Quarantine (Garuda)
| USS Garuda | ||
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 INACTIVE STATUS | ||
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Mission Summary
Part 1
- Stardate 239110
The USS Garuda returned to Deep Space 10 for some much-needed shore leave, and the crew enjoyed their time relaxing and recovering from the previous mission. However, their time to recuperate was cut short when, without warning, alarms blasted and quarantine containment doors sealed across the station. The crew were stranded in small groups throughout the station and needed to deal with the rising panic among the civilians -- a process made much more difficult by the recent Federation/Cardassian treaty that put the station under the join control of Starfleet and the Cardassian Union's military.
After the idea that the crisis was just a malfunction was ruled out, a number of the Cardassians on the station started becoming sick -- showing symptoms such as bleeding from the mouth and nose, accompanied with violent coughing. Some of them even needed emergency resuscitation. To make matters worse, Captain Egan Manno and the Garuda were summoned away just minutes after the crisis began on an urgent mission for Starfleet, leaving the remaining crew under acting-CO Lieutenant Commander Nia Calderan to find out what had caused the quarantine systems to engage and to keep the station's population from falling victim to whatever the pathogen might be.
Things seemed to have stabilized when Doctor Chythar Skyfire isolated a virus from an early patient and began working on a cure, and a team under command advocate Lieutenant Commander Msafiri Bakari tried to get the station's systems back online; but this was ended when a chilling video message was broadcast across all monitors in the station. Terrorists calling themselves the Maquis Reborn announced their connection with the release of the virus, and to prove their seriousness, murdered the Cardassian commanding officer of the station live on air.
Part 2
- Stardates 239111-239112
Following the bombing of Deep Space 10's main medical center by Nikael Kalre and the Maquis Reborn, the Garuda crew worked quickly to regain control of the situation before Kalre's imposed time limit for his demands -- that the Federation release all remaining Maquis prisoners -- ran out.
With Captain Egan Manno and the Garuda herself away on an emergency mission, XO Nia Calderan took charge as acting CO of the station. The crew had been isolated into several areas, and of utmost priority was releasing the station from the ongoing quarantine lock-down. However, though it was now suspected the Maquis Reborn were involved with the timing of the quarantine to execute their attack, Dr. Skyfire nonetheless still needed to find a cure for the illness that was spreading among the station's Cardassian population. Judging the matter to require desperate measures, Dr. Skyfire tested the antidote on himself first before beginning to treat the Cardassians.
A small group led by Msafiri Bakari was trapped below in the engineering levels of the station. Cut off from communications, Lt. Cmdr. Tristam Core and Lt. Juanita Sanchez, chief engineer of the recently recovered USS Mercury, devised a plan to use an EMP to knock out the Maquis Reborn's bombs throughout the station. They found a surprising new ally as well: the station's indigenous cyborg spiders, who managed to release the station from the lock-down. In a sealed dining area with air running out, Lt. Cmdr. Mei'konda and Lt. Evan Delano discovered a way out, but tensions were beginning to flare among the civilians as the Starfleet officers swept the area for any remaining Maquis traps. Negotiations with the Maquis proved fruitless, and Calderan ventured with a small team into the Arachnid Dome to get additional assistance from the cyborg spiders.
Meanwhile, the Maquis Reborn departed the station, taking Commander Valen Carys with them. Nikael Kalre delivered one last message to the station's inhabitants and the Federation, declaring that their lives had come at his mercy and that his ultimate goal had been to display the ineffectiveness of Starfleet to stop him and other threats facing Federation citizens. Before he and the Maquis escaped, he urged those listening to consider what he had said and encouraged them to join the Maquis Reborn's cause. The crew, however, could not trust Kalre's assurances that all was now well, and so the engineers triggered the EMP, which effectively disabled the bombs but also disrupted the medical staff's equipment, much to their frustration. Meanwhile, Calderan and her team, along with science officers Alora DeVeau and Tarsii Asmara, made contact with the spider queen to work together to resolve the situation. When the Garuda and Captain Egan Manno returned to DSX, the situation had changed. A Cardassian gul was dead. A new terrorist group had emerged. While the long, eventful day was finally over, it was clear that its ramifications would be felt a long time to come.