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Starfleet Academy - First Mission, Out the Gates

Posted Nov. 2, 2022, 7:48 p.m. by Lieutenant Commander Natasha Knight (Chief Medical Officer) (Kate O'Neill)

Posted by Captain Dante Knight (Commanding Officer) in Starfleet Academy - First Mission, Out the Gates

Posted by Lieutenant Commander Natasha Knight (Chief Medical Officer) in Starfleet Academy - First Mission, Out the Gates

Posted by Captain Dante Knight (Commanding Officer) in Starfleet Academy - First Mission, Out the Gates
Posted by… suppressed (7) by the Post Ghost! 👻
SNIP
----------------A short time later---------------------

Turning into the gate house that led to the compound, Dante brought the car to a stop and wound down the window. “These guys have Warp but haven’t invented electric windows yet?” He moaned as he wound the handle that dropped the glass so he could talk to the guards. “Electric windows? That just sounds dangerous,” the man in the seat beside him said. “Why would you want electricity replacing glass?”

“Um, I’ll tell you later,” Dante said and leaned out slightly. “Hi!” he said to the man approaching him, and hooked his thumb back in Natasha’s direction. “We caught one of those Fedrats that stole the car in the city, the other one is still loose. We’re bringing her in for questioning, and she’s got the blotch, so don’t come too close.”

Cadet Knight

The man took a step back and instantly brought up a mask to his face. Walking backward he waved the car through. “Dante I don’t think this is going to work,” Natasha said as the car rolled completely unencumbered through the gates.

“It’ll work, trust me,” Dante replied calmly. “This plan fits like a glove. We’re already through phase one and they didn’t even blink.” As he drove the car into the compound, he turned it towards the main building. “Now if I was a super important document about keeping part of the population sick, and a cure for that population, where would I be?” He said to no one in particular. “I’d be in the most important looking building in the place. There.” Spying a park next to the door, he steered for it.

“Well how are we going to get through the doors,” she said the car rolled to a stop.

“It’s okay, I got it all figured out,” Dante said confidently as he put the parking brake on and turned off the engine. “In three, two, one,” and he pointed at the main entrance.

“Come on. Hurry up,” a man said in a full bio-suit suddenly at the doors in question flagging the occupants in the car into the building. “We cleared the halls and you have a straight path to the labs,” he yelled rolling his arm forward as if trying to make Dante and Natasha move faster.

“Like a glove.” Dante turned and smiled at Natasha. “Okay baby, time to work your magic.”

“You don’t know how much I hate you at times,” she muttered under her breath.

Natasha Daye Cadet

“I know exactly how much you hate me,” Dante looked over his shoulder at her and smirked with a very slight eyebrow raise. “That’s why the restraints come in handy so often.”

“Ugh,” the security man beside him covered his face in his hand. “Really? Really? you know there are innocent bystanders here right? Think of the collateral damage before you go saying stuff like that.”

“What? I did,” Dante looked at the man grinning. “Weighed, measured and decided that it was an acceptable level of expendability.” Looking back at Tasia, Dante winked at her. He knew she was worried and on that edge of panic, feeling vulnerable and maybe for the first time, the sudden weight of responsibility that Starfleet officers carried with them was on her shoulder and he was trying to make her smile even if only slightly. Dante and Kelly had experienced this and dealt with it many times already in simulations and field assessments, that was what Cadets earmarked for Command did. While Dante’s words did sound fun and casual to the security officer, he wasn’t wrong. In his desire to make Nat feel safer with the situation and Dante, the man was indeed expendable.

Getting out of the car he stepped to the back door and opened it, leaning in slightly with one hand taking hold of Natasha’s shoulder, the other he held in front of his face so that his fingers just rested under his eyes. “Like a glove,” he whispered, wiggling his fingers as if he was indeed wearing a glove.

“I am never going to live this down am I,” she rolled her eyes. Dante was everything everyone saw him as: brilliant, dedicated, loyal, honest, and fair. Dante also had another side that was fun and humorous. Only those closest to him got to see the side that wasn’t perfect cadet with a shining future. Right now, Dante was the cocky, a little too self-assured, and completely over confident man Natasha was madly in love with.

Guiding Nat’s shoulder and head so she was able to get out of the car and stand up without banging her head on the frame yet again, Dante turned around and walked her towards the door, the man that they had come with stopping beside the man who had greeted them and began to sign authorizations and clearance details for them.

“Now you worry about not banging my head off the side of the car,” she said in a low tone. “Maybe if you had it would knock this headache out of my head.” Although she rarely got headaches, right now this one was turning into a doozey.

“We’ll find something for the headache inside I’m sure but Nat, that thing is spreading,” he told her, looking at a purple blotch on her neck that hadn’t been there when they had gotten into the car. “Maybe this thing is spreading faster than they said? Do you think it evolves?” He was trying to speak calmly and factually, but Natasha knew him too well. Knew the slight panic underlying in his voice, knew the pause in his words before he spoke while his mind collected details, knew the pause between his words. By now, Natasha would know that fifty different scenario’s had been played out in his mind while he spoke and each one measured for probability and likelihood. She was completely aware that he was an overthinker, one of the few that used a mix of intuition and gut-feeling with the facts he had seen with his own eyes. While people wondered how it was that Dante Knight did so well seemingly impulsively, Natasha knew him better than his own mother did. He almost always had Captain Chaos as his partner in crime, but rather than his plans being impulsive, they were often adapted from something he had already considered using those gut instincts and knowledge.

“What,” she said letting out a small groan as they walked. “I dunno but slow down. It doesn’t need to be a sprint,” Natasha sounded like she had just run the three mile PT qualification. Thinking about what Dante said the increase in the intensity of the headache and the difficulty breathing with exertion was starting to make more sense. “That is mutate and no,” she said in a highly unconvincing tone. The answer was probably yes but there was no point in telling this to Dante. He would just pretend to ignore it to not stress her out and Natasha was trying to convince Dante he was wrong not to stress him out. It was ridiculous to belabor a point both of them knew was correct so she said nothing past a curt reply.

“We gotta get you to that lab and find this cure.” His skin was tingling and itching, but he was pretty sure that he wasn’t going to catch it. He never got sick, having a girlfriend who insisted on checking symptoms and probing where things shouldn’t be probed had encouraged him to develop an iron clad immune system.

“This way!” Another man in a hazmat suit met them as they walked past an intersection, and he joined the two as they walked. In his hand was what passed on this world for a tricorder and he was busy scanning them both. “Oh man, she’s got it good. We’re going to have to give her the new vaccine and do a memory wipe before she goes back to the Federation. I just hope it works out better than when we tried to do it to that liaison guy that was here last week. I mean who knew that putting the decimal in the wrong spot would wipe forty years from his memory banks? That ones gonna be hard to explain.”

On Nat’s shoulder, she would be able to feel Dante’s grip tighten.

Cadet Dante Knight

“Take her to the holding cell in B block first,” an officer walked up and lifted Nat’s chin to look at her neck. “There was two of them. She is probably going to pretend that she had no idea where he is but holding the vaccine for a couple of hours will change her mind. Won’t it sweetheart?”

Natasha might have felt sick but she was not delirious. “Probably not,” she shrugged with a smile. “I am stubborn as a mule and right now I am thinking how the crap will hit the fan when you have to roll my body out to the Federation if I drop dead. You know we have a sub-dermal tracking beacon only detected by medical scanners right. Tends to record all the vitals so if we drop dead they can tell us why and retrieve the body. So let’s do the couple of hour thing. It will just tell the Federation what this crazy bug is and how you withheld treatment even though we sent you cases of medical supplies.”

Beside her, Dante’s jaw tightened and Nat would feel the pressure on her shoulder remain firm. To anyone except Natasha, the tightening of his jaw and clenching of his teeth would seem to show that the Security Officer beside her was reacting to her words with the intent of dragging her to the cells. In reality, Nat knew he was reacting to her description of finding her body and this mans intention to withhold treatment. If the man didn’t back down, Nat would feel the likelihood of a body being found very shortly through Dante’s grip on her.

The man stared at Nat and in any other situation might have given her a strong backhand but it was clear people wanted as little contact with each other as possible. “Get her to the lab and remove that tracking beacon off her and the other guy in there. Then dump the bodies anywhere,” he growled taking a step back.

Grunting his response, Dante dragged Nat with him as he followed the man that had joined them in the Hazmat suit walking ahead of them, the Officer that had examined her neck walking a distance behind them.

Natasha walked next to Dante as they went down several halls and took several turns. It was just a fluke that she seemed to pick it up before Dante but Nat was starting to realize this was airborne and without any natural antibodies to this, she and Dante were going to get sick. Reaching to her side, she grabbed Dante’s shirt and knotted her fingers into the material as she stopped walking. “I think I,” she managed to get out before leaning over and vomiting all over the floor.

“Oh my god,” the man walking behind them stopped and stepped back a number of paces, covering his mouth and trying to look away. “Why does it smell like coffee?”

Once she started to vomit, Natasha did not stop until nothing was left. Letting out a moan she used the back of her hand to wipe off her mouth. Looking up at Dante she let out a small groaning chuckle. “You know how you know someone loves you? They hold your hair back when you puke. I also want you to know…this is probably whatever bug is floating around on the surface and not a sign I am pregnant.” The bit of humor was to try and make sure Dante stayed in the correct headspace. He would worry about anyone on his team but Natasha was more than just some cadet assigned to his group.

Natasha Daye CMO

“I’ve held your hair back plenty of times babe,” Dante smiled lightly and looked at her, letting the handful of hair go and making sure it stayed away from her face. “And I’m going to for a long, long time. Feel better? He’s right you know, it does smell like coffee.” As he spoke he looked towards the pile on the floor, and quietly dry retched before he pulled his eyes away from the mess.

“Get me a clean up crew,” The officer said into a comm device as he waited for them to keep walking.

The officer turned and gave Dante an odd look after placing the call. “Did you just call her babe,” the man said slowly reaching for his side arm. It was not uncommon for the officers at times to know prisoners with the amount of infected on the planet but this relationship seemed a tad more intimate. “Do you know her?”

Natasha glanced at Dante knowing they had made a rookie mistake. There was only one way to solve this so it made sure Dante had the correct growl and intonation to his voice to convince the man next to them his only thought in the world was to strangle the woman he was currently holding. “No, he is just trying to punch above his weight class and hoping to score a date when I get out of this.” Grimacing she balled up her fist and flung it back towards his groin. Her blow was close but what men termed grazing. She hoped her comment about punching above his weight class gave him enough warning to prepare for it.

She wasn’t sure if the grip and the way he was moving her to the lab was acting or if his tirade was real. The act however was aided by the fact Natasha was starting to get dizzy and feeling slightly off balance. It was probably a fever beginning to set in. This disease moved far faster than she expected. It made sense however of why the pathetic containment measures were working. If people got sick enough to not be able to move you didn’t need extreme quarantine procedures. People just died where they fell. Without hosts, the virus itself was dying out. This revelation began to infuriate her more. The planet was not actively trying to save the population. Just contain it long enough for it to die out.

Carrying on, Dante steered Natasha into the Lab that they had been heading to, and took her to a bio-bed that was nearby. Behind them, the Officer that had wanted her taken to a holding cell followed them in. “Sit up here,” Dante told her, “and wait a moment.”

She nodded grateful not to have to be standing any longer. Sitting at least gave her one less thing to think about and focus on getting the samples.

“I need to get some equipment,” the man in the hazmat suit told them. “Watch the door, I’ll be back soon.” Turning away, the man walked off towards a storage locker in the distance. Walking to the door as told, Dante slid the door shut and locked it from the inside, so that only he, Natasha and the Officer were left alone.

“What are you doing?” The Officer said, looking alarmed at being locked in with the sick woman.

“Making sure she can’t escape,” Dante replied, turning around. “She’s Starfleet, you know how resourceful they are? I don’t doubt that she or her friend that we haven’t caught yet are planning something. If nobody else can get in, she’s not going anywhere.”

Looking at her, Dante could see the virus was progressing faster than either of them accounted for. This was the folly of youth. Both of them had a little bit of knowledge and a lot of fool hearty courage.

Walking back to the bio bed, Dante noticed a device that he knew was for taking blood samples and picked it up, holding it against Nat’s arm and pressing the trigger. He watched fascinated as the small canister filled with her blood and then looked at her. “I thought this medical stuff was hard, you just literally press buttons.”

“Now you know the secret of why being a doctor is so easy,” she let out a small laugh.

Smiling with his back to the officer, Dante looked at her. “What do you need from here? We don’t have much time.” Looking over his shoulder he spoke to the Officer. “Where is the cure?” He asked.

Cadet Knight

“For someone like her there is no cure. The man said leaning back. We were supposed to have someone from the Federation but they sent some stupid cadets instead of real docs. In fact, I don’t think either of them were even doctors.” The man leaned back relaxed. “We have some in the back for us. They found some cocktail but the guy that made it died after making the batches. We are trying to replicate his work but the supply is dwindling. That is why we contacted those Fed turds.”

Security officer.

“In the back? Good, is it locked or can I just open the cabinet and get some?” Dante asked the man with his back towards the man still.

“Why would you need some? It’s not for her.” The man asked with a suspicious tone in his voice. One of his own security men asking for access to the cure was unusual to say the least, and this one had been acting weird for a while now. “It has a security code, no one can just walk in and get it aside from myself and the med-techs.”

Dante said nothing but could see that Natasha was getting worse by the second, the colour was draining from her face seemingly as he watched. “You know the code? That’s all I need.” Dante said and then leaned in and kissed Natasha on the forehead.

“Dante,” she tried to put on a hand but it simply rested on his chest. No wonder why people were moving around still and not in a quarantine lockdown state. The progression from infected to debilitated happened in a matter of hours. This in effect limited the number of people once could come into contact with before they were too sick to move and were sick enough to be identified. If this little ploy did not work, Dante had to be healthy enough to contact Kelly and Starfleet. Still, with as close as she and Knight had been, he was probably already infected.

“What the hell are you doing?” Came the voice from behind him as he heard the man shift and take a step forward. ‘Who the hell are you? You aren’t security!”

“Actually, I am,” Dante stood up straight now, but still had his back to the man while he turned his head slightly to look back at him. “Just not yours.”

Whatever the man was about to say was snuffed out as Dante threw a reverse kick with flexibility and accuracy that Hornsby would have been proud of, straight into the visor of the Hazmat suit the man was wearing. A sharp cracking sound of the plexiglass breaking was followed by a thud as the mans body impacted the metal lockers behind him and before the mans vision returned, Dante was on him. A firm hand gripped his shoulder while he felt another hand wrap around the broken shard of plastic in front of his face, pulling it off the helmet completely.

Next thing the man saw was a sideways image of Natasha as his head was thrust against the bed, a heavy weight of a body on top of him and a hand holding his head down.

“Give me the code, you’re gonna need it too,” Dante said, then looked at Nat. “Baby, come lick his face for me would you?”

Dante Knight, Cadet

“Okay, that’s it. I am so going to marry you,” Natasha said in a slow voice but with a weak smile on her face. Pushing off the table she leaned forward as Dante held the man still. Placing a kiss on his lips, she made sure she exhaled after.

As Natasha’s lips met the mans, he began to struggle and attempt to pull away. He was pinned hard however as Dante’s weight was on him, pinning him down with his hand firmly on top of the mans head and knee between his shoulders. “Oh god no!” The man began to protest, and Dante’s voice joined him. “Hey! I said lick, baby, lick. We really need to go over that list of rules again.” Despite the severity of the situation and Nat looking like she was going to win the Academy Halloween Ball prize for best zombie costume, Dante smiled at her.

“I’m not biting. You only say that when I am biting,” Natasha managed a weak smile before she took a steadying breath. Whatever this version of leprosy was, it hit hard and fast which was why the spread was so incredibly slow for being so infectious. If you immobilized the host, it could not be a vector for the disease.

“And you are NOT going to claim that kiss was cheating on you,” she let out a small laugh leaning back on the table.

“Fine,” he sighed. “You can have that one. Now, Mr Man,” Dante pulled the man to his feet by his hair which elicited a squeal of pain from him. “We are going to have a conversation about that code. If not, I’m going to bust it open with your head. Capisci?” The last word was spoken in an Italian accent that sounded exactly like the old Mafia movies.

====================
At the Ministry Building
====================
“And I am telling you that my team is on your planet and you have every ability to find them,” Kelly spoke into the comm with the Commander of the Ministry via comm screen.

“Unfortunately they have gone out of the safe area past the walls, and into the lower city where the protection and influence of our security forces is minimal.”

“So what about those floating pinata’s you call satellites? Are you saying they only transmit GalFlix?” The glib about pinatas might be lost on the man she was speaking with but it spoke volumes to Kelly’s crew.

” I assure you that even our satellites cannot track them there.”

“Oh come on now. We both know that is not true. We gave you those satellites. They can read the print of an ant reading a paper a foot underground. Try again.” Kelly sipped her coffee like this was a casual conversation between friends.

” They do not have the micro tracking chips we place in inhabitants of the lower city, and there are too many life signs for our systems to process. If we had them, we would certainly transfer these crim…inspectors, back to you.” The voice of the man was calm and smooth. Very much too smooth, like he was a well practiced politician reciting something he didn’t believe but wanted everyone else to.

“Oh…oh I was mistaken then. I did not know your satellites were not working. Here let me help you out. Nash load the photon torpedos,” Kelly said smoothly. “When you have them locked…fire.” Kelly did not care if this was the destruction of property or even a hostile act. It would be highly motivating to the people below and that was what she needed.

Nat Daye and Kelly Shultz

“Wait, what are you doing?” The smooth voice of the man hesitated a moment, and it no longer sounded so self assured. “You can’t do that.”

“We are just gonna give them a slight recalibration. You know like when the warp core isn’t humming right to so hit it with a spanner and then it purrs like a kitten.” Kelly made a swirling motion over her head.

“Torpedo loaded and locking in targeting profile,” the smooth voice of Nash sounded behind Kelly, but in his tone was no political sell.

“Wait wait wait,” the mans voice came through again, moments after the ping of the ships computer gaining target lock sounded. “This isn’t needed, we are all friends here!”

“Of course we are. That is why I am not targeting you on the ground,” Kelly said matter of factly as she took a sip of her drink.

“Firing now,” Nash ignored the voice on the comm and pressed the button. A slight woosh, and the viewscreen showed a bright light streaking away from the ship and curving slightly towards a spot above the planet.

------------------ Back in the Lab ------------------------

“Okay, so it was a pity that he lied about the code the first couple of times.” Dante shrugged and held up the hypo of cure towards Nat. Behind him, the locker that the medicine had been in hung open, with two very large and obvious dents in the door. To one side, the man that Nat had infected and Dante had kicked, lay unconscious with a large bump bruise on his forehead already forming.

Natasha smiled and shook her head. “How did you ever get an A in diplomacy 101.” Standing up she felt her knees buckle and the room start to fill with stars. The fever was intense and she was hot to the touch.

“Where do I inject you?” He asked as he leaned over her, “Does it matter? There is only one hypo in there and a little bit left in it. Sleepyhead over there can get his own, they’ll have more in the city for themselves.”

Natasha rubbed her neck near her jugular vein. It would be the fastest way to get it in her body without an IV. She had no idea how fast it would work but it should at least stabilize her until they could get back to the shuttle.

Out the large window beside them that looked over the slums of the lower city and the people that lived within it, a bright bloom suddenly appeared in the sky. High up, even in broad daylight it was visible and lit up the dimly lit room for a second. “That was a photon torpedo explosion,” Dante frowned. “What the hell.”

Cadet Knight

“Meteor,” Nat said closing her eyes. Lifting her arm she limply let it drape around Dante’s neck as she stood up. Using his body weight, she shifted her arm to his waist to let him try to support her weight. Looking down at his hand she picked up the hypo and stabbed him in the thigh. There was not a lot of medicine left in it but even a small dose would stall it some. They needed one of them to be able to walk.

“I gave you cooties,” she tried a weak joke looking at the small dots starting to appear on his skin. “How are you fehhh ling,” she put a hand to his forehead. She was still running a high fever so the heat from her head transferred to his forehead. “I think you have a fever?”

====================
At the Ministry Building
====================

“Oh friend you are so wrong. We can absolutely do this all day long,” Kelly corrected the stuttering man on the other end of the line. “There is even a song for it. Ninety nine satellites up in the sky. Ninety nine satellites. Shoot one down and watch it spread around, ninety eight satellites up in the sky.” Kelly’s lyrics did not match the tune exactly but everyone got the point.

Natasha Daye Cadet.


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