Call Me Anything, Just Call Me

Posted on Thu 16th Oct, 2025 @ 6:56pm by Renato Solis & Captain Gordon Francis & Commander Heriah Rex & Lieutenant Commander Lanis Dhuro MD

1,782 words; about a 9 minute read

Mission: From The Ashes
Location: Garden District
Timeline: One day after "A Fire Shall Be Woken"

Previously: https://sb109.sim-station.net/index.php/sim/viewpost/2484

-Start-

{Renato's Office- Garden District CRC}

Sultry, the night sung sanguine and no other word fit such as sultry. Tucked inside a clean, but well worn Community Center was a small office where a shingle hung in the hallway, reading "Renato's... Find help here." The simple wooden plank had been laser etched, as a gift from a client who had nothing but their skills and the workshops surplus pile. That was what happened here, desperate folks at the end of a long road certain the next turn wasn't further peril but certain death, finding the helping hand they needed.

Tonight he invoiced the dreams for nearly two thousand refugees, indexing skills, abilities, and finding a place for them somewhere in the vast Federation. They couldn't pay, yet, but the investments in past folks had seen returns, a few had even struck it rich and sent handsome gratuities. The Federation kept them powered and provided basic machines, but the locals had built the rest. The CRC dispatched people to jobs all over the station now, sending people with niche skills to the places that needed them. For a former junkie and ne'er-do-well, this life had a fulfilling pace. He was working with his assistant, a former Borg rescued from a cube many years ago, Tannis.

Renato took a drink of a plum Soju wine and announced a decision he had sweated over for hours, "They can play music, the Minarans, right? Is Primos Vala still taking our calls? I bet he could use three silent musicians."

Minarans were an oppressed underclass of the Vians, though recent membership talks with the Federation had swayed them to grant freedom. Now Minarans could leave their homeworld, but not many did. Like turtles who were born too far from the beach, their desperate flight from home had gotten them caught by pirates and trafficked. Starfleet had rescued them, brought them here for "processing" and the unskilled, innocent young women didn't have many options. And this was just one case in a thousand others on his docket.

Tannis grumbled, "I'll send word, along with gambling tokens for Mangallion." It was a good touch, they got a monthly comp from the Mangallion manager's past stay here, and it was on Wrigley's Pleasure Planet so a good bribe they used often to grease the wheels.

The banal nature of the myriad ways people found themselves adrift in life had a form of tedium and the same cadence. He enjoyed it, but this life could have gone stale, until he had discovered a gift for mystery. His mind had somehow learned how to uncover truths when others couldn't. To date he had solved many mysteries, and this office had become a Private Investigations bureau, another service offered by the CRC for its residents.

Before he picked up another Padd, a chime rang...

=/\= "Security dispatch to Investigator Solis, report to the Zodiac level 2 to meet with Commander Rex and Captain Francis. There has been a body discovered."

Renato didn't hesitate, the call to adventure should always be answered, both feet leaping off the ground,

=/\= Acknowledged, ETA four minutes!

{Cargo Bay 168-B: Garden District}

Captain Francis and the Commander were already at the scene when Solis arrived, standing out of the way of the medical officers tending to the body. Lieutenant Arita Sotu, a young Bajoran security officer, was briefing Francis.

The Cargo bays in Garden District had once been a place for virtuous folks to feel fear. Now, the well lit, cleaned hallways opened to well lit cleaned store rooms. Renato was nostalgic a touch for the lower light levels they used to have all over the sector. He made his way to the Captain, speaking to a young Bajoran officer. Once he was close enough to receive a glance from Francis he stopped and listened, taking in the scene.

The body had been preserved in a container in one of Cargo Bay 16-B's freezer units, she explained as Solis approached. The units had been scheduled for disposal yesterday but were delayed due to a malfunction. One of the engineering officers who had worked on the problem had run a safety diagnostic of the freezer unit and that's when the foreign object - a nondescript humanoid corpse - had been discovered. The body had been thoroughly frozen and was unrecognizable, other than that it was an adult humanoid. Medical officers were preparing to transfer the body to a thermal recovery chamber, where they could conduct a proper analysis.

Heriah was performing her own scans with her tricorder. She was affirming what the medical personnel were also finding out. "No records match the deceased. There is not even an identifiable DNA profile. Without a deep autopsy, there is little chance of finding out who or what race this person is...was. 'Port-mortem molecular camouflage' is what this is oftentimes called. We cannot ID the victim. Makes it all the more difficult to ID the perp."

Captain Francis turned to Solis. "That's the whole shebang so far," he said. "What do you think?"

Renato surveyed the scene as best as he could, the sterile room had little to go on. He began with the basics as his customary approach outlined. He took a breath and replied to the Captain,

“Death rarely lies in repose. The serenity here is borrowed, arranged. Lack of restraint marks, but visible patterns pressed into skin suggests the undressing was done after death. The skin is in some form of disrepair but unbroken, which points to careful handling, the absence of struggle is its own signature; the victim was still, already departed, when stripped and laid here."

He looked at the logs on the machine's display, showing the cryo unit had not been opened recently, despite the gruesome contents. "Someone with sufficient access to cargo systems went in to falsify the times of use, confirming this is a deliberate concealment, not an accident. The unit’s logs lie, but the machine itself does not. Its thermal cycle will tell us whether it embraced a warm body or a cold one."

He pointed to the schedule, where the cryo-unit was slated to be cleaned by fire, "If the unit was on disposal rotation, then the killer wasn’t just hiding the body; they were counting on Starfleet itself to destroy the evidence, which requires confident inside knowledge of base operations schedules. Cargo bays are high-traffic, but only certain crew would have clearance to open and reseal a cryo-unit without raising alarms. The silence of the skin tells us death was not violent, but insidious. Poison perhaps, something quick, causing no pain or struggle. We can start by examining transporter Logs, if no one saw the body being moved, perhaps it was beamed directly into the unit with clothing filtered out. That would require command-level transporter clearance."

Renato started posing questions as well, thinking out loud, "Did the unit begin preservation while the body was still warm, or long after? That narrows when the victim died versus when they were hidden."

Choosing disposal via automated systems suggests cowardice or calculation, not ritual, not sadism. They wanted the crime erased, not displayed. Was the unit vented? If oxygen had been present, then the body was placed after death. If anoxia, possible live victim sealed inside to die. To be naked, unbound, and alone in stasis; this is not concealment by accident, but by someone who feared recognition more than discovery. The murderer did not hide the body. They trusted Starfleet’s orderly processes to hide it for them, like a letter slipped into a furnace chute. This is likely a method used before as well. We should expand to finding other evidence of this as a disposal method."

Renato stopped talking as he felt how much he had said in a rush, he found this exhilarating. "Just some initial observations, more will be forthcoming with an autopsy and forensic analysis of the crime scene."

"One of the personnel on duty," Heriah started, "upon the unit being opened, indicated the local scanners picked up a sudden increase of nitrogen circulating in the air. In addition to cryostasis, the presence of molecular nitrogen will prevent the further breakdown of any proteins, aerosolized or otherwise. This helped keep the bioscanners from picking up any bio signatures inside the unit. It took someone's own eyes to see this. Even now, only our tricorders, in close proximity, will pick anything up."

"And thank the Prophets for them," said Dr. Dhuro, who was supervising the medical staff and doing his own scans of the body. "These remains are in a very delicate condition because of the molecular camouflage. They'll need to be beamed directly to the morgue, and I'm almost afraid to put a drape over them."

Renato felt the urge to extrapolate, but the need for solid facts asserted itself above deduction-based inferences.

"If you are asking me to assist in this case I would be glad to. We will definitely need to consult with Medical and Engineering for their analyses. Witness statements should come first. Who found the body?"

"Ensigns Kellogg and Mills were assigned to the post," Lieutenant Sotu reported. "Both engineering officers were here for a routine maintenance check. They had been there close to an hour before discovery of the body." She glanced at Solis, then back at the Captain. "I took their statements separately and advised them to return to their quarters until further notice."

Francis nodded. "I want them interviewed again before they return to duty."

"Yes sir," replied the Bajoran lieutenant.

Francis turned to Renato. "Mr. Solis, I hardly know you, but you have a shining reputation. How would you like to work with our new Chief of Security on this investigation? Mr. Mindo needs a good introduction to the station. This seems like a good start."

Renato tried to hide his glee, it would be a nice adventure to have indeed. Outwardly he smiled, and offered a small half bow.

"I concur, thank you for thinking of me. Shall we gather what evidence we have and jump to conclusions?" Solis asked.

"Don't jump too far," Francis replied. "Get this body to a morgue and I'll have Mr. Mindo meet you there."

"Tell him to bring a forensic anthropologist and maybe a bucket," Lanis muttered as he leaned down and placed a transponder disc beside the body. He straightened. "Dhuro to Sickbay. Lock onto transponder signal. Site-to-site transport required for remains. CI protocols to be in place." Moments later, the remains vanished in sparkles of light. Dhuro nodded to the other Bajoran officer. "All right, Lt. Sotu, the scene is yours."

-End-

 

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