“What the hell is going on here?” Orelia barked as she stepped through the main doors into Engineering, summoned by the team she’d sent down to check on the twins after Sidda’s suggestion.

T’Ael for her part had been found obsessively reading a Klingon repair guide, barely acknowledging the team and was still sitting at a console, a half dozen padds spread around her. Her attention flicked from one to another, back to the console, a string of utterances and then back to the padds. The security team had elected to put just one of their number to watch her, with an engineer, to ensure she was not doing anything detrimental.

The reason for that was R’tin, who was busy struggling against two men who massed half again more than he did. They both had him by an arm and were dragging him away, toward the door she had just entered through. They’d failed to remove the tool in his hands, but they had firm holds on his wrists and arms, preventing him from swinging them in any form of attack.

“Let go of me!” the Romulan man shouted. “I’ve got work to do! Don’t you see that you dull-witted thugs?” R’tin tried to get his feet under him and push against the deck to head back to wherever it was they had found him, but he lacked the mass and proper leverage, finding himself quickly dragged again before he attempted to repeat the process.

One of the security team, a human a smidge taller than she herself was if he ever stood up straight, nodded at her. “Found him attempting to disconnect the secondary,” the main stopped, eyes going to the ceiling as he struggled for words momentarily. “Secondary plasma manifold.”

“Powers the cloaking device,” the other human said, this one slightly taller than her, even slouching which he looked to do constantly. Then again, he did look to have a few decades on her as well.

“Goddesses,” she muttered, then walked around them to look at R’tin.

“Ah, Orelia, excellent, tell these oafs to let me go, I’ve got work to do!” He shouted the last bit at her as he managed to get his feet under him for once since they weren’t trying to drag him anymore. He looked ready to fight the entire Klingon Empire by himself, if not for being held in place.

“And why are you working on the power systems for the cloaking device?” she asked, keeping her tone low and quiet, but carrying an edge of menace to it. “And this had better be good little man,” she continued.

“Because it needs to be done,” he answered like it was the single most logical thing in the world. “I wasn’t going to disconnect the power, just work around the main power connections.”

She sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. Even she knew it was idiotic to do maintenance on a critical system when it was powered and oh, keeping them from being detected. With another sigh she stepped closer to him and then considerable effort and protest pried the tools from both of his hands, dropping them on the floor.

“I’ve got things to do!” he screeched, followed by a gasp and exhalation of air as she punched him solidly right in the gut, bringing his cries to a halt as he gasped for breath.

“Sorry,” she said, finding herself actually feeling that way, before stepping back. “Take him to sickbay,” she said to the two men. “Tie him down and stick with him. Whatever Bones wants, you do.”

“Aye ma’am,” the older man said. “Right lad, shall we?” And with R’tin still struggling to get his breath back managed to drag him out without further incident.

That handled, her attention drifted to T’Ael and Orelia found herself in short order taking a seat next to the engineer, after carefully clearing the seat of padds, which had earned her an unhappy sound and the padds snatched away to be set somewhere else. T’Ael had barely stopped in whatever it was she was doing, but it certainly looked complex. No diagrams or computer screens with ship systems open, so it seemed benign enough.

“What you doing?” she asked. She wasn’t exactly friends with T’Ael, but she hadn’t annoyed her as R’tin had and therefore she was willing to at least be neutral with the Romulan woman.

“Rewriting all the maintenance manuals,” T’Ael said, an exasperated sigh following before she took up a padd, swiped at the screen a few times and then shoved it at Orelia. “They’re shit. Worse than shit in some cases. I swear their engineers must be taught master an apprentice-style because this manual,” she said, jabbing at the screen Orelia was trying to read, “is unhelpful at best, dangerous at worst.”

“Okay, but why now?” she asked.

“Why not now?” T’Ael countered. “R’tin is handling maintenance and this has been bugging me for weeks. So, I’m doing it now. Then at least people have something they can reference.” Her attention then switched back to her work and it was as if she’d just decided Orelia wasn’t there by the total lack of regard she spared.

“T’Ael, we just dragged your brother to sickbay.”

That got her attention. T’Ael sighed, looked at Orelia, then past her at the engineer who had been tasked with watching the chief engineer. “Find Telrob, tell him to get onto R’tin’s maintenance list.”

The Engineer looked to Orelia for confirmation before he departed, leaving to speak with a middle-aged Bolian, who glanced in their direction, nodded his head, and then called over a few others. Delegation at work.

“T’Ael, I want you to go to sickbay as well,” Orelia said.

“Busy,” T’Ael replied.

“You can work on your rewrites there,” she countered.

“If I agree, will you stop asking me and let me work?”

“I’ll even ask Bones to give you one of the private rooms.” Not that they were private rooms, a Klingon ship being what it was, but more a converted space that Bones had insisted on to let some patients have privacy. Or to act as a medical brig in the worst situation.

She could watch T’Ael’s mental calculus, a glance to the chaos of Engineering then agreed, gather her padds, carefully, handing some to Orelia, some to the security officer, then gather the last herself and leading the way, all while still reading.

Half an hour later she was in Bones’ office with Sidda, all of them standing while looking at a medical readout of Revin, T’Ael and R’tin. There were both physiological and brain wave scans present for each patient, their brains rendered in green with rashes of red and blue in a dozen places.

“Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” Bones said with a shrug. “No physiological changes, save for changes in brain activity in certain locations.” She pointed at the red patches, highlighting the similarity in all three. “But it’s had a different effect in all three.”

“In plain Vondomese please Doctor,” Sidda said, arms crossed her whole posture a little tense, which put Orelia on edge almost instinctively.

Bones glared at Sidda for a moment, as if she had a question but left it. “It’s the Blood Dilithium, especially that refined cache on that prison planet. Its effects were considerably more potent. The monitors you and Orelia are wearing both had to start working harder as we neared the planet and have eased up as we moved away to make calls out without being heard.” She tapped the monitor and brought up Revin’s scans. “In Revin’s case, as you’re aware, it made her rather,” the older woman trailed off at Sidda’s disapproving look. “Oh, grow up, we’re all adults here. You want me to be respectful or medically precise?” And with that Sidda took a moment to nod her head and shrug, gaze returning to the large monitor.

Orelia really didn’t like seeing this woman speak to Sidda like that, but she’d been told to let it be. At least for now.

“So, Revin got rather amorous with you,” Bone continued, barrelling over the conversation point. “And forceful as well.” Then brought the brain scan up. “This section of the Romulan brain is responsible for things like feelings of affection, this part here lights up typically with aggression.”

“Carrying on,” Sidda muttered as a hand came up to rub at her left shoulder briefly.

“R’tin seems to have lost impulse control.” Bones brought his scans and the rotating model of his brain up in detail. “More activations here, less here,” she said, pointing at a red and blue rash respectively. “All three of them have similar results, but his are greater in these locations. Looks like for him a dash of poor decision making, poor impulse control, a dash of aggression.”

“And T’Ael?”

“Different, but similar.” Bones brought up the third scan, the same blobs of red and blue essentially, just different in intensity or size. “I’m trying to do a touch of this with what I can recall, but it looks similar to obsessive-compulsive disorder across multiple species, reduced impulse control. She got it in her mind to work on a project she’s been putting off and right now she’s unlikely to change her mind.”

“So, both my chief engineers are down,” Sidda grumbled. “Telrob?” Sidda asked her.

“Already taken over. Good thing we settled on our gamma shift leader before we came on this little adventure.” She’d interviewed the Bolian with T’Ael, R’tin and Sidda nearly three months ago, but it had taken months and more interviews with T’Ael and R’tin before settling on Telrob as gamma chief.

“Do me the favour of breaking the bad news that he’s the chief engineer until T’Ael and R’tin are on their feet. Tap the shift deputies to run their respective shifts.” Sidda then looked back to the medical scans. “Actually, I’m pulling the captain card.”

“Oh?” she asked her cousin.

“Yeah, tell Telrob he’s not just a gamma shift leader but our third chief engineer. Engineering needs a triumvirate.”

“More stable leadership?” she asked and smiled when Sidda nodded her head.

“Why weren’t Tavol and T’Rev affected?” Sidda then asked.

“Oh, they were. But Vulcans consider mental health and discipline fundamentals from as early as childhood. Both are wearing monitors and picked up the same changes, which then induced increased activity in the portions of their brains responsible for emotional control, at Tavol’s recommendation from a few days ago.” Bones brought up a scan of Tavol in comparison. “They are being affected, but they both also have a much tighter rein on their emotions and impulses.”

“Huh. Bet Tavol’s going to want to bore us with details about this at some point,” Sidda said.

Bones cleared her throat for effect more than anything. “I also don’t want to put pressure on you, but these changes are a bit more than what you Orions are experiencing. These activity changes could have long-term effects since none of them has a Vulcan’s mental discipline to help reign in behavioural changes. We need to either stay away from large Blood Dilithium deposits or I need to come up with a treatment plan. I’ve got an idea on how to help all three with cortical stimulators and suppressors, but I need to test it first.” She paused momentarily to get Sidda’s attention. “None of them are in a fit mind to volunteer.”

“I hate you,” Sidda said to Bones, who just shrugged at her. “Hmm, who’s the most likely to respond to treatment?”

“Any of them. But,” and it was a pregnant but, “R’tin is rather fighty and T’Ael could get extremely fighty if I need to keep making modifications and interrupt her with no improvements in her behaviour.”

“Oh, I really hate you,” Sidda said, then sighed, turning to Orelia. “I’m a compromised decision-maker.”

“You’re in charge,” she said to her cousin, who glared at her. “Fine.” She spared the monitor one last look. “Revin. We need our engineers more than we need a cook’s apprentice.”

“Fuck,” Sidda muttered. “You’re right.”

“Of course she’s right,” Bones stated, then produced a small hipflask for her lab coat’s left pocket and handed it over to Sidda. “No, I haven’t been drinking,” she said in defence before the question was asked. “I keep some nearby for folks who have loved ones in my sickbay.”

There were no further words spoken, just a passing around of the hipflask, a sip taken, Bones’ more like a hint of a sip before Orelia managed to usher Sidda out of sickbay after Bones insisted on checking their own cortical suppressors one last time.

“Did you have any good plans for dealing with the Devore ship?” Sidda asked her after about five steps past the door.

“Not yet.”

“I’ve still got a really bad plan for the planet.”

“Tavol has confirmed the Devore are malleable to suggestion,” she said, which garnered a wicked grin from Sidda. “Turns out a Malon Security Forces ship nearby was willing to send us scans they had as payment for our help with the Prospector 17.”

“A good deed earning another? Why I never! Did Starfleet ever answer our calls?”

“Not that Tavol has mentioned.”

“Right,” Sidda turned down a corridor, heading for the bridge. “Not surprised really. We’re just merchants after all.”

“Pre-emptive salvage merchants,” Orelia joked.

“So, let’s go make some salvage,” Sidda said. “This is a Klingon ship and that’s a wounded enemy cruiser out there. Let’s go be Klingons for a few minutes.”

“Are we repeating what we did to the D’Ghor?”

Sidda didn’t answer, just smiled wickedly as the door to the bridge opened and they stepped across.

Today was a good day to make someone else die.