Crisis of Consciousness

by Dave Galanter

“No!”

  “Please!”

  “Refrain!”

  “Destroy!”

  “We hope not,” Zhatan told her, and she wiped a clammy hand on her tunic. “I hope so.”

  “INCOMING. SEVERAL CONTACTS!” Jolma called.

  “ ‘Several’ isn’t a number, Mister.” The captain shot only a brief glance at the ensign. Muscles taut with anticipation, he edged forward in the command chair, his eyes on the viewscreen’s tactical display.

  “Twenty-seven, sir. Twenty-seven.”

  “Red alert, all hands to battle stations. Red alert,” Uhura ordered.

  “Evasive action.” They’d handled the missiles before—and many more of them—but there was less time now.

  One of the missiles sped quickly toward them, thrusting toward the port nacelle. It bounced off the shields, spun about, and headed back toward them again as Enterprise twisted away.

  “Shields holding,” Forbes said, but nevertheless the explosion reverberated across the ship, shuddering the bridge.

  Kirk spun toward Uhura. “Anything?”

  One hand at her controls, the other on her earpiece, Uhura shook her head. “No response from the Kenisian ship on any channel, sir.”

  Another missile crashed against the shields just above the bridge. Then another. And another.

  No matter how close they might be, Kirk had to fight back. His ship couldn’t take the pounding. “Phasers, point blank. Fire!”

  Explosions burst into more explosions around them. Bulkheads creaked; console circuits sizzled, sending sparks cascading across the bridge controls. Kirk was thrust from the command chair and felt some jagged piece of debris slice through his tunic sleeve and into his arm.

  Acrid smoke bit at his throat as he scrambled upright, pulling Chekov up into his navigator’s chair as he did. The captain moved to Sulu, who gasped for breath, having struck the console with his chest. “Bones,” Kirk called, and McCoy, also struggling to regain his wind, shuffled toward the helmsman.

  Pain arced along the captain’s arm and crackled across his back as he twisted around, making sure that everyone else was accounted for. Somehow Jolma had made it across the bridge to help Uhura back into her seat.

  Just as Forbes helped a yeoman to his feet, he collapsed. Blood dribbled down the side of his face.

  “Bones!” The captain leaped up to steady him, trying to ignore the sting that came with movement.

  McCoy took over, taking Forbes’s left hand and pushing it tightly against the cut in his scalp. The gash was large and a mere bandage wouldn’t suffice.

  “It’s wet,” he said.

  “What’s your name?” the doctor asked. He knew, but wanted to see if the engineer remembered it.

  “Forbes, Joshua,” he said, then added, “sir,” in a groggy afterthought.

  McCoy nodded. “You’re bleeding, Forbes. Keep pressure on it.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  On his way to the science station, Kirk moved past the turbolift just as the doors opened. Lieutenant Palamas stepped out, looking stunned to be on the bridge.

  “Palamas? Good.” McCoy motioned her over to the engineering station. “You’re a trained field medic. Help me get Forbes into the lift. It’s an aneurysm.”

  “Yes, Doctor.” She moved quickly to help him walk the barely conscious engineer into the lift. “You’re going to be fine, Josh,” Palamas told him.

  Once in the elevator, McCoy draped the engineer over his left shoulder. Palamas moved to go with them, but the doctor handed Palamas his medkit. “No, stay here. Triage.”

  By the time the lift doors closed, Kirk was at the science station. “Status.”

  Hovering over his console, Jolma was shaking his head repeatedly, incredulous. “Unknown.”

  The captain glared at the ensign. He felt his mouth gape open and then quickly closed it. “Explain.”

  “The bridge has only battery power, lights, and life-support,” Jolma said, coughing over his own words. “All other systems are offline.”

  “All other systems, Mister Jolma?” Kirk prodded.

  “Aye, sir.” He looked at the captain. “I—I don’t know what—”

  “All right, stand by, Ensign.” Kirk moved toward communications. “What’s smoldering?” he asked, then realized the list of what wasn’t might be shorter. He grabbed a yeoman from the damage control team as she passed. “Find out what’s burning, put it out.” He then turned to Uhura. “Get me engineering.”

  She nodded and snapped toggles on her board, and when one connection didn’t work, she tried another. Then a third. “I’ve got Mister Scott, sir. Internal communications are spotty. Subspace is out.”

  Wiping sweat and some soot from his forehead, the captain nodded his understanding and leaned toward the comm. “Scotty, go.”

  “It’s not good, Captain. I can have sensors in a few minutes, but structural integrity fields are close to overloaded again. There’s a bypass . . . emergency bulkheadsssss . . . I can’t get to . . . doing.”

  “Are you all right, Mister Scott?”

  “I’m—” The engineer was cut off.

  “I’m sorry, sir, the circuits are fried,” Uhura said.

  Wonderful, Kirk thought sardonically. Chewing on the inside of his lower lip, he took a moment to survey the bridge. The crew diligently ran their system checks, the upheaval of just a minute ago now past and their duties foremost in their minds. There were no more explosions—no more impacts against the shields—so the missiles were likely spent. But by destroying them so closely, Kirk had done the Enterprise inestimable harm.

  Spilt milk, he thought, still unwilling to dwell on the guilt he knew he’d feel later. This was his constant struggle—pushing away the distracting emotions until his tasks were complete. Right now, the Enterprise and her crew needed him, and he couldn’t lose focus. “Uhura, keep trying to raise engineering.”

  As he moved toward the turbolift, Palamas got his attention from the environmental controls. “Captain? Yeoman Merrill has a compound fracture of the tibia. I need to get him to sickbay.”

  Joining them, the captain eased the yeoman’s arm over his shoulder. “Let’s go.” He turned back to Uhura. “Coordinate repairs, Lieutenant. You have the bridge.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Uhura said as the lift doors closed.

  “WHAT HAPPENED to the Enterprise?” Pippenge asked aloud, understandably distressed. Since Kirk had simulcast his discussion with Zhatan, they knew that the captain had been cut off mid-message.

  “Unknown,” Spock said quietly.

  “Perhaps we can explain.” Sciver’s appearance shocked the ambassador and even Spock was somewhat startled. He’d been so focused on communicating with the Enterprise that he’d not heard his approach.

  “That would be appreciated,” the Vulcan said.

  “Long-range scans tell us your ship is disabled. We’ll have no more interference from Kirk.”

  “I see.” Spock glanced at Pippenge, who looked quite unnerved.

  “Our tests are complete,” Sciver said. “We would have you review our data and assist in modifying the prototype, assuming you can be trusted to give us an accurate appraisal.” The Kenisian scientist opened his arms and spread his hands apart. “You do still wish to limit the destructive spread of the na’hubis explosion, do you not?”

  Spock rose. “I do.”

  Sciver gestured for the Vulcan to follow, and both he and Pippenge did so.

  “Are you required for this?” the Kenisian asked the ambassador.

  “Is there a reason he cannot join us?” Spock asked. “I am entrusted with his well-being.” He didn’t think it wise for them to be separated at this juncture and would do all in his power to see they stayed in close proximity.

  Sciver accepted that and led the way.

  Hand on his chest, Pippenge tacitly thanked the Vulcan, and Spock bowed his head in reply.

  “We could have destroyed your vessel, you know,” Sciver said. “We did not, to show
you we don’t want the destruction of those who have not aggrieved us.”

  How incapacitated was the Enterprise? One could assume that communications had been disabled but the ship was intact. Supposition was of no value. Spock had his orders, he knew what to do. Support from the Enterprise would be appreciated, but he could not count on it.

  “Indeed,” Spock told Sciver. “I’m prepared to help you.”

  UHURA HAD DONE THIS before. She’d rebuilt her communications console’s circuits any number of times, and there were days she felt she lived in the access panel under her station. However, she’d rather see to the damage herself. Waiting for a tech and then relaying the problems was a waste of time, time the Enterprise did not have.

  The life of a starship communications officer; after a time the work one did on their station shifted from craft to art. Uhura knew her circuits better than those who designed the components. The lieutenant had stretched their specifications and capabilities to their limits. She’d designed new materials and had them fabricated aboard ship. And now, what lay before her was too many burned circuits and fried connections.

  Pushing herself away from the access hatch, she found Sulu offering her a hand up.

  She took his help and rose to her seat. “Thank you.” She brushed dust off the red engineering jumpsuit she’d taken from storage before she dove under the console.

  “The captain left you the conn,” the helmsman nodded toward the center seat, “so isn’t fixing this someone else’s problem?”

  “In command,” she said with a wink, “my job is to see things get done by the person best qualified to the task.”

  He smiled. “Oh, I see.”

  Uhura stood and stepped down to the command well where Chekov was working with a member of the damage control team.

  “How’re we doing?” she asked.

  “We are needing intensive care.” Chekov smiled wryly as he continued to work on a circuit node he’d pulled from the underside of the console. “Maybe three or five minutes.”

  “How’s the helm?” Uhura asked Sulu as she returned to her station and balanced herself on the back of her chair as she straightened the leg of her jumpsuit.

  “I’m good. Just waiting on Chekov.”

  “Give him a hand,” she told him. “I need to get back at mine. I’m not going to fix communications from this chair, or that one.” She nodded to the captain’s chair, then slid back down to the deck and reached again for her toolkit. “This would be easier if someone in engineering could reroute certain circuits, but I doubt they can spare anyone just now.”

  “Are you sure about that? Maybe they could spare someone,” Sulu said.

  “I’ll only be sure,” Uhura said, crawling back under the console, “when I get the intercoms working again.”

  AS THE TURBOLIFT moved toward sickbay, Kirk thought it was extraordinarily slow. He checked the indicator.

  “Something wrong, sir?” Palamas asked, trying to keep the pressure off Merrill’s broken leg.

  “Debris in the tube, power loss, or possible malfunction,” he told her. “Slowing us down.”

  “I think malfunction. I ordered the lift to bring me to my battle station on deck ten, and it brought me to the bridge instead.”

  Trying to take the majority of Merrill’s weight on himself, Kirk leaned in and repositioned the yeoman’s torso against his side. “Emergency protocol. If the bridge is damaged, the computer reroutes an available cab in case the bridge needs to be evacuated.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Palamas admitted.

  “Even clears a path to auxiliary control,” he added.

  Yeoman Merrill groaned softly.

  “I gave him something for the pain,” the lieutenant explained, “but I wasn’t sure of the dosage.”

  “We’ll be there soon, Merrill,” the captain assured him.

  When the lift doors finally opened, Kirk took Merrill’s full weight on his shoulder and guided the yeoman into the corridor. “I’ll take him from here,” he told Palamas. “Hold the cab on this deck, or we’ll lose it.”

  The captain met Palamas’s eyes a moment, and what he saw surprised him. She was steady, ready to do whatever her captain needed.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” she said.

  When Kirk got to sickbay, there was a line of crew curving out the door and down the corridor. Several medical techs were scanning people, treating them where they stood or taking them in for further examination.

  The captain passed Merrill to the first crewman he saw, Ensign Nehring, a research scientist who, like Palamas, doubled as a field medic when at battle stations. “He has a compound fracture of the tibia. Take care of him.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “How many?” Kirk asked, motioning up the corridor.

  “Seventeen inside, sir.” Nehring passed Merrill to the nurse nearest the sickbay doorway. “We’re still doing triage.”

  The captain mentally winced. How many were injured overall? Had he lost anyone? There was no time for a full report. Kirk knew however many made it to sickbay, more hadn’t.

  Kirk gestured to Nehring’s emergency medkit. It was more robust than the one McCoy had given Palamas, and they might need it. “Can you spare this?”

  “Yes, sir. No problem.” Nehring grabbed the kit and handed it to the captain, but as Kirk reached for it, the medic gasped, “Captain, your arm.”

  Kirk looked down. His tunic sleeve was torn where the debris had slashed into his forearm. The gold captain’s braid was cut in half, and crusted with dried blood. “I’m fine, Ensign.” He’d forgotten about the gash and there just wasn’t time to worry about such a minor wound.

  “Let me just seal—”

  Taking the medkit, the captain turned back toward the turbolift.

  “That’ll be all, Nehring. Carry on.”

  When Kirk returned to the lift, Palamas was waiting dutifully. Her eyes held a sadness, and the captain followed her gaze to the other side of the corridor. Repair crews were cleaning debris from the walkway as crewmen hurried by. Nothing unusual. But against one bulkhead was a blood stain. Perhaps one of the seventeen now in sickbay. Hopefully not one sent to the morgue.

  He couldn’t be thinking of that now. And neither should she. “Look what I found,” Kirk said more brightly than he felt as he handed her the medkit.

  As he stepped into the turbolift, she reciprocated his smile with one of her own. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Let’s hope we don’t need it.” The captain took the lift control in hand. “Engineering.”

  They traveled faster this time, probably because debris had been cleared from the turbolift tubes. In under a minute the doors opened to reveal the engineering deck.

  They entered main engineering to find a mad hive of activity. Crewmen in red moved crisscross from console to console, from one ladder to another, all carrying a tool or a replacement part or piles of circuits. Scotty stood in the middle of this pandemonium, focusing it and directing its flow.

  Maneuvering around the traffic, Kirk and Palamas strode to the chief engineer.

  “Just a moment, sir,” Scott said to Kirk, then called to the upper tier. “Sanchez, you can’t bypass that from there. You know better, lad.”

  The engineer sounded exhausted, and the captain noticed he was holding his wrist at an unnatural angle. Palamas saw it at the same time and pulled the scanner out of her medkit.

  “He needs to sit down,” she told Kirk, running the Feinberger from Scotty’s left hand, up his shoulder, then back down. “You need to sit down, Mister Scott.”

  “I don’t have time to sit,” he said, then turned to a crewman behind him. “Remember you can’t replace that circuit with power less than fifteen percent. Boost each auxiliary bypass to level six. That’ll reroute enough away from the node you need to repair. If you don’t, you’ll blow the whole subsystem.”

  Palamas cast an exasperated look at the captain, then took Scott by the elbow of his good arm and guided him to the chair
near the status board by the entry.

  As he was practically dragged away, the engineer continued to bark out orders. “Mister Gross, if I see you hold that probe like that again, I’ll have you replacing impulse points for the next year.”

  “Sit,” Palamas ordered, and Scotty looked to Kirk for support.

  “Doctor’s orders,” Kirk said.

  “But, sir, I need to—”

  “No, sir. Sit,” Palamas ordered.

  “You’re as bad as Doctor McCoy,” Scott said.

  Kirk smiled at Palamas, but she was bent over the chief engineer studying the readings. He was glad he’d grabbed the better medkit. The chaos seemed less organized without Scott.

  Kirk grabbed the arm of a passing engineer—who nearly clouted his captain on the jaw before he saw who’d seized him.

  “Sir! Captain!”

  Kirk took the man by his shoulders and pointed him at Scott. “Crewman Hong, you are now the chief engineer’s legs.”

  “Sir?”

  “I’m ordering Engineer Scott to sit here and not move. You, Mister Hong, are to run where he tells you, relaying his orders as he instructs. He is not to get up from this spot until Lieutenant Palamas or I say so. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir. Completely,” Hong said, sharing an awkward look with Scotty.

  The chief engineer sighed, but realized it was useless to protest. He nodded toward the auxiliary booth above them. “Tell Gudapati I want every change he makes to those intercooler circuits documented. If we don’t keep our records current, it’s like not keeping ’em at all.”

  “Aye, sir,” the engineer said, and hurried off.

  Palamas took Scott’s middle finger and pushed it upward. He winced hard and yanked his hand away. “Definitely a broken wrist,” she said.

  Nodding, Kirk could see that his wrist was red and already swelling.

  “Didn’t the blasted scanner tell you that?” the engineer protested.

  “I can help the pain,” Palamas told Kirk, “but this kit doesn’t have a splint.”

  “We can make one,” Scott said. “Get Hong back here. We can—”

  “No,” Palamas cut him off. “We need a real wrist splint, and I shouldn’t be the one setting it. The scaphoid bone may be shattered. That’s permanent nerve damage if we do this wrong and possible diminished use of your thumb.”