Through the station

Posted on Mon Jan 11th, 2016 @ 3:48am by Commander Bertrand Cuprum & Commander Cor Cordale & Ensign Honey Flanagan & Johnathen Wade

Mission: If I told you...
Location: Lower decks

Sinclair and her Marine were on point, with Chance directing them on where to go. Smith, Kilbane and Kardis came second, watching everything like hawks. Derring and Keller were carrying the wounded Marine who seemed to be suffering far more than his obvious injuries would suggest. Michelle and Honey were towards the rear, just in front of Cor and Sela.

The team had to move fast, because putting down an afflicted crew member would only buy them a minute at most before it was trying to get back on its feet. This meant the people at the front would need to put a crewman down, rush the team through, then Cor and Sela at the rear would need to fire a second round at the body to keep it down till they were well clear.

They came at last to a door that Chance indicated was a laboratory, "I don't have security access."

Smith stepped forward and keyed a quick rhythm into the pad nest to the door there was a beep and the door slid open.

Inside was mess. The room was large, containing a large amount of scientific and medical equipment, most now destroyed and dysfunctional. The centre of the room was dominated by a large, clear square, a containment unit of some sort. Attached to the unit were two cylinders. Inside was a creature, it screamed and hammered at the clear walling when it saw them. There was no one else in the room.

Kevin wasn't frightened by the creature, instead a morbid fascination took hold of him and he moved forward. Karadis moved towards him and took his arm saying "Are you sure you should move closer?"

Looking round at her Kevin replied "I know that curiosity killed the cat, but seeing as I'm not feline....."

"You don't have nine lives either Sir" Karadis replied.

"I'll be careful" Kevin replied as he smirked at her remark about the lives.

"Don't think for a single second I'm going to let you go near that 'thing' and not be beside you making sure you're ok" Karadis spoke up.

Kevin smiled at her, he knew that the moment he moved forward that she'd be at his side, just as she had been since their capture by The Collective. Nodding he turned back to the cylinder and started to move forward again. As he approached it he said out loud "There's a plate just below touch pad. He was now no more than about three feet from the Perspex and stooping down he began to read "Koresner Thragher..."

"Is that it's name or it's species?" Karadis asked.

"Your guess is as good as mine" Kevin replied "but there's more....'subject class three parasitic invertebrate'...."

"Species, or test class designation," Smith supplied. "You don't name your test subjects."

He moved next to Kevin, "You will notice the chamber is atmosphere sealed and the gasses on one side can be introduced by means of that control. There is a set of atmospheric controls opposite. It would seem they have been running a series of endurance tests on this subject; how it is able to survive under certain conditions."

He turned slowly, "Data is fed from there and stored in that control there. If it were functional we could get a good picture of what they were finding out. Lt Cor, Ensign Honey, do what you can to recover some data from that thing."

"On it. Honey, could you give me a hand with some of these?" Cordale offered. Sure, she was a scientist, and this was scientist-level stuff here, but the whole 'lifeform in a jar' didn't sit well with the Thux for some reason.

"Ofcourssse, Lieutenant." Honey answered, standing next to Cor to assist.

He turned to Michelle, "Commander Bartlet, it is my belief that they have infected this creature to study the effect of various environments on the contagion. I do not know for sure. There is a terminate feature that will kill it quickly built into the cage. Should I use it?"

Michelle was a little bit on the fence, though only for a second. The creature, if infected, was a serious risk to the crew. And yet they had to figure out somehow what exactly had been done to it... Though... An autopsy would be as good as a live scan... "Do it." she called out.

Just as the door was sliding closed behind them, Sela caught the sound of three gunshots from a solid projectile weapon close by. She held the door for a moment listening. Yes there was the sound again; a single shot, followed by two others. A pattern, which meant a mind. As survivour was back out in the corridor nearby.

A moment later Cmdr Bertram and the new manager of 10 Forward, Wade, ran around the corner. Seeing Sela, Bertrand called out and the pair ran up.

Wade didn't say anything as he picked up speed, heading over to smith who he promptly punched square in the Jaw. For an older gentleman he had a hell of a left hook. "You son of a bitch! How dare you put this or any crew in this kind of danger for a project that should have been scrubbed! The fuck is going through SFI's collective head to even think Project Parasol was a good idea!? Let alone sentient test subjects!"

At the sound of the punch, it was oh damn o'clock. "Damn..." Cordale said as he perked up at the sound. Wade, he liked. His bar served food, which was one of Cordale's favorite past times, though technically Smith was an officer. So Cordale played the Engineering Trump Card... sit this one out and wait for further orders.

Smith had fallen back against the gas canisters that were attached to the cage. He leaned against hem to climb back to his feet.

"You've been reading the secret files," he said, rubbing his jaw. "You know about the experimentation that was being done here and something of who is behind it. But you do not yet understand."

He twisted one of the canisters of it's housing and there was a sudden hiss as the gas flooded out of the canister and into the room.

"Recovering the Data about the research is the primary mission objective, as well as the crew of the USS Victory. Now I can ensure both are done together. You've all got a good dose of the R47W now."

"Sir, that's the..." Nurse Chance began but Smith cut him off.

"I know what I am doing," he barked. "Now we can stay here exchanging blows and recriminations or you can get me back to the Victory where I will tell you how to cure yourselves."

The Thux by the console turned slowly, his fur bristled as he took a step forward. "You... you stupid arrogant human." as he took step after angry step towards Smith. "You honestly think we're taking this back to the Victory to infect more people? Oh no. Honey? Kick in the quarantine protocols."

"Quarantine protocolsss engaged." Honey tapped in a command sequence. A right light started flashing, as a computerized voice sounded, repeating Honey's words.

"Either you're infected with us, and you need the cure... or you're immune, and tricorder scanning your body will help us cure ourselves." Cor said with an angry growl as he continued to approach the Intelligence officer with his shoulders hunched and a snarl starting to build on his muzzle, "... and if I recall my brief class on basic first aid, you don't need to be conscious for a tricorder scan."

Cor brought his prosthetic fist into his living hand over and over in the universally recognized 'someone's gonna get their ass beat' motion.

"I'm going to count to three, and whatever you spit out better be just as good for us manufactured types as it is for you home grown slugs."

Jack folded his arms and stared at Smith. "Prove that was the virus. If this virus was curable, this station would not have collapsed like it has. So prove it" He looks at Nurse Chance. "With him."

"Every stand down RIGHT NOW!" Bertrand bellowed. "I said STAND DOWN, Cor!"

He stepped between the crew and Smith, "I am Chief Of Security, and Smith is part of our crew for the remainder of the mission. We won't have a vigilante lynching. We all want off this station, and bottom line, if this is an airborne virus, we were all affected when we first stepped out of the runabouts. That means that the Victory is already infected and doesn't know it. We sent some of the ground crew back when the shuttle bay was over run."

"That means, regardless of our personal feelings on the matter, we need to get any possibility of a cure back to the Victory or the whole ship is already lost and they don't know what they are facing."

"As for Lt Smith and this project, they are backed by Admirals, so unless you plan on punching your way through the whole of SF HQ you better stow that macho bullshit NOW."

He turned to Wade, "That goes for you too. You may approve of a fist thrown in anger, but I don't. As far as I am concerned the only person, right now, who I KNOW has done anything wrong is you, Mr Wade."

"So let's all take a deep breath, remember the uniform we chose to wear and get the hell of this station. Agreed?"

Jack nearly growled, clenching his teeth. "This is dirty as hell, and remember Bertrand, you asked me to not keep anything back. Well this feels like a damn bluff, if this was curable this station wouldn't be a living horror movie. But if you want to play it this way, fine, your crew. And i wonder if the admiral who backed this was named Gates." He slammed his fist onto a table in frustration and stepped away.

"A deep breath is what got us all in this mess, Bertrand, or does gassing us not count as 'Anything Wrong'?" Cordale said, nearly growled, as he gave Smith one final glare before turning to face Bertrand. "If we received a higher dosage than anyone that went back, it's a risk to have us return to the Victory or to have anyone from the ship attempt to make contact with us. I don't agree with returning to the ship until we have something of a solution here." He brought his living hand over to his prosthetic to scratch at the back of the false hand as he took a moment to catch his breath. Heavy deep breaths, fueling a powerful and rapid heartbeat.

"Everyone! Calm. The. Hell. DOWN." sounded a rather unexpected voice, as the half-human, half-alien-of-unknown-origin stepped forward, tail twitching behind her, gills flared. "Let'sss ssstart approaching thisss conssstructively and ssscientifically inssstead of dessstructively and tesstosssterone-driven. I'm a xeno-biologissst. Sssince we are now probably all of ussss infected with a good chance the ssship isss asss well, asss far asss I'm concerned, that meansss that we are now in My houssse, and there are a few thingsss that we need to watch for, do and know." Honey spoke with a firm voice, tongue flicking out between breaths. For her crew, her expression contained concern. For Smith, contempt.

"The mossst important thing to remember isss that jussst becaussse thessse poor sssodsss didn't find a cure, that doesss not mean none exissstssss." the scientist added.

Kevin was disgusted by the lack of discipline by the majority of the so called Starfleet Officers in the room. Part of his own Starfleet Officer training, and he assumed the others to, had been about how to restrain one's self under pressure and not go 'off on one' even in the most difficult of circumstances.

He turned to Karadis and rolled his eyes at all the pretend macho, testosterone driven driveling threats being thrown at Smith. Yes, the Intel boss was an arse for what he'd allegedly just done, but the Starfleet Officers were showing themselves to be nothing more than an ill disciplined lynch mob, something that, if they ever got out of this predicament he'd file in his official report. He himself didn't particularly like Smith, but he liked even less the lack of professionalism being shown by people meant to be representatives of the uniform they wore.

"I know" Karadis said "but most of them are frustrated."

"That's no excuse Karadis" Kevin said "Discipline is taught for a reason, yet at the first sign this lot think they're prosecution, judge and jury rather than act responsibly for the better of the whole. Well, I guess that's Cuprum's bag now, not mine or yours."

Karadis looked at him quizzically.

Kevin moved off away from where he'd been standing off to the side of the canisters, taking Karadis with him. Catching Smiths eye, and unseen by anyone else in the room, Kevin surreptitiously gestured by eye movement that he was heading out the room. Gathering that the imperceptible nod from Smith was an agreeable acknowledgement, both Kevin and Karadis slipped out of the room unnoticed.

Now out in the corridor, Karadis asked "Ok, so why are we out here?"

"Think about it" Kevin said in reply "there's no way that anyone is going to keep the contagion and the cure in that one room for the simple reason that someone could steal them. So, we're going to look for where they'd keep the information about the antigen, or cure, for this R47W. Best place to start, the station bridge.

"Lead on McDuff" Karadis said, gesturing along the corridor.

"Honey, you're right I..." and the Thux just paused for a moment, taking a few deep breaths. "It was wrong of me to lash out like that. My actions have consequences and someone might have been hurt." he recited, like a mantra. "Our focus should be the objective, and not the series of events that led up to that objective."

Cor took a few more breaths, then looked around quick and seemed to perform basic math with the best of them, "Are we..? We're short two people. I think we're in danger of breaking quarantine." he turned to Bertrand after this, and gave a nod, "Sorry I lost my cool. I don't appreciate becoming the vector for an as-of-yet potentially uncured biophage. Well to be honest I really don't like being lied to, being used as a chump, having my friends and family threatened... again... you know what, let me see what I can do to help Honey." and Cordale went to the nearest console to start looking up logs, pulling up where secondary backups of research was kept, and started to transfer copies of anything he found to the consoles here in the laboratory.

As they moved up the corridor, Karadis said "Do you think we really should have left the room, you know, after what Smith did?"

Kevin stopped and turned to face Shr'Nesh and replied "What, the fact that we've already met one undead former personnel member of this station doesn't tell you that that particular ship has already sailed?"

Karadis just shrugged her shoulders "I suppose so."

"Karadis, whether we're in that room back there, or out here where it's almost a 'slam dunk' that the vast majority of the personnel will already have been infected by this....zombie like state, makes no difference" Kevin replied "The fact is, we need answers, and I doubt very much whether Smith will share everything he knows before we become 'one of them', therefor, we need to find out now what he doesn't want us to know!"

With that, he turned away again and began moving up the corridor again.

"You don't want to go that way, then," a voice said from behind them. Nurse Chase stepped out of the shadows he had been hiding in. "You aren't the only ones to have taken a different job after Intelligence. Bridge is this way, through the ducts. We'll avoid any unwanted interactions."