The floaters

Posted on Sat Nov 6th, 2021 @ 7:20am by Lieutenant Commander Timia Svidi & Emmah (Svidi) & Captain David Hawkins

Mission: A New Legacy
1920 words - 3.8 OF Standard Post Measure

Timia was glad to be back in her own space. She didn't like leading away teams much, especially when their job was focused on engineering. She didn't understand engineering like she did medicine. She was a doctor! Not a geese monkey! Hawkins would need to respect and understand that in the future.

For now she was informed they had picked up bodies which had been expelled from the T'sul upon the explosion. She ordered a few of her staff to start identifying the bodies so they could log them in the report and verify the missing from the damaged ship.

Just when she thought she could take a good lunch break she got a call from the morgue, a rather cryptic one demanding she arrive. She didn't like cryptic summons, but she she arrived any way. The morgue was fairly large considering the size of the ship, Even still some of the bodies were having to be stowed in a cargo space for a while.

"What is it?" she demanded.

"Sorry Doctor, I just... I've never seen anything like this before." the medic said turning a padd towards her, Near by another Doctor and three nurses were scowling at their own tricorders looking confused.

"What is it..." Timia started again as she glanced down at the padd. "This isn't right. Your scanner is broken." she said. "Don't call me for trivial shit, get a new tricorder." she said shoving the padd back at the medic.

"Dr. Svidi, the tricorder isn't broken, just look." Doctor Harris said sharply. He knew how to get her attention and wasn't afraid of her.

Timia frowned and moved over to the table he was standing next to and pulled the sheet back. She gasped instantly. "What the hell?" she asked.

"We are still processing the bodies, but the first 5 we looked at , 4 looked like this. No blood at all." Dr Harris said.

"Rapid decompression wouldn't do this..." Timia said as she moved to another table and jerked the sheet back, seeing another body, clearly drained of all blood. It wasn't something one needed a tricorder or testing to know. With out blood skin looked gray with a near green tint.

"Not unless you were plugged in to a hole in the hull and just the blood was siphoned out, but even then you'd be dealing with vein collapse." Harris commented.

Timia began looking over the body and stopped when she reached the right leg, finding a small bit of bruising, clearly some blood had leached in to skin. "Puncture was here, in the femoral artery." she said. "There must still be traces of blood inside, find it and run tests. This clearly happened before death, but no one would willingly let some pump be hooked up to their leg and their blood be drained. Chop chop, check all these bodies! I need to know how many."

With the staff scrambling and more being called in Timia tapped her comm badge. "Captain Hawkins Report to the Morgue."

With a ship so large, it took a while but finally David had found his way to the ship's primary morgue, along with Emmah, in tow next to him. His weight, though a great deal, was lighter just knowing that he had Emmah once again by his side. It almost seemed to help in the fact that he was assigned to a larger ship and mostly new crew. They never truly got the chance to have a good all crew social call. Though most people didn't mind them, it was finding the time that was the worst.

Getting back into the focus of things, the captain and his assistant scanned the cool room with their eyes. Though this was a highly clean and bright room, like the rest of the ship, it was not hard to feel almost as though it gave off an eerie feel as soon as you walked into the room. "You rang, Doctor. What do you..." he paused and as soon as he saw one of the bodies, he froze as it hit him like a brick wall. His head leaned down slightly and is light hearted demeaner dissipated as he slowly took a couple more steps closer. "... How many are like this?"

Timia looked at him with some confusion, as her eyes darted to the new blond woman by his side. Who was she? "We are still collecting bodies, but thus far, 37." she said. "And 10 others are unlike this. Do you know what this is?" she asked.

"Their bodies have been rapidly drained of all blood." Emmah stated as she looked over them. "Dr Jenic." she said motioning to the bed she was next to. "Captain this is who I was speaking with before I was deactivated."

"Deactivated? Who the hell have you brought in to my morgue?" Timia demanded.

"Emmah, my assistant," David answered as he looked at Emmah. "So much for thinking Dr Jenic had something to do with this. Can you identify the rest of these crew members that were drained?"

Emmah nodded her head and started to walk through the lines of bodies looking over each one of them. As she did so, names started to appear on a padd in David's hand, transferring the data directly to him as she was now able to access the computer of Arcadia.

Timia blinked a few times, "You need to be filling me in here Captain. What the hell is this?" she demanded. "This is not something that happens easily, or quickly for that matter."

"This is the work of a radical faction called the Trinity, a religious sect," the captain explained as he remembered the hatchet that lodged into his leg during a hand to hand conflict with the mentally disturbed zeolite. "Emmah was there during that time and kept medical documentation and details from that time in her records. But I thought they all but were killed off."

"Clearly not." Timia commented. "Emmah." she said snapping her finger at the girl. "I need that documentation now." she said firmly.

"Of course Doctor." Emmah said, "I will access, and compile them. I also can make some comparisons if I have a few minutes to examine these bodies." she said. "See if there are any differences." she said. "Captain, We may want to check the T'sul for the symbol, although its plausible the killer did not have time to paint the wall."

"Don't have to," David remarked as he walked up to one of the further bodies to see that one of the foreheads were cut into. "Choppy and uneven. Someone used an actual knife to carve up this member. Not fully completed, so rushed."

Timia followed the Captain as she looked at the symbol. It was an uneven circle, with an x through it and a v over the top. "You've seen this before, this is the only one who has it... it also seems to be a person with the most blood left in them. I was speculating they were the last to be drained." she said.

"That would make sense." Emmah said. "But is still different." she looked at David. "Captain... this is not the only occurrence of this." she told him. "An other merchant ship was found in the Fintal Shipping lanes, all the crew accounted for, dead, and drained. I was given the data to bring to you." she told him.

"There are more of these nutters?" Timia scoffed.

"There may be one or more still on the T'sul for all we know." Emmah commented.

"Doubt it," David sighed as he looked over the 'floater' before pulling out a small padd and tapped a couple buttons before showing Emmah. "They are the last of the missing crew except for one and we know that that last one is the attacker. A Lieutenant Rohan Eversmith."

Timia squinted her eyes. That name seemed like one she had heard before. "Hang on." she said. She walked over to a console and tapped a few buttons. She accessed the T'suls records, the Arcadia was working hard to restore the missing gaps of data. "Eversmith.... Eversmith..." she muttered. "Ah ha..."

"Transporter room, transport the contents of T'sul morgue, container 15 to Triage station 64." she said before she waved at David to follow her to an empty cart, marked with a 64.

A body materialized, and Timia pulled out the sheet stored under the cart and quickly covered the man. A dead body was never a pretty sight, despite the fact this one was still dressed in a uniform. She stopped the sheet at chest level, "Lacerations to the neck. I'd have to do a full exam, but first guess that is cause of death." she said seeing the gash on the skin. The body had stored, but no one had time to clean it up, the dried blood was still staining the skin around the throat, shoulder, matting in to the hair and clearly had pooled around the back of the shoulder. "I'd need to scan to verify this is the same man." she said.

Emmah appeared at their side, "Scan complete, Identify confirmed, This is Lt. Rohan Eversmith." she said.

"Ok that's just weird." Timia said looking at the hologram. She never was much for using AI's to help her in her job. It felt like cheating.

"Great..." David muttered as he crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. All of this was happening all over once again. The attackers, the lost souls, blood raining... symbols. All of this was repeating itself. But this seemed more bold. Very rarely did they risk dealings with Starfleet ships. This wasn't looking good at all. The phantom pain in his thigh flared up once again and caused him to grind his teeth ever so slightly. This wasn't something he wanted to deal with yet again. "So the attacker took this guy's identity to get on the ship, cripple the ship in space, drain these members, and caused an explosion to make it look as though it was all an accident. Just freaking great."

"Seems to be a therory." Timia said. "So who the hell are they?" she demanded as she covered the body back up.

"The Trinity." Emmah said flatly. "Shall I explain to the Doctor or would you like to speak to your whole staff about it? Captain, this is not the first attack, that was one of the messages I have stored in my memory to give you." she said.

This caused David to ponder about the ramifications that this was going to have on things and quite frankly this was something he had hoped to have seen never open up once again. "Hope about we wait till we have our debriefing before going into details. Long story short... we thought these people weren't alive anymore. Guess we were sorely mistaken."

The captain turned and looked at the two for a moment before speaking. "Do a full autopsy as usual. I'm recalling all of our crew once the starship is back up and running. I have already called in two escort ships to come and take her back in for repairs."

"Yes sir." Timia replied with a mild roll of her eyes, an autopsy was already on the list of things to do, for all these poor souls, but whatever, he had to give his orders any way.

Emmah watched the doctors expression for a moment before she turned and followed the Captain, with a blank look on her face.

~fin