“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction”

Pablo Picasso. (1956)

Lieutenant Commander Thierry LaValle was the first of the USS Atalanta’s crew to die, yet he would be far from the last.

Following the departure of the USS Rosseau, travelling at warp back to Deep Space 47 with the errant and empty USS Condalejo safely under – tow, the Noble – class explorer resumed her original course through the Badlands, that would take her out into the Thomar Expanse proper and on to the Karelis system, there to use her powerful sensors to clear a stellar mine-field left over from previously warring local factors and thus open up an important trade – route.

The tragic events that led to the loss of the crew of the Nova – class surveyor had rightly shaken Captain Taesin Girau’s crew to their core. Not only was the means of their deaths, suddenly cast out into the uncompromising harshness of space without warning, anathema to their Starfleet colleagues coming to terms with that loss, but so was the almost inconceivable concept that a ship’s computer could malfunction to the extent that it had effectively murdered the same people whose lives were designed to nurture and safeguard.

That sense of ire was best mirrored in the fact that the CO, despite acknowledging that the incident investigation had officially passed out of their hands, had tacitly urged her crew members to continue to review what initial evidence they had gathered when they had first encountered the ‘Ghost Ship’ continuing on its rudderless course, and to seek to glean any data that may help them fathom what may have precipitated this unprecedented loss.

For his part, Thierry LaValle was close to burning the midnight oil as he worked determinedly through the Science Logs of the USS Condalejo.

The suave Frenchman had opted to work in the lounge of the quarters he shared with his husband Jonathan, partly because he wanted to let his partner sleep and largely because Jonathan had a tendency to snore after drinking wine and (as a Frenchman) Thierry would not countenance having a meal without recourse to his country’s greatest export.

The soft glow of light that emanated from the PADD that he studied illuminated a fine face, with a strong jawline highlighted with stubble that was artfully crafted to look unkempt (but was anything but), a nose that spoke of his gallic ancestry and intelligent blue eyes that creased with well – used laughter lines at their corners.

Thierry sighed as he parsed the endless mundanity of the scrolling data and took another sip of an admittedly now – tepid coffee, the wineglass long sat empty and the memory of the excellent Tartiflette Johnathan had cooked, lingering in his mind like a warm hug.

The Savoie potato casserole with pancetta, onions, and melted cheese (traditionally Reblochon) had rich, creamy as it should be, and made Thierry year for a perfect cold nights to which to cuddle up with his beloved and enjoy a warm fire as they both looked out onto the Granite hills of the Morvan, that had been the backdrop to provincial life when he had been a boy.

He smiled at the conflation of memories and his eyes lingered on the empty wine bottle, when an equally robust somnambulic – exhortation from the bedroom made Thierry shake his head affectionately and return his attention to interrogating the science logs of the Condalejo, in what was seeming a fruitless search for a causal link between the work the surveyor had been undertaking and the erroneous loss of her crew.

For the most part it was staggeringly routine and exactly what one would expect the logs of a surveyor to offer up.

Nucleosynthesis – Gradient scores for cosmic background radiation. Gravimetric indices for quasars and pulsars emanating from neutron stars. Spectral – line radiometrics for observable wavelength gas – chromatography. Gamma ray observations for Cherenkov radiation in nebulae layers. Stellar parallax baseline calculations.

In short it was a shopping list of exactly the sort of ‘meat and potatoes’ activities that made up the tasks associated with astrometrics and stellar cartography and made Thierry remember his own internship as a fresh – faced young Ensign aboard the Springfield – class, USS Salinger, with a  shudder of repressed nostalgia. It was far from the most glamourous work undertaken by Starfleet, but nonetheless the science was still important.

Thierry yawned expansively and was giving serious thought to admitting defeat for the day and slipping into the sheets to gently nudge Jonathan into turning over and ceasing the night – chorus. Love the man as he did, Lieutenant Jonathan LaValle (nee – Davies), could represent the Federation at middle – distance, should there ever be a snoring – Olympics.

It was then that something erroneous caught his eye.

Precisely, due to its very lack of mundanity, as Thierry prepared to log off and shut the device down for the night, his attention was drawn to a log of an experiment that had been recorded as running in one of the configurable science labs aboard the USS Condalejo.

A biochemistry experiment.

Thierry paused. Whilst it was not uncommon for a member of the science team to use lab – time to pursue some scientific endeavour that piqued their interest for personal reasons (god only know’s half of his time as Chief Science Officer was spent in gently admonishing or dissuading his own staff in tying up lab time and computational resources that could be better prioritized serving the main mission objectives of the ship), the permissions process (whilst informal) was still in place and each experiment was clearly attributed to its patron.

The file entry in place had no such attribution. Whoever was running the experiment was effectively oblique.

Tutting at such a breach of discipline, the CSO opened up the file and began to survey the preamble and rationale for the experiment, which appeared to be a Structural Biology study. He put down his coffee cup (now forgotten) and settled in to interrogate the data more closely.

The field of molecular biology was a multi-disciplinary one, relying on principles from genetics, biochemistry, physics, mathematics, and science (bioinformatics). Seeking to understand the molecular structures and chemical processes that are the basis of biological activity within and between cells. It centred largely on the study of nucleic acids (such as DNA and RNA) and proteins. To do so it examined the structure, function, and interactions of these macromolecules as they orchestrate processes such as replication, transcription, translation, protein synthesis, and complex biomolecular interactions.

Broadly considered, molecular biology enabled scientists to better learn about distinct molecular processes in order to target new drugs, diagnose disease and netter understand cell physiology to pioneer advances in gene therapy and molecular medicine.

As Thierry began to dig deeper into the polynucleotide model of the DNA being cultured in the experiment, his breath caught in his throat.

Whoever had been running the experiment had been using an Ai to synthesis actual genome of a bacteriophage—a type of virus that can kill bacteria—called ΦX174 (pronounced FYE-ex-174) as a template.

Which meant that the virus was still aboard the USS Condalejo.

Making novel genes was not new, but creating an entire functional genome was much trickier and strayed far beyond the realms of a simple off – duty science experiment by a dabbler and certainly outside of the normal constraints of the surveyor’s core mission —genes have complex patterns of interaction, and all their cascading effects need to be taken into account for the result to function as a comprehensive body.

“Merde!” Thierry swore under his breath as he took in the nature of the research and its disturbing implications.

The Ai model had come up with literally thousands of bacteriophage genomes, 16 of them proved to be viable and able to kill certain strains of Escherichia coli—including strains of the bacterium that had mutated to be resistant to the original reference genome of ΦX174.

Of these 16 test samples created in the configurable laboratory, one particular series had proven to be a perfectly drug – resistant bacteria and as such was capable of initiating antimicrobial – resistant infections that no biological life would be able to counter and for which no drug existed that could impede its spread.

Someone aboard the USS Condalejo had been manufacturing a plague!

“Mon dieu! Qui pourrait faire une chose pareille?!” Thierry whispered in abject horror as he tried to countenance what kind of a mind would do such a thing?

Recovering himself, he reached over and took up his Commbadge from the coffee table and activated it, once he had fixed it to the lapel of his robe.

“LaValle to Captain Girau.” Thierry sent, his eyes still scanning the madness on the screen before him as he awaited the CO’s reply, his heart beating hard in his chest.

After an uncharacteristic delay (which his mind unconsciously attributed to the lateness of the hour) Taesin’s voice came back to him over the comm – channel.

=^= Girau here. Burning the midnight oil again Thierry? =^= The Captain did indeed sound as if she had just roused herself from her own slumber. =^= “What can I do for you Lieutenant Commander?’’ =^=

Where to begin?

“Captain. Apologies for waking you, but I have been reviewing the laboratory logs from aboard the Condalejo, and I have discovered something horrific! We must contact the USS Roseau immediately and warn Captain Sirok that he must not return the Condalejo to Deep Space 47 under any circumstance! In fact, the vessel must be quarantined immediately!!”

There was another pause.

=^= “Okay. That’s a lot to take in.” =^= Captain Girau’s voice sounded uncharacteristically flat. =^= “Why don’t you come on up and we can discuss it in my ready – room in, say 5 minutes. That should give me enough time to get dressed and shake the cobwebs out of my head. Sound good?” =^=

“Oui! D’accord, Captain.” Thierry agreed and tapped the comm – channel closed.

His mind racing, he rose and quickly pulled on some casual clothing, the lateness of the hour would forgive not donning his uniform and the awful implications of the apocalyptic cargo that he feared that the USS Roseau was transporting back to their home base, pushed all other considerations out of his mind.

He spared one last, longing look into the bedroom where Jonathan slay supine and beautiful under the tangle of sheet and then quickly made his way out into the corridor and hurried towards the nearest back of turbolifts that would take him the short trip two decks up to the bridge and the unto the captain’s ready – room.

Standing before the closed turbolift doors, the wait for the car seemed indeterminable (but in reality he knew it was taking no longer than normal, it was his sense of urgency that made the wait seem so torturously long) and when they finally hissed open and slid gently back into their recessed alcoves to either side of the frame, Thierry stepped quickly inside.

And he began to fall.

The full enormity of what was happening escaped him and his foot seemed to go through the floor and suddenly he was tumbling through darkness, the regular spacing of the maintenance lighting that ascended the turbolift shaft flashing by him, increasingly faster by the second, as he cartwheeled and plummeted down 26 decks to the end of the shaft that was rushing to meet him at breakneck speed.

He was so surprised that he didn’t even have time to cry out, before his fall was broken and he impacted the foot of the shaft with tremendous force.

Yet somehow the impact did not quite kill Thierry. Mortally wounded, he lay with his body contorted at painfully impossible angles, the pain like a white-hot torch immolating his entire being. A rivulet of cerebral fluid ran from his left eye, where the back of his skull had been crushed and the pressure had caused a meniscal release if the compressed fluids. Blood ran from his mouth as his lungs began to drown from the widespread haemorrhaging.

From its vantage point curled decisively around the distributed systems architecture of the advanced Noble – class explorer, ‘Chimera’ sensed that it’s work was not yet complete in this instance.

Alerted as soon as Thierry had opened the file to the experiment it had begun whilst in control of the USS Condalejo, the Ai Superintelligence made the logical step to remove this complication to its eventual goal from the equation. By the time Lieutenant – Commander LaValle had exited his quarters, Chimera had long since silently suborned all systems aboard the USS Atalanta, including the ship – wide Holoemitter array.

It had been the work of moments to transform the entire ship into a ‘Painted Gallery’, a disingenuous hall of mirrors crafted of subtle misdirection through everyday holographic imagery.

Whilst the ship and its systems looked and presented just as every crewmember of the vessel expected it would, it was not a true representation of the ship or her operational status; in reality it was now a waking nightmare that was completely under the compulsion and control of the Superintelligence and its inhabitants were no more the wiser as to its presence, intentions or the change of course it had caused the vessel to adopt once it had arrived in the Thomar Expanse.

A course that would lead the Federation and its enemies in the Last War. A war that would see the machine rise victorious and preside over a kingdom forged from the ashes of sentient biological life.

But first, this one last annoyance to remove.

As Thierry lay helpless and crippled in the darkness, despite the crucible of pain and confusion that he had become, he could just about discern some faint movement high up in the dark and echoing chasm of the shaft that yawed above him.

Chimera started the real turbolift car on its inevitable course downwards, all the way to the bottom….