Star Trek: Erin

Part 52: Synthesizing Plans

     I hadn't heard from Gabriel in three weeks. Which was weird, considering we'd been in contact every other day since she'd left. It had started out like one might expect, with 'how are you, is the Enterprise still in one piece' and 'cool, how bad does Starbase 14 suck?' but the correspondence had become a bit deeper, and it had become something that meant more to me than I cared to admit. I looked forward to each message signed From Gabriel, especially with Nowak tied up in the reception mess.

     In the meantime, senior staff all beamed down to investigate a situation and promptly contracted something that made them get old real fast, which was weird. It was almost funny how fast it happened—like the universe was trying to tell them to follow the damn regulations—until a lieutenant died. She'd gone to the same Academy as me. Galway was her name.

     Pretty sure none of them learned from it.

     So with weird things happening, a depressing lack of interaction with Nowak or Gabriel, and prolonged silence from Starbase 14, I decided to throw some of my hefty junior lieutenant weight around and do some sleuthing.

     Basically, I was hoping she hadn't been killed by those marauders I'd heard had been hanging around Starbase 14.

     I started, as always, in front of Munitions, but Leong hadn't heard anything. Then the mess, which was emptier than normal, with a dishevelled Lieutenant Commander Parra slumped over a neon pink drink, and three ensigns—two redshirts and a yellowshirt—clustered around the food synthesizer. Loitering just within earshot, I recognized one of them to be Farik, a Vulcan a year below me in the Academy I attended. They seemed to be the ringleader.

     "It probably requires the additional code to synthesize the bottle," Farik was saying. "There is more risk in removing the code than to let the synth run it."

     One of Farik's companions, a human roughly two feet shorter than either of the others, rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, those odds kind of suck. We should run it through a sim first."

     The yellowshirt tilted her head, auburn bangs from her mostly shaved head flopping in her face. "Do you trust Michael or not, Triggs?"

     "Listen, Arius. I'd trust Michael with my life, but absolutely not Holly. I bet he fucked with the code to make the synth explode or something."

     I grinned. I had an idea about what was happening, which tended to occur once a year or so. It'll teach them a better lesson to let it play out.

     As Triggs and Arius were bickering, Farik raised an eyebrow and jammed the synthesizer card into the slot.

     There was a moment of quiet as the other two registered what Farik had done. The card in the slot shuddered. With a sucking noise, the card disappeared into the machine, and a heavy grinding hinted at what happened to it. Triggs swore. "There goes our—"

     The synthesizer made a sound like a shaking paint can, just before bright blue liquid sprayed from the machine directly in the faces of the three ensigns.

     Triggs and Arius spluttered and lurched back. Farik stood there as the stream ended, slowly tracing a finger down their face and tasting it.

     A slight frown creased their forehead.

     Stamping down my grin, I called over. "As expected, ensigns?"

     The humans jumped, but Farik glanced over their shoulder, liquid dripping onto their shoulders from their face and pointed ears. "Ma'am, it appears there is a fault in this synth plan."