Path: newsspool2.news.atl.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!elnk-atl-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!newsswing.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.net!prodigy.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!newsread.com!newsstand.newsread.com!POSTED.newshog.newsread.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated Approved: ascem@earthlink.net Organization: Better Living Thru TrekSmut Sender: ascem@earthlink.net Message-ID: <20041204172133.5849.qmail@web41904.mail.yahoo.com> From: Marcia Wilson-Cales MIME-Version: 1.0 Mailing-List: list ASCEML@yahoogroups.com; contact ASCEML-owner@yahoogroups.com Subject: "Corpses Are Not Considerate, Part 4" Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 234 Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 19:55:02 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.198.142.218 X-Complaints-To: Abuse Role , We Care X-Trace: newshog.newsread.com 1102190102 209.198.142.218 (Sat, 04 Dec 2004 14:55:02 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 14:55:02 EST Xref: news.earthlink.net alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated:85936 X-Received-Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 11:56:09 PST (newsspool2.news.atl.earthlink.net) (Sorry for lateness of this post...I just got laid off my job and have been jobhunting!!) *** Scott was winding down from what he hoped was the end of a very, very long day. First he found the damn skeleton. Then he dragged McCoy into helping him solve the problem, only the problem had been somewhat less complex than handwritten thermonuclear physics with the light of a brown star to see by. Then, he metally tallied as he poured himself a drink, then Chekov had accidentally moved the cannister, and McCoy couldn't discreetly get the captain down to save one's life (now there was an unfortunate choice of thoughts), and now Spock was involved without being involved. Hopefully, they were now back to the just-functioning level of things; McCoy wasn't happy about having a Vulcan's skeleton in his cabin, but it was probably the safest place for it. The man's reputation wasn't exactly of his making, it was just that people naturally assumed a CMO would have dark and unwholesome things around him. Then again, he got his medical internship examining failed galdiators of various species from the Imperial Arenas. He sank back on his berth and took a careful sip of Royale, sighing with relief. For the first time all day it crossed his mind to wonder if Mira really was involved with the contents of Mystery Canister D-5. He certainly hoped not, but his all-too-brief experience with the lovely Ms. Romaine had taught him that disasters could flock to her from as far away as Zetar... "Scott!" Scott jumped; reflexes that kept him from dropping a syntheloop down a Jefferies Outlet managed to salvage the drink from spill. "What in Saint Andrew's--McCoy, what the hell is it now?" "It's gone!" Scott didn't want to believe him. His first instinct, which was all about survival, simply refused to process the unwanted information. "What's gone?" "What do you #!%(*&#%) think??" McCoy snarled. "It's your @#(*&$ mailing tube your #%*&@#% girlfriend sent you. I can't find it!" "It's not there?" Scott was starting to understand, against all wishes. The intercom crackled with heavy irony. Were it possible, McCoy would have found a way to transmit silent scorn, sarcasm, and not a little potential for violence over the waves. "All right," Scott struggled to speak with a fair amount of calm. Beads of sweat had popped over his forehead. "We lost it before, we can find it again...where are ye noo?" "I am," McCoy also spoke calmly--the kind of calm that can only be obtained if one's teeth are gnashed tight enough to trap a nanobe and speaking through the gaps in his ivories. "In B Lounge." "On me way, mon." Scott slammed his drink down, already out the door. *** Not very far away from McCoy, two officers of a different color were doing some sweating of their own. "I didn't think a skeleton could weigh that much," Sulu breathed out. Chekov had given up already, and was sitting on the cold metal floor, exhaling. "It must be the denser calcium." "Metals, too." Sulu wheezed. "Couldn't we use one of your bodyguards?" Chekov asked hopefully. "Nothing doing, Pav. I don't want any of the little narcs to stab me in the back later." "No one you kin trust, eh?" "I trust a lot of them." Sulu scowled at the Russian's look of skepticism. "Sanchez, Berloiz, Wimme, Stamets and Bessette." Chekov's skepticism only grew. "Dose people are all dead, Sulu." "Well, it's not my fault they earned my trust a little late." Chekov knew he was going to hate himself for asking, but couldn't stop himself. "Why are you helping me then?" Sulu grinned, an easy predatory flash of leopard-like teeth. "Hey, if the rumors are right, Kirk wants to kill you. That means you're worth something, right?" "But I do not know why he wants to kill me!" Chekov protested. "Oh, that's ok. We'll figure it out. Honestly, Pavel, there's got to be something, or he wouldn't be trying to set you up like this." "I still think this is being overkill," Chekov muttered. His spine was starting to recover from the unusual stress. [ newsgroup posting-script note: line exceeds 512 bytes. Line being reformatted] "I don't know, Pavel. If you want to ge t someone out of the way, permanently, t hen get the Vulcans involved. You know what the laws are against offworlders vi ewing their remains?" When Chekov natur ally shook his head no, Sulu elaborated: "Really, really bad. Just think about it. If you had scanned the container a nd then looked inside to make sure there wasn't an error, then you'd have to rep ort Spock, and then Spock would probably have to kill you. Spock would be out a n astrophysicist, junior science officer , and protege, which would weaken his po sition against the captain. Your replac ement would be someone Kirk has in mind. " [end of reformatted line] "All this for looking at bones?" Chekov looked nausated. "Are there no exceptions to this rule?" "If there are, I certainly don't know them. Do you want to ask Spock?" Chekov's answer was a firm no--or was about to be, when the men heard angry footsteps ringing the hall at the same time. Paranoia gives birth to unusual agility and finesse; they ducked into the storage closet just in time. Both held their breath, releasing slowly as the footsteps hammered away. "McCoy's been down here a lot," Sulu commented. "That can't be good." Chekov opined. "Unless you think he really did misplace some pharmacaeuticals." "Hell, no. Anybody who can repair a defective Vuclan heart valve while the ship's under fire isn't likely to forget asprin. He's up to something." Sulu gnawed his bottom lip. "Finish up the job; go on to Mess as if nothing's wrong. I'm going to follow." *** Scott opened the B doors to see McCoy neatly pacing worried little runners into the floor. "You took long enough." McCoy told him kindly. "Ah was detained," Scott pointed out. "I got something that could help us wi' our work tonight." "Yeah?" McCoy came forward as Scott held up a small tricorder. "Another tricorder?" "Oh, nae just any tricorder." Scott grinned. "Nae only will it help us find th' problem, but it will lock on to th' object in question, so it cannae ever be lost again." McCoy refused to grin back. He was still very angry. "Fine. Get started. I'll give you moral support." *** "Big trouble," Sulu passed Chekov in mess, then sat down as if he actually had time to kill with his single cup of coffee. "Where'd you put that tube?" "I put it under the sta'bbard ledge. If they want it, they'll have to go through a lot of trouble." "But they could find it? Whew, that's a relief." Sulu visibly relaxed. "Why?" Chekov wondered. He was too saturated on tension to actually be fearful anymore. The fatalism that Sulu had always thought was a stereotype of the species had settled on the younger man. "It's McCoy's skeleton." Sulu hissed. As the words struck the ensign like pebbles, Sulu kept the barrage: "I don't know how he did it, but he somehow got permission to get a Vulcan skeleton off Vulcan. It's about forty kinds of illegal, but it's his skeleton, and now he's looking for it!" Chekov was trying not to choke on his drink. "How did you find out?" "He sent a message to Scott; it was encrypted, but you could understand what he was looking for. He must have gotten Scott's help with his connections to Memory Alpha." "Bohzemoi..." Chekov was awed. "You mean we're supposed to look the other way at the presence of a skeleton??" "What else are we going to do?" Sulu wanted to know. "We're not supposed to know about it, and you weren't even supposed to be in B-Lounge when you went in. You know the Praetorate Court. They'll die laughing if you say you were trying to 'get ahead' on your workload." Chekov winced. It didn't take a Covert Opsman with a degree in suspicion to hold the Praetors in contempt. "Da..." "And I'm betting anything Kirk knows about it, and he was trying to get rid of you. Why else would he assign you to the Mail job?" *** "Why did Jim assign Chekov to the Mail anyway?" McCoy swore as he rammed cardboard with his shoulder; the closet door finally shut. "Something about keepin' him out of trouble." Scott sank to the floor, using the wall as a backrest. He was breathing hard. "He tol' Spock, that so long as he kept th'lad hoppin, he couldn't think of ways to get in trouble." [ newsgroup posting-script note: line exceeds 512 bytes. Line being reformatted] "Well that just shows how much a man kno ws when he takes Command School, and not Basic Human Psychology!" McCoy shouted it to the ceiling, then sank down on th e other side of the door frame as Scott. "My God! Chekov can get in trouble al most as much as Spock--and Spock's only half human! How both of them can still be alive is beyond me, but I'll bet in t he 4th dimension, there's two very exhau sted angels with 40-foot wingspans!" Th e doctor let his head fall into his knee caps. "Oh, Christ." He moaned. "I'm b eat. And we've got how many doors and f loors to go?" [end of reformatted line] Scott told him. McCoy was by now too tired to swear. He let his silence speak for itself. He was getting good at that, Scott noticed. He staggered to the wall-server and came back with a cup of coffee. McCoy took it as his just due. "All right, once we get it home safe, what do we do?" Scott wondered. "Maybe we should ask Memory Alpha if they're missing any bodies." McCoy muttered. Scott looked at him. McCoy looked at him back. "Yer fashed." Scott told him. "Yer brain's turned. Ye've got a hedgehog where yer common sense would be." "Don't spare my feelings, Scotty." McCoy said mildly. "Use your in. Call Mira and ask if anything's going on. Heck, see if they have a news-report or something. Its a large station, so maybe they'd have an electronic news service." He glumly stared into his cup. "D'you have a better idea?" "Aye." "You do?" McCoy was interested. "What?" "Mail it back." Scott told him. "Just th'way we found it." "Well, we could, but that means getting Spock's clearance. And he's left for the day." "Blarg." Scott said. "We've got tae think o'something. DeSalle's nae ready tae replace me in rank just yet." "How do you think I feel?" McCoy wanted to know. "If M'Benga becomes CMO pro tem the ship's as good as lost. He doesn't know a thing about xenophsychology, cross-speices pathogens, or a decent game of golf." TBC... --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ ASCEM messages are copied to a mailing list. Most recent messages can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ASCEML. NewMessage: