Bitter Medicine

by Dave Galanter

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  #41: Bitter Medicine by Dave Galanter

  COMING SOON:

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  #43: Paradise Interrupted by John S. Drew

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Copyright © 2004 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

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  First Pocket Books Ebooks Edition June 2004

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  Chapter

  1

  “I’m reading the Starfleet warning buoy now, sir.” Susan Haznedl tabbed at the ops console, then turned back to the bridge’s center seat. “And also another warning hail, very weak.”

  Captain David Gold motioned to the speaker overhead. “Let’s hear the other.”

  Haznedl nodded and worked her console again. “Running it through the translator, sir. There’s not much of it, so it might take a few moments.”

  “I didn’t see in the report that there was an original warning,” Commander Sonya Gomez said, stepping down to the side of the captain’s chair from the upper bridge.

  “The Lexington sent the Starfleet buoy from two parsecs out,” Haznedl replied. “The signal I’m getting is very weak. I doubt they picked it up.”

  “Lexington didn’t have time to stop,” Gold told Gomez, “but two Allurian ships running salvage in this area are missing with all hands, and reported a hazard before contact with them was lost. It was enough for Starfleet to leave the buoy and dispatch us.”

  Twisting from ops, Haznedl gestured with a roll of her head toward the speaker above. “I have the translation now, sir.”

  “We issue this extreme warning to avoid our vessel at all costs. There is no hope, there is no cure. Beware.”

  Cryptic, Gold thought. “Is that all?”

  Shrugging slightly, Haznedl’s hands ran quickly over her controls. “There’s probably a datastream, too. And there might be more audio, sir, but there’s almost no power behind the signal.”

  Gold pursed his lips and continued to wonder just how much danger for his ship and crew was aboard that alien ship. Starfleet hadn’t heard the “no hope, no cure” message they just had. “What did our sensor scan find?”

  “A few ion trails, Allurian in signature,” Haznedl said. “I’m not sure how far we can track it, but they both head in the same direction: three-one-two, mark one-eight.”

  “Launch a sensor probe,” Gold told Lieutenant Anthony Shabalala at tactical. “Three-twelve, mark eighteen.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Pulling in a long breath, Gold stared for a moment at the alien ship on the forward viewscreen. It wasn’t particularly artistic in design. It looked more…efficient, for lack of a better word. “If there’s some hazard aboard that ship that spread to two other ships…” he said more to Gomez than anyone.

  “I’ll brief Dr. Lense,” Gomez said, turning immediately toward the turbolift.

  “Level-one safety procedures on this one,” the captain called after her.

  “A shuttle for decon?”

  “Only thing I know that spreads death from ship to ship is something contagious or something toxic. The away team can beam to and from the shuttle, but full medical tests are to be completed there before anyone comes back here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dr. Elizabeth Lense had come quickly to the bridge when Commander Gomez told her of the possible away mission. It had been a while since she’d been off ship, and she had to admit to looking forward to an opportunity to get out of sickbay, if only for a few hours.

  “I’m not sure we even need an expedition,” Captain Gold told her, putting into doubt that she might get the chance. “Closer sensor scans suggest this ship is derelict for a few hundred years at least. Probe telemetry shows the drift pattern.”

  “I thought the probes were tracking the Allurian ion trails,” Gomez said.

  The captain rose from his chair and walked to Haznedl’s ops station. “They are,” he said, pointing to the graphic display of the probe data. “It would seem the Allurians were headed in the direction the derelict came from.”

  “Something caused those ships to be lost with all hands,” Lense said. “I’d like to investigate it, Captain.”

  “I understand,” Gold said, resting one hand on the back of Haznedl’s chair and motioning to the ship on the viewer with his other. “I’m consid
ering it. What about life signs on the derelict?” he asked Haznedl. “Lexington said none.”

  “Indeterminate. There’s too much radiation to get a good reading.”

  “Their engines,” Gomez offered. “Half the ship is irradiated. It’ll definitely need structural repair, if we don’t declare it a hazard and destroy it.”

  “All right, then that’s the mission.” Gold pivoted and returned to the command chair. “To determine which, and then make it happen.”

  Lense nodded her understanding. “Commander Gomez said the message buoy talks about ‘no cure.’ If the Allurians contracted some disease, then took it away from here, we’ll need to investigate—not destroy—the source of that contagion.”

  “That’s a point and a half, Doctor,” Gold said with a sigh and smiled. “Finish readying your team,” he told Gomez as he lowered himself back into his seat. “And make it a small one, until we know what we’re dealing with.”

  “I don’t believe there’ll be a need for security, Commander.” Dr. Lense, having put her EVA suit on before entering the da Vinci shuttlebay because she didn’t want to bother struggling with it in the close quarters of the shuttle, double-checked her medkit for everything she thought she’d need.

  “Commander Gomez’s orders, Doctor.” Lieutenant Commander Domenica Corsi attached a holster to her EVA suit and made sure her hand phaser fit snugly inside it. “There might not be any people alive on that ship, but that doesn’t mean there’s no automated security.” She picked up a larger phaser rifle from next to her left boot, checked its safety, and leaned it against one shoulder.

  “Okay.” Lense nodded, then turned to Gomez as she entered the hangar deck. Gomez held the top half of her EVA suit under one arm, and was only wearing the bottom half. “I’m sure I don’t have to tell any of you how important it will be to make sure your EVA suits are kept completely intact,” Lense said, “even if there’s ample life support over there. We’ll be using this shuttle to beam over, and if you have an occurrence where you believe your suit is compromised, you’ll beam back to the shuttle. Any questions?”

  Gomez smiled and held up the bulky helmet and EVA shirt. “I just didn’t want to pilot out the shuttle in the suit. But yes, we understand. I’ll find engineering on the ship, and check out the engine design. Starfleet wants full specs on it, and it’s in obvious disrepair but I’ll find out the extent. Domenica, make your way through the ship as best you can, and see if anyone is still poking around on board. Report every fifteen minutes.”

  Corsi nodded and the three boarded the Shuttlecraft Kwolek.

  Lense never cared for beaming into any place with an EVA suit on. Somehow it seemed more claustrophobic, as if the suit beamed in first, and then she beamed into it. That was why she’d kept her eyes closed until she felt the transport process end. When she opened them, “obvious disrepair” seemed like an understatement.

  There were pods along the wall before them, electronics falling from their sides, wires and insulation hanging out from panels here and there and…well, everywhere. There were also a lot of squiggles and symbols on the walls, but it didn’t look so much like art as it looked like graffiti, or at least some kind of writing.

  “This is their sickbay.” She realized this as she looked from the writing to the consoles on which they had been scrawled, and the several beds against two of the gray walls.

  “It scanned as being the safest from the radiation leaks.” Gomez’s voice came over the EVA’s comm systems as the commander flipped open a tricorder. “Which I guess a sickbay would be, usually. Ours is more shielded, too.”

  Lense broke out her own tricorder—a medical one—and opened it a bit more awkwardly than Gomez had. Sonya was used to working in EVA suits from time to time. Lense has trained in them, had to use them sometimes, but generally didn’t get as much practice as the rest of the S.C.E. crew.

  “Atmosphere is nitrogen/oxygen mix, but I’m reading a high level of CO2, carbon monoxide, and other trace gases,” Gomez said.

  “Breathable, but we should stay in the suits.”

  “Agreed,” Gomez said. “Domenica, life signs are still indeterminate, so let’s secure this deck first, then I’ll spiral down to engineering and you go up toward what might be a bridge. Once it’s secure, maybe we can get this engine under control.”

  Corsi nodded, opened her own tricorder easily, and held her phaser rifle ready in the other hand.

  “Elizabeth?” Gomez turned to Lense.

  “I can set up shop here. If there is an infectious agent on this vessel, this is the place we’d find it anyway. It’s probably also where the Allurians beamed in.” She glanced down at her tricorder. “Oh!”

  “An idea?”

  “I can scan for Allurian DNA.” The doctor jabbed at the tricorder for a few moments, reconfiguring the scanning filters. “Traces. They were here. Within the last ten days, I’d say.”

  “You okay to go it alone?” Gomez tossed a thumb over her shoulder. “I thought I’d start by seeing if I can find a power relay on this deck and bring you more than lights. Maybe some of these consoles will have data we can access.”

  “Sure.”

  Corsi soon found a door into what was presumably a corridor. Gomez quickly followed her, and Lense was then alone. With a deep breath, she stiffly walked toward a desk and put her case down on it.

  There was something mildly spooky about being on an empty starship. An empty alien starship multiplied that by a factor of ten. Being confined to a space suit focused that foreboding feeling even more.

  As she reached for the case at her feet, Lense thought she heard a sound. She cocked her head toward the doorway—fruitless since external sound was delivered via the same speaker system in her helmet that transmitted the voices of the other members of the away team.

  “Domenica?” Lense took a step toward the door. “Sonya?”

  She heard the noise again, a tinny sort of scraping sound, she thought, but from the opposite direction to the door, obviously, since she was looking that way and there was nothing there. Using an input pad on the lower sleeve of her suit, she increased the gain of the external microphone. She heard nothing unusual, and thought that perhaps her mind was merely playing the tricks it could when one was alone and in a somewhat spooky setting.

  Opening her case, Lense pulled out a scanner that was a bit stronger than a normal medical tricorder, and set it to humming on the tabletop in front of her. Signs of an active virus in the air were beginning to show when she heard the scraping sound again. She wasn’t imagining it.

  “Lense to Gomez.”

  “Gomez here.”

  “Where are you, if I may ask, Commander?” Lense tried to keep the nerves from her voice.

  “I don’t have a map. I’m in a corridor heading into what’s either their engineering deck, or some other place they have some large radiation leak happening.”

  “I just meant are you close by. I heard a noise.”

  “What kind of a noise?”

  “Muffled. Like a shuffle or a scrape. Life signs were indeterminate.”

  “Do you want me to send Domenica back?”

  “I…No. It could be a processor glitch in the suit’s sensors.”

  After a brief pause, Gomez said, “I’m sending Corsi.”

  Lense shook her head and righted a chair that had been on its side on the deck. “Sonya, there’s no need. I’m fine.”

  “Mysterious ship, Elizabeth. Let’s play it safe.”

  “Fine. Lense out.” Now she felt stupid. She was a professional. Why was she calling for help after hearing a shuffle? Then again, she didn’t call for help. She called for information. And really, being cautious was probably the right way—

  Shooof. There it was again. But the EVA suit’s speakers were in back of the helmet and didn’t really give her a sense of the sound’s direction as the human ear would. “I’m not hearing things,” she whispered to herself, and switched her tricorder from bio mode to area-scan mode.
It wasn’t as accurate as a tactical tricorder, but it would do.

  She spun around. The tricorder told her there was a life form close by. Radiation was hampering the reading, but it was on this deck. It wasn’t human, if the readings were right, so it wasn’t Corsi. Then again, the readings may not have been right.

  Lense searched the perimeter of the room, and it wasn’t long before the proximity of the readings told her behind which panel to look. She considered calling for Corsi or contacting Gomez again. But whoever was with her was hiding…and if worse came to worst, she had her phaser.

  She slid the panel away, but nothing lay beyond. At least that she could see. On the cuff of her EVA suit was a light, and Lense tentatively switched it on and pointed it forward into the alcove.

  Two eyes reflected back, like a cat’s eyes might, and instinctively she shrank away for a moment, pulling the light back. When she shined it back into the wall’s recess, just a moment later, the eye reflections were gone.

  The being attached to them was not. Eyes scrunched closed, shaking in what Lense hoped was fear rather than a prelude to some attack, the smallish humanoid seemed to be attempting to back itself as far into a crevice as it could.

  “Lense to Gomez,” the doctor spoke into her comm as she took in the small form’s smooth head, slight limbs, and ridged brow. “We have a survivor.”

  “On my way. Domenica, meet me at the doctor’s location, double time.”

  Other than shaking, despite Lense’s now attempting to coax relaxation with soothing tones, the ship’s lone inhabitant didn’t move until Corsi and Gomez arrived, and then only with a rocking once it heard their voices.

  Lense had moved her light beam from directly on the being to slightly above it, so now the…was it a child? It looked like a child. In any case, it was cloaked half in shadow.

  “There could be others,” Corsi offered, and Lense noticed the woman’s tricorder was stowed and the phaser rifle was steadied in both hands.

  “Check each deck. Let’s be sure,” Gomez said. “I think the doctor and I have this handled.”

  Corsi nodded and left again with an “Aye, Commander.”