“You’ve lost your boss, and now you’ve lost your commanding officer,” said Roger. “Just like you lost me. You’re not doing too well, dear.”
“Shut up!” Chapel snapped. She didn’t have time for this. Determined to do her job, she flipped the comm. “Engineering.”
“Ensign Harper here.”
“Ensign, this is Nurse Chapel. I need to talk to Lieutenant DeSalle.”
“He’s busy with the warp circuits right now. I don’t think he can—”
“That’s an order, Ensign.”
Harper sounded unconvinced. “Aye.”
“DeSalle here. What is it?”
“Lieutenant Uhura is unconscious, pending surgery.”
“So?”
“That puts you in command of the Enterprise.”
“Not if we ever hope to get free. Is Lieutenant Sulu well enough to do it?”
A good question. “I’ll check.”
“Look, I can do more good down here. Engineering out.”
Chapel found herself wishing that Mister Spock was here. He would know what to do about the distortions, how to save the ship—
“Oh, that’s right,” said Roger, snapping his fingers. “You did replace me. With a man completely incapable of reciprocating your feelings. What does that say about you, I wonder?”
“I don’t—It’s not like—”
One blink later, a figure was standing next to Roger—Spock, as lifelike as could be. But unlike Roger, he didn’t say a thing. He simply stared at her, a judgmental look on his Vulcan features.
“I’ve moved on, from both of you,” she said at last.
Roger snorted. “That seems likely.”
Spock just raised an eyebrow.
Spock set the Hofstadter to head back to the planet and the source of the subspace distortion. The explosion had sent both shuttles reeling, and Spock had just regained control. The Columbus was stabilizing as well. He ordered Lieutenant Kologwe to match his course.
“What… what happened?” Engineer Scott asked in a shaken voice.
“We were hit by the explosion of the satellite,” Spock said. “Petty Officer Emalra’ehn was killed.”
“How?” Scott asked.
Spock kept his eyes on the screen ahead of him, but he could hear Scott attempting to sit up, followed by M’Benga admonishing him. “Once it was apparent that the Hofstadter would no longer be able to assist, Petty Officer Emalra’ehn triggered the power dump. He died instantly.”
“The poor lad… And the fighters?”
“The remaining fighter craft was destroyed. The shuttle sustained considerable damage. Shields are almost depleted.”
“Should we land?”
“Rest assured that this is what I have in mind, Mister Scott. We are heading to the hub of the reactor network, the cause of the subspace distortions.”
“Sir,” said Jaeger, who was at navigation. “There’s a Farrezzi ship in orbit. Over the northern hemisphere. It’s bigger than the fighters.”
Spock checked the readings. “We need to land before it notices us,” he said. “We cannot enter another firefight.”
“Are we still going to deactivate that weather satellite?” asked Jaeger.
“We will destroy it on our way down,” said Spock. “How long will it take the anomalous weather system to abate?”
Jaeger checked his readings. “A few hours at most.”
Spock nodded. “Setting course.” His fingers danced over the console. Simple, too simple. He had protected his crew, he had done his duty. But it was too easy, too easy to kill. Of late, Spock was troubled that he was forgetting what it meant to be Vulcan.
“Mister Spock,” said M’Benga, “do you know how the Columbus fared?”
Spock turned his attention to the physician. It appeared that he had sustained a cut on his forehead when the shuttle had been hit. “Kologwe reported that their shields held,” Spock said. “There were no injuries.”
M’Benga closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them to glance around, in search of something. “I need to look after Mister Scott.”
“Perhaps you should look after yourself.”
“No, sir, I’m fine. I can—” M’Benga wiped the blood off his forehead. He headed aft.
Spock swiveled around to face the console, resolving to increase their speed without overtaxing the engines.
Stardate Unknown
McCoy pushed upward, but the darkness swirled around him, dragging him back down.
stay here stay here stay here stay with us don’t go stay here stay here
The voice was Jocelyn’s.
He tried to shut it out, but it was almost comforting. Outside, all that waited for him was an insoluble problem. In here, he was safe.
that’s right stay here stay here don’t go stay here stay here
The voice was his father’s.
Safe? No! When had he ever thought this way? He’d been dogged by doubt his whole life. Was he doing the right thing? Was it for the right reason? But he’d always been able to keep on going.
you can’t you can’t you don’t want to you’re scared you’re frightened stay here stay here
The voice was Joanna’s.
He’d spent his adult life on the move, escaping the past.
no no no no stay here stay here
The voice was everyone’s. Everyone he’d ever left behind, everyone he’d ever let down.
Suddenly, he was out of the darkness, tumbling through… through what?
Thoughts peppered his consciousness from a dozen different directions, worries and anxieties, joys and triumphs. The feel of sheets on the first night he’d spent with Nancy. The taste of Jocelyn’s lips. The grateful smile of a patient he’d saved on Dramia. His hand switching off the monitor over the first crew member he’d lost on the Republic.
McCoy had never been as hard on himself as he had been today. This wasn’t natural. It was because of the espers. It was because they had reached out to him. It was because they were desperate. It was because they needed his help.
How? The espers didn’t know what was happening. They didn’t know how to get him back to consciousness. He was trapped.
McCoy felt himself falling backward, sinking back into the blackness.
come back come back oh yes oh yes stay here stay here
He stayed.
Stardate 4758.3 (0708 hours)
Chapel watched the doctor’s readings. They’d gone up for a brief moment and then slid back down. They now matched the coma patients’.
She had decided against a neural stimulant. Administering a stimulant had caused this, but waking him was just as dangerous. His mind was hovering on the precipice, not able to pull itself out. He wasn’t dying, not yet.
“You can’t do anything for him?” Roger asked, unwilling to leave her alone. “Nothing at all?”
She looked at her fiancé. It was an entire lifetime ago that she’d loved this man.
“He’s beyond the abilities of our medicine to reach,” she said.
Roger knelt down in front of her. “Here’s the thing, Christine. It’s all about self-doubt, isn’t it? Yours, his. The constant thought that we’re faking it, or that we don’t do things for the right reason. We spend our lives ignoring our doubts because we want to accomplish something. But what do we do when we feel the worst?”
“We… I don’t know.” What was he getting at? How was he trying to undermine her this time?
Was he trying to undermine her this time? If Doctor McCoy was right, these visitors were the espers’ way of communicating. Maybe he wanted to tell her something. “Talk to someone else?” she ventured.
Roger nodded.
A bleep from McCoy’s monitor drew her attention. His life-signs were sinking. She turned to face Roger, but he was gone.
Chapel knew what she had to do. McCoy could be quick to criticize, but just as quick to praise. He was a caring, devoted physician who’d do anything to save a patient. Chapel wondered if he
knew that.
“Doctor McCoy …” she began. That wasn’t right. “Leonard. I know you’re there somewhere, but you need to come back. Your patients need you. Only you can save them. You can’t give up. Come back to us, Leonard. Come back.”
Captain Kirk, Horr-Sav-Frerin, and Neff-Bironomaktio-Frerish—a Farrezzi with hunting experience—had taken the lead. With the element of surprise on their side, the fight against the slavers outside the interrogation room had been short. Several Farrezzi had been shot. Fortunately, several of the group knew first aid. The captain had been hit on the arm. He was keeping pressure on it as he watched the Farrezzi wrenching the door open with metal poles. Only a few minutes more, and the New Planets Cousins would have gotten in.
The heavily damaged door had been raised only halfway when Kirk slipped beneath it. The captain felt the heat coming from the lower edge and took care not to touch it.
Giotto was standing near the ensign, looking tired but relieved. Chekov was a mess but alive. At the back of the room, a pole reached to the ceiling, beside an unconscious Farrezzi slaver. There were dark red smears on the wall.
“The cavalry’s here.” Kirk smiled to reassure his crew.
“Just in the nick of time, sir,” Giotto said. “We’d almost given—” He cut himself off. “You’re wounded!”
Kirk waved it away. “It looks worse than it is. How’s Chekov?”
“Hard to say for sure, sir. He needs a doctor.”
“We need to turn this ship around. The Farrezzi have collected the guns from the slavers we knocked out. They’re ready to fight…. We’ll have surprise on our side.”
“How did you manage it, sir?”
“Diplomacy, Commander. And a kindergarten teacher.”
Giotto gave the captain a curious look. He ripped off a piece of his sleeve for a bandage. Wrapping it around Kirk’s arm, Giotto said, “Thank you, sir.”
“Let’s get Chekov out of here.” Kirk could only guess at what Chekov had gone through. “We’ll head for the command center.”
Stardate Unknown
McCoy was on his own in the darkness, with nothing to do but think.
“Pains you, doesn’t it?” a voice said from nowhere. It didn’t belong to one of his ghosts, nor to one of the espers. But whose was it? “When you have to stay in one place and can’t hide from what’s bothering you. You’re not used to that. You always ran rather than face your problems.”
“Who are you?” McCoy asked.
“Don’t you recognize yourself?”
It was his own voice. He shouldn’t be surprised—after engaging in conversations with hallucinations, talking to yourself was the next logical step.
“You sound like me, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
A chuckle in the dark. “Always the skeptic. Everybody lies, at least when they’re dealing with you. Isn’t that your opinion?”
“I never say that.”
“But you fear it, don’t you? Oh, I know you do. I’m you, after all.”
A figure appeared, a couple of meters away, but it was as if it had been there all along and he only just noticed it. It looked like him.
“Can’t you put away your doubts? Hell, I had no idea talking to yourself could be so aggravating.”
McCoy chose to get to the heart of the matter. “What do you want?”
“To help you. And me, of course. We’re in this together, you might say.”
“How do I get out of here?”
His mirror image raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know?”
“I wouldn’t still be here, playing your damn game, if I knew, would I?”
“You can’t run away. You have to face it. Make a choice.”
“I’ve always made choices.”
His other self shook its head. “But you always picked the easy choice, didn’t you? The choice that let you leave anything behind that troubled you, that inconvenienced you, that limited you. Your wife, your daughter, your dying father. The list goes on. Even right now, you want to leave the Enterprise.”
“That’s not true,” McCoy replied, but without conviction.
The other him snorted and took a step closer. “You may fool the others, but you can’t fool yourself. You left because it was easier than staying. In space, nothing could touch you.”
McCoy wanted to protest, to say that this wasn’t true. But there was an element of truth in it.
“You thought if you could be out here,” the other McCoy said, “where nobody knew you, you could avoid making connections with people.”
“I like people. I have friends.” He forced the words out. “And they like me.”
“Do they? Or are they just claiming to like you? It’s hard to tell, isn’t it? You can never be sure if their affection is real. You’d have to be a mind reader to find out, like old Pointy Ears.”
“Shut up.”
“What?”
“Shut up, I said.” McCoy could barely contain his anger. Instead of venting it aimlessly, he chose to focus it on what he’d come here to do. He wouldn’t let himself be derailed, not even by what claimed to be a part of him. “I’m a doctor. In here, I can’t do anybody any good. I have to leave.”
“You can’t.”
“Let me go!”
His other self laughed. “You don’t want to go, not really. Or you wouldn’t have to ask for my permission.”
“I need to allow myself to leave,” McCoy said, in order to make himself believe it. “I can’t stay here. I’m needed out there.”
His double waved the comment away. “So what?”
“I’m a doctor. Saving lives is what I do. I used to run away. But I haven’t run away in a long time, I’ve chosen. I’ve run to where I belong—Starfleet. I’ve saved lives that never would have been saved. I’ve chosen to stay.”
From somewhere above his head, a beam of light engulfed McCoy. Very quickly, everything was getting brighter and brighter, until he could see nothing.
When the blinding brightness receded, he could make out shapes. A bed. A monitor. Sickbay. At first, everything was silent, as though he was looking at a recording with the sound turned off. Gradually, his hearing returned.
Was this another illusion? Everything told him it wasn’t.
McCoy knew that his patients needed him, that only he could save them. They were all waiting for him. He couldn’t give up, not this time. No matter how bad it was, he had to return to them.
Determined to save his patients, McCoy took a deep breath, and plunged ahead. He looked ahead as he always did—
FIFTEEN
Stardate 4758.3 (0736 hours)
—as he always did.
McCoy opened his eyes and inhaled deeply as he sat up. The sickbay air rushed into his lungs. Nurse Chapel was standing in front of him, her face lit up in delight. “Welcome back, Doctor.”
McCoy shook his head, trying to shake off the numbness he felt. “Hello, Nurse,” he said, a grin growing on his face. “How long have I been out?”
“Almost an hour,” she said.
“Wow.”
“Longer than you thought?” she asked.
McCoy frowned, thinking about how it had felt. “Yes… and no. It seemed like I was there forever… but time stood still.”
“Where were you?” asked Chapel. “Your readings fell, but once I started talking to you, they began creeping back up.”
“You were talking to me? What were you saying?”
She blushed. “I told you to come back, that you were needed.”
“Thank you,” he said.
She smiled. “I’m glad to have you back.”
He grabbed Chapel’s hands in his own. “No, thank you. You put up with a lot, and you never say a thing. Thank you for everything.”
“You’re welcome.” Christine sounded profoundly grateful.
“It can’t always be easy.”
“No. But it’s worth it.”
There was a discreet cough from the doorway to the ward, where Lieu
tenant Sulu stood. McCoy quickly let go of Chapel’s hands. God… now he was blushing, too. “Welcome back, Doctor.”
“Thank you, Mister Sulu.”
“Good to see you back.” Sulu smiled wanly. “There have been developments.”
“Such as?”
“Lieutenant Uhura’s injured and needs surgery. I’m back in command.”
“What happened to Uhura?” McCoy asked.
Chapel gave him a brief summary. McCoy tried to read the medical monitor. “How am I doing?”
“Fine.”
McCoy leapt off the bed. “Excellent. We’re going to save Uhura, and we’re going to save these people.”
Sulu said, “You’re in a good mood, Doctor. Did you learn what you needed to?”
“Not really,” said McCoy. “But we’re saving these people. Every last one of them.”
A Farrezzi was able to point out the tunnel that led to the command center. Kirk broke into a run, eager to make it there before the ship went to warp. Not everyone could keep up. When Kirk stopped to check his makeshift team, he saw that Giotto was in the rear, keeping Chekov company, talking to him in a low voice.
“James-Kirk-Enterprise,” said Horr, “preparation lawbreaker attack now. Danger!”
“I know,” Kirk replied. “I’m prepared. When we get there, we’ll blast the door open and take them by surprise.” Giotto had liberated some grenades from the slavers.
A few minutes later, they reached the command center. The door was open. In an instant, they were under fire from slavers unleashing particle weapons at them.
With its smooth, featureless surface, the tunnel offered no protection. “Fall back!” Kirk shouted to the crowd of Farrezzi around them. He and Giotto lay down covering fire with their phasers. This discouraged the shooters, but there was still chaos around them. Some of the Farrezzi were slow to retreat, while others were overly eager. A slaver’s blast hit the wall next to Kirk, leaving a sharp odor of burnt plastic.
The group finally reached a bend in the tunnel that shielded them from the slavers’ fire. Kirk motioned Giotto over to him. “Not the welcome I expected,” Kirk said.
“A little too warm for me,” Giotto quipped.
Star Trek®: A Choice of Catastrophes Page 25
