THE CHILDREN OF HAMLIN

by Carmen Carter

  “I’m just tired,” said the counselor. Her hand lifted up and touched the dampness on her cheek. “Oh, I’ve been crying.”

  “Deanna … “

  “I’m fine, Will. I’ve just spent too many hours with the Hamlin captive. He’s so lonely, so filled with despair.”

  Acutely conscious of the side glances of passing crew members, and of Data’s undisguised curiosity, Riker was still unwilling to abandon Troi. “I’ll walk you to your cabin.”

  “Thank you, Will,” said Troi, then quickly added, “but I’d rather be by myself just now. These are only borrowed emotions, but until I untangle their influence … I’m vulnerable.” Quickening her pace, Troi followed two passengers into a turboelevator.

  “Deanna!”

  The doors snapped shut between them.

  “I also have a number of questions concerning the production of tears,” said Data. “Perhaps this would be a good—”

  “Not now, Data,” snapped Riker, and broke into a fast walk.

  “Then again, perhaps not,” said Data to himself. He added another query to his running list of perplexing human behaviors.

  Dr. Iovino wiped the water off the front of her uniform. “I guess you’ve had enough,” she said, pulling the glass away from Moses. She hadn’t yet convinced him what fun it would be to stop playing the drinking game with his meals.

  “No!” shouted the boy emphatically.

  “I thought you might say that.” She talked to him constantly and his understanding seemed to be growing rapidly, almost as if he were already familiar with the language, yet he had been slow to talk. At the moment he possessed a vocabulary of one word. “In case you’re interested, your behavioral development is right on schedule.”

  “No!”

  “Exactly my point. That’s why it’s called the ‘terrible twos.’ Right?” Then she answered her own questions so that together they cried out the inevitable, “No!” Moses giggled with delight at the chorus of their voices.

  A shadow fell across the floor and Iovino looked up to see who had entered the room. She recognized the woman as one of the survivors of the USS Ferrel and suspected that Ruthe was somehow connected to the child’s unexplained appearance in sickbay. She seemed something like a shy child herself. Lisa ignored Ruthe’s presence and continued talking to the boy.

  “Look what I’ve got.” Iovino held up a piece of chocolate. Moses had made the leap forward to solid food and this was one of his favorite items. “Do you want some?”

  “No!” he declared happily.

  She whisked it behind her back and waited for his reaction. When he started to whimper, she spoke very clearly. “But you said you didn’t want it.”

  Despite his sulking, he listened carefully to what she said.

  “Do you want some?” Iovino proferred the treat again. “Yes?”

  His lower lip stopped quivering. “Yesss,” he said with an exaggerated sibilance. He grabbed the treat from her hand and was all smiles again.

  “He looks happy,” said Ruthe with a hint of surprise in her voice.

  “He’s got a good disposition. Moses will do fine wherever he ends up.” The doctor frowned at her own comment. She had been so busy with his present welfare that she hadn’t really thought about his future. Suddenly, she was curious as to what would happen to this strange child.

  “I wonder if they’re all like him.”

  “All of who?” asked Iovino. Now the surprise was hers.

  “The other children. I’ve tried not to think about them, but maybe they’re happy, too.”

  The woman left as abruptly as she had appeared, leaving Iovino alone to ponder that tantalizing scrap of information. Thoughtfully, the doctor watched Moses eat the last crumbs of candy. He nibbled with dainty bites that left his face remarkably clean for such a young child, but then, the boy hated to get dirty. Wet was all right, however. “Just think, Moses. More kids like you.”

  “Yesss,” he said with great conviction.

  Jason slipped out of life quickly and quietly.

  He floated in peace for a full minute before the medic team reached the holodeck and shattered the illusion of the Choraii sphere. A knot of people, with Beverly Crusher at the center, gathered over the man laid out on the hard surface of the unadorned compartment. Harsh mechanical chatters and raised voices echoed between the flat walls as the emergency revival equipment was activated over and over again.

  Ruthe watched the doctors fight over the pale, still body, but she knew their frantic efforts were in vain. Jason had escaped.

  Dr. Crusher was slumped over the desk, her head cradled in her arms, but Picard saw there was too much tension in her spine for her to be asleep. He took another step forward into the office.

  “Beverly?” She straightened in place but didn’t speak to him. “You’ve lost patients before,” he said softly.

  “Injured ones, yes,” she answered at last. “With wounds too severe for me to heal or diseases that can’t be cured. Those deaths are unavoidable. But Jason was well and I couldn’t keep him alive.”

  “It was my decision to bring him on board.”

  “I’m not blaming you. I’m not even blaming myself.

  At the time, it seemed the right thing to do, but Ruthe knew better. We should have left him where he was.”

  “In captivity?” His abhorrence of the Hamlin children’s circumstances was not easily dismissed.

  “To him, this was captivity,” she said, waving at the enclosure of the ship’s hull. “Jean-Luc, Jason committed suicide. Not outright, not by damaging his body, but simply by deciding to die.”

  Picard listened to the tremor in her voice with deepening concern and was struck anew by her pallor. “You’re much too tired for this discussion.”

  “I can’t sleep,” she said brusquely, rising from behind the desk. “I’ve got work to do.”

  “You won’t bring Jason back to life by running around sickbay.”

  “I’ve got other patients to care for.”

  “Don’t you trust your own staff, Dr. Crusher?”

  “Well, of course I—”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Actually, I think I’m too tired to sleep.”

  Picard knew the feeling. After a certain point, exhaustion fed on itself and the mind raced on without regard to the body’s need for rest. “A sedative would change that.”

  “Don’t practice medicine without a license,” she advised, heading toward the office doorway. “And I won’t give orders on the bridge.”

  He let her brush past him and stalk out into the anteroom, then followed in her wake. She didn’t go far before another doctor waylaid her.

  “What is it, Iovino?” Crusher asked impatiently.

  “I have a question about Moses.”

  Picard waited until the young intern was standing by Crusher’s side, then he called out, “Beverly . . . ”

  She looked back toward him. With admirable slight of hand, Iovino whipped out a hypo spray and placed it against the chief medical officer’s arm. Crusher jerked away at the sound of the hiss, but not before the contents had been injected into her system.

  “What the hell are you doing, Iovino?”

  “Following my orders,” said Picard, walking up to them. He had hoped to avoid this surprise tactic, but given Crusher’s obstinacy, there seemed little alternative. Fortunately, Dr. Iovino had readily agreed to the maneuver.

  “Dammit, nobody orders my medical staff around but me,” Crusher stormed at Picard. He was unmoved by her fury. She turned on Iovino. “Retranine?”

  “Ten cc.”

  “I should put you on report for this.”

  “Just don’t spit at me,” said the intern without any remorse. “I’m tired of being spit at.”

  Crusher swayed in place. The sedative was already taking effect. With a sigh of exasperation, she said, “Five cc would have been more appropriate.”

  Iovino shrugged. “I knew I had to inject thr
ough your jacket.”

  “Oh, right,” said Crusher. Her head was suddenly very heavy.

  “Come on.” Picard took her firmly by the elbow. “I’ll walk you to your cabin.”

  The night-shift crew on the bridge was small. Data supervised the helm while Lieutenant Worf controlled the aft deck. Other support personnel were close at hand, but the Klingon did not call for assistance. He ran another check on the communications board, his third so far, and reported the results with an impassive expression. “No response.”

  “Damn.” Riker leaned forward in the captain’s chair. “Data?”

  “We are within contact range, sir,” said Data, turning from his position at the ops control. “The lack of radio transmissions indicates something is amiss.”

  The first officer ticked off the possible reasons for New Oregon’s silence. “Equipment malfunction, ion storm interference . . . ”

  “That possibility had already occurred to me,” interceded Data. “I ran the requisite sensor scan and found normal ion levels.”

  Riker continued with, “Frequency confusion . . . ”

  “Checking all communications bands,” declared Worf as his heavy hands touched lightly on the console surface. “No transmissions from that sector on any frequency.”

  Riker sighed heavily. “Which leaves us with equipment malfunction on the planet surface or . . . ” He let the unfinished phrase dangle in air.

  “Further conjecture would be highly speculative,” Data pointed out.

  “I know, Data, but we’ll have to assume the worst until we know otherwise; standard procedure demands that interpretation. What’s our estimated arrival time?”

  “Fifteen hours, twenty-three minutes—” Data paused, then continued hurriedly, “And five seconds.”

  Riker was too busy thinking to cut Data off. A lot could happen in fifteen hours. “Increase speed to warp seven.”

  “Warp seven,” confirmed Data, and the ship responded with an almost imperceptible shudder.

  The captain would feel it though. This time Riker hit the com link before Picard could demand an explanation. “Captain, request your presence on the bridge.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  DR. Crusher was the last member of the crew to receive a summons. She rubbed at sleep-weary eyes and tried to make sense of the tableau on the bridge. A full crew complement was assembled. Worf and Yar were hunched over the tactical console, too caught up in their observations to acknowledge the doctor’s entrance. They worked with the concentration typical of an alert status. With growing unease, Crusher walked down to the command center, where the captain stood huddled in discussion with Riker and Andrew Deelor. Both Geordi and Data were at the forward stations.

  Picard looked up at her approach and broke off his conversation with the other men. He had waited until the last minute before calling the doctor, allowing her to get as much rest as possible, but it was time for her to learn what had happened. She was the only medical officer with the proper security clearance for the work ahead.

  Crusher studied the image on the main viewer—a beige planet streaked with pale green bands. “New Oregon? We’re ahead of schedule.”

  “Yes,” said Picard. “There’s been a problem.”

  “Problem? What kind of problem?”

  “We believe the colony was attacked.”

  The flat tone of Picard’s voice should have alerted Crusher to what was coming, but her mind rejected the implications. “Why have I been called to the bridge? I should be down on the planet with my medical team.”

  Riker opened his mouth to reply, but the captain silenced him with an uplifted hand. Picard preferred to break the news himself. “It’s too late for any medical assistance, Dr. Crusher.”

  “No survivors?” Stunned, she sank down onto a chair. An exhaustion of spirit as well as body swept over her. Sickbay had already been prepared for the upcoming medical check of the colony’s Federation workers, over twenty terraform engineers, mechanics, and technicians. “All of them dead?”

  Picard forestalled any false hope. “There are no life signs left on the planet surface. Even the vegetation is dying.” By the time Geordi La Forge had brought the Enterprise into orbit around New Oregon, sensor scans had proven that the need for urgency had passed. The radio bands would continue to be silent.

  “How? Why?” Crusher asked, then found the answer for herself in Andrew Deelor’s presence. “The Choraii.”

  “Possibly,” said Picard. “Data detected a faint trace of organic particles on the outskirts of the solar system. The evidence is still circumstantial, but highly suggestive. We won’t know for certain until the away team has checked the surface.”

  Data turned from his ops console. “I have established transporter coordinates for both the terraforming station and the Farmer outpost. What is left of them. I sorted through considerable scattered rubble for a clear spot that would accommodate a landing party.” He pointed to an ominous red patch on his sensor screen. “And weather conditions will be quite harsh. The atmosphere-control fields have failed.”

  “Two teams,” ordered Picard briskly. “One to each location.” One of the hardest lessons of command had been to accept the away team as a substitute for his own presence, to use it as his eyes and ears and hands. Riker would quote safety as the reason for keeping the captain on the bridge, but Picard had come to realize that he usually could do his job better at a distance, calling alternately on the resources of his ship or the mission crew.

  Riker quickly assembled the first group. “Data, Yar, check out the Farmers’ settlement.”

  The designated officers abandoned their stations, leaving La Forge and Worf alone at opposite ends of the bridge. The first officer pointed to Deelor and Crusher next. “We’ll cover the control station. The greatest devastation will be there.”

  Crusher pushed herself up from the chair, drawing on a reserve of energy that was nearly depleted. “I’m supposed to save lives,” she said to no one in particular. “But lately I’ve done nothing but record death.”

  Riker’s landing party materialized on a broad, featureless plain. Cold, driving rain lashed down over them, and clouds of deep purple hid the overhead sun from view, turning mid-afternoon into late evening. Beneath their feet, a thick carpet of plants lay rotting in the water-logged soil. The first officer scanned the horizon for signs of habitation.

  “Over there,” said Deelor, pointing to a spot several dozen meters away.

  Riker lowered his gaze. Terraforming stations were built for utility rather than for beauty, but the structure on New Oregon now lacked both qualities. The squat tubes and bulbous domes of the operations center had been torn apart and smashed flat.

  Leading the approach to the attack site, Riker picked his way through the standing water which covered the ground. Despite his caution, he stumbled over a piece of debris hidden in the mud. Reaching down, he pulled out a chunk of contorted metal. Its original function was impossible to determine, but the falling rain washed away the covering grime and revealed charred patches on its surface. Riker handed the fragment over to Deelor, who inspected it with great interest.

  “The outer layer is completely carbonized,” he observed. His thumbnail scratched a thin bright line across the surface.

  “I’ll look for the bodies,” said Crusher, and walked on slowly. Her eyes swept over the burned construction materials. When her tricorder beeped suddenly, she took a closer look at a blackened lump in her path. “I’ve found something, Commander.”

  “That’s a body?” asked Riker when he had answered her call. His face paled and he swallowed convulsively.

  The doctor nodded and held up her tricorder. “Elevated calcium levels indicate the presence of bone inside.” She waved the instrument over the outer perimeter of the collapsed station. “I register several more corpses over there, buried beneath ashes and rubble. Also burned.”

  “The fire must have been very intense to cause this much damage,” said Riker.
<
br />   “Not fire.” Deelor kicked aside a loose metal plate lying next to the body. “The signs of a pressure impact are unmistakable. A hammer blow from a force field crushed the area. That was followed by an acid bath.”

  “How can you be so sure?” asked Riker.

  “I’ve seen records of a similar pattern of destruction on another planet. It’s Hamlin all over again.”

  Data monitored the open channel of Riker’s communicator, comparing Deelor’s description of the terraforming station to the blackened ruins of the farming settlement. Spars of timber lay rotting in jumbled piles. The hard rain had turned tilled fields into seas of mud.

  “The Choraii have been here as well,” Data reported to Picard. “There is very little remaining of the wooden structures. Even less remains of the people who lived in them.”

  “I joined Starfleet in order to stop things like this from happening,” said Yar, surveying the destruction. Her mouth settled into a hard line. “This time we arrived too late.”

  Once again the conference room was filled to capacity. Captain Picard contrasted this briefing session with the one that had occurred some two weeks ago and noted the differences. Wesley Crusher, who usually made a point of sitting away from his mother, had headed straight for her side in search of comfort. Counselor Troi, also shaken by the news of the colony’s destruction, was less obvious in her need, yet she was seated next to Riker. Their close proximity would mean little to most of the room’s occupants, but the captain recognized its significance.

  One person was conspicuously absent. Picard turned to the ambassador. “Where is Ruthe?”

  “I didn’t have time to tell her about the attack,” said Deelor, and quickly added, “she wouldn’t have any useful information to offer anyway.”

  Picard dismissed the rationalization and touched closer to the truth. “You can’t keep this from her. She’ll have to hear of it sooner or later.”

  “Then let it be later,” the ambassador murmured uneasily. “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”