Poke It With A Stick: A Science Stick!

Posted on Sat Jan 6th, 2018 @ 10:33am by Master Warrant Officer Tsabina & Captain Remas McDonald

2,103 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: S1:2: Rubicon
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: MD 7 09.30

Tsabina sighed. Another body. Even though it was yet another saboteur, it just seemed ill fortune to begin a voyage with such a high body count. Pathology technicians had the corpse enclosed by a force-field emitted by the biobed itself, so once they dropped off the mobile unit in the morgue's operating room, they didn't stick around for anything else.

At least the stench is contained, Tsabina thought. For now...

"Morgue to Doctor Kal," she said with a press to her commbadge. "The body is ready for autopsy."

"On my way," Rena replied, leaving her office. Dealing with dead bodies was not how she wanted to begin this trip, but given the importance of such a mission, she hated to admit it wasn't unexpected to have saboteurs. At least she wasn't squeamish when it came to the dead.

After she dressed down, she headed to the morgue, adjusting her gloves as she came in. "Alright, let's get this started." She looked at the bed and blinked with surprise, "that is one... uh, hole in his chest."

"Indeed, there is not much chest left," Tsabina remarked. "That one ran afoul of Ensign Zatra after murdering the Chief Operations Officer."

The head nurse took her position next to the table full of instruments and tools. Her voice rose with a pleasant, rhythmic lilt. "Where would you like to begin, Doctor?"

Rena gave a sort of a nod, "sure did. The computer should have done an external examination since he was brought here..." She pause long enough to check the system, and saw that it was completed. Good, five fewer minutes to spend in here. "Yes, so that can be checked off our list. I think we can determine his cause of death, but since we are looking for traces of a virus... given how long he's been dead, I doubt we will find much, but let's take a blood sample and run it through both the blood and DNA analyzers."

Tsabina removed a couple of vials with the hypospray. "The blood has already begun coagulation," she noted. "That's a rapid onset of rigor mortis if I've ever seen one."

"Then we must work quickly before it completely coagulates," Rena said with a slight nod. She agreed, it was fast, considering when this man died. "We are looking for something similar to the virus Mister Tolkath found in the other saboteur."

As she turned to enter the vials into the analyzer, she said almost absently, "It's never as fun handling patients after they're done breathing."

Rena couldn't help but think back to the war. Kal's host at the time saw many dead come back, some in surprisingly worse conditions than this man. At least he could be identified without taking samples. "It never is. Is this your first morgue patient?" She asked.

"No." Tsabina lowered her head in demure reverence. "But each time it feels like the first. Bodies are meant to be vibrant. Warm. Vessels of life's passions. Not... this."

"I know the feeling," Rena concurred solemnly. Using gloved hands, she positioned the bed's scanner over their patient to do a thorough scan of his organs, or what was left of them, to check for accumulation of the virus in any specific location. "The hardest is children," she admitted, leaning back against the counter as the machine worked. She reached up to tap her chin, but remembered what she was dealing with and ended up resting them on the sanitized counter. "I can only hope that doesn't happen here."

Tsabina watched Rena work with admiration. When the DNA analyzer beeped its completion, Tsabina started at the noise. "Let's see what we have here," she said as she reviewed the results. "It appears that the virus is dead, which is to be expected. Most viruses cannot survive outside their host for long, though the results indicate its deterioration is more extreme than usual."

She looked back at Rena. "Maybe it was engineered specifically for this individual's genome?"

"Perhaps. At least we knew this one was affected by the virus too... wait, look at that." She pointed to the blood sample, which had turned blue. "Blue blood? Wasn't it a different color when you took the sample?"

Tsabina gasped. "By my word..." Looking up to Rena in surprise, she asked, "Have you ever seen that before?"

"No, I haven't..." Rena responded. Pulling out her tricorder, she scanned the sample. "Bolian blood?" Turning around, she ran the device over the body, confusion evident on her face. "As the virus is dying, it's letting his own genetics take over..." Glancing up at the patient, she then raised her brows. "It does explain why he's turning blue... but we need to take extra precautions. Bolian bodily fluids are corrosive, which means-"

She heard a crack behind her, and turned to see the sample tube had broken and the blue blood was leaking out. "... which means that will happen. We just have to use vials with thicker glass, and wear gloves when handling the fluids." Or any part of a body, she thought.

Tsabina turned around and walked to the sanitation kit on the wall. She retrieved a vacuum-sealed bag, tore it open, and sprinkled its ashy contents on the tray where the sample tube had burst, as well as the floor surrounding it.

"Should contain it for now," she mused, "at least until Environmental Services can get in here and clean everything up."

"Good," Rena said, tapping her badge to alert Environmental Services of the mishap. Once she heard confirmation she looked back at the body on the table, putting her gloved hands on her hips. "Well, we know he had the virus, let's confirm that he is Bolian before we call the Captain."

"Certainly." Tsabina took up the medical tricorder that Rena had just used. After a scant few seconds of preliminary scanning, she nodded her head. "Scans confirm Bolian bio-signs. The postmortem state makes it difficult to determine conclusively, but this man was at least part Bolian. Given the incompatibility of interbreeding with humans, I would say that the odds are good that he is biologically full Bolian."

"I agree..." Her nise crinkled. While the forcefield kept most of the smell contained, there was something escaping the field that was quite... rancid. Looking at the hole in his chest, Rena couldn't hide her disgust at the cysts and blisters that started forming on the inside. "What the... look at this." She pointed with a gloved hand and gestured for her to scan the area. "I wonder if that's the Bolian bodily fluid corroding the modified parts. We may need an air freshener in here after this," she commented.

"The necrotic tissue is certainly reacting to the newly manifested Bolian lymphatic fluid." Tsabina scrunched her nose, and not just at the smell. "What I don't understand is why the Bolian tissue is presenting itself postmortem. There must be more to this retrovirus than meets the eye."

"A good question," Rena concurred. She was glad the forcefield was still up around the body, because one of the blisters exploded, squirting pus and other possibly corrosive juices, making the field buzz a little at the contact points. "I wonder... could the virus be experiencing degradation of some sort? Perhaps it's using the regenerated tissue as an energy source, which is revealing the Bolian tissue."

A shiver ran through Tsabina's body. "Could...could we be looking at cellular angiogenesis? We might need to inform the captain."

"That... that might actually be a lead to look into," the doctor said with a nod. "Let's start tests for angiogenesis." Tapping her comm badge, she called for the captain. "Sickbay to Commander McDonald, we have some more information on the virus."

"Excellent work Doctor Kal. I assume by the call it's a matter best explained than read of in a report?" The Rishian captain said, his voice buzzing over the loud speaker.

"That might help the report make more sense," she mused aloud. She glanced at the body as another blister popped, a slight grimace crossing her features. "I will warn you now, sir, it's not a pretty sight, and you will need to be in some biohazard equipment."

"Won't be my first rodeo as a former CO once put it, I'll be there shortly."

And indeed he beat his time by forty whole seconds. Remas scrubbed up well, gloves, mask, smock and all. The mask did little to hide the grimace.

"A less than charitable soul would feel little at seeing his foe like this after such cowardly acts," he remarked softly, before glancing at the two medics. "So I'm here for show and tell?"

Rena turned her attention to the Captain, taking in a breath. "We confirmed the presence of the virus in this one as well, but it seems to be behaving differently than Bruke. The man we knew as Samno, isn't human, rather our scans so far have identified him as Bolian. And I was thinking his skin was turning blue because the room was just cold," she began, a smile hiding behind her mask. "That's not all, Nurse Tsabina considered that the virus is thriving off a sort of angiogenesis. This here," she gestured to the blister/cyst- covered hole in the man's chest, "seems to be following that hypothesis."

"Don't most viruses die off after the host passes away? I didn't take the medical track at the Academy, but as I recall viral amplification works by repurposing cells to manufacture more virus. No cellular activity, no viral load..." Remas mused, moving around the body. "A virus that propagates in necrotising flesh does not make me a happy man."

"Especially if that was not how it was engineered," Tsabina added. "My virology is a little rusty, but viruses are the fastest known evolutionary lifeforms known to Starfleet. Their generations can replicate in hours."

"Its how we built the Accelerator in 5 years," Remas commented, stopping at the head of the table. "Nano machine's take after their naturally occurring cousins, and given what I saw the Starfleet Corp oF Engineer's do at Chief Zhuri's direction I have sympathy for asteroid's that catch a technological cold."

Remas turned his eyes to Rena.

"Have we determined if the growth trend of the virus is tapering off? Or will it just keep metabolising the remains until nothings left?" he asked the two of them. "And what sort of health risk to the crew does this pose?"

"At the attenuated rate of decomposition, I would suggest neither, Captain." Tsabina turned grave in the face. "If anything, the viral growth is accelerating, to which I would hazard a guess that the virus has jumped hosts from the dead one to live ones. The only possibility would be that the retrovirus is attacking the bacteria responsible for decomposition. If the virus jumped species once, then it can do so again--especially with millions of bacteria to catalyze its cross-species mutation." She looked down at the Bolian with a cold sweat forming over her eye. "If I'm right, then this body needs to be destroyed. Now."

"Agreed," Remas said, holding a hand up to Rena. "Keep the scans, but all samples need to follow this body into the incinerator. If you have need of further study of this virus, we have a perfectly fine and living host in 'Bruke'. And given he's not died, the virus won't begin to species jump rapidly."

Tsabina wasted no time. "By your leave, Doctor, I will personally see to the body's immediate disposal."

The nurse explained it well enough. Swallowing a little, Rena nodded, "make it so. We should sterilize the room as well to be safe." The body was disturbing enough as is, but with the potential for a developing virus?

"Absolutely. I suggest cutting life support as well until we can be certain," Tsabina said. She turned to the wall console to upload the autopsy report. "And then to hit the decon showers extra hard after we're done here." She tossed a wink to Rena and Remas alike.

"On that note, I want Bruke blood and body tissue treated in the same manner as a Level 4 biohazard. I don't want you or your team handling anything to do with him without gloves and enviro suits on," Remas instructed, turning to the door and nodding at Tsabina. "That bastard's cost me dearly already in lives, I will not have him billed a second time."

Rena nodded, both to Tsabina's recommendation and to Remas' order. "Aye sir. Every precaution will be taken."

 

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