Cavan/Arvelion: "The Fever" Part 2
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“The Fever” Part Two
Lt. Cmdr. Elinor Cavan, M.D.
Chief Medical Officer
U.S.S. Galaxy
Col. For’kel Suum-Arvelion, SFMC
Commanding Officer
188TH Starfleet Marines Detachment- “The Furies”
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The doctor is in…
The atmosphere of New Brasov was denser than anticipated. The runner handled it with all the grace of a brick being thrown through a vat of gelatin. Shuddering as though it was freezing cold as it made its descent rapidly through the clouds. The landscape that resolved through the viewport was a vision in rustic tranquility, rolling fields of a purplish tuber plant and, in the distance, the stark, grey scars of the mines. The settlement of Bran itself was a cluster of sturdy, prefabricated structures mingled with locally quarried stone buildings, all looking like they’d been there for a hundred centuries, not a mere few decades.
Ellie sat the runner down on the circular burnt out landing pad. It was not a large area by any means, but it was sizable enough for the runner and for any other small crafts to load up on minerals— she postulated.
The Constable was waiting for her as she opened the hatch. Her boots crunched with more than just gravel underfoot as she walked to greet him. Duranium and Tritanium ore. It confirmed that they were not teleporting their ores, they used manual transport, which seemed rather odd. All things considered. An inefficient, messy process for a colony with this level of technology. She filed it away into the constantly running catalog in her mind.
“You are Doctor Cavan?” Constable Stolnic approached her with his hand outstretched. His voice sounded like his larynx was run through a rock tumbler, then soaked in honey, giving it an almost brambled quality that was unmatched. “I am Constable Stolnic. Welcome to New Brasov. We... we are grateful for your assistance.”
His eyes darted from her face to the tips of her Vulcan ears to her scarred, non-regulation runner, a vessel that clearly belonged to someone who operated outside of standard protocols.
“Constable,” Ellie nodded, hefting her heavy, clanking field kit. She made no move to shake his hand. “We can dispense with the pleasantries and move onto the unpleasant business, I need to see the granary.”
He put his hand in his pocket, seeming unaffected by the custom. “The... the granary? But, Doctor, the bodies are at the med-center in stasis. I thought you would want to—”
“The bodies are patient, the crime scene —however— is not,” Ellie hefted her kit over her shoulder with a wince. Her tone was flat and final. “Lead on.”
With a simple nod the colony’s chief security officer escorted their guest to his null-g cruiser and drove her the 10 or so minutes down one of the few roads in town to what looked on the outside to be a classical windmill. While it still functioned as a windmill, the actual granary aspect had been automated. Inside, despite the wooden exterior construction, were rugged consoles and mechanical storage and transport rollers dating from the 2350s.
There was a consistent hum in the background, indicative of devices powered down but not turned off. The blood splatters were still visible, though by now any trace of color dissipated leaving only a uniform slick of brown.
“This is where we found the bodies…” The middle aged detective took a knee a safe distance away so as not to disturb anything. “We’ve kept the building sealed as it was when they were found. The victims here were two local kids, Justina Mikoluc and Bogdan Elescu. Both were found half dressed…” The Constable took a long and exceedingly hard swallow as he tried to deny the assumptions at play.
Ellie looked at him sympathetically. It was hard for some to deal with the trauma of such a violent act. However, facts were facts and it needed to be discussed. “Cause of death was blunt force trauma according, your reports said— that would be consistent with the machinery here.” She began the precursory inspection.
“That is what the Doctor said…” The Constable’s voice grew weary. “There were no weapons found and the force required…” he shook his head.
“No security records?” She looked up, already knowing the answer, verifying all the same.
“There are no security records… The granary is private property owned by the Belikov family. Their alibis checked out, but they’ve agreed to speak with you if you desire.”
Her tricorder whirled, her eyes did not leave it as she spoke. “I desire,” her voice even. “A lack of security seems a bit of profound naivete or deliberate convenience. It is a matter of which form of betting person you are, I suppose and I— for one— am not much of a gambler.”
She swept the tricorder around, recording the brutal scene. “This place was a predator’s wet dream. It is secluded. There is not a lick of monitoring to be had. Witnesses? Never heard of them. It is practically a white van that says FREE CANDY on the side for this town. Someone either knew these kids would be in here or someone brought them here.”
After some time, she snapped shut her tricorder. “Would you please take me to the morgue? I need to have an in depth conversation with Justina and Bogdan. They will tell me what else is amiss. Then, we can go talk with the Belkovs.”
*****
The medical center was located in central Bran. An unassuming sandy stone colored ashlar brick building that could easily be mistaken as a themed restaurant if it was located literally anywhere else, framed with spice bushes and a knotty pine tree that smelled like it would likely die within a year— was this colony’s state of the art medical center. Part of Ellie was extremely charmed. The other part of her was extremely concerned that they used leeches and blood letting for treatments.
It was not aided by the added authenticity that Doctor Petru Zohan looked remarkably like Vincent Price. There are dopplegangers… and there is Dr. Zohan who looked so much like Vincent Price that it was so eerie that when he spoke and that squeaky little voice came out of him, Ellie literally had to contain her laughter.
“Doctor Cavan, I’ve done all the standard tox screens and scans. The reports are in the system. It’s… it’s all so brutal. Unprecedented,” Dr. Zohan was wringing his hands nervously. His voice squeaked on every other syllable, like a prepubescent boy. Ellie bit back a smile. It was too much.
Ellie cleared her throat, mainly to clear away the last vestiges of any laughter remaining in her system from the absurdity of helium voiced Vincent Price here. “Not my first unprecedented case, Doctor,” she said with a small nod as they walked to the chilled room. “The two from the granary. Justina and Bogdan? I will see them first.”
Zohan, surprisingly, did not argue or defend his prior work like many of these small planetary residential doctors. He rushed to the controls of the cryo-pods that he used to keep the victims uncontaminated and brought down the stasis fields on the two units. The lids hissed open, revealing the brutalized bodies of the two young colonists.
Ellie donned a pair of synth-leather gloves with a definitive snap, the sound echoing in the tiled room. She leaned over Justina Mikoluc’s body, her gaze clinical and absorbent, a stark contrast to Zohan's nervous energy and Stolnic's pale-faced silence by the door.
“Your initial cause of death was correct Doctor,” she stated, not looking up from the massive cranial fracture. “Blunt force trauma. But your theory about the weapon is off.”
She picked up a medical scanner, using its beam like one would use a laser pointer during a lecture. “See the patterning here? The microfractures and the specific density of the contusion? This was not a pipe or a rock. And it certainly was not a piece of grain machinery.” She moved to Bogdan’s body to compare a contusion on his ribcage. “The impact surface was large, flat, and organic. Dense. This was done with immense physical strength. A single, overpowering blow for each.”
“What does that mean?” Constable Stolnic looked ill. He clearly did not want to be in there, let alone see these kids like this again.
“It means you are looking for someone with immense physical strength,” Ellie brushed a stray flyaway hair with her forearm. “This person has fists like sledgehammers.” She continued her examination. “You see they were interrupted.”
“Interrupted? How can you tell?” Zohan practically gasped, but it was merely his squeaky voice that was probably his intonation all the time.
“Bogdan’s left arm. The ulna is shattered, a classic defensive fracture. He saw the second blow coming. The first was for her. Instant, silent. The second was for him, but he had a fraction of a second to react. The killer had to strike again to finish the job. It broke the rhythm. Made it messy,” She moved down the table, her scanner hovering over their hands. “No tissue under their fingernails. No signs of a struggle beyond Bogdan’s arm. They were taken completely by surprise. They trusted their attacker.”
Ellie straightened up, taking off her gloves and stretching her neck. “These two might be a crime of opportunity or passion. Maybe even both. Even though they are not your only crime here. Just a piece of the puzzle.”
She desperately wished she had an IV drip of coffee at this point, but there was no rest for the wicked. “Show me Iancu Molotov. I need to see these famous bite marks.”
Zohan nodded vigorously and scurried to a third stasis unit. The field deactivated with a hum, revealing the body of a young man. Iancu Molotov. Even in death, she could see the handsome features that had charmed an Orion scientist. But now, they were marred by two distinct injuries: a livid, cauterized phaser burn on his chest and, just as described, a set of brutal punctures on the side of his neck.
All her fatigue faded as Ellie leaned in with her high resolution scanner.
“The phaser burn is superficial. Type-1. Set to stun,” she murmured, more to herself than to announce to anyone else. “More an insult to our intelligence really. It is beyond obvious it did not kill him.” Her attention shifted completely to the neck wounds. She took several scans, the device whirring as it mapped every micron of the tears.
“This,” she pointed with her finger and the scanner. “This is the kill shot. The canines are the primary punctures, but see the smaller, parallel lacerations here? From the incisors. The spacing is all wrong for a humanoid, and the depth suggests a jaw strength that is off the charts.”
“The average bite strength of a human is 162 psi and this looks akin to 7000 psi,” she looked at the readings. Tracing the air above the puncture, she kept speaking. “Hell a Gorn bites at less than 5000 psi which is saying something about their jaws… the way this wound looks it snaps down. THUNK. And does not let go. However, it does not seem to tear it apart further, not ripping, like a croc would or even a snapping turtle. Look at the bruising. The subcutaneous hemorrhaging is concentrated directly around the punctures. It held on long enough for massive capillary rupture and did not thrash…”
She stood up, removing her gloves once more. “We are looking for something that kills with intention and not rage—- with the bite force of an industrial press.”
“And fists like sledgehammers?” Zohan offered.
Ellie let out a soft chuckle. “It seems so.”