowest part of the body after death, but that would show clearly as massive bruising and hematomas."
"Yeah, it's like they're all in stasis or something," SSpc. Salimbangon observed. "Creepy."
"I think it's time we got started with our autopsies." Dr. Kubak held out his hand. "Laser scalpel."
Anthony handed the instrument over. "Careful you don't puncture your suit, sir."
Bridge
"Security reports an emergency situation on Deck 14," Marek announced. "The Gas Lab."
"The atmosphere samples," Grimes muttered. "Find out what's happening, and advise security to take quarantine precautions."
"Aye sir..." The first officer got another alert. "Sir, now it seems we have a medical emergency in the Geology Lab..."
The captain's eyes went wide. "Seal it off!" he ordered. "No one enters or leaves that lab! How many people are in there?"
Marek checked the duty roster. "Two." He checked internal sensors. "One still alive."
"Alert Sickbay, and transport them as soon as their isolation fields are up." Grimes sighed. "Something tells me that new EMH is going to be getting a workout."
Sick Bay, Isolation Ward
"Please state the nature of the medical emergency."
"We have five patients requiring full isolation protocols," Oscar explained to the hologram. "One patient is here now, and he seems stable, but he was exposed to an unknown gas or pathogen that killed three others. The others are being beamed in from two separate labs where they were also exposed to an unknown contaminant. At this time we don't know if it's the same one."
"And since I can cross through force fields and don't fear any disease, you need me to treat the patients." The EMH nodded. "I understand."
"Good." The Caitian nurse tapped at a console, and force fields sprang into place around four biobeds. "We're ready for the patients," he said into his comm.
"Transporting from Geology Lab now."
The unconscious forms of Ensigns Camus and Russell appeared in two beds, after a momentary fluctuation.
The EMH stepped forward, medical tricorder in hand. After a moment he said "Well, I can't do anything for these two. I'm a doctor, not a mortician."
"You can't revive them?"
"There'd be little point. This man died of a massive intracerebral hemorrhage immediately after transport. And this one..." he turned to Ens. Russell, poked his tricorder and frowned. "Curious. It appears there's nothing physically wrong with her, except her blood is clotted through. She seems to have died of total disseminated intravascular coagulation. There's only a handful of known toxins that can cause that, all quite painful. But she appears to have gone peacefully."
"Sick Bay, this is Security," Lt. Kumar called over the comm. "Are you ready to receive patients? We've got one severe bleeder and the other's extremely agitated."
Oscar was a bit shaken, but he recovered quickly. "Yes... Ops, Sick Bay. We have two DOAs from geology. Please transport the gas lab casualties now, and then move the geology lab fatalities to the morgue."
"Stand by. We're seeing weird power fluctuations with intraship transporters. We're trying to compensate."
Transporter Room 1
"Just what the hell is wrong with this thing?" LCdr. Beach demanded.
"No se - I don't know, sir," Transporter Chief Rafael Bermudez answered. "We started to see a power drain on the second probe we brought back, and it's been increasing on every sample container and probe we've moved since." He tapped at his LCARS panel, recalling the data from the last eight intraship transports he'd run. "Transporting people or bodies didn't have the same effect, until we transported that Tellarite from Geology. He drained power just like those probes."
A senior maintenance technician closed up an inspection panel. "I can't find anything wrong with this unit, sir. The signal amplifier and conversion matrix should be working properly."
Shania Beach frowned and rubbed her temples thoughtfully. "There has to be something wrong. The laws of thermodynamics and the conservation of energy say all that power can't just simply disappear."
She tapped her commbadge to summon the chief engineer. "Commander Galea, please report to Transporter Room One with a full diagnostic team. I need you to tear this unit apart until you find whatever's causing this power loss."
"We're on our way, Commander."
Shania tapped the badge again. "Transporter Room Two, go ahead and move the exposed personnel from the gas lab to the iso-beds in Sick Bay."
Transporter Room 2
"Aye sir, stand by." PO1 (Transporter Officer first class) Jon Lenskold set the confinement beams around the two contaminated junior officers. Then he powered up the scanner and checked the Heisenberg compensator to ensure the position and the momentum of every particle in their bodies was being accounted for. Then he set the target vectors to land them next to their isolation beds. Finally, he simultaneously ramped power to the matter-energy converter and the signal amplifier… "Dammit."
"What's wrong, Two?" Beach called.
"I'm getting that same sorta power drain Room One had, this time on the Betazoid." He had to boost the signal gain to make sure he got every last bit of the lieutenant's matter stream. He briefly stored his transportees in the pattern buffer while he rerouted their signals to their destination in Sick Bay. He found that he again had to route additional power to the signal to get the matter stream to coalesce.
He tapped the comm panel on his workstation. "Patients delivered alive, but something seriously weird is going on with the transporters."
Iso Ward
Lt. jg. Xam Gori started screaming the moment he beamed in. Ens. Ritter still clutched her oxygen bottle to her face in a near-panic, ignoring multiple lacerations to her arms and chest.
Oscar took stock of the situation and triaged the patients according to their apparent needs. "EMH, take care of Ensign Ritter first," he ordered.
"I can tell which patient needs my immediate attention, thank you very much," the hologram huffed disdainfully. He collected a vascular regenerator and a dermal regenerator and approached Jamie Ritter. As he passed Gori's bed he turned to him and snapped "Shut up, sit down, and calm yourself."
Gori just kept screaming and started throwing himself against the force field.
The EMH just shook his head as he started to treat Ritter. "Some patients just never listen."
"I'll listen to you, mister," Ritter said through her oxygen mask.
"Good for you. But please, call me "Doctor."
"Doctor what?"
"Just… Doctor," the EMH grumped. "Nurse, please prepare a strong sedative mixed with a non-narcotic analgesic for Mr. Gori."
"Already done," Oscar announced, as he loaded the concoction into a hypo.
"Excellent. Now, Ms. Ritter, don't engage in any strenuous activity for the next twenty-four hours. We'll get you some clean garments to wear and some steri-wipes so you can clean this blood off yourself."
"Thank you, Doctor."
The EMH left her bedside, collected the hypo from Oscar, and turned back to Gori. "Now, as for you…"
"Don't you touch me!" Xam Gori backed away from the force field.
"I only want to give you some medicine. It will make you feel better, and stop you from hurting yourself-"
"Get away! Get away!" Gori backed against the bed, and sat down in it hard. "I won't let you touch me!" He picked up the pillow and held it out like a shield.
The EMH made an exasperated sigh. "If you're intending to fight me off with that, you're clearly forgetting that I am a-" The hologram cut himself off when he realized what Lt. Gori was trying to do. "No! Droppit!" Gori held the pillow to his face, smothering himself, muffling his own screaming.
"Stop him!" Oscar yelled.
"I'm trying!" The EMH wrestled with Gori, trying to pull his arms off the pillow. The force fields that contained his form and gave him his strength strained and flickered. "Call engineering! I need more power to my matrix!"
"On it!" Oscar slapped the comm panel. "Sick Bay to engineering! The EMH needs more power!"
Gori suddenly went limp.
"Nevermind," the EMH sighed, and checked the med scanners. "He's dead."
Microbiology Lab - 16 minutes later
"So what do we have here?"
Lt. Paul Kedeshian tapped at his computer terminal, sending the display to a wall monitor. "What we have here, Captain, is green goo."
"Green goo?"
"Well, sometimes it's purple. It turns purple when it grows."
"It grows?" Captain Grimes shook his head. God, I need a coffee… "How?"
"I still need to run more tests." Kedeshian pointed to the display. "I've taken samples for cultures. I'm using every growth medium type we have in stock, and I'm putting them through the full spectrum of environmental conditions. We should have meaningful results in an hour or so, on what makes it grow, and what kills it."
"Is this what's killing my crew? Because if it is, I don't want to wait that long."
"I don't know yet. It kind of depends on just exactly how those poor guys died."
Morgue
"So these green flecks in the blood vessel walls," Dr. Kruxti pondered, "you think that's why these people clotted solid?"
"Yes, it does appear that we are dealing with a bacterial or fungal infection that favors arterial and venous tissues," Dr. Kubak remarked. "And in the case of the Tellarite, it apparently only had an appetite for the arterial walls within his brain, which caused him to have a cerebral hemorrhage, rather than form clots."
Kruxti shrugged. "Not too surprising. The Tellarite species has a higher-than-average INR and prothrombin time; they wouldn't clot instantly because their blood is thinner. But what's the story with the Betazoid?"
"We'll have to open his head and find out," Kubak said, plucking a sterile laser scalpel out of the autoclave. "But we know now how it kills, whatever it is."
Kruxti helped Kubak cut away and remove Lt. Gori's cranium. But when she saw what was inside, she dropped her scalpel and gasped in shock. "Oh my gods!"
Kubak just stared, confounded by what had become of Xam Gori's brain. "Well," he said at last, "this certainly changes things."
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
So, what do you think of the story so far?
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Infinite possibilities have implications that could not be completely understood if you turned this entire universe into a giant supercomputer.
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. Insensibly, one begins to twist facts to suit theories, rather than theories to suit facts."
Interesting story - power hungry green goo that kills horribly. Eep
Member Access Denied Armada!
My forum single-issue of rage: Make the Proton Experimental Weapon go for subsystem targetting!
As far as quotes, yeah, there's a bunch of others I could've used. But this whole story is sort of my tribute to my favorite author, in particular his breakout novel The Andromeda Strain. So I'm only using quotes from Michael Crichton as my lead-ins for each chapter.
I think that's where the Einstein reference came from in the quote I used from Travels.
Just wait. Things are going to get much, much worse.
...Oh, baby, you know, I've really got to leave you / Oh, I can hear it callin 'me / I said don't you hear it callin' me the way it used to do?...
- Anne Bredon
Now, I am reluctant to say it because I could very easily be proven wrong, but the transporter malfunctions have me deeply suspicious of a few possibilities...
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