Chapter IIb: On Your Own

I am Lorq. A friend. Do not react as the guards think you are unconscious. If I touch your shoulder act asleep. Who are you? Are there more of your crew here. Most importantly...do you have a plan to get out of here?3d6

( 1, 2, 6 ) = 9

Lorq:
The woman stirs lightly and opens her eyes. She looks around the room and sees the guards standing there with guns, observing you. She stops moving and closes her eyes again.
"Ensign Myers, USS Potential. Our away team got captured. I'm sure the Commander is on the way to get us back.", she whispers.

You complete the scans and don't notice anything unsual. She seems to be healthy, except for the mixture of tranquilizers and stimulants in her blood.

---

Alex, Zephyr, the guards keep you moving forward but they don't seem to care what you are talking to each other about.

3d6

( 1, 4, 5 ) = 10

Laser Feeling: The scans that you're performing on new arrivals, the secretive operations they perform without your presence, the steadily worsening condition of the entire crew. By now you've pieced together that they're willingly infecting many of the arrivals with something that lets them control new arrivals to recruit them into their crew. And this infection also continuously makes them sicker

You give the Ensign a tranquilizer injector without anyone noticing. Although you haven't been allowed to test any of the infected crew, you're fairly certain that any tranquilizer that would work on a normal human will also work on them

The two of you are being led into the ship's sickbay where you see a Meringue doctor leaning over a woman that Zephyr recognizes as Ensign Myers. He appears to be performing some standard health tests on her while two armed guards watch from a distance. One of them is human, the other is not but they are both very pale, the human more than the non-human who's skin has a light blue tint to it.
The guards look up at you for a moment but don't pay you too much attention.

Lorq, the door opens and two of your captors in vacuum sealed suits lead two people into the room. You recognize Lt. Comm. Lloyd. A man is with her, wearing a Spacefleet science uniform. One of the two pirates that led them here speaks to you in their clicking language that is quickly translated by his comm badge as: "Two more subjects to test. And be quick. The children are dying!"

Zephyr, listening to the symptoms, you've encountered some diseases that are similar but nothing so far that's exactly the same. The closest you've seen for this progression is an infection with C'torran muscleworms, a parasite that eats away at the host from the inside, but the symptoms don't quite match. This would also not explain the way everyone appears to slowly go white.

Alex, the guards seem impatient. They're not necessarily aggressive at the moment but you feel they're going to break up your conversation soon to get the doctor back to work

Lorq, you finish up the tests on Ensign Myers, who still pretends to be unconscious.

A guard walks up to Alex and Zephyr. He points his phaser rifle at them. The translator in his comm badge relays his clicking as: "Meatbags, lie down on the empty operating tables. We will need to sedate you for the tests. We will not harm you"