Sh’ill wondered about what was going on on his Bridge in dreadful anticipation of bloodshed up there. He was almost certain of what had happened, but he did not have the courage to even consider how that could have happened. And now, the turbolift stopped. In a few moments, Sh’ill would see what had become of his two Bridge officers. He assured himself that it was probably just a comms blackout, just that something had gone wrong.

He stepped off to a truly dreadful scene. It looked as if though several murders had been committed right by the MSD. But, of course, there weren’t several. There was but one, and that was Lieutenant Erti.

Delvok was peacefully sitting in the Captain’s chair, using the console on it to command the ship. He either hadn’t noticed Sh’ill stepping off the turbolift or just did not care. The Lieutenant, with a bloodied uniform, was commandeering the ship and was steering it straight into Droth 2V5. He had no look of remorse on his face, in fact, he had no emotion, the only thing suggesting that something had happened just now was the blood all over him.

The Captain hurried over to his XO and quickly took her heartrate and blood pressure with his hands, hoping to anyone who was up there that she was still alive. And she was, but just barely. From what the Commander could make out from her unconscious body, she had been knocked around the Bridge a fair few times and was bleeding heavily.

Delvok, or at least whatever was inside Delvok, turned around to face Sh’ill. “I wouldn’t try, Sh’ill. There’s no point. This ship, if you can call it that, will be a wreck soon. It will be a part of the blood.” He smirked, as if though he was enjoying this whole situation, and turned back around to face the viewscreen.

The Caitian, in a gust of fury, anger and vengeance, shot up and grabbed the Lieutenant from behind. “I do not know what you are, but do not fuck with my XO.” He grabbed him from behind with the raw power drawn from his need for revenge and body-slammed the entirety of Delvok into the MSD, shattering the console and throwing bits of glass all across the Bridge and coating them both in green blood. Sh’ill threw Delvok down on the ground at the side of the Bridge and moved to get them away from the planet.

But Delvok hadn’t been knocked out, their people were used to physical near-torture like this. He rose behind Sh’ill and straight punched the Caitian on the side of his face, hoping to get him down so he could neck-pinch him more easily.

The Commander knew that something like this would happen, and he knew that he would take a few punches. Sh’ill, now even more enraged, pulled Delvok up to himself with his hand and socked him twice straight in the jaw, which was no longer in one piece. He threw him back down, knowing that he had now passed out from the pain. If the heightened synaptic activity from the entity hadn’t been enough to overload his brain, this would do it.

The ventral part of the ship, where the cargo bay was, slowly opened, and a probe dropped down. Conveniently enough, while attempting to crash the Liris into the planet, Delvok had gotten the ship close enough to also destroy the dilithium on it. And so Sh’ill steered the ship away from the planet, but kept it close enough so that he could make sure that the probe got everything.

The Caitian stood up from the helm, quickly setting a course and putting the ship on autopilot, and walked over to his XO, who was still laying on the floor. Sh’ill quickly got the med-pack off the wall and started treating her with utmost care. He looked to his medical tricorder, hoping that she had a good chance of surviving. She did not. Jatia had lost a lot of blood, and her life was hanging by a thread. “No, no, come on… stay with me, stay with me… Computer, access medical records and beam up a blood transfusion of the Lieutenant’s blood type, 1 litre. Do the same for Lieutenant Junior Grade Delvok.”

He picked the transfusions up off the floor and rather chaotically got them both some blood. Sh’ill was horribly afraid of what might happen, he did not want his first major mission with his new crew to end with major casualties. But he was also an excellent doctor, and that was improving their chances.

Jatia slowly opened her eyes and looked up to find Sh’ill standing over her, examining her with a tricorder. “Where… where am I, Captain?”

Sh’ill leaned in, trying to calm her. “You’re on the Bridge. You were severely injured and have lost a lot of blood. Don’t move, please. I’m getting us all out of this mess. Now, calm down. The next thing you will see will be Sick Bay.” And he injected her with a sedative just as he finished speaking, putting her into a deep sleep for a while.

“And now I will also take care of you, Delvok.” He slid over to him across the floor and injected him with the sedative and set up the blood transfusion, just to make sure that he doesn’t wake up before time, but does stay alive.”I’m sorry about bringing that thing aboard, I never should’ve done that. What was that Earth saying… “Curiosity killed the cat.” Quite true, quite true.”

Now having dealt with his dying officers, Sh’ill hurried back over to the helm console and readied the probe’s systems. He pressed the go button and beamed the rock of dilithium out of sickbay and into space. “Please let that thing work, I need this.”

And so it did. The probe lit up the skies, creating spatial rifts under every atom of blood dilithium within 3 light-years and illuminating the system with a mild emerald glow.

On Droth 2V5, if Sh’ill had been there, he would have seen the dilithium mountain shrinking into nothing, leaving nothing but plain rock behind it.

The rock of dilithium floating near the Liris slowly disappeared into the same emerald glow, leaving nothing but bad memories behind itself.

Sh’ill now hurried over to the two sleeping officers and began triage. He scanned them both with a tricorder, and chances still weren’t looking up for them. The blood was helping, but not nearly enough. Another bit of bad news was that they both had several broken bones and couldn’t be safely moved, even with the transporter.

Sh’ill crossed his legs as he sat and silently, through his tricorder, ordered that a large assortment of medical supplies be beamed up. While the beaming was taking place, he carefully moved them to more manageable positions so that he could treat them without having to jump around.

“Computer… send a distress call on every encrypted frequency Starfleet has. Include our coordinates and information about our situation.” Sh’ill sighed as he said this, he hadn’t expected to have to declare distress at any point in his career, but here he was.

And thus he was alone here, floating in space with every one of his crewmen incapacitated. Sh’ill laid down on the floor, resting his head on his med-kit. Sure, he could try to get out of the system, but what good would that do? He’d invalidate the info in his distress call and get himself farther away from stellar objects that might make it easier to spot where he was.

And so the blood had coagulated.