Maiden Mistakes

Posted on Mon Aug 3rd, 2026 @ 2:20pm by Lieutenant Commander Victoria Aries & Lieutenant JG Diana Sereno

1,949 words; about a 10 minute read

Mission: The Hand That Rocks The Babe
Location: Velis III : Hospital Compound

Everyone was truly exhausted, Victoria was no exception. For the last three weeks, she'd been living in the biohazard suit except when she was in a 'safe room' where she would take a shower and grab a handful of hours of sleep before she was back on her feet, in the brightly colored suit and once again out on the grounds making repairs to the buildings, the fences and most especially overseeing the excavation of even more mass graves.

The fence line had been extended four times because of this and a now-expert eye informed her that she should get a crew on pre-emptively extending it again. That would be after the next supply drop, which was due in... She pulled out the PADD she used for such things, two hours and some change.

"Sokol to Aries, I'm reading a fault in the fence sensors about three hundred meters west of your location, could you check it out?"

Victoria sighed, a fault... Probably someone trying to break through the fence, they did that rather than take the main entrance sometimes, usually when there was a panic and took some cajoling to harry them around to where the populace would be let through to get to the main hospital. It was a miracle that they still came here, she thought, with everyone coming in and no one leaving. But it was hope that drove them, hope that these Starfleet officers would pull off a miracle.

The problem was that there was no miracle happening. Despite taking precautions, mistakes still happened and a score of Starfleet personnel had contracted whatever this illness was. Most of them had been taken up to Dreadnought and staged through to one of the auxiliary sickbays which had been completely sealed off from the rest of the ship. Six had already died and several others were about to. Three of the remainder were getting over the illness, but they were all non-human to the extreme.

Victoria crossed the open landing field area at a fast walk, there was always something else to do and this would likely need some repairs after she'd shooed them off, then ran directly into five figures as they came around a cargo container. Everyone fell down in a jumble of legs and flailing arms, then one of them loomed over Victoria and grabbed her by the suit.

"You have to help us, my son is sick, you're one of the doctors, right?" Victoria tried to push him off. but couldn't fight off the scrabbling hands. They pulled and yanked at the outfit in desperation, "You have to help him!"

"I'm not a doctor, stop!" Victoria continued to try to move away from hi, but one of the other adults had joined him at pawing at her. Then one caught the hood of the suit and yanked it off, whether intentionally or accidentally, Victoria never knew, only seeing several people running towards her from the direction of the hospital. Then one of the other three people started coughing and Victoria suddenly stopped fighting as liquid landed on her face.

Finally, the security personnel were there and dragged the sick residents off of Victoria, cuffing those that resisted and started the journey back towards the hospital as two others went to where the fence had once again been breached. "Commander Aries, Commander Aries!" One of them called to her from several inches away and behind a faceplate.

"I'm here, I'm okay." Victoria reached up and wiped away what had landed on her, looking at the back of her hand in horror as the sputum came away in globs. "Oh God..." She whispered to herself, then looked back up at the officer, "Oh God, no, this can't be happening."

"Commander, I'm going to get you up and we're going to get you to one of the doctors right away." The officer put actions to words and reached out for Victoria's hands, who grasped them and brought her to her feet, then smiled at her, "It can't be too bad, right? You didn't get much on you and we're getting it off of you right away." He rummaged in a pouch and pulled out a small, thin towel, reaching over and wiping Victoria's face first, then the glove that was still worn. "Come on, Commander, it'll be all right."

****** Two Days Later ******

Lieutenant Diana Serano smiled at Commander Aries through her own biohazard suit, not daring to unglove even one hand for the human touch that the Commander certainly wanted to feel. The Commander was pale and was often wracked by coughing fits, one having just ended moments before. Blood samples had confirmed that she had contracted the disease, down to the very last gene pair.

This worried Diana very much, because while she had been studying the disease, it hadn't mutated at all until it had hit non-humans. So far they had been extremely lucky, because the more different the victim was from human, the higher the mutation rate and the less deadly it was, as if it had to expend too much energy from it's replication cycle to change to attack the new host body. But humans, Vulcans, Romulans, Betazoids, even the Trill and Orion cells she'd introduced to the virus had been infected and destroyed with absolute relish. The Klingons were different enough that they would live if this got out to one or two, possibly, but a large scale infection would likely mutate enough for them, too.

"We're going to get you up to the ship soon, Commander, and we'll be able to take care of you better up there. Better facilities and all, do you understand me?" Diana asked her, getting a weak nod in return. "I'm working on some additional treatments that I'm sure will work, but it's just going to be easier to do things up on Dreadnought. Hold tight... I'm going to give you something that'll help you sleep better."

"Thanks, doc." Victoria said quietly, before another coughing fit hit.

"Diana was true to her word, taking a hypospray and pressing it to Victoria's neck, making sure that her smile was the last thing that the engineer saw before her eyes closed once more into the bliss of sleep.

Diana stood there for another pair of minutes, watching the sleeping engineer before she turned and headed back out the door and to the main nexus of this Starfleet-only building of patients, "Ensign, I want Commander Aries and Chief Gerrimal on the next evacuation shuttle to Dreadnought. You're going to go with them, because I want you to oversee their treatment for now. Contact sickbay, have them pull their files and generate enough blood for a full flush and transfusion with a seventy percent increase in white blood cell volume. Load them up with Moxalycam, as much as their bodies can take." She was referring to one of the strongest antibiotics in Starfleet's inventory, "Then pump them with as much fluid as possible. I'm going to want updates every six hours or if anything changes in any way."

"Yes, ma'am." The Ensign confirmed from her own suit, a look of relief that she would be escaping this planet coming through clearly. "We'll get this ma'am, somehow."

"That's my hope." Diana sighed and walked out and back to the small little habitat she called 'home'. It had the standard airlock entry where her suit was decontaminated and put into a locker and she pulled on a fluffy robe in medical blue that would serve as her pre-sleep-wear. She shook her head as she went over to the console that was as minimal as it could be in this prefabricated unit. It had a bed, a console and a cabinet with meals that just needed heating.

"Computer, record for transmission to Commodore Lucian Marshall." She waited for the chirrup and looked into the video pickup, certain that the Commodore would see the bags under her eyes, hear the seriousness in her voice. "Commodore, despite weeks work of research, I have mapped out the entire genome of the pandemic here on the surface, but have had no luck in discovering a treatment that is effective for the local population or even for our own people that have contracted the illness."

"Likewise, every single attempt I have made to develop a successful vaccine has failed, using tissue samples from every source I can think of. None that I can tell are completely immune to the virus, although I believe it to have been targeted purely for the citizens of Velis Three, the problem is that among all of the races that journey the stars, there are several genes that are relatively common throughout them all and the virus is attacking through those vectors." She reached up and rubbed her eyes, "The lack of mutation through the generations of the virus is leading me to be as certain as I can be that this virus was engineered specifically for the local genome. By whom, I can't tell you, but since here is the only place to be affected, I believe it was developed on-planet."

Diana looked at the pickup, mouth opened to continue, then she closed it again, her shoulders slumping as she shook her head, "I'm still confident that I can eventually find something that will work to mitigate or eliminate this virus, but at the rate of spread according to our observations of the planetary population, I do not believe that it will be in time to save them. My professional recommendation, given the deadliness and infection rate of this pandemic..." She paused again, closed her eyes for several seconds, then opened them again, "My recommendation is that we withdraw from Velis III, Commodore. The longer we remain here, the more desperate the population will get and before they die, they may successfully overrun the hospital annex and capture or infect the personnel we have here."

"I do not suggest this lightly, sir, but at present we have forty-three Federation personnel infected already, with fifteen of them already dead from the virus and I'm expecting word on several more deaths before the morning report. Two of the infected are senior staff officers, Lieutenant Commander Victoria Aries of Engineering and Lieutenant Cassian Massy of Operations. Most or all of the infected personnel will likely be dead within the next one hundred and twenty hours unless I can pull something out of the hat and I'm trying, sir."

"Until I hear otherwise, we will continue as we have and we will do our best, Commodore. I'm sorry to send this message direct to you without screening it through Doctor Thomas, but I believe you needed to know directly and as soon as possible. Lieutenant, jay gee, Diana Sereno, clear."

Diana hit the end recording button and placed her head on the backs of her hands for just a moment. She hated herself for having to say what she had, but it was the truth. Past pandemics she'd handled had been more slow burn, whether the virus or what had become less deadly as it had come along, or treatments had been more effective or just not as infectious. This was her worst nightmare and tears leaked out of her eyes as she again felt the failure that she had when Chase had come down sick. Despair sucked.

Finally, she raised her head enough to see the 'Send' button and hit it, transmitting the report directly to Commodore Marshall's message queue back on Dreadnought. She pried herself from the seat and stumbled over to the bed, setting her alarm. Another four hours of sleep, then it was back to the drawing board once more.

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