STF

Saving the colony

Posted Feb. 12, 2019, 11:50 p.m. by Lieutenant Kate O'Neill (Chief of Security) (Kate O'Neill)

SNIP

https://www.star-fleet.com/core/stf5/odin/notes/15757/ Link to orignial post -Lets keep this off the record

SABER ON ROUTE TO COLONY

Kate looked at Shaun as he fixed the approach vector to the colony. She was capable of piloting the ship but the girlfriend in her liked him flying. Partially it was the way she was raised but also it let her do the random stuff like play games and text on her personal communicator instead of making sure they did not crash. Many of her girlfriends complained that she should be more of a feminist and fly the ship while making Shaun take the co-pilot seat. Kate saw it that it was the epitome of feminism where the man did the work and she could sit back and just relax: sort of like a reverse 1950’s married couple. This trip however she was looking at him with an intense stare.

“Shaun, do all deliveries end up like that. You know without drugs and you jumping three ranks and becoming an ordained minister all in less than an hour?” Kate’s tone was playful but also had a hint of seriousness to it. “I mean how typical was that labor and delivery?” Kate had never doubted Shaun’s skill in the medical profession until the moment he uttered to Jessica Vaughn that they missed the window for drugs and that she could do it without them.

“It can, getting access to a ship like this is a perk though.” he said not knowing how to begin here.

“I’m serious,” Kate said looking at him. “Is that normal? The whole window for meds and is there a drug to actually make you go into labor for no reason?” Her tongue poked out of her mouth and moistened her bottom lip before she bit down on it. Shaun would be able to see Kate was intent on him providing an answer.

“This? As I said, it can be normal. Medical emergencies always end up a little weird. Now do I often deliver babies to Kingpins? Not really something I have done myself. There is always a first though, and this was certainly a first.”

“Kingpins,” Kate laughed. Really?”

Ending the lively debate she focused all her attention to the console running scans of the main town they were approaching. “There are life signs but they are condensed into tight groups. I have a group of about ten in the church, forty-six in the hospital, nine in the main administration annex, and about fifty scattered throughout the town and the surrounding three miles of the city center. Power is at a minimum. There is a distress call from the main relay beacon but its range is limited. This place is getting my spidey senses tingling Peter,” Kate said relaying far more concern in that one sentence than the actual words conveyed. Bypassing several junctions, Kate had boosted the signal enough that a strange crackling was coming through breaking up every few words.

=/\= Colony....quarrantine....Avoid.... infection…go…the hospital. I repeat, =/\= the voice said over and over in a loop. Kate listened to it several times and then gave Shaun a look.

“So we go to the hospital,” she said as he began to prep to land the shuttle. “That is my best guess but you were the one who lived here.”

“Yes, but… this feels wrong.” Shaun said, this was all different. No one had come to see them, the message had seemed to be targeted to him. The beacon others could hear but there was little traffic that came past this sector. Only once a year unless they got tourists, and it wasn’t much of a tourist destination. “They were self-sufficient in most things, there should be a fleet of ships here yet we come back and this is all?”

“Well they said that the colony was in quarantine so I wouldn’t expect a ten-piece band greeting us,” Kate said. Still, Shaun was right. This place reminded her of the haunted hallows event in October at homes. there were lights on in some of the buildings but the streets were deserted.

The main street was typical of any colony town. It was wide and lined on both sides by common buildings. From there the colony began to spread out more with housing for the townsfolk and then farther out the farms and industrial buildings. The landing pad for shuttle traffic was between the industrial zone and town. Not a far walk but Kate was getting the heebie geebies as they made their approach. “Shaun can we beam down and park the shuttle at the landing pad” Kate asked.

“The message said to come to the hospital but I don’t like this. This place feels off. If you just beam us down in that center area near the fountain, I think we can make it there without any resistance. If this is a quarantine zone we might need some muscle if people are scared or supplies are low. When people panic you can’t predict their behavior,” Kate stated. “These are your peeps but maybe we should have a few of his security team go with us? If we do have resistance the weapons on this ship could stop a small army or spark a small revolution.” Kate looked over her shoulder as if expecting someone to be there even though there was no one. “The quartermaster on the ship said the weapons are from a time when Aedan worked in conjuncture to help the Federation. They all checked out as legitimate and registered its just a lot…lot of weapons. Like Uncle Jeb’s shed lot of weapons. I also scanned the place for airborne contagions and everything seems normal. So that means we are okay to go dirtside without hazmat suits right? We just need to use universal precautions? ”

The others around the ship worked, Aedan had loaned his personal ship to this rescue, it gave them far more resources but a fleet was much better.

“Approaching shuttle are you here to help and bring supplies,” a voice cracked over the communications terminal. “We are in desperate need of food an medical supplies. Please come directly to the hospital.” The voice had a calm quailty to it as if there were approaching a vacation site and not a quarratined planet.

Later…

“We are five minutes from landing, but… I don’t see anyone do you? What can you pick up on sensors there dove?” Shaun said as he handled the decent. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, they had a haul of supplies with a ship ready to beam down more if needed. The issue was why didn’t anyone seem to be here for them? Why wouldn’t they show up?

“The Sensors suite on this thing is…close to military,” Kate said slowly. It was not that there was anything illegal about this ship but the ship was not like anything she was used to. “They are showing life signs but some are,” she let the words hang as she searched for the correct ones finish the sentence. “Was the colony only humanoid,” she asked Shaun.

“Well there was livestock, they farm here.” Shaun said as he looked over at here, a discerning look on his face. “What are you seeing doll?”

“Bizare life form readings. They are registering as barely living but they are clearly moving around,” she said bringing up the outskirts a few miles from where they were landing. On the control screen, the sensors showed people moving about in some sort of group. The darkness of the night kept Shaun or Kate from seeing things clearly. The scanners showed humans mulling around as if they were at a bonfire or large campground but not faces or actual actions. “I mean this makes no sense Shaun. It is as if the entire group activity they are doing out there has caused them to have hypothermia but the temperature is not that cold.” They would soon have the answer to the question so her statement was more rhetorical thought than anything else.

“Well… let’s see what that is. I am going to land and we can find out more love.” Shaun said hitting the control panel more as the struts of the ship touched down.

Kate got out of the co-pilots seat and began to move to the back of the ship. Rummaging around in the bag on a seat in the back she pulled out a phaser and the leg holster. This was supposed to be a vacation but Kate never went anywhere without her gun. “I hope there won’t be any angry mobs but you never know. Always better to be safe than sorry,” she said pulling her hair into a ponytail which was a clear indicator she was on guard and thinking like a security officer or that they were going to go do something physical.

Moving to the base of the landing ramp Kate waited as the door opened. The crisp night air rushed in and she breathed deeply. This was what she missed being on a ship. What did strike her was the silence. The place sounded like a tomb. It was eerily quiet to the point of being unsettling.

Taking out his tricorder Shaun began to scan, looking around from the area. Last time he was here there were people bustling around. Now, nothing. The colony wasn’t big, no more than hundred thousand scattered out in farms all over the continent. The city itself was small by most standards, about a third of the population lived here often trading supplies for the farmers, and small luxuries every colony wants like bars and entertainment.

Still, to find not a soul struck him as unusual. “You feel all the sudden like this was a very bad idea buttercup?”

Kate looked at Shaun and pressed her lips to his. This was not the spot for a romantic gesture but it had been so long since she was able to do it without thinking or just because she wanted to. For a period of time, they were not together. Currently, they were Lt. O’Neill and Lt. Grecken on a Starfleet vessel which meant they could not act like they were kids back in Green County. Now however they were just Shaun and Kate and she would take advantage of this. The kiss was that only longtime lovers share: Fast, soft but full of the things she didn’t need to say. “I feel like all of a sudden we need to get to that hospital,” Kate said pulling her gaze off him and descending the ramp.

He smiled as they separated from the kiss and nodded his head for her to follow. He wasn’t sure what this place had for them but he was certain it wasn’t normal right now.

“So this is where I drove you to forget about me,” Kate said walking next to Shaun down the main street of the city. “I mean your mom did say you told her you wanted to be so far away that there was no chance in hell of running into me and I think you found it.” If they had been anywhere but here the chill running down Kate’s spine that pulsed every few seconds would have been attributed to the night air. The desolate streets and the lack of sound coming from anywhere made Kate want to reach out and grab Shaun’s hand. This felt like one of the haunted towns that they went to every fall at the Autumn Leaf Festival back home. The reason she didn’t was that Kate needed her free hand to shoot anything that might appear in her way.

“Do you have anything about that group? Are they moving?” he asked, he wasn’t disagreeing with her suggestion though about the hospital as he turned, leading the way to the center of town. The town had a lot of familiar sites for Shaun, he spent over a year learning this place visiting for supplies helping when he wasn’t doing medical research.

Kate pulled out her tricorder and started a scan. Several times she hit the tricorder onto the palm of her hand as if it were on the fritz. She got a perplexed look on her face as she finally read the results. “Okay so there are about fifteen thousand life signs in this city but the city holds more that than right? But what is making me more confused is why did the scans not show the fifteen thousand in the buildings until now? When I said there were about 5000 people on the surface they were way far away from this section of town and right now they aren’t even showing up. If they are not in the city where are they from? The population numbers don’t seem to be adding up.
How many people are in the colony,” Kate asked extremely suspicious. Looking up she noticed the buildings were not vacant. Many had lights in the windows and now a few had faces that peered down from windows watching them. No one was making any attempts at contacting. There were just watching them walk.

Colony isn’t very large, about hundred thousand or so but about 50-60 thousand lived away from this city. It is small by most standards, but the other towns and villages only had a one or two thousand people. There was some as small as a few hundred and the rest are just spread out to the farms. The only place I knew that is was somewhat large is about two hundred kilometers from here. Tyler city has maybe 5-7 thousand people and serves as a second midway trade post and what can count as our industrial center.” Shaun said, giving her a brief run down of the planet itself.

“How far to the hospital,” Kate said almost uneasily. Shaun’s explanation accounted for the 5000 people out in the countryside but the numbers for a city this size was not adding up still. The message had said there was a quarantine but this place seemed like a ghost town.

“And it’s not really a hospital, more like a clinic with about room for hundred or so people.

“Let’s just get there okay,” Kate said increasing her stride to match Shaun’s natural one.

As they reached the doors to the hospital Katie and Shawn instantly knew something was wrong. The frosted glass doors with the standard medical symbol at the end of them did not open it was also deathly quiet. While the hospital was not large it still should have people milling about inside and around it as they came for treatment. There was none of this and even the door seemed to be more opaque than normal. Leaning in Kate cupped her hands and tried to see anything past the milky glass.

“Wow, when they say you need to make an appointment they mean to make an appointment,” Kate said giving up trying to see anything. “Is this normal,” she asked looking at Shaun.

There was only one thing to do at this point. “I can probably hotwire the doors open,” Kate said reaching into my pocket and pulling out her old fashion Swiss Army knife. It was an antique and had a little purpose in the 24th century except for back home on the Ticonderoga or apparently on the colony of Persie IV. Using the blade she pried open the control panel on the right side of the door frame. Since it was a federation colony it hosted many of the familiar low-level security techniques. This was just a backdoor method to gain entry used mainly by local police or emergency crews if something were to happen and the door got jammed shut.

“What the hell are you doing,” a voice suddenly screamed from the other side of the frosted glass. “Go away. Do not stay outside. Get indoors and isolate yourselves before they come,” he snapped.

Lt. Kate O’Neill COS


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