A Soothing Salve

Posted on Thu Jan 15th, 2026 @ 10:58pm by Lieutenant Avira zh'Kenarh M.D.

Mission: Royal Mail
Location: Main Sickbay
745 words - 1.5 OF Standard Post Measure

The main sickbay always had at least one member of the staff on active duty, though active duty was a generous description for most of the evening and night shifts. On a spaceship there was no astronomical need for a day and night cycle, of course, but even the early space explorers had quickly found that a steady rhythm gave a sense of normalcy. Humans especially seemed sensitive to the ebb and flow of a regular day.

In the dusk of the overhead lights set to what the MACOs called zero dark thirty Avira leaned over a PADD with data from the plants gathered on the planet. Potential salvation, a hundred times over. So far she'd been allergic to at least a dozen of them. It was slow going. Her antennae were coiled up tightly. She noticed her breath short.

For a moment she closed her eyes, leaned back in the chair and needed to force a knot in the pit of her stomach down to avoid lashing out at the PADD. There were only so many broken tools and appliances she could explain away with accidents before questions would be asked.

She grabbed a PADD of a more personal kind, scrolled through the available music on there. The Andorians had shared parts of a cultural database, there was some music on there, but most of it was bland. Safe. Government approved. She'd had to explore the breadth of the Human musical database to find something more in line with her tastes. This is when she'd come across Rock music, and had been amazed at all the sub-genres and variants of that existed, and that continued to evolve to current day. It wasn't until she stumbled onto folk rock that she felt a sense of home.

The music leaned on strings, close to the way wind sounded over Andoria’s ice flats. She remembered visiting the northern flats. How the wind swept snow dunes rose dozens of stories overhead. Her antennae unfurled. The PADD found its way back on the cluttered desk and Avira found herself grabbing another rundown of the protein sequences in plant specimen G47D. She started the simulation again. Anything that could give her a glimmer of hope.

The song played on as the numbers rolled by. She closed her eyes to think back to the dark blue ice of the ancients at the museum. The darkest blue she'd ever seen. The coldest ice she'd ever touched. She barely remembered why she'd visited there, then a voice of a woman cut into the song and a smile flashed in front of her eyes. Ishota. She barely remembered anything about the young woman she'd first met when she moved to the big city. But she remembered the warm pearly white smile.

The PADD chimed.

It broke her reverie. Avira frowned and peered closely at the data being displayed. She put the PADD on the desk and started scrolling through the different results. The outliers, of which there were very few. The simulated effects on the long term. The predicted side-effects. She stared at the highlighted proteins longer than necessary. As if they could talk to her directly.

Without taking her eyes off the simulation results she reached for the PADD playing the music. Just as the singer was circling back to a melancholic chorus she paused the playback.

The progression curves of the disease flattened out under the effects of this herb's proteins, for years, a decade maybe. Then like the snow dunes on the northern flats a spike that touched the sky. Her fingers slowed as she traced the later stage line. The progression stalled. Years of stability. Then the line rose, sudden and merciless. It could give her more time. Perhaps to find a proper cure.

She flagged the specimen to be propagated in hydroponics. The gamble was a rather big one. She'd shorten the timer but would make sure that until time was up she'd be as close to a hundred percent as she was now. She wasn't ready to make that decision now. She also wasn't ready to shoot it down.

With a motion of her hand she transferred the initial findings over to her personal research files. She then set the computer to run much more in depth analysis and follow-up simulations. This was a long way away from a proper cure, it felt more like time stolen. But for now that would have to be enough.