The Liquidator

Posted on 24 Apr 2023 @ 3:27pm by Commander Morgan Tarin & Ensign Mimi & Chief Warrant Officer 3 Alexion Wylde & Petty Officer 1st Class Gabriel Stark & Petty Officer 1st Class Ember Locksley & Petty Officer 2nd Class Leon Inaros & EMH Mark X-C "Shirley"

3,794 words; about a 19 minute read

Mission: Episode 18 - Cold Station 31
Location: USS Galileo-A - Deck 3, Sickbay
Timeline: MD 11, 0237 hrs

Previously, on Darkness...

There was a long pause, then suddenly a loud guttural groan emitted from his throat. He coughed up bubbly pink blood from his lungs and weakly flailed his arms in his sedated state. The LCARS monitors above his biobed quickly came to life while his vitals started to spike and red line. The lights in the room automatically brightened to signal a coding patient in need of urgent attention.

...

Repeating audible sirens continued to blare throughout the previously-calm and tranquil sickbay. Throaty Klingon coughs of despair and anguish accompanied KehG's last gasps for breath as more pink blood poured from his mouth and torso. In his final moments, his eyes opened and his head rolled to the side to face the Nekomi. "...Y--y...ouuu...." he gasped for breath, "...coward....!"

Mimi's eyes slowly fluttered open as KehG's voice gurgled around the sickbay, she looked around not immediately recognizing her surroundings in her sedated state. "Mosti dampris?" Then her mind reacted to the weight of something in her hand and she saw the bloody d'k tahg, gasping she dropped it to the floor.

...

KehG managed to push one of his arms in front of his body, then a second one. His legs slowly pumped in conjunction with his other extremities to crawl toward the Nekomi at a slow yet methodical pace. Hand over hand. Knee to knee. He closed the distance within thirty seconds until he managed to look up at the Starfleet officer from the foot of her biobed.

"W-we will go...to.." he wheezed, "Sto-vo-kor...together...!" he proclaimed as one of his thick hands reached up to grab her shoulder.

"I did not do this." She told KehG putting her hand on his, though she certainly had wished him dead she knew it wasn't her. "Computer activate.... surely... shirley?..... the EMH." She groggily called out, no one had responded to the alarms yet so the emh was the only option if she was going to get help.

The Klingon captain used the leverage from his grip to reach for Mimi's throat. His opposite hand grabbed the furry woman's esophagus and latched onto it with honor and conviction. His powerful fingers started to squeeze it tight, digging deep into the Nekomi's larynx and soft neck muscles.

In the near distance, a holographic figure quickly shimmered then materialized. Shirley's distinctive red hair and blue-collared uniform appeared within the sickbay, initially stoic and without emotion during her first seconds of summons. "Please state the nature of the medical emergency," she said.

Mimi put her hand to KehG's trying to break his near death grip on her throat, her own strength lessened by the sedatives still coursing through her system. "Help." She managed to say.

The EMH quickly surveilled its surroundings; the vacant biobed inundated with Klingon blood; another pool of bodily fluids nearby on the carpet; a robust Klingon warrior now attempting to strangle a fellow patient on an adjacent biobed. Shirley's programming led her to swift action. Her first response after observation was to alert the rest of the crew. "Doctor Shirley to Security and Medical," she said, not needing to manipulate her fake commbadge, "we have an urgent situation in sickbay."

Realizing she wasn't going to break his grip with her own strength before she passed out Mimi changed her grip using both hands, digging her claws into the gaps between the Klingon's knuckles and into his wrist hoping the pain would cause him to let go before she had to sever veins and tendons.

Captain KehG's death drip on Mimi suddenly softened in conjunction with the hiss of a hyospray. The EMH, Shirley, now stood next to the two patients and observed the Klingon lose consciousness and slide to the floor. She helped remove his fingers from the Starfleet officer's throat then looked down into her groggy eyes.

"Ensign Mimi. Can you hear and see me?"

Mimi took several deep breaths, she was surprised by the Klingons strength even as his life faded from him. After a few moments she looked up at Shirley. "Yes, I can see you."

And Now, the Continuation...

[ON]

"What do we have?" it was Dr. Alexion Wylde that got there first. Not requiring as much sleep as humans, he'd already been up and about and was often one of the first to arrive when a call went out. He stopped in his tracks when he saw the mess in front of him. Whatever he'd expected, it hadn't been this. He crossed the room in a couple of strides, groaning with the effort of rolling the considerable Klingon onto his back. "EMH, get over here..."

Alexion was crouched next to the dying man as he grabbed the tray above him, yanking it down to get to the contents. He rummaged through the vials before loading a hypo and pressing it to his neck. "He's too weak..." he frowned, shaking his head urgently as he tried to stabilise him with a second shot, his other hand reaching for the autosuture to try and force enough healing to at least give him a chance.

Shirley - the photonic doctor - quickly procured a medical tricorder from the nearby biobed then moved to the tall Vaeron's side. She unfolded the scanner and tapped its controls with rapid AI precision. The instrument started to blare repeating critical warnings tones as the patient's vitals slipped away. "Severe puncture trauma to the primary and secondary hearts. Uncontrolled internal hemorrhaging. Blood pressure is failing," she reported. Her observant and methodical eyes then scanned the room, first back to where the attendant nurse was stationed in the office then to the floor where a bloodied Klingon d'k tahg lay next to the Nekomi's outstretched hand. "Nurse Inaros appears unconscious and scans of the puncture wound conform to the knife next to Ensign Mimi."

Alexis swore, the connotations of all the data he was being served running through his mind, on both sides of the coin. He had to use the transporter to get the hefty Klingon up onto the bed, dragging the unit over that had been used to save Mimi's life only hours ago.

Stark arrived with his phaser already drawn, more than put out with the second call to Sickbay in a matter of hours. It only took a moment to realise that this was very, very different. Unsure what the hell had happened to create the scene in front of him, he remained in the path of the door, phaser drawn, ready to stun if anyone stepped out of place. Otherwise, with a medical crisis unfolding, he needed to allow the medics to continue unhindered.

"Where do you need me?" Dr. Ember Locksley slowed to a walk as she moved in past Gabriel, not seeming to notice the chaos of the scene, too wrapped up in the immediate emergency at hand.

"Check on Mimi," Alexion didn't even glance away from the bleeding patient as he brought the arch up around him. "EMH, you stay with me..." he shook his head as he saw the vitals scrolling across the screen...and how close he was to crashing despite the sutures and regeneration being applied. "Give him 40 CCs of inaprovaline," he ordered, grabbing a protoplaser to try and staunch the blood loss.

Next to the biobed, Shirley procured a hyprospray and rapidly loaded it with the requested dosage of cardiostimulant. She pressed the device to the Klingon's neck then referenced her medical tricorder once again. The blaring warnings which synchronized to KehG's failing heart beats flat-lined and now produced the distinctive sound no medical officer ever wanted to hear. "Cardiac failure in both hearts," she reported.

Wylde swore, grabbing the Klingon's arm as he tried to Transfer energy again, but he felt nothing but cold emptiness from the alien. He attached the delicate nodes for resuscitation, watching his vitals as he set the first pulse. Nothing. And then again, and again, still with no response.

"Negative cardiac response," Shirley reported without emotion as she monitored her tricorder which still blared a flat-line. "Doctor Wylde...I believe the patient is deceased."

Alexion pushed himself straight from the biobed, shouting an obscenity in a fleeting burst of anger. He shook his head, his hands resting on his hips in defeat as he took a long, tight breath. Just hours ago, they'd saved the lives of this pair...what the hell had happened? "Log it and inform the Captain," he said flatly, ignoring the momentary glance of concern that Ember gave him from across the room, taking a step away to go and check on Inaros.

"I need you to move around as little as possible," Gabriel finally spoke up with the medical emergency having reached an unfortunate conclusion, but knowing it would likely be unwelcome all the same. "We need to treat Sickbay as a crime scene now..."

Alexion stopped and turned to look at him with a sigh, clearly unimpressed by the statement. "Call it what you want, but this is still a Sickbay, and we still have patients here. I'm going to check my nurse is still alive, then we'll worry about the rest of this mess." He moved away, the quickness of his stride batting off further comment as he knelt by Leon to check him.

Gabriel's jaw tightened at the response but he bit back his sharp reply, guessing the doctor had had a bad enough day already. He started a scan of the bay all the same. The doctors had their job to do, but he also had his.

The photonic doctor assessed the reality of the situation in its entirety and flipped her medical tricorder closed. Its audible blares ceased and the room became quiet aside from the verbal exchanges between the various carbon-based lifeforms in the room. Her head and ginger red hair glanced back to where the other patient, Mimi, was positioned on the adjacent biobed. "Sickbay to Commander Tarin," began the EMH across the intra-ship comm network, "we have a medical emergency in Sickbay. Captain KehG is dead. Security is present and assessing the situation." Shirley then quickly walked to the nearest console where she manually entered the details of the Klingon patient's time of death, probable cause, and her personal observations.

Alexion crouched next to Leon, watching with concern as he pressed the hypospray to his neck. "Inaros? Inaros can you hear me?" he asked quietly, close to his ear, his hand on his back to help ground him as he regained consciousness.

Leon let out a soft moan before he suddenly jerked in the arms. His eyes opened and he gasped, a wave of nausea rushing over him before he suppressed it. The hand, the soft breath against his ear...it reminded him of where he was. Maybe it was more the voice than anything else. He shifted, almost dry-heaving before he mastered his body, taking slow and even breaths. He had been sedated, he knew that now. Because this was the rush after the counter, without any sedatives to keep he calm. "I...I can..." he managed to get out, his mouth dry.

"Easy," Alexion said quietly with a frown, shaking his head. "Take your time. There's been an...incident here. It looks like you were knocked out," he set the tricorder next to him so he could see for himself. "Don't answer any questions until you're feeling well."

Ember moved the regenerator carefully over the Nekomi's throat, glancing to her readouts and then to the officer's face. "Is your breathing easing?" she asked softly, trying her best to keep her calm given the circumstances.

Mimi had remained very quiet as the medical staff worked on Keh'G, partially from the sedation and partially from the shock of the last few minutes. "I am ok...." She eventually said. "I did not do this Ember." she quickly added.

Ember searched her eyes for a moment, letting out a soft breath as she nodded, squeezing her hand. "We'll get to the bottom of it," she assured. "Try and stay calm and show them you have nothing to hide."

"What happened?" Leon asked as he shifted to his knees, grimacing. His body was bruised from hitting the floor and he moved his right arm slowly to feel for any real damage.

"The Klingon captain has been killed," Gabriel moved in closer to them, closing his tricorder. "Now that everyone's stabilised, nothing should be touched or moved in here. Ensign Mimi, I...will need to take you to the brig when you're well enough."

"I did not kill him Gabriel." Mimi said as firmly as she could muster despite the look of her no doubt making everyone think otherwise, pink blood that had spurted from Keh'g covered what parts of her already blood stained uniform she wore and the 'smoking gun' of the blood soaked knife lay nearby.

"Right now, the evidence points to you," Gabriel shook his head with regret, lifting his tricorder slightly to indicate it. "But I'm going to investigate fully, Mimi, no matter how long it takes. This is going to be...sensitive though. And we have to do everything by the book."

"Well, in either case, that time's not yet, we need to keep her in longer," Ember said firmly, her stance with one hand on the biobed made it clear that there was no discussion to be had on the point.

The door to sickbay hissed opened to present Commander Morgan Tarin in all of her hungover glory. The urgent call from the EMH had awoken the acting captain at a most inopportune time; less than three hours following the conclusion of the mortal combat her crew member had initiated with the Klingon captain. Apparently, resting for few hours to digest the potent bloodwine concoction Nesh Saalm created was too much to ask. Someone -- a Klingon captain -- was now dead aboard her vessel.

As Tarin rubbed her baggy and bloodshot eyes, she narrowed her gaze on the various Starfleet personnel present. The scent of Klingon blood was overwhelming and seemed to emanate from a large pool of the pink liquid near the Nekomi's biobed. A d'k tahg lay on the floor adjacent to the operations ensign arm. "Report!" she barked. It was hard for her to find words to express what her initial instincts were telling her.

Alexion pushed himself up to stand, a sardonic expression on his face for a moment. He was tempted to say 'a circus', but instead glanced to Gabriel with a look that said 'go ahead' seeing as he was currently taking over.

"He's dead," Gabriel confirmed, stating the obvious before going into anymore detail. "Please be careful, we have to treat this as a crime scene now. I've done some preliminary scans, although a doctor still needs to do a post-mortem. I will need to take Ensign Mimi to the brig once she is declared fit...it's...her fingerprints on the knife, and I can't find any others."

Tarin's pale freckled face began to turn red with intense anger. She resisted the urge to storm further into the sickbay after processing the security officer's warning, but a multitude of questions swarmed her thoughts as to how this most unfortunate situation could have occurred. "Ensign Mimi...what have you done?!" she demanded.

Mimi looked at Tarin her ears recoiling at the woman's strong tone. "I did not kill him, when I woke up he was already bleeding."

The commander did a double-take following the junior officer's reply. "...You're telling me you were sleeping when the captain was killed? That you have no recollection of what happened?!" Tarin's hazel eyes were enraged and projected the most intensity she'd ever portrayed to the Galileo crew thus far.

"I woke up when I heard him trying to speak and fall off the biobed, he was already wounded." Mimi replied, she drew her knee's tight against herself on the biobed, tail twitching nervously. "Then I saw the knife in my hand and dropped it."

Inaros looked at her, sitting on the floor. He took a moment to think, trying to get it clear in his head. "The last round I remember doing, she was sedated. I doubt that she would have been able to do anything like this..." he said, before he rubbed his hands over his face.

Tarin pushed both of her hands up her face and into her curly dark hair. The palpable frustration she conveyed was more than evident to everyone in the near vicinity. "Ensign, if you didn't kill him, then who did?!" she retorted with simple deduction. Before she continued thinking and entered the deepest rabbit holes, her eyes shifted to the security officer. "Stark, get to the office and bring up the internal surveillance logs of sickbay and the surrounding corridor over the past two hours. Now!" She quickly returned her attention to the Nekomi. "I swear on my life, Mimi...if I find out you killed General KehG and you lied to me..."

"I did not kill him." Mimi repeated again, she lay back on the bio bed Pensat Mimi, pensat she told herself. "Something came in, I could smell it, then it was overpowered by Klingon blood."

The red-collared commander again frowned at Mimi. "What do you mean, 'something came in'? That you could smell? Were you, or weren't you, asleep as you just informed me and the doctors?" The edge to Tarin's voice was penetrating. There was no doubt by the tone of her voice that she possessed little patience for inconsistent testimony.

"My nose still works when I am asleep Captain." Mimi replied, she wanted to elaborate how it was part of her bodies instinctive defense's but knew Tarin was unlikely to want the explanation. "Something..... different came in, I am sure of it."

"Let's find out," Stark cut in quickly, shaking his head as he physically held his hands out, a habit from lounge calls. He made his way carefully to the compact 'office' area, using his codes to call up the surveillance logs. His frown deepened at the chirpy error sound and he tried again, with no better luck. "They've been scrubbed..."

"Scrubbed?," angrily repeated Tarin who had now made her way further and delicately through the small maze of biobeds and into sickbay's compact administrative chamber. "That's not good enough, petty officer. Find me something!"

Gabriel's eyes widened just a touch in an 'oookay' kind of way, taking a deep breath to keep his patience. "We should send it to Ops for thorough restoration, but I'll see what I can do..." he frowned as he worked on the files, annoyance creeping in with how finicky it was. "I've got something...not much, but I think I've got some fragments," he motioned her closer before playing the snippets he'd been able to rescue.

The small LCARS terminal within the office displayed an amalgamation of the different internal security footage views. Several showed nothing more than corrupt, static images, yet one seemed to alternate between moments of clarity and blackouts. "This one, here," Tarin pointed to the feed. "Isolate and enhance starting from 02:18:40."

Gabriel leant in, almost squinting to try and make sense of the image littered with articles. He cleaned it up as best he could, although it would need to be run through Ops at some point. Enhancing was a relative concept in the field of forensics. "This is the best I can do, Captain," he started to play, and now the outline and movement of a figure was clear.

The figure was not actually a figure, but a shimmering transparent silhouette which appeared to move across sickbay at the speed of a humanoid. Tarin moved her head closer to the screen while the small segment of useful footage cycled on a repeating loop. "...What is that?" she asked him. "A person? Another type of life-form?"

"I have no idea. Maybe even some kind of cloaking technology? One thing's for sure, it's not confirming that Mimi did this," he pointed out, pressing the controls but with no more luck. "It's the best I can do. We should get this to Ops for a full analysis. Meanwhile, I can sweep this place thoroughly."

Tarin's curly brown hair curtly snapped back and forth as she adamantly shook her head. Captain KehG's death and Ensign Mimi's culpability were now second on her list of major concerns. Her first and primary responsibility was the safeguarding of Galileo and its crew. "I need to know -- right now and with certainty -- if this 'entity' is still aboard the ship."

"While the forensic sweep runs here, I'll get to the Security office and run a full scan for any signs of an intruder," Stark assured, already standing up, ready to move.

"And I need to carry out the PM as soon as possible, or at the very least get him into stasis," Wylde chipped in, his arms folding across his chest as he glanced over the scene with a frown. The smell of Klingon blood was something else.

The acting CO bit down on her bottom lip with vexation not solely directed at the security officer. The entirety of the predicament they collectively found themselves in was beyond sub-par. "Go. Now. You have two minutes, Stark," she ordered the yellow-collared man. Her attention shifted to the ancient doctor. "Perform a non-intrusive autopsy immediately. Make sure his body remains intact. We'll have to return him to Praxis as soon as I..." she rubbed her forehead, "inform them of this murder on our ship." Her hazel irises then laid themselves on the operations ensign still laying in her biobed. "And I want Ensign Mimi revived and fully conscious to answer questions within the hour. Understood?"

Gabriel had set the scan of Sickbay running, but had already upped and left Sickbay during the last of her orders, clearly not waiting around...just in case.

"Understood," Wylde confirmed, moving to 'scrub up', in the contemporary sense of the phrase at least. He just hoped that medical science also understood the Captain's instructions and complied.

[OFF]

--

CMDR Morgan Tarin
Acting Commanding Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Saalm]

Ensign Mimi
Deputy Operations Manager
USS Galileo-A

EMH Mark X-C "Shirley"
Medical Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Saalm]

Dr. Alexion Wylde
Medical Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Blake]

Dr. Ember Locksley
Medical Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Blake]

PO1 Gabriel Stark
Security Officer
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Blake]

PO2 Leon Inaros
Nurse
USS Galileo-A
[PNPC Rice]

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