Fragments and Memories

Posted on Sat 15th Oct, 2016 @ 2:38am by Lieutenant Ricardo Shepard

2,183 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Cloak & Dagger
Location: Primary Sickbay
Timeline: Shortly after the briefing posts

The shuttlecraft approached the escape pod slowly. It was a Federation pod, and the systems were running. There were life signs. And yet, the pod had made neither automated nor intelligent response to hails.

"Five meters," Ensign April Winter said. "Three."

"Stand ready," the ensign's sister, Second Lieutenant March Winter, instructed the two Marines in boarding armor. "Morgan, you have point."

The Lance Corporal nodded, shifted her grip on her phaser weapon.

"Contact," Ensign Winter said. The slight bump as the hulls connected made the announcement superfluous.

"Engaging umbilical," Lieutenant Winter said, and there was another bump. "Opening locks."

The airtight door on the shuttle end of the inflated tunnel opened, and Clarissa Morgan moved in, going to the far end. She checked the pressure indicator next to the pod's door, verifying that the far side had atmosphere. She activated the control, and the door swung open. The Lance Corporal crouched to the side, her phaser pointed into the pod. There was a moment of tension, then she lowered her weapon's muzzle slightly. "One," she said. "No weapon."

Lieutenant Winter moved up, looked inside. A single woman sat inside, strapped into one of the crew seats, staring blankly at the door. She wore the black and blue uniform of Starfleet Medical. Winter scanned her with a tactical tricorder, and read the information projected in her field of view by her helmet. "Doctor Addams?" She asked. There was no response. "Doctor Addams?" She snapped her fingers in front of the pale woman's eyes. "Doc?"
Addams stirred. "Lieutenant Shepard," she said, her voice still faint. "I told you before... a dock is a place where cargo is transshipped."

Lantz had watched the doctor's surface to consciousness. It seemed certain there had been some kind of brain activity going on, judging by the eye motions under the closed lids. Had she been dreaming? Remembering? What kind of story lay hidden in the recesses of the very unusual Addams brain?

"She's coming to, Jade." The Chief Operations Officer stated with a bit of relief in his voice. "Take it easy Doctor. How are you feeling right now?"

"There should be ten physicians and thirty nurses on-shift," Addams said, sounding irritated.

"And there are," a Vulcan in medical black-and-blue answered, stepping up. "You had an episode of syncope, Doctor Addams."

"Of course I did," Addams countered, still sounding waspish. "Excess of emotion. I assure you there's nothing seriously wrong with me." She reached for the bed control, raised it into a sitting configuration, and started to turn, preparatory to getting up.

"None the less, standard procedure calls for an hour of observation following syncope," the Vulcan said. "So please make yourself comfortable." She nodded at Shepard and Lantz. "There's a button there which will call for help if she requires anything," she said, pointing to a red button marked with a white exclamation point.

"You had us ... mmmm, surprised, I think would be the best word," Lantz said. "I sense that you aren't the type to want to be fussed over, but is there anything we can get for you? A medical journal or your PADD, perhaps?"

Before Addams could respond to Jade's question, Rico's curiosity got the better of him.

"Well, I want to know what happened to you. You seemed to ....." Rico couldn't think of the right word to describe the state that the Doctor was in. He looked over to Jade with a helpless expression on his face.

"Keel over in shock?" she suggested.

Rico looked back over to Addams laying on the bed. "Yeah, what she said."

Addams sighed, then smiled as what seemed to be a disembodied human hand dropped from above onto the bed. "Hello, dear Thing," she said, picking it up and holding it gently. "Did I worry you as well?" She sighed again, and looked from Shepard's dark face to Lantz' lighter visage. "Archimedes was..."
"Only a moron," Addams said, lightly, "would think I would question your competence, Captain. Still. As Archimedes is the Star Fleet's last resort for morons, screw-ups, and na'er-do-wells, I take your point."

"Careful, Doctor," Nathan told her as he got to his feet and frowned down at her, "I resemble that comment."

"We all do, Captain. It's an observation, not an insult." Addams sat back in her chair and steepled her fingers. "Haven't you ever wondered why the crew is full of... characters? It's because Archimedes is the last stop. You get sent here, you shape up, or you get the boot."
"...my previous ship," Addams said.

Jade rarely thought of her own painful past - so many years long gone, along with the majority of her people and most of her family. She could empathize with someone who didn't want to share the past. 2293 ... SS Robert Fox ... a long time ago.

"Imperfectly enlightening, my dear doctor," Lantz said after a moment, "but I can understand if you don't want to share more. Sometimes our experiences are too ... intense, perhaps? Yes, too intense to want to share them freely, and you really don't know either of us well. However, we'd both make good confidants - and friends. If you ever feel in need of such things."

Addams held Thing on the palm of one hand, and stroked its fingers lightly with the other. "I am telling you this... particularly you, Mr. Shepard... because it is," she paused for the smallest of moments, choosing her next word carefully, "potentially relevant.

"We arrived at Starbase 50 in pursuit of a rogue holographic researcher, Doctor Lutton Powell," Addams went on. "Doctor Powell had come up with a way to erase a Human's mind from their brain, and substitute the personality matrix of a holographic person. We were too late; by the time we arrived, most of the station's crew had already been converted. We..."

"Roger that," Cuddles answered. The two-meter-plus dinosauroid Marine studied his HUD for a moment more, then strode forward, swinging his canon to point at where the first converted hologram was hiding. He cleared the cover, squeezed his triggers, and the woman went down, a hole the size of a slip of latinum bored through her chest by the superheated copper ions of the canon's bolt. Like an efficient machine, the dinosaur advanced, swinging the weapon, firing, his targets preselected by his tactical tricorder, and years of practice matching his aim to that data flow. Within five seconds, there were four more smoking corpses and twelve burn marks on the bulkheads, where holographic emitters had been destroyed.

The sound of the cannon cycling down could be heard, and Cuddles called, "Clear!"

"Sacré..." Doctor Addams breathed in surprise.

"Cuddles not like violence," the big Marine answered saddly, hoisting his rotary cannon. "Believe in peace. Believe in friendship. Believe in cannoodle like junkyard bunnies."

"Put down the insurrection," Addams finished.

"Of course you did," Jade answered, only able to guess a small fraction of what might have happened, and sure it involved deaths. Of her team? Of those on the station whose minds had been erased? Either one had the power leave emotional ... damage. "What other choice had you? Do you feel guilty about anything that happened?"

"No," Addams said.

"Everyone dies, Doctor Scott," Addams said, resealing the body bag. "Death is therefore of no concern to us, for for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist."
After a moment, the Doctor went on, "We cleaned up the starbase."
Towering scaffolding broke the space up into little more than a network of interconnected passageways. Every single row of every single structure had been built to cradle a coffin. There were hundreds of them. The bodies long frozen, here lay the real crew of Starbase Fifty. The morgue would have been overflowed following the massacre. Resultantly, the environment of the cargo bay had been converted into cold storage.

Sefton would have been afraid of losing his way --striding between the racks, dodging between Operations personnel-- but he was following someone. Wistfully, he said to her, "You're going to miss them, aren't you?"

"Quite," Doctor Addams agreed. She paused, and touched a coffin lightly with her fingers. "Petty Officer Edwina Salazar, who died of electrocution, taught me a great deal about cellular damage in electrically affected tissues. I understand she was an avid bridge player." She moved to another, and touched it, "Lieutenant Elwood "Mac" McKee, blunt object trauma. His blood did fascinating things post-mortem. Affected a Scottish accent in life, though the closest he'd ever come to Scotland was Nova Scotia." She turned, and looked at Cristobel. "They have all become my friends, you see."
"And Starfleet sent a Marine contingent to relieve us," Addams went on. "My younger sister Ischaemia came along with them. She is a civilian consultant to the Judge Advocate General's office, a specialist in non-biological entities and the laws relating to them."
"Ischaemia, darling," Addams drawled, holding her hands out wide.

"Chlamydia! Joy of man's delight!" her sister said, coming into her embrace. They kissed each other lightly on the cheek, and then drew back to arm's length, their hands still on each other's shoulders. "Look at you! So pale! I'm jealous!"

Chlamydia smiled and tilted her head, looking at her sister. Ischaemia had worn a scarlet dress, so tight it might have been painted on, with cap sleeves, a plunging neckline, and a hem short enough that it was barely legal. "And you!" Chlamydia announced. "So thin! You look like an old holo of mother!"

Ischaemia laughed, and kissed her sister's cheek again. "So sweet of you to say," she said, taking Chlamydia's elbow.
Shepard paced the medical room processing everything that he just heard. "So this is what Starfleet was so hush hush about. I had heard several things in reference to holograms, but I didn't have a clue."

Rico looked over to Jade to see if she was following. "Have you heard about these before?"

Feeling no need to elaborate on any information she might already have connected to the few words from the good doctor, Lantz shook her head. "Not exactly. A few insubstantial rumors. When Starfleet covers, it covers well." She looked at Doctor Addams. "It's no wonder you reacted as you did. It might, at first glance, have seemed out of character, but it would be a shock to anyone to ... what? Find out the ship was still out there somewhere?"

"Ouiche," Addams said. "Though you anticipate the end of the story. After the relief expedition arrived, Archimedes got underway." The Doctor sighed, and rubbed her eyebrow. "And has not been heard from again. I can recall nothing between Archimedes departing Starbase 50, and Thing and I being found alone in an escape pod drifting in space, three months later. Archimedes is listed as overdue, presumed lost.

"So. Yes. When I heard that an unidentified Intrepid class starship had been observed acting in a... mysterious... manner, it was something of a shock to me." Addams laced her fingers with Thing's.

Shepard was amazed by everything he just heard from the Doctor. He was simply stunned and amazed that Starfleet could keep such a thing a secret. But, he instantly realized that if the Doctor was the only one to return, it couldn't be that hard of a secret to keep. "And there have been no more leads to what happened to Archimedes?" he asked.

"None... or at least, none of which Starfleet has informed me," Addams answered. "From my recollection and Starfleet records, Archimedes departed Starbase 50 enroute to Risa. It was felt that the crew had earned an extended shore leave. But when Samurai found my escape pod, it was nowhere near the least-time flight path between the Starbase and Risa." She sighed. "I was extensively debriefed. They even brought in telepaths to attempt to recover the missing time. To no avail."

Still amazed, Shepard pulled himself together to figure out how he could best be of use here. "Well Doctor, I must say the mystery of the Archimedes does intrigue me. Perhaps when we get a handle on things here, we could look into it more.... That is, if you are interested."

In no sense was Jade psychic or empathic. The abilities of the El Aurians didn't tend that way. Their strengths came from millennia of dealing with other species and libraries of records on those dealings. At least they had, before the Borg destroyed almost everything that was El Aurian. Something, though, was telling Jade that she, and everyone else, needed to be at peak efficiency for the foreseeable future.

"I look forward to a good mystery myself, but right now," Jade said, "we need to be sure you're ready to be back on call in Sickbay. I have a feeling there's going to be a need for your services, and long before we would expect. I have a sense of uneasiness, and I can't pin it down."

 

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