The image hangs in the air before me, rotating slowly around its vertical axis, and I stare at it with eyes gritty from fatigue. It is a thing of formidable complexity, a molecule whose links and loops and intricate doublings-back upon itself make me dizzy even to look at it. It is the core of the Kobali virus, and I have been studying it now for what seems like a decade.
"Results still negative," rumbles Toriash. On the other side of the bioscience lab, Siowxayer shakes his massive head, slowly.
"Rrueo is drowning in negativity," I say crossly. Then I sigh. "It is time for Rrueo to face facts. What we are looking for, we have not found. There is no mutation of the Kobali virus."
"Such is my assessment also," says Siowxayer in tones of enormous weariness.
I sit down, heavily. My officers follow suit. With an irritated movement, I touch a control panel, and the image of the virus winks out.
"This leaves Rrueo in a heightened state of perplexity," I grumble. "Mutation of the virus did not kill those colonists. But they are inarguably dead. What, therefore, did kill them?"
Siowxayer's weary tones continue. "Cellular degradation and decomposition... consistent with the effects of a virus." A virus enters a cell, consumes it from within, uses the material to replicate itself, then erupts out leaving nothing but wreckage behind. "But there is no virus. None, at any rate, that we can detect, that could cause this. So...."
"A puzzle," says Toriash.
"A puzzle that has killed four thousand people so far," I say, "and might kill more if not solved. Including, by the by, us. Rrueo thinks we should devote effort to finding the solution." I smooth my drooping whiskers with one claw. "So. Some other way of producing the same effect. A tuned low-intensity disruptor field, perhaps? Something like a Varon-T disruptor, only slower?"
"A tempting possibility," says Toriash, "but no. Blanketing the settlement with such an effect would have induced cell disintegration in all the colonists, at the same time. The records indicate that was not so."
"Some of the Kobali might have had greater natural resistance than others...." I snarl. "Rrueo is committing the basic error of clinging to a theory despite contrary evidence. You are right, Toriash, this thing spread like a conventional plague. We know this from the colony's records." I stand up. "Rrueo will go now to see if anything more is known from the colony's records."
---
Oschmann and K'Rokok have taken over my ready room, and are studying the plethora of records which we downloaded. Or, at least, that is the theory. In practice, the human and the Klingon are glowering and sniping at each other. They fall silent when I enter, and exchange sullen glances.
K'Rokok is my first officer... during the Tiaza Zephora incident, though, shortly before my former ship the Anar was snatched out of normal space-time, he was injured in a fall in Engineering. So, in his and my absence, Oschmann took command of the Anar during that time... a matter neither of them has forgotten. I repress a snarl. Rivalry is supposed to be a potent motivating force among junior officers - that, at any rate, is the KDF's official doctrine. Sometimes, I wonder if I should be in Starfleet, after all.
"Have you discovered anything?" I ask them.
"The human thinks she has something," says K'Rokok with a very definite sneer. Oschmann responds with a hollow-eyed glare. She holds up a datapad.
"I have summarized the off-world contacts from the colony's communications records," she says. "It seemed a logical first step."
"Assuming that the disease is not native to the planet," K'Rokok snaps.
"We assume nothing," I say. "Oschmann is right, this was a necessary preliminary. What have you found?"
"Free traders and explorers passing through the system, mostly," says Oschmann. "We might try to track them all - it would be a formidable job, though."
This is, sadly, true. Though there are major powers in the Delta Quadrant, they are often isolationist, at odds with each other, or generally wrapped up in their own concerns - there is no sort of concord, no international agreements that might enable the movements of ships like these to be charted. The biggest single organized force in the Quadrant... is the Borg Collective. Something tells me the Borg are unlikely to be amenable to a request for contact tracing.
"However, one ship is interesting," Oschmann continues. "First, it was the last one to come through the system before the plague began. Secondly, it was accompanied by a Hazari security escort."
"Those mercenaries work for anyone who pays," grumbles K'Rokok.
"But the fact that this ship's owners paid for such security... is interesting," says Oschmann. "The ship was called the Temur, a survey vessel of the Kadirian Alliance."
"Rrueo has not heard of this Alliance," I say.
"It is a very small alliance," Oschmann says. "Three systems, if my sources can be trusted. One species... and that small in number."
"Yes," says K'Rokok, "and that leads to the point which makes your suppositions nonsense. Tell the General the rest!"
"The Kadirians did not actually land at the Kobali settlement," Oschmann says. "They deployed holograms. An entire survey team of self-aware holograms, handled by a single emitter module roughly the size of one of our Class IV probes. Apparently, the Kadirians are so under-populated that they have to make extensive use of photonic workers."
"And if you can explain how a squad of holograms could pass a disease on to the Kobali," sneers K'Rokok, "then I am sure the General would be amused to hear it!"
"Enough," I snap. "Rrueo has a headache already. Rrueo does not want to hear more bickering."
"The chances of an accidental infection seem remote," says Oschmann. "But if the Kadirians were testing some sort of weapon - particularly a biological weapon -"
"Then holograms would make sense as a distribution agent," I say.
"Why would these Kadirians attack the Kobali in such a way?" K'Rokok demands.
"Why would they not?" Oschmann snaps back. "The Kobali are hardly well-regarded, as a species. A single, remote, settlement of theirs - it might seem an ideal place for such a test. Especially as the plague seems to have begun in the colony's central complex, meaning the main subspace transmitters were sealed off under quarantine very quickly. It was just good luck that a hobbyist had a transmitter outside, that we intercepted the distress call -"
"It is possible," I say. "As a working hypothesis, it is possible." I grimace. "It does not explain one thing - the apparent absence of an actual virus. That still perplexes Rrueo."
"We need further scientific assistance," says K'Rokok. "I mean no disrespect, General, but -"
"But our facilities are limited. Rrueo agrees. But the KDF is stretched thinly in this quadrant, and there are many calls on our attention."
"There is a possibility." Oschmann looks as though she has a foul taste in her mouth, and the single light is burning fiercely in the tower of her mind. "Starfleet has apparently sent a Dauntless-class science vessel into the quadrant, with a roving commission. If we could persuade them to rove in our direction -"
Oschmann has no love for Starfleet. But the suggestion is sound, nonetheless. "Starfleet's scientists can be useful. And the Dauntless class, reportedly, has excellent military potential. Very well. Let us signal our Starfleet allies, and let us track this Kadirian vessel." K'Rokok looks as if he is about to register a vehement objection; I raise one hand to forestall him. "It is a starting point. We must take this investigation in some direction, and this is the first that has offered itself." I permit myself a doleful shake of the head. "Rrueo hopes it will be a fruitful one."
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