B-19....BINGO!

Posted on Thu Feb 7, 2019 @ 12:01am by Lieutenant Nicole Anderson & Fleet Captain Rhea Kennit & Lieutenant JG Camille Lévesque PhD

1,425 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Plaga Navis
Location: Science Lab
Timeline: 0200 thereabouts before Following the Trail

Nicole was sitting propped up against the wall, eyes closed, one hand resting on Camille's shoulder, who was lying down, using Nicole's leg as a pillow.

Camille’s eyes fluttered open gently as she woke, yawning, after what she assumed was a short time of surprisingly restful sleep. She looked up to see the beautiful doctor, and studying her surroundings, smiled widely at how she’d fallen asleep. “Quelle heure est-il?” she asked Nicole, before turning her head back into her warm and comfortable makeshift pillow.

Nicole looked up at the chronometer and yawned. "A bit before 0200," she said. They'd been working nonstop, hunched over Camille's scanners, painstakingly going through the virus samples. They'd finally gotten a clean sample and put it through the sequencer. Now they were waiting for the computer's analysis to confirm their theory. If they were right, the computer would be signaling them approximately--

"Analysis complete," the computer said. "Sample parameters match preset parameters."

"Computer..." Nicole said hesitantly, "repeat that."

"Analysis complete," the computer said. "Sample parameters match preset parameters."

She looked at Camille. "Did we find it?"

Camille smiled widely. “Looks like it!” she exclaimed. “Come on, let’s check to be sure.” She pulled herself to a sitting position and asked Nicole sheepishly “Can you help me find my glasses first?”

"Again?" Nicole said, exasperated. "How do you keep losing them? You really should let me correct your vision." It wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation, and while Nicole found Camille's glasses becoming, her repeated misplacing of them was irksome. Nicole looked around and spotted them folded next to the wall a foot or so away. She scooped them up, opened them and placed them delicately on the other woman's face. "Let's get moving."

They scrambled to their feet and sat back down in front of their terminals. "Genetic sequence is a match," she said. "By Providence, look at this monster." She sat up and looked at Camille. "This was not a mutation. This was a designer virus." She licked her lips. "We need to tell the Captain."

Camille looked over the data herself. “You’re right. It’s too precise, too perfect. Even if these factors could have mutated naturally, it wouldn’t look this clean.” Knowing this lab better than her own quarters by now, Camille reached across the station she was working at blindly and tapped the buttons activating the comms system. “Science Lab to Br--,” she said.

"It's 0200," Nicole reminded her. "Computer, where is Captain Kennit?"

"Captain Kennit is in her quarters," the computer said.

"Come on," Nicole said. She downloaded their findings to a padd, stood up and rushed out of the lab.

Camille smiled sheepishly at her mistake and then followed Nicole out of the lab and down towards the turbolift.

They hurried to the Captain's quarters and as they skidded to a halt outside the door, rang the chime.

The sound of the chime pulled the Captain from sleep. She ignored it at first, but the damn chime sounded again. And again.

Annoyed, awake. Rhea disconnected from the power connections which had been linked into her neural net through the dual ports along her spine. Briefly she considered answering the Still chiming door as she was, silken panties and nothing else. But, conventional morals kicked in and she pulled on a gown and robe before exiting her bedroom. Crossing the main area of her quarters, lit only by a soft light which glued out from a carved stone lamp she tied the belt of the robe loosely around her waist. Opening the hatch, lit from behind the soft light cast a glow through the Captains silk night clothes. She let out a disgusted snort when she saw who was there. “Doctor Anderson, someone had better be dead...”

"Yes, Captain," Nicole said, instinctively putting herself in front of Camille protectively. "Several dozen someones. We now know why." She held out the padd. "Parvovirus B-19," she said, summarizing. "Someone took one of our most common, unassuming childhood illnesses and turned it into a deadly trojan horse."

“Analysis confirmed just a few minutes ago,” Camille added from behind Nicole.

“That is a human virus, originating from Earth. Yet it killed multiple species on the freighter, meaning someone had to have had access to a range of genome samples for it to have had such a complete effect regardless of species infected.” Kennit said, finding the Doctor’s act in shielding the science officer amusing. ::As if you could actually stop me..you couldn’t even slow me down..::

"Not to mention someone extremely adept at genetic engineering," Nicole said. "It's incredibly sophisticated. It's going to take us a while to unravel it. A designer virus means a designer cure, and that's going to take time and manpower."

“Assuming you can unravel the genetic code, is there any information to be learned from the manipulation of the virus itself which might provide evidence which could lead us to its creator?” The Captain asked, still standing in the open door to her quarters. A pair of engineering techs walked past, one of them tripping slightly over his own feet at the sight of the ship’s commanding officer standing there in a silken nightgown.

“Manipulation like this should leave a trace of some kind,” Camille said, trying to muster the courage to stand beside Nicole instead of behind her. “There are forensic techniques we can apply and possibly link this bullet to the gun that fired it. So to speak.”

"Most who do this kind of work have a signature," Nicole agreed. "Assuming we've seen them before, we might be able to find something that signals who it was. If Starfleet Intelligence has any information, we could use it."

“It might be a very subtle signature,” added Camille, finally closer to being beside the doctor. “Something intel analysts may miss. This may come down to finding the exact base pair where a sequence was inserted. One group might use a technique that inserts a gene ten pairs to the left than the other. So raw intel data on foreign powers’ genetic modification techniques will be more useful than analyst assessments.”

"I'll begin mapping its genome tomorrow," Nicole concluded. "With some luck, we can begin trying to dismantle it."

With a short nod, the Captain answered “I will send a message out..see what information may be available through the appropriate channels..”. Meaning she would contact Admiral Bennett and advise him of their current findings.

"Aye, Captain," Nicole said, taking that as their 'dismissed.' She nudged Camille back down the hallway and followed closely behind her into a turbolift. "Good night's sleep and we start fresh tomorrow as soon as we can, yes?"

Camille smiled to the Captain as they made their exit. “Bonne idée,” she replied to Nicole. “I’m supposed to be on the bridge in the morning. A few hours of sleep will help.” She yawned and lifted her glasses to rub the corners of her eyes.

Nicole tapped the panel, sending them the short ride to Camille's deck and stepped out. "Why do you have glasses?" she said. "I can adjust your vision in less than an hour to better than perfect."

“No one touches the eyes, Doctor,” Camille said, a bit more forcefully than she meant to. “Sorry,” she said more softly. “I’m just not comfortable with anything to do with my eyes. As a girl, we tried Retnax VII to fix it and I had a terrible allergic reaction. I was blind for three days.” Her mood picked up a bit, now that he history was out of the way. “And I’m used to them. And they look cute, non?”

Nicole smiled, and shook her head. "Adorable, yes," she said. They got to Camille's door and she sighed. "Well, you and your glasses enjoy your night."

“Nicole,” Camille said, “would you like to come in? It would really just be for sleep, but maybe you can join me?”

Nicole pondered whether or not she should, and whether or not it was worth the seemingly long trek back to her quarters on her exhausted legs, weighing that versus the odds of them actually getting right to sleep and knew that those odds weren't the greatest and she should probably just say goodnight and head back to her quarters.

Still...those glasses really were adorable.

She smiled and slipped past Camille, then grabbed her and pulled her close as the door closed, enjoying the sound of her laugh.

 

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