OOC: Looks like a formatting error... I'll try this AGAIN. (sorry)

ON

<location: Medical laboratory, main sickbay, deck 12, USS Republic>
<time: Three hours after departing the Ash'aarian star system>

The sickbay's main medical laboratory was an expansive chamber, and
well-equipped to process tissue cultures and fluid samples in addition to
performing medical research on an as-needed basis. Two large floor-to-ceiling
viewscreens adorned the far walls perpendicular to one another, while
workbenches and equipment stands filled out the rest of the plentiful workspace.
Here, small projects could be carried out either on the countertops, or, for
larger projects, on the workspace floor itself. The latter configuration
usually required the installation of specialized equipment, some of which was
stored in the adjacent, large-equipment storage room. Normally, standard
medical equipment which was not being immediately used in sickbay could be
stored in the cargo holds, as storage space is always at a premium aboard a
starship. However, there was need for some equipment to be on hand at a
moment's notice, and available to patients when they need them. Equipment such
as life support modules and portable trauma kits were kept in this storage room,
as well as antigravity stretchers and various landing party gear. Slightly less
important devices like research equipment and bio-monitoring apparatuses could
also be found here, but were located more towards the rear along with portable
biobeds and specialized operating tools.

In the wake of the hectic research project to unlock the mysteries of the
Ash'aarian plague, the medical laboratory had returned to it's normally dormant
state, and the crews throughout sickbay had already put the lab back into order,
readying it for the next analytical task when called upon. So, with the
exception of Petty Officer Third Class Christopher Teague, who was present only
to do a simple equipment check, the lab was completely unoccupied. For his
part, the young medical technician simply stood next to the door leading to the
storage room with ambiguity and consternation on his face. He had been there
for no more than five minutes when Doctor Saal Yezbeck strode into the lab
wearing a quizzical expression.

"You called me?" he took note of the medtech.

"Yes sir," the young man replied. "I came here to do my weekly maintenance on
the landing party equipment, and I can't get into the storage room."

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I said, sir. It's locked."

"Locked?" Saal scoffed while walking up to the access console to the left of the
storage room door. "Why would anyone lock it?"

"I don't know, sir," Teague shrugged. "It's never been locked before when I've
come in."

Doctor Yezbeck dialed a few combinations into the wall-mounted console, and a
negative electronic warble indicated that the locking mechanism could not be
coaxed open.

"Computer," he beckoned in mid-air. "Disengage lockout to medical lab equipment
storage room."

=/\= "Unable to comply. Command lockout functions engaged." =/\=

Blinking with confusion, Saal muttered, "command lockout? How could there be a
command lockout on it? It's just a storage room!"

Teague shook his head. "Maybe it's a malfunction," he suggested. "We had
trouble with the interlocks in Exam One about a week ago. We had to get
security to fix it."

With a frown, Saal tapped his combadge. "Yezbeck to security."

=/\= "Security. Narudi here. How can I help you, Doctor?" =/\=

"Ensign, can you please disengage the command lockout on the equipment storage
room in the main medical laboratory?"

=/\= "Stand by, doctor" =/\=

An instant later, the access console beeped a positive signal, the lock
disengaged, and the door to the storage room finally slid open.

"There we go!" Saal exclaimed with satisfaction. "Thanks, Narundi!"

=/\= "No problem. Security out." =/\=

As Yezbeck and Teague walked curiously into the storage space, the younger
medical technician gasped in surprise. Instead of a cramped, claustrophobic
storage compartment brimming with neatly stowed medical equipment, the two
crewman were staring into a completely empty room. The clean white walls
contrasted with the low-profile beige carpet, accentuating the stark voidness.
The two slowly wandered inside, gawking at the vacuity, attempting to figure out
how the space had been cleaned out so perfectly without the duty nurse in the
main ward noticing anyone coming or going.

"I think... I think we've been robbed..." Teague ogled.

"Pillaged and plundered is more like it..." Saal shook his head in puzzlement.
"Who would do this?" he asked rhetorically. "Command lockouts can only be
engaged by senior..." He caught himself in mid-sentence as a thought dawned upon
him. "...bridge officers." Turning back to Teague, Saal asked pointedly, "have
you seen Doctor Cromwell?"

"Yes sir," came the affirmative reply. "He came into sickbay about an hour
ago."

It was about then that a glint of metal from the floor caught his eye. It was
so small, and so well camouflaged by the color of the carpet, that he didn't
notice it when he first walked in. But the angle of the light changed as they
stepped into the room, and the reflective object flickered long enough for Saal
to notice it. As he bent down to investigate, the shape of the metal item was
unmistakable: it was a Starfleet communicator. Slowly, the doctor picked up the
device and scrutinized both sides of it, as his mind settled upon the most
obvious owner of it. To confirm his suspicion, he simply tapped his own
communicator.

"Yezbeck to Cromwell."

=/\= "Lieutenant Commander Cromwell is not aboard the Republic." =/\=

***

<location: Runabout Fowler, shuttlebay 2, deck 13, USS Republic>

With a swift pull, Leon tightened the final cargo strap and firmly secured the
last of the huge cache of supplies to the inside bulkhead of the runabout.
Nearly every empty space within the craft that wasn't essential for flight
operations was filled to capacity with medical equipment, consumables, and
pharmaceuticals, leaving little room to maneuver in any area except the cockpit.
Taking a moment's rest, Leon surveyed the parcels he had acquired from sickbay
using the isolation lab's closed-circuit medical transporter. He had to be
careful that no one was loitering near either the storage room or pharmacy when
he swiped the materials; Doctor Harris especially, as she could easily have
foiled his plans had her program been active in the main sickbay. It was perhaps
one of the most cavalier stunts he had pulled since reporting aboard a year and
a half ago, and definitely the most half-cocked. He shook his head in
displeasure as he realized his first mistake: he had beamed the largest crate
containing the 1000+ modified plasma generators right in front of the bathroom
door, blocking a semi-vital portion of what would normally be a spacious living
compartment for long-duration spaceflight. While the generators were previously
fabricated in anticipation of a positive reply from the Ash'aarian government,
the declination and subsequent eviction of Republic from the solar system was
more than Leon could bear. What was once a Starfleet mission to relieve death
and suffering on the devastated planet turned into a personal one.

Now, with enough supplies to outfit a small hospital, Leon was about to embark
on this new mission. The doctor turned his body sideways, and engaged an
obstacle course of cargo crates by shuffling between two supply pallets that
were no more than eighteen inches apart. Passing the small entrance alcove
containing the sealed planetfall hatch, he slipped through the adjacent door
leading to the flight deck. As the door slid shut behind him, he took a seat in
the pilot's chair, and looked out over the shuttlebay floor. As if in mourning,
he realized it might be the last time he viewed the ship as a free man, assuming
that he would even be alive in the near future to view it one more time.

What he was about to do wasn't trivial nor trite. It was, at the very least,
disobeying direct orders. At worst, it was a criminal court martial offense.
But, if there was anything that Leon had learned during the past several months,
it was that the best moral course of action was not always the ethical one, and
that the rules shouldn't always be allowed to stand in the way of making the
right decision. The worst part was that it took the straining of a friendship
to teach him that... and the breaking of one to learn it. Deep down inside, he
knew that John was only doing his job by backing up the captain on the bridge,
and Leon didn't want to throw away their relationship over it. However, what he
was about to do was completely unforgivable from the standpoint of authority,
and he could see no way that even John Carter would wish to continue cultivating
a friendship with an officer who betrays his captain. With a momentary sigh of
trepidation, he turned his thoughts to the mental checklist of items he had to
cover before performing his final act as chief medical officer of the Republic.

Beaming quietly into the runabout was the easy part. After transporting all the
cargo from sickbay, he had a window of few seconds when beaming himself onboard
before the deck crew would be alerted to his presence. With a swift keystroke on
the security panel in the cockpit, he set up an internal bio-dampening field
using the emergency batteries, completely bypassing the main start-up sequence.
Once the field was active, internal passive sensors could not detect him,
leaving him free to complete his clandestine activities. The hard part was yet
to come. As soon as the runabout's main power was brought online, the engines
would automatically begin their pre-ignition sequence, and all hell would break
loose. The bridge would focus an active sensor scan onto the craft, and unless
he could raise the runabout's shields right away and begin rotating shield
frequencies, the bridge would be able to lock onto him and beam him out,
presumably to the brig.

So, Leon devised an alternative.

One of the protocols he remembered from his bridge officer's course was the
emergency shuttlebay protocols for damaged shuttlecraft: If a shuttle's warp
core is overloading, deactivate the magnetic deck moorings and initiate
emergency explosive decompression of the entire shuttlebay. Of course, Leon had
no intention of putting the Republic in *that* kind of jeopardy any more than he
would hover a hypospray full of arsenic over an ailing patient. Instead, he
would have to trick the shuttle deck crew, not to mention the bridge, into
thinking there was an engine overload in progress. It was a simple enough
procedure - disengage the computer uplink to the Republic's main computer to
prevent remote access, and under manual control, reduce the strength of the
magnetic field of one of the runabout's antimatter bottles. This would cause an
increase in localized radiation that would be picked up by the ship's internal
sensors as an overload. What neither the deck crew nor the bridge would know,
however, was that the antimatter would not be in danger of being released, as
Leon would also be leaching the antimatter from the "malfunctioning" bottle to
one of the adjacent empty ones. It would be a hair-raising event for the crew,
but if Leon played his cards right, it would be over quickly, and he would soon
be clear of the ship and free to navigate within thirty seconds.

Unfortunately, that's where the hard part began. Leon was seasoned field
doctor; he had survival training and knew how to use a phasor. However, he was
no pilot. Sure, he could tell the computer where he wanted to go, and the
complex programming of the runabout could perform all the flight control
functions through automated means, but if he didn't get away quickly, there
would be no out-maneuvering a Galaxy-class starship. Furthermore, he hadn't a
clear idea of where to find safe harbor once he arrived back at the Ash'aarian
homeworld, or even how to hide from Republic once he got there. All he knew is
that the Ash'aarians were dying, and he had the cure in the palm of his hand.
If there was any justice in the universe at all, he would be successful even if
he managed to save only a few thousand of them from extinction.

"Do no harm," Leon whispered with conviction as he turned his attention to the
control panel in front of him. With his fingers hovering over the power control
systems, he paused briefly prior to committing his life to a new chapter.

"Doc?" a familiar, southern-accented voice beckoned from the open cockpit door
behind Leon. "What'n the hella ya doin'?"

<tag = Hawk>

OFF

LTCR Leon Cromwell, MD
Chief Medical Officer
USS Republic