The St. Louis Starr Detective Agency
Posted on Tue Apr 12th, 2016 @ 10:04pm by
Edited on on Thu Jun 2nd, 2016 @ 11:35pm
Mission:
Time and High Society
Location: Office Space, SB-332
Timeline: Off shift
[ON]
Dr. St. Louis dragged herself back to quarters after yet another demanding demanding day at the hospital. Secondary wound issues, patients who had their own ideas of how to self-medicate; less than healthy dietary choices brought put people back into the hospital who wouldn't otherwise be there.
And once again, Monday Starr's workload in SciLabs had been light. Most of the day was spent reviewing microbe submissions from quarantine and decontamination stations. Nothing unusual. She brought a food tray of traditional meal to share with her buddy. It had been months since either had enjoyed anything other than food bars and field smoothies.
Ricki took up napkin and fork, "Nothing moves in any of these dishes, does it?"
"Nope. I fought the cooks off bravely on dynamic dishes."
"Mhh! Not bad! You're a good cook, Ensign."
"Cook? To borrow your 'ism, how do you spell that? I speak replicator."
Ricki's combadge chirped, and she tapped it, "St. Louis, here."
=/Doctor, I've got a civilian asking to see you.\=
"What's the condition?"
=/Not a medical case, Doctor.\=
Monday took a bite of cranberry coctail and shook her head, "Doesn't sound good."
"Ops, are we private?"
=/Yes, ma'am.\=
"It had better not be Ferengi. Because if it is, I'm going to become upset."
=/No, ma'am. Doctor, I'd tell him to come back during day hours, but he seems pretty shaken.\=
Monday shrugged, "You can always refer him to a specialist."
Ricki sighed, "Very well, Ops. I'll be down in a few." After closing the connection, she put the warming lids over the dishes, "Come on, girl. You're helping me."
The pair met the waiting man in a waiting room. After the Ops clerk conducted introductions, they sat down together. Ricki asked, "What can I do for you, Sir?"
"Doctor, we've heard that you help people."
Ricki exchanged a glance with Monday, "Well... yes, that's what I do."
"No, I don't mean medically. You help people who have problems."
Again, Ricki looked to Monday. The Herisian reminded her, "The Gercheedi and the V-book writer."
"Oh! Yes, of course. We... were able to give some helpful advice."
"Doctor, we were hoping that you might be willing to help us."
"We? Who is 'us'?"
"We are tent dwellers in the lower civilian levels."
Monday asked, "You were stranded here by the Sojourner conflict and don't have visa passes to other worlds?"
"Correct. We have submitted refugee applications, but these things take time."
Ricki nodded, "My empathy is with you, Sir. Is that what you need help with, emigration?"
He shook his head, "Not immediately."
Monday asked, "Then what's the problem?"
The man hesitated. "Monsters."
Ricki exhaled a chuckle and gave a smile of disbelief, "Monsters?"
He tensed, "Nobody believes us, but some kind of creatures are stalking in the deep levels."
Ricki felt a little embarrassed about pointing out the obvious. "Sir... there are security cameras and base sensors. Add to that the fact that we've been on war alert recently. Nothing and no one can stalk about without being spotted."
The man sighed wearily, "I know those things are true, but whatever is down there is not being detected."
Ricki smiled at Monday, "Well, Detective Starr, you're the science officer, here!" She offered an innocent look, "Wouldn't you like to volunteer to help search for monsters?"
Maintaining eye contact, Monday folded her arms in a sigh. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt to see if non-standard scanners pick up unusual readings."
The man heaved with deep sense of relief, "Thank you! I don't know how we can repay you!"
Ricki quoted the traditional cliché, "It's merely our job, Sir."
"Come on, Doc, you're helping me!" Monday figuratively dragged her investigatory partner down to the lower levels.
"You're the scientist, not I."
"Too bad."
Ricki looked at her wristbook display and shook her head, "Nothing." She surveyed the huge infrastructure columns. "Any luck recruiting help?"
"None. They asked me if my name was Nancy Drew or Trixie Belden. I told them you're Trick-sie."
"Tricksie... cute. Any idea what we're looking for?"
Monday aimed a directional scanner about, "Not... a clue." She stopped, clasping hands together and pressing fingers to her lips in thought.
Ricki asked, "What is it?"
"We've been searching inside the starbase."
"You think there might be some kind of external leach?"
"I can't tell with small scanners on the inside. Outer shell is too thick. We need to cruise around the surface outside."
"Porkinsky?"
"Porkinsky."
Said pilot cringed when he saw the women approaching. "No! No... no... no! I am not your personal taxi service!"
The ladies cuddled in on each side of the worried man. Monday reassured, "Oh, come on! You love to fly any chance you get!"
Deeply wishing to find a way to escape, he protested, "Normal patrols, yes. I was born for it. But with you? 'Scooter, we have sort of dangerous package we need to get off of starbase on the QT'. 'Scooter, we need to bring that dangerous and probably illegal package back again. No!"
Ricki straightened the collar of his jacket properly, "Oh, now Scooter! You haven't even heard us out, yet!"
The stout man stopped and exhaled a groaning sigh of surrender, "What do you want?"
"We need to make a slow inspection of deep crevasses in the outer hull."
"So grab a shuttle and go do it."
"Paperwork, Scooter. You have the authority to get us out there faster."
"Wait a minute! You have that fancy pants racing space cycle that you totally embarrassed me with! Why don't the two of you hop on that thing and go for your joyride?"
Blocking his path, Monday folded her arms, "Porkinsky, we need to haul around a suite of scanners."
Ricki playfully pleaded, "Pleeease?"
Monday tipped her head, "I need to learn that pouty look."
She reached in a touching gesture, "It's easy."
Porkinsky sighed, "Okay. Okay, I'll give you one hour!" He tapped his combadge, "Computer, I need a type nine shuttle with equipment racks readied for flight."
==BAY ELEVEN, NUMBER ECHO FIVE.==
Ricki patted his shoulder, "You're a good man, Scooter."
Quickly abandoned, Porkinsky stood there, "Why do I let them do this to me? I know why I let them do this to me. It's because they're incredibly pretty ladies, and I like pretty ladies who smile at me. I am a fool. And I know it." He sighed and began the long trip to shuttlebay.
A half hour later saw the little shuttle slowly coursing the out her hull among the largest external columns. External lights bathed cracks and corners that rarely saw light. Ricki shook her head, "Clean as a whistle. External maintenance sweeps the floors well."
Monday turned her head sharply over over to an equipment cluster. Porkinsky didn't see anything unusual, "What did you see?"
"I... I thought I saw something move."
Ricki focused the scanner suite with her synapses. "Nothing's moving, but..."
Porkinsky frowned, "But what?"
"Something's wrong with these scanners. Density and material readings are all wrong."
Monday studied her wrist book, shaking her head, "These base schematics are way out of date. They don't even show all this equipment." She noticed Porkinsky squinting at the telescopic magnification. "You notice something?"
"What is all that? It looks like a kluge of unrelated equipment. Maybe leftover legacy tech that nobody's hauled away?"
Monday pointed to her scanner, "There! There's a very fine dust cloud."
Ricky shook her head, "But from where? The hull is spotless."
On a whim, Porkinsky projected a momentary pulse of the navigation deflector. The entire structure burst into a thick cloud of dust. "What the..."
Ricki yelled, "Look out!
Thin tendrils shot out of the dust cloud and grasped the shuttle by the engine struts. Porkinsky jammed the throttle into full reverse as nebulous bodies thudded against the canopy. "AAAAAAA!" He reached for weapon controls.
Monday grasped his wrist, "No-no! We don't know who or what it is!"
"So what? They're attacking us!
"It might just feel frightened!"
"IT'S frightened?" He thrusted hard to bring the nose around and engage full impulse thrust.
Ricki viewed scan results on her wrist book, "It's an asteroid parasite! Not from this sector... probably hitchhiked on a freighter... collects and camouflages itself with cosmic dust..." She groaned. "Mhhh, some subspecies might be a little bit destructive to space stations."
Starbase Flight Control struggled to interpret the distress signal and yelling they heard over harbor radio frequencies. The problem became plainly evident when the Type-9 shuttle skidded into a landing bay grappled by tendrilled asteroid monsters. After diving for cover and raising the alarm, shuttlebay mechanics jumped on the cargo handling tractor beams to carefully extract the new life form encounter and push them back out into space.
Later that evening, Ricki and Monday sat in the doctor's quarters staring off in remembrance. They didn't say much, only occasionally breaking the silence with a comment.
Ricki laughed, "Did you see the look on poor Scooter's face?"
"We seem to be a strain for him."
The Thorian sighed, "Well, yeah. But that makes life interesting." She got up to prepare refreshments, "Hopefully, he'll become accustomed to us."
"What do you mean? You anticipate more misadventures?"
Ricki handed her a glass, "Every classic detective agency has its James driver."
The trace of a rare smile glowed on Monday's face, "A detective agency." She tipped her head with raised brows, "Out in the wild frontier like we are, I suppose that mysteries and surprises await every day!" She accepted and raised her glass, "I give you... the St. Louis Starr Detective Agency."
Ricki chuckled nervously, "We need to think very carefully about getting roped into strange investigations."
Monday stared into her eyes, "You said it. I'm a scientist... Trixie."
Ricki shook a finger, "There is one and only one reason I would even consider such a thing."
"And that is?"
"Have you ever studied the nineteen forties era of Earth? The had... the coolest outfits, and they knew how to dance."
Monday frowned pensively, "And that would be reason enough for you?"
Ricki offered a self-satisfied shrug as she sat back. She returned the toast, "It would... Nancy."
[OFF]
Dr. Ricki St. Louis
Ens. Monday Starr
2nd Lt. Scooter Porkinsky
Starbase 332
Pegasus Fleet
