Lt. Commander Tahna Meru - In Blood and Benamite (Part II)
Tahna Meru
((Clinic, Lower vIq'mItlh City))
Rain poured down, glancing off Meru’s uniform jacket and causing her steps to splash on the dark pavement. The clinic was located in the lower city, near the benamite mines that made the planet its fortune. Two unfriendly hired guards let the team inside, and Meru got the distinct impression they were there not to keep the clinic’s patients safe from outsiders, but instead to keep the civilians outside safe should a patient try to get out. The colony’s resources were spread thin, and the government didn’t seem keen on acknowledging the mystery drug making the rounds among the miners, not while they still lacked a solution.
Once inside, Meru let her jacket hood fall from her head. A sense of tension and unease hung in the air here, thick as the acrid scents of blood, sweat, and cleaning chemicals. If that weren’t overwhelming enough, the sight before them was… Well, Meru had never seen anything quite so desperate. There were more patients than there were beds, and Klingons spilled out of the dedicated treatment rooms into the corridor. Some were lucky enough to have a stretcher, others sat slumped against the wall. At best, the patients looked drunk. At worst, a few thrashed around violently, fighting imaginary enemies under their individual restraining fields.
Meru eyed one of the more violent patients, both pitying him and hoping his restraining field held, before turning to her team. She kept her voice low when she spoke, so she might not upset any of the patients, though enough of them were yelling and screaming that it was hardly necessary.
Tahna: Whatever they’re on appears to be an entirely new drug, it doesn’t match anything in any Klingon or Federation database. At low doses it’s intoxicating. At higher doses they get violent, experience psychosis, even seizures and death.
Neathler / Auricsdottir: Response
The clinicians barely had time to stop, greeting the Starfleet team with a grunt and a nod as they hurried past. It would have been natural to expect some hostility, as a Starfleet team meddling in Klingon affairs, but here everyone was too overwhelmed to care. Meru wished, likely not for the last time, that there was a doctor with them. But the team she had was capable, with a wide range of expertise. And they didn’t just need to find a way to counteract the drug, they needed to stop its distribution in the first place.
Tahna: There’s been no reported cases in the upper city. Whoever’s distributing it seems to only be interested in miners and other blue-collar workers down here.
Neathler / Auricsdottir: Response
That begged the question: did this have something to do with control of the mines, or perhaps a desire to destabilize the economy? It was far too early in the investigation to begin ascribing motive, but she kept those theories in the back of her mind, to return to when they’d gathered more information.
One of the Klingon patients who had not been under a restraining field in the hall caught sight of the Starfleet team, and his stare seemed to sharpen, his mouth curling into a snarl. He unleashed a string of Klingon curses, pointing at their group and talking to someone who wasn’t there. Meru did not reach for her phaser, though it sat heavy on her hip. Further antagonizing him (and all the patients in here) by drawing a weapon would do no good. Irritated either by his imagined companion’s response or the lack thereof, he charged the Starfleet team. Meru shifted her weight, ready to dodge out of his way, but a pair of clinicians caught him before he made it down the corridor, wrestling him back to a bed and into a restraining field, which he proceeded to pound on, still cursing.
Tahna: We need to identify what these drugs are, where they’re coming from, and how they’re being distributed so we can put a stop to it. The clinic has granted us access to all their medical records for review. They aren’t sure we’ll get coherent answers out of any of the patients, but it may be worthwhile to find out where they were before they started experiencing symptoms.
Neathler / Auricsdottir: Response
Lt. Commander Tahna Meru
First Officer
USS Gorkon (NCC-82293)
G239801TM4