Krystal's in
trouble! Venor searches the hospital, randomly breaking down doors (and
knocking down tables, in a restaurant, in a western town, call the
police there's a madman around) but not finding her. He uses his
tricorder but it's going to take a few minutes to find a random
individual. Instead he looks for the backup generator and heads there.
Clancy and crew rush into the hospital and start searching.
Meanwhile, Krystal wakes up tied to another operating chair next to
Paris. Paris is strangely silent, looking ahead with a vacant look.
"Ah, I see our guest has woken up," begins the doctor. "Another human
to experiment on. Excellent." Then he wheels in an evil looking
contraption. In desperation, Krystal destroys it with her telekinesis.
"Very well, we shall do this the hard way!" He tries to Mind Meld with
Krystal.
Clancy bursts into the anteroom and gets into a firefight with the
Romulan guards. Major Sela leaves the operating room to help the
defenders. One level down Venor finds the backup generator and disables
it. As the hospital is enveloped in darkness, Clancy recognizes Sela
and fires on her but misses and Krystal repels the doctor. "We must
leave!" yells Major Sela as she rushes into the operating room and
calls for transport out.
A Romulan Warbird appears, throwing the Ensigns on the Discovery into
panic. Clancy beams up to take control of the ship and he gets to the
bridge just in time to see the Warbird cloak. Krystal beams up with Tom
Paris and works on finding a cure. Clancy goes down to help while Venor
mops up back on the planet. Krystal sneaks away. Hmm, some sort of
nanobot technology which takes over the nervous system, finds Clancy.
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Suddenly the
shields go down. The Warbird decloaks and starts pounding on the
Discovery. Clancy rushes back to the bridge and has Venor beamed up to
take over Tactical. "What's wrong with the shields?" "Someone has taken
a vital part, we canna fix it immediately!" "Find anybody beamed up
from the planet and place them under arrest." Meanwhile Krystal heads
for the phaser banks.
But two security guards find her. She hyposprays one while the other
stuns her unconscious. The space battle continues with the Discovery
barely hanging on. Clancy hails the Romulan Warbird and tries to bluff
his way through. "There's no point in destroying us. We've already
contacted Starfleet with all we know." "Perhaps you're right," begins
the Romulan Commander. But Major Sela will have none of that and fires
the disruptors, restarting the fight. The Discovery's shields go up and
now the Warbird is the one with a major disadvantage, so they cloak and
leave.
Krystal is cured from her nanobots. (How did they get to me? You were
stunned unconscious for a few minutes before you woke up to find
yourself in the chair. The rest was all an elaborate ruse to make you
believe they had failed to turn you.) With the Discovery once again
badly damaged, it's back to the Starbase for repairs. The Federation
will not press this violation of the Neutral Zone, what with the
Dominion War occupying their attention.
The nanobots start breaking down the nervous system after a day,
meaning that all of the colony staff is in serious shape. Federation
authorities decide that it's better to transfer the prisoners to the
New Zealand Penal Colony on Earth. (A bit of a time mismatch. Paris
ends up in New Zealand. Janeway enlists him for a secret mission in the
Badlands, to recruit the Maqui for the war against the Dominion. They
end up in the Delta Quadrant.)
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