A/N: And another update! Not going too quickly perhaps but we are slowly but surely getting to some of my favorite parts of the story so far. *rubbing my gay little hands together excitedly*

Also have I mentioned how much I love my dumbass chapter titles? Because I do, I really do. Some are just kinda goofy quips, others simple descriptions, and then you've got my favorites aka the obscure references and the ones with multiple increasingly convoluted meanings. And then I've still got this one title I've been holding onto since what at one point was chapter 19 (probably back in 2017) that I couldn't use! aarrghhsthfhnd it sounds so nice and I want to use it some day... hopefully.

Aaaanywho lot's of treknobabble in this one but I don't think there should be anything new, really? So no wordlist this time. Please enjoy :)

Chapter 21: In sickbay and in hell

A few hours earlier

Waking up in sickbay wasn't a particularly pleasant experience. Sure, it was better than Terei had expected, when she became lucid enough to remember where she had been when she lost consciousness, but she still felt like – well – someone had set off a bomb far too close to her. Blinking and squinting even in the dim light, Terei pushed herself up and swung her legs over the side of the biobed, only for her head to start spinning as vertigo hit her hard. She didn't have to reach up to check to know that she was down at least one antenna; she had done it before and the signs were all too familiar.

Thankfully, Neterr knew his stuff. "This should help while your body adjusts to your antenna," he said, pressing hypospray to the side of Terei's neck.

She took a deep breath and stretched her neck, waiting for the nausea to fade. When moving her head didn't make her stomach violently churn, she carefully tilted her head back up, only now noticing Captain Rose standing by her bed as well.

"Welcome back," Rose said. "How do you feel?"

"A lot better than I had expected, I think." Looking down on her arms, crisscrossed with marks and whole swaths of skin of a slightly different color – memories of all the repair Neterr must've had to make – she couldn't quite wrap her mind around the whole thing. "The last thing I remember, I was thrown off my feet by an explosion, and now..." She shrugged. "Besides the nausea, I mostly just feel stiff."

Rose smiled. "That's good to hear. You've been out for several days, so that's not too odd."

"Days?" Terei repeated, frowning.

"There was a lot to repair," Neterr said with a nod towards Terei's arm. From her fingers all the way up to her shoulder, the skin was a distinctly different, lighter shade for blue. "And don't expect to be getting back to work right away; your body is still healing."

Considering she was getting tired just from sitting up, taking it easy for a while did sound like a plan. "Works for me."

"Well," Rose said, "I'm afraid I need to get going. Commander Moors and I will be going outside for a couple of hours, so if you need anything, just let Diaval know."

Terei blinked dumbly. "Going outside? You're spacewalking?"

"Not exactly. I'll let the doctor bring you up to speed on the details," Rose grinned.

After the captain had left and Neterr had given her a quick rundown of the previous few days' events, Terei lay back down on the bed again. She wasn't exactly sleepy – and the biobed wasn't particularly comfortable – but she was tired enough that none of that really mattered.

The computer's voice stirred her awake some time later.

"...possibility for sub-molecular life was found in cargo bay two."

Terei pushed herself up on her elbow to see Neterr at one of the science labs, and although she wasn't the best at figuring out Caitian body language, she was pretty sure his ears were firmly in just work, damn it-mode. Her imagination easily overtaking her sleepiness, she sat up properly. "What's in cargo bay two?"

Neterr looked up, his ears twitching. "Sorry, I tried not to wake you." His frown deepened. "And nothing interesting, as far as I know. I was going to run some tests on some sample of the surface here, but the computer isn't cooperating at all. Someone from engineering should get here soon, though."

"Mind if I join you?" Terei slid off the biobed onto her feet without waiting for a reply, testing how well her legs held up. Thankfully, they were just a little wobbly and nothing much more than that. "I've had enough of sleep for a while."

"I suppose. As long as you don't wear yourself out."

"Not a problem." She shuffled over to Neterr and peered down at the box of gray rocks and sand on top of the science lab's desk. "Anything special about them?"

"I–"

The sickbay doors opened, interrupting him, and Fenrir entered with a hyperspanner in hand.

"Ah, Lieutenant," Neterr said. "You're here to fix whatever's wrong with the computer?"

"That's the plan. Computer, run a level five self-diagnostic of the comm system in sickbay."

"The Pulgotian Gerbil is an invasive species introduced to the Fourth Vileni Flotilla at some point before stardate 12756. Although similar in appearance to rodents, they are coldblooded and have vestigial wings, indicating a possible avian origin. No close relatives are known, and..." the computer rambled on.

"I guess that's answers that," Fenrir muttered as they yanked off an access panel and began pulling out isolinear chips until the computer finally stopped talking. "Definitely something wrong with the comm system."

As Fenrir began to open more and more hatches and access panels all around the room, Neterr and Terei turned back to box of space dust on the lab desk.

"Maybe there's some kind of radiation coming from the sample that is interfering with the computer, somehow," Neterr said, frowning at his tricorder readings, "since the computer started acting up around the time I brought this in, but I don't get any radiation signatures at all."

Terei leaned over and skimmed through the readings. Nothing of interest stood out. "You'd think Fae's main sensors would've picked something up if there was something to find, but in their state–"

"There you are," Fenrir muttered, head halfway into a Jefferies Tube. A sharp clang and a brief flicker of the lights later, Fenrir emerged holding a charred piece of metal.

"That's what did it?" Terei asked, eyeing the metal thing skeptically. She wasn't much of an engineering person and the thought of the ship having random, bent pieces of metal jammed into various systems was less than comforting.

"Yep. The only reason we hadn't found it yet was that it was still functioning most of the time. But I bypassed it, so it should be fine now." They tapped their combadge. "Fenrir to engineering."

Nothing.

"Aewan to the bridge."

Again, no response.

"Aewan to anyone at all."

Silence. Not even static.

Muttering something unintelligible under their breath, Fenrir crossed the room to another access panel, crouched down, and pulled out a heavy metal box from inside the hatch. It was roughly cube-shaped, and about thirty centimeters tall. After a quick inspection of the box, Fenrir looked over to the others. "So, ah, there's a quick fix to this and there's a..." Fenrir gave half a shrug, "proper fix. The quick one isn't exactly up to Starfleet code, but this phase-transceiver here–" they tapped the box with their toe "–isn't Starfleet tech to begin with, so..."

Neterr and Terei shared a wary look. As far as Terei knew, the doctor was about as good with engineering stuff as she was.

"Basically, the proper fix will take about three days and a complete replacement of all EPS conduits," Fenrir continued. "The quick fix will take a couple of seconds."

Terei shrugged. "It's your sickbay, doc."

"If it will fix the computer, I suppose you can go ahead," Neterr said, clearly not particularly enthusiastic about the prospect.

"Alright." Fenrir turned back to the box, did a quick scan of it with their tricorder, and then promptly kicked the box hard enough to push it back towards the hatch several centimeters.

The light flickered again, and then the computer sprung to life. "Comm system diagnostic completed. Five thousand eight hundred and seventy four critical errors found. Complete system failure may be imminent."

The message did nothing to dampen Fenrir's mood, however. "Purge all errors," they said happily, pushing in the box again and replacing the panel. "Fenrir to engineering. I just fixed sickbay's comm system."

"Atlas here. I'll run a diagnostic, hold on." A few seconds passed. "Looks good from here."

"Great. I'll be back in a bit." They tapped the combadge again and turned to Neterr. "Try running that scan again; it should work now."

Neterr nodded. "Alright. Computer, run a level five molecular scan of the sample in Medical Lab 2."

"Passive scan complete. No ships detected within range."

Diaval let out a soft breath, forcing himself to relax a little where he sat in the captain's chair on the bridge. He didn't have much against being in command – especially not days like this when there wasn't a whole lot to command – but with both Maleficent and the captain off the ship he couldn't shake that nagging worry that something might show up on sensors before they returned. Not that it mattered much where they were seeing how the Fae's nacelles were in the process of being dismantled, but still.

At least with the sensor probes up and the computer doing regular passive scans, the risk that anything would show up without them noticing was pretty slim.

Just as he had begun to relax a little, red light suddenly flooded the bridge, followed by alert sirens and the viewscreen switching from a calm landscape to a schematic of the Fae, entirely covered in red warning signs.

"Alert. Highly unsafe amounts of hazardous material detected in Medical Lab 2," the computer announced. "All personnel in sickbay have been advised to evacuate immediately to avoid injury or death. Radiation levels are currently at fifty-nine thousand percent above safe limits. Emergency force fields are in place."

Diaval blinked, his mind freezing for a moment as it tried to catch up to what was going on. "Report!"

The ensign at the ops station just helplessly shook his head. "I don't know! It's... big? The readings are literally off the charts; our sensors shouldn't be able to measure this kind of radiation. And the mass is–" He tapped a few commands and the readings came up on the main viewscreen. "Around seventy thousand tons. More than half the ship's mass."

For once, the absurdity of the sensor readings felt like a good thing. "That has to be a sensor glitch." Diaval activated his combadge. "Bridge to sickbay, report!"

"Neterr here. Something went wrong with the sensors. Lieutenant Aewan is trying to find out what's causing it."

"You're all alright then? The computer seems to think you're all seconds away from dying."

"We're all stuck here inside force fields, but other than that, we're fine. We can't lower them until the computer stops thinking the radiation will sterilize the entire sector, though."

Diaval sighed and sank back into his chair. At least that pretty much confirmed it was just a sensor glitch. "Do you need any assistance?"

"I think Aewan has things under control. We'll keep you posted."

Balthazar glared down at his console in main engineering. Whoever had thought it was a good idea to skimp out on plausibility checks in the sensors – either during the design of the ship or during the recent repairs – would not have a pleasant day when he got his hands on them. For the last few minutes he had tried to reason with the computer, hoping it would realize that its own sensor readings were complete garbage, but apparently some clown over at Starfleet had thought so highly of their safety protocols that they had made the protocols override everything else.

Still, he wasn't one to give up easily. "Computer, how much mass is currently inside Medical Lab 2?"

"Seventy three thousand four hundred and eight tons."

"How much volume does it take up?"

"Less than one cubic meter."

"Can the emergency force fields, the inertial stabilizers, the artificial gravity – hell, even the structural integrity field itself – contain that kind of concentrated mass?"

"No."

"Are those systems holding?"

"Yes."

"Explain."

The computer stayed silent for a few seconds. "A sensor malfunction is the most likely explanation. However, recent diagnostics showed no irregularities."

"But the last diagnostic failed," Balthazar said, bringing the diagnostic results up on his console.

"Affirmative. No conclusions could be drawn from that diagnostic due to a lack of data."

"Alright." He ran his fingers through his cropped hair, trying his best to curb his frustration. With its voice and its usually halfway decent reasoning ability, it was so easy to view the computer as a living being instead of a highly advanced – and sometimes flawed – machine. "What's the most likely reason for the diagnostic failing?"

"Physical damage to the sensor is the most likely explanation."

"And could a damaged sensor give similar readings as the ones from sickbay?"

"Yes. Damage to the sensors is the most likely explanation for the sensor readings in sickbay."

"Good. Then disable that sensor and drop the force fields in sickbay."

Another pause. "Unable to comply. Starfleet Safety Protocol 5610J requires all possible steps to be taken to avoid causing multi-system extinction events. Current radiation levels would significantly harm all biological matter within eight parsecs."

Balthazar glowered at the console, making a mental note to find out exactly who had added this particular piece of logic to the computer. "Fine, we'll do it the hard way then." He tapped his combadge. "Balthazar to sickbay; I'm going to manually disable the force fields. Stand by." With that, he turned around and went over to an access panel nearby where sickbay's subsystems passed through. A few isolinear chips switched place, and...

"Containment force fields on deck four have failed. Hazardous radiation levels detected on all decks. Emergency bulkheads have been closed. Emergency force fields are holding. Warp core breach imminent. Please evacuate Main Engineering. All systems are failing."

As the main blast door went down in front of the entrance, the dozen or so officers spread out in engineering stopped and looked around, all with various levels of confusion.

"All systems are failing," the computer repeated. "Warp core breach is imminent."

The warp core pulsed at its usual slow pace, humming along as happily as ever.

Terei poked her head out of the sickbay door, finding both ends of the corridor outside blocked off by force fields.

"Well, at least we don't have any force fields in here anymore." She turned around and stepped back inside. "Any luck with the sensor?"

Fenrir grumbled something unintelligible from halfway inside an access panel. "It must've been more damaged back in the nebula than we thought. It's a wonder it managed to scan anything at all. My guess is it got some partial scan of the space dirt and then extrapolated half a ship's worth of it, and now that reading is stuck in the sensor buffers and the circuits are too fried to do a new scan." They winced, reaching farther into the hatch. "I tried to hook up a tricorder but in this high-alert state we're in, the sensors are basically locked down completely."

"We've got the same problem here," Balthazar said over the comm system. "We could take the whole system down and purge the sensor buffers that way, but that might take down the external sensors too. If we could just get the computer to stop thinking we're five seconds away from complete destruction though, we could get rid of the old sensor reading without problems."

"If it's stuck following safety protocols, are there any we can use ourselves?" Neterr asked. "Or do we just have to convince the computer that we're immune to all forms of radiation?"

Fenrir looked up, a wild grin spreading across their face. "That might not be such a bad idea."

Diaval didn't usually pace, but as things were, there wasn't much else to do. Back and forth, back and forth, across the bridge. Everyone was still safe – true – and the external sensors still worked – sure – but they were almost as vulnerable now as they had been back during the attack in the nebula, with most of the crew either stuck between force fields all over the ship, or stuck outside in EV suits.

"Lieutenant," the ensign at the ops station began, but was immediately interrupted by the computer.

"Warning. Energy reserves will be depleted in five seconds. Main power is failing. Secondary power is failing. Emergency power is failing. All systems will be inoperable in zero seconds."

A moment later, the lighting on the bridge returned to normal, no longer flooding everything in red.

"Hazardous material has been contained. Emergency safety protocols are no longer in effect. Isolation protocols have been lifted. Energy reserves will be depleted in zero seconds. All systems are failing."

"I'm getting a massive energy reading from sickbay," the ensign reported. "Wait, no– it's gone now. It was a massive force field. I think that was what–"

"Energy reserves are back to normal."

Diaval waited a beat, expecting the computer to announce something new and equally dire, but the silence on the bridge held. "What's the status of the ship?"

The ops officer rubbed his neck, tapping a few commands on his console. "Everything looks... fine, sir. Not any worse than it did before the sensor glitch, at least."

"Sickbay to bridge." This time it was Fenrir on the comm system. "I think we've fixed the problem."

Diaval sat down again, his eyes landing on the rather serene landscape pictured on the viewscreen. It was as if nothing had happened. "I'm guessing you're the one behind that force field that just showed up?"

"Best way to secure an impossible sensor ghost is with another impossible sensor ghost," Fenrir said, sounding rather chipper. "Still, we should probably do a full check of all sensor hardware in the ship as soon as possible."

"Add it to the list," Diaval sighed. At least Maleficent's little trip outside would soon be over and he could get some much needed rest, hopefully without any overwhelming sensor glitches.