The Science of Death - Part II
Posted on Wed Sep 2nd, 2026 @ 11:19am by Lieutenant Commander Alyssa Maren & Sergeant Major Lachlan Barr
Edited on on Wed Sep 2nd, 2026 @ 5:13pm
1,841 words; about a 9 minute read
Mission:
Episode 18 - The Edge of Darkness
Location: Camp Nostromo
Timeline: MD004 1130 hrs
Not everything she added to the folder was a potential cause of the deaths. Some were things she wanted to look into, had a question about, or simply were incomplete in some way. "I'm going to have to take all of this back to the ship and run it through the science computer. I've flagged a few things, but no smoking gun. But if it were that easy, someone would have noticed as soon as people started getting sick."
She looked at the bodies in the room. "Or it developed too quickly to do anything."
Lachlan had been following more of it than he expected, though some of the terminology was still firmly in Alyssa’s territory. His attention shifted from the files to the bodies visible beyond the open doorway.
“If it moved that fast, maybe don’t start with what killed them. Start with who got it first.”
He leaned forward slightly, forearms resting on his knees.
“Marines are creatures of habit, Commander. Same squads train together, eat together, bunk near each other. Duty sections use the same armouries, briefing rooms, transport points. Even when we’re off duty, half of us still end up drinking with the same miserable bastards we worked beside all day.”
His eyes returned to the survey data.
“If you can find the first medical reports, first missed muster, first lot who stopped answering comms, you might be able to work backwards. See if they shared a barracks block, a mess, ventilation sector... whatever.”
He gave a small shrug.
“I couldn’t tell you what mutated into what. But give me the first ten Marines who went down and where they’d been that day, and I can probably tell you what they had in common.”
"All right." Alyssa was pretty sure medical would be focusing on the bodies themselves--for now, anyway. So, she gave the computer a command to backtrack to the first ten Marines to fall ill. Or just to fall. She narrowed the parameters to focus on the most recent outbreak.
The computer quickly scrolled back through twelve thousand names--clearly it had been monitoring the outbreak, or whatever the cause was.
Then it listed ten names.
She glanced over at Lachlan, then back to the console. "Computer, identify names of the ten, the location of their quarters, and where their bodies are right now."
A list of ten names appeared on the screen, each a different color. Then a map of the compound with the quarters marked in the same color as the names. Finally, ten colored dots appeared on the map, marking where the bodies lay.
She printed out the lists and turned again to Lachlan. "Quarters or bodies first?"
Lachlan barely had to think about it.
“Quarters.”
He pushed himself out of the chair and came across to look at the map properly, following the coloured markers Alyssa had pulled up.
“Medical’ll be all over the bodies already. No point us getting under their feet unless they find something.”
His finger hovered over the first marked barracks block without touching the screen.
“Where somebody lives tells you plenty. Who they bunk with, what shift they’re on, what they eat, what they’ve brought in from outside, whether they’ve been somewhere they shouldn’t. Marines leave trails without realising it.”
He studied the spread of the ten quarters for another moment.
“And if these ten have something in common, I’d rather find it before we start walking through half the bloody base.”
Lachlan picked up his weapon and nodded toward the first location.
“Start with whoever went down first. We work forward from there.”
"Got it. But I do want to let Colonel Tremble know who were the first to fall, and where. It may be important later." She quickly sent the list and the map to Tremble, letting him know what they found and where they were headed next.
Then she checked the location of the first quarters and how to get there. "Okay. Let's go."
It felt a little eerie to walk through the base knowing no one was going to return to their barracks. The other teams were far enough away they were out of hearing, but not out of telepathic range. That was only marginally better. It didn't take long to find the right bunk. "Here we are. Private Marion Leslie Jones. This was his first assignment."
Lachlan gave a short nod as Alyssa sent the information back to Tremble.
“Aye. Colonel needs to know what we’re finding, even if we don’t know what it means yet.”
He followed her through the dim corridors, keeping half a pace behind and to one side. Nostromo felt worse away from the parade ground. There, the scale of it had almost been too large to take in. Here, among barracks doors, duty rosters and abandoned personal kit, it became harder to keep twelve thousand people as a number.
Private Marion Leslie Jones.
First assignment.
Lachlan looked at the nameplate beside the bunk before stepping inside.
“Poor bastard barely got started.”
He left Alyssa the bunk itself and the surrounding surfaces, giving her room to scan without him putting his hands where they weren’t wanted. Instead, Lachlan crouched beside the small storage locker at the foot of the bed and opened it carefully.
Everything inside had the particular order of somebody still new enough to Marine life to care about doing things exactly right. Spare uniform folded properly. Boots clean. Field kit packed tighter than it needed to be. A few civilian clothes sat beneath it all, compressed into whatever space remained.
Lachlan worked through it without disturbing more than necessary, looking for medication, food, anything unusual Jones might have brought into the camp.
There wasn’t much.
At the bottom he found a small holo-frame tucked between two shirts. He thumbed it on.
A family appeared around an untidy kitchen table somewhere green and very wet. Jones stood at the back in civilian clothes, younger somehow despite looking much the same age, while an older woman reached up to straighten his collar. Someone beside her was laughing. A little girl at the front kept waving enthusiastically at whoever had taken the recording.
The image looped.
Lachlan watched it once, then switched it off.
Underneath was a folded scrap of actual paper, the sort people kept because throwing it away felt wrong.
Call when you get settled. Mum.
He read no further.
Lachlan folded it along the crease already there and put it back exactly where he had found it, setting the holo-frame carefully on top.
His attention returned to the locker, voice quieter when he spoke to Alyssa.
“Nothing unusual in his kit so far. Looks like he came here straight from wherever he trained and unpacked by the book.”
He glanced toward her tricorder.
“If Jones was first, whatever got him might’ve found him through the base rather than something he brought with him.”
Then he went back to searching, slower now, leaving the photograph where it belonged.
Alyssa's tricorder noticed something under the pillow. She carefully lifted it to find a holoimage of a young woman in her 20s. She had long, blonde hair and a bright smile. Her right hand formed the sign for I love you.
She was clearly his girlfriend. How long had she been waiting to hear from him? Did his parents know about her? Would she be told he was gone, or hear it on some news broadcast?
Alyssa slid the image out and turned it over and read the inscription. "All my love, Maryanne." She put the image back and lowered the pillow. Her heart ached for what this girl, and the family and friends of all the Marines, would have to face over the coming days and weeks.
She scanned the rest of the room, but there was nothing that might indicate he was patient zero, or that he'd brought something onto the base. "Nothing so far. I'm going to check his computer to see if there's any indication he received a package."
But after a careful search, she found nothing. "Okay. Let's check the next Marine."
The next quarters told much the same story.
Different photographs. Different keepsakes. One Marine had a half-finished model shuttle tucked into the corner of his desk; another had apparently been working his way through a stack of old detective novels. There were letters, training certificates, civilian clothes and the usual collection of small things people carried with them when they were trying to make somewhere temporary feel less temporary.
Nothing that explained why any of them were dead.
Lachlan checked lockers and personal storage while Alyssa worked through the rooms with her tricorder and the base records. He kept his hands careful, putting things back where he found them. By the fourth set of quarters, the pattern was becoming clear enough that neither of them needed to say much about it.
No common package. No contraband food or drink. No shared medication. Nothing brought in from outside that tied the first casualties together.
At the last room, Lachlan closed the locker he had been searching and stood.
“That’s enough for me,” he said. “If there’s something here, it’s no’ sitting in somebody’s kit waiting for us to find it.”
He glanced toward Alyssa’s tricorder and the data crystal carrying the original survey information.
“Medical will have their own records from the bodies. Put what you’ve got beside theirs and we might actually start seeing something.”
Alyssa sighed. "Yes. Something definitely changed, but we won't find it this way." She wanted to talk with Hermia and see what a comparison of the data indicated. But that wasn't something they should do here.
Lachlan keyed his comm.
“Barr to Tremble. We’ve checked the quarters of the first casualties. Nothing obvious linking them personally and nothing suggesting one of them brought something into the camp. Commander Maren has the original survey data and we’re bringing it back for comparison with Medical.”
He released the channel and looked back toward the corridor they had come through.
“Come on, Commander. We’ve stared at enough dead Marines’ belongings for one morning.”
He waited for her to gather the last of her equipment, then fell in beside her for the walk back to the others, weapon in hand and his attention once again on the empty corridors ahead.
A Joint Post By
Sergeant Major Lachlan Barr
Chief of The Boat, USS Pioneer
First Sergeant, The Cure
Lieutenant Commander Alyssa Maren
Chief Science Officer/Second Officer, USS Pioneer
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