Start Of A Floating Zoo

Posted on Thu Feb 13th, 2020 @ 3:03pm by Ka'see 'Cassie' Anderson (*) & Ryder Bray & Liha t'Ehhelih

Mission: Mission 10 - Temperance
Location: USS Temperance
Timeline: MD 08 : 1203 Hrs
3203 words - 6.4 OF Standard Post Measure

The trip down to where the science department was meant to be was silent. Cassie did not say anything and the pair that had opted to come with her were not exactly talkative. She did not want to talk much so it seemed perfect even if a little odd. "Why did you both decide to come along?" She wondered finally as they crawled out into the corridor and could stand up properly.

Liha shrugged. "Science is more interesting. more likely to have useful equipment too." The fact that the little sister that she couldn't protect anymore was a science officer had nothing to do with it, of course.

Ryder was more blatant. Mostly. "Safety in numbers. Besides, we don't know what's here and it's better to have more people trained in handling potentially violent situations. And I can't keep up with the Ops crew. Never could."

Cassie smiled just a little at Ryder's comment around operations. It had always been the way but as she had told him many times she could not do his job in security. It took many people to make a ship or society work. "I guess." Was all she commented.

"It should be through here," Liha said, checking a ship schematic on her PaDD. "What areas do you want to check first? Physics? Chemistry? Bio labs?"

"Always Bio," Cassie assured quickly. Biology were normally the ones with the most dangerous stuff and normally needed to be fixed first. She wanted to also see what they had in the way of chemicals, she had an idea to do something nice for the crew but she was missing just one ingredient.

"Biology it is," Ryder spoke with an eerie deadpan, hand to the side where his phaser pistol sat. "... Where all the funky stuff is and the potentially grumpy animals are. Hopefully... inert, at least. Not dead - " he held up a hand. "... Inert. Very. Very inert."

Cassie offered a quick squeeze on his shoulder before she moved in front of him to move to where the lab door was open. If there was anything inert, it had escaped before now. "This is biology right?" She checked back from Liha as she took a step past the door holding up her flashlight.

"Yes," Liha confirmed after a quick check on her PaDD. "I doubt very much that anything beyond the microcellular level anything is still alive in here. Though potential things on that level mean we should be cautious about touching anything."

Cassie glanced back and smiled a little. She might be from 2246 but she was fully aware of science procedures. She would have been top of the genetics field if she had carried on living in her timeline instead of jumping here. It would have been following in her mothers footsteps. "Hands in pockets if you have them then," The hybrid said brightly.

"Touching, breathing, looking at if we're that unlucky." Ryder kept his hands on his phaser, seeing it as the only safe thing to touch in the room as they entered. "Are we looking for anything specific or should we just keep our eyes out for... anything?"

"Anything," Cassie assured quickly as she shone her flashlight around the room and her mouth opened at the technology. "This equipment..." She whispered in awe.

"Eh, not bad." Liha shrugged. It was certainly better equipment than she had seen in awhile, but hardly noteworthy by comparison to what she recalled from Galae ships or the labs at the Academy were her parents worked.

"For us it is." Rosie was on its last legs with technology but this was looking barely used. "This stuff looks so new," Cassie admitted running her hand along a console as she started looking at the shelves, taking in what supplies were around.

So much for not touching things... Liha shook her head quietly. Scientists! They had no sense of caution when it came to labs. "Let's start cataloging what's here and tagging things we might want to bring back to Mary Rose if we decide to stay with her."

Cassie looked at the woman and did the most un-Vulcan thing she could have done in rolling her eyes. "Was what I was planning to do." She assured stopping to look at something that caught her attention suddenly. She sniffed the air suddenly and took a step back. "You two might not want to come any further in here for a moment." Cassie slowly moved closure to what she could smell.

"If we don't, what makes you think it's a good idea for you to?" Ryder stepped forward despite the smell, sticking behind Cassie but close enough to pull her out of any danger if that was a necessary step. "What is it you think it is anyway?"

"Old decomp." Liha wrinkled her nose. "..and something else, like ...almonds?"

"It is cyanide out the pair of you," Cassie instructed grabbing both of them by arms pushing and tugging them back even further. "Neither of you need 'internal asphyxia'." She was rather fond of Ryder and the other woman would just cause paperwork she did not need.

"What, if it's cyanide none of us need to be here," Ryder pointed out as he stumbled backwards. "Why is there cyanide in a biology lab? Does that make this whole wing unusable until we can get this outta here?"

"Cyanide occurs naturally in a lot of forms, and various plants and bacteria produce it, so I'm not too surprised about it in a bio lab," Liha said, as she pulled away from Cassie and walked to the bins by the wall where masks were stored. As a full-blooded vulcanoid, she was even less susceptible to histotoxic hypoxia than the half-Vulcan (which made getting shoo-ed out by her rather amusing). In fact cyanide gas could interact with copper blood to produce higher oxygen conversion in a way that would make vulcanoids twitchy, but since Liha had grown up around science types, she knew the drill. After first fixing the mask on her face, she grabbed two more and tossed them to the others. "Here. We should find out where that's coming from."

Cassie held her tongue just as she took the mask. She really did not want to get into what the humans called a pissing match but she was going to say something to the woman about rubbing people up the wrong way privately. "Just lucky I can smell it. Not many people can smell it in that form." Cassie mumbled stepping back inside to start looking around for a broken container or something just as devious.

Ryder looked between the two women. He was no scientist, but he also was not stupid. Saying anything about detection or who was more durable against deadly gases was likely a bad idea. He slipped the mask over his head before he pulled his flashlight out to peer into the room. "Well if it was knocked over, then either the ship ran into some turbulence before we got to it, or there's something in here that we should be worried about."

"Or one of big spiders everyone is on about knocked a container over looking for food," Liha replied, and just to make the point that she had the same olfactory senses as any vulcanoid female, added. "The smell isn't strong enough for it to be a very recent spill, so I doubt anything hung around in there. But caution is a good idea. Any number of other things might have gotten splashed around as well."

"Ah yes... The Stan. I truly hope there are no more of those things around. It would only upset more people." Cassie said with only a hint of distaste in her tone. She had been asked to check the thing over and though it was cute she was not a fan of the thing at all. She was just glad she lived nowhere near Eden.

Ryder looked between the pair. "It's just a spider," he pointed out with a hint of confusion in his tone. "It's not like it's gonna be poisonous... But if it's worse than a spider, we should probably keep our eyes peeled." He stepped forward, deciding to step over to one of the various lab tables for any sign of broken container or something with multiple legs. "Can't believe there's been stuff lurking about on this ship for so long."

"It is rather surprising, but to me the fact that there's been some level of life support operating all this time is what seems strange. From an engineering standpoint, it's not impossible, but it is unlikely," Liha remarked, scanning the area. It might be the standard Romulan level of paranoia, but she wasn't comfortable with things working despite long odds. "When I patrolled the Neutral Zone, if we'd come across something like this, even if it was one of our own ships, we'd have opened the hatches and let hard vacuum take care of anyone lurking aboard."

"The war from my studies was a difficult time. If this ship went off on a trajectory from the battlefield and into any number of nebula or spacial anomaly it could have been flung all over the space knocking things on and off." Cassie murmured from inside her mask. "Stranger things have happened like us being stuck on a computer for so long."

Liha nodded at that. She was alive and not in a Tal Shiar prison because of such an unexpected event in battle. "Yes. The war was a difficult time, and many strange things happened," she confirmed. "But it is also not unusual for abandoned ships to be traps or drop points for pirates."

"Truly. We used to use them in 2244 to catch them." Cassie confirmed moving her mask a little on her face to readjust it.

"It's one of the more effective strategies." Ryder pointed out, "In our heyday, there were enough pirates out there that Starfleet managed to wrangle a fair few up. Not all of them, but typically the smaller ones that weren't as experienced. Or the desperate ones." He murmured the rest under his breath, mind wandering off as the others continued. His eyes narrowed at a spot behind one of the various lab tables. The space was small, no bigger than something a rat could slip through. "... Do one of you two have a flashlight?"

"Of course." Liha easily retrieved a small work light. Her night vision was excellent, but a light was still standard for an engineering tool kit.

Cassie said nothing as she took a few steps to the side as she saw the man start to shine a light around. Pirates and those kinds of days seemed a lot more boring than the never-ending chaos they faced now.

Ryder plopped himself down, light shining into the small space. He squinted, before pressing against the table and reaching a hand in. "I could have sworn I saw something dart in here. I think I still see it."

Liha drew her knife, just in case. "It might just be another spider or some other sort of vermin, but in a science lab you never know what might have been set free. Even if it looks harmless it might be infected with something."

"Maybe." Ryder couldn't help but agree with that, but his arm was already in there. He was committed. "But that's what doctors are for, right? Unless it's something we just don't have any clue on what it is, but then that's why we brought the scientist along-" he was about to continue, when he felt a set of pointy fangs sink into his hand. He winced, but went quiet as he quickly made a grab at whatever it was had him. Fur. That was a good first sign that it wasn't going to be a creepy crawly. Though, he didn't expect the two he was accompanied with were all that grossed out by bugs or spiders.

He could feel the creature's attempt to fight, scratches and possibly another bite or two, but it didn't stop him from pulling out the four-legged creature. "Here we go." He repositioned himself, cross-legged in front of the pair, careful to not squeeze too hard or let the little rat go. "This must've been what I saw. Poor little guy. Minding his own business and the big, scary human gets a hold of him."

"Ryder!" Cassie said sharply seeing the bite marks on his hand. She quickly pulled out her old fashioned tricorder and scanned first him then the rat. What was he thinking just blindly grabbing the thing? "It is not infected with anything known but what is a rat doing here?" She wondered looking at the creature struggling to escape.

"If I recall correctly 'lab rat' is a human idiom," Liha remarked dryly. "I just never knew it was literal."

"Lab rats are so common place I don't think even the usual protests against such animal testing extends to these poor guys. Though - " he took a better look at their four-legged animal he had not-so-politely apprehended, "it looks like this guy may have skipped the white furred lab rat days entirely. Don't worry Cass - " he added with a small wink. "I know you've got my back. And it was better this than anything else that could have been under there. I might not be able to huff in carcinogens like you two can but I'm at least hardy enough to take a few bites."

Cassie flung a bandage at him and huffed a little at the wink with a roll of her eyes. She could not see anything set up for experiments on anything animal-related, the lab seemed set up for something to do with chemicals. "I suspect that little guys ancestors was a pet." She surmised taking the rat from Ryder so he could bandage himself up.

"If he's descended from generations of pet or lab rats, that would imply a whole breeding colony of them here." Liha frowned, looking around for other signs of movement even as she considered the implications. "I wonder what they've been eating. Spiders? Each other?"

"I'm hoping spiders," Cassie commented quickly. She need not want to think on cannibal rats and the one in her hands gave her no indication that it was like that it had any number of diseases that were spread by it. Cassie spotted a clear cage and popped the rat into it for a moment so she could help with the searching.

"If there are spiders and rats, it's not far to think there might be other creepy crawlies in the area," Ryder pointed out as he bandaged himself up. After making a mental note to see medical to make sure he wasn't going to catch some form of odd rabies, he hopped up to take a look at the rat in the cage. "Little guy's a fighter. I'd feel bad if we left him behind." Really, he wasn't sure if he would feel 'bad,' but more 'worried Eden would hear about it.' Last thing he needed was any of the old crew upset that he left a rat on a scary ship. "Could always take him with us and see if there's any... pathogens... or... anything that could have prevented people from taking the ship before."

"You just want a pet don't you?" Cassie found herself teasing just a little her old friend. Was not many people who had seen her highest highs and lowest lows alive and kicking.

"Not a bad pet, actually..." Liha mused. "Small, but definitely a scrapper. ...hmm... You know we could test if the rats and spiders have been feeding off each other, but seeing how Eden's spider reacts to him." She grinned a little at the idea of a rat vs. spider cage fight - and at how appalled the humans would probably be at the suggestion. It would be worth mentioning it to Burnie just to see his expression.

"I dunno if I want a pet," Ryder started, before giving Liha a confused expression. "And I dunno if Eden's gonna appreciate that idea." Probably not, with the way Eden took care of her eight-legged friend. But it was something to think about. "Just didn't wanna see this poor guy abandoned, even if we do take the ship. He could get scrubbed out like everything else. Don't really wanna deal with someone finding his body and making a fuss."

Liha shrugged. "You could always give it to Jinx's pet raptor. Body would be properly disposed of, and you'd make friends with a useful pet."

"The raptor eats everything and anything. I think it would have a field day on the ship if it was let off its leash enough." Cassie commented with a shrug. "But let's not upset Eden. I am fond of the woman and Stan is a good specimen . So what are you going to name him?" She asked redirecting it back onto keeping the rat alive.

Ryder picked up the small cage, shaking his head. "I don't want to name it yet. If I name 'im, I'll get attached, and we can't have that. Not when the potential for him to be someone else's lunch is so high." Tucking the cage under his arm, he gestured through the room. "Shall we keep going?"

Cassie nodded. She was sad that the biology labs had not given her much to work with, barely any equipment undamaged and nowhere to run a quick experiment. "So Physics or Chemistry." She offered giving them the option seeing she had picked this time.

Liha debated internally. Burnie would have said Chemistry because of the potential for explosives, or components to make them ...which was an argument for getting there first and getting them locked down. But, physics would have better equipment. In her opinion, the only worthwhile equipment in chemistry was for distillation. "Depends. Do you want components for a still or for repairing various systems on the Rosie?"

"Both?" Cassie asked not able to compromise on what she wanted that second. She was desperate to run an experiment but she knew that the ship needed components for repairing stuff. Not much more could be salvaged from deck 7.

Ryder looked between the two. "Physics is probably going to be the safer option without any sort of safety equipment. Which, arguably Chemistry would have, but do we wanna take that chance? I vote Physics first. We can sweep the labs, make sure they've got good equipment, then sweep Chemistry. After that, make a return trip to take what we noted was good, or report back and just tell the Captain what's good or bad."

"Sounds good." Liha nodded and looked around. "Anything we want to take from here? Other than the rat, that is."

"I will come back for anything here." Cassie shrugged. Nothing that she wanted could be carried so it was easier to come back for things.

OFF::

Liha t'Ehhileh
Engineer
SS Mary Rose
(PNPC Burnstein)

Ka'see 'Cassie' Anderson
Biologist
SS Mary Rose
(PNPC Gregnol)

Ryder Bray
Security
SS Mary Rose
(PNPC Uhin)