Chapter Text
File type: Incident Report, First Contact
Stardate [redacted]
FILE CLASSIFIED BY STARFLEET INTELLIGENCE REQUIRE ALPHA SECURITY CLEARANCE TO VIEW
Medical Officer’s Report conducted by Doctor Julian Bashir
Coroner’s Report conducted by Doctor Julian Bashir
Starfleet personnel fatalities: 3
Lieutenant [name redacted] Cause Of Death: presumed strangulation, remains unable to be recovered.
Ensign [name redacted] C.O.D.: fatal head trauma
Ensign [name redacted] C.O.D.: fatal head trauma
Civilian fatalities: 1
[name redacted] C.O.D.: fatal head trauma
Medical Officer’s notes:
It is my opinion that given the circumstances, nothing could have been done to avoid these deaths. These individuals were beyond medical help the moment they came into contact with an unknown, hostile life form [redacted]. These deaths therefore are ruled as accidental and in the line of duty. The hostile life form has been neutralized. No further official inquiry is required.
Olivia hadn’t expected the station to look so…well, Cardassian. She shouldn’t have been surprised, after all Deep Space Nine was a Cardassian station. Or had been. She’d just heard it spoken of in conjunction with the Federation so often that the skeletal pylon arms reaching into space seemed out of place.
The shuttle creaked as it locked into the dock. The passengers around her started to get up and collected their luggage. Olivia waited until everyone disembarked before standing up. She slung her bag over her shoulder and followed the last of the passengers toward the exit. The only things in her bag were a spare uniform and a few toiletries, replicated on the rescue ship. She shoved her book into the bag.
A young woman in a cadet’s uniform was waiting for her. “Lieutenant Olivia Marsh?” she asked anxiously.
“Yes.”
“Oh, good. I’m Cadet Mattson, I’m here to escort you to the infirmary.”
“Infirmary? I’ve been medically cleared.”
“Right, but um you’re supposed to have another psychological evaluation before you can be technically cleared for duty. Doctor Bashir wanted you to come to the infirmary before you report to ops, so he sent me.”
“Psych eval?”
“Yes, you should have received a notification about it.”
Olivia shrugged. It was entirely possible she had. She hadn’t been keeping a close eye on her notifications over the last few cycles. It made sense they would give her another evaluation once she made it to her new posting, but for some reason Olivia was hoping they would have forgotten.
If she passed it, they might clear her for more duties. Might reassign her. Would definitely reassign her. She had done so well, rigging the coolant system of the Endeavour to explode when it did. They would want another quick-thinking Starfleet officer back in the field as soon as possible.
It wasn’t difficult to fail a Starfleet psych evaluation. Because who would want to fail it? Failing meant you’d be stuck at a desk, or stuck synthesizing chemical compounds rather than getting back aboard a starship and exploring strange new worlds. At least, that’s what they told her.
She fell in step slightly behind the cadet. The cadets seemed to get younger by the year.
“What year are you at the academy? And what are you doing out here?”
“Oh, I’m an early graduate. Trying for Starfleet Medical. I want to be a trauma surgeon so they sent me to do a residency here.”
Olivia considered the girl. She looked like she might be a hundred pounds soaking wet with short brown hair and a considerable amount of freckles. She had a slight squint as if she’d had several optical surgeries. She looked more like the kind of girl who belonged in a lab or an archive, not in a medbay.
“Huh. You like working here?” Olivia asked.
“It keeps me busy,” she said with a wan smile. “Doctor Bashir is a wonderful supervisor, and I’m learning all kinds of new procedures. What department are you in?”
“I was in xenobiology.”
“Oh, my cousin’s a xenobiologist! Not in Starfleet, but he’s done a lot of independent research…”
Olivia let the nervous cadet continue rambling until they got to the infirmary. A Bajoran nurse mercifully gave the cadet some paperwork to do and then ushered Olivia into a cordoned off section of the infirmary. Olivia was grateful this nurse didn’t try to make small talk and left her there to wait for the doctor.
He arrived a few minutes later. He was very young, not too much older than Cadet Mattson, which surprised Olivia. It wasn’t easy to get a CMO posting of an entire space station.
“Lieutenant Marsh?” he asked, sitting down across from her.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m Doctor Bashir, pleased to meet you.”
Olivia only gave a thin smile in reply. She was tired of meeting people. Introductions felt so unimportant. She didn’t expect to see most of them for long enough for it to matter.
“I’ll be conducting your psychological evaluation today,” he continued.
“Are you the station counselor, too?” Olivia asked.
“Ah, no. We’re a bit short staffed, I’m afraid. But I promise I am certified to conduct psych evals. If you would prefer to have a licensed counselor conduct the evaluation, we could reschedule-”
“No, it’s fine. I know how short staffing goes.”
“Quite,” Doctor Bashir said with a smile. He looked tired, but was doing a good job hiding it. “Now, if I could have you state your full name, rank, and identification for the record.”
“Lieutenant Olivia Marsh, serial designation 339876.”
“Good. Thank you. I’m sure you are familiar with Starfleet evaluations, so we’ll start with a basic vitals scan.”
Olivia waited as he did the vital scans, then a neurological scan.
“Have you been having trouble sleeping?” he asked, looking at the results.
Olivia shrugged. “Who doesn’t?”
“Well. I might prescribe you something to help deepen your REM sleep because it seems like your body isn’t getting enough rest. But otherwise, you’re clearing the tests. Now, for the questions.”
There were the usual questions: have you attempted to or thought about harming yourself or others in the last two weeks? Have you purposefully restricted food or water intake in the last two weeks? These were the high risk questions, and Olivia knew not to answer these incorrectly. But once they got to the questions scored by number, she knew exactly the score she needed.
“Your results are indicating that you are stable and cleared for light duty, but you did not score high enough for me to completely clear you for reassignment.” He said it like he was trying to break bad news to her gently. “You’re scheduled for another eval in two weeks and we can reassess.”
“Alright.”
“Do you have any questions?”
“No. Thank you.”
“Of course. Just focus on getting better. When you’re ready, report to Commander Dax in ops.”
Dax, as it turned out, was a tall, somewhat intimidating woman but her smile was very genuine. As she sat across from her in a conference room, Olivia vaguely wondered how many lifetimes she’d lived. There had been a Trill officer on the Endeavour who had a symbiote who had lived four lifetimes. They hadn’t been able to save the host or symbiote after a skirmish with the Jem’Hadar ruptured an energy cell in engineering and practically incinerated them. Olivia was pulled back to the present by Dax tapping her fingers on the desk.
“Lieutenant, I understand this is your first posting since your return from medical leave?” Dax said, not unkindly.
“Correct, sir.”
Dax looked down at the PADD, presumably surveying Oliva’s file. Olivia wondered if the commander had had time to look at it before she arrived - probably not. A commander on Deep Space Nine had better things to do than read over some traumatized science officer’s file.
“I have to be honest, there isn’t much for a xenobiologist to do on this station. We used to be a hotspot for expeditions into the Gamma Quadrant but…” She trailed off. The war spoke for itself. “We can certainly use your help in other areas, though I have to warn you it won’t be particularly exciting.”
“Sir, I promise excitement is the last thing I’m looking for.”
“You were aboard the Endeavour ?”
“Yes, sir.”
Dax made no further comment on this. “I see that you minored in engineering at the Academy and served multiple rotations on an engineering crew aboard your ship.”
“Yes, sir. Commander Che, our Chief Engineer, wanted me to transfer to his division.” He had asked her several times. The last thing he’d ever done was ask her to transfer to engineering, actually. She never got a chance to answer. Dominion fire struck the deck he was on and the power surge killed him mid-sentence.
“Would you be opposed to doing some engineering work on DS9? Chief O’Brien is always looking for extra hands.”
Trying to shove away the image of Commander Che’s burned body, Olivia said, “I would be glad to help wherever I’m needed.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. You are dismissed and will be informed when and where to report once I have your new orders. You’ve been assigned quarters, the details are all here,” she handed Olivia a PADD. “Get some rest.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Lieutenant?”
“Sir?”
Dax’s expression softened. “What happened to the Endeavour was devastating. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The habitat ring of the station was bigger than she expected, but she found her quarters with little trouble. They were serviceable. She could tell it was the kind of room given to someone who didn’t stay long. The walls were featureless, save for a strange kind of geometric design above the uncomfortable-looking bed.
Her quarters on the Endeavour had been small and shared, but there had always been a few things on the walls. She thought of the painting her ethics professor at the academy had given her as a graduation present. She’d hung it above her bunk. There hadn’t been enough time for her to grab it before running for the escape pod.
She opened the closet door, then closed it. There didn’t seem to be much point in unpacking. She put the bag next to her bed and sat down on the stiff mattress.
Her body wanted to sleep. Her mind, strangely, was still turning over Commander Che’s request for her to join engineering. She wondered what she would have decided.
Her alarm went off at 0700 hours. She didn’t remember setting it. A notification from the station computer alerted her that she was to report to conference room 2G. The computer terminal provided her a map with a highlighted route to the room. She didn’t have time for a shower, so she dressed in her uniform as quickly as possible. She stared in the mirror, trying to decide what to do with her hair. It fell past her shoulders now. It was itchy and she found herself running her fingers through it, like she expected dirt or ash to be there. Olivia pulled it back into a tight bun and tried to ignore the desire to cut it all off.
She was hoping there wouldn’t be anyone in the conference room before she arrived, but as was just her luck, someone had beat her there. A short, stocky man with a pattern on his skin that suggested he might have Trill ancestry was helping himself to a coffee in the replicator. He turned as the door opened.
“Morning,” the man said cheerfully. “I’m Lai. And you’re…” he squinted at the pips on Olivia’s collar. “Lieutenant?”
“Lieutenant Marsh,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”
“Civilian contractor,” Lai said as he noticed Olivia looking at his civilian clothing. “I figured, since I’m already here, I might as well do my part.”
“Already here?”
“Yeah, my wife is a security officer. I’m just along for the ride, but I have a few skills that come in handy,” he grinned. “You new to Deep Space Nine?”
“Arrived yesterday,” Olivia said. “Temporary transfer, or at least that’s what they say.”
“That’s what they said to us, and now we’ve been here almost a year,” Lai said, but he didn’t sound bitter. “Parking right at the Dominion’s door certainly keeps things interesting.”
The door opened again. A twitchy-looking ensign entered, looking half asleep. Olivia was spared the need to talk to him by the arrival of a few more engineering crew, who seemed familiar with him and struck up a conversation around the replicator. Olivia found a seat at the end of the conference room, near Lai.
The door opened again and a woman walked in.
“Morning,” she said, taking the seat next to Lai.
Lai smiled and leaned in to plant a kiss on the woman’s cheek. “Morning, imzadi, ” he said.
“Lai, we’re at work,” she scolded.
“Morning, Lieutenant, ” he said, with the same emphasis. She rolled her eyes. “Lieutenant Marsh,” Lai said. “Allow me to introduce my wife Lieutenant Vadi Oneastra.”
Betazoids were nearly indistinguishable from humans, but the name, the greeting from Lai, and the woman’s dark irises gave her away as a Betazoid. What struck Olivia as unusual, however, was that the woman wore a security officer’s uniform.
Betazoids were usually science officers, often specializing in sociology, psychology or other social sciences. There had been a Betazoid xenobiologist on the Endeavour. But it was more rare for them to choose a career path in security. Every species had its stereotypes, and people mostly thought of Betazoids as passive and non-confrontational.
Vadi Oneastra looked anything but.
She was a good four inches taller than Olivia and the sleeves of her uniform were tight against well-defined arm muscles. Her hair was cut short, which was also culturally unusual for a Betazoid.
“This is Lieutenant Marsh,” Lai said. “She’s new.”
Olivia lifted her left hand and tapped her temple twice in greeting. It was a common gesture Betazoids used in greeting, accompanied by a telepathic message - though, of course, Olivia couldn’t do that part.
Lieutenant Oneastra raised her eyebrows.
“Sorry,” Olivia said sheepishly. “My xenobiology focus was on telepathic and empathic species. I spent six months on Betazed, it’s just habit. I didn’t mean to assume-”
“No need to apologize,” Oneastra said. “Just surprised me.”
“Six months? Where were you on the planet?” Lai asked.
“Sort of all over. Spent the most time in the capitol.
“What kind of research did you do?” Lai asked, sounding genuinely interested.
“Mostly just profile data gathering. The Betazed Scientific Conservatory was doing a joint project with Starfleet and the VSA. We were trying to measure psi receptivity in Terran, Vulcan, and Betazoid children versus children who had been raised off their home planet, but-”
“A collaboration with the BSC and the Vulcans? That must’ve been fascinating!”
“It was,” Olivia admitted.
“What were the results?”
“We, uh, never finished the study. The war…” she trailed off. Lai sighed with understanding.
The door opened again and what seemed to be the engineering chief entered.
“Alright, people, listen up. I’ve got the duty roster for the next couple rotations.” He began passing out PADDs to the shift team leads. He stopped in front of the twitchy-looking ensign and slid a PADD across the table to him.
“We’ve had some shuffling around, Ensign Fitz got deployed so Ensign Brandt, you will be filling in his usual spot on the maintenance shift.”
The boy paled in his seat. “Sir?” he spluttered.
“You said you wanted to log more hours toward that promotion. Here’s your chance.” O’Brien set a PADD down in front of him. “You heard me. Call your team.” Brandt hesitated. “Go on, Ensign,” O’Brien prodded.
Brandt cleared his throat. “Lai Oneastra and Lieutenant Marsh? Um, you’ll be - sir, are you sure this is right?”
“Perfectly sure.”
“Right. Ok. Um. Mr. Oneastra and Lieutenant Marsh, with me.”
As Olivia went to follow Brandt out of the room, she caught a snatch of the Chief muttering something about “...as green as an Irish hill and with the brains of a lump of dirt to boot.” She almost laughed out loud.
“So where is the Chief sending us today?” Lai asked cheerfully as they followed Brandt down the corridor.
Brandt gave them a furtive glance then stopped to look more closely at his PADD. “Yes. Erm - we’ve been assigned to maintenance patrol in Lower Pylon 3’s Main Cross.”
“Brandt, I have no idea what that means,” Lai said.
“I thought you’d been here a year,” Olivia said.
“Only officers call things by their technical names, you can’t expect me to know which one of the Pylons he’s talking about from the number.”
Brandt sighed. “Pylon 3 is the one that’s always broken.”
“See, I know exactly where that is. Why didn’t you just say so? Lead the way, Ensign.”
Olivia suspected that Lai knew exactly where he was going on the station, but still let Ensign Brandt lead them down the corridors until they stopped at the walkway that bridged from the habitat ring to the docking Pylons. Brandt kept glancing back at Olivia the entire time as if expecting her to say something.
His eyes flicked back again. “So - erm, Lieutenant-”
“Yes?”
“I suppose - I mean-”
Olivia frowned. “Is everything ok?”
“The boy’s afraid you won’t listen to him because he’s an ensign and you’re a lieutenant and he’s been put in charge of your shift,” Lai said.
Brandt turned red. “Lai! That’s not what - I mean - I understand if the Lieutenant feels hesitant-”
“What? I’ve only been here a day, why would they put me in charge of anything, regardless of rank. Just tell me what my job is.”
Brandt turned even redder, if possible. But he managed to keep going. “There’s been damage done to some of the conduits in this Pylon bridge, we’re just supposed to repair what we can and take inventory of anything bigger.”
“Ok, basic repair jobs” Olivia said slowly. “So - why is Mr. Oneastra here? Are you an engineer too?”
“Just call me Lai. And not at all. I’m here because of the voles.”
“The…what?”
“I also have a xenobiology background, but with smaller organisms. Basically I’m just an exterminator with a degree.”
“Cardassian voles have been a plague on the station since the Federation got here,” Brandt said. “ Mr. Oneastra, er Lai, has been trying to find a solution.”
“We tried flushing them out with different kinds of gas, but they’re hardy little creatures, and we don’t want to use any substances that might damage the station,” Lai said. “So it’s back to hunting them down with phasers.”
“So our job is just…pest control,” Olivia said.
“Basically,” Lai said. “Well, I’m the pest control, you and Ensign Brandt are the ones who’re supposed to clean up the wiring and ducts behind me.”
“Ah,” Olivia said. “So we’re the shit scrapers.”
Lai winked. “You said it, not me. The maintenance crews do a lot of this work, but in sections like this one the Chief wants at least one person with engineering experience since there’s more delicate systems contained in the Pylon bridges.”
“Shit scrapers with degrees,” Olivia said.
“That’s about how it looks, yeah.”
Brandt looked like he wanted to laugh but wasn’t sure he was in on the joke, so he gave an awkward cough instead and turned to open the bridge maintenance hatch. A short ladder led down into the bridge’s inner workings. He removed the engineering toolkit from its place on the back of the hatch door. It had some basic tools and protective gear. Brandt passed her and Lai a pair of gloves, diagnostic scanner, and flashlights. He went first into the tunnel, then Lai, then Olivia. She had to duck slightly in the maintenance tunnel, but it was wider and taller than a Jefferies Tube.
Once inside, Lai took the lead. “I set some traps a few days ago in this sector. I want to check them to see if they’re working.”
The sides of the tunnels were paneled but the panels were transparent to allow maintenance crews to see the inner wiring and power cells. There were no overhead lights, but the lights from inside the panels were bright enough to illuminate the area. The tunnel had a musty odor that Olivia did not like.
They came across evidence of voles a few minutes later. A loose panel had some exposed and chewed wiring sticking out of it. Olivia bent to examine it. It was a quick fix, just needing to solder a few wires back together. The wiring was live, but carried a low enough voltage that Olivia felt comfortable handling it with gloves. She also noticed the trail of whitish pellets that lined the edge of the floor and suppressed an involuntary shudder. Say what you would about Starfleet, but they never had vermin on their ships.
“Hmm,” Lai said, a few feet ahead of them. “This trap’s been set off but it didn’t catch anything.”
“Have you tried poison?” Olivia asked as she put on her thick gloves.
“A couple different kinds. You can poison them, but the problem is that they usually end up dying somewhere you can’t find them. Terrible smell and usually it just causes more technical problems. Traps are better because you can track where you’ve put them. Of course, those traps have to work and so far…” he bent over a box-like contraption that had a blinking red light. He pushed a button which set the light to green. “Let’s keep going.”
The shift continued like this for several hours. They followed Lai from trap to trap, stopping to check panels and wires. The most damage they found was a shorted power coupling that they would need to fix with more tools. Mostly the afternoon consisted of using a medical sterilizing unit to sweep the floors and vaporize the vole droppings left behind. Only one of Lai’s traps had caught anything.
Lai held up the dead vole for Olivia to see. She immediately understood why no one wanted these creatures around. They were larger than an average rat, mostly hairless with scabby skin and their teeth looked like they could do damage to more than just wires. Olivia made a face.
“Here,” Lai said, trying to hand it to Brandt.
“Uh - what am I supposed to - we can’t-”
“Put it in the toolbox.”
“No!”
“We can’t leave it here to stink up the tunnel,” Lai said. Brandt opened the toolbox, but swiped it with the medical scanner first for good measure. Lai put the dead vole inside and snapped the lid shut. “Well, that was the last trap. We can go a little further but then-” He stopped. Olivia heard it. A scrabbling sound. It seemed like it was ahead of them. Scratching.
Olivia stepped forward and shined her flashlight down the tunnel. Something skittered out of sight.
“What was that?” Brandt said, apprehensive.
“Probably just a very big vole,” Lai said. “Don’t worry, I’ll get him.” He kept going down the tunnel, Olivia close behind him, Brandt taking up the rear. Strange, Olivia thought, she didn’t see any vole droppings here but the smell was definitely getting worse.
“Ugh,” Lai said. “Maybe some of those gas treatments have been working. It smells like something died in here.”
The corridor split into a fork. “I’ll take the left,” Olivia offered.
“Great, Ensign Brandt and I can take the right. If you see it-”
“I’ll get it.”
“Much appreciated, Lieutenant.”
They split off. The wiring was definitely worse here, there was less light until finally everything was illuminated by red low-power lights. Something sparked above Olivia’s head and she ducked instinctively.
Turning the corner, she found herself in a hub that branched off in three directions. And she found the source of the smell. The hub was piled with the bodies of dead voles. She looked down to realize she was stepping in one and quickly moved back, trying not to breathe through her nose. There were flies buzzing above the pile like a strange static current.
She tapped her badge and said, “Marsh to Brandt.”
“Yes?”
“I think you and Lai better come over here. There’s dozens - no, I don’t know how many. They’re all dead. Just sort of piled-” Something in the corner twitched. Olivia froze, then turned her light toward the movement. Lurking just out of sight there was something - definitely alive. Olivia could barely make out its shape, but what she could see were two very bright eyes gleaming in the dim corridor. She took a tentative step toward it. It looked about the size of a vole, but something about the way it moved its head seemed like a different kind of creature. Something predatory. Stalking. Olivia edged closer. The thing drew back and uttered a low hiss.
“What the-”
It sprang at her. She threw her hands in front of her face, dropping the flashlight and somehow tripping over her own feet. She sat up, wildly reaching for the flashlight. The sound of scrabbling claws echoed down one of the nearby conduits.
“Lieutenant!”
Brandt and Lai were there.
“Are you alright?” Lai asked.
“Fine - did you see…” she trailed off. “Did you see it?”
“No,” Lai said. “Did you?”
“Not really. It was -”
“What happened here?” Brandt said, eyes wide, looking around the room piled with dead voles. Now that she wasn’t being completely overwhelmed by the smell, Olivia could see another very strange thing about the scene. The voles weren’t in one piece. There were legs, tails, fur, skin, other viscera splattered across the wall and caked into the floor in a demented, disgusting puddle.
“Hm. Well it looks like maybe the gas treatment worked better than I thought it did.”
Olivia prodded one of the dead voles with her toe. “Are you sure? These things have been…”
“Voles will cannibalize each other,” Lai said.
“But these haven’t been eaten, they've been torn apart.” But torn apart wasn’t quite right. Shredded, was more like it. It looked like the aftermath of a really bad transporter accident.
“I should call this in,” Brandt said, sounding shaken. He tapped his com badge, but Olivia found herself distracted again. She took a few steps down the corridor where the creature had vanished. If it wasn’t just a very large vole, then what…
She jumped as Lai put a hand on her shoulder.
“We’re going back,” he said. “Our shift is over. Engineering scanned the sector, they didn’t find any evidence of life signs. Still, they’re going to isolate this section and lower the temperature. There’s enough of those dead voles to create a biohazard. We’ve been assigned to clean it up tomorrow, and they’re sending a few security officers with us, just in case.”
“Right,” Olivia said. She glanced down the tunnel one more time, then forced herself to turn back and follow Lai.
She took a long sonic shower that night, hoping it would make the smell of the corridor go away.
She got ready for bed, taking a PADD with her. She had notification telling her that she had an appointment in the infirmary in two weeks for another psych eval. Olivia wondered how many more times she could fail the exam before Doctor Bashir caught on. If she kept failing, though, she’d keep having to clean dead voles out of Jeffries tubes. But it also meant she didn’t come to work and find an empty station where her coworker had been the day before, until he got shot or electrocuted or something worse. Starting the day tomorrow by getting into a biohazard suit and cleaning dead rodents sounded bad, but she reminded herself of the way Ensign Vedri’s head split open when he hit the corner of the lab counter or how Commander Talbot’s chest constricted as she tried to get to sickbay but dropped dead in the hall before she could get more than a few feet.
Yes, rewiring habitat ring conduits and mopping up rodents was much better than that.