Lieutenant Dhae’s personal log, mandated supplemental entry, stardate [REDACTED]: the situation is [REDACTED].

Sakar and Dhae extracted Iskander from the Jefferies tube. The human could crawl and walk if guided, but looked stunned otherwise.

“Iskander!” exclaimed Dhae when the human emerged into the corridor.

“Heeh” answered Iskander, slumping somewhat to the floor. He was still wearing his quite sexy evening attire, which Dhae of course appreciated but that was of course out of place for an engineering task.

Dhae looked somewhat suspiciously at Sakar. “What did you do to him?”

“I added one milligram of dniepertzalatine to the hypospray” said the Vulcan, emerging himself from the Jefferies tube now that the human was out. “You need not to be concerned. It is a strong and quickly-metabolized neural dampener and it will wear within a couple of minutes. As its effect weakens, it will give time to the acetodestroteraphtalbenzoic acid to act and neutralize the paranoid effect of Astrolisomyces.”

“Hmph” grumbled Dhae. The method was logical and sound — Jibrolranki had said that the cure had required some five minutes to act, and Iskander would have consequently been still panicking for that time — but he didn’t like at all seeing his boyfriend reduced to this tuber-approximating mental state. “You might have told me.”

Sakar was packing the hypospray into a pocket. “I am the medical officer amongst the two of us and qualified to take such decisions, Lieutenant. Would you have argued against my expertise?”

Dhae grumbled again as he helped Iskander to stand. “I’m not saying I would have.”

Sakar helped him propping Iskander up on his legs. “Had you not, we would have gained nothing by discussing it. Had you, it would only have shown that your emotional attachment was clouding your judgement, and I would have gained nothing by putting my decision out for a debate. My course of action was logical.”

“I so understand why my ancestors left Vulcan instead of staying there and arguing” mumbled Dhae. “Iskander, can you walk?”

“Rhuu” answered Iskander. He was leaning quite heavily on Dhae, but seemed to have a modicum of balance.

Dhae holding him on the left side, and Sakar on the right, Iskander managed to move his feet in the correct configuration. They started moving in the direction of Atmospheric Control.

T’Vylin and Jibrolranki should have already have been there, and hopefully have secured the room. The task now was simple: get there, enter, and have a much sobered-up Iskander set the correct diffusion mode for the cure to paranoia.

“Skoooo” chirped Iskander.

“You are certain that this is temporary?” asked Dhae to Sakar. “He sounds like a vegetable.”

The Vulcan didn’t give any answer more explicit than a tiny movement of the eyebrow. Dhae realized in that moment that, despite their fame, Vulcans were as expressive as anyone else: but their expressivity was entirely eyebrow-based.

“Your paranoia is unwarranted” said Sakar. “I wouldn’t turn permanently Mr al-Kwaritzmi’s into a vegetable.”

They walked.

The corridors of the ship had been, until now, blessedly deserted, most likely because most people had been cowering inside their quarters. But, as Sakar had said, at some point the effect of Astrolisomyces would shift from paranoia to fury, as the affected humanoids would want to do something about their fears.

Dhae knew that this was a necessary step of the lifecycle of Astrolisomyces: the psychological effects of its spores would grow in intensity until someone, prey to a mindless paranoid rage, would destroy the ship. Everyone would die and the mushroom would calmly, over a period of years, consume the dead bodies and let the solar or galactic winds spread its spores, renewing its lifecycle.

It was, for sure, a method to eliminate competition, developed under untold aeons of evolution. In a non-destroyed starship, a body would have been disposed in efficient ways. In a warm atmosphere, other mushrooms and insects would have consumed dead matter faster than Astrolisomyces noosferos could. But in the dead of empty space, exposed to vacuum, Astrolisomyces and its slow temperature-insensitive metabolism reigned alone, and hence reigned supreme.

Usually Dhae would have felt a strong kinship to Astrolisomyces noosferos. With its capacity to induce paranoia and to exploit a softer specie’s weaknesses, it was possibly the most Romulan of the fungine kingdom. It, just like the Romulan, had evolved to exploit fear and anguish to a full logical extent.

But of course Dhae’s life was now threatened. It was personally inconvenient, and Dhae lived by the hard rule that he did not extend any spiritual kinship to things that inconvenienced him to death.

All of this meant that by now the angrier members of the crew, having stomached about as much anguish as they could, were starting to get out of their safe places, nervously looking for an enemy they could blame for all the fear.

The corridor they were walking in led to a large junction where they happened upon four of their shipmates, whose names Dhae couldn’t remember in any way. The four — two women and two men, one of which recognizably an Efrosian — turned to stare at Sakar, Dhae and Iskander held by them.

For a moment nothing moved and nothing happened.

“Good evening” said Sakar finally, very calmly. He nodded in one direction for Dhae’s benefit. “That way.”

“What — what are you doing with him?” asked one of the two women, looking at Iskander.

“Aor moor” said Iskander, unhelpfully.

“You– you–” tried saying one of the two men, starting to get angry, “WHAT IS HAPPENING?”

“Please, Lieutenant Stribilizt” said Sakar, “surely you can trust me.”

Lieutenant Stribilitz seemed to consider the notion, then he went very pale, made a displeased face, cried and charged against his psychologist.

Sakar let loose of Iskander in order to avoid a punch. Iskander swayed quite a bit having been so let loose.

“Lieutenant! We have a year-long therapeutic relation!” protested Sakar as Stribilitz tried to punch him again. “I beseech you to consider some self-control!”

“AAAAAHHH!” screamed Stribilitz.

Sakar seemed to have enough and, elegantly, used the next punch to take the arm and move his other hand to the shoulder. Vulcan-pinched to unconsciousness, Stribilitz fell to the floor a bit ungracefully.

“I do hope that this doesn’t damage the trust relation that we have built so carefully” said Sakar to the unconscious lieutenant.

The man and two women who had been with Stribilitz, who had looked at the scene with astonishment, seemed to take the fall of their companion to be a direct signal to attack.

Sorry, my love, thought Dhae as, pressed by the close-quarters attack, he had to let loose of his engineering human to answer some punches. Iskander swayed even further but seemed to fall back unto a wall.

The two women had picked Dhae as a target. They charged with great enthusiasm, but with a definite lack of coordination — the mushroom and its paranoid effects probably were already overruling the strategic parts of the brain.

Dhae wasn’t a good melee fighter. He had many skills: he was an excellent supernovae astrophysicist, a solid plasma physicist, an exquisite linear algebrist, an insightful group theorist, a passable science generalist and a workable repairman. He had repelled the psyonic attack of a class-3 Reman telepath and no one had yet discovered his deathly secret. But he was a terrible ranged fighter, quite hopeless with a phaser, and a celebratedly bad melee fighter.

So he tanked the attacks. He had discovered that this was his only good move if his opponents were unharmed: steel himself and take the punch.

He did, and had to make himself a mental note that Starfleet hand-to-hand and muscular routines were really good: the two women punched him quite well.

And, after only four or five punches, both women stopped. Dhae opened his eyes and Sakar was standing in front of him, his hand still in the form of the Vulcan pinch, a perplexed expression in his eyes.

“Is it that you are not a good fighter, Lieutenant, or that you wanted to unimpress me?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m much worse than bad” said Dhae massaging his side, where a particularly sneaky punch had landed. “But I knew you’d Vulcan-pinch me out of my predicament.”

“Dh–Dhae” said Iskander.

The two turned. Iskander seemed to be quite concerned.

“Iskander! You speak!” rejoiced Dhae. That was maybe the first good news all evening. He jumped to his human boyfriend and kissed him. “You speak!”

The human’s eyes didn’t seem to be quite able to focus. “What –”

“Take it easy, Mr al-Kwaritzmi” said Sakar. “You still need a moment to recuperate. My guess is that the adrenaline has quickened the recovery.”

“What can you feel?” asked Dhae.

“Nothing” said Iskander.

“That must feel quite novel for you” said Dhae.

“Please do not chide your partner while he’s still under the effect of an emotional dampener” requested Dhae. “We should get going.”

As they walked, faster and faster, the mood in the corridors got progressively worse. More and more crewmembers would exit their quarters — or whatever place had served as a panic refuge for the last half an hour — and be easily provoked by people just passing by.

So the march towards Atmospheric Control slowed to a crawl as they started to encounter a progressive number of crewmembers. Dhae and Sakar had silently converged to a good working partnership: Dhae would take care of Iskander, keeping the pace as high as possible, while Sakar would Vulcan-pinch any aggressor.

Dhae was surprised at how talkative Sakar was, for a Vulcan. He was the sort of guy who talked to himself: or, at least, he talked to the senseless people he had just neutralized, which amounted to the same as having only himself as a public — unless he somehow directed his words to Dhae, which would also have been illogical.

But he did, indeed, keep saying things like “This is not representative of my therapeutic approach” or “I do trust that you’re not going to cancel our meeting in three days, Ensign” or “I will notify my colleague about this very interesting anguish you have just expressed”.

Iskander was slowly getting back to his senses. “Dhae?”

“Yes, Isk?”

“I was… very afraid.”

“It’s not your fault. There’s spores of a paranoia-inducing mushroom in the air.”

Iskander nodded slowly.

“Did I try to kill you?”

“No, certainly not. You booby-trapped the door of our quarters, though.”

“Does that not count as trying to kill you?”

Dhae pondered for a moment. Booby-trapped doors were quite normal for a Romulan, but he guessed that for Iskander the gesture was a little more dramatic than that. “You were trying to kill anyone.”

“Still feels bad.”

“You should try to see it from my point of view” said Dhae.

Iskander was looking at him quizzically. In front of them, Sakar was Vulcan-pinching a large human and a red-haired Bolian, both wielding a phaser.

“The home I grew up into had two doors: a main entrance, which was booby-trapped and deadly, and a secret door which was the only safe way” explained Dhae. “This was quite nostalgic for me.”

“IT’S THE ROMULANS!” screamed a Chief seeing Dhae. Sakar Vulcan-pinched him too.

“Counselor” said Iskander to Sakar. “Am I wrong in recalling that you ambushed me in the Jefferies tubes?”

Sakar had a scratch on the chin and a bit of green blood had smeared it. He looked at Iskander calmly. “Are you distressed by the thought of your analyst ambushing you, Lieutenant?”

“Honestly, a little bit.”

Sakar intercepted and Vulcan-pinched a sword-wielding Andorian scientist, who fell to the floor. “I understand and respect this emotional response” he said. “Would you accept an apology? I hope we can salvage our therapeutic bond.”

They arrived at the door of Atmospheric Control. It was locked. Sakar rang and, after having confirmed his identity, the door opened.

“There you are” said Jibrolranki, in the doorway. He sounded relieved. Past him, T’Vylin was standing at a table, the canister of replicated chemical with her. “Everything is secure.”

Atmospheric Control was a very large room filled with any sort of large machinery: gas generators, heat pumps, filters, recyclers, humidifiers, chi-rho exchangers, pressurized recatalysts, osmotic balancers, and even some of the diagnostic systems, such as a gas chromatographer and a Dowjerty-Klie. The sound was of overwhelming pumping.

Iskander cleared his throat. He had been explained the situation and what was needed of him. “Has a diagnostic been run?”

“Yes, Lieutenant” said T’Vylin, calmly. “All atmospheric systems are within parameters.”

Iskander advanced and took the canister. For an instance, incongruously, Dhae was again struck by how attractive his partner was when he was concentrated and on the job: he exuded a sort of natural, low-key charisma, a subdued authority that came from being competent rather than having to fight for it. Of course, he would have found this description absurd: in his perennial underestimating himself, he’d probably have been confused by the thought of others thinking him charismatic.

But it also helped that he was still wearing the rather sexy Capri pants and floral shirt he had donned for the dinner. He wasn’t even wearing his commbadge — he had maybe discarded it in a fit of paranoia. It wasn’t an appropriate attire for the engineering work, but was good for the morale.

Well, for Dhae’s morale at least.

“The nebulization unit is there” said Iskander, pointing at a shining, metallic machine. “Ensign T’Vylin, please bring the canister. Lieutenant Sakar, I need you to assist me for a couple of calculations.”

“Of course, Lieutenant” answered Sakar. There was something odd, for Dhae, in seeing Iskander give orders to the Vulcan, despite Sakar being equal in rank as him, and also his analyst. But, realized the Romulan, there was something to be said for Starfleet professionalism: the hierarchy wasn’t as marked as it would have been on a Romulan Republic Navy ship, but it was as fast to emerge as it should have been.

“We’ll be starting the infusion soon” estimated Iskander. “The whole process will require then a couple of minutes.”

“Can’t it be sped up?” asked Jibrolranki.

“That is the sped-up version of the process” grumbled Iskander. “Any more liquid per unit of volume and the molecule will undergo condensation.”

T’Vylin, Jibrolranki and Dhae retreated a couple of meters, leaving Iskander and Sakar to their calculations — something about the air flow and the optimal air humidity to carry the heavy molecule. As they reached a conclusion, signalled by each of them nodding to the other, Iskander attached the canister and started inputting settings and parameters on a command panel.

And that was the point at which the door of Atmospheric Control was breached by the sharp tip of a bat’leth.