Upping the Ante

[Cmdr JFarrington 0]

Upping the Ante

 

((This log takes place during the time Atragon was gone from the bridge.))

 

zom·bie/ˈzämbē/

1. Originally, a snake-deity of or deriving from West Africa and Haiti.
   
2. A soulless corpse said to be revived by witchcraft, esp. in certain African and Caribbean religions.
   
3. More recently, a corpse in the control of nanites, making it display the characteristics of a living person.
   

~The Dictionary of Federation Standard, © 2368

 

Nanites. Why did it have to be nanites? Of all the research in the universe there was nothing more dangerous than experimenting with nanites -- programmable, but unpredictable in their interactions with one another. And now the only possible explanation to what was happening on Manticore was that the nanites that had been used in experiments on Iota 18 were on the loose. Rogue nanites, capable of communicating and mutating, had joined to achieve a common goal: life, if only through a decaying biological body. If they wanted to pick a body, why a human body? Why not a fly, or a mouse, or a turtle, for heaven’s sake? And now she was dying to get her hands on those research files.

 

Well, maybe not dying.

 

She blew out an exasperated sigh. Atragon had left the bridge. She was in command. The ship was at all stop. The lives of everyone on the ship were dangerously close to all stop. The dead in sick bay were moving, as though they were alive....

 

A half hour earlier Jami was happily manning OPS, her temporary home since Lt Cmdr Faldek’s recall. She remembered hoping that temporary was the operative word, but it didn’t look promising, at least not until this mission was complete.

 

And it looked now like the mission might already be complete, but not in the way they had hoped.

 

“Just what am I sending my personnel into?” Commander Precip’s valid concern had no definitive answer then, and it didn’t now. He would essentially be sending them in blind, and all Jami could do from OPS was to relay the facts as they had come to her from the medical deck.

 

“They have a problem with moving bodies, Commander,” she had said. “I figure it's post-rigor, but Dr. Chalice believes the nanites may be on the prowl.”

 

“Ah... that is illogical as the Captain would say. Are we talking a contagion? I just sent McFly down there and I'd rather not see him dead.”

 

“They’re on lock down, getting into EVA suits...” which’ll do a heck of a lot of good if it’s nanites....

 

At the admiral’s request, a video feed from sick bay had filled the main viewscreen, split between the now-isolated exam room and the main area of sick bay, where medical personnel were in various stages of pulling on EVA suits. In the exam room, bodies ready for autopsy were twitching limbs, shaking like B-movie ghouls. It was definitely not post-rigor.

 

“Precip here. Arriving at sickbay entrance; doors are sealed. Do we have a biohazard situation? If so I need to ready my teams.”

 

“If the doors are sealed, it’s biohazard. We have visual. It looks like the bodies are coming alive, but we really have no idea what it is.”

 

Behind her, the cross-conversation between Atragon on the bridge and Villane in sick bay had become edgy. “I can waste gas in there,” said the doctor, “but these are dead bodies, and if Escher's theory is correct, we are dealing with mobile nanites under the skin of each of those bodies! Admiral, we definitely need security clearance for everyone in sickbay, on whatever the secret project was. No more secrets; they are going to kill us.”

 

Tempers had waxed and waned over the next hour, culminating with senior medical personnel being granted full access to Iota 18’s files. The futility of the situation had become painfully evident as members of Manticore’s crew began to show the same symptoms as the victims of Iota 18.

At the request of Dr. Chalice, Jami had engineered an auxiliary sick bay around the medical shuttle in the shuttle bay.

 

When the admiral left to confer with the Consul General, the situation worsened, necessitating a lock down of the entire medical deck. No one in, no one out. She had, with one word, signed their death warrants... unless a solution could be found, and found soon.

 

And Jami was in the command chair.