“Once you suggested it, yes,” Laspas said. “Your idea of using your transporters was a good one, and if we had had the opportunity . . .”
“But your people didn’t give us that opportunity!”
“They were about to slip away from us!” Laspas shot back, matching Kirk’s irate tone. “Those animals would have happily destroyed you, just as their colleagues at Nystrom IV would have if we hadn’t saved you.”
Realizing they were both on the verge of boiling over, Kirk reined himself in and took a deep breath before continuing. “We do not take life unless absolutely necessary. One of the Federation’s highest ideals is that all life, all living beings, are deserving of basic respect.”
“Even when those beings do not share your unqualified respect for life? And who kill others with none of the same remorse?” Laspas asked.
Kirk nodded. “Even then, yes.”
“Well, that is an . . . interesting philosophy,” Laspas said coolly, considering Kirk as if for the first time. “It is regrettable that you have chosen to take offense at the way the Domain handles its own internal affairs.” He turned to open the cabin door, and gestured to Kirk to walk out ahead of him.
Kirk stepped back out into the command center, with Laspas directly on his heels. “Satrav, report,” the commander ordered.
“Standing by, code 2-45,” the second commander answered.
“Captain Kirk.” Kirk turned to Laspas, who stood so close behind him that he was forced to look up into his narrow slit eyes. “Would you have any objection if we were to resume our course to Wezonvu?” the commander asked.
“No,” Kirk answered in the same neutral tone of voice. “No objection.”
“Code 2-45,” Laspas called out to the command center, then looked back down his muzzle at the human. “Is there anything else, Captain?”
“No, nothing,” Kirk replied as he turned to go, leaving the Goeg to his ship.
* * *
McCoy felt a sick sinking in his stomach as the three survivors materialized on the transporter platform, and Doctor Deeshal, standing at his side, uttered a single word: “Urpires.”
They both rushed forward to examine their patients. Only two of the three were Urpires—insectoid beings, diminutive and frail-looking, even without considering their injured state. McCoy had only briefly reviewed the Domain’s minimal basic information about the species ahead of their unsuccessful rescue mission. Now he loaded that data into his medical tricorder, and ran a scan of the two bodies lying crumpled in front of him. They were still alive, but judging from the ugly cracks in their chitinous exoskeletons, and the dark ichor seeping from those wounds and soaking their garishly colored clothing, they wouldn’t be for much longer. The third survivor, an Abesian, appeared to be in slightly better shape, though her limbs were spasming wildly, and she keened in obvious pain.
“I’ll take this one first,” Deeshal said, referring to the more seriously injured of the two Urpires. McCoy nodded and gestured to the first of the three two-person gurney teams standing by ready to get the injured to sickbay. As they carefully transferred the wounded alien onto the stretcher, McCoy heard Jim’s voice from the transporter console, ordering the escape pod passengers to be beamed aboard. McCoy signaled to Ensign Houlihan to open the comm channel, and called out, “Already way ahead of you, Jim. We’ve got all three of them, and we’re on our way to surgery.”
“Surgery? How bad is it?”
“I wish I could tell you, Jim,” he answered as Deeshal headed out the doors with his patient, and McCoy indicated for the second team to take the other Urpire, and the third the Abesian. “But right now . . .” He trailed off, his lips suddenly gone dry.
“I know you’ll do your best, Bones,” Kirk told him before signing off.
“Let’s hope that’s good enough,” McCoy muttered, then called out to his orderlies, “All right, come on, time’s a-wastin’!” They all rushed together to sickbay, McCoy continuing to scan both patients as he jogged alongside. The Abesian’s injuries were minor—a broken femur, a possible concussion. The Urpire was much worse off, though McCoy couldn’t say anything more specific than that.
When they reached sickbay, Deeshal was already in the surgical bay with his patient, assisted by Jabilo M’Benga. Christine Chapel stood just outside the doorway, prepped and ready to assist McCoy with his procedure. McCoy directed her to take the second Urpire into surgery as well, and then filled in med tech Gannon, who started working on the Abesian.
After quickly finishing his own pre-surgery prep, McCoy entered the surgical bay, and stopped when he saw Deeshal, M’Benga, and Chapel all circled around the second Urpire. The first one lay alone on the other table, covered head to foot with a sheet, the surgical support frame over its midsection deactivated and silent. “Dammit,” McCoy whispered, and then said, “Tell me what’s happening,” as he started moving again toward the others.
“He was too far gone,” Chapel told him, looking up briefly from her close monitoring of the still-living Urpire.
“And this one?” McCoy asked as he moved beside M’Benga. He was deftly manipulating the surgical frame controls as Deeshal issued urgent instructions and anxiously observed the effects.
“Extensive blunt-force trauma to the skull and thorax, with significant internal injuries and hemorrhaging,” M’Benga answered without looking up or breaking his concentration. “I think we’ve stanched the worst of the bleeding.”
“But we’re not out of the woods yet,” Deeshal added.
McCoy observed M’Benga as he continued working. Though nearly twenty years younger than McCoy, M’Benga had far more interspecies medical experience, having interned on Vulcan and having served on a frontier starbase just prior to joining the Enterprise. If anyone was going to be able to treat such an unfamiliar patient, it would be him.
Though right now, that appeared to be a very big “if.”
“Diastolic pressure dropping,” Chapel called out urgently, at the same time as warning tones sounded from the diagnostic sensors.
“No,” Deeshal growled. “We’re missing something! What?” he demanded of no one in particular as he jabbed at buttons and twisted dials, running every scan the frame was capable of.
“We need to try something else,” M’Benga said. “Something to slow down his autonomic systems until we can—”
“That won’t work with an Urpire,” Deeshal cut him off. “He’ll crash, just like the other one.”
“Brainwave activity becoming erratic,” Chapel said.
Deeshal slammed the palms of his hands on top of the shell in frustration. Then he lifted his head and said, “2-0-1-9.”
“What?” McCoy asked, silently biting back a caustic remark about the Goeg’s damned obsession with numbers and codes.
“In the medical transfer case I brought over!” Deeshal shouted. “It’s labeled two-oh-one-nine!”
McCoy crossed the surgery to the corner where the transport case from the 814 had been set, and quickly found the clearly labeled vial, arranged sequentially with all the rest. Okay, the numbering system does come in handy sometimes, he privately admitted as he grabbed a Domain-issue hypospray, inserted the drug cartridge, and crossed back to slap it into Deeshal’s outstretched and waiting hand. The Goeg doctor wedged the nozzle of the hypo into the seam in the patient’s carapace where his head met the thorax, and released the drug with a low hiss.
At first, the Urpire seemed to stabilize, but his life-sign readings remained uncomfortably weak. “Come on,” Deeshal urged him in a low tone. “You know you don’t want to die all the way out here, so far from Cravalco. Fight!”
Deeshal’s exhortations weren’t enough, though. “Brainwave readings faltering again,” Chapel said, and the doctor’s entire body sagged. McCoy looked from him to M’Benga, who wore a similar expression of defeat. The beeps and tones from the surgical arch abated, and then fell quiet, as did the four healers.
After several seconds of silence, Deeshal lifted h
is head. “Where is the third one?” he asked. “The Abesian?”
“Out in the main ward,” McCoy said. “Her injuries were relatively minor.”
Deeshal pushed himself away from the table and out the door of the surgical bay. McCoy followed him across the ward to where the third survivor lay, still unconscious, on her biobed. Deeshal considered the vital signs displayed on the overhead monitor, then the patient herself. He lightly ran his fingers along her leg, feeling for the fracture in the bone.
Then, when he found it, he pressed harder. Through her sedation, the woman began to wince in pain, and Deeshal reacted by squeezing harder still. “What are you doing?” McCoy asked, as the semiconscious woman’s cries grew louder.
“Who were they?” Deeshal asked in a preternaturally calm voice as he continued his callous prodding. “What were they doing on that ship with you?”
McCoy had to physically grab the other man’s arm and yank him away from the biobed. “What in the hell has gotten into you?” he demanded.
“There were Urpires on that vessel!” Deeshal said, still glowering at the patient as Chapel gave her another painkiller and sedative. “The Urpires are politically neutral, they take special pride in remaining above any kind of outside conflicts. There are no Urpires in the Taarpi.”
“So?” McCoy asked. “What does that mean?”
Deeshal turned to face McCoy. “That means they weren’t on her ship by choice. And that their injuries—their deaths—were most likely her doing.”
* * *
As Kirk made his way to the 814’s uppermost deck, back toward the airlock and his own ship, he passed a quartet of Starfleet engineers, led by a Liruq officer describing the repairs needed to the structures connecting the two ships in the wake of the recent battle. The captain put on a smile for them as they moved by, hiding his private concerns from them.
A fair amount of foot traffic was flowing through the hard dock connection, in both directions. In spite of everything, Kirk was proud of the way the two crews had managed to work together to keep things running as smoothly as they had. He also knew that many had formed friendships along the way. And he hated now having to worry about how trustworthy any of the Domain crew were.
After waiting for a pair of Domain crewmen—a Liruq and a Rokean—queued up ahead of him to log out with the guard and move through the airlock, Kirk climbed up after them to the Enterprise. As he stepped onto the deck of his own ship again, he found his chief engineer waiting for him. “Welcome back aboard, sir.”
“It looks like we’ve got some more repair work under way,” Kirk said, gesturing to the other crew members transferring between the two ships. “How bad is it?”
“Minimal, sir,” Scotty answered, walking alongside the captain as he made his way to the nearest turbolift. “Our shields held up better than I hoped after the beating they took at Nystrom. The worst of it was from all the evasive maneuvering the 814 put us through. We’re lucky we didn’t end up ripping a chunk of our hull off.”
Kirk’s brow furrowed at hearing that. “Perhaps we should have a procedure in place for emergency separation,” he said.
Scotty nodded. “Aye, that’s something N’Mi and I had discussed from the get-go. Coordinating it would take quite a bit of doing—”
Kirk interrupted him. “I was thinking more along the lines of something that wouldn’t necessarily require coordination with the 814,” he said, his voice lowered.
“Oh.” Scotty’s eyes widened as he realized what Kirk was talking about, and he dropped his voice as well. “Are we anticipating a genuine emergency situation?”
Kirk’s lips pressed into a tight line of concern. “I just want to have options open to us,” he said, as they reached the open and waiting turbolift.
“Well, I’ll do what I can . . .” Scotty stated, shaking his head. “But without warp capacity of our own, we won’t get very far.”
“Understood, Scotty,” Kirk said, clapping the engineer on the shoulder before boarding the turbolift. “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”
Kirk ordered the lift to sickbay. As soon as he arrived and the doors opened, the captain heard a commotion coming from down the corridor. Bones’s voice cut through the two others he heard. “I don’t care who you are! This is my sickbay, and unless you’re a lot less healthy than you look, you’re not setting foot in here.” Kirk picked up his pace, and saw the same Liruq and Rokean pairing who had come aboard ahead of him standing just outside the entry to main sickbay, being held at bay by Leonard McCoy.
“You are impeding the official business of the Goeg Domain,” the larger Rokean said.
“And you’re impeding my treatment of a patient!” McCoy snarled back. “Would you care to guess which I give more of a damn about?”
Before matters could escalate beyond mere words, Kirk wedged his way into the center of the group. “What is going on here?”
“What’s going on, Captain Kirk,” McCoy said, putting a stress on his name and rank for the benefit of the two soldiers, “is that these . . . gentlemen want to pull a seriously injured patient out of her bed and drag her off to some interrogation chamber.”
“That patient is a dangerous terrorist,” the Rokean said, not seeming too impressed by the human captain. “She must be turned over to us.”
“Oh, must she?” Kirk asked, not hiding his annoyance at having orders issued to him by interlopers on his ship.
“The Taarpi are the Goeg Domain’s most inexorable threat. They have been responsible for—”
“I know what the Taarpi are responsible for,” Kirk thundered at the guards. “They launched an unprovoked attack on the United Federation of Planets, nearly destroying my ship at the Nystrom system, and then tried to finish the job just minutes ago.” Kirk stepped right up to the large Rokean soldier, nearly pressing his nose into his bovine face. “We’re the ones who captured this woman, so we’re the ones who will get first crack at questioning her. Then, once we reach Wezonvu and I’m through with her, maybe then we can discuss extradition to the Goeg Domain.” Kirk took a step back then, and asked, “Do either of you have any problems with that?”
The Domain soldiers appeared to have been caught completely off guard. After McCoy’s humanitarian appeals, they didn’t expect the hard-line tack Kirk had taken. After a momentary show of uncertainty, the Rokean answered, “I will have to bring this to my superiors.”
“Fine. You do that,” Kirk said, pointing the pair toward the nearest turbolift. After another moment of awkward indecision, the Rokean cocked his head to his partner, and the two headed back the way they had come.
“Bravo, Jim,” McCoy said once the duo were out of earshot.
“Never mind the accolades,” Kirk said as he let his belligerent front slip away. “What’s going on here, Bones? You said ‘patient.’ I thought there were three people in that escape pod.”
The doctor’s smile quickly evaporated. “There were. We couldn’t save the other two.”
Kirk took a moment, then asked, “And the one who made it, what kind of shape is she in? Will she be able to talk?”
“Give her a day or two to recover and yeah, she’ll be fine. At least,” he added, shooting a sidewise glare at Doctor Deeshal, “she will for as long as I have anything to say about it.”
Kirk looked over at the Goeg physician as well, and it struck him that he had been standing there the entire time, oddly disengaged from the confrontation with the two soldiers and from the current discussion as well. As he noticed Kirk’s look, he dropped his eyes to the deck, pointedly avoiding eye contact with anyone else in the sickbay.
The captain turned his back to the Goeg doctor, and whispered to McCoy, “Problem?”
“I’m not sure,” McCoy answered, also trying to keep Deeshal from overhearing. “I hope not.”
“All right,” Kirk said, leaving it at that. “Keep me posted.”
As he turned to go, McCoy stepped out into the corridor with him. “Jim . . . that was
a pretty convincing show of anger you gave for those two guards. You all right?”
Kirk gave him a tight, humorless smile. “Nothing you need to worry about, Bones.”
But McCoy caught him by the arm. “No one leaves my sickbay unless I say they’re fit to leave.” Kirk put up a token protest, but allowed the doctor to lead him into his private office, and then to plant him into one of the chairs in front of his workstation. “All right, Jim, let it out.”
“Let what out, Bones?” Kirk asked.
McCoy took the seat opposite him. “We’re getting a hell of a lot more than we bargained for when we first agreed to let these people ‘help’ us, aren’t we?”
“You have a true gift for understatement, you know that, Doctor?”
“And I get the feeling that your little chat with Laspas went about as well as my last half-hour with Deeshal,” McCoy continued.
“He didn’t have the slightest compunction about destroying that ship!” Kirk nearly shouted, standing up out of his chair. “Or about using my ship to do so. The Goeg Domain is little more than an empire with a thin veneer of democracy covering it.” His anger then suddenly spent, Kirk wrapped his fists around the back of his chair and said, “How could I have misjudged these people so badly?”
McCoy stood then, so that he and the captain were eye to eye. “It’s hard enough to be a good judge of people you do know, let alone strangers. Hell, I was married to my ex-wife for over fifteen years, and I had no idea from one day to the next what she was capable of. You can hardly be blamed for not knowing what Laspas would do if we crossed paths with the Taarpi again.”
“Maybe.” Kirk shrugged. “But I assume your divorce didn’t involve the threat of phaser fire, either.”
McCoy chuckled at that, but before he could either confirm or deny Kirk’s assertion, they were interrupted by the whistling of the intraship, and Uhura’s voice saying, “Bridge to Captain Kirk.”
Kirk tabbed the unit on McCoy’s workstation. “Yes, Lieutenant?”
“Captain, there’s a hail incoming from Commander Laspas, asking to speak with you.”
Star Trek: The Original Series: The Shocks of Adversity Page 15
