Blood & Ice 07 - Last-Minute Rescue
BLOOD AND ICE
by Soledad
Author's note:For disclaimer, rating, etc., see the secondary index page.
Rigelian scientist Professor R’Nata is an OFC, based on a colleague of mine.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
CHAPTER SEVEN - LAST-MINUTE RESCUE
Anxiety spread quickly among the survivors of the Copernicus, following LaForge’s announcement. Commander Yarell, clearly having reached the end of his rope, was waving a phaser at the Regulan.
“This is all your fault!” he screamed. “My entire crew died or turned into man-eating monsters because of you. You should be executed on the spot.”
“Go on, kill me,” Rohan answered coldly. “That will only release the dormant spores in my blood, and you’ll all become the living dead before your ship explodes.”
Frightened to the edge of madness, Yarell reluctantly lowered his phaser.
“There is one more problem to be considered, Commander,” Data said to Ryker. “The spores - though not the worms themselves - are obviously spaceborn. Which means that if the Copernicus explodes, they may spread over this entire sector.”
“How high is the possibility that they’d survive the explosion?” Ryker asked.
“Relatively low, sir; about four point seven three per cent,” the android replied. “Still, is that a risk we can ignore?”
“No, it isn’t,” Ryker agreed. “But what could we do against it? Where would the worms be destroyed without doubt?”
“In the heart of a sun, Commander,” Data answered without hesitation. “And there happens to be a brown dwarf star with an extremely strong gravitation field one point six nine parsecs from here. If we can access navigation and helm controls from this room, we could jury-rig the engines to go on emergency Warp as soon as we’ve beamed out and send the ship right into the star. Should the nuclear fusion not be enough to exterminate the worms, the gravity would trap them forever.”
“That can actually be done?” Ryker looked at LaForge for confirmation.
Their chief engineer nodded. “It would require extremely correct calculations, but we’ve got Data. With his help, yeah, we can do this.”
“All right, make it so,” Ryker didn’t realize he was using the favourite phrase of their captain; nor did he see the hurriedly suppressed grins of his shipmates.
Data and LaForge started working on the calculations at once, while Doctor Crusher monitored Carli’s vitals, who was whimpering, even in hir unconscious state. The doctor looked up to Ryker in concern.
“I really think we should freeze him… her, Commander.”
“That won’t help him,” Ryker dismissed the idea. Again.
“No,” Doctor Crusher agreed. “But it would hold back the onset of the transformation. For a while anyway.”
“I’d rather take my chances with Beverly’s cure,” Ryker answered stubbornly.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Right on clue, a transporter beam began to shimmer in their midst, coalescing into the sleek form of Beverly Crusher, standing in the graceful pose of a resting ballerina and holding a large medkit as if it had been some bizarrely oversized designer handbag.
Spotting her brother-in-law, she all but dropped it, though.
“Robert!” she squealed happily. “You’re alive! That’s wonderful!”
Robert hugged her briefly. “I am, but my patients won’t be much longer, Bev, so we should hurry up.”
“He’s right,” Ryker said. “I’d hate to leave behind anyone, just because we ran out of time. Start with Carli; he’s in the worst shape of us all.”
“Oh, of course, Bill, you’re absolutely right!” Beverly opened her medkit, took out a hypospray and pressed it to Carli’s neck. With a low hiss, the hypo emptied its contents into hir bloodstream.
“Let’s hope it works,” Robert Crusher said, while Beverly went on to inoculate him. “Their physiology is in a very delicate balance. If the disease itself doesn’t kill him… her, the cure still might.”
“Well, that can’t be helped,” Beverly stepped over to LaForge to administer the cure. “We couldn’t come up with something different for hir in such a short time.”
She inoculated Hernandez and Yarell, and then went over to the cryogenic chambers.
“How long until they’d thaw out?” she asked.
“About twenty minutes,” Robert Crusher was already starting the reviving sequence. “These are the newest models, fortunately. If they don’t malfunction, we may heal our people within the time frame.”
“Let’s hope so,” Beverly scanned Carli. “The cure seems to work. The bloodworms in hir blood are dying. There’ll be a great deal of rehab later, after we’d flushed the anti-worms out of hir blood, but at least s/he’s no longer contagious. S/he can be beamed back to the Enterprise; and so can you,” she added scanning Yarell, who, in turn, pointed at the Regulan accusingly.
“What about him?” he demanded. “You’re not planning to take him with us, do you?”
“That’s exactly what I’m planning, Commander,” Ryker answered coldly, not used to others questioning his judgement. Especially not when said others had just managed to lose their entire crew to some homicidal parasites.
“Why?” Yarell demanded. “He tried to spread the bloodworms throughout Federation space. He should be left behind, sent into the sun, together with the Copernicus and the damned zombies!”
“May I remind you that those damned zombies are actually your former crewmates?” Daro growled. He could understand that the man was frightened, but being so callous towards former colleagues whose only crime was to have been less lucky than he’d had was way too selfish.
“No, we won’t get rid of him so easily,” Ryker said. “Federation authorities will deal with this problem; and with him. This is not our league. Mr. Worf, take him into custody and beam over with him to the Enterprise.”
“But-but he’s a carrier!” Yarell protested. “He’ll infest your ship with the bloodworms, just as you did with ours!”
Hernandez gave him an unfriendly look.
“No, he won’t,” she said. “We have specific cells in our brig, with quarantine fields. Or do you think we’re stupid, hombre? C’mon, Worf!”
The Klingon wrestled the Regulan’s arms behind his back and handcuffed him with the special, molecular-bound manacles no-one had ever been able to break. The Regulan offered no resistance when they were caught in the transporter beam and carried away.
Less than a minute later Worf reappeared. “Everything is settled,” he told Ryker.
The executive officer nodded. “Good work, Mr. Worf. Your turn now,” he turned to Yarell and Robert Crusher.
But the chief medical officer of the Copernicus shook his head.
“No, I’ll stay. These are my patients,” he gestured towards the cryogenic chambers, “and Beverly may need my help when they come to. They don’t know her; however, they do know me.”
Ryker nodded, because that was a logical assumption.
“All right,” he said. “Macha, Ensign Daro, return to the Enterprise and take Carli with you.”
“S/he must be kept in quarantine,” Robert Crusher warned, “just like the rest of us, even those with immunity. We still don’t know how efficient the cure is; or how to neutralize the dormant spores in the blood stream of potential carriers. I’m afraid we’re all going to have a fairly long forced sick leave to expect.”
“That would be actually convenient,” Ryker said. “It would give us the chance to discuss the demands of the Regulans with the Federation authorities.”
Yarell stared at him in shocked disbelief.
“Ryker, you can’t be serious!” he exclaimed. “Are you really considering forwarding their… their ultimatum to the Federation Council? They’re mass murderers!”
“No, they’re not,” Ryker answered coldly. “They’re merely desperate. Granted, the methods of Mr Rohan… could that truly be his name? He isn’t a Saurian, after all.”
“I assume his real name would be close enough,” Data injected. “Regulan names are, as a rule, too difficult for humanoids to pronounce. The vocal cords of mammals are not made to produce the right sounds. We should simply call him Rohan, as this is apparently the name he chose.”
“Whatever his real name may be, while it’s true that his methods were a bit unorthodox, to put it mildly, I understand - and I’m sure Captain Picard will agree with me - that his people were mistreated by the Federation a hundred and fifty years ago,” Ryker said.
“We had to protect ourselves!” Yarell shouted.
“Perhaps,” Ryker allowed. “But not by forcing an entire civilization back to the pre-industrial age. I understand that our people were frightened; the bloodworms are a very serious threat and could become the ultimate doomsday weapon in the wrong hands. But sacrificing an otherwise blameless species just to set our fears to rest is not the right way to go.”
Yarell looked as if he wanted to keep arguing, but by then, Worf had had enough. He grabbed the Copernicus officer by the throat and lifted him bodily in the air.
“Worf to Enterprise,” he barked. “Two to beam over, directly to the brig.”
Before Yarell could have suffocated, sparkles fill the air, and Worf and his victim were beamed away.
“Well then,” Ryker said dryly, “now that the excitement is over, I believe the rest of us have a job to do.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
It was a true - and sometimes frightening - race against time, but in the end the two Doctor Crushers managed to thaw out and inoculate all surviving crewmembers of the Copernicus… about seven minutes before Data and LaForge would have finished jury-rigging the engines to send the ship into the nearest convenient sun. Which, as Data had explained previously, was a brown dwarf, just hot enough to reduce both ship and zombified crew into a bunch of glowing atoms. Hopefully, together with the mutated bloodworms.
They all beamed over to the Enterprise in a great hurry, directly into the quarantine area. Even Data had to be quarantined until the doctors could be absolutely sure that none of the airborne spores were hiding in his hair or clothes.
They all gathered in the living room of the quarantine area - well, with the exception of Carli, whose delicate physiology was still coping with the aftermath of both the infection and the cure and the Regulan who had been put in one of the high-security arrest cells - to watch the last voyage of the Copernicus.
“They may be man-eating, undead monsters, now,” Robert Crusher summarized everybody’s feelings, “but less than two days ago, they were our crewmates: simple human beings like us. In fact, it could have been us, heading towards a fiery grave, had we been just a little less fortunate.”
“Quite true,” Ryker agreed, rising his glass as the Copernicus’ warp engines suddenly came alive and the ship became grotesquely elongated for a nanosecond, like a rubber band, before leaping into hyperspace. “To absent friends we won’t see anymore. This is to Mikal Hodel, the best diagnostic engineer and most outrageous flirt we’ve ever served with.”
“And this is to Ensign Baldor who would have deserved better from her crewmates,” Daro added quietly, raising his own glass, the electric blue beverage in which looked suspiciously like Romulan ale. The others followed his lead, somewhat guiltily, as more than one of them had had their doubts against the Romulan expatriate - and had been proved wrong, but for what price?
Worf, holding a smoking tankard of check’tluth, a traditional Klingon beverage other races would hesitate to use for de-rusting photon torpedo tubes in fear that it would eat its way through the super hard metal, muttered something under his breath in Klingoneese. It was either a word of apology, or a word of farewell… or a parting insult. Nobody was stupid (or suicidal) enough to ask which one.
One by one, the Copernicus officers named their shipmates one last time and drank to their honour. It was a long list and a great many drinks - sixty-eight out of eighty crew had either been killed and eaten or transformed.
“Commander,” Data, who did not participate in the impromptu farewell ceremony, opting instead to monitor the progress of the Copernicus, “long-range sensors show a massive matter-antimatter explosion at the exact coordinates of the brown dwarf. It seems the Copernicus has reached her final destination. In fact, the explosion in the core of the star seems to have briefly rekindled the dead sun.”
“I hope that’s good news for us, Data,” Ryker said.
The android nodded. “Yes, sir. The nuclear reactions within an active star will safely eliminate any possible dangers coming from the bloodworms. And any potential wreckage surviving the explosion, unlikely though that is, would be safely trapped in the star’s gravity field. I would suggest placing warning bakes around the area, though, just in case.”
Ryker nodded. “Good idea, Data. I’ll forward it to Captain Picard. That’s one crisis solved; now if we just could deal with the two major problems so easily.”
“What do you mean, Bill?” Beverly asked. “We’ve found a cure, so everything’s all right.”
“We still don’t know what these anti-worms you’ve flooded our systems with are actually doing to us,” Ryker pointed out. “And there’s still the main problem of Regulus II. I don’t think the enforced quarantine could be justified any longer. It was barbaric and unfair a hundred and fifty years ago to begin with; by today’s standards it can’t be continued anymore. Which means, we’ll need a different solution - and that won’t be easily found.”
He could not know, of course - not yet - that somebody was already working on that solution.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Doctor Selar looked at the picture of Professor R’Nata, as it appeared on the viewscreen in her quarters, with scientific curiosity. The famous - or rather infamous - Rigelian woman was roughly twice her age, which still did not count as old for a Vulcanoid, with the usual sharp features and elegantly pointed ears, but with an unruly mass of greying, ash blonde hair twisted into a loose knot on the nape of her long, thin neck. Her eyes were watery blue, very observant and quite shrewd. She wore the usual blue smock of medical personnel, and watched the Vulcan doctor with equal interest.
“Yes, your Regulan fugitive was here, in my lab, for five standard months,” she admitted readily. “He allowed me to do a complete physical on him, though which I’ve collected a great amount of useful data about Regulan physiology in general and its deterioration due to the results of the enforced quarantine in particular. Including their symbiosis with the mutated bloodworms.”
“Symbiosis?” Selar repeated with an arched eyebrow. “I thought he was merely a carrier.”
“That was what I thought in the beginning, too,” Professor R’Nata was visibly warming up to the topic. “However, after a thorough and repeated analysis of the data, I’ve postulated the hypothesis that these mutated worms, while adapting to the lack of any other available hosts, have developed a symbiotic connection to the native Regulans. They can survive in the blood stream of Regulan hosts, in a dormant state, and in exchange, they keep the host body alive.”
“I assume you mean by giving them a certain level of immunity against many diseases the Regulans no longer have the scientific means to protect themselves from,” Selar clarified, and the professor nodded.
“That is correct.”
“But that would also mean that - should we choose to inoculate them with Doctor Crusher’s cure - we could annihilate the native population of Regulus II in its entirety, by taking away the only immunity against diseases they currently possess,” Selar mentally made the next logical step.
The Rigelian doctor nodded again.
“That is also correct. But more than that, Doctor Crusher’s anti-worms seem to have a very aggressive nature. We must flush them out of the system of everyone who’s been infected, because if they’re allowed to breed uncontrolled, the consequences would be by magnitudes worse than the actual plasmasite infection.”
“They are not supposed to breed at all,” Selar reminded her colleague. “They are supposed to die and be absorbed by the host body.”
R’Nata gave her an ironic eyebrow that would have put any Vulcan to shame.
“I know what they’re supposed to do, doctor. But we both know there are no guarantees that they’d actually do it; and the long-term effects haven’t been considered, either, not even in theory, as far as I’m informed.”
“We did not have the time for that,” Selar knew she sounded vaguely defensive, and that annoyed her; it wasn’t her fault, after all, that her concerns had been overridden. “Our immediate goal was to save the infected people.”
“I understand that, and I’m not making any accusations,” R’Nata answered. “But we do have the time now, and I’m offering my help. You know that, despite my sometimes questionable reputation, I’m the expert when it comes to bloodworms. Granted, my attempts to find a cure - one that isn’t worse than the disease itself, that is - have failed so far. But with the new data I’ve gathered, and with Doctor Crusher’s crude temporary cure, we could deal with this treat, once and forever.”
“And that would not endanger the native population of Regulus II?” Selar asked.
“Not if we work together and get help from the lead geneticists of Starfleet Medical,” R’Nata promised. “My plan is to cause changes in the genetic make-up of the bloodworms; changes that would enable them to absorb iron directly from other sources than just haemoglobin.”
“You mean like rust-eating bacteria?” Selar asked doubtfully.
The Rigelian nodded. “Something like that, yes.”
Selar thought about the suggestion unhurriedly for several minutes.
“Your idea does have its merits, Professor,” she finally said. “But an undertaking like this would require time, equipment, well-trained research and medical personnel… and volunteers. Do you have all these things at your disposal?”
“I have all the time in the universe,” R’Nata said. “I have extensive labs and dedicated researchers here; all Vulcans and Rigelians with natural immunity. I will need more and better equipment, though; and I need you to have all your quarantined crewmates and the Regulan fugitive transferred to me. I’ll need them to observe the aftershocks of Doctor Crusher’s so-called cure. Besides, they won’t endanger anyone else here.”
“You assume that I can arrange their transfer,” Selar wasn’t so certain about that. In fact, she seriously doubted it. She said so, and Professor R’Nata shrugged.
“You’re a Vulcan and the daughter of a high-ranking diplomat; and you’re Starfleet. You’ve got the connections. I suggest that you use them.”
Selar thought for a while again, and then she nodded.
“Very well, Professor, I will see what I can do. I will contact you about the results of my actions shortly.”
“I’ll be awaiting your message,” and with that, the Rigelian broke the connection.
Selar took a deep breath and roughly eight point three one seconds to collect her thoughts before touching her comm badge.
“Selar to Picard.”
“Go ahead, doctor,” came the immediate answer.
“Captain, if you could spare some time for me, I believe I have a suggestion how to solve our current problem,” Selar told him. “Although you may not like it.”
There was a short, meaningful pause, and then Picard answered calmly. “Come to my ready room, Lieutenant, and we’ll discuss it.”
Chapter 08 - Politics
by Soledad
Author's note:For disclaimer, rating, etc., see the secondary index page.
Rigelian scientist Professor R’Nata is an OFC, based on a colleague of mine.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
CHAPTER SEVEN - LAST-MINUTE RESCUE
Anxiety spread quickly among the survivors of the Copernicus, following LaForge’s announcement. Commander Yarell, clearly having reached the end of his rope, was waving a phaser at the Regulan.
“This is all your fault!” he screamed. “My entire crew died or turned into man-eating monsters because of you. You should be executed on the spot.”
“Go on, kill me,” Rohan answered coldly. “That will only release the dormant spores in my blood, and you’ll all become the living dead before your ship explodes.”
Frightened to the edge of madness, Yarell reluctantly lowered his phaser.
“There is one more problem to be considered, Commander,” Data said to Ryker. “The spores - though not the worms themselves - are obviously spaceborn. Which means that if the Copernicus explodes, they may spread over this entire sector.”
“How high is the possibility that they’d survive the explosion?” Ryker asked.
“Relatively low, sir; about four point seven three per cent,” the android replied. “Still, is that a risk we can ignore?”
“No, it isn’t,” Ryker agreed. “But what could we do against it? Where would the worms be destroyed without doubt?”
“In the heart of a sun, Commander,” Data answered without hesitation. “And there happens to be a brown dwarf star with an extremely strong gravitation field one point six nine parsecs from here. If we can access navigation and helm controls from this room, we could jury-rig the engines to go on emergency Warp as soon as we’ve beamed out and send the ship right into the star. Should the nuclear fusion not be enough to exterminate the worms, the gravity would trap them forever.”
“That can actually be done?” Ryker looked at LaForge for confirmation.
Their chief engineer nodded. “It would require extremely correct calculations, but we’ve got Data. With his help, yeah, we can do this.”
“All right, make it so,” Ryker didn’t realize he was using the favourite phrase of their captain; nor did he see the hurriedly suppressed grins of his shipmates.
Data and LaForge started working on the calculations at once, while Doctor Crusher monitored Carli’s vitals, who was whimpering, even in hir unconscious state. The doctor looked up to Ryker in concern.
“I really think we should freeze him… her, Commander.”
“That won’t help him,” Ryker dismissed the idea. Again.
“No,” Doctor Crusher agreed. “But it would hold back the onset of the transformation. For a while anyway.”
“I’d rather take my chances with Beverly’s cure,” Ryker answered stubbornly.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Right on clue, a transporter beam began to shimmer in their midst, coalescing into the sleek form of Beverly Crusher, standing in the graceful pose of a resting ballerina and holding a large medkit as if it had been some bizarrely oversized designer handbag.
Spotting her brother-in-law, she all but dropped it, though.
“Robert!” she squealed happily. “You’re alive! That’s wonderful!”
Robert hugged her briefly. “I am, but my patients won’t be much longer, Bev, so we should hurry up.”
“He’s right,” Ryker said. “I’d hate to leave behind anyone, just because we ran out of time. Start with Carli; he’s in the worst shape of us all.”
“Oh, of course, Bill, you’re absolutely right!” Beverly opened her medkit, took out a hypospray and pressed it to Carli’s neck. With a low hiss, the hypo emptied its contents into hir bloodstream.
“Let’s hope it works,” Robert Crusher said, while Beverly went on to inoculate him. “Their physiology is in a very delicate balance. If the disease itself doesn’t kill him… her, the cure still might.”
“Well, that can’t be helped,” Beverly stepped over to LaForge to administer the cure. “We couldn’t come up with something different for hir in such a short time.”
She inoculated Hernandez and Yarell, and then went over to the cryogenic chambers.
“How long until they’d thaw out?” she asked.
“About twenty minutes,” Robert Crusher was already starting the reviving sequence. “These are the newest models, fortunately. If they don’t malfunction, we may heal our people within the time frame.”
“Let’s hope so,” Beverly scanned Carli. “The cure seems to work. The bloodworms in hir blood are dying. There’ll be a great deal of rehab later, after we’d flushed the anti-worms out of hir blood, but at least s/he’s no longer contagious. S/he can be beamed back to the Enterprise; and so can you,” she added scanning Yarell, who, in turn, pointed at the Regulan accusingly.
“What about him?” he demanded. “You’re not planning to take him with us, do you?”
“That’s exactly what I’m planning, Commander,” Ryker answered coldly, not used to others questioning his judgement. Especially not when said others had just managed to lose their entire crew to some homicidal parasites.
“Why?” Yarell demanded. “He tried to spread the bloodworms throughout Federation space. He should be left behind, sent into the sun, together with the Copernicus and the damned zombies!”
“May I remind you that those damned zombies are actually your former crewmates?” Daro growled. He could understand that the man was frightened, but being so callous towards former colleagues whose only crime was to have been less lucky than he’d had was way too selfish.
“No, we won’t get rid of him so easily,” Ryker said. “Federation authorities will deal with this problem; and with him. This is not our league. Mr. Worf, take him into custody and beam over with him to the Enterprise.”
“But-but he’s a carrier!” Yarell protested. “He’ll infest your ship with the bloodworms, just as you did with ours!”
Hernandez gave him an unfriendly look.
“No, he won’t,” she said. “We have specific cells in our brig, with quarantine fields. Or do you think we’re stupid, hombre? C’mon, Worf!”
The Klingon wrestled the Regulan’s arms behind his back and handcuffed him with the special, molecular-bound manacles no-one had ever been able to break. The Regulan offered no resistance when they were caught in the transporter beam and carried away.
Less than a minute later Worf reappeared. “Everything is settled,” he told Ryker.
The executive officer nodded. “Good work, Mr. Worf. Your turn now,” he turned to Yarell and Robert Crusher.
But the chief medical officer of the Copernicus shook his head.
“No, I’ll stay. These are my patients,” he gestured towards the cryogenic chambers, “and Beverly may need my help when they come to. They don’t know her; however, they do know me.”
Ryker nodded, because that was a logical assumption.
“All right,” he said. “Macha, Ensign Daro, return to the Enterprise and take Carli with you.”
“S/he must be kept in quarantine,” Robert Crusher warned, “just like the rest of us, even those with immunity. We still don’t know how efficient the cure is; or how to neutralize the dormant spores in the blood stream of potential carriers. I’m afraid we’re all going to have a fairly long forced sick leave to expect.”
“That would be actually convenient,” Ryker said. “It would give us the chance to discuss the demands of the Regulans with the Federation authorities.”
Yarell stared at him in shocked disbelief.
“Ryker, you can’t be serious!” he exclaimed. “Are you really considering forwarding their… their ultimatum to the Federation Council? They’re mass murderers!”
“No, they’re not,” Ryker answered coldly. “They’re merely desperate. Granted, the methods of Mr Rohan… could that truly be his name? He isn’t a Saurian, after all.”
“I assume his real name would be close enough,” Data injected. “Regulan names are, as a rule, too difficult for humanoids to pronounce. The vocal cords of mammals are not made to produce the right sounds. We should simply call him Rohan, as this is apparently the name he chose.”
“Whatever his real name may be, while it’s true that his methods were a bit unorthodox, to put it mildly, I understand - and I’m sure Captain Picard will agree with me - that his people were mistreated by the Federation a hundred and fifty years ago,” Ryker said.
“We had to protect ourselves!” Yarell shouted.
“Perhaps,” Ryker allowed. “But not by forcing an entire civilization back to the pre-industrial age. I understand that our people were frightened; the bloodworms are a very serious threat and could become the ultimate doomsday weapon in the wrong hands. But sacrificing an otherwise blameless species just to set our fears to rest is not the right way to go.”
Yarell looked as if he wanted to keep arguing, but by then, Worf had had enough. He grabbed the Copernicus officer by the throat and lifted him bodily in the air.
“Worf to Enterprise,” he barked. “Two to beam over, directly to the brig.”
Before Yarell could have suffocated, sparkles fill the air, and Worf and his victim were beamed away.
“Well then,” Ryker said dryly, “now that the excitement is over, I believe the rest of us have a job to do.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
It was a true - and sometimes frightening - race against time, but in the end the two Doctor Crushers managed to thaw out and inoculate all surviving crewmembers of the Copernicus… about seven minutes before Data and LaForge would have finished jury-rigging the engines to send the ship into the nearest convenient sun. Which, as Data had explained previously, was a brown dwarf, just hot enough to reduce both ship and zombified crew into a bunch of glowing atoms. Hopefully, together with the mutated bloodworms.
They all beamed over to the Enterprise in a great hurry, directly into the quarantine area. Even Data had to be quarantined until the doctors could be absolutely sure that none of the airborne spores were hiding in his hair or clothes.
They all gathered in the living room of the quarantine area - well, with the exception of Carli, whose delicate physiology was still coping with the aftermath of both the infection and the cure and the Regulan who had been put in one of the high-security arrest cells - to watch the last voyage of the Copernicus.
“They may be man-eating, undead monsters, now,” Robert Crusher summarized everybody’s feelings, “but less than two days ago, they were our crewmates: simple human beings like us. In fact, it could have been us, heading towards a fiery grave, had we been just a little less fortunate.”
“Quite true,” Ryker agreed, rising his glass as the Copernicus’ warp engines suddenly came alive and the ship became grotesquely elongated for a nanosecond, like a rubber band, before leaping into hyperspace. “To absent friends we won’t see anymore. This is to Mikal Hodel, the best diagnostic engineer and most outrageous flirt we’ve ever served with.”
“And this is to Ensign Baldor who would have deserved better from her crewmates,” Daro added quietly, raising his own glass, the electric blue beverage in which looked suspiciously like Romulan ale. The others followed his lead, somewhat guiltily, as more than one of them had had their doubts against the Romulan expatriate - and had been proved wrong, but for what price?
Worf, holding a smoking tankard of check’tluth, a traditional Klingon beverage other races would hesitate to use for de-rusting photon torpedo tubes in fear that it would eat its way through the super hard metal, muttered something under his breath in Klingoneese. It was either a word of apology, or a word of farewell… or a parting insult. Nobody was stupid (or suicidal) enough to ask which one.
One by one, the Copernicus officers named their shipmates one last time and drank to their honour. It was a long list and a great many drinks - sixty-eight out of eighty crew had either been killed and eaten or transformed.
“Commander,” Data, who did not participate in the impromptu farewell ceremony, opting instead to monitor the progress of the Copernicus, “long-range sensors show a massive matter-antimatter explosion at the exact coordinates of the brown dwarf. It seems the Copernicus has reached her final destination. In fact, the explosion in the core of the star seems to have briefly rekindled the dead sun.”
“I hope that’s good news for us, Data,” Ryker said.
The android nodded. “Yes, sir. The nuclear reactions within an active star will safely eliminate any possible dangers coming from the bloodworms. And any potential wreckage surviving the explosion, unlikely though that is, would be safely trapped in the star’s gravity field. I would suggest placing warning bakes around the area, though, just in case.”
Ryker nodded. “Good idea, Data. I’ll forward it to Captain Picard. That’s one crisis solved; now if we just could deal with the two major problems so easily.”
“What do you mean, Bill?” Beverly asked. “We’ve found a cure, so everything’s all right.”
“We still don’t know what these anti-worms you’ve flooded our systems with are actually doing to us,” Ryker pointed out. “And there’s still the main problem of Regulus II. I don’t think the enforced quarantine could be justified any longer. It was barbaric and unfair a hundred and fifty years ago to begin with; by today’s standards it can’t be continued anymore. Which means, we’ll need a different solution - and that won’t be easily found.”
He could not know, of course - not yet - that somebody was already working on that solution.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Doctor Selar looked at the picture of Professor R’Nata, as it appeared on the viewscreen in her quarters, with scientific curiosity. The famous - or rather infamous - Rigelian woman was roughly twice her age, which still did not count as old for a Vulcanoid, with the usual sharp features and elegantly pointed ears, but with an unruly mass of greying, ash blonde hair twisted into a loose knot on the nape of her long, thin neck. Her eyes were watery blue, very observant and quite shrewd. She wore the usual blue smock of medical personnel, and watched the Vulcan doctor with equal interest.
“Yes, your Regulan fugitive was here, in my lab, for five standard months,” she admitted readily. “He allowed me to do a complete physical on him, though which I’ve collected a great amount of useful data about Regulan physiology in general and its deterioration due to the results of the enforced quarantine in particular. Including their symbiosis with the mutated bloodworms.”
“Symbiosis?” Selar repeated with an arched eyebrow. “I thought he was merely a carrier.”
“That was what I thought in the beginning, too,” Professor R’Nata was visibly warming up to the topic. “However, after a thorough and repeated analysis of the data, I’ve postulated the hypothesis that these mutated worms, while adapting to the lack of any other available hosts, have developed a symbiotic connection to the native Regulans. They can survive in the blood stream of Regulan hosts, in a dormant state, and in exchange, they keep the host body alive.”
“I assume you mean by giving them a certain level of immunity against many diseases the Regulans no longer have the scientific means to protect themselves from,” Selar clarified, and the professor nodded.
“That is correct.”
“But that would also mean that - should we choose to inoculate them with Doctor Crusher’s cure - we could annihilate the native population of Regulus II in its entirety, by taking away the only immunity against diseases they currently possess,” Selar mentally made the next logical step.
The Rigelian doctor nodded again.
“That is also correct. But more than that, Doctor Crusher’s anti-worms seem to have a very aggressive nature. We must flush them out of the system of everyone who’s been infected, because if they’re allowed to breed uncontrolled, the consequences would be by magnitudes worse than the actual plasmasite infection.”
“They are not supposed to breed at all,” Selar reminded her colleague. “They are supposed to die and be absorbed by the host body.”
R’Nata gave her an ironic eyebrow that would have put any Vulcan to shame.
“I know what they’re supposed to do, doctor. But we both know there are no guarantees that they’d actually do it; and the long-term effects haven’t been considered, either, not even in theory, as far as I’m informed.”
“We did not have the time for that,” Selar knew she sounded vaguely defensive, and that annoyed her; it wasn’t her fault, after all, that her concerns had been overridden. “Our immediate goal was to save the infected people.”
“I understand that, and I’m not making any accusations,” R’Nata answered. “But we do have the time now, and I’m offering my help. You know that, despite my sometimes questionable reputation, I’m the expert when it comes to bloodworms. Granted, my attempts to find a cure - one that isn’t worse than the disease itself, that is - have failed so far. But with the new data I’ve gathered, and with Doctor Crusher’s crude temporary cure, we could deal with this treat, once and forever.”
“And that would not endanger the native population of Regulus II?” Selar asked.
“Not if we work together and get help from the lead geneticists of Starfleet Medical,” R’Nata promised. “My plan is to cause changes in the genetic make-up of the bloodworms; changes that would enable them to absorb iron directly from other sources than just haemoglobin.”
“You mean like rust-eating bacteria?” Selar asked doubtfully.
The Rigelian nodded. “Something like that, yes.”
Selar thought about the suggestion unhurriedly for several minutes.
“Your idea does have its merits, Professor,” she finally said. “But an undertaking like this would require time, equipment, well-trained research and medical personnel… and volunteers. Do you have all these things at your disposal?”
“I have all the time in the universe,” R’Nata said. “I have extensive labs and dedicated researchers here; all Vulcans and Rigelians with natural immunity. I will need more and better equipment, though; and I need you to have all your quarantined crewmates and the Regulan fugitive transferred to me. I’ll need them to observe the aftershocks of Doctor Crusher’s so-called cure. Besides, they won’t endanger anyone else here.”
“You assume that I can arrange their transfer,” Selar wasn’t so certain about that. In fact, she seriously doubted it. She said so, and Professor R’Nata shrugged.
“You’re a Vulcan and the daughter of a high-ranking diplomat; and you’re Starfleet. You’ve got the connections. I suggest that you use them.”
Selar thought for a while again, and then she nodded.
“Very well, Professor, I will see what I can do. I will contact you about the results of my actions shortly.”
“I’ll be awaiting your message,” and with that, the Rigelian broke the connection.
Selar took a deep breath and roughly eight point three one seconds to collect her thoughts before touching her comm badge.
“Selar to Picard.”
“Go ahead, doctor,” came the immediate answer.
“Captain, if you could spare some time for me, I believe I have a suggestion how to solve our current problem,” Selar told him. “Although you may not like it.”
There was a short, meaningful pause, and then Picard answered calmly. “Come to my ready room, Lieutenant, and we’ll discuss it.”
Chapter 08 - Politics