Two against many

Posted on 23 Apr 2010 @ 8:41pm by Commodore Da`nal of the House of Varal

1,154 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: M4: The Cartaris Strain
Location: USS Weatherbey
Timeline: MD 2

ON:

The Weatherbey was quiet. The only noise was that of people's movement and running equipment. Repair were under way and the ships warp core had been salvaged.

It hung below the ship after being tractored back by one of the Weatherbey's shuttles. Until the housings and matter injectors were repaired the ship was running on impulse power and that was being supplemented by auxiliary fusion generators.

On the bridge, what had been the ships Captain sat reading and everything he read would become a part of the Aggregate. There had been repeated attempts at communication but they had been ignored.

Elsewhere on the ship their weapons of war were being prepared. They would no longer sacrifice the sentient members to spread the seeds of their kind but the animals on the planets surface had been brought onboard. The cargo bays were fill with all manor of beast; from large predators and small rodent-like creates, to tanks of fish or sea creatures swam about; all ready to be sent aboard other vessels or down to a planets surface.

In the shuttle bay the Weatherbey's two warp capable shuttle were like wise being readied. Their flight crews sat at the controls as animals obediently flowed the instructions of the Aggregate and walked or otherwise moved into the shuttles as they prepared to launch.


Caecus could heard his breathing loud in his ears inside the helmet, he hated these suit, but he hadn't had a choice but to don one when he saw crewman Allen's head explode into a cloud of grayish, green what he could only assume where spores. He had been in the bio-lab that he had set up for the biological samples they were going to bring up from the planet.

Oh merciful fate...Allen had been on the Away team... He stopped his thoughts and continued crawling through the Jefferies tubes with his case of medical tools, he had to take things one step at a time. The first thing was to find a sensor relay substation that he could tap into to see how far this….invasion had spread and if there were any others onboard that weren’t taken over by whatever this might be.

The crew eerily reminded him of Borg drones…coldly, silently going about their alien purpose, as a doctor and scientist he was fascinated by the way that the ‘infected’ crew seemed to work as one without communicating in any visible manner, though he knew that what ever that purpose was he needed to alert someone to what had happened here after rescuing survivors. He continued to crawl along the Jefferies Tubes towards his objective and then thought about sabotaging the ship, one of the primary bio-neural transition matrix access points would work, he personally found the new bio-gel pack to be unreliable, at least to the is linear chips these little bags of vat grown neurons had replaced.

He stopped at an ODN relay and pulled out his tricorder along with a couple of tools as he began the process of tying his equipment into the existing sensor systems.


[On the Bridge]

A monitor on the bridge chimed at the security violation. Several heads turned at the sound but as one of the bridge crew processed the situation everyone else went about their tasks. After isolating the location of the intrusion he looked up briefly then returned o his duties.

[Deck 3]

Wordlessly two member of the crew walked to the the Jefferies hatch and crawled in.

Caecus worked quickly and methodically, sure that he had tripped a security protocol while tying into the internal sensors. He again pushed any concerns that threatened his zen focus at the moment out of his mind, instead he quickly finished and checked his tricorder display to see if he could get an accurate reading on the crew and what ever else was aboard. He quickly put away his tools and began making his way towards the bio-neural matrix, the modified tricorder in hand.

It began to ping a warning as two life signs appeared approaching towards him.

They reached the area of the breach only to find an open panel. The continued down the tube until they cam to a junction. Only after a slight pause, as they were directed, did they continue.

The El-Aurian crawled as quickly as he could through the maintenance tubes and stopped periodically to consult the device in his hand and muttered to himself "Quiet retirement...just filling in for the doctor every once and a while...sure and I'm a Ferengi."

He found the passage he was looking for on the map and began crawling down it, feeling like he was now the hunted, like that time so long ago with the Borg.

Jake had hung out with Oz ever since he had come aboard. He hadn't had the easiest of time at the start given his past, but had slowly earned peoples trust. His bumbling accident prone self of a source of many a good laugh in the lounge and his stories...including the Cartaris one were at times hard to believe. Now....well he was taking Oz's stories as gospel, especially after seeing that crewman's head explode. If he had been on the other side of the glass he'd have been infected like the others.

The first he had done was to modify his combadge to block his biosigns so unless he was seen he was safe....relatively. Either way he wasn't taking any chances and was staying in the jefferies tubes.

Caecus continued to crawl along his path, hoping that these thing weren't as smart as the Borg No cunning...that's the word...not smart he thought to himself as, almost missing the sound of someone else in the tubes, and he felt a leaden weight drop in the pit of his stomach, though he let it have just a moment as he looked down at his tricorder, he say nothing but he heard something or someone up ahead.

With caution the supposedly retired El-Aurian doctor crawled forward and at the corner of the junction he quietly spoke up "Boo."

Even with the low volume of the voice Jake near shot a hole through the bulkhead. Dropping in heap against the fall wall he held his hand over his heart. "DOC! I swear don't ever do that again!"

Once he had calmed down and was laughing with the ships medical officer he asked the obvious question. "What do we do now?"

Caecus had taken off the helmet of the environmental suit and ran a gloved hand through his sweat soaked hair, he looked at the young man across from him and gave him a smile that was reassuring and goofy at them same time "Lieutenant we get help and stop this here."

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Adm Caecus Romehl Ret.
CMO
USS Weatherbey

Ltjg. Jake Rosenthal
NPC

 

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