To: , ,
        , ,
        , "JustKenning"
        
From: "Jay  P Hailey" 
Reply-To: trekcreative{at}yahoogroups.com


Title: Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile
Author: Jay P Hailey (JayPHailey{at}yahoo.com) Series: MISC - TNG OCs
COdes: None
Part: 137/335(?)
Rating:[PG]
Archive: Fine with me, just tell me where. Disclaimer: Paramount owns all
things Star Trek.  I claim Original Characters and Situations for me.
Webpage HTTP://www.phoenixinn.iwarp.com/jayphailey

Civil Disorder
by
Jay P. Hailey
And
Dennnis Washburn
(Stardate 49017)

"Hailey here, go ahead." I said. I was grateful to have my
ruminations interrupted.

"Captain, there is something you should see here." It was
Stephanie Anderson, my Chief of Security.

"What is it?" I asked.

I'd rather not say on the Intercom, Sir. We're in section 240 on deck
Nine." That was the stables area where live stock for the Colony was
being kept.

"I'll be right there."

I left my office and took the turbo lift down to the Colonist's section of
the Discovery. I didn't get down there as often as I would have liked.
There was often more nit-picky busy-work to being Captain than I expected.

The stables area was the second biggest allotment of space in the Saucer
Section. It was two decks tall and reasonably open. Cargo holds had been
modified to hold the animals and one spectacular area had been opened up to
allow animals to be walked and exercised. There were horses and cows. They
were the generic Earth models. I wasn't exactly sure why that was until I
remembered the Borg attack on El-Au. No farm animals really made it off the
planet. The El-Aurians had trained with and adopted mostly Earth animals
for their colony.

The smell was...interesting. There is nothing else like the smell of
stables full of animals. It was not what you'd expect from a Flagship of
the Federation, but for some reason that made me happy. The Discovery
wasn't like any other ship in the fleet. We weren't separate, but we were
taking the Starfleet "book" in a direction that it hadn't gone
before.

I walked over to the spot where Stephanie was standing. She was stationed
outside the sheep pens. She didn't look happy. There were several of our
"Redshirt" security officers nearby. I recognized Arthur
Hendrickson among them. They were keeping the sheep pens isolated.

"What's up?" I asked as I walked up.

Stephanie motioned me inside the sheep pen. I walked inside and saw the
little girl. She was ten years old. Her name was Mary-Anne Foote and she
had been beaten to death. There was quite a bit of blood although a lot of
it had run into the drains that littered the decks.

"Jesus Christ." I said. The smell of death hung in the air mixed
with manure and sweaty animal. "What in the hell happened here?"

"Snoopy found her." Stephanie said. "He called me right
away. We locked down the scene and called for you."

"Okay." I said. Why did she call me first? "Send someone to
go find Aaron and then begin your investigation, Lieutenant
Commander." I turned to go out side and then I saw a forlorn heap of
white fur. I went over to look at it. "Oh, shit." I said. It was
a lamb. It was dead. It had been savagely beaten, too. I just looked at
Stephanie. Her face was blank. Of course. She had been a police officer
back on Earth. Although most crimes were rare on Earth, human nature said
that there would occasionally be violence. Had Stephanie seen this all
before? I tried to think of what kind of maniac would beat a girl and her
little lamb to death and my mind came up blank.

"I'm going to clear out and stop messing up your evidence." I
said. I was fighting back tears. I stepped outside and let my eyes water
for a bit. It wasn't the first dead body that I had seen. A career in
Starfleet means that you see too many dead people. But a little girl? And
her pet lamb for the love of mike? What was the lamb going to do, tell on
him? It was a bit strong.

Aaron came up. "Jay, what's wrong?"

I waved him into the pen. Stephanie showed him the bodies.

"Oh, no." He said. He sounded a little choked, too. "That's
Mary Anne Foote." He came back out of the sheep pen. "What
happened, Captain?"

"We're investigating, now." I said. The implication hit home.
"Some where on this ship there is a killer. Either in my crew or your
colonists and we're going to find him." I said.

Aaron took a deep breath. "All right, Captain. What do you want me to do?"

"I guess we're going to have to tell her next of kin." I said.

Aaron got grim. "Yeah. I know."

Soon the security people finished their scans. Now as complete a record as
possible had been made of the crime scene. Mary-Anne was transported to
sickbay, where Dr. Burlington would do an obligatory autopsy.

-*-

The Footes took the news as well as anyone could expect. Dena Foote looked
like she had been stabbed. She just turned pale. Justin Foote was small
neat man with a bald spot and a kindly face. He wasn't angry he was just
desperately curious.

"What happened?" He asked.

I told him what we knew, which wasn't enough. "We're investigating,
Mr. Foote. We'll get to the bottom of this."

"But how could this happen?" He asked he was as confused as any
of the rest of us. "Do you mean that some one in the colony killed
her?"

"Not necessarily, Justin." Aaron said.

"Well who then? One of Captain Hailey's crew? That kind of limits our
suspects, doesn't it?" Justin Foote said.

"We don't know. But we're going to find out, Sir." I said.

"Please do, Captain." He said. "Please find out what happened."

-*-

As soon as we were finished, Dr. Burlington called me to sickbay. I hurried
to that part of the Discovery and Dr. Burlington met me inside the door.

"The girl was not beaten." Dr. Burlington said.

"What? But the...The damage..." I didn't have the right words to
describe Mary Anne's face. It was pretty bad.

"The girl had a very high amount of seratonin in her blood stream and
her brain." Dr. Burlington said.

"What's seratonin?"

"It's a neurotransmitter. It's one of the chemicals that carries
messages between neurons in the brain." Dr. Burlington explained.
"The amount of seratonin in the girl's body was over 1000% percent of
what we would expect to find."

"Mary Anne." I said.

"What?" Dr. Burlington asked.

"The girl's name was Mary Anne." I said.

Dr. Burlington just looked at me for a moment. "Yes, Sir. Mary Anne
had a lot of seratonin in her brain. Other damage to her body suggests that
she went into a seizure."

"What? What does that mean?" I asked.

"She beat herself to death against the deck, Captain. The effect was
like a prolonged, powerful epileptic seizure. The damage is all consistent
with that effect." Dr. Burlington said.

I looked at her confused. "She had an epileptic seizure?"

"For all intents and purposes, yes. The effect would be just the same."

I remembered all the blood. "That must have been quite a seizure."

"It's nothing that I would want to witness." Burlington said.

"That still doesn't explain the lamb, though." I said.

"What lamb?" Dr. Burlington asked.

"Mary's lamb." I couldn't help it. "Mary's little lamb. It
was dead too, in much the same way."

Dr. Burlington just looked at me again for a moment. I realized that she
was very good at hiding shocked or angry expressions in that way. It was
just a sort of "Are you serious? Rethink what you just said
carefully," look.

"I wish someone had told me." Dr. Burlington said. "Captain,
I need to examine the lamb, too."

"Okay." I called down to Security at the sheep pen and had them
prepare the body. They beamed the little lamb right onto a surgical bed.

Doctor Burlington was right on top of as it materialized. She inserted a
probe into the lamb's head. It looked like she had stuck a large needle
wired into a console into the lamb. There was a small laser cutter on the
end of the probe with allowed it to pass straight into the lamb's head.
There was no blood and no noise. It looked a little surreal.

Burlington turned on the scanner and a diagram of the sheep's brain
appeared on the main view screen.

"Scan for seratonin levels. Warn of excess and specify amount."
Burlington said.

"Working." The computer said. It wasn't the standard Federation
computer voice. It was a soft, male voice. "Scan finished. High
seratonin levels noted. Scan indicates amounts in excess of 1200%
present."

"Save data." Burlington said, thoughtfully.

"Specify file name."

"Mary's little lamb." Burlington said.

"What could cause that?" I asked.

"The high seratonin levels? Lots of things. That's not the problem,
it's a symptom." She said thoughtfully.

"Well, let me know." I said.

I had time to get all the way back to my office. I was thinking. No one
seemed to have a motive to kill Mary Anne Foote herself. Her death might be
a side effect. Of what? If we knew what killed her, then we'd have a clue
about why.

Dr. Burlington called me as I settled in. "I know what killed Mary
Anne Foote." Dr. Burlington said.

"Good. What?" I said. That was fast.

"Some sort of toxic gas." Dr. Burlington said. "Both Mary
Anne and her lamb have residue of it in their lungs."

"What was the gas?" I asked. This was very bad. Poison gas on a
starship? We only had so much air with us. What we had would have to do. If
some accident made it unbreathable then we would have to hold our breath
and hope the life support equipment could fix it in less than four minutes.
If it was deliberate act, then someone had risked the whole ship and
everyone on it.

"I don't know what the gas was specifically." Dr. Burlington
said. That was very bad. It began to rule out accidents. Every substance in
use on the Discovery was listed in the computer somewhere. If the computer
could not identify the gas that killed Mary Anne Foote, then it was not
something that belonged on the ship.

"Okay. Prepare to deal with it if more people are poisoned with that
stuff." I said.

Dr. Burlington nodded shortly and cut the channel.

"Hailey to Bridge." I called.

"McCoy here. Sir." Lucas McCoy was third in command of Discovery
and handled the evening shift watch on the bridge.

"Sound yellow alert and then isolate the stables, Mr. McCoy. We may
have a toxic spill into the atmosphere on Deck 9."

"Aye, Sir." Yellow alert sounded.

"Address intership." I said. The computer beeped to let me know
that my voice was being carried all over the Discovery. "This is the
Captain. May I have your attention, please?" I waited a couple of
beats. "We are currently at a state of yellow alert. There has been a
spill of toxic chemicals on deck nine. We will begin search and
decontamination procedures immediately. Anyone currently caught on deck
nine, do not panic. I was just there and I am suffering no symptoms. This
is a precautionary alert. Security and Engineering crews responsible for
life support and the Mary Anne Foote investigation report to Lieutenant
Commander McCoy for assignment. Close intership."

As soon as I finished talking I got up and went back down to deck nine.


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