StarDate 2406.189

Doctor Veren had been working with patients for the past month. They would come in asking him to cure them of various ailments. One such person was Mirgo a Ferengi businessman who came in and said "Doctor I will pay you to keep this to yourself, I cannot let this get back to the Ferengi homeworld."

Doctor Veren pulled out a scanner and began his preliminary evaluation. "Any signs of change that I need to be aware of?"

Mirgo thought about it and embarrased to tell, but he was paying for silence and this was a Terran doctor and not another Ferengi. "My ears are smaller than they were a week ago"

Strange thing to say, the doctor thought. They were quite large to him. He had a large green head skirt around the base of his skull that gave the distinct feeling the ears were larger than the rest of his head. "You are sure about this, when was the last time they were measured?" trying to sound passive and unbiased.

"Every time I make a business deal. I have a history of all of my measurements and I didn't notice the change, but look they are definately smaller!" Mirgo sounded desperate and convinced he was right. "Look here and here, this was when I sold an engine core from a destroyed galaxy class cruiser." as he pointed to the PADD. "This was when I sold one hundred and fifty thousand tons of tritanium plating. My ears shrunk by three milimeters!"

Veren took the interest as far as the patient let him. Having go through changes of up to eleven millimeters. "Well, from what I see your numbers are correct. Where is your tool you use for measuring?"

Mirgo walked to the chair and pulled out a long metal rod. Its end had a tip that lit up and to show its effectiveness he put it to his ear and it took a scan and projected the ear as a hologram. The hologram also gave notes on size and distance and took commands verbally. Mirgo pressed a button on the rod. "Give me the height length and width of the scan" the rod voice activated with a male tone "That will be one slip of latinum, press your thumb print into the scanner and you will have your answer." frustrated he put his thumb to the scanner and it spit out the appropriate response. "One hundred and seventy point two millimeters tall by one hundred and eighty point six millimeters long..."

The rest of the answer was drowned out and interupted by an Aenaran female. "Doctor we do not have time to listen to this worthless wretch complain about his ears" as she steps out in her pure white robe with red tips lining the edges.

Veren defiantly asked "Who are you and why are you here? This is a private matter."

"Oh Doctor Veren when we put you back together I will be sure to take that tone out of your system" she laughs and steps aside as Otuv daughter of Klandlack a dark skinned and dark haired Klingon in a light armor moves through the doctor and stands next to Mirgo. "However, I will introduce myself and if you cannot assist us in removing your patients memories of us, we will be forced to kill him."

"What?" Mirgo tries to get up and Otuv pulls a knife with her right hand and presses him down with her left. She bared her teeth at him and quietly hissed.

"Wait, I have money, what will it take for you to let me go?" he was shivering and trying to back away from

"We already have some of your money, but now we need you to take some medicine right doctor? Oh I forgot, you don't know me. Very well my name is Teb Ch'thatrehr, but you can call me Teb" she giggles toward the Ferengi. "You won't need to pay us, at least not anymore than you already have."

Mirgo wanted to move and confront Teb, but with a knife threatening him and the viscious look Otuv had upon him he didn't think it was a good idea. "I've never paid you"

"You never had to, we just took it from your accounts. You see, I have a very good friend, much like yourself." she walks around the room slowly, her voice seemed to get higher in pitch. "Not a businessman, but a Ferengi who wants to improve himself through other means. You wish for money, my friend wants to understand the link between technology and biology. We think he have come up with a way to block your natural ability to stop telepathic contact. Isn't that lovely, now I can finally read your mind"

"The Ferengi business association will hear of this and I will make sure the Grand Nagus exposes you" he started to gain some confidence and had to be reminded by Otuv, he was not in control. The tip of the blade reached his neck and pierced his skin.

"Otuv, that is not how we treat guests" she scolded at her. "Mister Mirgo, I believe you are over due for a head examination. If you would please remove the head skirt and we will proceed."

When he did not move Otuv forced him onto his belly against the bed and lifted the head skirt off with her blade. Doctor Veren saw it immediately a small metal injection right into the base of Mirgo's skull. His head piece was covering it making it less likely to be detected. "I have seen this before. I thought it was a dream but I know I have seen this"

"That's too bad doctor, it means our powers are weakening on you and you will need a second dose as well. It does seem that direct contact with this" as she holds up a long needle tool with a liquid in a chamber. "Doctor, you have a choice, you can inject Mirgo with this or we will."

"I will not" he denies them the satisfaction.

"There are those morals again doctor." the soft voice can be heard from the other end of the room. Cr'oa leaped across the room landing in front of Mirgo landing as silent and as light as a feather hitting the ground "Well you are about to treat him for some facial discomfort" Otuv let him go.

Mirgo never having been this close to a Caitian and seeing the breadth of Cr'oa he was stone cold petrified. As fast as lightning he reached up and grabbed Mirgo by the back of his neck and slammed him into the bed face first. Mirgo cried out in pain "AHHH." Cr'oa's tail snatched the needle tool out of the hands of Teb's hand and stabs Mirgo directly into his injector port releasing the liquid into his system.

Mirgo was swimming in pain, the swirl of room twisted around him as he went from excruciating pain to bliss. He could feel someone giving him oo-max and whispering to him. “Mirgo, I will bathe you in latinum and drown you in jewels” The thought gave him solace as he moaned in pleasure. “Yesssss, keep going” he replied to the unknown female voice.

Standing over him was Cr’oa and Teb while Veren hid in the corner under the watchful eye of Otuv. Cr’oa said “This better work, or we will lose yet another potential test subject” they had been bringing in numerous individuals over the past month. Today was the last day that Cr’oa was going to put up with any more delays. If they did not have a significant amount of progress by the end of today. Veren and Mirgo would be the latest casualties. On top of that, they would have to move to another part of the galaxy again and start over.

In the past three years they have been working with different scientists and doctors on formulas to take natural abilities and negating them. In some cases trained abilities such as the Vulcan mind discipline and bypassing it. With each successive discipline they obtain their useful information and stored it and passed it along to the next successor and see where they will take the information. Thirty seven medical professionals and scientists have been used and been given a very short leash. The threat of death was always that a threat. They have never killed any of their assistants but it wasn’t beyond what the crew were capable of. Scientists had a very weak backbone and physical threats were enough to keep them in line most of the time.

Those who were employed as test subjects were treated as such. They were injected with formula’s and waited for reactions. Some good which gave proof to their theories and some bad resulting in a sick patient who was not going to be of use anymore or worse for the patient their own demise.

Mirgo fluttered again as the tingling sensation reached his ears again. He turned his head into the touch trying to get more out of what he was feeling. In reality it was all in his head he was given a psychotropic drug that allowed him to think he was in constant pleasure. Thus lowering his own natural defenses against intrusion to the mind. Combined with a special formula that Teb and Kotu had acquired four months ago. They started working with their chemistry knowledge and a Xeno-biologist with a sub specialty in telepaths to create a compound that would aid in their quest for telepathic links to any mind.

Their testing had already taken the lives of three other Ferengi. The first died shortly after receiving the injection. They had not taken into account the Ferengi immune system being so swift in fighting their serum with total organ failure. The second was able to last two whole minutes with the same reaction of cellular collapse. The combination of chemicals and antibodies that were fighting against each other.

Eight days ago

The last subject they gave Doctor Veren who proposed “What if we tried to incorporate a Borg treatment of nanoprobes.”

Fraaza heartily disagreed. “That would undermine what we are doing. We need to be able to telepathically link to anyone without touch.”

Veren very enthusiastically gave his reasoning “If we lower the defense completely using my method and Borg technology. We can see what produces the barrier that we need to go through and attack it directly. Is it part of the brain, is it apart of their physiology? Will this work on one species or all species with telepathic abilities? I won’t know till we get one studied.”

Fraaza wasn’t sure if this was the way to go but this was the direction of the expert. He did what was needed. He took Lamac’s nanoprobes and modified them to take a healthy Ferengi and make him so sick his body would think his immune system needed to go into overdrive. A second set would attack his neuroreceptors directly. At least the hope was that the natural immunity coincided with the cells ability to communicate with one another. If this was a physical natural attribute, no amount of technology would allow a remote source to invade a Ferengi.

Fortunately for Doctor Veren his timetable for this subject they made their subject’s body think it was on the brink of death with a parasite. Once the antibodies were trying to fight off the parasite the nanoprobes were injected. Fraaza upset with the result “It’s not working, look at these readings” he touched the screen and forced it to another page. “The metabolic readings remain steady.”

Veren not wanting to give up had one last idea. He went to his lab and came back with an injector. “I can make him sicker.”

“What is in it?” Fraaza demanded

“Dorek Syndrone disease stage one. I have a cure for stage one, but if he gets to stage two, we won’t see him last longer than a couple days.” He adjusted the settings on the injector to give as little as possible to keep the subject alive as long as he could without giving a fatal dose. “Ten hours is the maximum I give him to survive with stage one”

Fraaza thought to himself, well maybe stage two is where we need to get to and not just think it was going to die, but actually die and soon.

Nine and a half hours later

Veren and Fraaza were watching the monitors. Teb came to view the final results to be able to contact Cr’oa with whatever their findings were. They waited for another twenty five minutes with no change. Veren got up and prepared the cure.

Teb put herself and Fraaza on a telepathic link through a device he created just for Teb and Kotu to communicate with him as they had their own device connected to their brains that he gave them over a year ago. It allowed him to have a telepathic link to any one of his devices but it had to be turned on and sync’d with every use. Just in case it was lost or stolen it would do the user no good without his schematic and formula on its creation.

Cr'oa told them "Under no circumstances should our patient get that cure. If he does, one of you will be receiving it" They knew he was serious, the master plan that he had concocted years ago needed total anonymity