Ensign Roy Bancroft - Microparticles, and Other Bad Ideas
Carter Schimpff
((Holodeck 2, Deck 2, USS Artemis))
Jovenan: Looks like we have everything we need of the device now. Thank you, Doctor, great work. We can continue studying it on the workstation, unless you think there’s something more in there.
Bancroft: Agreed. I’m going to get to work analyzing the biological material here. ::opening kit:: Let’s see if our dearly departed friends left behind anything besides viscera and unresolved plot threads.
Jovenan: Very well. Call me if you find anything interesting, or join us when you’re ready.
Bancroft: Response
((OOC: Removing the section beginning where Imril has the computer create a duplicate of the unknown transmitter and ending with Tho’Bi’s invective of Thullex - at the same time as this section, the following takes place inside the Grunt.))
Inside the shattered Grunt transport, the air smelled faintly of hot metal and bad decisions — or at least, Roy imagined it would, were the holographic filters in his isolation mask not removing such olfactory commentary. Real or not, the carnage was impressive in the clinical sense. Less so in every other.
oO Charming. Oo
What remained of the six occupants wasn’t pretty – fragmented bones, shredded armor, and clumps of matted fur. Viscera painted the walls in looping arcs that might’ve been artistic, if you weren’t in the business of knowing what each item used to do.
Roy crouched beside the first body – or what was left of it – and opened his field kit with the solemnity of a man preparing to host a dinner party no one wanted to attend. The gleaming instruments inside were pristine, sterilized, and smugly unfazed by the carnage around them. That was their job. His now, too.
He completed a thorough examination of the first body, then carried on to the next.
Occupants One through Five: Blunt force trauma. Massive shrapnel lacerations. Secondary burns. Bone fragment trajectories aligned with a typical close-proximity high-energy explosion. Estimated time of death? All within the same sixty-second window.
Unpleasant, but tragically textbook.
Then came Number Six.
The scan caught his eye immediately – not because it was worse (though it was), but because it was different.
oO That’s… unusual. Oo
He slowed. Zoomed. Adjusted the field.
Internal bleeding across the cerebral cortex. Massive neural disruption. Retinal vessels burst without mechanical damage to the eyes. Subdural micro-hemorrhages in a radial pattern – pressure from within, not impact from without.
He checked the estimated time of death again. Ten to fifteen minutes before the others.
oO Stroke? Hemorrhage? Sudden aneurysm? Oo
Maybe. But something wasn’t adding up.
The rest of the trauma – the burns, the lacerations, the bone fractures – they were all still present. Just… off. No signs of bruising. No swelling. Little to no bleeding at the edges of the wounds. The blast had torn through him just the same, but his body hadn’t responded like the others. It had already shut down.
oO So you were dead before the shelling. Did you have a stroke going into battle? I wouldn’t blame you. I’d probably do the same. Oo
His tricorder chirped again. Roy filtered out the usual battlefield noise – residual explosive particulates, degraded tissue, all the delightful chaos of high-impact trauma – and narrowed the scan on the neural tissue.
The damage was too patterned. Too dense. Not a bleed. More like a detonation.
And then came the real surprise.
A diffuse cloud. Barely visible. Scattered throughout the bloodstream – ultrafine, passive, nearly undetectable.
Not nanotech. No circuitry, no programs, no processing. Just... particles. Inert. Harmless. Unless told otherwise.
He swept the others. All six had them – same structure, same composition. But only in this sixth body had the particles moved – converged – into the brain.
He frowned, fingers dancing across the tricorder’s interface. These weren’t machines. No embedded code. No intent. If they’d done anything, it wasn’t by choice – it was by command.
He expanded the analysis and overlaid the findings with the remnants of the signal trace logged by the initial scan collected on the battlefield.
There.
A spike. Faint, but distinct. A timestamp that matched the estimated time of death.
A tiny surge. A narrow-band electromagnetic pulse – just enough to shift something in a bloodstream. Not enough to trip an alarm. But enough to detonate a poor soul from the inside out.
Roy straightened slowly, gaze drifting toward the torn-open floor where the transponder had been embedded.
oO That thing wasn’t just listening. It was acting. Oo
Bancroft: ::quietly, to himself:: That's one hell of a way to go.
((OOC: This is where Tho’Bi says Thullex! in quiet frustration))
Jovenan: ::to Imril:: See if any of the artificial objects could be used for receiving or transmitting signals using technology we’ve found in the Grunden and Kobyar matériel. ::to Bancroft:: Doctor, what’s your status?
The word “Doctor” snapped Roy out of his analytical trance. He straightened reflexively–
Clang.
His head struck an overhead storage rack with the satisfying metallic finality of a closing argument. He paused, eyes watering slightly behind the visor of his isolation suit.
Bancroft: ::muffled, to the overhead rack:: That was… extremely rude. ::louder, to the rest of the holodeck:: Er, almost done, Commander! Just giving our dearly departed one last lookover before I join the grown-ups.
Imril: Response
Tho’Bi: ::to Computer:: Computer (beat) Postulate (beat) Drone detention equals causal termination point (beat) Identify code function.
With a mutter to the computer, Roy dematerialized the isolation suit. In its place, a bag of frozen peas appeared in his outstretched hand – Starfleet’s most advanced concussion protocol.
Computer: Within proposed parameters (beat) Probable code function (beat) countdown.
Tho’Bi: ::to Computer:: Computer (beat) Extrapolate Countdown initiation trigger and timing.
Bancroft: ::walking up, holding the frozen bag of peas to his head:: Oh good, the words "countdown" and "trigger". Two words you never want to hear in a holodeck full of Engineers. ::looking to Imril:: Shall I alert Sickbay, or just lie down somewhere dramatic and convenient?
Imril: Response
Computer: Trigger (beat) Unable to comply (beat) Insufficient data.
Tho’Bi: ::quiet growing frustration:: Zalexu
Jovenan: Save that kind of language to the Engineering, Ensign. Would you explain what are you doing?
Roy glanced over, waiting. Tho’Bi didn’t respond – didn’t blink, didn’t breathe. He just stared at the console like a man in court, waiting to hear if his world was about to fall apart.
Imril: Response
Computer: Timing (beat) Two Hours and fifty three minutes.
A long sigh escaped Commander Jovenan – relief, perhaps, or maybe the kind of exhale one uses when patience runs thin but decorum must be maintained.
Jovenan: Is that what you were looking for, Ensign?
Bancroft: ::eyes shifting from Jovenan to Imril to Tho’Bi and back again, clearly waiting for a kaboom:: oO Well, nobody else is running. Would it be gauche if I beamed to the bar anyway? ::beat:: Or just appropriately proactive? Oo
Imril/Tho’Bi: Response
A soft whoosh cut through the hum of the holodeck, and Roy jumped slightly before realizing it was just the doors opening. The crewmember who stepped in was someone he didn’t recognize – which, to be fair, described about 97% of the Artemis.
Jovenan: Yes?
Crewmember: The Captain wanted you to study this. ::hands over the device:: It’s from the Grunden General. He said he took it from his executive officer he killed after the executive officer tried to prevent him from entering the underground facility.
Jovenan: Thank you. ::turns around:: Ensigns?
Jovenan placed the device on the table, waiting as they gathered around.
Jovenan: Before we get to studying whatever this is, I want to try and combine as much as we can of what we’ve discovered so far. It all appears to relate to each other. Doctor Bancroft, please begin. What did you discover from the, um, biological data, or otherwise in the grunt?
Bancroft: Five of the soldiers in that Grunt died the way you’d expect in a war zone – shrapnel, blunt force trauma, likely from an artillery shell. Horrible, but typical. ::beat:: The sixth, though – that one’s different. And it might tell us what that transceiver was really for.
Imril/Tho’Bi/Jovenan: Response
Roy uploaded his Tricorder scans to the nearest console.
Bancroft: All six had trace particles circulating in their bloodstreams – tiny, inert, and nearly invisible. Probably slipped in through rations or some other regular intake. Nothing sophisticated. No circuitry. But they’re electromagnetically reactive.
He caught himself mid-thought and added, a little softer–
Bancroft: …and for the record, I doubt seriously that Grundan tech would have picked them up.
Bancroft: In five of the bodies, the particles stayed evenly distributed throughout the circulatory system. But the sixth — he died ten to fifteen minutes earlier, and not from combat. Every one of those particles migrated to the brain. The results were… critical. Like a massive stroke or widespread aneurysm. Except, it wasn’t.
Imril/Tho’Bi/Jovenan: Response
Bancroft: And here’s the real kick in the shins – that event lines up almost exactly with a low-level electromagnetic pulse from the Grunt’s hidden transceiver. Subtle enough not to trip alarms… but enough to move the particles.
Imril/Tho’Bi/Jovenan: Response
TAG/TBC
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Ensign Roy Bancroft
Medical Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240205RB1