PART THIRTEEN [CLOSED]

[st_anon]

PREVIOUS PARTS ON THIS TAG

NEXT PART

Discussion post

ATTN: regarding reposts
As a new guideline: for the time being, I'd like to put a damper on the re-requesting going on. Please only re-request something if it has been more than a month since you asked for it and it still hasn't been filled. I'd like to remind everyone that old parts still have many

Comments

Testify [1/20]

[anonymous]

After it was all over and things were--mostly--all right again, they asked Spock how he had managed to find the cure so quickly. "I mean, I know you're a genius and all" Kirk said, the lazy insolence almost back in his tone but still threaded with something softer, tentative and unsure and a bit guilty, "but shouldn't it have taken at least a few days just to find the cause?"

"That is essentially correct, Captain." The bruises on Spock's face had been healed in Sickbay by that point, but it would be several weeks before certain crew members forgot how they had looked, so dark green as to seem almost black against his pale skin. "However, due to some calculations I computed after the Incident last month, I significantly narrowed down the possible causes and was able to proceed much more quickly. In two years of our Mission, I have calculated that 83.2% of incidents aboard this ship are caused by encounters with alien races, 3.6% involve Federation regulations, .2% involve personal issues among the crew, and the remaining 13% are caused by spores, viruses and unusual radiation. I concluded fairly quickly that this situation was most probably the last of those, and because I am affected 24% of the time by radiation, 16.3% of the time by viruses and infections but only 8% of the time by spores, I made an educated guess that they were, in this instance, responsible."

Later in the Enterprise Main Gossip Center (which had initially been named the Recreation Center, and though no one was entirely certain who had switched the sign on the door they all suspected the Captain), Ensign John Kyle would summarize Spock's position as a phrase which would soon become a common utterance on the ship: "It's always bloody spores."

~~~

No one was sure who had been the first infected. Shore leave hadn't been authorized for the planet below (Starfleet designation 55 Cancri Ab, Jim Kirk designation "that one planet with the fluffy rocks") but it was a gorgeous place and the Captain had turned a tolerant eye to more "fact-finding missions" and "collection of samples" than were really necessary. So fully a third of the crew had at one point or another been down there scrambling along the fluffy rocks and napping in the very gentle sunlight: the spores could have come from anywhere.

What they did know was that, like most things, it hit Sickbay first. One of the nurses went into a private examination room to deal with a patient who had a "private and slightly embarrassing" complaint, and the next thing they knew there was screaming, and CMO McCoy and Nurse Chapel were prying open a door to see the nurse and the patient fighting with stunning viciousness, her nails raking trails down his face while he struggled to close a hand around her neck.

By the time both patients were sedated, it had spread to the rest of Sickbay. People screamed, shouted, spewed vile sentiments and even more vile language, turned on the nearest person in completely artificial fury. Someone threw the first punch, someone made the first scramble for the medicine cabinets, and pandemonium reigned. Doctor McCoy managed to comm the bridge and then, extremely uncharacteristically for someone who always strove to heal as many as he could despite personal risk, locked himself in his office. The bridge received the frantic message and instantly sent Security down to contain the situation, which instead simply spread the infection faster. Swiftly, too swiftly, the Enterprise crew changed from a group of professional, well-trained and for the most part pleasant, intelligent and likable people, into mere vessels for pure, concentrated savagery.