Chapter IIa: Absolute Disaster

Moira passes this on verbatim (except the brogue) to Cassano

"Send back a response that the pirates seem to have a condition that kills them if they are removed from their ships, so we will not be transporting any more of them until we understand more about that. Our first strike team is attempting to interrogate the survivors on the pirate ship to find out more about the other ships. We'll let Antarctica know the instant we have further information."

Aye, Commander.

She sends the information back, along with a note that she’s temporarily got the Captain’s chair, but Cassano is still around.

How does morale look on the bridge?

"mm. Possible. Marbo is confused as to the organs current processes. Nothing synchronized. No signs of any relay from brain to heart, or liver, or lungs. Marbo things maybe the work of a madman, parasite possible, but too much artificial control applied to various vitalities of the body. Marbo asks you go through decontamination before leaving. Medbay should be quarantined. Marbo needs to find his suit... There is a brief pause before marbo chimes up again.
Interns! Activate stage 1 of quarantine protocol, non-essential personell to be removed from sickbay, all medical personell scrub and suit up. Marbo is unsure of root cause if this condition, but can not risk infecting the potential.

Cass hears Marbo rattling off the quarantine protocol and thinks, inanely and unfairly, that he has a piss-poor understanding of keep it to yourself, we can't afford a panic. She knows that making such calls is his job as chief medical officer, but this really couldn't be more inconvenient.

Cass turns to head toward wherever she needs to go to undergo decontamination. As she does, she catches sight of Darcy, and is struck by the fact that Capt. Tulak's response had neglected to address her concerns about getting the relieved officer assessed by a counselor. Cass is suddenly flooded with doubts. Is she overthinking the Darcy situation? Was requesting a visit with a ship's counselor an unreasonable thing to do in the middle of this serious and complex pirate situation? Had she just made a really bad call in relieving Darcy of duty in the first place?

She'd felt very confident in her decision up to now, but that was before she'd beamed a potential contagion onto her ship. Darcy's reasons for doubting Cass as a commander were absurd, but objectively... maybe doubting her wasn't entirely unreasonable.

Deleting this to move it to after Cass has her exchange with Darcy.

"Of course," Cass says, then turns to head toward the turbolift.

As they leave the sickbay after decontamination, Cass asks Kendall to accompany her back to the bridge. She steps off the turbolift onto the bridge and says to Moira, "Report?"

"Hmm, curious. Belka, specimen collection."

Marbo will drop the green tissue into a sealed containment unit and hand it off to Belka.

"Run the tests. All of them. Map the genome. We must know what causes it to exist"


He taps his comms link and sets it to shipwide PA.

"All personnel. Zlam. Quarantine in effect on medbay. Please avoid unless it is a matter of life and death."

Moira hops out of the captain's chair, her face betraying slight alarm when Marbo's voice comes over the comm.

That bad, Commander? And nuthin' here that ah haven't already told yeh. What do yeh need?