Star Trek: Animus: Plague Bound

Part 1

Reena Blackford massaged a knot in her right shoulder as she keyed the access code to her quarters, thankful that her shift in the armoury of the USS Kokoda was finally over. As the door opened, she was confronted by a wall of upbeat music emanating from the refresher unit of her shared accommodation. While as a Lieutenant on larger Starfleet vessels she would have been assigned a private sleeping berth, the age and tonnage of the venerable Mercury Class Frigate meant that she had to share a billet.

Accompanying the upbeat music was the clearly noticeable sound of someone singing along, underpinned by the regular thrum of the sonic shower, Reena smiled, she could recognise the voice of her bunkmate, the Medical Science officer Lieutenant Jacinta Tryne anywhere. Taking a step inside the cabin, the door automatically closed once she crossed the sensor.

"Sin, I'm home," she called smiling as she unclasped the front of her blue service tunic, she wasn't surprised when Jacinta didn't reply, instead only continuing to sing.

Moving to her personal workstation, she glanced at a holoframe on its surface that portrayed a pair of ladies at a formal function. One was Reena, her auburn hair up in an absurd hairstyle and a form-fitting azure dress whose slit up the side still made her blush. She was standing arm-in-arm with a woman that could have easily passed for her twin, where it not for the woman's dark brown hair pulled back into a sharp style that fully showed off the twin lines of intricate brown marks that started at her temples and ran down both sides of her body, encased in a gold one-shoulder dress with mesh panelling down the sides of her abdomen.

The two women had been amazed by the physical similarities they shared despite having over half of the Federation between their birthplaces (and the fact that Reena was a year younger than Jacinta), the two immediately became close friends, much to the annoyance of their superiors, with the Terran Reena becoming a confidant to the elusive Trill. Reena helped the other woman come to terms with the fact that she was only a handful of the defiantly neutral Trill in Starfleet.

Activating her workstation, Reena left her tunic undone and checked if she had received any correspondence since she ended her shift. The sonic shower deactivated, the noticeable thrum leaving the ambience, leaving the music still playing.

Before Reena could instruct the computer to lower the volume, Jacinta emerged from the refresher unit, clad only in her underwear, dancing along to the tunes, completely oblivious to her surroundings. The security officer looked up at Jacinta and watched the performance, marvelling at the fact that while the two women managed to spend identical periods of time in the Kokoda's cramped gym, Jacinta managed to get the better outcomes. She was about to comment about her bunkmate's unorthodox dance style when Jacinta finally turned to face Reena.

The security officer gasped audibly as she caught sight of the fist-sized undulating bulge that sat at the top of the medical science officer's abdomen.

"Sin!" Reena exclaimed, this remark finally informing Jacinta that she was in fact no longer alone.

The Trill officer froze, her eyes wide, as the undulating bulge appeared to shrink back into her abdomen, giving her the same overall appearance of a Terran woman, save for the twin sets of markings down either side of her body.

"Er, hi Reena," she managed to squeeze out as her normal skin tone gained a noticeable pallor.

"Don't hi me, Sin, you going to explain what is going on?" Reena asked standing, and taking an unsteady step towards her colleague, "And just what that thing in your stomach is."

Before Jacinta could explain, the Kokoda's intership sounded the bosuns whistle, "Attention all stations, Yellow Alert, all crews to their stations. Lieutenant's Blackford and Tryne report to the shuttle bay."