The Chamber of Horrors

Posted on Fri 14th Apr, 2017 @ 1:15pm by Colonel Horatio Drake & Commander Zachary Hunt

1,326 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Wrongs Darker Than Death Or Night
Location: Deck 1500: Section 49 Alpha
Timeline: MD-02-1900 Hours

Starfleet had been an organisation split since its beginning. Even on the first Starship to explore deep space, it hadn't been long before a detachment of MACOs were assigned when things started heating up. Until the Dominion War, Starfleet had tried to avoid having Marines permanently posted on starships -- but it was now a necessity. One of the overriding reasons for this had been the split it had caused: Security Vs. Marines. Each thought they were better than the other; in truth, both had their strengths and weaknesses. Regardless of this point, it was usually the Marines who were sent into the worst or most difficult situations. Consequently Drake, and those akin to him, had seen more firefights and combat than the equivalent 'Fleet' Officer... he had seen more suffering and more death.

Regardless of this fact, something about Section 49 Alpha had turned his stomach. There was something about procedures like this being done against one's will which gave him the creeps. In a firefight you, usually, had volunteered to be where you were... you had options and choices, move here, move there, fall back to here... even run away. When you were strapped to a table, there was little chance you had volunteered to be there and no chance you had any choices or options.

The first body that his light beam had darted across, ten minutes earlier, had been wearing what resembled Borg Armor with his face seemingly drained of blood -- but still the red of a Starfleet uniform and comm badge were visible. It was a uniform from two generations ago and a comm. badge to match... this body hadn't been put here recently. Despite that, he looked like he had only just met his unfortunate end. Perhaps the vacuum that they found the room in had preserved them. The Engineering crews had just managed to get main power back online, presently a console started beeping... more than beeping... counting down?

"Mr. Hunt!" Drake yelled and pointed towards a console. If he was right, the evidence was being erased as they spoke.

Hunt was already pacing towards the console, knowing what Drake wanted. The console continued to vigorously count down towards something. Hunt pressed a few buttons, but to no avail, it was like he had been locked out. He quickly pressed a series of commands into the console, hoping something would work. It didn't. He cursed out loud, which was uncharacteristic of him, slamming a fist into the console, followed by a kick, "This blasted thing!" It was very unusual for him to lose his temper.

He continued to bash in some more codes, with a bit more force each time, the count down still happening. "AHHH! VOILA!" He shouted. He had got into the console. Files of some kind were being deleted before his eyes. "Colonel, you need to see this!" He called for Drake, attempting to stop the deletion. The beeping wasn't a countdown but for the percentage increase of files deleted. The console currently read that 39% of files were gone. Hunt continued to fight against the deletion by a few more commands and a bit more button bashing.

"We need that information, Commander" Drake stared intently at the console.

Hunt had briefly ignored Drake to concentrate on stopping the deletion. "Finally," He muttered to himself as he managed to stop it on 67%. The deletion had been stopped, but over half of the files had been permanently erased. "I've retrieved just under half, sir. Whatever the files are, someones been trying to hide something... and they've encrypted them."

"Get on the decryption immediately" He barked at him.

"On it," Hunt muttered.

The sound of an annular confinement beam peaked in the corridor outside, and then faded. A moment later, there was a murmur of voices, and then Chlamydia Addams entered, a dark blue labcoat over her duty uniform, and a medical kit in her hand. Her black eyes swept the dimly lit chamber, and then settled on Colonel Drake. "A mysterious room full of corpses! And it's not even my birthday! Really, Colonel, you shouldn't have!"

Drake's facial expression didn't change. "Start with this one." He pointed to the corpse of the Starfleet Officer closest to them.

"Aye, aye, sir," the Doctor responded. She pulled a medical tricorder from the pocket of her lab coat, but left it closed as she approached the body on the bed. Instead, she used her own senses. The bed had been standard Fleet issue, once upon a time, but it had been modified. Tubes carrying fluids connected to the bed, and wires ran to the bulkhead where a Fleet issue computer of similar vintage was displaying... "sacré bleu!" Addams exclaimed.

The Doctor raised the tricorder in her hand and flipped it open, pulling the Feinberg scanner from its top and running the device over the body on the bed. "Colonel!" she called. "These people are..." she hesitated, glancing from bedside monitor to bedside monitor, searching for the right word. She settled for, "not dead."

Drake turned and approached the Doctor. "What do you mean?" His voice was sharp, demanding.

"They're not precisely alive, either," the Doctor said, looking back at the body in front of her. "From a medical standpoint, their tissues are being kept functional, and their brains seem to have been..." she fumbled for the right word again; it was not a sensation she was accustomed to. "Appropriated. Used as part of something."

"Why would someone do that?" He asked, inquisitively.

"The organic brain is a miracle of computing power," Addams responded. "Roughly an exoflop of calculation power, in less than a kilogram and a half of mass, with a power consumption of only twenty watts? It is no wonder engineers have been trying to emulate it since the dawn of computing. Neuromorphic chips, bio-neural gel packs... all an attempt to match the organic brain's power and flexibility. In this case, it seems as though someone has skipped the 'emulation' and gone straight to using actual organic brains."

Drake chose his next words carefully, "They seem to resemble... Drones?"

"They do, yes," Addams agreed. "If I were going to guess, given the age of the chamber and the state of the... participants... someone was trying to reverse engineer the Borg; to give the Federation its own unstoppable, group-mind combat force."

He turned to Hunt, who had been unusually quiet during all of this, and raised an eyebrow in his direction.

"Doctor, I want autopsies performed on any Starfleet personnel, first. As soon as they're complete, report directly to me. Please, do not share your discoveries with anyone else." He didn't know why he was being so direct and security conscious - something about all of this didn't sit right, apart from the obvious.

Hunt had noticed the obvious direction towards him as Drake spoke to Commander Addams. He ignored it, holding his temper a little, continuing just to concentrate on the decryption he was performing.

Addams raised an eyebrow. "They're not entirely dead," she reiterated. "You would like me to vivisect them?" She smiled as if enjoying the thought.

"Are they alive, in any real sense of the word Doctor?" He could feel his patience ebbing away.

"Are you still alive if you're thinking someone else's thoughts?" Addams' voice showed delight in the philosophical question. "We can argue that in depth later. For now, I'd like to proceed cautiously, to see if I can revive one of them." She gestured to the man in command rust, whose plating nearly obscured his uniform. "I can start with this one, if you'd like?"

"Proceed, Doctor" Drake said, uneasily. Something about this seemed almost wrong... how could these people still be alive after so many years without sustenance? Perhaps it was just something that he didn't understand. Either way, would attempting to revive them be the best course of action... was he even qualified to make such a decision?

 

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