by David Smith
It was getting late when they closed up the shuttle door and Dave and the security team headed back to the hospital. Izzy came too, despite Dave’s objections, quoting an obscure Starfleet regulation concerning contact with reluctant species to make her point. Dave didn’t have time to argue, and if he was honest with himself, he drew comfort from her strength of character.
The red sun was low in the sky when they reached the hospital, casting deep, dark shadows across the entrance and Dave knew that they were cutting things too fine. He called Stavros and asked him to be ready to evacuate them directly from the lawn in front of the hospital: they wouldn’t have time to carry a captured Sha T’Al all the way back to the university before night fell and they faced a horde of crazed flesh-eaters if that was the case.
They hadn’t been below ground at the hospital as the wards and labs were all in the higher floors. Chief Belle led the way, phaser in hand. Behind her, Sorensen held the tranq gun ready while Dave and Izzy held tricorders, casting this way and that trying to find life-signs. Sparks brought up the rear, phaser at the ready.
The building extended deeper into the ground than they expected and they found their first trace of life on the third basement level. Worryingly, as Izzy had predicted, the whole floor seemed to be a combined mortuary and chapel of rest, but there were very few actual corpses. Most of the bodies they found were skeletal remains, or in an advanced state of decomposition due to the lack of power to refrigerate them. The whole place stank of decay, and Dave fought to keep the contents of his stomach down.
The corridors were long and punctuated with many doors on either side, and they moved cautiously onward, checking each room before proceeding. Belle stopped at a junction, and spoke to Dave.
“This isn’t good ExO. It looks like there are corridors running parallel to this one with interconnecting passageways. If we stay together, we can’t stop any hostile from getting between us and the exit.”
“I know Chief, but we are trying to bag one of them. I’d take the risk, rather than split up and have one of the crazies rush a smaller group.”
“Agreed, but you and Lieutenant-Commander Grosvenor must be prepared to act quickly.”
“Ok. Izzy, draw your phaser, highest stun setting.”
Izzy nodded nervously and Dave thought he saw the slightest tremor in her hand as she selected a setting. A soft beep from Dave tricorder was repeated by Izzy’s. They were getting close.
They reached the end of a corridor and Chief Belle gently pushed the door. Everyone froze as it gave the lightest of squeaks, and Chief Belle stopped and peaked through the gap. Silently, she stepped back and signaled to Sorenson to come forward. The PO looked through the gap and nodded, shouldering the tranq gun.
There was a dull “Phut!” as he shot the crouching target, but before he could celebrate there was a scream of fury and the door flew open. Sorenson was thrown to the ground as a second Sha T’Al smashed into him, and before she could get a shot off, another attacked Chief Belle.
Sorenson screamed as the beast sank its teeth into his arm, dropping the unwieldy tranq-gun and desperately trying to get his free hand to his phaser. Dave jumped on its back and tried to pull it away from Sorenson, but the beast simply turned on him instead.
It was unbelievably strong, and it was all Dave could do to keep its slavering jaws away from him. Sorenson hit it, but it shrugged him off and attacked Dave with renewed vigour. He rolled over and pushed his forearm into its throat, but it seemed to ignore this, until it was suddenly knocked off him by a huge flying lump.
Gathering his senses he saw a battered and bloody Chief Belle marching over to the lump (an even more battered and bloody Sha T’Al) with murderous intent. The one that had been attacking Dave reared up and charged her, but she calmly span on one leg, and launched herself into the air, catching it square on the jaw with a flying kick from her other foot, before landing in a neat crouch like a coiled spring.
The creature got up again, but as it reared up, Sparks got a clear shot and hit it square in the chest, dropping it instantly. The other creature was still on the floor looking very battered and dazed. Attacking the Chief was never a good move. Sorenson calmly re-loaded the tranq gun and shot it just to make sure.
Still gasping for breath, Dave pulled out his communicator “Stavros, taxi for eight, repeat, taxi for eight”
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They hauled the three unconscious Sha T’Al up the flights of stairs, and were gasping for breath by the time they reached the entrance lobby. Outside, the light was fading fast and Dave could barely see the shuttle in the dim red light. Stavros had landed as close as he dare to the hospital, putting 10% down about twenty meters from the entrance to the lobby
Dave was glad that the Sha T’Al were still unconscious as they’d have been impossible to move if they’d struggled. The hatch of the shuttle opened and Dave saw Lieutenant L’Amour jump out, phaser in hand.
“Move it!!” she shouted “We’ve got incoming!”
Dave hadn’t believed his heart could beat any faster, but adrenaline flooded his system again as he and Sparks dragged their cargo as fast as they could. Izzy and Sorenson were dragging another, while Chief Belle had the smallest of the three Sha T’Al casually draped over her shoulder.
He’d hoped that L’Amour was exaggerating, but realised how serious things were as he heard screams from behind them and saw L’Amour take careful aim and shoot past them. The screams increased in volume and number, and Chen leaned out of the hatch adding to the weight of fire.
Dave looked over his shoulder to see dozens of the crazed aliens charging towards them at frightening speed, then heard a grunt and the Sha T’Al he was dragging suddenly became much heavier. Sparks rolled away under a writhing, screaming mass of alien fury, and seconds later he heard Chief Belle swear as she too was caught.
Izzy and Sorenson had made it to the shuttle and were shoving their load inside, but Dave had to duck as a scream immediately behind him let him know he was in trouble. He dropped the Sha T’Al and dived and rolled, drawing his phaser and shooting from the hip as he did so.
His shot struck his attacker on his shoulder, twisting him around, but not stopping him. Dave shot him again, but still the creature got up. Hastily notching the phaser up another power level he shot it again and this time it stopped moving. Sparks was in trouble, and was screaming as the creature attacking him bit deep into his flesh, spraying blood as its teeth found a major blood vessel.
Behind him Chief Belle had lost patience with trying to disable the attacking Sha T’Al and was calmly disintegrating them with frightening efficiency. Knowing Sparks couldn’t survive much longer, Dave risked a shot, and was relieved to hit the screaming beast square in the back, throwing him off Sparks.
“CHIEF BELLE!! Leave the Sha T’Al and cover us!!!” Dave screamed as he abandoned his unconscious Sha T’Al and instead helped the groaning Sparks back to the shuttle. Strong hands helped him man-handle the security man aboard and he turned to see the Chief fighting a one woman rear-guard action, still doggedly dragging her Sha T’Al with her. More and more Sha T’Al were appearing, drawn by the screams of their cousins, but the Chief remained calm. She kept on covering ground while still dragging the inert Sha T’Al and somehow managing to keep her attackers at bay. Dave, Sorenson and L’Amour gave her covering fire as she crossed the last few meters, and she bodily lifted the alien and threw it onto the shuttle.
“Ok, I’m good, we can go now!” she growled.
Stavros lit up the lift engines even before they’d secured the hatch. A few of the more determined Sha T’Al leapt at the shuttle, trying to claw their way in, but as the shuttle picked up speed the unfortunate creatures were swept away to fall to their doom.
Inside the shuttle, the gasping team took stock. They’d managed to capture two of the creatures, but Sparks was badly hurt, and Chief Belle was nearly as bad. Her arms bled from a dozen deep bite wounds, and in places Dave could see chunks of fl
esh had literally been bitten out. The Chief however, remained calm as Chen and Torres dressed her horrific wounds.
“Well, that went as smoothly as could be expected” gasped Izzy.
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Back on board Tiger, O’Mara kept the two living Sha T’Al sedated while they examined them and cross referenced their findings with the data and samples they’d collected from the dead subjects at the hospital.
Dave gave the science team twenty-four hours in which to work before he met with Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara and Commander Mengele in a lab that had been cleared for the investigation.
Mengele gave her report first. “It would appear that the psychopathic Sha T’Al are suffering from severe swelling in certain areas of the brain and nervous system. As we aren’t fully familiar with their anatomy yet we can’t be certain, but it would appear these damaged areas correlate with the more developed parts of the brain that control reasoning and cognitive processes. As a result they seem to have reverted to a more ancient, savage state”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed” grumbled Dave.
Mengele ignored him and O’Mara continued. “At first we suspected a viral or bacterial infection might have caused this, but there was no evidence of this in the samples we recovered from the Hospital. We then realised that the staff at the Sha T’Al hospital had been concentrating their efforts on a particular chemical that we’d found in several of their labs.”
“It seems that ingestion of this white-powder substance causes huge disruption to their brain chemistry, and causes cumulative damage, with the older, more primitive parts of the brain taking over as the rest of the brain shuts down.”
“So what’s the chemical and where did it come from?”
“Its acetylsalicyclic acid” said Mengele.
“What??”
“Aspirin, ExO” added O’Mara “and I think we all know where it came from.”
Chapter 11
Having discovered the nature of the Sha T'Al's problem, how to cure it remained a mystery. The brain damage exhibited by the cadavers and the two live subjects seemed to be permanent as well as severe.
Closer examination revealed that the effects of the aspirin was cumulative, with many of the victims exhibiting early stages of cerebral deterioration themselves.
Mengele, Torres and O'Mara worked together with the live subjects trying to work out if there was any way the savage tendencies produced by the drug could be controlled.
Lieutenant Selassie also reported her findings. Although opportunities for her to examine Sha T'Al culture and society were extremely limited geographically, she was able to assimilate some useful information from the files and database recovered by the away team. She'd already concluded that the Sha T'Al were essentially an enlightened, spiritual and peaceful people. It seemed their greatest concern (and probably the reason they closed the border) was the effect the violent and destructive behaviour of Federation personnel would have on their people.
After a couple of days it became apparent that the drug was seriously addictive. Even under sedation, as the volume of the active substance in the blood-stream fell, the Sha T'Al began to suffer withdrawal-like symptoms. Brain scans showed sharp increases in spurious activity by the body’s pain receptors and increasingly powerful and random muscle spasms.
Awake, the Sha T'Al would suffer crippling pains and who knew what other effects on a psychological level. They tried various substances as a substitute for aspirin, but nothing seemed to work. Every substance they tried was a nerve-wracking step into the unknown, as the body chemistry of the Sha T'Al had been a complete mystery up to this point.
With successive failures to find a way to control the addiction it soon became apparent that the two Sha T'Al were dying. In desperation, Mengele elected to give one of the two a tiny dose of the aspirin recovered from the lab.
Awaking from his sedation, the Sha T'Al became feral instantly, and for a while they thought the examination table restraints would not be enough to stop it from escaping. However, the wild thrashing quickly tired the Sha T'Al and Mengele was able to inject a few micrograms.
The aspirin produced the most profound effect. Heart rate dropped dramatically, activity in the cerebellum stabilised and huge amounts of endorphins flooded the brain. The Sha T’Al entered a peaceful, serene state, almost totally unaware of its surroundings or circumstances.
The situation wasn't going to get any better. Tiger had stayed in orbit in case the Science Team needed to revisit the hospital, but it seemed they couldn't sort through what information they already had to hand. The differences between human and Sha T'Al genomes made everything guesswork, and the sheer volume of data they'd extracted made it difficult to find worthwhile information.
Dave also worried about what they would do if (when) they found a cure. How could they apply it to a tiny scattered population that either hid away from you or attacked you ferociously? It was another three frustrating days before O'Mara called Dave down to the isolation lab.
"We've made a break-through" announced Mengele.
"More by luck than judgement" added O'Mara almost apologetically.
"It seems that within their body chemistry, ethyl alcohol can counteract the physical addiction to aspirin. It doesn't cure them, but it eliminates their dependency and the side-effects are less......distressing"
How ironic thought Dave: Taking alcohol to get over the effects of aspirin.
He asked about the side effects.
"Yes, the Sha T'Al exhibit effects not unlike humans, but as with the original drug the effects are more pronounced."
With that Mengele opened the door to the observation area, from which the two isolation rooms could be seen through armour plate glass windows. Inside one room the infected Sha T'Al was singing loudly and very, very badly, whilst in the second room, the Sha T'Al seemed to be hugging a chair and having an earnest heart-to-heart chat with it.
O'Mara sighed "Better minds than ours might come up with a cure, but in the mean-time it seems this is our only real option."
"All very well," said Dave "but frankly, I'm not about to saunter into a bar and offer to buy these guys a drink."
"We may have found a solution to that too. But we'd need to speak to Chief Carstairs"
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Chief Andy Carstairs rubbed his chin and thought hard about it.
"Well, the computer reads from whatever is in the buffers. If we adjust the recipe it should work. What did you have in mind?"
"We need you to resend your virus, but before you do, we'll adjust the pattern of haggis you used with this one" said Chief Deng, and handing Andy a small, near spherical object.
"What's the difference?"
"This haggis contains about 1% by mass of ethyl alcohol, which we believe will relieve the symptoms of the Sha T'Al’s drug addiction" she explained.
"I’ll give it a shot, but it was PO Park who wrote the workings of the virus"
"He's not gone anywhere" said Dave, "If you need his assistance, I'm sure he'd be happy to help. The walls of the brig aren't exactly exciting."
"Ok. Well, with his help the rewrite will only take a few minutes, but I'm not sure how long it will take for the virus to infiltrate the system. I'm also not sure if it will reach all the previously infected areas. We'll need to keep testing the system and checking to see what comes out."
"Please proceed as a matter of the utmost urgency, Chief" Dave urged.
"I'm on it. Can I......"
He was interrupted by the wail of alarms and the room was bathed in flashing red light from the action station alert beacon.
Above the din Dave heard a hail from the Bridge: “Bridge to ExO!”
“Hollins here. What’s going on ASBeau?”
“Sir, a Tana vessel has just dropped out of warp.”
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A minute later, Dave was on the Bridge. Izzy had beaten him there and was hunched over Lieutenant Shearer trying to open comm
unications with the alien vessel.
“What’s their heading?” Dave asked as soon as the turbo-lift doors opened.
“They’re making a bee-line for us ExO, will intercept us in just over an hour” said Crash.
“Any contact yet comms?”
Izzy replied “We’re transmitting standard greetings and other friendship messages in the Tana language on all channels. No response from them yet, but they are broadcasting a looped signal claiming this system for the glory of the Tana Empire.”
“Ouch. Keep trying. ASBeau, what are we up against?”
“We’re too far away for a detailed sensor sweep, but she’s clearly some kind of scout vessel. Our previous encounters with the Tana have shown their technology isn’t as advanced as our own. Tactical systems are basic and weapons are primitive. Their standard ship weapon is a micro-wave laser, which isn’t effective against the tritanium hull of a Starship. Their propulsion is a generation behind ours too. Even a scout like that that won’t manage anything better than, say, warp seven. We can out-gun ‘em and out-run ‘em.”
“What’s our status?”
“Shields are up, warp drive is on line, impulse engines powered and ready to go, starboard and forward phaser batteries operating.”
“Torpedoes?”
“None on board, sir.”
“What?? Are you sure??”
“Counted ‘em myself ExO” said ASBeau through gritted teeth.
“How the hell have we run out of torpedoes when the ship’s been stuck in orbit over Hole for a year?!”
“We needed to keep combat efficiency up, sir. We indulged in regular training and drills.”