by David Smith
“Don’t get funny with me Hollins, I’m the senior officer on board.”
“Of course Commander, but as you don’t seem to know your arse from your elbow, I can’t see how you could possibly lead us back to Federation space.”
Dave could here Cassini’s teeth grinding as the fiery Italian tried to find words.
“Oh well, I suppose it would be best for us to return to Federation space. Command would probably be quite interested in finding out how Tiger broke the speed record. They’ll probably be equally interested to find out why the Tiger’s hull plating is only 3mm thick in places. Of course, the computer will have a record of all operations undertaken by the transporter system over the last two years, so I imagine that should be easy to work out.”
Dave checked the comm line. It was still open, but the other end was silent.
After a pause Cassini whispered “You’re talking black-mail….”
“Whereas you talk bollocks. I suggest you make yourself useful Commander, there’s an awful lot that needs fixing before we even consider leaving orbit”
The line went dead, and Dave wondered how difficult the Commander would get.
--------------------
Over the next few days key systems failed, came back on line, then failed again. Dave fielded a dozen calls from an increasingly irate Lieutenant-Commander Romanov all of which took the same basic format: Cassini was an interfering idiot, he was trying to organise repairs on systems that were beyond his capability and Romanov was going to kill him with a phaser / knife / hammer / cheese grater.
Each time Dave would go down to engineering and try to mediate between the arrogant but incompetent Commander and his temperamental but brilliant deputy. Things were getting worse and worse. Cassini literally held the high-ground and refused to come down from the upper level of engineering. Romanov refused to speak to Cassini or comply with any of his instructions, her normal response to his orders consisting of her hurling an empty vodka bottle at his office window with impressive accuracy.
Dave was forced to remonstrate with her when an unfortunate crewman got in the line of fire and caught an empty Smirnoff bottle square on the temple, but he knew it was just frustration on her part. Cassini was a charlatan, and was causing a lot more problems than he solved. Dave couldn’t make his mind up if this was incompetence or a series of deliberate acts of sabotage.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t have better things to do. Izzy was making slow progress with Sha T’Al but they clearly didn’t trust anyone from the Federation, blaming the Federation in general and humans in particular for their current predicament. They’d opened a line of communication to the Sha T’Al’s leadership, but refused to reveal nature or content of their discussions with anyone.
By inference, Izzy had concluded that the part of Sha T’Al space Tiger was in was effectively quarantined, and that the local Sha T’Al were expected to resolve the issues without assistance from the unaffected Sha T’Al systems. This came as something of a shock to Dave. The Sha T’Al weren’t an expansive race and it seemed they’d just sacrificed about a fifth of their total territory just to ensure there was no chance of the mysterious plague spreading.
On the positive side, if they did manage to hold the plague back at its current extent it would limit the Tana Empire’s possible expansion beyond that point too.
Izzy also worked with another reasonable assumption, which was that the Sha T’Al on board also knew the whereabouts of other pockets of uninfected Sha T’Al on Todot Hahn. They also probably knew the situation in the other nearby systems but were unwilling to discuss it as they clearly weren’t sure of the Federation’s intentions.
None of this helped even slightly towards his goal of securing Sha T’Al space against the Tana Empire. He needed to find a way to get the Sha T’Al to trust them, but he couldn’t even trust his own crew. As if on cue, he took a call from Romanov.
She was screaming something in a mixture of Russian, English and possibly other languages too, but the comm-line was strangely muffled and he struggled to understand much of what she was saying. He caught “Interfering asshole” which he assumed was a reference to Cassini, and “touching things he shouldn’t” which Dave hoped (for Cassini’s own personal safety) referred to one of the ship’s systems rather than Romanov’s person.
He sighed, “I’m on my way down”.
A slightly breathless Dave arrived a few minutes later. Remembering his previous experience with the doors he approached them with caution.
Whether they'd been fixed, or perhaps because they were terrified of upsetting Lieutenant-Commander Romanov, the doors behaved perfectly, sliding open smoothly to their full extent.
Dave was greeted by the bizarre spectacle of several of the engineering staff doing hand-stands on the edges of the deck gangways, and even more impressively a couple of the staff were managing perfect hand-stands on the handrails of the upper level of the deck. He stepped into the compartment....
"What the fu.....whoooaaaa!!!"
…….. and plunged head-long upwards, landing with a hefty, bone-crunching thud as the malfunctioning artificial gravity system took hold of him. Sprawled on the deck-head, dazed and in considerable pain, he was now looking up (down?) at the crewmen dangling above (below?) him.
One of the unfortunate crewmen lost his grip at that point and fell the full height of the compartment with a scream, landing with a howl of agony and a very visceral splat not far from Dave.
Romanov was one of the crew dangling from the hand-rails, and through a veil of pain and confusion Dave was aware that she was screaming abuse at Commander Cassini, who had evidently managed to haul himself up into the space between the legs of one of the engine room consoles. He was leaning underneath, exchanging insults with Romanov and reaching around to the controls on the console panels, pushing buttons apparently at random.
"NOT YET!!!" Romanov screamed, but it was too late.
Dave had a momentary sensation of nausea as the artificial gravity cut-out, but the sensation of weightlessness was quickly replaced by free-fall induced panic and an associated bowel movement as the artificial gravity reasserted itself in the correct plane and dropped him five meters onto the deck.
He desperately tried to break his fall, but the sudden change of gravitational direction left him too much time to accelerate in, and too little time to do anything about it. He landed pretty much face-first, and felt the sickening sensation of several more things breaking on impact.
He was vaguely aware of screams of terror and several other impacts followed by congruent screams of pain before he passed out.
--------------------
Dave drifted in and out of consciousness.
He could hear Commander Mengele's voice and felt pain flare agonisingly in several different parts of his body as she explored the extent of his injuries.
"..... broken left radius, severe laceration to left side of face, minor skull fracture above left orbit, severe concussion, broken nose, three missing teeth......oh hang on.....yes……here they are: I was sat on them....broken collar bone, two broken metacarpals on right hand.........
Everything went black again.
Dave had disturbing dreams where he tied someone in an engineering uniform to a probe and launched it towards a black-hole, which made him smile, but the dreams always took a darker turn and he’d soon find himself running, desperately trying to escape a shiny black demon, screaming "Not my ass!!!! Please, not again!!!"
The next time he neared consciousness he had the faintest perception of bright lights and antiseptics. He was also vaguely aware of Steward Butler talking to Commander Mengele.
"He's been lucky then?"
"If you consider fourteen broken or fractured bones, internal bleeding and severe concussion lucky, yes."
"I mean compared to some. I understand Commander Cassini could end up a vegetable."
"Commander Cassini's own staff have universally confirmed that this is not a significant c
hange from his usual mental condition, although in some cases that may be an understandable reaction to the mistake by the Commander that has left them in sick-bay. Many have commented on the irony of Crewman Biko’s life probably being saved by his landing on top of Commander Cassini."
"Either way, the ExO could've come out a lot worse?"
"Given the amount of treatment he's needed from me since his arrival on Tiger, I'm very surprised it wasn't..........”
Blackness.
More dreams.
"He's still not conscious."
"Do you know when he will be, Doctor?"
"No. His injuries are very extensive."
"Was his spine damaged?"
"No. Why do you ask?"
"I'm really hoping that's some kind of internal splint device that's sticking out of his bottom."
"Are you a proctologist?"
"No."
"Then go away."
--------------------
Dave regained consciousness long enough to speak three days later. Everything hurt, and the doctor kept him immobilised face down on a sick-bed. She ran through his extensive list of injuries, which prompted Dave to ask "Did I land face first then?"
"Yes, both times"
"Then why does my ass hurt?"
There was a slight pause.
"Do not concern yourself, you've been on safe hands."
"IN safe hands" she corrected herself "You've been in safe hands"
Dave passed out again.
--------------------
At least while he was incarcerated in sick-bay, Dave gathered an understanding of why there were always so many people listed here and off duty. According to Lieutenant Chen (who was considerably more talkative than Commander Mengele) this sort of thing happened with worrying regularity.
Dave was still slightly groggy and in considerable pain when the medical team had to react to a major incident in the toilet cubicles on Deck 6. He was unceremoniously ejected from sick-bay to make room for an influx of drowning victims. Commander Mengele did provide pain-killers, but there was still no aspirin available.
It was another couple of days before he felt well enough to hobble up to the Bridge. His left arm was still in a cast and very painful. Having been broken once recently, the healing process seemed to have gone on strike in that part of his body. He still had a slight head-ache and an uncomfortable feeling that his intestines were falling out every time he went for a poo, but aside from that he was healthy.
A pad was waiting for him on the Captains chair. On it was an update of the Science team’s latest findings, and also a brief from Lieutenant-Commander Grosvenor concerning the diplomatic situation.
The Sha T’Al were still as secretive as ever, but seemed resigned to working with the crew of the Tiger, presumably as they’d been cut adrift by their own leadership. Getting anything out of them was difficult, but Izzy worked tirelessly and methodically to glean what information she could. Two facts were particularly relevant. Firstly, the Sha T’Al knew that the aspirin that was plaguing them had come across the border from Hole and was transported by humans. Secondly the Sha T’Al had significant information concerning their neighbours, the Tana, which they were willing to share.
Perhaps more importantly than that, they'd actually asked for assistance for the first time. As a result, a small team of engineers had been taken to the surface to assist in getting the Sha T’Al’s infrastructure up and running. The power plant in the capital city was the first task, followed by replicators that were extensively tested by producing a plethora of earths finest cuisine which, oddly, excluded haggis.
Once they'd got power to the civic buildings, the Sha T'Al had been able to communicate with isolated pockets of survivors in the affected areas. They’d managed to establish contact with the surviving Sha T’Al on Cho-dal-far, the nearest colony to Federation space. It appeared the population had been decimated, but had managed to stabilise the situation. Thankfully, the off-shore islands there had provided a safe base of operations from which they’d managed to combat the disease. The leadership on Cho-dal-far also confirmed that several minor outposts nearby had remained free of the disease.
Izzy was almost shaking with excitement when she reported that the de facto leader of the Sha T'Al on Todot Hahn had formally requested that Tiger leave orbit and render assistance to the inhabitants of another system, where an ever decreasing number of unafflicted Sha T'Al were fighting and losing a rear-guard action against the disease. It seemed that the Sha T’Al’s options were still limited and that they perceived it as an unfortunate necessity to trust in the crew of the Tiger to save their cousins.
With the situation at Todot Hahn improving, Dave saw no reason to refuse and quietly prepared the ship to leave orbit. He was still in command but was aware that he was now moving further and further outside his stated mission parameters. Following his moral compass, he decided to worry about how Command would react to this when they actually caught up with him.
He also received some encouraging news from what remained of the Engineering Department. Whilst he'd been in sick-bay, Stavros had managed to “cut and shut” three of the scrapped shuttles with engines and thrusters from one of the ships’ work-pods to make a working shuttle. Being born from the remains of the shuttles Fermi, Goddard and Saker, she had inevitably been christened Fer-God-Sake, and like 10% (and the occasionally operational Hawking) had been fully engaged in operations on Todot Hahn.
Dave was still going through the fine detail of the science team's findings when he was called by the Security team about a disturbance in the galley.
“Good to see you’re back in harness Chief Belle, what’s up?”
“Chief Burns is having an episode, sir. Request permission to shoot him.”
“Is that really necessary Chief??”
“He’s being a prize ass-hole, sir.”
“Which Regulation does that conflict with, and is shooting him a permissible course of action?” asked Dave.
There was a pause. “Not entirely sure, sir. How about if I just taser him?”
“Do you think it might be a good idea to try talking to him first?”
“Not really, sir. We’re talking about Chief Burns here.”
“I suppose that means I’d best come down then” sighed Dave.
--------------------
In the galley, Chief Burns’ “episode” included wholesale destruction of everything even remotely breakable.
Dave went to the opening at the rear of the galley that led to the Chief’s office, but Chief Belle blocked his way.
“Sir, I would advise against contact with the Chief……..” she ducked as a sixth sense warned her of the arrival of a medium size frying pan, which flew over her head and clattered against the bulkhead behind her “…..he’s not particularly rational at the moment” she continued.
“Still want to shoot him, eh?” smiled Dave.
“Safest course of action, sir” she said with an absolutely straight face.
“I still think I’d prefer to try talking first” said Dave, and after a slight pause, Chief Belle reluctantly stepped out of his way.
“It’s your ass, sir.”
Dave stepped through the opening.
“YOU!!!” roared Burns “You’ve got some fucking brass neck showing your weasley, miserable face here!”
“Easy Chief, we’re all on the same side here. What’s the problem?” said Dave as calmly as he could.
“PROBLEM?? PROBLEM?? I’ll show you what the problem is you fucking ass-wipe” screamed the Chief.
With that, he yanked an empty drawer out of the desk and threw it at Dave. Another followed it, and Dave was soon ducking and dodging flying drawers and doors as the Chief seemed hell-bent on destroying every storage space in the galley.
“I don’t get it Chief?” yelled Dave, as he ducked another flying drawer “Do you not like the furniture??”
“FURNITURE???” Screamed the Chief, with murder in his eyes, “FU
RNITURE?? It's nothing to do with the fucking furniture!!! It’s what was in the furniture you complete fucking moron! My whisky!! All of its gone! Every last bottle and flask!!”
His voice cracked and Dave was sure he could see tears welling in the Chiefs eyes.
“Chief, I had to make a call. Their need was greater than ours….”
The Chief froze, and then stepped over, squaring up to Dave.
“Who the fuck are you to judge my needs?” he growled.
“Chief, without whisky they were all going to die. The very fabric of their society was coming apart at the seams……” said Dave, slowly backing away.
“Well,” said the Chief “if you’re that worried about “fabric” and “seams”, you can get this stitched, Jimmy!”
--------------------
Dave woke with Commander Mengele and Chief Belle leaning over him.
“Told you we should have shot him.” grumbled the Chief.
Dave tried to sit up, but Mengele pushed him back down.
“Lie still, you have lost a considerable amount of blood. I suspect having your nose broken for the third time in six weeks has significantly weakened tissue structures in that area”
She gently probed his nose, bringing a groan of pain. The groan turned to a scream as Mengele shoved the damaged cartilage back into place yet again.
“There, good as new.” She paused and thought about this. “Actually, you look terrible. We will undertake cosmetic surgery to correct the deformation when we have capacity in sick-bay.”
Dave was still sobbing gently.
Almost concerned, Mengele added “I would recommend that you avoid upsetting any more members of the crew. I’m not sure how much more damage your nose can take and still function.”
She stood up abruptly & strode off, leaving Dave flat on the floor. Beyond where she’d been crouched, Chief Burns lay unconscious, but still twitching.
“Yoo taysuhed hib?”
“Yep.”
Chief Burns moaned and stirred, and Chief Belle whipped out her taser and shot him again, sending him into fresh convulsions.
“Wath dat really decessary, Chief?”
“Just putting down a marker, sir. He’s going to behave himself while he’s in my brig. Or else.”