Blood and Fire
by Soledad
Author's note: Technical data of the Oberth-class vessel are borrowed from the Ex Astris Scientia website. If I've misinterpreted anything, it's not the fault of that excellent site. I've made the Copernicus an Oberth-class ship because it was said to be a science vessel. Feel free to disagree with me. The rest of the technobabble is from the "Next Generation Technical Manual" and from Internet research about wavicles – I humbly admit that I don't understand most of what Data and Selar are pontificating about. But it does sound very scientific. *g*
The description of the original form of Regulan bloodworms is from "The Worlds of the Federation" by Franz Joseph.
Lieutenant Commander Ahrens is "played" by Adrian Pasdar, just to give him a face. Ensign Burke is a minor canon character, played by Glenn Morshower.
Chapter 02 – Lethal Encounters
The away team materialized in a darkened corridor of the other starship. As O'Brien had mentioned several times, the corridors were crammed, but that wasn't really surprising by a small saucer section of 39m diameter for the lower deck and 32m for the upper deck, respectively. As the same small saucer included the standard-sized bridge, a computer core, quarters for eighty crew members, three cargo bays and, of course, several science labs as it could be expected on a dedicated science ship, it was small wonder that the corridors offered barely enough room for two people to walk side-by-side.
They were also fairly cold and the air had a somewhat muffed quality.
"Are the environmental systems still working?" Riker asked, while Geordi, Nagel and Eakins switched on their tricorders, set on recording modus.
Freeman used his medical tricorder to check the environmental data and nodded.
"Oxygen level is low but still breathable," he replied. "We should keep our breathing masks at hand, though. There is no guarantee that it will stay that way."
They were all wearing the environmental collars, which, combined with the breathing masks, could serve both as oxygen supply and biofilter. It wasn't as safe as wearing a hazmat suit, or a complete EVA suit, but it protected them from airborne viruses and bacteria, without slowing them down, which was a definite plus in a situation where seconds could make a difference between life and death.
"Ship's monitoring systems must be down, though," Geordi added, "Since we can't hear anything from within. Absolutely nothing."
"Well, we won't hear a thing if the whole crew is dead," Ensign Burke pointed out pessimistically. He was a lanky, big-boned guy with a long neck and thin, straw-blond hair on his round head, and with a depressing tendency of always expecting the worst.
Of course, that same attitude had kept him alive for sixteen years of duty in the security section, which was no small feat. Overconfident security officers tended to die young.
"They can't be all dead," Riker said. "O'Brien's found some sort of life signs, remember? They were weak, but they were there. Somebody must be still alive on this ship, and we're gonna find them. We're going to the bridge. Geordi, are you familiar with the inner layout of Oberth-class vessels? Geordi?"
But LaForge wasn't listening to him. Perhaps hadn't even heard him. He was staring at something right before him, floating mid-air: a strange flickering of pink and gold sparkles, so faint it seemed almost subliminal… and after a moment, it was gone already.
"Whoa!" Ensign Nagel commented softly. "What the hell was that?"
Coming out of his near-trance, Geordi turned to her in surprise. "You've seen it too?"
Nagel nodded. "Yeah; it seemed like those sparkly things my Grandma liked to hang onto the Christmas tree when I was a child. Ours had holographic sparkles, of course, for safety reasons, but Grams said that a century or two ago, there were so-called wonder-candles that really sparkled fire…" she trailed off, realizing that she was telling insignificant stuff that was in no way related to their current mission.
"Sorry, Lieutenant. Why did you ask whether I'd seen it, too?" she then asked.
Geordi shrugged. "It was so brief I thought my VISOR might be malfunctioning. It's always a possibility, but if you saw it, too…"
"Here it is again," Riker interrupted, catching a glimpse of the flicker. "What do you make of this?"
"Seems like some kind of wavicle," Geordi replied distractedly.
"Some kind of what?" Worf demanded.
"Wavicles," Geordi repeated. "Phenomenon that demonstrates the characteristics of both wave and particle. It is both a wave and a particle together with their respective intrinsic properties of wavelength, frequency, linear and angular momentum… as we can see," he added, as the flickers appeared again, considerably more than before. They moved in, gathered around him in a spiralling swirl of light… and then seemed to be absorbed by his skin.
Geordi giggled. "It tickles in my whole body," he explained at Riker's bewildered look. Then the tickling sensation vanished, too.
"What did you read?" Riker asked Freeman, who'd been utilizing his medical tricorder.
The med-tech shook his head apologetically. "I'm sorry, Commander. I simply can't explain what we've just seen. These… wavicles," he tried the foreing-sounding expression, "seem to be in constant flux. My tricorder readings are all confused."
"Is there any way to clear up the readings?" Riker asked.
"Perhaps if we had a magnetic deconstructor – which we haven't – we might be able to isolate their transactions," Geordi replied with a shrug. "But so… nah, we don't have a chance. Perhaps Data will dig into the problem after the mission, when he has the time."
"All right," Riker said, slightly disappointed; he didn't like to leave a problem unsolved. "Ensign Freeman, check Lieutenant LaForge's vitals, just to be on the safe side. I want to know if these… these wavicles have harmed him in any way."
Freeman did as he was told, then shook his head. "The readings are similar to Lieutenant LaForge's latest physical resulsts. There aren't any changes to his medical condition."
"Not yet," Worf commented darkly.
Geordi withstood the urge to roll his eyes; it would have been a moot point behind the VISOR anyway. "Geez, Worf, try to depress a guy, won't you?"
The Klingon just shrugged fatalistically.
Picard, Data and Selar had been watched the scene on the main viewer of the bridge, via tricorder feed.
"What do you think about these wavicles, Mr Data?" the captain asked.
"Well, sir, Lieutenant LaForge's explanation about the nature of the wavicles was basically correct," the android began to warm up to the topic. "However, theoretically a wavicle has intrinsic double spins. Both spins can singularly be described by a conserved mass independent local infinitesimal angular acceleration such that the scalar inner dot product of this acceleration and the local infinitesimal metric is a constant the square of light speed in vacuum. If now a unit of inertial mass is defined then, as inertial mass dependence description…"
"Data… Data," Picard raised his hand before the android could have launched a really long explanation. "I wasn't asking for the analysis of a scientific theorem. What I want to know is: can those wavicles be the source of the diffuse lifesigns Chief O'Brien was reading shortly before the away team beamed over to the Copernicus?"
"Insufficient data, Captain," the android replied promptly. "It seems highly unlikely, however. A wavicle has no physical volume or surface area."
"True, but incomplete," Selar corrected, displaying the sometimes frustrating Vulcan ability of being well-versed in scientific areas fairly different from one's own. "As we all know, each wavicle is composed of two intrinsic local infinitesimal orthogonal primary forces. If one of these primary forces becomes a secondary force, then they become attractive and a wavicle then starts acquiring surface area. This dynamic surface could then be used to define approximately a physical volume."
"Not all of us know that," Picard commented dryly. "Some of us haven't taken advanced Quantum Mechanic classes beyond the basics."
"Neither have I, Captain," the Vulcan replied. "Wavicle theory is actually part of the basic classes nowadays. Of course, as you are not a science officer, it might seem complicated to you, but in actuality, it is quite simple. One of the most important conceptions of matter and energy to come out of the twenty-first century, besides the fact that they are interchangeable states of the same thing, was the fact that either state can act as either a particle or a wave. This was a very perplexing problem, and still remains so if we try to visualize what matter/energy looks like at the elementary level. A particle is localized in space-time – it can be assigned very distinct coordinates, and even thought of as stationary and static. A wave is not localized and cannot be static."
"The wave-particle duality is one of the best examples of the complementarity principle in quantum theory," Data added helpfully. "An electron, for example, will either act like a particle or a wave, but never both at the same time. If we use a particle detector to see the electron, it will be a particle, and if we use a wave detector, it will be a wave. Somehow, we must think of the electron as being both, but in its ability to display both modes of mutually exclusive states of being, it is actually neither. The essence of what the electron really is must be something else entirely. Whatever that is, is quite impossible to visualize, and has been dubbed a wavicle."
"Thank you, Mr. Data," Picard tried to stop the scientific onslaught again; he'd lost track right after Selar's first contribution. "Now, answer me a simple question: Is it possible for any living organisms to exist in the form of wavicles?"
"Theoretically, everything is possible," Data replied. "The universe is endless, therefore life can manifest in infinite combinations. At the moment, however, I cannot remember having ever read about such life forms; although I have to admit that in-depth research into energy-based organisms has never been part of my personal studies."
Picard turned to Selar. "What about you, Doctor? You seem to be very familiar with this particular discipline."
"I do have a suspicion," the Vulcan admitted. "A rather unlikely one, but it is a possibility. I need to cross-reference the medical and exobiology database with wavicle theory, though, before I would sound the alarm."
"Is it that bad?" Picard asked in concern.
Selar nodded. "Worse," she answered simply.
"I see," Picard suppressed a heavy sigh. "Very well, Doctor; do your research. Data, I want you to find out everything you can about the current mission of the Copernicus and about this Commander Yarell. Don't let security protocols block your way to the necessary information."
The android blinked in simulated confusion. "Are you authorizing me to break into confidential Starfleet databases, sir?"
Picard suppressed another sigh. Dealing with a literal-minded Vulcan and with an android who was worse than an entire planet of literal-minded Vulcans at the same time was sometimes more than he felt up to.
"I cannot authorize you to do that, Data," he answered patiently. "I don't have that kind of security clearance, and you know that. I'm asking you to sneak around the security protocols of Starfleet Intelligence and find me out what the hell Yarell is doing aboard the Copernicus. We need to know what we're dealing with, or the away team might find themselves in lethal danger. But yes, if that's what you're concerned about, I am taking full responsibility for your actions. Now, will you kindly find me something?"
Data blinked again, sarcasm being without affect on him as always. Then he nodded and turned back to his console to do as he'd been asked.
Meanwhile, aboard the Copernicus the away team was heading towards the bridge. As O'Brien had told them, it occupied the upper deck of the saucer section. As they had originally arrived at a corridor in the crew's quarters, in theory they wouldn't have a long way to go. Unfortunately, after they'd managed to get to the upper deck, they found that their passage in the corridor was blocked up by a set of heavy snap doors, not unlike those of the Enterprise's holodecks, which stubbornly refused to open.
"We can forget about these doors," Geordi noted, after having checked them out with his tricorder. "They've been permanently sealed; welded shut, in fact."
"We can always cut through them with the phaser rifles," Worf, who had already had enough, suggested.
Geordi shook his head. "Not these. They're made of pure, collapsed duranium steel; emergency hatches, remember? Not even Type III phaser rifles can cut them open. They're supposed to protect parts of the ship in case of a hull breach."
"Besides," Ensign Nagel added, "whoever welded them sealed, must have had a very good reason for it."
"Perhaps," Eakins said. "But what are we gonna do now? We need to reach the bridge; if for no other reason then to shut the distress call off before the Ferengi pick it up and decide to investigate."
"Agreed," Riker said. "And since we obviously can't use the doors, we'll need another way in."
"What about the turbolifts?" Freeman asked.
"I won't suggest that," Hodel shook his head, consulting the ship's deck plans that had been uploaded to his PADD. "The turbolifts are running through the pylons. The car departs vertically in the upper hull and arrives horizontally in the lower hull, and it has to be turned by ninety degrees again upon arrival. Since no lift car is currently on this level, we can't tell which route they would follow, even if we managed to reach one; and what kind of damage the ship has suffered along those routes."
"Unfortunately, that's right," Geordi said. "Which means that there's only one way to get to the bridge without losing time and wandering around the ship, looking for easier access."
Burke and Eakins exchanged martyred looks. "The Jefferies tubes?" they asked in unison and groaned as one man.
Geordi nodded. "The Jefferies tubes indeed," he replied. "An engineer's last refuge when everything else fails."
"Hey, what are you whining about, guys?" Hodel teased the security officers. "It's not so bad, really. We from Engineering do it all the time. It keeps us limber and athletic."
"I knew there was a reason why I never wanted to become an engineer," Eakins commented dryly.
They grinned; then Riker touched his comm badge. "Riker to enterprise," he reported in. "We've tried to get to the bridge, but the doors are permanently sealed. "We'll try to get manual access now."
"Data here," the voice of the android answered. "Be careful, Commander. I am picking up extremely weak readings of life throughout the ship, but I am unable to locate all of them; or to identify them."
"Are any of them currently on the bridge?" Riker asked.
"Not at the moment," Data answered, "but it seems that they are heading to the bridge as well."
"We'll have to gain access first, then," Riker said. "We need to find the ship's logs to figure out what's happened here."
For a moment, there was no answer; Data was apparently consulting with the captain.
"Acknowledged," he finally said. "I shall keep an eye on the lifesign readings for you and alert you when there are any changes. Just be very careful. Data out."
The move through the Jefferies tubes onto the bridge was a long and arduous one. The Copernicus being a small and crammed ship, the access tubes were accordingly narrow, and especially Riker and Work, but even Freeman had a hard time pushing their broad frames through in certain places. Eakins had it relatively easy, and so did Nagel, both of whom where thin and limber.
"Next time," Freeman panted, "I'll just wait outside till you guys open the doors from within."
"Not an option here, I'm afraid," Hodell grunted ahead of him. While long and slim, the half-Daliwakan had relatively broad shoulders that made for him getting forward in the narrow tube difficult.
"Almost there," LaForge told them encouragingly. The chief engineer was wiggling forward on his belly with a skill that spoke of long experience – he was the chief engineer of a starship, after all, used to crawl around in crammed spaces.
LaForge reached the end of the Jefferies tube first and gave the panel sealing it off an experimental push. It didn't move. The chief engineer said something in a lower Romulan dialect that made Worf raise his eyebrows in surprise – but again, LaForge had spent his childhood on a remote outpost at the Romulan Neutral Zone, so he'd had ample opportunity to pick up swear words – and tried to override the controls manually. After several attempts, he finally succeeded and dropped out onto the bridge unceremoniously, like a piece of overripe fruit.
A moment later he was screaming in horror – a strangely high-pitched sound from a grown man.
Eakins wriggled his way to the opening hurriedly and made a turn in it, so that he'd land on his feet when dropping out. For a moment, everything was eerily silent; then the ones still in the access tube could hear Eakins' deliberately calm, measured voice.
"Calm down, Lieutenant. He's dead. There's nothing we can do for him."
The others did their best to clear the tube as quickly as they could without injuring themselves, and soon they were surrounding the mummified body of a Copernicus officer, half-lying in the command chair. He was wearing a burgundy uniform and the rank insignia of a full commander.
"Presumably the executive officer of the Copernicus," Riker guessed. "He must have been the one who sent out the distress call," he looked at Freeman. "Can you tell me what killed him?"
Freeman stepped closer, his medical tricorder in diagnostic mode, and scanned the body.
"He's been dead for approximately three days," he said with a frown. "Must have been killed right after sending out the distress call. But as to what killed him… oh God…"he trailed off, staring at the small display screen of the tricorder in visible shock.
"What is it?" Riker asked, seeing that the med tech was deathly pale and shaking.
Freeman looked up at him with a troubled expression on his face. "Sir… there's no blood left in this poor man's body… not a single drop."
"Perhaps he fell victim to a space vampire," Hodell tried to ease the tension with a lame joke, but his face was ash grey with shock, too.
Riker was not amused but decided not to chastise him for the tasteless joke, as he was clearly just trying to overcome his fear. Eakins, on the other hand, shook his head in disgust.
"You're an incurable smartass, Mikael," he said.
"Spread out," Riker ordered them. "Check out all stations, see if we find any hints what's happened here. Geordi, try to download the Copernicus' logs to our tricorders and transfer them to the Enterprise. We need facts, people, and we need them now."
Hodell was already moving towards the engineering station… only to find the consoles blackened and burned out.
"Commander," he reported, "this station has been destroyed by phaser fire. Thoroughly. We won't get anything from here."
"Tactical is the same," Eakins called down from the section behind the command chair. "And it seems the communication system is dead, too… completely burned out."
"Try the library computer," Riker told him. "Worf check out the weapon systems. Something must have survived the destruction. Federation technology is nothing if not redundant."
"Give me a hand," Eakins said to Hodell, and the two of them moved on to the science station to try finding access to the library computer. LaForge took over the engineering station to see if he could save anything there.
Riker's comm badge chose this moment to start beeping. It was Data from aboard the Enterprise.
"Commander," the android reported, "I must warn you that the previously detected life form is heading directly for the bridge."
"Have you figured out what it is?" Riker asked.
"Negative, sir," the android replied. "However, Doctor Selar is currently checking out a possibility that seems to concern her."
"Concern her? A Vulcan?" Riker didn't like the sound of that. "Did she say anything conclusive?"
"No, sir. She said she needed to confirm her suspicion first. But she did seem quite certain about her theory."
"Vulcans usually are," Riker commented. "And they usually don't tell you anything until they're two hundred per cent sure about their suspicions. All right, Data, thank you. We'll contact you as soon as we've figured out anything on our end of the line. Riker out."
He broke the connection and whirled around when, seconds later, he heard the turbolift doors swish open next to the engineering station, phaser at the ready. The security team followed suit, ready to shoot at anything that as much as looked at them in a bad way. But the opening doors released just a single man onto the bridge: a very haggard-looking, obviously sick man, whose eyes seemed unnaturally large in his hollow, angular face, strands of matted black hair hanging limply over his brow. He was wearing a blue science uniform and the rank insignia of a lieutenant commander.
"Please," he begged, his voice hoarse and pain-filled, as if he hadn't used it for quite some time. "Please, kill me…."
Everyone instinctively took a step back – everyone but Freeman, that is, who carefully approached the man tricorder outstretched.
"Try to calm down, sir," he said in his best bedside manner. "We've come to help you. Who are you and what's your name?"
"Ahrens," the man muttered. "I am… was the science officer here. But you can't help me… nobody can. It's too late… too late for us all… We're dead already… everyone's dead… and you're next."
His voice was rising steadily as he spoke, almost to a hysterical scream. Moving as calmly and unobstrusely as he could, Freeman removed a hypospray from his med-kit and injected the man with a tranquilizer. Ahrens collapsed to the deck, seemingly in shock and didn't move any longer.
"What did you give him?" Riker demanded.
"Just a simply sedative," Freeman replied defensively. "Nothing we wouldn't administer to human patients all the time. I don't understand… it isn't even a strong one. It shouldn't have such a strong effect."
"The man was obviously at death's door already," Eakins tried to reassure him. "It wasn't your fault, Colin."
"Easy for you to say," Freeman muttered. "I'm supposed to help these people, not to kill them, out of sheer stupidity."
"He's not dead," Worf interrupted. "I can still hear his heartbeat… it's unusually fast for an unconscious man. Something is not right here."
"We'll know more when we had this man beamed to sickbay," Riker said, touching his comm badge. "Riker to Enterprise. Data, we've solved the mystery of the life form readings: it was a very sick, very weak crewman who needs medical help."
"I do not think so, Commander," the android countered. "In fact, the life forms are still moving towards the bridge."
"What?" Riker cried in disbelief.
At the same moment, the Copernicus officer suddenly woke up with a desperate, pain-filled scream and clambered to his feet, reaching out to them pleadingly.
"Please, kill me," he begged. "Kill me quickly, spare me the torture…"
He collapsed to the deck again, a red stain spreading quickly across his chest. Geordi instinctively moved towards him to support him, but the man suddenly grabbed his phaser and turned it against himself.
"No, don't!" Freeman cried.
But Ahrens had already unleashed a lethal blast at himself, disintegrating his body and leaving in the aftermath a cloud of gold and pink wavicles, similar to the ones they'd seen earlier. The wavicles spread out quickly, moved around the away team members in a spectacular swirl of light and got absorbed by their bodies, causing a tingling sensation that, however, was gone within seconds again.
Picard and the rest of the senior staff had been watching the events on the main viewer of the conference room. They were every bit as shocked by what they'd witnessed as the away team itself.
"Opinions?" the captain asked.
Data was the first to offer his opinion. "It seems quite obvious that the entire ship – including our away team – is infected with whatever killed the Copernicus crew," he said. "Consequently, we cannot afford to beam our people back to the Enterprise; not until we know what they have been infected with and how to counteract the effects."
"Can't we use the transporter's biofilter?" Troi suggested.
O'Brien shook his head. "Afraid not. The biofilter can contain the particle form, but not the wave form. That won't be enough against wavicles, which are, essentially, both. They'd slip right through. I'm sorry, but there's simply no way to beam them back. Not without endangering our ship and the entire crew as well."
"What about setting up a repulsor field of our own, perhaps in one of the holodecks?" Ensign Clancy, who was representing Engineering in LaForge's absence, asked.
Dr. Martin, attending to the meeting in Selar's stead, shook his head. "That would be a temporary solution only. We can't be certain if a repulsor field could contain the wavicles at all; or for how long."
"It must have some effect," Douglas Haskell, the Enterprise's chief conn officer said. "The Copernicus crew wouldn't have established one in their cargo bas without a reason."
"We don't know what the reason was, or if it worked at all," Picard pointed out. "They might have tried to keep something out."
"Whatever the reason might be, the survivors who've isolated themselves within the repulsor field in the cargo bay may have the answers we need," Clancy said.
"If there are any survivors at all," Lieutenant Bader from security emphasized.
"Even if they're all dead, their bodies may provide some answers," Picard raised his voice a little for the communications system to catch it. "Number One, have you copied everything?"
"Aye, Captain," Riker's voice answered through the loudspeakers. "Actually, that was the possibility we were going to investigate next. Can you arrange for us to be beamed inside the repulsor field, as soon as we're done on the bridge?"
"I'll have Chief O'Brien working on it," Picard promised. "Report in immediately, should you find anything of true significance. Picard out."
He broke the connection and was about to dismiss the staff meeting when the conference room doors opened and Dr. Selar came in carrying a PADD. She didn't look any differently than always – calm, collected, alert – and yet Picard could literally feel the tension roll off of her in waves.
"Captain," she announced, "I need to speak with you. In private… although he input of Commander Data and Counselor Troi may prove helpful."
Concerned by the unusual intensity of the Vulcan, Picard dismissed the meeting and took the two officers whose presence had been requested to his ready room. As soon as the doors closed behind them, Selar handed the PADD to Data. The android checked the data on it and a very human frown appeared on his usually impassive face. He was getting better at mimicking human expressions each passing day.
"I see," he turned to Picard. "Captain, it seems we have found the root of the problem. The Copernicus has apparently been contaminated by plasmasites."
"Plasmasites?" the term sounded vaguely familiar, but at the moment Picard couldn't quite put his finger on the actual meaning of it.
"Also known as Regulan bloodworms," Data added helpfully.
"Impossible," Picard shook his head. "The only known case of plasmasite infection took place on a world within the Regulus system, and that had been quarantined for the past century and a half. How in hell could this have happened?"
"There is only one logical explanation, Captain," Selar stated with eerie Vulcan calmness. "The Copernicus must have violated the quarantine."
"Not necessarily," Picard argued. "Some Klingons are known to drink bloodworms in their bloodwine; the acid in the wine, combined with their peculiar body chemistry renders the worms harmless. Perhaps the beasts broke out through a careless Klingon trader."
Selar shook her head. "No, Captain. The Regulan bloodworm in its natural state is a soft, shapeless organism of maximally five centimetres long, with its internal organs and circulatory system visible through its milky, transparent skin. Of parasitic nature, they attach themselves to their hosts by the use of four mouths, located at the end of tentacle-like appendages. They live in damp, shady areas; their spores would never survive in the relatively dry, artificial environment of a starship. Neither were the bloodworms infesting Regulus VI anything like the ordinary species. According to reports from the early twenty-third century, they were a least ten centimetres of length, dark read and extremely aggressive. It is a logical assumption that someone at that time must have done some genetic resequencing with a group of worms, crating a new, different subspecies."
"The Klingons would come to one's mind," Picard said slowly, "since they're immune against the bloodworms; and they were at war with the Federation at the time Regulus VI was put under quarantine."
"We shouldn't forget the Ferengi, either," Troi warned, "since we don't know what they were doing during that time. They weren't always a strictly business-based society, and their great upheaval, the one that led to the current form of government, is said to have happened approximately a hundred and sixty years ago."
"Whoever might have created the worms, that is not our primary concern right now," Picard said. "We have to find a way to get our people off the Copernicus, and soon."
"I am afraid we cannot do that," Data pointed out. "Starfleet regulations prohibit even attempted rescue of potential victims, according to General Order 9. Such situations require a Code 9 directive to deal with."
"What is a Code 9 directive?" Troi asked.
"Code 9 is a standing Starfleet order that when you run into a ship that's infected with plasmasites, you must destroy that ship immediately," Data explained. "In fact, it is the merciful thing to do, as being killed by plasmasites is a horrendous and very painful way to die."
"The last three ships that tried to save an infected population, back in the twenty-third century, were also infected, and the crew died horribly," Picard added grimly.
Does this mean that we'll have to destroy the Copernicus, with our own people on board?" Troi asked in shock.
"If they are already infected, which we must assume at least in Lieutenant LaForge's case, then they are beyond help already," Selar replied in a detached, clinical manner. "We do not know how long the lifecycle of the plasmasites is. We do know, however, how it works. The spores – the wavicles – enter the body of the victim. Then they grow in his or her blood, until they reach a certain point of development, at which they – like malaria – explode and begin to look for new hosts."
Troi shuddered in disgust. "Sounds painful… and messy."
"That it is," Selar agreed. "But the worst part is: there is no known cure for this condition, as it never left any survivors."
There was a long, pregnant pause in the ready room, all four of them considering the ramifications.
"I cannot accept that," Picard finally said. "There must be a solution that we can reach."
"If there is one, I am not familiar with it," Selar replied. "I am sorry, captain, but there is no cure."
"Then we'll have to find one," Picard said simply. He was not about to just roll over to give up. Not until there still was something he could do. "There are laboratories on this ship; dozens of them. There are scientists who count as the best and the brightest in Starfleet. Use them. Use anything or anyone you need – but find me a cure."
The Vulcan inclined her head respectfully. "We shall do our best, Captain. However, I cannot guarantee success."
"I understand that," Picard replied soberly, "and I don't expect wonders from you, Doctor. All I expect is that you do what you can. General order 9 or no, I'm not ready to give up our people just yet."
~TBC~