A Mind's a Mind for A' That

Posted on Wed 16th Sep, 2020 @ 6:33pm by Lieutenant Damion Ildaran

1,154 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Resolution
Location: Section 49-Alpha
Timeline: MD-3, Evening

Previously on Star Trek: Starbase 109

"Dr. Addams, I'd like to talk with you a moment before you leave, please.," Damion said to the Chief Medical Officer.

"Yes," Chlamydia said, her own tone indicating that she had scraps of flesh to ply from bone.

And now, the flaying commences!

Chlamydia watched her younger sister and the complicated young woman of many names proceed from the room. She turned and raised an eyebrow at the Crime Scene Investigator lurking in the corner. "Thank you, Lieutenant Langston."

"Of course, Doctor," Muffet answered, packing up the scarf she was nearly done with. She sensed tension between the Doctor and the Man from Intel, though she didn't know what it was about -- and frankly, didn't care.

"Walk with me?" Chlamydia asked Damion, her voice mild.

Damion nodded at Dr. Addams and turned toward Muffet. "Lieutenant, thank you for taking time from your day to do this with us. I would like to hear your observations during the debrief. And I would very much like to talk knitting with you, sometime."

"Uh, sure, Sir," Muffet answered.

Why the 'sir,' Damion wondered? Weren't they the same rank? He'd ask her about it later.

Chlamydia led the intelligence officer from the room. As the doors of a turbolift closed behind them, she told the expert system which guided lift traffic, "Deck fourteen-forty, frame 49-201 please." The lift pulled away from their origin, speeding toward the designated spot. "The problem with secrets," Chlamydia mused, "is not so much that the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. No; the problem is, the right hand doesn't necessarily know that the left hand even exists."

"You've got that right," Damion said to Dr. Addams in wry tones. "I've been feeling that way through much of this investigation." He sighed. "What I showed Miss Alegari back in there--the file you looked at--I couldn't decide whether to show it to you. The file's contents look like badly-written autopsy reports. Not in proper format, not enough detail, no precision whatsoever, not written in the style a doctor would use. A doctor would never explain exsanguination in an autopsy report, so the intended reader wasn't a doctor. The reports were never meant to be legal documents, at all. So I kept the file back--because I honestly wasn't sure what it was or whether it merited sharing. Perhaps you can make some sense of it, because I can't. I looked in the personnel archives for a Dr. Nyx. I came up with nothing."

"I suspect it's a pseudonym, as Nyx is Greek for 'night.'" She paused. "Greek is a Terran ancestral language now used mostly for occluding meanings. Which is interesting in its own right, as nyx also carries connotations of blindness and obscuring gloom." She moved her left hand in a sweeping gesture, dismissing the topic. "I wish to..." she broke off as the lift arrived.

"Come," Addams commanded, and stepped out onto deck 1440. She led the way to a cross-corridor where hazard tape was strung, and ducked under.

Immediately, the station computer's voice came from the walls. "This area has been placed under quarantine by Starfleet Medical. Depart immediately."

Damion's eyes widened and then narrowed as he studied the yellow tape and listened to the computer warning. He too stepped under the tape, and the computer repeated its order. A number code niggled at his memory, and he went still. "You told the lift to stop at frame 49-201. Would this be section A?"

"Computer, override quarantine. Authorization Addams zebra-tango-regret six-one-niner." The computer chirped acquiescence, and the Doctor looked at Damion. "Very good. The space I'm about to show you[1] was discovered by Lieutenant D'vir, who is now dead. He was supervised by Colonel Drake, who is now dead. Commander Hunt was present; he is now dead. The security personnel who were present have been transferred off-station, to places as far away from here as the Fleet could send them. In short, Lieutenant, the only living person aboard this station who has personally seen the inside of this area is me."

"I'm very glad you're not dead," Damion told her. He looked at the area and saw faint scorch marks in a great circle around the pair of them, up to the ceiling, on the opposite wall, and on the deck plating. "I see something exploded here. Right now, I'm just in shock at finding out what the code 49-Alpha means. That's all I had, was the code."

"Death need not concern us overmuch, Lieutenant. While we exist, it does not; while it exists, we do not." Addams moved to the end of the short corridor, to a reinforced air-tight door. She placed her thumb on a control, and repeated, "Authorization Addams zebra-tango-regret six-one-niner." A chime sounded, and a short tube emerged from the bulkhead. "Commander Chlamydia Addams recognized. Retinal scan required." Addams put her left eye to the tube, and a moment later, the door opened.

Stepping through, Addams commented, "The majority of section 49-Alpha is unremarkable. Offices, storage closets, et cetera. However..." she took a deep breath, stopping in front of another door which did not open automatically. She touched a control, and stepped into a medical ward. There were a half-dozen stations for biomonitor and support beds, though one of the beds was absent. The other five were foot-in toward the passage between the two sides, with cords of some sort draped from the bulkhead computer stations to the beds.

"Welcome to the Chamber of Horrors, Mr. Ildaran."

"Bloody hell," Damion whispered. He didn't move, at first, just studied the room and tried to remember as many details of it as he could. At last, he took a deep breath and slowly walked around the room. He paused at one of the biobeds. "Restraint straps, not ropes," he muttered under his breath, "which is what I would expect. So why did the autopsy reports mention ropes?"

The bed smelled--fetid, somehow. Damion wrinkled his nose--and then he jerked his gaze back to Dr. Addams. "Someone was in this bed for a while or left it very recently." He took a closer look at the machinery near the headboard. "Are these the devices that can supposedly separate a life force from a body?"

"The difficulty with the King's advice to Alice is that one often has difficulty deciding where the beginning is," the Doctor mused. "Shall I tell the tale chronologically, as I have come to piece it together? Or shall I tell it as I experienced it, one crumb coming into my grasp at a time?"

"Whichever way you prefer to tell it," Damion said. "I think I'd probably like to hear how you experienced it, but I've no objection, either way."

---

1) In the post titled The Chamber of Horrors.

 

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