Lingering Tendrils (Part 3 of 3)

Posted on 21 Aug 2023 @ 7:12pm by Commander Morgan Tarin & Commander Scarlet Blake & Commander Allyndra illm Warraquim & Ensign Mimi & Lieutenant JG Sofie Ullswater & Ensign Amanda Turell & Petty Officer 1st Class Gabriel Stark
Edited on on 21 Aug 2023 @ 7:14pm

3,090 words; about a 15 minute read

Mission: Episode 18 - Cold Station 31
Location: USS Galileo-A - Deck 3, Security Office/Brig
Timeline: MD 11, 1925 hrs

Previously, on Lingering Tendrils (Part 2)...

Ullswater was barley able to register the fall of her comrade through the pain and suffocating heat. But she did register it. They were defeated, as good as dead, but deep down in the animal part of the ensign's brain a switch flicked. That last burst of adrenalin before life ends. There were no thoughts, just action, as she leaped forward in one last feeble effort to grab on to Dr Quil. Hands clawing, tears in her eyes, hope at it's end.

And Now, the Conclusion...

[ON]

Mimi flinched and ducked slightly as the bolt passed close over her head feeling the heat of the bolt singing the fur atop her ears, when Sofie came at her she grabbed her by the wrists in an effort to hold the woman back. "Sofie I do not want to hurt you." She said as she struggled with her friend, she doubted she could hold her off for too long her already weak body struggling to find the energy it needed.

If Sofie heard what Mimi said she made no sign of it. There wasn't any room for thoughts in her head, it was a fight for survival and Quil's grip was weak, weaker than Mimi's would have been. Weak enough for her to twist one of her hands out of that hold and with that one free hand lash out in the direction of her opponent's face in a instinctual attempt to do something. It was a pathetic, through all the tears and pain there wasn't much left in Sofie either but she was going to make her desperate last attempts to save her friends.

Sofie's wild swing caught Mimi on the cheek and staggered her, the Nekomi taking a step back as she struggled to take the blow. She desperately tried to re-grab the arm that had struck her.

Mimi's efforts kept Ullswater from being able to muster anything much in the way of an attack. Ullswater's incoherent flailing began to subside, it wasn't working and she needed another angle, something to save this horrible situation. Something like the phaser rifle she had dropped... Her eyes left her opponent, scanning for where it had fell and where it was in relation to her.

She saw it. It would be just one last effort, grab, aim and shoot. No hesitations this time. She'd barely started to move when Amanda put an end to all that hope.

As soon as Darius had fallen stunned to the ground Amanda had dashed forward, she could hear the sounds of struggling between Sofie and Mimi. "Stand down Sofie." She shouted aiming her phaser at the woman as the pair came into sight. As Sofie made an attempt to grab the fallen rifle, she fired, the orange beam striking the woman in the back.

If there had been any time for Sofie to react she might have thought of how Amanda had doomed them all, of how she and Darius had failed, of how now all that awaited them were whatever torments the Cold Station monster could dream up before their eventual demise. Fortunately there was no time to react, no time to think or understand. Just the inky blackness as the second lion fell just as the first had. The victory of the Cold Station.


Elsewhere on the ship

Inside the captain's ready room on deck 2, Commander Tarin's head snapped up to the sudden overhead-sounding security alert. One of the consoles in her private office flashed with distinctive red hues, notating the vessel's combined security office and brig as the primary source of the alarm. Quickly pushing her PADDs to the side, she slapped the commbadge on her left breast then spoke with urgency. "Tarin to Stark, Blake and Warraquim, we have a situation in the brig. Meet me there. Armed." Ensign Mimi again. She quickly located her holster and phaser on her couch then grabbed it with one hand as she sprinted out through the door.

Allyndra was in her office when the call came in. "Security officer and armed?" She shook her head. "I'm a doctor not a damn security officer." Nonetheless, she grabbed a kit and then punched a code to reveal a phaser which she added to her person. She took the lift to the said area.

When she arrived. Allyndra was still wondering what was going on.

Blake and Stark arrived together, both with weapons already in hand and talking to each other in hushed tones as they slowed up outside the door. "I'll go in first," Gabriel nodded firmly, already lifting his weapon higher as he moved to push inside.

Tarin had quickly jogged down the corridor from her ready room and now slowed when she approached the other three crew members already assembled outside of the security office's door. Her observant gaze quickly focused on the nearby armory hatch which had been left open with two phaser files seemingly absent from the inventory. Her adrenaline started to flow when she watched both Stark and Blake take their positions on either side of the door. "Breach now, go!" was her call before grabbing the doctors arm and pulling her back next to her side. "Wait for it...," she instructed.

Gabriel didn't even wait for the first word to finish forming before he moved in, weapon lifted and ready to fire. He called a warning as he pushed forward, and his finger almost twitched at the movement in the room. But he caught himself as Amanda's features came into focus, and he took in the sight of two slumped figures out cold on the deck. Lamar and Ullswater. Mimi wasn't armed, and she seemed in recovery. "Turell?" he was asking for the all clear.

"Stark?" Amanda called out immediately recognising the voice of her fellow security officer from where she sat near the stunned bodies of Darius and Sofie. "Everything is under control."

The acting captain nodded to the CMO then entered the shared facility several seconds behind the petty officer. Hand phaser trained in front of her with an extended arm, she quickly scanned the room then slowly lowered her weapon. If she was a more emotive person, her jaw might have dropped. Two of her crew lay incapacitated on the ground mere feet from Ensign Mimi with two phaser rifles discarded within their reaching distance. Two large holes with surrounding scorch marks were visible, one where the brig cell's LCARS console should have been and the other at the rear wall of the Nekomi's cell just behind her head. Smoldering bulkhead debris littered the floor in a large radius which conformed to blast fragmentation.

Allyndra waited for the others and as they cleared, she jumped and took to the air. *Death from above* She figured that it gave her a better view. The scene while chaotically interesting didn't seem to present an immediate danger. Still, she hovered keeping her weapon trained.

"...What happened here?!" Tarin demanded.

"I'm not quite sure." Amanda admitted as she slowly got to her feet. "Chief Darius and Ensign Ullswater burst into here armed with phaser rifles and tried to kill Ensign Mimi."

"They thought I was Doctor Quill, whoever that is." Mimi said from the cells bed where she lay with her hands holding her stomach and a look of discomfort plainly visible on her face.

Blake swore under her breath as she took in the scene, shaking her head firmly as she crossed her arms. "Warraquim, let's get them back to Sickbay. We'll need to keep them restrained until we can determine if they're suffering psychosis that needs medicating..." ordinarily, that would be the Counsellor's job, but seeing as he was recovering from his own trauma from the station, it would likely need to be Allyndra, or she was also certified herself. "Mimi too," she looked to her with concern, seeing the way she held her middle. "Turell?" she asked, a question of whether she needed to go too.

"I'm good." Amanda replied. "I just had to shoot two people who less than a day ago were perfectly sane friends of ours in the back but I'm good." She quickly turned the conversation away from her though. "I think Mimi may have re-injured herself, she was struggling with Ullswater before I stunned her."

Looking up to the ceiling's bright lights which seemed to still be fully intact, Tarin pushed both of her hands' long fingers through her hair along the sides of her temples while anger boiled in her abdomen. She exhaled a deep breath then holstered her phaser in her belt's weapon pouch. Her eyes hazel irises sparkled with condemnatory emotion as she looked across all of those present in the room -- even the two unconscious ones. She inhaled then exhaled once more to tame her anger. "Doctor, I want a full report once you have all of them back in sickbay and finish your diagnostics." Her narrowed gaze then turned to her first officer. "Blake, I need a word outside."

Allyndra had landed as things settled down. "Yes captain." She pressed her comm. "Emergency transport to sickbay, full filters in place. All medical personal, report." There was a few moments before she vanished along with the others.

Blake glanced to see Gabriel moving to help Amanda, nodding to them before moving out to join the Captain in the corridor, holstering her phaser. "They're going to need medication," she said knowingly as she shook her head with a frown.

The acting captain slowly walked away from the entrance before leaning back on the corridor's bulkhead. "Medication??" she stared the first office in her eyes with a furrowed brow. "Two of your away team members just broke out of sickbay and tried to kill Ensign Mimi!" Her voice raised with incredulity. "What the hell happened over there on that cold station, Blake? Are you all a security risk like Darius and Ullswater?" she sharply questioned, because that was where her first instincts were leading to. Tarin would put all of them in the brig for the return journey if she had to for the sake of the ship's safety. "I want the full truth, not a sanitized Starfleet debriefing."

"I told you the truth," Blake replied firmly, meeting her eyes without issue, showing she was hiding nothing. "Other team members have not been showing these symptoms, I don't know why Darius and Ullswater are behaving differently. Contact with some kind of organic tendril temporarily induced hallucinations. They faded though, so much so that we were able to fight and fix the transporter. Darius seemed to believe that he was still on the cold station earlier in Sickbay and was sedated as a result. Ordinarily, the counsellor would have assessed him, but he too is in recovery. From what I've seen, it seems there's two possibilities. Either that alien contact they had is still causing hallucinations...which is highly unlikely seeing as nothing came up in the medical scans...or these are paranoid psychotic episodes brought on by fear and trauma..." she watched her, to make sure she was still with her. "Which would be my hunch."

"Contact with...organic tendrils 'temporarily' induced hallucinations?" repeated Tarin. She'd thoroughly read the after-action report Blake submitted but hadn't thought to investigate this specific element any further. "It seems these hallucinations aren't temporary afterall." The acting captain chewed on her bottom lip again. "This alien contact, as you call it," she paused to collect her thoughts, "created these hallucinations on the cold station, yes? Blake, you're talking about extremely volatile emotions that the average Starfleet counselor isn't qualified to handle."

Blake shook her head, stopping so she could turn to talk to her properly, not sure that she'd understood what she'd tried to say. "If there was still anything in their system physically causing this, it would have come up on the scans. Abnormal brain activity would have been flagged, and the quarantine process was thorough. And from what I saw of Darius earlier, he wasn't hallucinating...on the station, they were seeing and experiencing things that weren't there, but in Sickbay earlier, Darius wasn't seeing anything that wasn't there...he was having a paranoid reaction to what *was* there. It's far more likely that this is trauma," she said again, pausing to let it sink in. "Paranoia, fear and trauma that causes a delusional psychosis. Now that *is* treatable by a counsellor, but not through talking therapy alone, medication is required for a period of time to help calm the patient so that they can reconnect with reality."

Putting her hands sternly on her hips, Tarin had a difference of opinion to convey. "Blake, where you've been - both of the away teams - is arguably outside the realm of known science. Your report indicated that. Have you..." her thoughts drifted to the darkest parts of her assessment, "considered that you and your teams might have brought something back with you from the cold station? Something you encountered there that we can't fully understand or identify without sensors and tricorders?"

"Can I entirely rule that out? No. And further scans would definitely be a worthwhile precaution," Blake searched her eyes for a long moment. She knew the other woman had been a First Officer and presumably led a number of her own Away Missions. They both understood that the weird and wonderful was an integral risk of the unknown. "But I wouldn't expect to see such a change in the symptoms if it's caused by the same thing. And I would also expect all affected team members to be showing similar signs. The presentation is far more in line with paranoid delusion than a psychotropic hallucination. Captain, this used to be my job," she reminded her quietly. "And I've worked with a lot of marines with PTSD," she paused a moment, looking back towards the security office. "I won't rule out the possibility that they brought something back with them, but you shouldn't rule out the possibility that this is trauma either. They need a psychological assessment as well as a medical one."

A frustrated sigh softly emanated from the taller commander's chest. The first officer wasn't wrong in her assessment but that didn't mean she was necessarily correct. "You're suggesting medicating Darius and Ullswater. For which purpose? To ascertain whatever psychological issues they may be facing? Or to pacify them for now?"

"Both," Blake replied bluntly as she shook her head, folding her arms as concern reached her features, "whatever the cause, they're clearly a danger to themselves and others at the moment. Until we know what this is and can treat it accordingly, it's the safest course of action. If it turns out to be psychological, then an episode this intense would require medication as part of the treatment, counselling alone won't cut it. And if it's something we brought back..." she took a deep breath at that scenario, looking back down the corridor towards the scene they'd left. "Then hopefully we can find the right treatment to nullify it."

Tarin shook her head, not convinced by the XO's argument. "Galileo isn't an ancient insane asylum where we keep our mentally ill sedated while we search for cures. I'm not convinced that they actually are suffering from some sort of psychosis because this is, so far, just speculation." She rubbed her chin in deep thought before arriving at a conclusion. "I want them behind a forcefield in sickbay. Un-sedated and without any medication in their bloodstreams until Doctor Warraquim can perform a medical review and reach a diagnosis."

"With due respect, you're not a Doctor," Blake relied bluntly, not understanding how or why the Commander who had climbed the ranks through helm thought she had any expertise around medicine. It didn't surprise her though, she seemed to think she was an expert in everything else too. "It's up to Dr. Warraquim to decide their treatment plan. I was trying to prepare you for what would likely come next based on what I've seen and my experience, that's all," she shrugged, at a loss with the Captain's attitude. Giving such advisement was literally a part of her job as First Officer, she didn't understand why it had turned into an argument in the hallway.

The acting captain narrowed her eyes. "I never professed to be a doctor, and I already stated that I won't allow any immediate action taken before Doctor Warraquim completes her diagnosis." She couldn't help but roll her eyes. "You might be a former Marine and counselor, Blake, but you're not a medical doctor qualified to make preemptive treatment decisions."

Blake crossed her arms, a sign of her growing impatience as she shook her head lightly, but mostly, she was tired of arguing with her. "I was warning you of what I thought was likely to happen next," she said again, with the essence of a sigh in her voice, because she knew that, as usual, Tarin would do as Tarin pleased. "Captain, this is getting us nowhere, do you have an order for me or am I dismissed?"

"Get a repair crew together and get this brig back in operation by zero-hundred." Tarin could sense animosity coming from the first officer and this was becoming a recurring happenstance whenever their opinions differed. "And I want a full report detailing how Darius and Ullswater were able to break out of sickbay in the first place. We need to make sure it doesn't happen again."

"Yes, Captain," Blake nodded with her hands clasped behind her back before turning sharply and striding away as she made a mental list of crew to assign to the task, and a note to contact Warraquim to put a report together regarding how the patient had escaped Sickbay. She was already feeling better as she walked away, tugging the cuffs of her sleeves neatly back into position; these were things she *could* do something about.

[OFF]

--

CMDR Morgan Tarin
Acting Commanding Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Saalm]

Ensign Sofie Ullswater
Science Officer
USS Galileo-A

Cmdr Allyndra illm Warraquim
Second and Chief Medical Officer
USS Gallileo-A

CMDR Scarlet Blake
First Officer
USS Galileo-A

PO1 Gabriel Stark
Security/Tactical
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Blake]

Ensign Mimi
Deputy Operations Manager
USS Galileo-A

Ensign Amanda Turell
Security Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Mimi]

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