Ensign Roy Bancroft - Not My Department (Yet Here We Are)
Carter Schimpff
(( Cargo Bay 1 – Deck 11, USS Artemis-A ))
Vahljeahn: My friends, we are glad to see some of you recovering, and I have an announcement to make.
Bancroft: oO Moments from a coma, then tighter-lipped than a Vulcan priest at a Betazoid wedding – and now they’ve got an announcement for the entire cargobay. This should be good. Oo
Vahljeahn: First let us thank the crew of this ship for their care and attention to us. We have yet to learn their names but from my experience, as you all can see, they are friends.
Bancroft: oO Friends. Well then, no permanent harm done from when I implied their leader might also be a trafficker. So… odds of spontaneous airlocking: slightly reduced. Oo
Then again, with Fleet Captain MacKenzie off de-worming orphans – or liberating a star system from a sentient parasitic amoeba, or whatever it was this week – his baseline chances of being airlocked were already pleasantly low.
Morgan struck him as the type who absolutely had the impulse but lacked the patience for the paperwork.
Vahljeahn: Next it is a momental event, as much as when we departed. Luirétt has requested asylum with our hosts. The second steps to our full freedom have been taken.
Roy didn’t see it – but he felt it. The way Morgan’s shoulders cinched ever so slightly, like someone had just suggested replacing the warp core with a toaster.
Vahljeahn had already described their band of misfits as refugees, and that alone was enough to make a high-level diplomat start brewing extra-strong coffee. For a newly minted command officer like Munro, it was probably enough to trigger spontaneous sympathetic migraines in half the bridge crew.
But asylum? That wasn’t just a flashing red light – that was an entire diplomatic parade marching through a minefield. Roy, not for the first time, felt deeply grateful that his job mostly revolved around broken bones, bleeding from places blood wasn’t supposed to come from, and the occasional impromptu proto-slug extraction.
Morgan: I didn’t realize that was going to be public information?
Bancroft: ::sotto voice:: I didn’t realize that was even on the table. Do you think Commander Munro’s already granted…?
The Chief Medical Officer’s eyes widened slightly further, giving him the unsettling look of an owl debating whether to swallow another mouse – or cough up the skeletal remains of the last one.
Morgan: I’m sure there’s no way to know whether or not the captain is actually considering granting them asylum… Certainly not enough to warrant getting these people excited about yet…
Roy took in a long, quiet breath and let out a low whistle – just loud enough for Morgan to hear.
Bancroft: ::sardonically:: Well, this’ll do wonders for their blood pressure. Might be time to pre-medicate the whole cargo bay and just hope for the best.
Morgan: Response
Roy pivoted toward the nearest patient on his side of the bay – a Yurum with a ragged vertical laceration stretching from lobe to chin. By some anatomical miracle, it had missed their eyes entirely, though only just. The injury had been sealed cleanly with a dermal regenerator – a testament to whichever nurse had wielded it – but there was something in the patient’s stillness that kept Roy on alert.
Their cheeks bore an irregular mottled flush – not bruising, not inflammation. A reaction? A marker? The Yurum’s eyes, half-glazed, tracked him without focus.
He’d seen that look before. Not in textbooks, but in triage zones.
The kind of look that suggested the body wasn’t visibly bleeding anymore, but something underneath still was.
Behind him, K’Wara guided Vahljeahn toward the waiting medics.
K’Wara: Vahljeahn, if you wouldn’t mind? ::assists Vahljeahn towards the waiting medics on the side:: We’ve been trying to get a general medical history on the patients from your medics, but it’s clear that you’ve not been able to establish a formal ‘medical database’. Regardless, we’d like to know if any of the patients have any older injuries, illnesses, allergies, those kinds of things. ::looks to the medics:: It doesn’t have to be anything formal or anything, just if you remember anything, please.
Vahljeahn: Response
Medic #1: Uhh, w-well, Buíre - that’s the one on Bed 7 - has had difficulty breathing for a while? They don’t seem ill or anything, but ever since we boarded New Hope, they’ve been struggling a bit.
Vahljeahn: Response
Roy’s brow furrowed. He kept working – a tricorder in one hand, an anabolic protoplaser in the other – but his attention pinged back to the exchange between K’Wara, Vahljeahn, and the medic.
Bancroft: ::not looking up from his patient:: Chief Morgan, seven’s one of yours. Do you have hands, or do you want Brenn?
Morgan: Response
It was at this moment that Roy did a double-take at his tricorder. As expected, he’d found significant internal bleeding in his patient’s cranial cavity. He’d responded with the appropriate course of action – a pass of the anabolic protoplaser, re-scan, re-calibrate, another pass.
What stopped him was that it all seemed to be working too well, too fast.
Bancroft: ::frowning at his tricorder:: Vahljeahn… do your people have some sort of self-regenerative ability? This injury is healing far faster than I’d expect given the treatment I’m administering. ::a beat, glancing over:: For that matter, you healed remarkably fast yourself – now that I think about it.
Vahljeahn/Morgan/K’Wara: Responses
Roy tilted the tricorder slightly, watching the data scroll. Cellular regeneration rate was elevated. Inflammatory markers were dropping rapidly. No sign of other external stimuli, save for some trace airborn chemicals he hadn’t read a moment ago.
And yet… measurable improvement.
He hadn’t done anything special. In fact, he’d only just started.
Bancroft: Inflammatory suppression is off the charts in this patient. Internal wound closure is progressing faster than this protoplaser alone should account for. Something’s boosting this.
Vahljeahn/Morgan/K’Wara: Responses
TAG/TBC!
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Ensign Roy Bancroft
Medical Officer
USS Artemis-A
A240205RB1