Animal, Mineral, or Vegetable

Posted on 06 Aug 2021 @ 9:46pm by Lieutenant Elli-Navine
Edited on on 17 Jun 2023 @ 11:00am

Mission: M2 - Sanctuary
Location: In orbit of Catan, Potemkin's Shuttlebay
Timeline: After Episode #13
825 words - 1.7 OF Standard Post Measure

After much initial excitement had passed, Elli-Navine re-approached the USS Atalanta. She'd gone back to look around and see if it was different without Pride aboard. Even though she wasn't really sneaking, she felt like she could hear every one of her boot falls echoing entirely too loudly in the bay. Could the alien ship hear them? Did it 'know' she was approaching? She looked at the form of it from the 'nose' and had a creepy feeling wash over her again. It was the shape of the alien skulls, the tens of thousands of elongated, flat looking skulls in the burial grounds. As she stared into what her instincts said were 'eye sockets', her rational mind corrected her, reminding her they were really just air intakes. The lower 'jaw' were weapons modules mounted around airfoils. It wasn't alive, not alive-alive. But Elli could feel the little hairs on the back of her neck all standing up and her gut telling her a predator was looming.

"Hello, there!"

Her nerves having been primed by her inspection of the Atalanta, Elli reeled back and whipped around, swinging her tool kit up in front of herself defensively.

There stood the ships' Medical Chief, boisterous as ever, within inches of where she once stood. "Nice day we're having." He added, ignoring Elli's reaction as he walked on by, cup of rakta in hand.

Elli tried to recompose herself . "Oh, it's just you," she intoned, annoyed. "You shouldn't sneak up on people like that."

"Me? Stealthy?" Alexander uttered under his breath, "that's a new one," as he swirled the Klingon coffee around in the cup. He raised his voice, changing the subject, "What had you so engrossed, anyway?"

"I just wanted to get another look, inside I mean." Elli explained. "I wanted to see... you know, if it's any different when Commander Pride is away from it."

"Yes," The doctor took a sip before continuing, "I'd like to know how it behaves, too."

"Creeps me out." Elli muttered as they approached the boarding entry. "It's like it's animal and machine, but not animal or machine." She paused at the code pad and wondered with no small amount of anxiety... "You don't suppose it can hear my thoughts, right now?" Did it know she didn't trust it? Would that potentially upset it?

Alexander leaned forward towards her, pursing his lips, "Try not to think about just how much you want to dissect it in a lab, then... yes?" He smirked.

"I don't really know what I'd dissect, to be honest." She entered the code she and Scott had figured out. She was really getting to like code cracking with him. It felt a little like getting to play a thief in an action movie— always just a little thrilling and uncertain. The ship revealed the gangway and Elli climbed up, looking every which way with distrust and awe. "It's just so weird." She unholstered her tricorder and an extra sensor and recording device she'd brought to expand the analysis. "I mean its structure *is* metallic, but look at how it's arranged, almost like cellular patterns. It's not alive, but there's no way I could match anything it's made of with replication or fabrication! It must be cloned or like, grown in a vat or something crazy."

The doctor had followed her up and was glancing about. "It's obviously changing shape at the will of the user, even colors... but how?" He asked while eyeing a particular corner of the ceiling, as if looking about for a bogeyman. His movements were slow and steady as he pulled his medical tricorder out of its' holster and opened it up. Little lights began flashing and the usual chorus of chirps indicated scanner activation. His blue eyes moved back and forth from one part of the ship to another, glancing down at the readings between each suspecting stare at another seemingly innocuous panel or grate.

"Some kind of telepathy?" Elli guessed helplessly. "I hope you can figure something out about its... biology? Makeup? Because this is a fighter, and Pride is likely to take it into a fight, and aside from some general operating diagnostics, there's not much I can say or do. I can't patch her. We need to develop a whole new set of tools to even try. Probably bio-equivalent to what usual ship maintenance entails."

Elli touched a panel tentatively and the blank slate did it's morphing thing into familiar buttons and controls. It made her skin crawl. "I don't like it." She reiterated, following up with a sigh of resignation. "But I'm glad we're both here. We need to find a way to adapt a medical approach to effect repairs. I have a few ideas to test out on the plating and systems to see what potential regeneration effects we can get." Elli cracked her knuckles. "Let's trade some notes and see what we can come up with... Together."