DINNER AT TEN-FORWARD
by ardavenport
- - - Part 14: The Return of the H'cars
"Ensign Ikainet is now 100,000 meters from the ship," Data announced, not taking his eyes off the Ops bridge station. Commander Riker stood behind him. Lieutenant Worf stood ready at tactical. Sitting back at the primary science station, Lieutenant Mahmood observed a three dimensional computer image of the Roocaroom around the ship.
"Begin, Mr Data," Riker ordered.
Phasers blazed out from the starship to Ensign Ikainet's immense gray trunk. Bright energy bolts leapt out from her to her fellow Roocaroom. The exchange only lasted about ten seconds. After that, a few stray energy bolts echoed between the Roocaroom. They abruptly turned in unison and closed on the Enterprise.
"Well?" Riker asked, peering over Data's shoulder.
"Commander!" Up on the main view screen, Ikainet's cylindrical form melted, shrank and dissolved into a blob of light. And then it disappeared entirely.
The Roocaroom on Mahmood's screen vanished.
*oo*oo* *oo*oo* *oo*oo*
Captain Picard opened his eyes. Something was poking him in the temple.
A bald head with large, oversized blue eyes, and very dark skin hovered over him. Picard started, fully awake.
"What?" A smooth, featureless, dark finger jabbed his cheek.
"Stop that!" he demanded. The creature didn't appear to hear. It kept stabbing at him with its fingers.
"Security, intruder alert in Sickbay!" Picard turned to see Doctor Crusher and Nurse Ogawa rushing forward. Half rising on his elbows, he moved away from the being's persistent prodding, but there wasn't anywhere for him to go on the high biobed. He put a hand up and found it encased in a gray, plastic cast that went down past the wrist.
"Stop that!" Crusher and Ogawa had grabbed the creature's arms, but it was completely immobile to their efforts. It didn't even acknowledge them as it thrust its arm at their patient. It didn't even look real. It wore no clothes at all and it's physique was untroubled by any unnecessary anatomical detailing. Its skin was smooth and as lifeless as molded plastic; it looked like a mannequin with big, Caroomadi eyes and rounded features and joints.
Something bumped Picard's shoulder. He turned his head and found himself staring at a blue-green Starfleet uniform.
"Ensign, what is this creature doing here?" he demanded. Ikainet, mouth wide open, stared back at him even more vacantly than usual.
"Ensign!" A movement caught his eye and Picard turned to find two more Ensign Ikainets looking at him.
"What's going on?" Doctor Crusher demanded. The mannequin continued to poke at Picard. Crusher got between it and the wall and tried pushing it away with her body, but it didn't budge. Picard hit the creature's arm with one of his immobilized hands; both of them were in casts. The blows had no effect on the mannequin, but his wrist started tingling.
"Stop that!" Doctor Crusher ordered as she continued to shove.
"Tell that to this thing!" Picard argued back, giving the prodding arm another whack. Something came loose inside the cast, a numbing, cool-wet sensation ran down his palm. He was backed up as far as he could; the only reason why he didn't fall backwards off the biobed was because the Ikainet behind him blocked his way. The two other Ikainets at the foot of the biobed mutely watched the one-sided battle. More people arrived, med-techs, other doctors, security. Everyone tugged and pulled on the intruders, arms and legs working hard, but the mannequin and the Ikainets were as immobile as stone.
The ship rumbled and shuddered. The lights dimmed and came back up. Everyone froze momentarily, automatically repositioning themselves for another jolt.
The ship rocked violently. Picard grabbed for support and then realized that he didn't have anything to grab with. Hands reached across him and seized the front of his blue fatigues and Doctor Crusher pulled him back toward her. Picard saw a flash of reflected light from above and then Doctor Crusher deliberately fell across him, her arms and chest covered him, pinning one of his arms.
"Aaaaagh!" He tried to spit out a lock of her hair. Something flashed and crackled above, but he couldn't really see anything except long hair, the doctor's body protecting him from the sudden energy discharge. He futilely tried to pry her off with his free arm.
And then she suddenly pulled away. The lights came back up. Picard smelled something burning.
"Doctor!" She staggered; her head fell back and she collapsed, her fall partially cushioned as she fell on top of Nurse Ogawa's body.
*oo*oo* *oo*oo* *oo*oo*
"Damn!" Down in Engineering, Geordi LaForge swore at his instrument panels. He issued some quick orders to the engineers and technicians who hurried to their emergency stations around him. Red alert sounded.
LaForge looked up at the pulsating warp chamber; it's usual blue light carried a distinctively familiar trace of a yellow aura.
"Get out of there!" he yelled.
*oo*oo* *oo*oo* *oo*oo*
"Report!" Riker demanded on the bridge.
"The Roocaroom have disappeared," Data answered, secure in his seat at Ops. "Ensign Ikainet-" Data's board exploded; the android was thrown to the side. Lightning flashed from Ops, catching the two Ensign Ikainets and the two unfamiliar Caroomadi who'd appeared on the bridge moments ago. The security people around them ducked for cover.
"Data!" Riker called out. Lieutenant Monroe stayed at her post at the helm. The energy blast from Ops flickered and ceased. The smell of burning, charred plastic filled the bridge.
"Damage reports coming in from all over the ship!" Worf called out, still standing at his station. Riker stayed put in the command chair, even though the gravity seemed to have steadied.
"Geordi, what's going on!" Riker demanded of Engineering.
"Ensign Ikainet's in the warp drive again!" LaForge yelled back. Hundreds of collective hours of repair work had just gone down the drain and would have to be repeated all over again. Lieutenant Barclay and at trio of other engineers at the controls watched their work fizzle and burn out again. As if to contradict him, the yellow haze looming over Engineering from the warp chamber faded and vanished. Power levels steadied as the computer switched to back-up circuits.
"What...?" LaForge asked, now furious as if the H'car had somehow guiltily run away from her deed.
Commander Riker stared up at Ensign Ikainet, who had just solidified in front of him. The real Ensign Ikainet, he presumed.
"Ensign, what did you do?" he demanded, rising, towering over her, forcing her to back up a step.
"I asked the Roocaroom what they wanted!" she answered ecstatically.
"That wasn't asking Ensign!" he yelled back as if his shouting might blow away her cheerfulness.
"They want this." Excited, she pointed at the other Ikainets and the Caroomadi. They'd fallen into a stiff-limbed heap in front of the viewscreen, their eyes staring back at Riker.
"What were you doing in Engineering?"
Ikainet's smile faded. "They wanted that, too. I stopped them and told them not to." The sharp burning odor from Ops remained from after she'd "told them not to." Worf was listing damage reports in Sickbay, in Engineering, in Ten Forward and other places. Apparently, Ensign Ikainet, while she'd been in the warp core, had used the Enterprise's power systems to relay her message to her fellows all over the ship.
One of the Caroomadi got up from the pile. The security people tried to stop her, but she just walked right through them, her body pushing them aside. Like a zombie she approached Ikainet and Riker. Her hair and mustaches were intensely purple, her skin was almost the same shade. She stepped on Commander Data, who was still lying motionless on the deck. A security person knelt over the android after the H'car had passed. The H'car looked from Riker to Ikainet with huge, unblinking eyes, her mouth hanging open in a smile that revealed all of her little yellow teeth.
"This is great!" the new H'car exclaimed. She and Ensign Ikainet eagerly nodded their heads in agreement. Riker closed his eyes.
"Oh no..."
*oo*oo* *oo*oo* *oo*oo*
Doctor Selar entered Sickbay and calmly assessed the situation. She was the senior staff person present. Doctor Crusher lay on the floor with Nurse Ogawa, obviously injured somehow. Selar took charge. She assigned one med-tech and Doctor Hill to handle the incoming injured and prioritized the calls coming in from around the ship. Crusher, Ogawa and a man from security would be tended to first. Captain Picard was trying to get off the biobed to Doctor Crusher, and yelling for the bridge and not getting an answer since he didn't have a comm badge. Selar ignored him.
Of more concern were the three Ensign Ikainets and the naked, featureless Caroomadi lying on the floor. Selar mentally cut off any speculation about where they had come from and concentrated on the emerging medical emergency. After determining that they all had the same incomprehensible warp field, Selar and the rest of the Sickbay staff merely stepped over them as they worked on the crises that they could deal with.
The red alert ceased. The first injuries were arriving. Selar turned to see Picard climbing off the biobed. A man in a gold and black security uniform was saying something to the captain about staying were he was, but he clearly had little experience with treating patients and was unwilling to use physical force on Picard.
Selar left her patients and swiftly went to a cabinet, plucked a hypospray from the top drawer and quickly adjusted the setting on it. Then, with Vulcan agility she moved behind the captain and pressed the hypospray to the back of his neck. He half turned to her with a surprised expression before he collapsed. It was quite illogical of him to be surprised by her actions, she thought as she caught him. Patients were not allowed to go roaming about at will, especially during a crisis. She put her arm under his knees, her Vulcan strength lifting the human easily. The security man helped straighten the captain's legs on the biobed. She gave his vital signs a quick look before returning to Crusher and Ogawa.
*oo*oo* *oo*oo* *oo*oo*
"All forty-seven of them?" Commander Riker demanded. Ensign Ikainet faced him in a loose approximation of attention.
"Yes, Sir!"
"All over the ship?"
"Yes, Sir!"
"We are receiving intruder alerts in Sickbay, Engineering, Ten Forward and the science departments," Worf announced. Not coincidentally they had appeared in the places of most damage.
"Well, contain them Lieutenant," Riker ordered back harshly. He knew he didn't need to worry about being angry with Worf. Worf expected it anyway. Lieutenant Commander Data was sitting up on the deck. He seemed to be relatively undamaged, but he had a voice processor malfunction, so he could only produce weird squeaky noises and buzzing sounds.
"Ensign, can you find all these things?"
"Things?" Ikainet asked.
"The Roocaroom, Ensign!"
"Oh, they're H'cars now in humanoid-"
"I don't care what they're called, Ensign! I want you to help round them up and..." He paused a moment to recall which hold had the least amount of toxic or explosive supplies stored in it. "...put them in Cargo Hold 4. Right now!"
"Riiiiiiight!" Ikainet swiveled around and went straight to Captain Picard's ready room. There were three more H'cars in a heap on the desk. The room smelled like burned insulation. Riker spotted what looked like the remains of Picard's computer terminal on a sooty patch of carpet near the wall. The H'cars stirred. The one on the bottom was another copy of Ensign Ikainet.
"Why do some of these things look like you, Ensign?" Riker asked loudly.
"Oh, some of them have never had a H'car form before. So, they copied mine, Sir." She seized a limb from each of them, tucking an ankle and a wrist under one arm. A foot stuck out from under the other. Then, facing the door, she heaved forward. They all came bumping down off the desk together and Ikainet dragged them behind her like life-sized dolls. The H'cars didn't object, though one of them waved her arms around a bit. Riker followed.
Geordi LaForge arrived on the bridge as they exited the ready room. He went straight to Riker and gave a brief report on the state of affairs down in Engineering. Circuits blown, components fused. Because of the short energy pulse she'd used to communicate with her fellow Roocaroom, Ensign Ikainet had caused even more damage the second time she'd gotten into the power systems than the first. And security had dragged four copies of Ensign Ikainet and three other H'cars away from the engine core. They were being watched in the brig.
"We're going to have to go back and do everything over again," the overworked engineer concluded, disgusted. "And I can't give you any guarantees about when we'll be finished."
Riker looked back at him sympathetically. Ikainet had only been a major pain in the ass to him on the bridge. But Geordi LaForge was the person who had to clean up her mess.
"All right. Do what you can."
LaForge started to leave, but stopped and then turned to Ikainet who was still clasping the arms and legs of her companions.
"I don't ever want to see you down in Engineering again," he warned, holding up a threatening finger. "If you even get near Deck 36, I'll have you thrown off the ship!" Ikainet stared back at him with open-mouthed surprise.
"Riiiiiiight," she finally affirmed, nodding vigorously.
"Right," LaForge grumbled, leaving the bridge. Riker turned back to the ensign.
"How many of them look like you?" the commander asked.
"Twenty-one, Sir."
Twenty-one more Ensign Ikainets?
Ikainet was looking at the other four H'cars, two standing, one sitting and one lying on her back, on the bridge.
"Help Ensign Ikainet take these...H'cars down to Cargo Bay 4," Riker ordered the attending security people. "Mr. Worf go with them." They left in two separate turbolifts.
Twenty-one Ensign Ikainets? Plus the original? Riker shook his head, his rage subsiding into weary anger, and knelt down to look at Mr. Data.
*oo*oo* *oo*oo* *oo*oo*
Three hours later Commander Riker and Counselor Troi entered Sickbay and went to Doctor Crusher's office.
Crusher looked up hastily from her computer screen as they entered.
"How are you feeling?" Troi asked, her dark eyes concerned.
"I'm fine," Crusher answered back a little impatiently from behind her wide desk. Everybody had been asking her that for the past two hours and she was tired of hearing it. Her injury hadn't been any worse than a heavy phaser stun, but she'd still been out for an hour. She'd woken up to find Wesley sitting next to her biobed. She'd really appreciated his concern in those first few minutes after regaining consciousness when she was unsteady. But she'd been equally relieved to send her hovering son back to Engineering once she was back on her feet.
There had been fifty-three casualties, none of them severe, though several people had some painful burns. Most of the injuries had been like hers, people stunned by the discharge when Ensign Ikainet had abruptly usurped the ship's power grid to communicate with her fellow H'cars.
Troi and Riker exchanged glances. Doctor Crusher did not look entirely "fine". She brushed loose strands of red hair back as she wearily finished what she was doing and flicked the screen off. The counselor felt the physician's fatigue as she reported the final casualty count to Riker. When the commander asked if she was included on that list the doctor's temper perked up briefly, but slipped away before she grudgingly admitted that the only way she'd been able to escape Doctors Hill and Selar from officially taking her off duty was to retreat to her office while they and her staff finished with the remainder of the crisis.
"I suppose I am tired," she admitted, sitting back in her chair.
"You're not the only one," Riker sympathized.
"I've been hearing about our 'guests,' " Crusher said with a hint of a smile.
"They're in Cargo Bay 4 for now. At least they're keeping Ensign Ikainet busy."
"And Worf and most of his security people," Troi added.
"How's the captain?" Riker asked.
"Quiet," Crusher answered simply.
"Really?"
"Well," the doctor admitted. "Selar had to sedate him when the red alert sounded, but other than that he's been fine."
"Oh." Riker and Troi answered.
- - - Part 14 continues . . .