Temporal Disease

Posted on Thu Jul 25th, 2024 @ 8:18pm by Lieutenant Commander Shoniara T’ghann-Travis Dr & Commander Samantha Howard & Lieutenant Commander Deanna Celes
Edited on on Fri Jul 26th, 2024 @ 7:18am

Mission: The Andromeda Strain
Location: Sickbay

The medical staff had their hands full. The temporal dysphoria was causing injuries and illness in many of the crew, including those tasked with their care. At this point Sam was unaffected, but for how long she didn't know. She focused on the chaos before her, treating those that had injured themselves or had sustained brain trauma from the dysphoria plaguing the ship.

Deanna entered sickbay, looking a little woozy. A nurse quickly came to her side and helped her to a biobed. She saw Sam and Shon and offered a labored smile. "Glad to see you two. Obviously, I am recovering from one of those temporal dysphoria incidents. I can tell you I had a flash into the future, and I know the two of you will create a cure of some sort to stop this. You should know that while we are dealing with temporal anomalies, it isn't what is causing the dysphoria. That is being caused by a disease, likely a virus, and it is tachyon based, as strange as that sounds."

"A virus?" Sam looked shocked but quickly schooled her expression into something more professional. A hundred different questions machine gunned through her brain, and she carefully picked out a few of the important ones. "Do you know if the virus was organic or synthetic? Was this natural or a targeted attack?"

"I can't say for certain, but a tachyon-based disease would have to be something naturally occurring I would think. By all means scan me and see what you can learn. I obviously will be infected as I suffered from the dysphoria" Deanna replied.

Sam's gut dropped, they were looking at potentially a ship wide outbreak of a pathogen she knew nothing about. "How many people on the bridge were affected by the dysphoria?" Her mind trying to get ahead of the numbers game. At this stage Shon and herself were yet unaffected, but it could only be a matter of time.

"Everyone on the bridge was affected except for Cmdr Grayson and Lt Imik" Deanna answered, knowing Sam's thoughts. "I should note that I freed myself from the dysphoria state I was in. With the shields now modified to protect us from the temporal distortions waves, it is only this tachyon disease that we are dealing with. It would seem that at the very least, a strong telepath can free themselves from the dysphoria under these conditions, though I must admit, it wasn't easy and it left me mentally and physically drained for several minutes." Deanna looked at Sam and then to Shon, "Does any of this help or make sense to either of you?"

"It does help, although the making sense part I'm still working on" Sam replied with a tired smile. "I'm going to do some scans, in the meantime this nuritent hypo should help you recover from the ordeal" she pressed a hypo into Deanna's neck and activated the scanning function on the biobed, looking for traces of a tachyon virus. She also instructed the rest of her medical staff to begin scanning for it. Perhaps if they caught it early enough they stood half a chance.

Shon walked over to Sam mopping her brow. "This might be a virus? Sam, you know I have several degrees and awards in virology, let me work on this. I can run some deep scans on Deanna's blood, I have developed a multi strand scans that should diagnose a virus."

"If you want to work on developing and anti-viral for a long-term solution, I'll work on treating the symptoms" Sam nodded as Shon spoke. Everyone had their strengths, and she would be a fool not to utilize them.

"So, am I free to go or am I required to remain here?" questioned Deanna. "I ask as we are in a critical situation currently and I am needed on the bridge." Suddenly one of the intruders materialized in the middle of sickbay. Deanna pulled her phaser and fired, killing the creature instantly. "I guess we will need to assign security to sickbay as well. My apology for killing it, but stun settings have no effect on them, as we discovered when they attempted to kill the captain." Deanna quickly hit her comm badge and signaled for security to be sent to sickbay. "Perhaps we can place the creature in a stasis unit for study at a future point."

Sam ran another tricorder scan over Deanna and furrowed her brow a little. "Your readings are still a little off, but I feel it's nothing that you can't handle till this crisis is over. Eat when you can, stay hydrated, and rest when you can. Come back of course if you begin to feel worse."

"Appreciated doctor" Deanna said as she got up from the biobed.

As Deanna left Sam cautiously approached the intruder than had been shot as she waited for the security detail. She had a feeling that the security teams would be rather busy at the moment. Tricorder in hand she scanned the being, storing the information in the tricorder to analyze for anything that could aid them.

"Doctor, I would like to examine the alien myself, take some tissue and other samples, that might help me?" Shon asked.