S1 - Mission 6 - Killer Cove

[Alexander Wu]

[Sickbay]
"A shame..." Vem repeated, chewing the words Almar had said.
"Yes... a shame. A pitty." He expounded, kind of lost in thought.
"Not something worthy o' honor... at least to us. To Á¢â,¬Ëœdem... I think they went out the way they wanted ta'. The way they thought wad' best. At least I hope it wad' for them. If not- was was very much a shame..."

Vem shook his head to Zex's question, "No one hurt. Just sum' people' dead."

The Klingon had seemed lost in thought because he was mulling over the conundrum of his blackout and mysterious arrival on the Gibson. Had it been punishment from some divine force or a blessing? The fact that he got blisteringly drunk during the Oathing Ceremony, a holy religious ceremony that dealt with the bonds between people, only to find himself freeing others from their bonds to the mortal world was too poetic not to be the work of some divine presence. What he couldn't figure out was if this was a punishment or a reward.

He settled on the notion that nothing is a paradox- it could be both. Or, more probably, neither- it was simply what he needed to do to become the Vem-that-would-be that the future demanded he be.

Vem looked up for his internal mutterings and looked Wu in the eye, a quizzical look in his eye.

"Please- I'm not a doctor. Never got that license. Jus' call me Chappy. Jus' a simple Chaplin now."

[Sickbay]

Alex flushed, looking at the Klingon. "Apologies...Chappy. Please assist the medical teams...and also please check to see if she followed any faiths that may require religious services."

[Sickbay]

The captain looked a bit more like himself with his cane as he limped into sickbay. But the uneasy cast to his eyes and the angry, tense look on his face was utterly unlike him.

The first thing he noticed upon entering the room was the body. A young, pretty female nurse, whose eyes were shot through with black. 8 ball hemorrhage. The woman had died violently, and in agony.

There were piles of ashes on the floor, and a lot of sad, shocked looks on the faces of those around him.

"Well?" The captain asked at them all, his tone bitter and challenging. He was addressing them all but seemed to hone in on Wu, the highest ranked one there. "What the hell happened?"

[Sickbay]

"Two sick and injured dogs ran through here. They bit at everyone who extended a hand in compassion and eventually ate each other in their moral starvation." Vem stated in a raspy matter-of-fact tone.

"And... pain. Lots of... pain." Those words fell like hammers from his lips. Clearly there was more conflict inside him that he left out.

"That's about it." Alex translated Vem's cryptic message. First names and slackness were out the window again. "The Tripoli was carrying two people, who identified themselves as requiring assistance. They were transported onboard and their injuries appeared genuine...Doctors Aviad and Zex treated them. I don't know how or why our scanners didn't detect them as Romulans. Somehow they masked their biosignatures. Once their injuries were treated, they attacked, killing the nurse and demanding to be taken to you."

He paused, glancing at the direction which the female one had been standing only minutes ago. "One of them, before she died, said, you will never use the data to defeat the empire."

[Malcolm Adeyemi]

[Sickbay]

"Two sick and injured dogs ran through here. They bit at everyone who extended a hand in compassion and eventually ate each other in their moral starvation." Vem stated in a raspy matter-of-fact tone.

"And... pain. Lots of... pain." Those words fell like hammers from his lips. Clearly there was more conflict inside him that he left out.

[Sickbay]

"That's about it." Alex translated Vem's cryptic message. First names and slackness were out the window again. "The Tripoli was carrying two people, who identified themselves as requiring assistance. They were transported onboard and their injuries appeared genuine...Doctors Aviad and Zex treated them. I don't know how or why our scanners didn't detect them as Romulans. Somehow they masked their biosignatures. Once their injuries were treated, they attacked, killing the nurse and demanding to be taken to you."

He paused, glancing at the direction which the female one had been standing only minutes ago. "One of them, before she died, said, you will never use the data to defeat the empire."

[Sickbay]

Stafford had no time for Vem's happy go lucky riddles, so he was glad that Wu had spoken up as well. Moving like a man who was a hundred years old, the captain squatted next to the corpse, the joints in his knees and hip popping audibly, and touched the woman's shoulder.

"What was her name?" He asked, looking up at them.

"Petty Officer Koehler, captain." answered another nurse. "Angelika."

Angelika. What did you you do for fun, Angelika? What were you planning to do when you left Starfleet? Did you have a man or a woman in your life, someone that made your heart beat faster? Did you have a baby? You are a baby. Somebody's daughter. You were.

"Chaplain, see that she's afforded every dignity." Stafford stood up. "Get her off of the deck. I'll notify the family."

The captain took the precious data chip out of his pocket, showed it to them and turned it so they could see it was just an every day piece of equipment, something you'd leave somewhere and never remember or miss.

"This is what she died for, what Dr. Salek and most of his team died for. This is what we all could have died for." He closed his fist. "She...and we...deserve to know what's on it. I don't give a shit what Admiral Kirok or Starfleet thinks."

With that, the captain inserted the data chip into the sickbay viewing monitor, displaying its contents for all of them to see.

END MISSION