Chapter Text
File type: Shipping Manifest
Vessel: USS Hoover
THIS FILE HAS BEEN CLASSIFIED BY STARFLEET INTELLIGENCE, REQUIRE SECURITY ALPHA CLEARANCE TO VIEW
Voyage number: 5568
Date of Departure: [redacted]
Port of Departure: [redacted] Daystrom Institute
Date of Arrival: [redacted]
Port of Arrival: Lower Pylon 2, Deep Space Nine
Cargo net tonnage: 2.4
Cargo type/classification: medical supplies, engineering components
Total no. of containers upon arrival: 24
Total no. of containers upon departure: 22
Number of crew: 8
Station Security officer notes:
Expected Starfleet shipment of medical supplies and engineering components to be distributed to Deep Space Nine for department use. Crew unloaded supply crates onto transporter, did not want station security assistance. USS Hoover departed for [redacted] forty-five minutes after docking.
The alarm went off at 0700 hours again, and this time Olivia was certain she hadn’t set it. There was a message from Brandt telling her (in an awkwardly formal tone) that she was to report to the same conference room.
The sonic shower’s resonance was off and so it took her several extra minutes to wash her hair, and then she realized that she’d never cleaned her uniform that was still smeared with grease from the maintenance tunnel. Once she was finally dressed, she barely had time to replicate a protein bar and run to the conference room. She was the last one to arrive, it seemed.
Brandt was sitting near the room’s display screen, trying to look busy with his PADD so that no one would talk to him. Lai was chatting amicably with a young woman that Olivia recognized as the cadet who had met her at the docking station. Lai’s wife was scowling into a cup of sweet smelling tea in the seat next to her husband. Olivia did a double take and realized that Lai also had a large orange cat sitting on his lap. She was about to ask about that story when she was interrupted by Brandt clearing his throat.
“You’re late, Lieutenant,” Brandt said sharply, then immediately turned red. It was clear he hadn’t meant to snap. Olivia sighed. Uptight ensigns were a plague on Starfleet. She contemplated bringing up the difference in their rank, but that would probably have to result in a formal complaint and she didn’t feel like doing paperwork.
“Apologies, sir,” she said.
“Yes - well, erm don’t let it happen again.”
Lai coughed in a poor attempt to hide laughter. Brandt flushed a deeper red. Vadi swatted her husband.
“Alright, listen up,” she said. “Ensign Brandt is still lead of this shift assignment.”
Brandt stood. “Right. So, we’ll be going back to the same tunnel as yesterday. Our goal is to remove the biohazard and sterilize the area. Engineering has locked it down, so we’ll have to follow level one quarantine procedures. Due to the, uh, concerns from yesterday we also have Starfleet security accompanying us. Will they be here soon?” He looked at Vadi.
“Some important Vedic is visiting today,” Vai said. “So they couldn’t spare any extra security personnel. It’s just me.”
“And that’s plenty,” Lai said, planting a kiss on her cheek. Vadi rolled her eyes but failed to keep the corner of her mouth from twitching.
“Joining us as well will be Cadet Marta Mattson,” Brandt said.
Marta sat up and said, “Since the report said this infestation was a potential biohazard, Doctor Bashir wanted me to go along with you to create a separate medical report.”
Olivia had a feeling that a separate medical report wasn’t necessary for this and Doctor Bashir had been eager to find something for the cadet to do. Away from him. Olivia wondered if she’d been like Brandt or Mattson once upon a time.
“Who’s this?” Olivia asked, gesturing to the cat. .
Lai cheerfully held up the animal. “This is Eleanor of Aquitaine.”
Olivia blinked. “What?”
Vadi sighed. “The name of an old Earth warrior, according to the freighter captain who sold Lai the cat.”
“We call her Ellie. She’s very sweet,” Lai said.
Ellie looked like she had both started and ended many catfights during her time as a freighter cat. Part of her right ear was missing and she only had one eye. Still, she looked perfectly happy in Lai’s lap, purring with her eyes partially closed.
“So…is she coming with us?” Olivia asked.
“Mr. Oneastra asked if he could bring an additional extermination expert,” Brandt explained, sounding annoyed.
“No one’s better at sniffing out rodents than Ellie. She’s a great team member. Never complains.” Seeing Brand’s face, he added, “We might as well try the old Earth method of getting rid of pests.”
Brandt had no further answer to this and instead began distributing the equipment. Each of them would have to lug a bag with the proper biohazard disposal equipment into the maintenance shaft, which felt a little overkill to Olivia. It was gross, maybe, but it was just some dead rodents.
They were slightly delayed by the ordeal of Lai getting Ellie into her car carrier, but once this was accomplished they followed Brandt back to the Pylon maintenance bridge.
Lai waited until they were to the branching passages in the maintenance tunnel before he let the cat out. Ellie slowly slunk out of her carrier, stretching her paws as she went. She sat, tail twitching a little, sniffing the air. Then, without warning, she sprang down the right branch and out of sight.
“What if we can’t find her?” Marta asked.
“She’ll come back, don’t worry. Always brings us her prey once she’s got it. Besides, she’s an independent little spirit. If she wants to go, she’d go. But so far she likes coming back.”
“Just as long as she isn’t going to eat those dead voles,” Vadi said. “Really, I think you should have waited until we had everything cleaned up before just setting her loose. She’s up to date on her vaccines, right?”
“Yes, yes.” As soon as she was out of earshot, Lai turned to Olivia and said, “And she swore she didn’t want a pet.”
“I can feel your amusement even if I can’t hear you, Lai,” Vadi said.
“If you’re a telepath, couldn’t you just sense where the voles are?” Marta asked. Brandt glared at her, trying to will her to be silent. Vadi didn’t seem bothered by the question.
“It’s hard to sense more simplistic minds when you’re surrounded by more complex ones. Maybe if I was on a planet that only had a few types of species, I could sense something as small as a vole but the background noise from everyone on the station makes that impossible. Besides, I never tuned my telepathic abilities that well.”
Brandt led them down the same path they’d gone yesterday.
The hub was the same as they’d left it, only a bit colder. The piles of dead rodents were still there, but the lowered temperature had helped to immobilize the flies and lessen the smell. The cat was waiting for them, sitting near a dark stain on the floor, looking from the carnage to the humanoids expectantly. As Lai began to set down his equipment, Ellie stalked circles around him and rubbed against his legs.
“Oh-”
Olivia glanced back at Cadet Mattson. She probably should’ve warned her better. The girl went a little pale as she looked around the room, the beam of her flashlight catching details of the grotesque scene.
“Cadet,” Olivia said quickly. “Scan the area for any hazardous, um, substances.” Olivia had no idea what the girl was supposed to do, but she hoped it would prod the cadet to do something.
“Right. Yes, sir.” She turned her back on the grisly room and pulled out her med scanner. Olivia realized belatedly that it was Brandt who should have given Mattson the orders, but the young man was not looking much better than the timid cadet.
“Lai, where do you need us?” Vadi asked.
“If you and Lars wouldn’t mind holding the biobags, Olivia and I can begin filling them.”
It took Olivia to realize that Lars was Brandt’s first name. She supposed Lai could get away with first names since he was a civilian. Still, it felt strange to be called Olivia by anyone other than her roommate and few friends.
No one had called her Olivia since the Endeavour was destroyed.
She found herself bending down to pick up the vole corpses from the floor and put them in the bag Vadi was holding. She was moving mechanically, purely on instinct. She hoped this wouldn’t take long. The corridor felt smaller than it had a minute ago. She needed something else to think about or she would start smelling burning coolant that wasn’t there and hear commands barked by the dead.
“So how did you and Lieutenant Oneastra meet?” she asked Lai as she scraped up an indistinct mix of fur and bone from the ground.
“It was on Starbase 7,” Lai said.
“I arrested him,” Vadi said with a sheepish grin as the cadet filled the bag she was holding.
Lai laughed. “She thought I was breaking and entering but really I’d just locked myself out of my lab and I was trying to get in via the window. She had me halfway to the nearest law enforcement station before I managed to explain.”
“You have many talents, imzadi, but being concise and to the point is not one of them,” Vadi said fondly.
“In my defense, I was very distracted. It’s not every day a goddess tackles you to the floor.”
Olivia sealed a biobag and Vadi opened a new one. Olivia appreciated their discussion; it gave her something to focus on besides the shredded remains of voles.
“Anyway, Lai used to work for a company that specializes in decontaminating deep space craft. He was on the team assigned to sweep my ship, so I saw him the next day at the spaceport. We just sort of started talking, had a few drinks.”
“Her ship left the next day, so I thought that would be it,” Lai said. “But then she started sending me subspace communications.”
“Yeah, I got in trouble for that. Something about not using Starfleet channels for personal matters.”
They went on to describe their tumultuous courtship; sneaking off to Risa on an unauthorized shuttle, stolen moments on starbases, smuggling Lai into Vadi’s quarters and then hiding him in the vents when her roommate came back unexpectedly. Lai was the one supplying some of the more suspenseful elements of the story while Vadi rolled her eyes and made minor corrections.
They had cleared all the major debris; now all that remained was to clean. Olivia began to assemble the sonic cleaner just as Lai got to recounting the wedding.
“We eloped. I was all for having a traditional Betazoid wedding but Vadi didn’t have much leave saved up and there wasn’t time. When the war’s over, maybe we’ll go back and have a ceremony on Betazed.”
“And maybe I’ll shoot myself into the wormhole,” Vadi said.
“Vadi’s not too keen on the homeworld at the moment,” Lai said.
“I’m not too keen on my mother at the moment,” she clarified.
“She hates me,” Lai said conversationally. “She’s convinced I’m dragging down her daughter’s career since now Vadi will only take postings that let her bring her useless husband.”
“I’d hardly call you useless,” Olivia said as she pulled out the chemical spray and rags from their bag. All the technology in the galaxy and it was still easier to scrub a metal floor with a rag than to pass a decontamination beam through the area. The sonic cleaner shook all of the gore loose but they would still have to mop up after it.
Soon they were all scrubbing. Lai did share as he did everything else: with enthusiasm. Vadi covered the most square footage. Brandt huffed and puffed in way that Olivia found incredibly irritating. Cadet Mattson continued with her scans and was no help at all.
A siren blared. Everyone jumped.
The corridors were illuminated red as the alarm increased in volume. Everyone dropped what they were holding, looking around frantically.
“We must’ve set off a security protocol,” Vadi said. Brandt’s face drained of color and Lai’s eyes grew wide. Vadi tapped her badge. “Lieutenant Oneastra to security, we have an unknown protocol in maintenance shaft 6 Pylon 3.”
“And…what does that mean?” Cadet Mattson asked.
“The last time someone set off one of these, the whole station was flooded with nuerocine gas and set to self-destruct,” Brandt said, lips white with terror.
“What?! What kind of a security protocol does that?” Olivia demanded.
“A Cardassian one,” Vadi said bitterly.
“Security to Oneastra, we acknowledge,” said a muffled voice from Vadi’s badge. “Evacuate the area as quickly as possible. Standby for further instructions.”
“We need to move. Now. Leave the equipment behind,” Vadi ordered.
“What about Ellie?” Lai said.
“I’m required to prioritize the safety of the crew,” Vadi said.
“But I’m not.” Lai turned and ran toward the corridor. “I’ll meet you at the access port!”
Vadi grimaced but didn’t follow. “Come on. Move. Stubborn, idiotic man,” she muttered to herself. They broke into a run, Vadi at the front, Brandt taking up the rear. Olivia was right behind Vadi so she could hear the continued stream of “...swear if he doesn’t make it I’ll kill him.”
“Station security to Oneastra,” came a staticky voice. “We see the security protocol, we are working to disable it. What is your status?”
“The team is heading for the access port we entered through.”
“Chief O’Brien is on his way there to meet you,” the security voice said.
They turned and found themselves back in the same tunnel they had entered through.
“Brandt, Marsh, start working on that door,” Vadi ordered. “I’m going back for Lai.”
“But you can’t-” Brandt started. Olivia grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the door.
“Understood, sir,” she said and began to pull on the hatch door. “Brandt, Mattson, help me.”
The door wouldn’t budge.
Olivia swore and tapped her own badge. “Marsh to O’Brien. The door is stuck, readings are showing that the mechanisms have been disabled.”
“Correct, Lieutenant,” came O’Brien’s voice. “We are attempting to restore power. Keep com lines open.”
“What do we do?” Brandt asked, voice higher than usual. Mattson just stared in silence behind him.
“Hold this,” Olivia said, shoving her flashlight into his hand. “Hold it over this.” She pried a transparent panel off the wall and jerked one of the wires loose. There was no current. The mechanisms that controlled the door seemed to only be accessible from inside the hatch and there was no power running to them.
Behind her, Lai and Vadi came running down the tunnel. Lai was holding a grumpy Eleanor in his arms.
“What’s the status?” Vadi asked immediately.
“Door won’t open, there’s no power. A significant amount of power in this area has been diverted, but I can’t tell where,” Olivia reported.
“Ops to repair team and O’Brien,” said the voice of Commander Dax from Vadi’s badge. “We have more information about the security protocol.”
“Go ahead,” O’Brien said.
“The good news is that so far as we can tell, there are no lethal countermeasures in place. No gas, anyway.”
Olivia closed her eyes in relief. “Alright, so what’s the bad news?”
“The power that’s been diverted away from the Pylon maintenance bridge has been rerouted to create an ion field around the quarantined area.”
“What?”
“Odo thinks it’s because it’s a security system designed to catch smugglers. It’s an old trick to stash contraband on a station and beam it aboard after the ship’s cleared inspections. Activating an ion field prevents anything from beaming on or off. It also deadlocks the area. Thankfully we can still get a coms signal through.”
“So we’re not going to die,” Lai said. “We’re just stuck.”
“That’s what it looks like,” Dax said apologetically.
“Well,” Lai said. “That’s a relief. Excuse me, I think I need to lie down for a second.” He slumped against the side of the tunnel and slid to the floor. Brandt joined him a moment later.
“Captain Sisko to repair team.” Everyone sat up a little at the new voice that came from the coms. “Do you read me?”
“Yes, captain,” Vadi said.
“Good. We’re going to get you out. I’ve got Major Kira and Constable Odo here, we’ll have you out in no time.”
“Thank you, sir,” Vadi said.
“We’ll leave the line open,” Dax said.
“O’Brien, report,” Sisko ordered. O’Brien gave the rundown of the ion field and the diverted power. A female voice spoke next.
“Well, if we disabled the the ion field generator, we could beam them out.”
“True. But we would have to locate the ion field generator and there’s nothing in the station schematics that says anything about a field generator, “O’Brien said. “And the ion field interferes with scanners so we can’t look for it that way.”
“Typical Cardassian trick,” the female voice said. Olivia felt confident this was probably the Bajoran Major Kira.
“Is there a way to disable the protocol through the computer?” Sisko asked.
“There’s definitely a code that an officer could enter to disable it,” Odo said.
“Listen, I don’t mean to be a downer but we don’t have the best track record with successfully interfering with Cardassian systems,” Dax said.
“Are you saying you want to get Garak?” Odo said.
“Well…yes.”
“Can’t we at least try to do this ourselves?” Kira said.
Dax seemed to shrug. “It was just a suggestion.”
“Wouldn’t matter either way,” Odo said. “Garak isn’t on the station currently.”
“What?”
“He left a day ago. Should be back in the next week.”
“How do you - nevermind,” Kira said. “Ok, we don’t have a code. Could we force the door?”
“That would require explosives. This door is very solid,” O’Brien said. “The risk of significant damage to the station is too high. That’s a last resort.”
“Sir, scanners might not work down here but the square footage of the area we’re confined to isn’t that large. We could search for the ion field generator the old fashioned way,” Vadi suggested.
“That might be the only viable option at the moment,” said Sisko. “Lieutenant Oneastra, you and your people start looking for the source of the ion field. Dax and Odo will keep working on overriding the protocol’s code.”
“Yes, sir,” Vadi said. “Chief, any advice in looking for the generator?”
“You’re going to want to look for some kind of converter,” O’Brien said. “It would have to take the ambient power in the system and reroute it to a dormant generator. Look for - oh, I don’t know, just some kind of technology that looks out of place. It would probably be in the ceiling circuitry, that’s where I would hide it.”
That wasn’t much to go on, considering the walls and ceilings were just masses of wiring and circuitry. “How big do you think it is?” Olivia asked.
“To generate a field big enough to cover this sector? Ehh I’d say it’s probably the size of a PADD.”
“Right. We’ll start looking.”
Olivia soon became more intimately familiar with the layout of Pylon 3’s maintenance tunnel than she ever wanted to be. She hadn’t really paid attention to it yesterday or today for that matter. There was the access port they had entered through. A corridor stretched from the access port to a fork. The right fork, as Olivia discovered, led to another access port. Lai guessed that it let out in Pylon 3 proper, probably in one of the docking lift’s shafts. The left side went to the hub where they’d found the dead voles.
The hub there split off into three more passages. Olivia was tasked with combing those areas with her scanner.
Her scanner fritzed. It could only take very low level readings, but it was enough to let her measure power fluctuations in the circuitry. This meant, in theory, that they would be able to detect higher concentrations of energy which would hopefully lead them to the hidden ion field generator. She opened another panel and slowly passed her scanner over it. The screen froze, fritzed again and then instead of giving her a power level reading, began to detect life signs nearby. Olivia smacked the scanner a few times but it didn’t change the setting.
She sighed and tapped her badge. “Anyone else having an issue keeping the scanner on the right setting?” she asked.
“What’s it doing?” Lai asked.
“Well, now it’s just telling me where all of you are.”
“Really?” Vadi asked. “Read out the positions. Let’s see if it’s accurate. If it can pinpoint life signs maybe the ion field is weakening.”
“Right, um, it has Ensign Brandt in the main corridor about sixty feet from the hatch we entered in.”
“That’s correct,” Brandt said.
“And it has Cadet Mattson and Lai in the hub.”
“Yep,” Lai said.
“Vadi, it says you’re near the secondary hatch.”
“I am. I’m also with Ellie, is the scanner picking her up?”
“No. Well, it looks like-” she paused. There was a red dot on her screen indicating where she was standing. And then there was another dot in the middle branch ahead of her. It was moving. The dot disappeared. Then it reappeared, several feet closer. She smacked the scanner again. Was it that vole they’d seen yesterday? But if the scanner couldn’t pick up Ellie’s life signs, then it shouldn’t be able to pick up a vole either.
They were all accounted for. There shouldn’t be something else down here, certainly not something with enough of a vital signal to register as humanoid. The dot disappeared again, then reappeared.
It stopped.
The scanner indicated the source was ten feet in front of her in the dark tunnel. Olivia’s heart hammered in her chest. Slowly, she lifted up her flashlight. At first, she thought she saw nothing. Then she caught a shape, barely visible in the light’s beam.
She took a step back.
“The scanner is reading another life form.”
“What do you mean?” Vadi asked.
Olivia’s breath caught in her throat. “There’s - I can see it,” she said quietly. “There’s something else down here with us.”
“A vole?” Lai asked.
“No. It’s definitely not a vole.”
“Can you see it?” Vadi asked.
“A little. It isn’t moving.”
“I’m coming to find you,” Vadi said. “Stay where you are, do not approach.”
The shape in the tunnel began to unfold. It moved toward Olivia, slowly. It was bigger than it looked. Four legs. Something that could maybe be a head connected to a lean body. It moved jerkily, as if its legs were being moved by an outside force and not coming from the creature itself. A low, threatening sound came from its throat as it stalked closer.
Now it was in the full beam of the flashlight and Olivia had to suppress a sound.
It had been an animal once. A large dog maybe, or a targ. It was hard to tell because beyond having four legs and a dog-like snout it was unrecognizable. It was covered with something that might have been skin but was riddled with tears and holes where black viscous liquid oozed like a horrible parody of blood. The light from her flashlight caught a glint of white and Olivia realized it was the thing’s bones sticking through the skin in certain areas. She could see a few ribs, a tibia, a collarbone.
It lifted one of its feet, and Olivia saw the twisted, jagged claws attached. It pawed at the ground, grating against the metal floor and tearing into it. Olivia’s breath caught.
It turned its head toward her suddenly, snorting and snarling. Olivia couldn’t make out any eyes in the mess of its head but she had no doubt it could sense her. She took a slow step back, cursing herself for not bringing a phaser.
The thing’s mouth opened, revealing black teeth which dripped more of the black viscous liquid onto the floor.
“Ssserve,” the thing hissed. “Kill.”
A bright burst of phaser fire flew past Olivia’s head and hit the creature. It screamed, and Olivia didn’t have time to register if it had been wounded before Vadi dragged her back toward the main passage. She caught a glimpse of the thing clawing at its face before they turned the corner.
“It spoke,” was all Olivia could say. Vadi looked like she might reply, but another hiss from down the corridor sent them both running.