“Is something the matter, Doctor?”
“Don’t interrupt—”
The different voice gave McCoy a start. He turned to see Chapel hovering in the doorway. “No,” he said, hoping she hadn’t heard enough to think he was really losing it.
With a start, he realized that he’d been talking—talking!—to Jocelyn, and it had felt like the most natural thing in the world. He turned his head to see where she was, but she was gone. “No,” he said again. “I just need to clear my head. I’m going for a walk.”
Flipping off his computer, McCoy grabbed his medkit and headed out into the corridor. Jocelyn and his father were there waiting for him.
Ahead of Giotto, the tunnel curved to the left. At the end, it glowed orange, like all the lights on this damn spaceship. The tricorder told him that he was rapidly approaching the end of this particular tunnel, which led to a room. The tricorder also told him that the room was being guarded by one of the aliens.
Phaser in hand, Giotto slowly closed the distance so he could see without being seen. He didn’t hear anything other than a big creature sucking in air. Giotto waited until he was sure the guard was just standing there.
He charged around the bend, took aim, and fired. The Farrezzi guard—a particularly chunky specimen—dropped like a bag of rocks before Giotto had even stopped his sprint.
He took a scan of his surroundings. He almost let loose a cry of victory when one of the life signs he detected behind the door was human.
The other one was Farrezzi.
Giotto inspected the big, semicircular door that the Farrezzi had been guarding, but it didn’t have the usual release mechanism. This was either a cell or an interrogation chamber; the way to open it would be well protected.
Giotto went back to the unconscious guard. Straps of beige leatherlike material wound around the limbs, with pouches hanging off some of them, and the lower torso was covered with more faux leather, but in a darker shade. He went through the pouches, ripping them open and shaking their contents onto the floor. As he did so, he wondered briefly if he’d know what he was looking for once he saw it.
A metal ball rolled out of the pouch he’d just opened, hitting the floor with a loud clang. He grabbed it before it could roll away and studied it. Heavier than it had any right to be, and cold. Its surface was segmented, with colorful pictographs.
Was this a remote? Which pictograph should he press? He couldn’t waste more time, so he decided to press every one. This might not be a good idea. But he had no intention of staying here any longer than necessary. Open the door, get whoever was in there out, leave. After four attempts without any result, the fifth did something. The door remained shut, but something inside it clicked loudly. A locking mechanism? On a whim, Giotto pressed the symbol again. This time the door slid open, retreating up into its frame.
He waited a few seconds, then he heard something big move. A Farrezzi was approaching the open entrance, holding something that looked very much like a high-tech version of an old Earth musket.
Giotto waited until he had a clear shot, and fired. Set to maximum stun, one short beam was all it took to drop the guard.
Stepping into the room, Giotto saw a man tied to a pole: Chekov. Was he alive?
Alive, but unconscious. He had been severely abused—numerous wounds covered his face and hands. There were bound to be more beneath his uniform. He was tied to the pole with a cord, but the phaser cut through it easily. Chekov fell into Giotto’s arms and was lowered to the floor. Carefully, Giotto turned Chekov onto his side to ease his breathing and keep him from choking.
Giotto needed to wake Chekov up. They had to get out of there. He pulled out his communicator to contact the captain.
“Kirk here. Report, Mister Giotto?”
“I’ve found Chekov, sir. He’s injured, but alive.”
“Good work, Commander.” The joy in Kirk’s voice was plain. “I’ll lock onto your signal with my tricorder and join up with you.”
“We might have to move, sir, but I’ll keep this channel open so you can follow me.”
“Copy that. See you soon. Kirk out.”
He’d give Chekov five minutes, and if he didn’t wake up, he’d sling the ensign over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He went over to the door, facing the tunnel bend he’d passed mere moments before, his tricorder on active scan. If the Farrezzi came, he’d spot them before they spotted him. He checked the power level of his phaser.
Let them come.
ELEVEN
Thirteen Years Ago
The more time Leonard spends with Nancy, the more uncomfortable he gets. Initially a carefree release from his troubles, the affair starts to weigh him down with guilt. He’s stopped wearing his wedding ring, and he tells everyone that he’s divorced, even though he’s still married to Jocelyn.
He’s busier than ever, working in Republic’s sickbay and taking the required Starfleet courses. Jocelyn begins sending him messages, telling him that she’s returned to work and Joanna misses him, asking him to come back. She insists that they can make it work. He sends back vaguely supportive messages, but nothing else.
Near Joanna’s second birthday, Jocelyn serves him with divorce papers. He takes leave, goes back to Earth, and tries to reconcile with his wife. Jocelyn knows he’s there only because of their daughter, and not because he still loves her. He’s already made his choice. It pains him to leave Joanna behind, but he can’t raise a daughter on his own. He’s in Starfleet—a starship is no place for children. He leaves Earth, cursing Jocelyn for being right; he has made his choice.
However, once he makes it back to the Republic, Leonard realizes he can’t stay. He puts in for reassignment, and takes the first posting that comes up, on the Feynman. He never tells Nancy that he’s leaving. They step out of each other’s lives without even saying good-bye. Later, he realizes that he’s displacing his anger onto Nancy.
When Leonard has time for introspection, he begins to grasp just how awful a person he could become. He can’t undo what happened, but he makes a promise to himself to change, to never again be that person.
Stardate 4758.1 (0151 hours)
The Enterprise had been through a lot these past hours. As McCoy walked through the corridors, he was struck by how much debris and clutter was still lying about. For the ship to be torn to pieces without an enemy to fight made him feel uneasy. Would things have gone better with Jim in command? Or would he also have insisted on pressing ahead?
“That would have relieved you of the responsibility, wouldn’t it?” asked McCoy’s father. He was following him like a well-trained dog. “If someone could just solve this problem by getting the Enterprise out of the distortion zone, then maybe you wouldn’t have to do anything.”
Dad… no, he wasn’t Dad, he was an illusion, a figment of his imagination. Why was his mind doing this to him? Why did it torment him, reminding him how helpless he’d felt, watching his father waste away, ravaged and weakened by that damned disease?
In the end, his father had weighed so little. McCoy’d had nightmares the whole time, and they’d only intensified when his father died. To see the elder McCoy in that wasted state, here and now, was like being punched in the stomach every time their eyes met.
“That’s what you like, isn’t it?” Jocelyn said. “Shifting the blame for your problems elsewhere.”
“That’s not even true!” McCoy snapped, unable to avoid rising to the bait. “I’ve always accepted responsibility for my actions.”
“Oh? Is that why you enlisted in Starfleet rather than stick it out on Earth?” asked Jocelyn.
“And is that why you always blame me for my death?” asked his father. His voice was becoming hoarse; every breath sounded labored, like it had been back then. Toward the end, he’d been unable to speak, merely giving barely perceptible nods or shakes of his head in reply to McCoy’s questions.
“You asked me!” McCoy said, unable to help himself. “You begged me! What else could I do
?”
His father looked at him reproachfully. “Leonard, I wasn’t in my right mind. You should’ve known that. How many people have asked you to let them go when the pain got to be too much?”
He’d refused that request so many times… but not that time.
“And you had no better idea than to run from that, too,” Jocelyn pointed out. “After you’d gone back to Earth for the first time in years to help your father… the first thing you did after he died was to run to Capella IV.”
“And then, you ran here,” added McCoy’s father. “Not because you believed it was the best thing to do, but because Jim Kirk asked you to take Mark Piper’s place and you thought—”
“And I thought out here in space, I could finally get away from it all,” McCoy said, glad that nobody else was using this corridor.
“But you haven’t!” Jocelyn wore a victorious smile, like when she won an argument. “I’m here, your father’s here… even Joanna’s here. You can keep on running, but you’ll never make it.”
They were right. He had never chosen to do this, he just ran… That’s why he was wandering the corridors instead of working his ass off to find a cure.
His aimless wanderings had brought him to a turbolift junction. He stepped inside, Jocelyn and his father following closely. But where should he go?
It occurred to him that sickbay hadn’t heard anything from auxiliary control. It was worth a visit, to make sure everyone was doing all right.
And hell, he wanted to know if his idea had panned out.
Jocelyn and his father didn’t say anything on the trip to auxiliary control. They stood there, watching him, accusing him with their eyes. Their presence was a reminder of why he was out here, why he was about to fail the five comatose crew members and probably the entire crew. He felt sorry for poor Bouchard, Petriello, Santos, Fraser, and Salah. They deserved better. They deserved a doctor who knew what he was doing.
When McCoy and his entourage stepped into auxiliary control, things were relatively calm. Uhura was standing over Singh’s shoulder at the main console, while Padmanabhan worked off to the side. DeSalle was nowhere to be seen—likely somewhere in engineering.
Uhura looked up as he entered, and smiled faintly. McCoy estimated she must’ve been up for more than eighteen hours. “I thought you might need a house call,” he said, removing a hypo from his kit and loading it up with a fast-acting stimulant. “This’ll let you do your job.”
As he injected it into her arm, she let off a sigh. “Thanks, Doctor.”
“Last one,” said McCoy.
Uhura nodded. “Understood.”
To her right, Singh looked up from his controls. “Lieutenant, we’re set.”
Uhura hit some buttons on his console, watching as readouts popped up on the main screen. “It looks good to me,” she said. “Tell Lieutenant DeSalle that we’re ready to go.”
“Is that real-space bubble working?” asked McCoy.
An eager, high-pitched voice jumped in from the starboard alcove. “Really well!” Ensign Padmanabhan said. “But it’s making it hard to get data on the other universe—we’re overwriting it with ours.”
“Things have stabilized, Doctor,” Uhura said. “We’re going to try to move forward again.”
“Is that wise?” McCoy didn’t particularly fancy plunging into another reality.
“Ensign Padmanabhan had the idea of extending the real-space bubble forward of the ship by a few thousand kilometers,” Uhura said, sounding confident and optimistic. Apparently, the boy’s relentless enthusiasm was contagious. “It should smooth our flight path enough to make travel safe.”
“We’re not going to warp again, are we?”
“No, Doctor,” Singh grumbled. The lieutenant struck McCoy as being uncomfortable with so many people around, filling up the control room. Uncomfortable and tired. Like Uhura, Singh and the others could probably use some stimulants.
“It would be impossible,” Padmanabhan pointed out with surprising fervor. “We can’t use the warp drive—not for propulsion—when we’re using it to make a real-space bubble!”
McCoy injected Singh, who simply humphed in response, and then Padmanabhan, who nearly leapt out of his chair. Maybe the kid was a little too excited to need the stimulants. He made his way back to Uhura. “Is it wise?”
“We get a signal out; everything just bounces back. It’ll be a week before anyone at Starfleet realizes we haven’t reported in.” Uhura took her chair. “It could be a whole month before they can send a starship to investigate.”
“What are the risks?” McCoy asked.
Uhura pursed her lips. “It’ll still be rough, and we’ll still experience some computer problems.”
“A euphemism for explosions?”
“We hope not. It should be like the earlier distortions—a little rough, but not terrible. The computers might flicker, but they should be fine.”
McCoy reflected that Uhura didn’t have a choice. It was this or wait for the ship’s power to dwindle away. So going forward it was, then. “What about my patients?” he asked. “How will it affect them?”
“Have you figured out why they’re ill yet?”
“No,” admitted McCoy reluctantly.
“Then I don’t know,” Uhura said. “I’ve got Padmanabhan focusing on how this affects the ship.”
“These are the lives of five men and women we’re talking about.”
“I have to think about the lives of four hundred. I’m sorry, Doctor.”
This was just more impetus to solve the problem. As if he needed it. “Well, I’d better get back to sickbay.”
He began to leave, but Uhura stopped him, her hand on his arm. “How are you doing?” she asked.
“I told you,” he replied. “I haven’t been making much progress.”
“That’s not what I asked,” she said. “How are you?”
For a moment, McCoy wanted to tell her everything. Tell her that he’d started hearing things and moved on to seeing them. Tell her that he was having conversations with people who weren’t there. Tell her that he had no idea what was happening to him, no idea at all. He smiled but was pretty sure it looked fake. “I’m just tired. But I’ll be fine.”
Karen Seven Deers had seconds. Kologwe was at the helm, with Tra beside her at navigation. Saloniemi sat next to Seven Deers, but he was an anthropologist. It was up to her to restore Columbus’s phasers.
She’d opened an access hatch in the deck to the phaser components. The emitter crystal from a phaser rifle was wired into a slot much too large for it. The connections were sound. Why wasn’t it working? Commander Scott was listing possibilities over her communicator, but with her head still a little woozy, his constant stream of information was making it impossible to think. “—the circuits through the whole shuttle, it could be a simple short or—”
“Ensign,” called Kologwe, “any time now.”
Seven Deers snapped the communicator closed. She could do this. Think. How did the emitter crystal of a phaser rifle work? Energy accumulated in the prefire chamber and then—
Ah! The crystal’s embedded safeties were rejecting the amount of energy the shuttle’s phaser systems were sending it. It was more than a phaser rifle could generate. If she could convince the crystal that she was setting a rifle to overload… Seven Deers programmed the tricorder to override the safeties. “Now, Lieutenant!”
The crystal lit up as energy passed through it to the phaser rifle. Seven Deers looked out the viewports. Success. The Farrezzi fighter tried to dodge out of the way, but it was not fast enough. Sparks flew off the fighter, and it began to tumble. Both shuttles kept their phaser fire focused on it as they flew ever higher.
“Engines to maximum,” ordered Spock over the comm.
As the fighter plummeted, the two shuttles streaked by it, free to climb into space. Seven Deers let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. The clouds were parting, and stars were beginning to make themselves visible.<
br />
The phasers shut off. The emitter crystal was dark black, burnt out by the shuttle’s phaser systems. Replacing the damaged crystal with one from a phaser rifle had been Scotty’s brilliant idea. Phaser rifles weren’t standard issue; each shuttle had been issued only one. Their phaser system was done for.
Her communicator signaled. “Seven Deers here.”
“Ensign, what do you think you’re doing?” demanded Scott. “Switching off your communicator like that?”
“Sorry, sir, I just needed a moment to think,” she said.
Scott sighed. “Sorry. I’m just frustrated, lass. I canna move!” She was irritated he’d called her “lass,” but she knew it was a sign of fondness. “How’s the crystal?” he asked.
“Burnt out,” she said. “We can’t use it again.”
“Shouldn’t have to,” said Kologwe. “We are clear for orbit.”
Saloniemi whooped, and Tra punched the air with his fist.
“Affirmative,” said Spock. “Plotting a course to bring us to the hub of the reactor network from above.”
A pinging noise drew Seven Deers’s attention to the front of the Columbus. “Ensign,” said Tra, “something’s coming up from behind us.”
“What?” she asked, checking her own readings.
Tra shook his head in frustration. “It looks like those fighters are space-capable. They’re right behind us.”
Following Giotto’s signal turned out to be more difficult than Kirk had anticipated. The spiraling layout of the Farrezzi ship meant that it was impossible to move in a straight line. The captain came to a wider section, like an anteroom, with a large opening at the other end. Stepping closer, he risked looking in. It was dark inside, but as he got closer, there was a familiar pale blue glow.
Kirk stepped inside. It was a storage area, filled with hundreds of the hibernation pods. The sight of so many innocent beings about to be exploited shocked him to the core, especially because they had no idea what was going to happen to them. The sleepers needed to know about their fate.
Star Trek®: A Choice of Catastrophes Page 19
