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Episode 02: Cosmic Imperative / Re: Ch 4: S [Day 1 | 1810 hrs] A Friend Indeed...
Last post by TWilkins -“What’s that about potatoes?” Sylvain asked with a somewhat bewildered expression, his attempts to turn his head to look in Cora’s direction being somewhat impeded by the Moopsy that had suddenly made a rather energised attempt to chow-down upon Sylvain’s neck. That, and the sudden, diabolical, craving that emerged in his gut, a desperate yearning to stretch his own mouth that wide, around a plate of hot fish and chips. “No… No…” He chided the creature, attempting to peel its gummy maw away from the sensitive skin on his neck, growing ever-more conscious that perhaps stuffing the animal into his shirt hadn’t been the most prudent course of action. “I’m not food, please…” His complaints continued, one hand battling with the creature’s attempts to suckle the life out of him, whilst the other continued attempting to scan the Moopsy with his tricorder, all the while trying to pay more attention to Cora’s commentary regarding potatoes…
And mentally, he was very much trying to repress the thought of how much slobber was now soaking into the red material of his undershirt.
Cora’s words didn’t exactly fill the Ensign with any great sense of relief. From what the woman was describing, the data she was reading out from the PDA that she’d pilfered, the Savi appeared to have conducted some sort of extreme genetic engineering on the Moopsy that Sylvain was attempting to peel away from his throat… He managed to steal a glance at Cora’s padd, and the few sentences he managed to get through before the Moopsy had resumed its chomp upon his flesh, hadn’t sounded good… An expedited gestational period? Degenerative dental enzymes? The evidence strongly indicated that the Savi were transforming the poor creatures into a biologically enhanced weapon of mass destruction, one that would leave minimal environmental damage, nor evidence, given their penchant for digesting bone matter, before starving to death after the dental enzyme had gotten to work and caused premature tooth loss…
“That’s barbaric…” The Ensign recoiled as he spoke, an expression of equal parts horror and disgust painted upon his face, his temperament, for perhaps the first time, in full agreement with Cora’s stance. “I know we’re desperate for allies… But this is… It’s just…” He found himself at a loss for words. “What’s to stop them from transporting a thousand of these genetically enhanced creatures onto a Federation space station? Or Earth? Or Vulcan or Betazed?” He thought of his Mother, of Starfleet Academy, of the seals basking upon the beaches of the North Sea… The Parasites might wipe out everything if the crew of the Theurgy failed at their grander mission, but what was to stop the Savi doing the same if he and Cora ignored this very obvious threat... “With the Savi cloaking technology, by the time anyone knew what was happening, it would already be too late to stop it… It would be one thing if the Savi were engineering them to combat Borg or something, but doing it with- no! Stop it!” Sylvain’s sentence became detached as the Moopsy that had, for a moment, placated itself with batting its paw at the collar of Sylvain’s jacket, returned to attempting to feast upon his neck.
Worst of all, Cora seemed to find it amusing.
Sylvain returned his hand to the Moopsy’s diabolically squishy thorax, cradling its underbelly within his palm, before yoinking the creature off from his neck once more, gritting his teeth as he gave its squashy body a firm tug. The pull was enough force to break the suction against his pale skin, which, as Cora had so disturbingly commented, would probably leave a mark, a glorious souvenir of a mission to bring back to the Theurgy. Assuming he survived, of course… The motion did have an unintended side-effect however, which Sylvain only realised as he watched the Moopsy’s entire body flop into an arc that flung ropes of saliva outwards across the maintenance tube, thankfully, in a trajectory that curved away from him…
He was certainthat there was a word for it, when, at the end of the motion, a healthy rope of Moopsy spittle hung precariously from Cora’s chin, a second decorating the side of her clearly painstakingly maintained hair… Sylvain had to bite his lip to stop an uncharacteristic laugh from boiling out of his throat. He believed that Humans tended to call such a series of events, karma.
“I know I just berated you for getting us into this predicament, but... You’re not wrong, wanting to put a stop to this…” Sylvain affirmed Cora’s earlier statement, once he’d gotten control over his amusement wracked body, and the rather feeble remainders of his sanity had returned to the forefront of his mind. “But, even just one level up… That’s a long way…” He thought of how many Savi there would be on a vessel as massive as the Erudite. “And if we get caught, it could jeopardise the alliance even further; they could take retaliation against everyone on the ship…” The risks were astronomical… But that didn’t mean that Sylvain was comfortable not doing anything about the Savi’s genocidal payload.
The Ensign’s brow furrowed in thought as he weighed up he and Cora’s options… On one hand, they could attempt to get back to the rest of their crew, inform Commander Leavitt... That would be the Starfleet approved course of action, but the Ensign couldn't help but doubt if it would accomplish anything; he didn't expect that the Commander had the negotiating power to prevent the Savi from dabbling in genocide… On the other hand, he and Cora could make an attempt to reach the aforementioned gene-therapy centre, but even if they made it there, and that was a big ‘if’, what would it achieve? They didn’t have any gear or equipment on them that would allow them to put a stop to the Savi operations, and even if they did, it would hardly be subtle… The cogs continued to whirr within Sylvain’s mind, set to the soundtrack of Cora attempting to scrape Moopsy saliva off of her, his neck and right collarbone absolutely sodden with drool, to the point that the Ensign figured that his first port of call ought to be finding an alternative mode of travel for the Moopsy…
He couldn’t save them all, but perhaps he could get this one away from the Savi at least.
“Moopsy…” A forlorn little noise squeeked out of the creature’s mouth as Sylvain pondered such topics.
“Yeah, I know bud…” He empathised with the squishy little creature nestled within his palm, looking down at his body in the hopes of spotting something that might have worked as an effective Moopsy transportation device. The only thing that came to mind was the small side-pouch that was mounted upon the hip of his combat harness, a small velcro bag that contained a couple of emergency tools for use in field operations; some emergency rations, a locator beacon, a wrist mounted illumination device… He wagered that such things would fit in his pockets comfortably enough…
“What do you think it can eat now, given its lack of teeth and such?” Sylvain queried aloud to Cora, changing the subject to better prevent his mind from spiraling into a pit of despair, his free hand removing the contents of the combat pouch rapidly, dumping the items onto the floor of the maintenance hatch when the Moopsy began making an attempt at devouring his wrist. “There you go bud, nice and snug…” The Ensign continued as he manoeuvred the creature into his hip-pouch, strapping the velcro down against its chunky body, confident that it was secure enough, without being too-tight on the gelatinous little blob. “We really should give it a name too, it feel’s rude calling it, ‘it’, all the time…” Sylvain began the arduous task of collecting the items he’d dumped on the floor of the tube, and made a haphazard effort to return them to his pockets.
“Yoghurt? That’s got a high calcium content right? As something it can eat, not a name…” Sylvain’s idle postulation on what to feed a toothless Moopsy, was mostly to keep his mind distracted from the harrowing reality of their predicament… “I know you mentioned potatoes earlier, but I don’t see how that would work…” He glanced down at the squishy white head that had popped out from underneath the velcro flap of the pouch, it’s enormous eyes once again doing things to Sylvain’s heart that caused him both physical, and emotional, pain. “Maybe as a name?” He pondered orally, whilst mentally, his mind fought upon a battleground made up of the insane circumstances that he and Cora had found themselves in.
They were already on a mission that had been described multiple times, as suicide, and yet, every passing hour seemed to add weight to their shoulders. Not only were he and Cora stranded within an unauthorised part of the Erudite, possibly to be blamed for the death of one of their researchers, but now they also had to contend with the knowledge that they’d just uncovered a genetically engineered bioweapon designed to eradicate entire planets, conscious that, in reality, there was little that they could do to stop it.
“Perhaps the replicators can create some sort of bone broth, I’m sure there has to be some sort of bone-based Klingon delicacy in the Federation database, right?” His mind continued to tick as he babbled about yoghurt and potatoes, hands busy with the task of stuffing the former contents of his tactical pouch back into his pockets, trying valiantly to avoid the Moopsy-head that was poking out of said pouch, which was attempting to gum at his limbs as they passed by. His mind was still flickering between his conversation about Moopsy-friendly cuisine, the reality of their circumstances, the fact that Cora had started talking about potatoes, and the Moopsy now clamped to his hip, quite a concoction of subjects, when Sylvain’s fingers brushed against something that made him freeze.
A transport enhancer…
“Hey…” It was as if all the cogs and levers he’d imagined within his mind had suddenly lined up into a symposium of perfect symphony, because, as if by magic, Sylvain had an idea… An absolutely insane, career-ending, likely-suicidal, idea… But an idea nonetheless. He might have gone as far as to label it, a 'Theurgy-level' idea. “...I don’t suppose that Intelligence posting means you’re competent with hacking, does it?” Sylvain turned to the woman, probably sounding like a lunatic after making such an abrupt transmission between bone-based cuisine and electronic espionage, before holding the transport enhancers towards her, a cold sweat prickling on the back of his neck… He realised, in quite a heart-pounding revelation, that he was about to suggest that the pair do the most insane thing he’d ever done in his life. “Because I bet there’s a few Savi on the Hobus Station that would find the Moopsies just as cute as we did…”
“Moopsy!” The little voice yapped up from the pouch upon his side, and though it was impossible, the timing suggested that it was in agreement. With a rather confused expression pulling at his lips, the Yathho hybrid glanced back up towards Cora with a face that was somewhere between vague confidence, and absolute hysteria… He reckoned that the only reason he hadn’t yet had a psionic-induced breakdown, was because his mind was so bloody full of subjects, that his precognitive receptors weren’t able to function; he’d probably have a migraine for a week after this. He couldn't even fathom where such a brazen idea had come from; it certainly wasn't a scheme he'd developed based on data or analysis... It was like it just popped out of thin air and landed on his lap, glowing like a latinum bar. It was mad. It almost certainly violated about eighteen Starfleet codes. Yet, he couldn't get the necessity of such a plan out of his head...
“Well, it looks like Potato agrees… What do you say Petty Officer Davidson? Fancy getting a bioweapon out of the hands of a technologically advanced species with questionable morals?”
