Star Trek Sim/ Star Trek RPG
USS Eagle, NCC 2185
CPT Kematsopoulos, LCDR Laleia-Lii, LTjg Richards, Ensign Hanson, & Yeoman
Tsundra
JOINT LOGS
Joint Logs by Myth, Hana and Nouri
Title: What's Behind Door Number Two?, Part Seventeen
Location: The USS Eagle
Setting: The Captain's Quarters
Leah had moved back to give the others a chance to get to Hanson.
The CMO rubbed her temples. She didn't like to use her telepathic abilities.
Besides other reasons, it was giving her such a headache as it would do sometimes.
Emotions were very raw in this room and conflicted. Hopefully, with the most
troubled mind asleep now, she would feel better and be able to be more focused.
"Lights? Those are bad for a patient somehow?" the CO asked confused. ~Why
would lights be bad?~ he wondered.
The CMO frowned, here was another difficult mind. The Captain was rarely
an easy read and hadn't been the same since the cargo bay accident. She could
tell he was keeping something from her, but what? Perhaps it was just the
top secret equipment he had secured where he had the accident and the location
of the spy? Perhaps it was more? Yeoman Tsundra, who had previously had other
duties, too conveniently appeared and replaced the Captain's new personal
yeoman, Yeoman Perksandra. Yeoman Perky, as the crew called her, didn't last
long as his yeoman. The timing for all of this was more than coincidental,
the Doctor felt.
She discreetly monitored CO's thoughts to figure out how much he knew.
"Under normal conditions ... no. Certain medical conditions make patients
photosensitive..." she said deliberately obtuse, trying to gauge his reaction.
"But it's unconscious," the Captain said.
"And we want to keep it that way," she said.
"I know I've missed a lot, but that makes no sense," he said. He was no doctor,
but being raised by one in his late childhood had by circumstance meant that
he learned quite a few things in that area.
The doctor tried another tact. She tried to converse telepathically to CO,
knowing, of course, that if he was himself, he would not hear her. ~~There
are intruders on the ship,~~ she thought to him.
"I don't understand," he said again. He was oblivious to any telepathic message
the CMO was sending him.
"I will explain later," she said, relieved.
"The patient is unconscious, so their eyes won't be hurt," the Captain pointed
out. To him it sounded like the CMO was trying to keep him from knowing the
truth.
"Photosensitivity can also affect the skin. Please take my advice as a doctor
that it needs to be dark in here for Hanson's health..." she said.
"Skin??" he sighed. ~Well, she's got me there. I've heard very little on
that,~ he thought. "Tsundra?" he asked to get a second opinion.
"She's right," Tsundra said, meaning light is a bad idea not that the alien's
skin was sensitive to it or that even the alien had skin.
The CMO sighed. She was more relieved.
"How long have comms and lights been out? I'll get the illumin-lights for
you. I have some here...in the kitchen unless you two blew that up also..."
he tried to move on. He didn't know that this would get him the answer he
needed about the intruder.
Leah said nothing, but she was fuming inside. ~It's one hole in a wall! Jeez-
it's not that big a deal!~ Never mind that it had in fact been Hanson's fault
anyways!
The Doctor replied quickly, "That's not necessary....sir," she said.
Just then the alien started to regain consciousness. He made a definitely
creepy and not at all earthly sound from deep within his being. Besides the
sound that was made, the emotions rolling off the alien were intense. The
Doctor stiffened.
Leah drew her phaser, just in case, but kept it on stun. No need to further
'redecorate' the CO's quarters.
"Did any of you hear a noise?" the Captain asked, hoping it was not just
him.
" ...maybe?" replied the CMO. Being telepathic, one sometimes could not be
sure if it was thought or speech.
"Yes, sirs," Leah said. The sound had been too weird to be a product of imagination.
The Doctor took the Captain aside. She said very quietly to not alarm him.
"We have an intruder, sir. It nearly killed her, Hanson, and myself," she
explained. She was able to tell he really knew nothing about it now.
"Yes, unconscious you said," he repeated back.
"It needs light to repair its tissues. We need to keep the ship as dark as
possible," she said.
This confused the Captain further. ~What is she talking about?~ he wondered.
"I don't know how much or how little other crewmates know. There was another.
It beamed away," she said and rubbed her temples. "I don't know. Maybe.
There was a lot of psychic chatter," she said, confused herself.
Just then the alien fully regained consciousness. He made another terrible
noise, but it was louder this time.
"I think we have company," the Doctor said.
The Captain was filled with compassion for whoever it was, but didn't want
to take chances. He hoped there was some middle ground to achieve both safety
of the ship and safety of the intruder. "What can you do for him or her?
It sounds like they are suffering," he said.
"Want me to shoot it, sir?" LT Richards asked, recalling how adamant Hanson
was about keeping it knocked out.
The CMO muttered, "Good. Knock it out again, if possible. Try to keep it
alive, we need any information it has," she said.
"Not what I had in mind. Doc, what race is it? Hanson seemed to have recognized
it," the Captain said.
"It is completely alien to me," the Doctor said surprised she had not encountered
anything like it before.
"What can you do? You are the doc, Doc," he said.
"I don't know enough about its physiology to render it harmless. I
need to study it. Its mind is absolutely alien in nature and difficult to
glean information from. It seems like some sort of strange plant-animal
hybrid," she said.
Just then the alien gave a terrified scream. ~Dark. Dark. I can't ...~ he
screamed again.
In the darkness, the Doctor drew her phaser, set to stun and prepared to
fire on the alien.
In a very deep voice, the alien spoke. "Where am I?" he asked.
"That's not important right now," the CMO said as she fired.
The alien stiffened and then fell unconscious again.
The CMO sighed. She did not want to do that.
"Doc, it sounds scared. I don't know what it is supposed to sound like, but
it sounded scared. Why did you do that?" he asked.
"Because if it wakes up and starts moving we are all going to die," she said.
"You can't shoot it forever. How much can it handle?" the Captain asked concerned
for the alien's life.
"Hanson was terrified out of his mind when I found him a while ago. We need
to move it to an area we can reinforce and then I will attempt to communicate
with it. It probably won't go well," she said.
"That's what the brig is for, Doc," the Captain said.
Leah interrupted. "Door's still locked. Hanson said we can't fix it, so I
think the brig might be out, sir."
"Locked?" He didn't understand why a locked door was a problem.
"I don't think the brig will hold that thing," the Doctor said. She thought
some more.
Leah shrugged. "Or stuck or something. There wasn't time for him to look
at it, really."
"What about the psychological containment units? For 'cabin fever' patients?"
she asked.
"Stuck? Units?" the Captain asked confused.
Yeoman Tsundra jumped in. "We haven't use those since I have been here. They
might work," she said.
"Those keep patients immobilized in zero G so they don't hurt themselves...
They might be pretty good at keeping this guy here from causing any trouble,
too," she said.
"You don't know what weightlessness will do..." the Yeoman cautioned the
CMO.
The Captain decided that he was out of the conversation at this point and
moved on. ~It is best to let the two with medical experience figure it out,~
he thought. Time was limited and he had a lot to catch up on. "Richards?"
he asked.
"Yes, sir?" she said.
"Please keep watch, but come over here. I need some more filling in. I think
I missed a lot more than has been told," he said.
Leah joined the Captain while keeping both her phaser and gaze trained on
the alien. "Where do you want me to start, sir?" A lot had happened.
The CO sighed. "Anywhere. I don't know where the beginning is," he said.
~How long have I been unconscious?~ he wondered.
Leah mentally groaned. She didn't like wasting time rehashing things even
if it was the Captain who'd requested it. "Well, ... when I got here the
intruders had already been through. They left you, Yeoman Tsundra and the
CMO for dead. But Ensign Hanson ... happened to drop in in time to save the
three of you. Then when the two beamed back, he managed to catch that one.
Now we just gotta figure what to do with it..." By then Leah was leaning
more and more towards killing it, if only because this would be the fastest
way to end the debate.
As Richards tried to fill the CO in on the more important parts, leaving
out of course anything Hanson wanted hidden from the CMO and others, the
CMO and the Captain's Yeoman argued.
"Most plants don't suffer any ill effects from weightlessness. It's better
than keeping it here. It's a time bomb," the CMO said.
Tsundra countered, "He's not most plants..."
"Well, we can't keep stunning it. We can't keep it in the brig... And the
psych units have a built-in vitals monitoring system," she replied.
"Maybe you should keep the gravity for him. What's all this going to do to
his mind and circulatory system?" Tsundra was worried about the ramifications
of what they were trying to do. This included any cruelty to the intruder.
She wanted none of that.
"At this point, I don't care. He would happily rip any one of us to
shreds," the CMO said.
"It would. I don't doubt that. Remember, it attacked me also and I seem unfortunately
to remember more of that than you do," she reminded the CMO that they were
both attacked and although the CMO's condition was more life threatening,
she remembered more of the attack and that was nothing to be dismissed.
"Help me drag him to the ward," the CMO said.
The CMO eyed Tsundra warily. She didn't trust her before this and trusted
her even less now. "Do you have any reasons to object?" she asked.
"We are the last people who should be touching him or in charge of him,"
she said reminding the CMO again that they were both attacked and not just
vulnerable to the alien but should not be in charge of it. She felt
it best that the CMO and she had no authority over the intruder and that
however it all ended up, it would be best to have the mantle of responsibility
rest on more than one person and with accountability measures in place. She
was old also and knew the dangers inherent in the saying, "Absolute power
corrupts absolutely." She had seen power abused by those she never thought
capable of such cruelty. She did not want herself or anyone on the Eagle
to end up in that soul destroying way and the intruder, no matter how terrible
he was, to suffer needlessly.
"Well, here we are, and here he is. Don't think we have a choice in that
matter," the Doctor said holstering her phaser.
"No, Hanson warned of skin to skin contact. We were both harmed by him. We
should not set ourselves in charge of him. It is wrong," the Yeoman said
more clearly. Tsundra shook her head. This was going no where with the CMO.
"The unit should be moved to him not vice versa..." she said trying to distance
herself and the CMO from the alien.
"I suppose that's what we have gloves for. Wrong or not, we are in charge
of him. Personally, I don't want to kill him. Whether I like it or
not, that goes against my creed as a doctor. He's still a living creature.
I will say this, though - if he attempts to harm another person on board
this ship, we may have to kill him. This is a far less cruel option," the
CMO said.
This was the last straw for Tsundra. "You and I are not carrying him. There
is light out there. You are too small and I can say that because I am the
next shortest one on the ship!" she exclaimed.
The CMO thought about the alien biology and was secretly amazed that Hanson
managed to do anything medical at all or subdue the plant creature. "What
exactly did Hanson do to this thing, anyway? This creature has telepathic
tendencies. Hanson wouldn't know how to prepare for those," she asked.
"As far as I know, he only shot it, sir." Leah had been unconscious in the
CO's closet at the time so she hadn't seen it happen.
Other things now came to the Dr. Laleia-Lii's mind. "And how did he save
me from... er... psychic shock?" she asked. Besides knowing more about the
plant creature, Ensign Hanson was a bigger puzzle that he first seemed to
be.
"I have no idea how much he knew about anything - only that it had him freaked.
And he seemed to suspect there were others already here." Leah explained.
"Tsundra?" the Captain asked to get her attention.
"Yes, sir?" she replied.
"Tell me, what is going on? More than you told me while I was coming to?"
he asked.
She moved towards CO, and said quietly, "I can't tell you much more now,
sir. The CMO is here. We can't be sure of her actions. If she's feeling anything
like I do, we can't be sure of much."
The Captain read between the lines and put a hand on her shoulder to let
her know he recognized her suffering and would be there for her.
"What did you see Hanson do?" the CMO asked the security officer.
"When? To the alien? Or to you three?" Leah asked.
"Anything you saw him do," she replied.
"Well, ... that covers a lot. I didn't see everything, either." Leah added.
She'd spent most of the time doing what he told her to, not watching over
his shoulder. "He started with you and Yeoman Tsundra ... then there was
some kind of gas, we had to relocate to the other room. He uh... hypo'd me
with something and had me do the same to you two. I'm sorry I can't give
you much detail - but Hanson really seemed to know exactly what he was doing."
"It's OK. Anything you can offer is helpful," she said.
That took the pressure off some. "Anyways, when they beamed in I was in the
bed room - I didn't see anything Hanson did to the prisoner."
"Gas? That's when your tore up my nursery?" the Captain interrupted, hoping
to find some humor to break things up a bit.
Leah blushed. She was in trouble enough with Unstoffe and didn't need the
Captain annoyed with her, too. "The nursery wasn't too neat when I got here,
sir. All we did was move a few tanks."
Something about that disturbed the Captain. "Uh ... any light in the nursery?"
he asked hoping he was wrong.
Leah looked past the Captain to double check. "Yes." She had assumed the
intruders had something to do with turning the lights off and was surprised.
The Yeoman reacted first. "Hanson left some on for us.. I'll be right back
sir..." she said moving quickly.
He knew it was nearly pointless, but the Captain looked around anyway, not
that he could see even if lights were on.
" ... there's a candle in the bed room, that's it." Leah offered. She figured
mentioning the candle was not the same as explaining its purpose, so she
hadn't broken her promise to Hanson really.
The Captain stared at the bedroom oddly. He was blind, but yet he somehow
knew there was a warm light there. He shook his head.
"A candle?" the CMO asked.
"Er... on the night stand." Leah said. ~unless I'm seeing things...~
The doctor didn't see it but had felt something odd there earlier. "I...
can't see any light in here...?"
While LT Richards and the CMO talked, the Yeoman shut off lights in the nursery.
She hoped the lights were too faint and far away to be useful to the alien
or that they would be too weak for him to use.
"It's on the night stand by the bed!" Leah pointed out to the CMO. She didn't
like feeling crazy.
The Captain was puzzled by the debate. He interrupted, "I often keep one
there by the picture and icon. It's remained lit all this time? Should I
blow it out?" he asked. As long as no one had moved furniture or blew anything
else up he'd used for a mental marker, he didn't need any help to find his
night stand.
"Maybe not..." the CMO said.
Tsundra emerged from the nursery and over heard the conversations. She hurried
again. "No, sir. I got it. I'll drop the partition, unless it's been blown
up also..." she half joked. It could have been damaged if it was attached
to the bathroom when it was incinerated. She hoped the "candle" was not a
light the prisoner could photosynthesize with, but why take chances with
something so "weird and alien"?
~One lousy shot! Sheesh~ Leah thought, Then she noticed something odd. Near
the lit candle stood an unlit candle and the picture of the CO and his wife.
There was a slight crack in the glass near the corner of the frame. ~How
did that get back up there?~ "Excuse me..." Leah headed after Tsundra to
check the picture out up close. Last she'd seen it, had been on the floor.
There was definitely something up again. The CMO quietly observed everyone
involved to figure it out.
Leah reached the bedroom and picked up the picture to reexamine it.
As the Lieutenant appeared and was bathed in the soft golden light of the
mysterious candle, Tsundra put her finger to her lips for Leah to see her
motion to be quiet.
"Did you move this?" Leah asked Tsundra in a whisper. Tsundra had spent the
most time away from the rest of them since the alien had been subdued so
it seemed like a reasonable guess. Even stranger, as she looked around Leah
could see that the rest of the room was considerably cleaner than it had
been before.
"Move what?" the CMO asked hoping for a straight answer.
The mysterious Yeoman shook her head, "no", for the young woman to see.
The CMO rested her hand on her phaser and looked around in the darkness.
Yeoman Tsundra put her finger again to her lips again for Leah to remain
quiet.
Leah returned the picture to its place, very confused. Unless she'd been
out a lot longer than she'd thought there didn't seem to have been time to
clean all this up. Certainly not if Hanson was working alone. ~What the heck
is going on here?~
"Just some things moved around to make it easier for the Captain," Tsundra
said to reply to the CMO.
None of the strange bottles remained or even any sign of struggle. ~This
makes no sense...~ Leah just nodded in reply to Tsundra - apparently her
questions would have to wait to be answered.
Tsundra mouthed the word, "later" to the security officer.
The CMO didn't say anything, knowing something was going on and was trying
to gauge everybody's' reactions,
"OK, I am dropping the partition. Best to get on the other side," Tsundra
told LT Richards.
Leah nodded again and backed into the main room, acting as if nothing out
of the ordinary was going on.
The Yeoman returned and set the candle near the CO. "Back, " she announced.
The Captain should have felt relieved by that but was just all the more confused.
He had no idea what was going on between the three women. The CMO had more
of an idea but not much.
"OK, If we need to keep the alien out of light, how can we do that here?
No bathroom anymore. Missing a wall on the nursery..that leaves my bedroom,"
he said definitely not wanting a roommate much less a likely to be green
and slimy one.
"Unless it's smaller than a Human. Is it?" he asked.
"Larger," the CMO said glumly.
"How much?" the CO asked.
"Roughly 7 feet tall. So about 2.5 of me..." she said emphasizing the difference.
~Whoah!~ the Captain thought. "Well, that rules out most of what we could
try and make out of the nursery.." he said.
"Is there anywhere large enough for it?" she asked.
"Some of the stasis units are that big. We could use one for larger species
to transport .." Yeoman Tsundra said.
Leah rolled her eyes. At this rate the stupid thing would starve - or whatever
- before they were done talking. "Why not shove it in the closet? Then we
can barricade the door too." She was not at all concerned with whether or
not this arrangement would be comfortable for the alien.
"Good idea," the Captain said. ~~And no green slime to wash out
of blankets and pillows,~ he thought.
"It's plant matter, it's probably good for your skin...," the Doctor said.
"We're animals to it, probably good for ..." the CO paused, not saying compost.
" ... isn't skin to skin contact a bad idea, supposedly?" Leah asked. Or
had Hanson been less than truthful?
"I was being witty..." the CMO explained.
"Sorry. Just one of things Hanson warned me about, sir," said LT Richards.
Apparently Hanson hadn't been lying about that.
"Ah. Moeban humor. Should have known. Closet then for now. The rest of you
need some light to work and think," the Captain said.
The CMO chuckled. She got them all this time.
"I apparently have sufficient [light]," the Captain said. He looked towards
Yeoman Tsundra for a moment, curious if she caught his jokes and if she could
see him turn to look at her for emphasis.
Naomi saw the Captain look at her then and looked away, trying not to laugh.
The double pun on blindness and the candle not everyone could see was too
much for her with all the more serious things going on. She unsuccessfully
tried to suppress a small snicker.
The Captain heard her. ~Ha! I got you! Finally!~ he thought.
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