Ghostbusters Part 1

Posted on Mon Sep 7th, 2026 @ 5:02am by Lieutenant Kally Kellerman & Lieutenant JG Katie Kellerman & Ensign Henry Taylor & Petty Officer 2nd Class Quinn Sullivan & Captain Calypso Skyie

2,166 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: The Next Interim
Location: Sickbay
Timeline: Continuing from The Wounded

"All right, one, two, three, haul!" Peter said as he, Cally and Katie lifted Jadizon's body up and put him on a biobed. Henry activated the sensors and pulled up his readings. "All vitals falling," he said.

Kally had managed to heal Raven's concussion, and had induced a deep sleep so the girl could recover safely. She was frazzled and tired, but she wasn't nearly done. She hurried back over to Jadizon's biobed and stood opposite Henry. "Cordrazine, five ceecees," Kally said, pulling out a tricorder and scanning him quickly. "What the fuck..." she said to herself.

Henry grabbed a hypospray and loaded the dosage, smacking it smartly with his palm before pressing it to Jadizon's neck. The levels on the screen adjusted slightly, but then began to fall again.

"What's going on?" Katie said, trying not to sound frantic. "What happened to him?"

"I don't know," Kally said, her frustration rising. "He has no wounds, no pathogens, no toxins. There is nothing wrong with him, he's just..." she looked at the biobed monitor again. "Dying." She grabbed a second hypospray and loaded another medication, pressing it to his neck and watching his vitals. After a moment, the fall slowed to a crawl. She adjusted the dosage and injected him again. The monitor beeped steadily as his vitals hovered above the red line, but she didn't declare victory. She wasn't keeping his body alive, so much as forcing it to be, and all she'd done is caused a temporary stalemate.

"All right," she said, "we've bought ourselves a little time. Let me run some deeper scans and try to figure this out. Give me twenty minutes."

"Is there anything we can do?" Katie said.

Kally glanced at her, then glanced again, realizing Katie was panicked but hiding it. She came over and gave her sister a kiss and a quick hug. "Go sit down somewhere and just give me time. I'll do everything I can, you know that," she said.

Katie squeezed Kally's hand and nodded, feeling like she should be able to do something for him, but realizing Kally was his best bet. She stepped back next to Cally and leaned against her. "Mind keeping me company?" she said, watching Kally and Henry go to work.

An arm automatically went around her girlfriend’s sister, basically her little sister now in all but name, and Cally held her close to her, “There’s nothing else for me to do.” Cally said quietly. Here was where everyone that mattered to the situation at hand was, Kally, Alex, Jadizon, the most senior NCO and her Exec on a ship that literally was being tugged around the planet. She’d gone from one of the most powerful people in the star system to a mere observer.

Ironically, it was Tessa who had volunteered to be the liaison between the ship and the Orgrann government, which explained her absence, with Mark as the official ship’s representative. Would wonders never cease? “He’s going to be all right, Katie, your sister is one of the best doctors I’ve ever known.”

Katie let Cally lead her over to a far end of sickbay with some seats and they both sat down. "I know," Katie said. "And she's standing there saying things like 'what the fuck' and 'he's just dying'. That doesn't bode well." She folded her arms and crossed her legs, hugging herself gently. "I never should have let him go off alone."

“You could have stopped him?” Cally asked her softly, turning Katie’s eyes to look at her. “Hardly. I know men are stupid at times, especially when they’re trying to protect those they care deeply about, but if you had gone after him, he would have been more reckless because he would have been worrying about you the whole time. That could have led to mistakes, then he wouldn’t be here, but the morgue. Here, he has a chance.”

Katie gave a shiver. "I suppose," she said. "Heaven knows he's too headstrong to listen to me sometimes, but I'm not completely useless. I took out a few of those thugs too." She tried to sound defiant, but she didn't have the fire in her anymore. "And I don't want him in the morgue. He's dealt with death enough lately as it is." She paused a moment, then bolted straight up from her chair. "Kally!" she shouted. "It's her!"

Kally turned from across Sickbay, confused and concerned as she came running over, looking around. "It's who?"

"Her" Katie said, making even less sense the second time. "That...woman! The one he talked about! The one he keeps having visions of!"

Kally looked at her like she'd lost her mind, then turned and looked back at Jadizon. "So...he's being killed...by a vision?"

"Or by whatever's got a psychic grip on him," Katie said. "He'd keep acting distracted, and he'd lie to me and say he's fine, but it had to have been her. Kally, whatever 'she' is, it's real, and it's got him."

Kally cleared his vitals from the screen and scanned his head with her tricorder, putting the results on the screen. "No alpha waves...beta...is high? How is that possible? Gamma waves, no theta...he thinks he's awake, but his body doesn't. This isn't possible." She went pale as she looked at the screen, then started pacing. "So....what do we do? I could suppress his metacampus, maybe. If I eliminate his telepathic abilities, that might cut off her access."

"Or lock her in him," Katie said. "Is there some way we can wake him? Get to her through him? Warn him what she's doing?"

"He's not asleep in the traditional sense," Kally said. "He's...dormant. I don't know if he can hear us but he certainly isn't showing any physical response to us."

Calypso had followed Katie over to the biobed and looked at the readings, admittedly not knowing quite what she was looking at, "What do you mean, 'her'?" She put a hand on Kally's shoulder, "And we're not cutting him off from his telepathic abilities, we don't know what that would do to him." She turned to Katie and made the other Kellerman turn towards her, "Who is 'her'?"

Katie licked her lips. "Remember when those tentacle-faced guys boarded the ship? He says when he was shot, he died."

"I still say he didn't die," Kally said. "He was on the edge, but his readings never stopped."

"He was very on the edge," Katie countered.

Kally thought about it, and nodded. "Yeah...I mean, it was touch-and-go there for a bit."

"Well evidently something touched him and didn't let go," Katie said. "He says he sees her, hears her. I can see the fear in him when he talks about it. He keeps trying to protect me by pretending it isn't happening, or saying he's just tired, but it gets to him. He says..." she wrapped her arms around herself. "He says she wants him...that she won't let him go until she has him back."

Kally shook her head. "I just don't see how something has him with no physical signs."

"And yet you say his brainwaves make no sense," Katie countered.

"True," Kally said. "When he was awake, we wouldn't have seen much of this, and we never scanned him during a vision..."

Cally placed a hand on Katie's shoulder, "There are entities out there that prey on the mind when the body is weak... Betazed has a couple of parasites that will glom onto weak psyches, but they can be dealt with. This... Isn't one of them, but if it's the essence of a strong telepath, it's been theorized that they can extend their own lives by connecting themselves to another.. If you can call it a life." She gave a tentative look at Jadizon laying there, a look filled with some sort of fear, "I could... See."

Kally paled. "Oh the hell you will," she said. "What if the...whatever-it-is decides you're tastier and moves to you?"

"We'd need a firewall," Katie said, thinking.

"A what?" Kally said.

"A security barrier. Some kind of middle-ground protection that stops her from accessing Cally, but still allows her to snoop around his mind."

"Okay," Kally said. "So how do we put a wall between two telepaths who are deliberately being telepathic without making them not telepathic?"

Katie thought a moment and shrugged. "No idea," she said.

"You don't, I do." Calypso said confidently, though her heart skipped a beat in trepidation, "I spent the better part of two decades keeping everything and everyone out of my head. I'm not talking just your run-of-the-mill casual touches, I mean intentional, counselors trying to get in, to make me open up."

The Captain looked at Kally deliberately, "When Rala experienced her Awakening, I shut her down. I'm a 9.8 on the Hezhalli scale," She referred to an obscure 'grading' chart of telepathic ability on Betazed, "If I set up a block to my mind, it would take something stronger than that to break in."

"You mean like something strong enough to drain the soul from a body without being in any kind of physical proximity?" Kally said, shaking her head. "It's too dangerous. Plus, there's no guarantee it would let you in at all. It'd recognize you immediately as a threat."

"Ironic we can't do it," Katie said. "But if we could we'd be too telepathic in the first place."

Calypso instantly turned contemplative about things. "Oh, I could defend against it, that's why they need someone at their weakest to establish the psychic link, such as someone at or near death." She paced off a couple steps, then turned back, "Think of our telepathy as a river flowing, when someone grows old, or weaker, the river turns into a stream, into a trickle... When death comes to a Betazoid, that trickle cuts off. Something or someone can find it easy to enter that stream, then set an anchor into it which will hold even when it turns back into a river. Then it doesn't matter how strong they get, because they're already behind the defenses."

"That's how I know I'll be safe if I keep my walls up. I'm not in a diminished state, there's nowhere for it to get a hold of me." Cally brought a hand up to her chin, "But if I shifted to offense, there would be a fair chance for me to get through, though it would leave me open, so that's pretty much out... Katie, how much of a connection do you and Jadizon have? Did he ever... Give you mental exercises to do to bring you closer?"

"We...tried some things," she admitted. "During sex, when I was at my most open and vulnerable and emotional, and then sometimes afterwards when we were just cuddled up."

Kally nodded. "Me too. He wanted us to feel his emotional state and he wanted to feel ours. Sometimes I got flashes of things, sometimes whole thoughts."

Katie nodded as well. "He and I were more adept at it, but I could feel his mind usually and vice versa. It was an odd sensation at first, but I've gotten used to it." She frowned. "Although he's been pretty closed off as of late."

"So you two have that backdoor connection to him already." Cally mused.

"Shut up, Kal," Katie said, reflexively, even though Kally hadn't even started to say something.

"But she can't hook into you two, because you aren't telepathic innately." She went quiet as her eyes flicked towards Jadizon and then the twins.

"What're you thinking?" Kally said, slowly.

"Hypothetically, I could use the connection you two have to get behind his defenses, make a surprise attack per se. Or... Even more hypothetically... No. I'm willing to risk myself, not the two of you." Cally shook her head.

"Cally, tell us," Katie said, her ire rising. "This is as much our fight as anyone else's, and no one more than me. Tell me what to do."

"It's dangerous, not guaranteed to even be possible and relies entirely on no one backing down in any way shape or form." Cally exhaled deeply, "And me. Maybe, MAYBE I could take you in with me. Armor you up with psychic energy, possibly arm you, all while I'm in the back monitoring. I'd be purely on the defensive, which could make it work, but it would make you 'visible' to her."

The girls looked at each other, thinking.

"We could--"

"Already tried."

"If she--"

"She could.

"Do we--"

"What else?"

They finished the conversation silently between them, then looked back at Cally. "Let's do it," they said together.

Cally looked between the twins and sighed, "I don't like this... But what choice do we have?"

"None," Katie said.

"Henry!" Kally said. "I need two cots!"

TBC

 

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