Story Game v2.0

Helena Grey sat at her desk with her eyes closed and rubbed her temples with her fingertips. She let out a breath that was also a sigh and was also a groan. "So we have enough vaccines? You're sure?"
"Stocks are more than adequate," replied the attendant nurse, trying to be cheerful and assertive.
"Don't say adequate." Helena opened her eyes and with a wave of her hand cast away the dark strands of her hair and then pushed them behind an ear. "I hate that word ... 'adequate.' It just makes me think, 'INadequate.' Use another word next time."
"Er- OK," the young nurse stuttered.
"And we've synthesized enough blood plasma?"
"Stocks are... " the nurse paused for too long. "...sufficient?"
Helena couldn't help but smile a little. "Thank you. You can go now." She rolled her eyes at the nurse's efforts to please her but there was no-one here to see it now. She was alone in her little office. Until another figure crept into the doorway and rapped a knuckle on the door.
"Excuse me," the older woman with the white hair spoke with an apologetic tone as if she felt she was intruding here.
Helena groaned and sighed and exhaled again. "Yes, yes, yes," she repeated quickly, rising from her seat to stride towards the woman. "And what are you?" she continued walking past the woman and through the door, leading her away from the small office into the much larger sick bay.
"WHAT am I??" she was a little stunned by the question.
"Yes," Helena turn back to face her. "What are you? Doctor? Professor? Colonel? Emperor??" She ran both hands through her hair in exasperation. "I feel like I'm suffering from Title Tinnitus. I can't remember when someone just told me their name."
"Well, you can just call me, Elander." The woman responded with a warm understanding.
Helena looked to the ceiling with an expression of mock, exaggerated relief. "Thank you. Thank you." As she lowered her gaze to restore eye contact that parody of relief seemed to crystallize into something more genuine. "You know, it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for this..." Unable to immediately find what she was talking about she looked frantically around. "Ah, there it is." She plucked something off a nearby workstation and showed it to Elander.
It was a name badge that read, "Helena Grey: Doctor."
"You see that?"
"Doctor?"
"Exactly. Doctor. AFTER the name. You know why?"
Elander shrugged.
"Because it's not an official 'academic' title. Oh, no. It's just my JOB. Here on this ship we have zoologists, botanists, archaeologists, engineers, even some of the nerdy number guys working the computer. All Doctor This and Doctor That with capital 'D', but me?" she waved the namebadge. "I'm just a doctor. By job. After the name!" She threw the namebadge away like a frisbee. "I don't mean to sound resentful- Well maybe I do. Actually YES, I do. It's not as if I haven't studied for X number of years."
"Well," Elander now spoke like a patronising parent talking to a petulant child. "We could take it up with the Captain and get you a nice pretty badge with the right title."
Helena laughed, appreciating the jokey change of tone that brought her back down from her petty rant. "I'm sorry. I deserved that. You don't have to be crazy to work here but..." She raised her eyebrows at her own pause. "Or perhaps I should say OVERwork. It's been a tough couple of days preparing for landing and whatever eventualities that might bring."
Elander offered some words of wisdom, "The harder the work the greater the reward."
"Yeah, I got that fortune cookie once." They both shared a laugh then Helena confessed, "You know, despite my rant I do have an official title here."
"You do. I know." And they both recited it. "Chief Medical Officer."
"Officer!" She scoffed. "Makes me sound like one of those military grunts. Which I don't appreciate. Anyway, what can I do for you?"
"Nothing dramatic, I'm afraid," the old woman admitted. "I was just checking up on your patient."
"The botanist?" the other woman nodded. "Come have a look."
They both walked over to the bed where the previously indisposed botanist was still laying on a bed in an unresponsive fugue.
"Done all the necessary tests and scans. It's definitely too much of that Idrian Ale."
Elander sighed sharpy and heavily. "I told them not to serve that. I told them. They choose it because of the taste and the significance, they think it's symbolic just because it was brewed from an alien yeast but it's a mild neurotoxin, a paralytic in high concentration."
"I guess he really liked the funny juice."
"You see, this," Elander jabbed an angry pointed finger at the horizontal botanist, "is why we need the quarantine protocols. Some of the people in charge here just don't understand the importance of this. They just think I'm a silly old woman shouting at the wind."
"You're preaching to the converted here," Helena agreed.
The woman smoothed her white hair with her palm, feeling composed by the doctor's words. "So, will he be OK?"
"Sure. We've got him on all the right fluids and we're giving him anti-xenoids. But it's a slow process, he still had a pretty high concentration of the substance, and you can't be too careful with xenoids, you don't want to give him full neuro-shock. So, long story short, the stuff won't be fully out of his system until .... maybe a month? But he should be up and about then with no lasting damage. Only sad thing for him is that he'll be missing all the fun on the planet."

Listening outside the treatment room, Professor Relin's face smiled. A month would be more than enough time. The smile turned into a satisfied smirk. He thought that was a good decision he'd made with the botanist. Merely drowsing him with the Charm and then injecting him with such a high proof of Idrian Ale. The injection mark on his finger looked just like the the scars that the botanist had from the thorns of his plants. Not even a Chief Medical Officer could tell the difference.

The sound of an alarm widened the Professor's eyes. A calm voice, metallically aloof, distant yet everywhere, informed the crew. "Prepare for orbital entry. Prepare for engine burn. Brace. In 5... 4... 3... 2... 1..."
Professor Relin placed his hand on the wall to steady himself as the ship shuddered to the engine's controlled thrust. The massive g-forces were dampened through inertial shunts into just mere vibrations felt throughout the ship's internal structure, but those vibrations were still significant. As he struggled to maintain his balance and posture Relin noticed the subtle glow in his hand. He glanced up and down the corridor with a furtive urgency. There was no-one to see him but he needed this to end soon.
"Main engine shut-off. In 5... 4... 3... 2... 1..."
The vibrations had stopped. Professor Relin had left the corridor. And the explorer ship Omicron was successfully in low, stable orbit.
It was time.