The Cholmondely-Smythe Year

“Captain’s Log, stardate 8347568.78653. Once more we are on patrol along the border of the Vulcan-Orion border, this time Iota Sector. This section of space, I’m told, is home to very little except the occasional lump of rock and some harmless bands of kappa radiation, most likely the remainders of a star that went nova an unfeasibly large number of years ago. There have been reports of increased activity along almost every part of the Zone, with this being one of the few exceptions. Hence our deployment. Spiffing is not the word.”

Two days of patrolling had produced nothing except a heightened state of extreme boredom among the crew and, as an indirect result of this, section fifteen of deck eleven being marked off limits until such time as a specialist cleanup crew from a Starbase trained in both biohazard containment and localised space-time anomalies could be brought in. In his ready room Cholmondely-Smythe shuffled the padds on his desk again, this time moving the ‘In’ pile to his left and the ‘Out’ to the right. Or possibly the other way around. He hesitated, then frowned. He had moved them so many times now that he had managed to confuse himself. Was his ‘In’ pile on the left or right?

Huffing out an irritated sigh he very deliberately knocked over both piles, scattering them on his desk in a complete muddle before arranging them once more into one neat pile. He was hardly rushed off his feet, after all, so re-reading a few reports was an easy – if dull – way to pass some time.

“Captain to the Bridge,” Commander Hill’s voice rang over the comm, and Cholmondely-Smythe practically vaulted out of his chair with excessive enthusiasm. He hurried through the broom closet-cum-ready room door to the bridge, where there was almost an undercurrent of excitement running through the crew. It was the middle of beta shift but there was a mix of alpha and beta shift crew on the deck, most likely due to so many of them not actually having social lives.

At the front, behind helm and navigation, were the beta shift members Stocks and Irving. Bleep, as always, was stationed at the communications panel and Commander Hill was seated in the centre seat. He stood up reluctantly as Cholmondely-Smythe approached, vacating the seat and moving back to his station.

“Report!” Cholmondely-Smythe barked, and Hill tapped a few controls on his panel.

“We picked up some unusual energy readings coming from the asteroid on the viewscreen,” he replied. “It looks to be the signature from a known Orion-made generator but it’s on very low power. I’m also picking up what appear to be fairly extensive underground structures, possibly a facility of some kind.”

“Splendid,” Cholmondely-Smythe beamed. “Anything look dangerous?”

“Nope.”

“Well then,” the captain said sternly, frowning at Hill’s lack of decorum, “assemble an away team and have a jolly old squizz, there’s a good chap.”

“Er… right,” Hill shrugged, having finally become mostly accustomed to his commanding officer’s occasionally odd speech patterns. He glanced around the bridge. “Whatsyername, Stocks, you’re with me,” he said, heading for the turbolift as the beta shift navigator ran to catch up. “Hill to security,” he added, as the doors closed and it began to descend.

A vague grunt answered him. “Huh?”

“Have a team meet me in transporter room one.”

“Uh-huh.”

The channel closed and they rode the lift in silence until it disgorged them into the corridor leading to the transporter room. On the way Hill raided an equipment locker for tricorders and phasers, leaving behind an IOU written in barely legible scrawl as an afterthought. They only had to wait an extra few minutes for the security team to arrive – a pair of hulking gorillas who appeared to be far more interested in locating and inspecting the contents of their noses than listening to what Hill had to say – and beamed down onto the asteroid in what was quite possibly record-breaking time.

They materialised inside one of the chambers within the asteroid and it was immediately obvious that it was not a natural formation. If the perfectly square corners had not been a giveaway, the doors and ruddy great piece of dust-covered equipment in the middle of the room would certainly have sufficed. After a quick scan, Stocks declared the air to be both uncontaminated and breathable. Hill gave him a startled look.

“Shouldn’t we have checked that before we beamed over?”

Stocks shrugged. “You didn’t really give us enough time.”

Shaking his head Hill ordered the security guards to take a look around the rest of the station and then started to wander aimlessly, peering at the equipment. He tapped hesitantly at the control panel and grinned smugly as the vague hum of the generators in the background rose to a more audible level, the lights flickering unsteadily to brightness. Stocks walked over to a closed door, which whooshed open after he spent a few moments fiddling with the controls.

Hill spun around as a remarkably girly scream echoed around the main chamber, to find Stocks on the ground under what appeared to be the partly-decomposed body of an Orion in military uniform. As the navigator struggled out from its weight and scrambled to one side, Hill got a good look at what was left of the Orion’s face, which was contorted in extreme terror.

 

“Let me see if I’ve got this correct,” Captain Cholmondely-Smythe said, pacing the briefing room with his hands clasped behind his back. Seated around the table were both Hills, Stocks (who was seen as a suitable – and more preferable – alternative to trying to get Damerell and Wall coherent in the middle of the night) and Jackson.

“There are thirteen dead Orions aboard that asteroid – all male – and they all appear to have died either from being murdered by their compatriots or of… fright?”

Jackson nodded. “That’s what my staff tell me,” he replied.

“This, then, begs two questions: why did they kill each other and what killed those who weren’t killed by… themselves… and, possibly more importantly, what in heaven’s name is a secret Orion military research base doing on this side of the border?!”

“Erm… that’s three questions,” Ensign Stocks pointed out apologetically.

“What?”

“That’s three questions, sir. Why did they turn on each other, why did the others die and the other one, the base thingy.”

“Ah. Yes.” Looking somewhat disconcerted, Cholmondely-Smythe went on. “So. Any of you chaps got any ideas?”

Heads shook around the table, until the Counsellor spoke. “Have the crew members who beamed over been checked for infection?”

Jackson nodded. “They all came up clean.”

“The equipment there seems to be a lab of some kind, but there aren’t any active containment fields,” Hill put in. “We checked everything thoroughly before we came back – there’s just nothing there.”

“Then, ladies and gentlemen, we have a mystery! One which I intend for us to solve, and Command agrees!” Cholmondely-Smythe waved a finger in the air to emphasise his point. When no-one moved he added, “Hop to it!”

Everyone scrambled for the door, Hill, Cholmondely-Smythe and Stocks having a brief scuffle as they all tried to go through the door at the same moment and then headed for their stations, Jackson slipping away into the turbolift. Stocks took his seat and exchanged a nod with Ensign Irving, the beta shift helmsman, quickly checking their orbit around the asteroid as the captain settled into his chair and muttered what sounded like, “Damned peculiar,” under his breath.

 

Their shift finished with no further excitement and Stocks headed with Irving down to Fred’s Bar, which was crowded with a mix of alpha and beta shifts due to the shift change. They grabbed some food and sat themselves down at the only two empty seats, which happened to be at the same table as Damerell, Wall and Klumpf, who were have a somewhat animated discussion.

“I don’t care if you’re President of the Federation!” Damerell was saying, “You’re still a pillock!”

“Oi, I’m your social superior I am!” Wall responded irately. “And don’t you forget it!”

“Oh for pity’s sake,” Damerell sighed, “why do you always fall back on that? It’s getting a bit old now. You’re the bastard descendant of a supposedly noble house that doesn’t even have a fiefdom, let alone any money!”

“I’ve got a used mining asteroid. And a painting,” Wall sulked. His eyes narrowed and he looked at his friend suspiciously. “Where’d you learn that word anyway?”

Damerell looked confused. “What, ‘bastard’?”

“No, you prat, ‘fiefdom’?”

Damerell shrugged and nodded his head at Klumpf, who had remained silent during the exchange, due to nursing a crippling hangover brought on by an entire pint of real ale drunk the night before.

“Guess this bugger’s vocabulary’s starting to wear off on me,” he replied, and Wall grunted, finally noticing the stares of Stocks and Irving, who had been watching them with a certain amount of morbid interest. “What?”

The ensigns turned back to their meals quickly, and Wall turned back to Damerell. “Anyway, the point is, I can so do a three-axis 480 degree rotation of a shuttlecraft without losing my lunch!” Wall expounded. “I’ve done it before.”

“You weren’t entirely in control, though, were you?” Damerell pointed out. “Nor, I have to add, did you particularly manage to retain the contents of your stomach.”

Wall waved his hand in dismissal. “Details.”

Apruptly, Klumpf raised his head and blinked blearily. “Should we not be on the bridge?”

The other two glanced at him, then at the chronometer built into the bulkhead above the bar.

“Bollocks,” they said in unison and jumped to their feet, each taking an arm and dragging Klumpf up with them.

“Why do we always end up carrying this lump?” Wall complained as they got the arms of the seven-foot Klingon over their shoulders.

“Personally I think the universe hates us,” Damerell said.

Wall was just contemplating that when a shout from behind made them shuffle around to look.

“I’m holding a live grenade!!!”

Ensign Stocks had jumped up onto the table and was holding his clenched fist over his head, an expression of wild desperation on his face.

“Er. No you’re not,” Wall told him.

The relief navigator hesitated and brought his hand down, staring at it. “Well, I could be,” he finally said, to which Wall nodded encouragingly. Suddenly the maniacal gleam was back in Stocks’ eye as he spotted Damerell.

“You!” he snarled, taking a step forward to the edge of the table. “You’re in my way! If you weren’t around, I’d be the Chief Navigator!!”

Damerell’s hasty, “Look if you want the job, you can have it!” was lost as, with a battle cry Klumpf would have been proud of, Stocks launched himself off the table. Nimbly, with reflexes borne out of years of association with Wall and his plans, Damerell dodged out of the way to let the junior officer crash to the floor. His movement unbalanced Klumpf who slowly toppled over, landing heavily on top of Stocks. The backup navigator let out a muffled squawk followed by a long moan of pain.

As someone in the background put in a call to sickbay, Wall glared at Damerell. “Honestly,” he said, “I can’t take you anywhere, can I?”

 

“We’re examining him now,” Jackson’s voice came over the Bridge speakers. “We can’t see any sign of anything anomalous yet, but I’d recommend we quarantine the other members of the away team until further notice.”

“Acknowledged,” Cholmondely-Smythe replied, clicking off the link. “You heard him, Number One,” he said over his shoulder to Hill. “Get down to sickbay, there’s a good chap.”

“Aye sir,” Hill did not look pleased at the prospect but headed for the turbolift. Wall and Damerell were now at their positions, with Klumpf at one of the tactical stations to one side. They had given Cholmondely-Smythe their eye-witness accounts upon reaching the Bridge, which only barely saved them from a serious dressing down for being so late.

“This is bloody peculiar,” he muttered, staring out through the viewscreen at the asteroid beneath them. The Counsellor, moving to sit in Hill’s newly-vacant seat, glanced at him.

“You’ve already said that, sir,” she pointed out, and Cholmondely-Smythe frowned.

“Actually, Counsellor, I said it was damned peculiar. Either way, it bears repeating, wot?”

 

In the turbolift, Hill was on his way to sickbay. Quarantine in Dr Jackson’s domain was not his preferred holiday of choice, but with the assistance of the medical staff he stood a good chance of getting out with all his limbs attached.

Putting that worry to one side as one he faced every day, he turned his attention to the matter at hand – namely what it was that had driven Stocks round the twist. There was no doubt it was something the relief navigator had picked up on the secret Orion base and given the situation there was every chance he had contracted it as well. The safest thing to do – for once – was for him to get himself locked up in a nice comfy quarantined room in sickbay and get in a well-deserved nap. In fact-

He broke off, having caught a glimpse of his reflection in the plexiglass panel he had been thinking about removing a minute ago. He hesitated, shaking his head, dismissing what he had seen – what he thought he had seen – as a distortion caused by the shape of the panel.

That lasted all of about three seconds before his escalating morbid curiosity drew him back, and he stared at the panel with mounting horror. His reflection was totally bald.

With a strangled scream his hands flew up to his head, and he let out a shaky sigh when he realised he was still in possession of a full head of hair. It didn’t take him long to work out what had happened – he had obviously been shown a vision of the future!

Straightening up, he knew what he had to do. He had been shown the future for a reason, and that reason was to prevent it at all costs. Touching the turbolift control panel he brought it to a halt. “Computer,” he said determinedly, “change destination to Main Engineering.”

 

“Captain’s Log, Supplemental. This is dashed peculiar. A hidden Orion research base on an asteroid on the Federation side of the Neutral Zone. No indication of dangerous materials but one officer returns from the away team infected and decidedly mad. And now my first officer has gone missing, his comm badge deactivated and the logs from the turbolift he was in wiped clean. It is at times like these that I very much wish I had a Security Chief. All in all, not the best of days.”

The next shift ended without incident, disregarding the missing Commander Hill. A full security sweep was being run but, as Barfoot pointed out, Hill was probably the only person who knew the best places to hide on the ship better than he did.

Wall and Damerell got up from their consoles to let Irving and Stocks’ replacement, a Bagellian ensign named Hanson, take their seats. Klumpf, who had been loitering near Damerell’s console for most of the shift and disrupting him with questions and comments, followed hot on their heels as they made for the turbolift. They almost literally ran into Cholmondely-Smythe as he was exiting his ready room, Wall sidestepping neatly as Klumpf accidentally shouldered the captain into the bulkhead.

“My apologies, Captain,” Klumpf rumbled without breaking stride or taking his eyes off Damerell’s back.

“Um, quite alright,” Cholmondely-Smythe muttered, plastered against the wall. “My fault entirely, I’m sure.”

The turbolift doors closed on the three of them, and Wall yawned ostentatiously. “I’m knackered. Gonna get some kip before dinner. See you in Fred’s later?”

“Yeah, okay,” Damerell said, shuffling minutely away from Klumpf, who was standing rather close and breathing rather oddly. The turbolift stopped and they disembarked, Wall heading in one direction and Damerell turning in the other. He had taken several steps before he realised Klumpf was still following him. “Erm, you want something? Only I was going to sit quietly in the dark for a while and pretend everything was okay.”

“Warrior Philip,” Klumpf said, oddly formal. “May I have a word? In private?”

Damerell sighed, put upon, but nodded, leading the way down the empty corridors to his quarters. Once they were inside, sitting awkwardly on his bed, Damerell fiddled with his thumbs while Klumpf looked around the Spartan quarters approvingly.

“You live like a Klingon warrior-in-training,” the Klingon said. “We must live uncluttered to allow us to focus on becoming better, stronger.”

“Hmm,” Damerell shrugged. “Too much stuff makes my head hurt.”

“You are a fine warrior,” Klumpf said. “You are strong of heart and mind, and your blood runs hot with the desire for victory.”

“Um, if you say so,” Damerell eyed the door, wondering if he could make his escape. Probably not.

“I do. May I remove my armour?”

“Uh, I suppose…” Damerell mumbled. “I’ll get us some drinks.”

“A good plan. Blood wine for all!”

Damerell rolled his eyes and quietly ordered a cranberry juice and a watered down blood wine in appropriate goblets. He turned back from the replicator and promptly dropped the goblets, eyes wide and mouth open.

Klumpf stood near the end of the bed, his armour set neatly to one side along with his boots, gloves and vest, leaving him shirtless and barefoot in just his leather trousers and a predatory gleam in his eye.

“Um?” Damerell squeaked.

“You are magnificent,” Klumpf bellowed. “I must have you!”

Damerell was too slow to avoid Klumpf’s lunge, and a moment later he found himself flat on his back on his bed, the seven-foot Klingon warrior looming over him.

“Help?”

 

The search for Hill was not going well. Once working out that Hill had either smashed his comm badge or somehow deactivated it, Barfoot had been scanning Hill’s specific lifesigns, using the information in the computer’s medical files. This took time but not that much, and so far he had successfully eliminated every section of the ship three times over. Hill was a tricky bugger, Barfoot had to admit. He was working on the assumption that the First Officer had actually reconfigured his comm badge to disrupt scans, so he was now about to start looking for anomalies in the lifesigns aboard – a longer process but one almost guaranteed to succeed.

Bent over one of the central consoles in main engineering, Barfoot didn’t see Hill sneaking up behind him until it was too late. He straightened up as he felt something poking into his right kidney.

“Ouch!” he said. “There’s no need for that.”

“Everyone into the Chief Engineer’s office!” Hill shouted, keeping one phaser on Barfoot and waving another around wildly.

“Alright, there’s no need to get antsy,” Barfoot said, gesturing for the engineers to proceed him into the room. The door clicked behind him and there was the distinct snap and buzz of a forcefield flaring into life. Stark was snoozing in his chair, feet propped up on his desk as he waited for something delicious-smelling to finish cooking in the oven. He didn’t stir as his entire engineering staff were herded into the room.

“Right chaps,” Barfoot said, clapping his hands together. “Options?”

“He’s blocking our communicators,” one of the junior engineers said, one of the comm badges already dismantled on the desk next to Stark’s feet.

There was a hiss and a yelp from behind Stark’s chair. “The forcefield covered the Jeffries tube access as well,” another engineer said, sucking on his burnt fingers.

“Hmm. Tricky,” Barfoot commented, stroking his chin. “How about we try overloading the forcefield?”

 

On the other side of the door, Hill glanced up as he heard loud footsteps, a sharp rise in the forcefield noise and lots of whimpering. Shaking his head, he turned back to the main console and quickly overrode the safety controls.

“I’m not losing my hair,” he muttered, “not now, not ever.”

“Warning, removal of the safety protocols may result in warp core instability,” the computer informed him.

“Acknowledged. Override Hill-Iota-Lambda-Lambda,” he said, keeping his fingers crossed that he hadn’t been locked out of the system just yet.

“Override accepted. Warp core containment now under manual control.”

“Yes!” he pumped his fist in the air before clearing his throat and coming over all embarrassed. A few more taps at the console had the containment field set on a pattern of deterioration that would hit critical levels in fifteen minutes.

A second later the red alert sirens started to scream and the lighting changed. He looked down at the console and saw himself, bald head gleaming pink in the red lighting. He screamed.

 

The Counsellor looked up from the readings on the arm of the captain’s chair on the bridge as the red alert klaxons sounded. She had seated herself there for lack of better options and was very much enjoying the view. As it turned out, she was also the senior officer on the bridge.

“Report!” she snapped, spinning to look at Bleep.

“Warp core containment field is unstable and deteriorating,” the android told her, just as Cholmondely-Smythe burst out of the ready room.

“Counsellor!” he exclaimed, heading directly for her.

“Captain, the warp core is unstable-”

“Never mind that,” he said dismissively. “I have something important to tell you.”

“You do?”

“Yes.” He dropped to his knees and produced a single red rose from behind his back.

“Oh good grief,” Irving said from his console at the front, exchanging exasperated looks with Hanson.

“Shut up,” the Counsellor snapped. “Captain, please, get up.”

“But I love you! I must express my undying devotion. You are a paragon of virtue and elegance and I am unfit to worship at the altar of your beauty.”

“That’s true,” the Counsellor said, momentarily off-guard, “but that’s not the point.”

“It’s the only important point!” Cholmondely-Smythe insisted. “Odes should be written to your loveliness!”

The Counsellor glanced around for help but, finding none forthcoming, planted her foot on the captain’s shoulder and pushed him away. With Cholmondely-Smythe sprawled on the floor babbling more nonsense, she sat back down in the command chair and hit the intercom.

“Hill to Engineering. What’s going on down there?”

“…Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…” A scream reverberated around the bridge, setting everyone’s teeth on edge. The Counsellor frowned, recognising the voice.

“…Commander Unk?”

“…Aaaaaahhhhh- Oh, hello.”

“What’s going on down there? We’re reading a warp core containment deterioration.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“What’s causing it?”

“I am.”

Clenching her teeth, the Counsellor counted to five slowly before asking, “Any particular reason?”

“I won’t go bald! I won’t! You can’t make me!!! I’ll die before I let that happen, and I’ll take all of you bastards with me!!!!”

Counsellor Hill blinked. “Somewhat extreme, don’t you think?”

“No!!! Now leave me alone!!”

The channel closed and the Counsellor blinked. She stared down at the Captain, who was currently prostrate on the floor licking her boots.

“Mr. Bleep, can we contact anyone else in Engineering?”

“Negative,” Bleep replied. “Sensors indicate all other methods of communication with Main Engineering are being blocked.”

“Can you override it?”

“Attempts so far have been unsuccessful but are continuing.”

With the Captain and XO out of commission Stark would be the next in command. With him not contactable it fell to… the Counsellor shuddered. There was no way she was putting Wall or Damerell in charge of the ship at a time like this. She thumbed the intercom again.

“Counsellor Hill to Sickbay. Doctor, are you there?”

“Nurse Baldwin here,” the reply came back after a few moments. “I’m afraid Doctor Jackson is somewhat tied up at the moment.”

The Counsellor hesitated. Something in the nurse’s tone sounded odd. “Why do I get the feeling you aren’t talking figuratively?”

“He went a bit odd – well, odder than usual. When he went for the axe we decided to strap him down for everyone’s safety.”

“Fair enough. Any sign of an antidote yet?”

“We’re close, we think.” She paused and then added, “The security guards that went with them have both died, apparently of fright. Testing on Stocks has been, um, useful.”

“How is he?”

“Sedated. Every time we wake him up he starts off on one about eliminating Damerell.”

“Right. He’s a better navigator, though, isn’t he?”

“Couldn’t possibly comment,” Nurse Baldwin said briskly.

“No, of course, sorry, just thinking out loud,” the Counsellor said hastily. “Look, I’m going to come down there. See if I can’t hurry things on a bit.”

“Oh yes, that’ll help I’m sure,” was the response, just before the Counsellor ended the channel. She looked up at Bleep.

“Keep trying to break through the communications blackout. And stop that core breach!”

“Aye.”

On cue, the computer burbled, “Warning. Warp core containment will pass beyond acceptable levels in twelve minutes.”

“Irving, you’re in command until I get back,” the Counsellor barked, heading for the turbolift. “Don’t break anything!” She halted as something grabbed her ankle. Looking down, she saw Cholmondely-Smythe fully stretched out, grasping her leg with a pleading expression on his face.

“Please Counsellor, I cannot live without you. I can’t breathe when I’m not in your presence. You are like the sun giving life to my world!”

“We don’t have time for this!” she snapped, tugging her foot out of his hand. She considered for a moment and then kicked him in the head, knocking him out. Meeting the shocked gazes of Irving and Hanson, she shrugged. “He’ll thank me when he wakes up.”

“If you say so,” Irving said, turning back to his console and bringing up what looked like the schematic of one of the escape pods.

The Counsellor ran to the turbolift and took a deep breath as the door closed. Bending down she straightened the leg of her uniform trousers where Cholmondely-Smythe’s hand had rucked it up. She had an itch on her ankle, which she scratched for a moment before she stopped, looking down in horror. Cholmondely-Smythe’s hand had touched her bare skin, she was sure of it. Which meant she was almost certainly infected. She straightened up, swallowing hard. Hopefully she could keep it together long enough to fix everything.

Though at that moment she had absolutely no idea how to do that.

 

Sickbay was an oddly quiet oasis of calm, the red alert sirens muted and the staff bustling around busily, murmuring quietly to each other when the Counsellor burst through the door a few minutes later. She could feel agitation building up inside her. Although she knew it was the virus – or whatever it was – starting to take hold, that didn’t mean she could control it.

“Nurse!” she yelled, getting the attention of everyone in the room. She smiled as Nurse Baldwin approached, not particularly aware of the manic edge her grin had taken on.

“Counsellor,” Nurse Baldwin said carefully. “You’re just in time. We’re pretty sure we have an antidote and we’re about to test it on Ensign Stocks.” She gestured towards the prone figure on one of the biobeds. The unfortunate ensign shifted restlessly in his sleep.

“Good. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. Computer, status?”

“Seven minutes to warp core containment failure.”

Nurse Baldwin’s eyes widened. “Why did no-one tell us it was that serious? We should be evacuating!”

“People aren’t exactly running on all cylinders at the moment,” the Counsellor admitted. “If this antidote works I can get it down to engineering in time to inject Commander Hill, we’ll be fine.” The nurse gave her a disbelieving look and she added, “Besides, if the warp core goes up there’s no way the escape pods could get far enough away to avoid it.”

Nurse Baldwin sniffed, gesturing at one of her colleagues who handed her a hypospray. The Counsellor followed her over to the biobed and watched as one of the other nurses administered a shot that jerked Stocks to wakefulness, eyes wide and gleaming with some mix of rage and desperation.

“I’ll kill him!! Then I’ll be the chief navigator!!!”

“Aiming low,” the Counsellor commented as Nurse Baldwin reached in and pushed the hypospray against Stocks’ neck. It hissed and he flinched, glaring up at the nurse with a betrayed expression. Then his eyes rolled back into his head, he twitched violently, fell off the biobed and started snoring loudly.

“We think that’s done it,” Nurse Baldwin said confidently. “The last attempt had him trying to lick his own-”

“Yes, thank you nurse!” the Counsellor interrupted.

“What? I was going to say elbow,” Nurse Baldwin protested.

The Counsellor blushed but was saved when Stocks snorted loudly, mumbled what sounded like ‘elephant telemetry’ and woke up.

“Wassgoinon?”

“I’ll take that as a successful test,” the Counsellor said, grabbing a hypospray away from one of the orderlies as he approached.

“If you wait a second, we can inject you first,” Nurse Baldwin said, making a grab for the Counsellor who dodged aside and headed for the door with a cry of, “No time!”

The medical staff were about to chase after her when the head of an axe appeared through the doorway to one of the quarantine rooms. It was yanked out and Jackson’s face appeared in the gap.

“Here’s Danny!” he said with a manic grin, prompting the nurses and orderlies to forget about the Counsellor in favour of subduing their wayward CMO.

 

Barfoot wiped his brow with the sleeve of his uniform top, which he had just removed. Stark’s office, like any kitchen, was hot and humid, and it hadn’t been long before all the engineers were starting to sweat through their uniforms. Stark had woken up when one of the engineers had yelled out after losing his eyebrows in one of the many attempts to break the forcefield and he wasn’t happy about having all the bodies in his kitchen. The previously pleasant-smelling room was starting to get the whiff of school changing rooms about it.

“Someone get that roulade out of the oven!” Stark shouted, unable to get to the oven himself.

“We’ve got bigger problems Chief,” Barfoot told him from where he was crouched by the door’s control panel. “Hill’s barricaded us in and set the warp core containment to fail in,” he glanced at his watch, “five minutes.”

Stark blinked. “If that roulade goes dry and overdone, you won’t have any bigger problems than that, believe me.”

“Righto. Any suggestions?”

Stark glanced around. “There’s a forcefield over the door?”

“And the Jeffries tubes,” Barfoot agreed.

“Just there? Or in the walls as well?”

Barfoot looked down at where he had the door controls in bits all over the floor. “Pretty sure it’s just the emergency forcefields over the standard openings. But we don’t have anything powerful enough to cut through the wall and the forcefields are designed to cover the generation points as well to prevent sabotage once they’re active. Communications are blocked too.”

Stark bit his lip, looking at the massively oversized range set in one wall. “What’s behind there?” he asked pointing at it. Barfoot frowned.

“It’s the equipment locker, isn’t it?”

“I had to cut into the wall to get it to fit, so there’s a great big hole behind it, into the back of a cupboard.”

“Spanktacular!” Barfoot shouted. “Come on lads, put your backs into it!”

A group of them clustered around the oven, heaving it away from the wall to reveal the hole, light filtering through the cracks in the cupboard door. Barfoot clambered through, pushing the door open and tumbling out into the equipment store. Stark followed him, with the other engineers trailing behind, and they all crowded up close to the glass panel in the door. Through it they could see Hill staring avidly at one of the control panels, fingers threaded through his hair and tugging on it, as though to reassure himself it was still there. Barfoot and Stark exchanged glances.

“There, look!” One of the engineers pointed at the main doors. The Counsellor was visible on the other side, hammering her fists against it.

“Is she holding a hypospray?” Stark wondered, squinting.

“Ooh! Maybe it’s a cure!” Barfoot said. “If we can get it to Hill, he can stop the meltdown.”

“Right. Pete, you get the door open. You lot,” Stark said, turning to the engineers, “we’ve got to distract Hill. There’s a slice of that roulade in it for all of you if we get out of this alive.” This brought a ragged cheer from the sweaty engineers.

“You got it, Chief,” Barfoot saluted sloppily. He looked at his watch. “Holy crap, two minutes to the earth-shattering kaboom!”

“Go!”

Stark and the engineers rushed Hill, who whirled around and fired off his phasers randomly, sending them scattering for cover. Barfoot scurried over to the door and frantically overrode the lock, jumping back when the door cycled open and the Counsellor’s flailing fist narrowly missed punching him in the face.

“Come on Counsellor,” he said, grinning disarmingly. “Time to inject the XO.”

An expression of extreme concentration came over the Counsellor’s face as she looked at the hypospray in her hand and then over at Hill, who was surrounded by a growing sea of stunned engineers. Stark was crouched nearby, hurriedly tapping at some controls to try and unlock the weapons cabinet next to him.

“UNK!!!!” the Counsellor bellowed, launching herself across the engineering section. She dodged one phaser blast, grabbed an engineer to throw him in the path of another and then dove forward into a forward roll that put her within arm’s reach of Hill, who jumped back with uncommon grace and put the console between them.

“Warning. Forty-five seconds to warp core breach.”

Barfoot followed the Counsellor, trying to get to the console where Hill had locked the controls, but had to back away when Hill fired a phaser off at him.

“I won’t go bald!!!” Hill shouted.

“I will inject you!!!” the Counsellor yelled back.

A ladle flew out of nowhere and thunked Hill right in the temple, sending him staggering back. The Counsellor vaulted the console and jammed the hypospray into Hill’s neck, dropping him to the floor in a dead faint. The Counsellor raised her hands in a victory pose screaming, “Victory!!!” into the echoing warp core chamber.

“Warning. Fifteen seconds to warp core breach.”

“Shut it off!” Stark yelled at Barfoot, who was frantically tapping at the console, fingers flying.

“He’s sodding DNA locked it!” Barfoot moaned. His head snapped up. “Counsellor!”

The Counsellor darted over, shadow boxing all the way. “Yup?!”

“Warning. Ten seconds to warp core breach. Nine. Eight.”

“Press that, turn that, press those two together, press that.”

“Six. Five.”

“You got it!”

“Four. Three. Two. Warp core containment field automatic stabilisation initialised. Containment field returning to default safety values.”

Barfoot and Stark collapsed in relief, as did all the engineers still standing. With perfect timing a team of medical personnel hurried through the still-open main doors. They began checking over the stunned crewmen as Nurse Baldwin stepped up to the Counsellor and pressed a hypospray against her neck. She collapsed to the ground just as Hill twitched from his prone position on the floor, belched loudly and sat up clutching his head.

“Interesting,” Nurse Baldwin said. “No-one else has done that.”

 

“Captain’s log, stardate 8347783.7725. I have handed the matter of the apparent secret Orion research base over to my superiors. Someone further up the chain is welcome to that particular headache. Very few of my senior staff have much memory of the last day or so. In particular no-one appears to be able to tell me why I have a lump on my head and the security logs around that time appear to have been edited. Still, perhaps it’s for the best. Crisis averted and all that. I’m told Ensign Stocks will recover fully following surgery to reattach his arm after he, ah, heroically threw himself in the path of a rampaging Dr. Jackson.”

Cholmondely-Smythe tapped the control to end the recording and sat back in his chair. Over his shoulder Hill was bent over his console, devoting himself to scanning the area and not talking to anyone. Cholmondely-Smythe had been careful to make sure that everyone knew no blame would be attached to any of their actions while under the influence of the virus – as the medical staff had confirmed it to be – but Hill was still keeping quiet and playing nicely.

The turbolift doors opened and Damerell appeared in the captain’s line of vision, walking stiff-backed and fists clenched. Cholmondely-Smythe startled as Colonel Klumpf also appeared, crossing the front of the bridge to sit at one of the empty consoles on the other side. He was limping slightly and when he sat down he did so gingerly, easing himself downwards with a wince.

“Colonel?” Cholmondely-Smythe asked. “Everything alright?”

Damerell and Klumpf exchanged quick looks, Damerell blushing bright red from his hairline all the way down to his uniform collar, his ears standing out like mooring beacons. Klumpf cleared his throat and nodded.

“Yes Captain, everything is fine. Whatever happened while I was under the influence must have been very… enthusiastic.”

“Quite,” Cholmondely-Smythe nodded, discreetly dropping the subject.

The turbolift doors opened once more and Wall bounded down the steps, throwing himself into his chair.

“That was an amazing nap,” he said cheerfully. “What did I miss?”