Sickbay, Enterprise – Mars Orbit above Olduvai

Christine Chapel hated not being involved in a medical situation. That was the real reason that she was personally supervising the quarantine of the ten UAC personnel that had been inside the Mars facility. The rest of the medical department thought she was simply drowning her grief over losing crewman Jakar. The Andorian had suffered a fatal embolism as a result of how hard he had struck his head down in the Mars facility. By the time he had been rushed into surgery it was simply too late. There had been nothing anyone could have done to help him.

Christine was well aware of this and while she was sorrowful over the man's death, she wasn't blaming herself the way the others thought she was. She simply had a need to help those patients that she could help at the moment. She didn't know exactly what they were being quarantined for (something else she wasn't happy about, she was only the head nurse after all!) but Doctor McCoy's orders had specifically told her to watch for physical mutations, especially with the woman who had been quarantined by herself.

None of the patients had shown any sign of infection, injury (Nyota had told her to look for bite marks when she had relayed Doctor McCoy's orders concerning the patients) or mutation, but even with a fast incubation rate Christine wasn't going to take any chances. She'd seen enough during her year on the Enterprise to know that the only thing certain was that anything could and would happen.

She shook her head as she remembered going to the supply sergeant to get some building compound that Doctor McCoy had used to treat the Mother Horta's phaser wound during that first contact mission. That had been a really brilliant way to seal and heal a silicon creature's injury. Christine hoped that Doctor McCoy could pull off yet another brilliant plan with whatever pestilence had overwhelmed the people planetside this time.

"Miss Christine?" Jo-Anna asked. She was sitting at the observation desk with her homework in front of her. She was supposed to be studying beginning physiologies of Federation species. Instead she was ignoring it in favor of staring at Justine Milton, the woman who was in private quarantine.

"Yes sweetie?" Christine asked as she jotted down the readings from the medical sensors for the multiple person quarantine.

"Is she in trouble? Because she looks like she did something bad and she's gonna get caught. But since she's in there, didn't she get caught already?" Jo-Anna asked, confused.

"All of these people are in quarantine because they were down in the base where your dad and aunt are, not because they're in trouble. There is something down there that's making people sick. Whatever it is has a short incubation period, but I'm not taking any chances so they'll stay in isolation until Doctor McCoy gets back and clears them. It's much better to be triple sure than to take a chance with deadly diseases," Christine explained as she moved to check the other medical sensors.

Jo-Anna put on her most stubborn expression. She got up from the desk, walked over to the large window that looked into the iso room and glared at Milton with her arms crossed. "Just what did you do?" she growled. Christine had to turn away to hide her amusement. There was no doubt that this was Leonard McCoy's daughter, or that she was not about to accept that the woman hadn't done anything worse than accidentally walking into a plague site.

"I didn't do anything!" Milton protested, but her eyes shifted away from the little girl as though she couldn't stand to see her just accusation. There was something in her voice that caught Christine's attention. Doctors and nurses alike were used to patients lying to them and soon learned to spot those lies because it was often important to the patient's health. People did try to hide the most idiotic things when they were embarrassed, and what was worse was the fact that it often was important for the medical team to know these things.

"You shouldn't lie to little kids," Jo-Anna scolded. "It stunts their development and makes you look really stupid. Now my daddy had to go down there to fix whatever's going wrong. Now you 'fess up, or I'll tell the captain on you!"

DOOMTREKDOOMTREKDOOMTREK

Christine Chapel burst onto the bridge, not caring in the least that it made her look like a panic stricken cadet. Unlike most of the crew, she knew that this mission was on the hush, hush side; otherwise she'd be down there with Doctor McCoy and the rest of the medical staff, not getting skimpy orders relayed through Lieutenant Uhura. "There's more people down there!" she cried, as she accidentally slammed into the captain's chair. "Justine Milton, the woman who gave you the head count, she lied about how many people had gone into the facility."

"How many more!" Kirk demanded.

"Five, Jo-Anna got her to confess." Christine paused while Kirk relayed the information to Doctor McCoy. A quick look around the bridge during that time found the bridge strangely deserted. Uhura was at her station as was Lieutenant Sulu, but that was all, and the captain wasn't at his station but Commander Spock's. One look at the main screen showed her why. The screen was separated into ten sections, each showing the view from a different camera. One camera showed Doctor McCoy with a large antique rifle in his hands. In shock, (this was the same man who refused to carry a phaser!) Christine said, "Nyota you really need to copy the footage from iso room one. It's one of the cutest things I've ever seen."

"GOD DAMN IT!" Reaper yelled. "I thought we were almost done down here!" He paused and pinched the bridge of his nose. He'd been distracted by thoughts of Sarge and what had happened two centuries ago to the point of stupidity. He never would have simply accepted the woman's claims that only five people had gone into Olduvai otherwise. He knew how these scientist types of people felt about making sure that only they had claims to their dig sites. "Jim, how many people did you beam into quarantine? We know that ship could only have brought twenty people, and it's only made the trip once."

"We beamed up ten," Kirk reported.

"I've got Justine Milton, the woman you questioned, in solitary isolation and the rest in group isolation doctor," Christine reported. "There are no signs of injury, infection, or mutation in any of them."

"Ok, that means we've got six more to find plus Sarge; that puts us at halfway through," Reaper figured. "F'rak' stay with Huey and Dewy. I don't want anyone left on their own. Sarge will be looking for weaknesses and that would be a big one. Louie where are you?"

"I inside ARK chamber doctor," Louie reported. "Dead Human here. Human small, bones new, negative old, small monster meal." Of all three Horta he was the one who had least mastered the intricacies of soft person languages. Fortunately he wasn't working with people who had low mental capacities and they could figure out what he meant most of the time. When they couldn't one of his brothers were usually close by to translate.

"Why am I not surprised?" Reaper snarked. He knew that not everyone in the UAC group could have been susceptible to infection. Someone had to have died as a meal because there really were only three choices when dealing with the mutated and the third one, simply being killed without being eaten; only seemed to apply to those with blood that was incompatible with the monster's taste buds. Stupid idiots deserved what they got for reopening this hellhole.

John knew that he really didn't mean that, no one deserved to die that way, but he just wanted out of here. This was the place of his worst nightmares. Not even living through two of the worst wars in Human history had given him nightmares to equal the ones from this place. He was about to tell Louie to team up with Sam and Spock when a soft sound grabbed his attention. "Contact," he whispered to Stormskies.

They both quickly checked the large central storage area they were clearing. "Oh great," Reaper moaned as he spotted two shapes launching themselves at him and Stormskies from one of the side rooms. "This just really isn't my day."

"What is it John?" Sam asked, leading Spock into the maintenance level.

"Zombies," he snarled, shooting at the shambling, but extremely quick, mutated men.

"Did he say zombies?" Uhura asked, startled. She turned around to take a quick look at the main screen. Her station's screens only showed the away team's life signs, not what they were seeing. She'd heard stories in her childhood about walking dead men, but she'd always known that they were just that – stories. On the other hand, what she saw on the main screen was far too close to those old stories for her to not understand just why Doctor McCoy had named the men that.

"Looks like the real thing to me," Kirk smirked. He too was watching Reaper and Stormskies shoot at the mutating men. "I almost expect them to start moaning 'BRAINS!'"

"I almost wish they were. They'd be a lot less lethal that way," Reaper yelled over the snarling, dodging a knife swinging his way.

Uhura rolled her eyes. "Shall I order some holomovies while we're in system captain?" There wasn't a whole lot she could say to Kirk that wouldn't be considered insubordinate, but her tone would let him know exactly what she thought about his remarks.

"I think Bones would shoot me if you did," Kirk grinned.

"Damned right I would!" Reaper snarled as he ducked a large set of claws. The two mutating men were not the only ones making noise. Stormskies was yowling in frustration as she tried to both stay out of Reaper's and the zombies' way and shoot the zombiefied men before they could get a grip on her partner. This was made even more difficult by the speed at which all three men were moving. No one had any warning when two arms, only one of which had a hand, grabbed Stormskies around the waist and dragged her off.

UAC Headquarter, Earth

'Komack, that paranoid bastard!' Pike snarled to himself. His fellow admiral had long been a pain in Pike's ass but this was pushing things too far. This was the leak that Pike had worried about. Komack had written a dissertation on the UAC's role in the Eugenics War and WW3. If there was anyone that was outside of the twin's confidence who had any idea at all about what had gone on at Olduvai, it was him.

The paranoia that had overtaken the man after Vulcan's destruction had no doubt had him hunting down anything that he thought would destroy the Romulans, and in the process he had reopened the biggest can of worms in the quadrant. It was made just that much worse knowing that the Romulans were on their best behavior with the Federation because they had their hands full with the Klingons, who didn't care that they had nothing to do with Nero and his insanity. If there was going to be a war it was going to be between those two Empires, not between the Romulan Empire and the Federation.

"You have no right to do this!" Komack yelled at Pike as the security officers pulled him out of the UAC's boardroom.

"You have become just as much of an idiot as the original UAC people behind this mess," Pike growled. "The plague that they created would destroy every life form it comes into contact with. There is no way to cure it and once it is let loose, it would be only a matter of hours before everyone who came into contact in any way, shape or form was dead. If you really wanted to go around doing Nero's work for him, you've found a great way to do it." He turned back to the rest of the men and women sitting around the boardroom table. "As for the rest of you, you will be undergoing interrogation by a Betaziod telepath to find out exactly which ones among you were part of this attempt at treason – no exceptions."