The Star Beagle Adventures
Episode 1: Eye of the Beholder
Scene 14: Prognosis
1.14
Prognosis
"I am afraid I may have set Krank's recovery back significantly - at least his psychological recovery. But I really had no choice - I did what I had to do to stop Lieutenant Commander Straiv."
Dr. Tentis Uto was meeting with Captains Yui and Howard in the medical conference room aboard the U.S.S. Beagle. Behind a transparent wall, the two captains could see the stasis units that held Captain Carter and General Krank.
"How are they, physically?" asked Captain Yui Song.
Dr. Uto took a deep breath, then a sip of sog, a thick, extremely bitter, purple drink that only betazoids seemed able to drink without gagging. The smell of the drink was enough to put both the human captains off their lunch and they kept their distance. "Captain Carter will probably recover in a few days. Before I wake her, I will have to replace a lot of the destroyed tissue in her right shoulder and rebuild her ball and socket. I had to remove most of her right shoulder to stop the radiation from poisoning the rest of her system. We're growing the replacement tissue now. Full recovery will take months of exercise."
"And Krank?" Captain Skip Howard was worrying his long red hair.
"His armor absorbed a lot of the radiation, but the hit was close to his minor heart. It is still functioning, but I have routed his blood through a purifier to remove the radiation before it goes back into his body. I will replace the minor heart with a prosthetic. Heart replacement with prosthetics is common enough for betazoids and, well, most Federation species. But it will be the first time for a klingon, which means there are lots of hazards that we can only imagine. I have no idea how long his recovery will be. Hours if it goes well. Could be months. Might be never…"
Yui Song finally got to the question that was burning on her mind: "But you're more concerned about the psychological damage?"
Uto toyed with his greying goatee and looked upset. "One of the worst things the changelings did to him was to block his ability to kill - you can imagine what kind of torment that is for a klingon. If he had had the strength to kill Straiv without my help, it would have been a breakthrough. As it was, I had to force him to relive some of the worst of the torment the changelings put him through and convince him that Straiv was me to goad him to action. He killed an enemy who had fired on him - that counts for something. But he knows he couldn't have done it without my help and that is going to set him back. Worse because of the memories I had to force on him to make it happen. He wasn't ready to relive those moments. Not yet."
Skip Howard waved his hand impatiently. "Cut to the chase, Ten. What are we up against? You got a taste of the thing that took over Lieutenant Commander Straiv. What is it?"
Uto shuddered. "Utterly alien." He stopped for a long pull of sog, which caused both Howard and Yui to shudder. "I tried to make contact with it and it immediately tried to take control of my mind. I had to lock it out and focus on Krank. It was a very near thing. Our autopsy of Lieutenant Commander Straiv confirmed that what we saw was a physical presence that entered his cranium and physically changed his brain structure. It had not completed taking him over, but it evidently had gotten control of his motor functions very quickly. Here's the weird thing…" Uto paused for another drink of sog. "The remnants of the creature that entered Straiv's brain conform largely with the readings we have of the unidentified lifeform aboard the Tyr'phoyx 8. But it also has trill DNA."
Captains Yui and Howard exchanged surprised glances.
"Trill DNA? Are you certain?" Yui Song asked.
"To a surprising degree, actually," Dr. Uto responded. "The majority of the creature consisted of neural matter. But it looked like an eyeball because the neural matter was encased inside an eyeball. A trill eyeball. A trill eyeball about the size of a baseball, which is about three and a half times the size of the average trill eyeball. But one endowed with sight. I cross referenced with the biometric readings the internal sensors took of that thing before it merged with Lieutenant Commander Straiv. It was quite literally a brain inside an eyeball."
"Okay," said Skip Howard, rubbing his eye with a finger (but careful not to smudge his green eyeshadow). "So how does an actual physical brain inside an actual physical eyeball slam at a few dozen KPH into a vulcan's forehead and just go inside and start rewiring his brain without leaving a mark?"
"Now you're asking something," said Uto.
1.14
