The “Milli-Cochrane Caper" Conclusion, part 2

Posted on Thu 1st Dec, 2022 @ 8:47am by Renato Solis & Commander Paul Graves PsyD

2,066 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: A Fresh Perspective
Location: Brown Sector M100, Main Sickbay
Timeline: MD 1, 2230

Previously, in 100 M ...

Another scaly bat descended from a vertical shaft, and dropped a bulb-shaped object into a small opening near Renato. It broadcast a message, without moving its lips. "Doods, brohs find. Bad mojo. You take." Then it flew to its ... friend? Broh? They both disappeared upward.

And now, the conclusion ....

No sooner was the device spotted than Renato grabbed for it, but the apparition was an assault on his senses, not so far away from where they stood. Renato wanted to reach for the small deadly thing, but the telepathic assault was overwhelming. Feeling boiling oil inside every sense and under his skin Renato’s nervous failed to cope and he collapsed. Desperation to act let him look one last time to the man he came to save. Darkness took him, the apparitions howling fear the final sounds as he fell to coma.

Edge took a moment to realize why Renato wasn't moving, slumped against the console, eyes fluttering. The Starfleet man was in similar straits as well, but Edge felt nothing. Where Renato had reached, Edge followed the path to a spot it took him to his shoulder to reach. It was narrow and tapered at one end, smooth and bulbous on the other. A bulb designed to explode gas which then ignited into plasma was now in the palm of his hand, a dash of Thalaron added in by its creator to get the job done.

He knew where the garbage chutes were--too far away and down a crowded corridor. He had no comm badge or time to explain the beam out; the seconds were a roulette wheel and his luck was running low. Looking toward the small apartment he shared with his sister, a more natural version of his life flashed before him, realizing that this morning as he had left was, in fact, the last time. The people he had grown to care for, the life he had scraped together, was the price to be paid. He saw the grim and squat metal shed they used to store tools, deal drugs, steal time with a lover ... this place was his home, and with tearing eyes he knew how much he was missing.

Renato was breathing, so Edge took one moment more to lean over and whisper, "You better be real about what you say you're trying to do. Be there for Patricia."

Daring not one more second, Edge ran to the tool shed and slammed the door shut. This small building had a table with three seats around it, tools, the smell of motors and lubricant. As familiar to him as the streets he grew up on, the refreshing of his memory giving him insight into even the earliest days. He wouldn't have enjoyed his time here as much if he had known this was the room where it was to end. A wooden chest, filled with tools and the sundry of gardening caught his eye. It was thick, beautiful wood. Grown and made by a resident in real dirt, hand watered for eight years.

Considering whether to place the bomb in there felt like an important choice. Symbolic in the extreme, but a final test of integrity perhaps was given here. A grim tale told by his parents from their own hard life, “Freezing cold brings hard choices. Burn it all to stay warm, but we dont burn the Bible.”

A choice rewarded itself in a blissful final moment. The resulting silence was unbearable for a whole breath as nothing happened, lost in memory, and finally at peace.

A sudden feeling of pressure and the concussion blew off the door to the ramshackle hut. Only a small group remained nearby witnessing the excitement, and now were all sent scrambling. Many voices called for Edge, some for the other people trapped within the smoke and flame. Alarms blared, and containment fields sprang into being. Homes built within the cargo bay were snapped into scraps and tinder, dragging their supporting structures down with them. People fell, some from as high as six meters, suppression systems cleared the flame and smoke quickly, but all that could be seen was a mountain of debris.

*

Whatever the apparition was, it shredded through Paul's mental shields as if they were wet tissue paper, leaving him with a headache that wouldn't quit. His mind was assaulted by something half desperate, half maniacal, with an extra helping of raw power. He could feel Renato suffering similar effects. Then the world exploded, the sound reverberating in his ears, and the apparition was gone. So was Edge's mind. Oddly, that felt peaceful. Renato, however...not so much.

Paul grimaced. He couldn't stop his hands from shaking, and he could barely hear. He grasped the sleeve on Renato's left arm and fumbled blindly for his combadge with his other hand. "Graves to...Main Infirmary. Mass casualties in...section M100, Brown Sector. Site-to-site transport for...two. One Ullian, one Betazoid. Psychic shock, shrapnel, minor burns." He coughed. "Check this vicinity for...remains and fire control."

If anyone responded to him, he couldn't hear it.

An instant later, the world dissolved and a transporter pad in the infirmary materialized around them. The air changed from smoke-filled to the scent of alcohol. Fuzzily, Paul recognized a couple of nurses and saw a red-haired female doctor he'd never met before. To his relief, they all wore gloves.

"Commander? I'm Dr. MacAran. Do you know what is happening right now?"

Paul would have rolled his eyes, but that required too much effort. "Paul Graves. Infirmary. S'evening. Renato n' I are a mess--apparition. Thalaron bomb went off. Edge is dead." He shook. "Whole deck is a mess. So many people--"

"Excellent. We're taking care of Mr. Renato; you can let go of him now. Yes, I know his name; you're all but shouting it at me. Do please reassert your shields. We've sent emergency teams to Brown Sector." As she spoke she touched his temples and the headache diminished. She glanced at one of the nurses. "He's oriented times four but will require examination by an ENT for sonic concussion trauma AU. Everything else appears grossly intact, save for the contusions, lacerations and burns. His BP is sky-high, of course. Give him 20mg hydralazine b.i.d. for today only, PRN. I will examine them both again after they've rested. They're quite distraught right now."

It took Paul a moment to realize she hadn't said a word to him, and neither had he responded with speech. Gratefully, he let himself relax and quieted his thoughts, slowing his breathing and pulse, also. He kept an eye on Renato as Dr. MacAran knelt over him and gently touched his head. He was aware of her giving a similar review of Renato's status to a different nurse. Soon, a pair of orderlies lifted the two of them onto gurnies and wheeled them into a shielded treatment room. Moments later, casualties from Brown Sector arrived on the platform.

Dreams of another life abruptly changed at the transition into the treatment room. Renato awoke in a panic, the final moments of his life clinging in his memories alongside the mental depressions gouged by his contact with Edge. There was confusion for sure, but his eyes worked, and his ears, though ringing, could hear. Fingers flexed, toes wiggled, and little by little, despite a raging migraine, Renato came back to life

Retrocognition completed the answers as he'd been listening in a twilight state during their convalescence. Dr. MacAran was at his side soon, and ran her tests. Renato had not been injured in the explosion or by any significant dose of radiation, but it was the summary of casualties which surprised him. Apparently people had heard of the bomb and run, Nobody was close enough to be affected.

Plenty of injuries, but only one death. It felt like a blessing, but that was blunted to the truth that Edge was gone. Renato felt tears come to his eyes unbidden. The man certainly had flaws, but he didn’t deserve death. Not when so many looked to him. It was a tragic, pointless waste. How else could one feel about loss?

Paul was in the bed adjacent, and had taken notice of Renato coming to. He waved to his friend, feeling a harshness in his throat from the smoke.

"I did not expect Edge to do that," Paul said, surmising Renato's thoughts from his emotions. "He saved the lives of everyone in Brown Sector."

Accepting the hard truth with an exhausted neutral face Renato sat on his bed, looking to Paul directly.

“Cheers to that.” He was still misty-eyed, in self-diagnostic reverie. “I heard M block got torn down. Unregistered obstructions got demolished by the containment fields. It was all built by margins, over the years until it became… that. Edge lived on the margins, we all lived in margins. The margins are where Theo found a place to hide. Edge turned out ok in the end, despite his hard life.”
His memory of the bad times stuck out even more. “There are shadows here, but we need to shine a light. Rebuild Section M, and the whole block with proper accommodations. No more blind eyes. No more letting Edges and Theos operate on people's desires to be left alone."

Renato stood to cross over to Paul, wincing at the injuries at his ribs and head. He took his friend's hand, and released his memories of the times in Brown Sector, good and bad. Renato couldn't control what memories flowed, it was entirely a part of the process. So what memories he sent delighted him to have included Kya and the wonderful families of the CRC. In return, from Paul the outpouring was absolutely, genuinely, that Starfleet was here to help, and in Paul, Renato trusted.

"Thank you, my friend."

"Thank you--for all you've done and for all I know you'll continue to do. You and Kya are the soul of that place." Paul let out a breath. "Do you think there could be a funeral for Edge? Would people come to it?"

"Count on it."

"Sir!" A stern faced bolian in blue walked towards them briskly looking at Renato.

As Renato was chased back into bed by a nurse, the two friends exchanged a relaxed banter. No longer the patient and doctor but a man finding himself with the Officer Gentleman to help him look. Elsewhere, the sticks and panels of fallen shelters were given new life with better materials, industrial sheets and paneling replaced the worst of the shelters with a solid workable door, internal plumbing, a full bed. The lights however, were set to a dimmer knob, with a scolding to prevent future tampering. From Sections B to S, it was midnight, and that’s how they liked it.

{Elsewhere}

Theo came to his sense inside of a bio bed containment unit for comatose patients. The dull aches of probes and electrodes withdrawing from his cranium among the first sensations of his new reality as he considered his waking world. With rising alarm, Theo realized he was captive, held tightly inside the pod which kept his body alive. As he began to panic, a voice came over comms inside to calm him.

"Relax, you are a prisoner at the Sigma IV R&D mine. I'll let you out in a moment, but first... I need you go over your work with me..."

{Sigma IV R&D Facility}

Theo was materialized into a room not unlike the lab he blew up on the starbase. He knew only aspects of what had happened, all of his thoughts jumbling at once. The whole affair had been removed from his brain so he had just working knowledge of the memory to retain the clinical work, and it was done without regards to sanity.

With a grim and sudden realization, he had just enough time to glimpse another version of himself at a set of controls outside of the small lab he had materialized into just moments before. Looking around as the world dissolved into Millicochranes and Quantum shadows again, it was only then he realized this was now the temporal reset point. A victim of his own making doomed to reappear in the chamber ever and again, achieving the immortality that drove him mad.

-End-

Renato Solis

Paul Graves

 

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