Executive Officer's Mission Report

[Cmdr JFarrington 0]

Executive Officer's Mission Report

Stardate 500903.12

Cmdr JFarrington, MD

USS Manticore NCC 5852-A

 

The Romulan Connection

 

Manticore has now been in Romulan space for just over three standard days. Presently we are four days from Romulus, still orbiting an uninhabited planet. We remain under cloak.

 

In approximately 20 hours we will depart this secure location to rendezvous with a contact in the Romulan government, as we intend to continue a humanitarian mission that was curtailed when the covert team inside our dorsal module was tragically killed by radiation poisoning.

 

It seems strange that we began our incursion into Romulan space believing that we were on a mission of war when we were actually on a mission of peace. Such is the human condition – always quick to imagine the worst when alternate possibilities exist. As often as I curse his logic for being cold and calculating, I find myself looking more to Captain Sovak for counsel, as his logic gives a more even perspective on many situations, especially those that evoke strong emotion. Strange. As I record this log I suddenly realize that my speech pattern has changed. Perhaps, as Captain Sovak has often mentioned, there is hope for me yet.

 

Lt Lewis, the only remaining Romulan Connection covert operative, remains in guarded condition in sick bay. His report, taken from the ship's senior staff briefing logs, follows:

 

"The Romulans have some childhood diseases that the population is inoculated against. One of their big ones is Adenoma Ta'Rax, their "small pox" if you will. Thanks to the more structured lives of the Romulan people, almost all of the populace is inoculated against Adenoma Ta'Rax, and that is their problem.

 

"Recently, a virus common to the Federation has made its way into the Romulan sphere. For us, it is quite harmless and usually doesn't even need medication for us to heal from it. We call it Hepatitis A. It can be spread in contaminated food or water. If a Romulan is exposed to Hep A, they get sick for a few weeks and then get better. If a Romulan who has been inoculated against Adenoma Ta'Rax is exposed to Hep A, they get sick for a few weeks and then die.

 

"Earliest estimates show that the people on Romulus, being on the home world and all that, have a 90-94% inoculation rate. We know all this because a high-ranking official in the Romulan government actually reach out to the Federation, covertly. They have become desperate to find a cure and they have created a sort of Medical prison camp where they have pulled in all of the Medical and Scientific minds they can find and put them to work on the problem. They have made no headway.

"Our team had made great strides with an already existing serum for liver function that has been altered to create a few different serum strains. Now we just need to get into that medical facility and test our serums on some of the afflicted. Your mission will not be difficult if you can fix the Scout ship. We have to hurry, the spread of the Echococcosis plague is about to go exponential, possibly within three weeks. We have to test, verify, mass produce and deploy the serum before then."

 

I have grave concerns about this mission, one of which is the possibility that the Vulcans aboard the Manticore may be in some danger from the plague, since their physiology is similar Romulan. Also, there is the problem of making contact with the Romulan official. Lt James has intimated that the government contact on Romulus "was very skittish about being connected to all of this and wanted to limit his exposure to the Federation." Unfortunately, there was only one member of the team who knew the contact, and that member is dead.

 

Captain Sovak has noted that, "originally, the team was to use the battle and probably loss of the Manticore to mask their entrance onto the planet, and make contact with the official. We will still need the scout ship to enter the planet's atmosphere, but the diversion of the battle will not available to us, since we will now be aboard the ship. We need to come up with a new method of making the contact."

 

We have much to do.

 

All departments are coordinating their efforts, some pulling double shifts to complete this mission before it is too late. Science is still working on the bioablative armor, using the Cerberus for experimentation. Engineering will soon be ready with the Romulan Scout ship soon; I await their report. The major portion of our problem sits on the shoulders of the security department, who must devise an alternate method of making Romulan contact.

 

Both Dr. Mele and I are suspicious as to how the population was infected with Hepatitis A. However, that is a matter for another time and place. For now, we focus on the mission.