Mrs Nerg

Posted on Thu Jul 22nd, 2021 @ 12:21pm by Lieutenant Commander P’rel M.D & Petty Officer 3rd Class Sam Saghir & [DECEASED] Gil Silnan Tolbarr

Mission: By Artemis' Bow
Location: Intelligence Suite
Timeline: After "Problem Solving"
1491 words - 3 OF Standard Post Measure

The Cardassian biologist sighed as he sat back from the screen, having spent hours correlating and cross referencing the data he had previously gleaned from even more hours staring down the scope of a nucleotide imager. He rubbed his tired eyes and noticed he'd caught the eye of the Petty Officer he'd been sharing the room with; a young human, handsome by Terran standards, and way out of his depth.

"Tired?" Sam asked, his genuinely pleasant demeanour cutting through the heavy silence of the concentration filled room.

"Oh...yes, yes a little" replied Silnan, only half truthfully; his fatigued appearance in truth had more to do with the burgeoning masses of data he was uncovering. "Humans would call this 'going down the rabbit hole', I believe".

Sam frowned curiously, standing to walk to his colleagues screen and look at the data; "I'm afraid this is all a bit beyond me..."

Standing himself to stretch his legs a little, Silnan motioned vaguely at the screen filled with numbers, tables, nucleotide sequences and various medical reports. "Drugs, my friend, ultimately" he replied with a grim smile. "Whatever the biomass from that shuttle was, and I'm working on the assumption that it's from the pilgrims, it is ultimately turned into a drug; at least that's one thing it's used for - some of this data is well beyond me as well".

"Someone is harvesting the space cows to make drugs? How?" Sam asked, a tinge of sadness as he tried to avoid looking at the container of thick gloop sat atop a desktop scanner.

"Ah, well I -" the Cardassian's explanation was cut short as P'rel walked in. Stormed in, would be more accurate - in as much as his dear friend and mentor never really 'walked' anywhere as such.

"Report" P'rel demanded, half glaring at Saghir with a vague irritation that he wasn't at his post working on imagery analysis of the alien shuttle.

"As I was just explaining to young Mr. Saghir here..." Silnan began, noticing a faint flicker of a thanking smile on Sam's face as he justified the human's absence from the workstation. "...we are essentially looking, at least in part, at narcotics. The samples provided to us by our mysterious benefactor, very clearly show the biomass in various stages of processing."

The Vulcan was unsurprised, and had assumed already that the pilgrims were being poached for some kind of profit, and narcotics was as profitable an enterprise as any. "That was as much expected, what else do we know?".

Retaking his seat, the Cardassian couldn't help but smile as Saghir rolled his eyes with sardonic exasperation over his superior officer's demeanour. He brought up the most succinct data tables and biological summary analyses he could think of, knowing that P'rel as a medical doctor would be able to understand it, more or less. "This sample we have here..." he gestured to the container behind him; the smell knocking most others sick incomprehensibly, when he should have liked little more than to heat the suspension and eat obscene quantities of the stuff. "...appears to be at a much later stage in a process of refinement, it's almost as if it's a base-sauce, ready to be specified into other dishes..."; scolding himself for a food analogy, he enlarged an RNA readout and tried to forget how delicious the black gloop would be.

"Here, Lieutenant..." Sam had discreetly come up behind the pair with a stool, and offered it to the Vulcan officer who returned his gesture with a scowl. She took the stool from him and placed it next to her.

Observing the exchange, Silnan continued - "At this stage in the process, the suspension becomes a highly potent and quite addictive mind altering substance; the effect would be similar in nearly all species of humanoids. But - this substance itself could be used with varying other substances readily available for all sorts of purposes, with very little other refinement. Uhhmmm medicines, mainly powerful ones, in fact when properly sequenced with arithrazine then something akin an extremely stable biomimetic gel would be produced, and in substantial quantities too."

Holding a hand to silence her Cardassian ward, P'rel paused for a moment to think - narcotics really wasn't a surprise, but being able to produce something similar to biomimetic gel en masse was more of a concern. "Starbase 50 was raided some months ago, something which in and of itself was connected to our own complications on our previous mission....but curiously, a large quantity of arithrazine was taken during the raid." Some of this was stating to make more sense now; there was a certain elegance to the logic - poach the space cows, sell off some drug as the cover which was bad enough, making that seem like the purpose; whilst really producing a biomimetic substance which was incalculably valuable. "Cloning" she muttered.

Nodding thoughtfully, Silnan brought up an overlay of the Cardassian data sets he had been working on before this little adventure began; "possibly...but look here as well..." he pointed to a set of comparative genomic sequences. "These genetic structures here, as far as I understand, could easily alter humanoid biology to create addiction, extreme addiction at that if properly altered. Creating addicted clones...now that's something we haven't seen since -"

"The Dominion", finished the Vulcan, bristling with discomfort. She shook her head; "any of this being perpetrated by the Dominion themselves is highly unlikely, however it is indeed a possibility that someone else is replicating their methods; effective as they were in large part". As she finished, her vision caught sight of a nucleotide sequence that made her sick to her stomach, something she very much recognised, and had hoped to never see again. Suppressing the wave of dread which burned across her, she fought to contain the memory. "These samples; are they consistent with the findings of the Cardassians?"

"Yes" Silnan replied curtly, opening up another submenu which expanded into a list of about two dozen entries; "the genetic structures here are identical to the samples we were analysing on Cardassia; and they appear in several unexplained hospitalisations across the sector as well - which now makes some sense, in terms of narcotic abuse."

"But we are still uncertain whether any of this comes from those space cows?" asked the Vulcan, already sure of the answer even before Silnan confirmed it with a slow shake of his head. "And we can't confirm that either way, without a sample which we can't get, yet which Captain Kane ordered me to obtain." She stood in frustrated silence for a moment, for once having little to no idea how to proceed. Having forgotten the presence of her borderline useless assistant, she was genuinely startled when Sam suddenly called out -

"MRS NERG!" - Sam blushed heavily, rapidly feeling the warming effects of deep embarrassment. Breaking the tension as both Silnan and P'rel looked at eachother, and then back at him, he settled down a little and explained. "Mrs Nerg.....erm....school science - well, I mean erm....everything alive must exhibit certain characteristics..." he hoped a black hole would swallow him, as he tried to convey infant level education on biology to a Cardassian biologist and a Vulcan MD. "It's an acronym... Movement, Respiration, Sensitivity, Nutrition, Excretion, Reproduction, Growth..."

Silnan and P'rel both stared at him; one dumbfounded the other irate. "Petty Officer..." began the latter, irritation most distinctly noticeable in her voice.

"Excrement" Sam offered, "Space...cow....excrement....as a sample...."

Silnan chuckled and shrugged slowly towards the Vulcan; "ineloquent perhaps, but he raises a good point - a sample of excrement from a pilgrim would contain sufficient biomatter to verify them as the origin of the other samples..."

"You're telling me..." began the Vulcan, somewhere amidst a maelstrom of annoyance, disgust, confusion and being somewhat impressed... "that we need to go and catch the excrement of a space cow..."

Sam sat silent and getting redder, his contribution very much have now exceeded the level of expertise he could offer to the conversation, and hoped the burning gaze of his Vulcan superior would shift elsewhere.

"Uh the fresher the better, too -" interjected the Cardassian, far too cheery at the pending task. "Exposure to space for too long would damage the uhm...sample...."

P'rel held her Cardassian friend's arm, and looked towards Saghir as well; "Come" she ordered with no regard for politeness or courtesy.

"I...." came a voice from Sam, moreso a whimper.

"Athena can't get close enough to use the transporter targetting scanners for such a specific target, and you Mr. Saghir are a qualified auxillary pilot - let's go."

Leading the equally reluctant trio, P'rel left the suite and headed for the turbolift, tapping her comm badge she spoke quickly as they walked "=/\= Lieutenant P'rel to shuttlebay, prep a shuttle for immediate departure under my authorisation and inform Captain Kane of the pending departure =/\=".