A little 'side project'

Posted on Thu Oct 6, 2011 @ 10:47pm by

467 words; about a 2 minute read

Her attention focused on the small science distillation unit she'd liberated from a storage crate, Kira froze for a moment when she heard voices in the passageway outside. It wasn't until the crewmen, whoever they were, had walked past and their voices faded that she relaxed a little and returned her attention to the little science project she was working on.

One of the other Maquis (assigned now to operations and who, like Kira and Seska, did not think of himself as 'former Maquis'), had discovered an interesting little plant on the surface of the planet while working with an away team looking for suitable food plants to bring back to try and grow in the hydroponics bay being constructed..

At face value, it wasn't anything special. Just an average little plant, produce flowers to create it's seed pods. The seed pods were highly nutritious, providing a high source of natural proteins reminiscent of soy beans from back on earth. However, quite by accident Kira had discovered something else about the little plant and it's seeds. She'd accidentally gotten a few dried up, blackened seed pods while collecting the live plants for transport back to Voyager. Before she'd taken the potted plants over to be placed into the sealed transport crates and loaded on the shuttle, per regulation she'd scanned the pots and plants to be sure that no insect life 'accidentally' got a ride up to the ship. The tricorder hadn't found any insect life on the plants but it had determined that one of the four blackened, dried seed pods contained a toxic substance within the dried seeds that the other three did not.

So toxic, that a high enough dose (or perhaps a low dose administered over a long enough time...) could kill.

What she needed to find out now was what was different about this one little dried up, nasty looking black lump that it's seeds were poison, while the others weren't.

With a little quiet help from some of the other loyal Maquis, she now had a decent sampling of the toxic pods to work on...

If she could figure out what happened to change the chemical makeup of the seed pod and it's contents.. she'd be able to make a poison that was almost undetectable...

And that could be just what they needed in order to get rid of Janeway and do so in a way that would put Chakotay in command of Voyager. The best part was that it was a byproduct of a plant they were now planting in the hydroponics bay by the dozen! Even if the doctor figured out what killed the Captain.. there wouldn't be a reason to think it more than just a tragic accident...

 

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