Services Requested

Posted on Thu Aug 4th, 2011 @ 8:00am by Lieutenant Thelin ch'Rassa M.D. & Commander Michael Evans M.D.

Mission: Episode 2.2 - "Resistance"
Location: Main Sickbay, USS Pandora
Timeline: MD-04, 16:13 Hours

ON:

=/\= "Chief Medical Officer's Log: Dr. Michael Evans reporting. We've beamed aboard three different Borg drone corpses to analyze from the debris field. The first two were apparently a repair drone and an interlink drone. The third, however, has yet to be classified. Preliminary scans have noted some unusual clusterings of nanites beyond the usual assimilation module. We are fortunate to have Dr. Thelin ch'Rassa aboard as a passenger during this incident, as he's done some extensive research into medical nanotechnology in his career, and I've asked him to attend the autopsy of this drone as a consulting physician." =/\=

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[[USS Pandora, Main Sickbay, MD04, 16:13hrs]]

The borg drone lay carefully sprawled on the surgical table, its accessory components having already been removed. They lay nearby: the drone's eyepiece, the upper appendicular distal scanning attachment, the cranial plate, and the manufactured carapace that served as a multifunctional form of borg clothing.

Dr. Evans gave a short, sideways glance at the pile of borg components before moving his medical equipment tray to a more convenient location. All those parts creeped him out a little, though he tried not to let on. He positioned the tray carefully near the head and looked up. "Thanks for agreeing to attend, Dr. ch'Rassa," he said. "I really appreciate it."

Doctor Thelin ch'Rassa stood quietly in his duty uniform and lab coat as he looked up from a surgical table that had a Borg drone of some sorts laid out on it. While he had studied the Borg in medical school, he could not recognize the configuration by sight of this particular unit. "It's not a unit, Thelin, it's a living being just like you and me, only assimilated," he reminded himself. After hearing his name called out he looked up and forced a small smile.

"It was my pleasure, Doctor Evans. The fact was I had hoped to catch you while on board the Pandora, I just did not think it would be over a Borg autopsy. Do you mind telling me what we know about this drone?" he responded.

Evans nodded an assent while Petty Officer Cutbirth, who was serving as diener, finished the prep work. "He was found in a small, relatively-intact section of the borg vessel along with five tactical drones. I'm expecting that his cause of death will be along the same lines as all the other drones, but what has me interested are those nodules I've mentioned. I'm not sure if this is another sort of tactical drone or if he's a medical drone or an assimilation drone or what... He may even be a maintenance drone that uses nanotechnology. We just don't know," Evans finished with a shrug. "His accoutrements appear to be 'standard borg issue,' but I haven't had them looked at very closely yet."

Offering a small nod of acknowledgement the Andorian Doctor crossed over to the opposite side of the table and pulled out his tricorder. While a preliminary scan had already been done Thelin had a belief in doing things himself. "I can see the confusion in deciphering the Borg's purpose. By chance has a sample of the nanoprobes in its body been taken yet? Each drone's nanoprobes has a unique encoding sequence and could provide us with some clues if we can compare to base references."

"Hmm. Sort of like the way DNA serves as coding information for carbon-based biologics? Curious." Michael quirked an eyebrow. "No, we haven't yet taken any samples," he continued, "but that's remedied easily enough." He turned to the diener. "Cutbirth, would you please hand me the extractor?"

She handed Evans the extractor and held containers ready to receive the samples. "First sample is from the nodule at the base of the nanoprobe injection tubules," Evans stated for the sake of recording as he withdrew the sample and placed it in the waiting container. "Second sample from the distal node in the right anterior forearm," he recorded with the extraction. "Third sample from the proximal node in the right anterior forearm... And fourth sample from the node in the posterior forearm," he finished as he deposited the last sample. Cutbirth lined the samples up neatly near the universal nanoprobe interface scanner (UNIS) device.

"Those were the only nodules we've found in preliminary scans," Evans reported. "I'm curious to see if anything shows up in the histological profiles too, though."

ch'Rassa nodded as he watched the nurse begin placing the samples under the UNIS device. Turning around to his Human counterpart he offered a small smile. "You know Doctor Evans you're doing this very well. I hate to admit it now that you have me here but most of my hands on work with nanoprobes came for medical implications, just a bit of it was Borg related. Sadly when I say Borg related though I mean as in a starbase being invaded by a Cube." the Andorian said as he shook his head.

Michael's eyes widened a bit with the mention of the Cube. "Well, you're one up on me," he replied. "I've had a little hands-on time with the Starfleet nanites, but mostly in CEU's and other training exercises. Certainly no first-hand knowledge of the little Borg buggers."

Stepping over to the small side station Thelin looked over the display screen and motioned for Michael to step over. "We can see here a few things. First off there are residual DNA proteins in the nanprobes that suggest this person was a male Saurian. As for its purpose by looking at these structures here and then...hrmm, interesting, I've never seen this before." Thelin said as he paused and turned around.

"Did we check behind the ears of this Drone to see if it had an intact neuro-processing adjunct?" he asked aloud as he headed to the smaller table that had the parts laid out on it.

Michael shook his head. "Cutbirth?" he prompted.

She checked visually, then ran a quick scan with the tricorder to confirm. "There's an adjunct here, behind the left auricle," she reported.

"Why? What do you see?" Michael asked ch'Rassa. He looked carefully at the display, but was unable to see what had piqued his colleague's attention.

Thelin pointed to assimilation tubules on the Borg's hand and then the adjunct. "Just like nanoprobes Borgs, have unique adjuncts based on their role. Judging by the assimilation tubules on the right forearm of this individual we should be looking at an Assimilation Drone. However, this neuro-processing adjunct would suggest it's a Medical Drone. Thus we have to ask are we seeing a hybrid or a mistake?!"

Pausing for a moment to stroke his chin the Andorian looked to the other two members present and frowned. "I think we all know the answer however, mistakes are not in the Borg's vocabulary," Thelin said with a worried tone.

Michael paused thoughfully for a moment, frowning at the floor. "Maybe," he said slowly. "Dr. ch'Rassa, is there a way to determine what these nanoprobes are designed to do? I still feel they're the biggest clue about this drone."

"Nanoprobes are nanoprobes Doctor. They have only purpose and that is to assimilate at least to our understanding since we first discovered them. If however you think there is a different purpose beyond this Drone's unique design we could attempt to have engineering help us modify a tricorder so it's bioscanner could perform a passive high-resolution series scan on a nanoprobe sample. Then we could get enough details on it to possibly allow the computer to run some simulations and find a purpose." Thelin responded after taking a few paused moments to think.

Mike drummed his fingers on the console, frowning as he thought. Suddenly, an impulse struck him; he wrestled only briefly before going recklessly with his gut. "I think I have another idea," he muttered audibly and looked up. "It would take some time to reconfigure the tricorder, but I think we can get acceptable results another way." He paused briefly, wondering at what he was about to say. "Let's inject one of the borg corpses with the nanoprobes and observe the effect. The effects of each nanoprobe batch would be directly evident and measurable."

Thelin paced back and forth again as was becoming a somewhat standard fare for him during this exam. Thinking back to everything he knew the idea sounded reasonable if not a tad dangerous. "That sounds like a plan to me Doctor, but which one of us is going to hold the phaser at it's chest? I think we'll at least need a security officer in here and a level ten forcefield around the drone we choose. My personal thoughts would be on one of the freshest corpses who have the least amount of cellular decay."

Michael nodded and began directing preparations.

OFF

A joint post by:

Lt. Cmdr. Michael Evans, M.D.
2XO/CMO
USS Pandora

and

Lieutenant Thelin ch'Rassa, M.D.
Medical Officer
USS Pandora