Take a Little Ride with Me... Redux
Posted on Thu Sep 6th, 2012 @ 7:11pm by Commander Oralia Zeferino & Lieutenant Commander William Harding M.D.
Mission: Sections of the Delta Quadrant
SB900 Flight Deck | Shuttle Genova
“We ready?” Oralia peered into the shuttle’s interior at the pilot sitting at the controls.
“Yes, Ma’am, I’ve checked her over and double-checked. Nothing looks out of whack or like it might suddenly go out of whack,” he nodded and moved back to the open hatch.
Oz moved out of his way and realized: this would be her first shuttle ride in more than two years. On her last one, she’d met Connor. And then she’d nearly died. So had he. Why did Harding want to take a ride? She frowned.
“Ma’am, everything will be okay. Trust me,” the pilot briefly touched her shoulder, a move that earned his hand a glower. Oralia still didn’t like being touched by just anyone. Add to it that the guy was, now that she looked him in the eye she could tell, a Betazoid. Of course. He’d just read her trepidation.
“I’m sure, Chief.” Her name was called from somewhere on the flight deck and she turned to see Doctor Harding striding towards her. She raised her hand in greeting then asked, “How’re your flight skills? I’m going to guess that you want this ride as quiet as possible?”
“Good and yes I do.” Harding looked at the pilot who hovered by them. “Thank you, Lt. Rand. I’ll take it from here.” Once the pilot was dismissed, he smiled to Oz. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” she gestured for Harding to enter first, then, with just a second’s pause, she bundled in behind him and pulled the hatch closed. She took the co-pilot’s seat and within a few minutes, they were out the hangar bay doors and navigating away from the Station. “What are you showing me?”
“Not much really, but here we won’t be interrupted and it’s safer to talk.” Harding turned the shuttle, taking a heading towards Archadia. “It’s lovely from up here isn’t it?”
Uncomfortably realizing that she was starting to sweat for reasons unrelated to the cabin’s air temperature, Oralia blandly answered, “Mmm-hmm. Most planets are beautiful from space. Safer to talk? A shuttle can be bugged just as well as a room on the station, Doctor. But spill whatever it is you’re looking to say.”
“Natalia. Are you aware of her past Oz? What she was involved in that concerned me as well as Jackson and Sulan?”
“I am now, yes.” She nodded and looked out the viewscreen at the planet below. “You’re pretty aware of who I’m sharing a bed with, so you can imagine what knowledge I have.” The sentence was out there and she inwardly cringed at what it invited the Doctor to do. “I mean... nevermind, so this involves the Ba’Ku incident?”
“It has everything to do with the lab there. She lost her way, Oz, was too tempted by what dangled before her, long before it was safe. Who wouldn’t be lured by the promise of immortality?” Harding snorted. “Try asking the two who are afflicted with it. Or me, when I have to try and put one of them back together. This wasn’t a natural form of it and as you are aware with Jackson and Sulan, it caused problems. They are, in effect, in stasis. Natalia set off that explosion on purpose and I suspect, got a much heavier dose. My theory now is that perhaps it had begun to have detrimental effects on her.”
Detrimental effects? Oz turned to look at him, frowning. “If Natalia was having side effects... what about Jackson, then?” Her concern about being in a shuttle all but vanished in light of the idea that Jackson might be sick. “What sort of detrimental effects did you see in Natalia?”
“From what we saw in the lab when we went in after the explosion, she was right at ground zero. Jackson and Sulan were in an open adjoining room, while she she got the bulk of the blast. She had always seemed level-headed but recently she began to worry us. Make some bad decisions, get a little too focused on that project, bypass safety protocols. She is the reason I came here.” Will adjusted their course slightly and they began a loop around the night side of the planet.
“And?” On the side away from Harding, Oz had gripped her phaser. Not because she intended to use it, but because it was slightly less noticeable to grip it rather than the armrest of the co-pilot’s seat.
“Let me ask you a question, Oz.” Down below them, Archadia was now bathed in shadow. “That fellow Chase who was involved. Did he ever set off your spider sense, if you’ll pardon the pun?”
“Ha,” she laughed humorlessly. “He did. My two Lieutenants, Gilroy and Darwin, didn’t much care for him either. There was always something about him. I had just demoted him and replaced him with Aliso.”
Will nodded. “Then you will understand when I say that in the beginning, that is all we had from Natalia. She never liked me, that I knew, though she was civil enough on the surface. I was sent to see what she was up to. Just before I departed, we received the news she had come to 900 and that there was now a Section 31 tie. Given she knew I was part of that old project, I was less likely to arouse suspicion if she thought I was part of the plan.”
“Who are you working with, then?”
He took a moment to regard the peaceful-looking planet below before he answered. “The original research group was tied to Starfleet Medical of course, and reported to Starfleet Intel.”
“So just Intel? Not Section 31?”
“No, but she didn’t know that. The idea was to see who she was close to.” He shrugged, then put the shuttle on auto-pilot in an orbit around the planet.
Seeing the auto-pilot light come on, Oz swallowed carefully. “I see. And did you? Did you see who she was close to?” A realization was creeping up on her, much like Iggy sometimes did during the evenings. “You know who we’re looking for, don’t you?”
“Possibly so. But she lied. A very convincing lie I might add about how she was being forced and all that. You get the idea. So I decided it was better not to take anything at face value.”
“Stop talking in circles, Doctor Harding!”, she snapped, irritated now. “You’ve presented more than one issue so far and haven’t offered any answers. You knew Natalia was here as Section 31 and didn’t tell anyone. No wonder you wanted to be off station when you told me this: I can’t arrest you and toss you in the Brig right now!”
Harding held up his hands. “No need. And remember, being part of that group isn’t actually grounds for immediate arrest. But from what I suspect is in the works, and you likely know more about that than I, what is to come could be. Have you investigated Mr. Bren’s department colleagues?”
“I wouldn’t arrest you simply for being part of Section 31, Doctor. I’d do so because you’re annoying me.” She sighed. “We’ve started compiling a list of likely suspects, some of them are in the Science department. Is there one, maybe two, you’d like to point out in particular?”
Harding nodded. “One in particular, name of Levin. Have you seen him around?”
“Levin...,” she shook her head then stood and moved to one of the consoles in the back of the shuttle. As she went, she held onto every handhold and anything else that was within range. At the console, she tapped a few commands in and, after a moment, Jonas Levin’s visage came up on the console’s screen. Oz looked him over, frowning. “He was in the Nexus last night, with Ian Bren’s party.”
“Stellar cartography,” Harding informed her.
Opening a commchannel, Oralia reached out to Darwin. “Lieutenant, there should be a Jonas Levin on your list of people to put in the lineup for Cassidy Wilde. He’s in Sciences, Stellar Cartography.”
Darwin’s image nodded, “He’s on our list, but we haven’t located him yet. Apparently he went to the planet for a sample-collecting field trip.”
“Get one of ours on Archadia to find him and detain him, then,” she ordered. Again, Darwin nodded. Looking forward towards Harding, she asked, “You heard that?”
“I did. You’d better buckle up tight, Oz.” Already he was changing course and laying in the heading.
“Scuse me?” She nearly squeaked but was already in motion, buckling herself into the seat.
“I am assuming we are going to land this thing down below?” Harding looked over at her finally.
“Why? I have people on the planet. And it’s a really big planet! If he’s really down there on a field trip, there’s no telling where he is. We can go back to the Station, just fine. I’ll beam down from there.” But no, Harding already had the shuttle turned into the planet’s atmosphere. “Or... not....”
“Trust me, I’m good at this.” He smiled briefly, then they were off, headed around Archadia and aiming to the capitol city.
“I recall another doctor telling me something close to that the last time,” Oralia muttered to herself and held on tight.
*************
Lt.Commander Oralia Zeferino
Afraid? No, Not Me.
Lt. Commander William Harding, MD
Daredevil
