by L. A. Graf
going to stand and argue with each other all night?"
Chekov sighed and shook his head. "I've got to tell the captain that
we've had a violation of ship security. Even if Sulu left his door wide
open, the fact that someone did so much damage to his room makes it an
act of premeditated vandalism. Captain Kirk will want to know about it
immediately." He opened the door for her. "I'll join you later, if I
can."
"I know what your 'laters' mean--usually that we won't see you again for
a week." Uhura paused in the doorway as he went out, glancing back at
Sulu. "Aren't you coming, either?"
Sulu shook his head. "I have to water and repot a bunch of these plants
if I want them to survive. You guys can bring me back something if
you're feeling generous."
"It's a promise." The door slid shut behind her, then opened a moment
later to let Chekov lean back around the jamb. "I almost forgot--Dr.
McCoy said you missed your radiation scan today. He wants you to stop
by sickbay tonight."
Sulu glanced down at his drooping plants and shook his head. "It'll
have to wait until tomorrow morning."
Chekov offered a warning frown. "He won't like that."
"I know." Sulu shrugged. "But it's just a medical check. How annoyed
can he get?"
"Mr. Sulu." A breakfast troy slammed down on the rec room table with an
irate clatter, followed by a thump as Dr. McCoy dropped into the empty
chair on the other side. "Do the words 'permanent genetic damage' mean
anything to you?"
Sulu flinched and looked up guiltily from his half-eaten stack of
lingonberry pancakes. "Um--that I'm going to get yelled at?" .
McCoy snorted and began to butter his toast. "Damned right you are." The
background hum of food processors delivering a steady stream of meals to
the first shift crew could not disguise the exasperated snap in the
doctor's voice. "That was an emergency radiation scan you missed last
night, young man, not a routine physical. It would have served you
right if you'd woken up this morning looking like a giant carrot!"
Sulu ducked his head, trying to avoid Uhura's
/tinused glance from farther down the table. McCoy would never forgive
him if he started to laugh right in the middle of a scolding. 'Tm sorry
I missed my appointment, sir. I had a slight crisis--"
"Doctor." Spock looked up from the table's other end, setting down the
electronic reader that usually accompanied him to meals. "I am not
aware of any cases of severe cellular mutation resulting from subspace
radiation exposures as brief
"Dammit, Spock, it was just a figure of speech." McCoy gave the Vulcan a
disgruntled frown while he stirred his coffee. "How the hell am I
supposed to intimidate anybody aboard this ship with you constantly
contradicting me?"
"If you did not indulge in such extreme exaggerations, Doctor,
contradiction would not be necessary."
McCoy snorted. "If the line officers on this ship would show up for
medical exams when I tell them to, intimidation wouldn't be necessary,
either." He shot Sulu a glare as he started to pick up his tray. "Don't
you try to sneak out of here, either. I'm going to haul you down to
sickbay for that scan as soon as I'm finished with breakfast."
Sulu grimaced as he checked the time display on the nearest wall
monitor. "Dr. McCoy, if I'm late for two bridge shifts in a row,
Captain Kirk willre"
"--make you stop eating breakfast with long-winded doctors." The captain
set his own steaming tray down on the table beside Sulu, a smile tugging
at his hazel eyes. "Bones, I could hear you yelling clear across the
room. What's the matter now?" He cocked an eyebrow at the bowl of
steaming yellow mud on the doctor's tray. "Food processors
malfunctioning?"
The Southerner gave him an incensed look. "I asked
for grits," he informed him in dignified tones. "And if you didn't set
such a bad example for your officers, I wouldn't have to yell at them.
Do you, by any chance, think you're immortal?"
Kirk picked up his fork, trading long-suffering looks with Sulu. "Bones,
we've been over this before. The food processors remove all the
saturated fat from bacon and eggs when they're synthesized--"
"I'm not talking about the coronary bypass special," McCoy retorted.
"I'm talking about your DNA. For all you know, it could be even more
scrambled than those eggs." He swung around to point a spoonful of grits
down the table at Spock. "Don't say it."
The Vulcan lifted an austere eyebrow. "If you insist on using
inappropriate analogies for complex scientific concepts, Doctor, I
certainly cannot stop you. However, I would like to point out that--"
"Was the radiation pulse really that bad?" Kirk demanded, cutting
through the argument with the ease of long practice.
McCoy shrugged. "How should I know? According to Spock, all the bridge
stations were too busy throwing off false alarms to record anything
useful." He threw a challenging look at the Vulcan, who, as usual,
ignored it.
"Our data record is fragmentary, Captain, but computer analysis suggests
a short-duration, low-frequency event, most likely from a distant
neutron star. It appears to have been confined to the upper decks of
the ship."
Memories of long-ago astrophysical lectures nudged at Sulu, and he gave
the science officer a curious look. "Isn't that odd behavior for stellar
subspace radiation, sir?"
"Indeed." Spock steepled his fingers thoughtfully. "I suspect that
gravitational lensing from Sigma One"
"It doesn't matter where it came from or how it got here, Spock." McCoy
dropped his spoon into his empty bowl with a impatient clink. "As long
as it contained unknown levels of subspace radiation, I want to scan
everyone who might have been exposed to it. It's like rabieswif you
don't catch the dog, you've got to take the shots."
Kirk sighed again, clearing his plate and reaching over to help himself
to the last of McCoy's toast. "All right, Bones, you've made your
point. You can run me through your DNA descrambler."
The doctor blinked in surprise. "Right now?"
"Why not?" Kirk picked up his tray and slid it into the nearest waste
disposal unit. "Mr. Spock can take command of the bridge until I get
there."
"How about your helmsman?" McCoy persisted, dropping a hand on Sulu's
shoulder when he rose to
clear his breakfast tray. "Can I scan him now, too?"
"Anything to make you happy, Bones."
"Well, hot dog." Smiling broadly, McCoy dumped his own tray and herded
them to the door. "Now, if I could only get that big liaison officer
from Sigma One--what's his name?"
"Purviance," Sulu said.
"Right, Purviance. He snuck out of sickbay yesterday before I could get
him--might as well catch all my fish at once." McCoy's face brightened
when he spied John Taylor's tall form emerging from the turbolift
opposite the rec room door. "Hey, Taylor. Where's your liaison
officer?"
The head
auditor threw him a suspicious look, as if he didn't trust what
might be behind the question.
"He's assisting Gendron today. I sent them down to check dispatch
records on the Deck Seven transporter."
"Good. We can stop by and collect him on the way to sickbay." McCoy
followed Sulu into the open turbolift, reaching back to tug at Kirk's
elbow when the captain paused to frown at the auditor. "Come on, Jim.
Radiation scan, remember?"
Kirk's mouth tightened, but he allowed himself to be pulled into the
lift. "What the hell are Federation auditors doing checking our
dispatch records?" he demanded once the doors had closed. "I thought
they were supposed to be improving our efficiency on.this trip."
"Deck Seven," McCoy told the lift, then turned back toward the captain
as it began to move. "Jim, as far as I can tell, their idea of
improving efficiency means enforcing every regulation some Federation
bureaucrat ever dreamed up."
Sulu frowned, visions of red tape and endless paperwork groaning through
his head. "Hasn't anyone ever told them that some of those regulations
weren't meant to apply to Starfleet?"
"Apparently not." McCoy's eyebrows knitted in a scowl. "They've already
threatened to report me because I let my doctors conduct medical
research while they're on duty. I can't seem to make them understand
that we're not some factory ship hospital, dealing with daily
accidents." The turbolift hissed to a stop. "Hold the lift here," the
doctor told them while he waited for the doors to open. "It should only
take me a, minute tow"
"Bones--" Kirk's swift yank brought McCoy to a halt before the doctor
could step out onto the deck. Sulu followed the captain's gaze down to
the corridor
floor and felt his stomach lurch with dismay. A iron-dark trickle of
blood crawled across the clean bright metal, inching its way out through
the closed transporter room doors.
"What the hell--?" McCoy demanded.
Footsteps pounded down the hallway. "Sir!" A transporter technician
rushed up breathlessly beside Kirk, his arms full of record disks. The
young ensign's eyes widened with horror when he followed their gaze
toward the blood-stained floor. "Sir, I swear--I was only away from my
station for a minute! The auditors said they needed more dispatch
recordsm"
"Don't worry about that now." Kirk motioned the technician toward the
transporter chamber. "Just open the doors."
"Aye, sir." The technician stepped forward, his hand shaking slightly as
he lifted it to activate the door. Sulu took a deep, steadying breath,
and immediately wished he hadn't. Despite the busy whine of the
ventilating system, the air that rolled out the open transporter chamber
smelled like rotten meat.
"Oh, my God--" McCoy pushed past Kirk to stand locked on the threshold
of the room, his shoulders jerking as if someone had hit him. Sulu
forced himself to take one reluctant step closer, peering over the
doctor's shoulder. He choked and turned away, overwhelmed by the
glaring evidence that they had arrived too late.
Everything inside the room was red.
Chapter Seven
CHEKOV LEFT the transporter room only ten minutes
after having gone inside. He didn't know how McCoy and the medics could
stand it--how he could expect his guards to clean up the area as though
they were mopping up a coolant spill in engineering. Environmental
suits, maybe. Pretend it wasn't blood that made the flooring so tacky,
force a separation between themselves and this awful reality by
shielding themSelves inside layers of plasfoam and plastic.
Folding his arms on the corridor wall to rest his head against them,
Chekov wondered if the engine room on the Kongo had smelled this bad.
The transporter room door whisked open behind him, and a coppery feather
of stench ghosted into the hallway. "You going to be all right?" McCoy
asked quietly as the door drifted shut again on the smells.
Chekov nodded, turning to lean back against the bulkhead instead. Just
outside the transporter room,
McCoy looked slim and professional in his green sterile jumpsuit, blood
flecks and trioorder only adding finishing touches to his medical image.
"I just feel a little sick," the lieutenant admitted. He crossed his
arms, embarrassed by what felt too much like weakness. "I guess I'm not
used to this."
McCoy shook his head and came a few steps farther into the hall. "It's
not an easy thing to get used to." He rubbed a thumb across the screen
on his trioorder. "I don't know if it's good that we can."
Survival meant getting used to things, Chekov reminded himself. You had
to keep moving, had to go on. "Do you have an identification on--the
body?"
McCoy nodded, and Chekov knew what McCoy would say from the way the
doctor kept his eyes on his tricotaler. He tried to make things easier
by anticipating the news. "It's Ensign Sweeney, isn't it?" Thanks to
Kelly's new schedule, Sweeney had gone on duty at midnight last night,
then hadn't signed off at 0800 this morning. No one had seen him, he
wasn't in his room, and his post had bn observed unattended as early as
0700. Try as he might, Chekov couldn't ignore where that kind of
evidence pointed.
When McCoy finally looked up, the gentle regret in his eyes was as good
as an answer. "During a normal transport, the system would have made a
record of whom we were trying to beam out. In an accident like this,
where the equipment apparently went off without any preparation or
destination, it makes things harder." He shook his head sadly. "I went
over the DNA scans myself. I'll have to send to Sigma One to verify the
match on Lindsey Purviance, but there's no doubt that one of the victims
is Roberta Gendron and the third is Dennis Sweeney." He sighed, like a
doctor
who feels he should have done something more. "I'm sorry, Chekov."
Chekov nodded, not sure what he should say. At least he was past being
shocked by the news. That helped, at least a little.
"So we've definitely got three victims?" Kirk's voice sounded clearly
from halfway down the corridor. Behind him, Scott followed with a
diagnostic kit in hand. Chekov didn't envy the engineer his upcoming
job.
"As near as we can tell so far," McCoy said in answer to Kirk's
question. "I'm afraid the transporter didn't leave us a lot to go on.
Most of their cell structure was completely denatured, but enough DNA
fragments are left to play medical connect-the-dots. So far, we've been
able to reconstruct chains from three distinct humans. I'm hoping we
don't find any more."
Kirk cast a short, grim glance at the closed transporter room. "Do we
actually have enough mass to account for all three people?"
McCoy snorted, scowling. "How the hell am I supposed to know?"
"Well, you're the doctor, Bones, you seemed the logical one to ask."
Clearing his throat, Chekov moved a little away from the wall to stand
beside the doctor. "Security will be taking care of cleanup, Sir.
Once
we've had a chance to--" He hated having to pause and search for words
to disguise the awfulness of their task. "--assemble everything, we'll
have a better idea how much is there."
"Och, this is a sorry business." Setting down his diagnostic kit, Scott
stepped close enough to the door
to trigger it. Chekov was forced to glimpse the thickening sheen of red
again when he didn't glance aside quickly enough, and Scott made a gruff
noise of disgust before turning away.
"I've seen it before at public cargo transporters," the engineer said as
the door slid shut behind him, and the hideous smell slowly drifted
away. "The lads there don't always wait to get verification that a ship
has dropped her screens; they try to send the payload through--" He
slapped his hands one against the other, mimicking a payload ricochet.
"The shields bounce back the transporter beam, usually along its
transmittal path, and you end up materializing the cargo all over the
origination chamber." He scrubbed self-consciously at his face, and
Chekov wondered if Scott felt as sick as he did. "It leaves you with a
bonnie mess, not to mention a misaligned transporter."
"Why didn't they rematerialize as people?" Kirk asked.
"Interaction with the shield energy scrambles the signal," Scott told
him. "It's the same thing that keeps
phaser shots from coming through during combat." He started to glance
