“Two hours, fourteen minutes.”
For some reason, that prompted a yawn in Rosenhaus. That, in turn, prompted the realization that he hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep the previous night, having been awakened by the Proximan distress call. Might not be a bad idea to take a nap.
He checked the time, and saw that it had been four hours since McCoy left. Shrugging, he called out to Chapel.
“Yes, Doctor?” she said with an air of both demureness and professionalism for which Rosenhaus was grateful, since it meant she wasn’t holding his dopey comments from earlier against him.
“I’ve got a program running that’s going to take two-and-a-quarter hours. I’m gonna grab a quick nap. Wake me if Dr. McCoy comes back, okay?”
“Of course, Doctor.”
Rosenhaus hesitated as he got up from the chair. “Uh, is there any word from McCoy?”
“He reached the surface safely, but he hasn’t checked in with me since. I can double-check with Lieutenant Uhura on the bridge, if you like.”
Shaking his head, he said, “No, don’t bother. I’m sure he’s fine. Is there a free bed in sickbay I can sack out on?”
“Of course, Doctor. Help yourself.”
Nodding, Rosenhaus exited the lab and went two rooms over to the exam room. He lay down on one of the two beds.
The biomonitor immediately fired up. Sighing, Rosenhaus said, “Computer, discontinue bioreadings.”
“Disabling of medical functions requires authorization by chief medical officer.”
“Authorization Rosenhaus-426-Gamma.”
“Authorization not recognized.”
Again, he sighed. You’re not on the Constellation, Lew. Computer doesn’t know you from Schweitzer.
This was a quandary. The only bed that didn’t show bioreadings was the exercise bed across the room, but that was too small to lie down on. “Computer, can you at least mute the noise?”
“Negative.”
A third sigh. “Nurse!” he called out.
After a moment, Chapel came into the exam room. “Yes, Doctor?”
“I’m going to beam back to the Constellation until the program’s run. I need some familiarity for a bit.”
Chapel actually smiled at that. “I understand completely, Doctor. I’ll have Lieutenant Uhura contact you if Dr. McCoy comes back before the program finishes running.”
Viewing that smile as a good sign, Rosenhaus returned it. “That’s very good of you, Nurse Chapel. Thanks.”
As he walked through the sickbay doors, he had a mild spring in his step. I’m willing to bet that the Andorian treatment will do the trick. And then, once I’ve saved the day, maybe I can convince the lovely nurse to let me make up for my gaffe with dinner….
“I can assure you that we are doing everything we can to ensure that a cure is found quickly, and that your lives can return to normal operation. I repeat, this is a temporary measure. For now, we ask that people stay in their homes unless they have sanctioned duties. A list of those duties is readily available on the information net. Please carry identification with you at all times.”
She stared at the image of the young man in the golden Starfleet uniform in something like shock.
They’ve declared martial law. Amazing.
She hadn’t thought that her oh-so-esteemed former colleagues would do such a thing.
But then, maybe they didn’t. Maybe Starfleet just waltzed in and took over.
Not that it mattered. They could impose curfews, restrict movement, quell riots—none of it could possibly have made the tiniest difference.
Because she had the power.
She walked over to her gift. It sat on her kitchen table, pulsating with the green glow that she first saw on Pirenne’s Peak.
She still didn’t know where the gift came from or who built it. Images had flooded her mind of strange alien beings who died in odd ways, thanks to this gift, but ultimately the images had no meaning to her, no context.
It didn’t matter. It provided her with deliverance. It provided her with vengeance.
She loved the irony. Not only did it instantly make people fatally ill, but the illness also had hard-to-identify symptoms. Nobody would even know there was anything wrong until they were dead.
Dead by her hand.
The only drawback was that it could only do so much at once. She had hoped to destroy everyone on Proxima in one shot, as it were, but that had proven beyond the gift’s capabilities. Only a few hundred had contracted the virus before the green glow dimmed.
At first, she had been furious. Killing a random group of people in Sierra City hardly satiated her need for revenge. Everyone had to die. More to the point, everyone had to suffer.
Then the green glow had come back. By that time, people had started to die, their hearts exploding like photon torpedoes in people’s ribcages. Her only regret was that she had been unable to stand over their bodies as they expired. She wanted everyone’s last sight to be of her. She wanted them to know why they were dead.
When the glow returned, she used it again, this time on everyone occupying the Government Center, which had called an emergency session.
Now it was glowing again.
Who shall I destroy next?
The voice on the newsfeed droned on. “Medical scanners are being distributed to all residents of Proxima. Distribution schedules are posted on the nets as well. Please use these scanners regularly, but do not tamper with them. They have been specifically calibrated to seek out the virus. If a scan turns up positive, report to the nearest hospital immediately for treatment.”
She turned in anger. They had identified the virus? They were treating it? Worse, they were now giving people the means to find it?
Damn them!
She had originally considered targeting police headquarters. With Starfleet involved, that won’t work anymore. So who—?
Then she realized what she had to do. Oh, this is too perfect.
The annoying Starfleet face went away, to be replaced by the usual newscaster. “That was Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise, one of the two starships that has declared martial law on Proxima. It should be added that the first decree made by Kirk and the U.S.S. Constellation’s Commodore Matthew Decker was that the news sources would be allowed to continue uncensored. To repeat, medical scanners are being handed ou—”
She turned off the feed. Infecting both ships with the virus wasn’t possible—at least not at once. But she could take down one of them…
The computer diligently woke Lewis Rosenhaus up two hours after he’d hit the pillow in his quarters. As usual, he was wide awake in an instant. First Rosenhaus checked in with the lab, where Technician Shickele assured him that the synthesizing of kerylene was proceeding apace. McCoy may not want to be prepared for every eventuality, but I’m not going to make the same mistake.
He then contacted the bridge and asked the communications officer to put him through to Nurse Chapel on the Enterprise.
“Yes, Doctor, what is it?”
Rosenhaus blinked. Gone were the demure tones of the woman whom Rosenhaus had embarrassed with his verbal blundering about Roger Korby. Now she sounded as excitable as a Klingon. “Uh, I wanted to make sure my program—”
“Yes, your program’s all done, and no, Dr. McCoy hasn’t come back on board yet. I would’ve told you that, Doctor, I did promise you that. I can assure you, I’m the type that—”
A fist of ice clenching his heart, Rosenhaus said, “Nurse, do you have a medical tricorder on you?”
“What the hell kind of ridiculous question is that? Of course I do, but I hardly—”
“Scan yourself, please.”
“Why should I—?”
“Nurse, please, run a scan on yourself.”
Even as Chapel spoke, Rosenhaus could hear the telltale sound of the Feinberger running over Chapel’s form as it read her biological data. “Dammit, Doctor, I really don’t have time for—Oh my God.”
“You have the virus, right?”
“Yes, I—”
Rosenhaus got up from his bed and put a fresh shirt on. “Where are you?”
“Sickbay. Doctor, I’m so sorry, I—”
“Never mind that. Run a scan on some other people—pick crew members at random, then report back to me.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
She signed off, then he contacted the bridge. “This is Dr. Rosenhaus again. Put me through to Dr. McCoy, Priority One.”
After a few moments, a familiar, cranky voice came on the line. “This better be damned—”
“Doctor, I believe the Enterprise has been infected.”
A pause. “What!?”
“I’m back on the Constellation. I left your ship two hours ago while I had a program running and took a quick nap. And before you bite my head off, I only got an hour’s sleep before the distress call from Proxima came.”
“That’s one hour more than I got,” McCoy grumbled, “but that doesn’t matter. What happened?”
“I contacted your Nurse Chapel, and she sounded more excitable than usual. I asked her to scan herself, and she had the virus. I asked her to scan some random crew members to be sure, but—”
“But whoever’s doing this probably targeted the whole ship. Damn.” McCoy sighed. “Jim’s gone and declared martial law, so I’d better let him know, too. At least he’s safe down here, and Spock’s on the Constellation with your pal Masada.”
Running a hand through his shaggy red hair, Rosenhaus said, “We’ll need to declare a quarantine on the Enterprise. We can’t let anyone on or off.”
“Don’t be an idiot! First thing we verified is that this isn’t contractible unless you’re targeted by that blessed artifact.”
Rosenhaus cursed his own stupidity. “Sorry. Force of habit. Not used to a disease that doesn’t wipe out the whole room.”
“None of us are, son,” McCoy said in a surprisingly conciliatory voice. “I sent up a woman on a shuttlecraft to the Enterprise. She volunteered to be our guinea pig. I’ll have it divert to the Constellation. You’ll need to go over to the Enterprise, verify this and retrieve all the data, then—”
Another voice interrupted. “Bridge to Dr. Rosenhaus.”
“Rosenhaus here.”
“Doctor, I have Nurse Chapel on the Enterprise.”
“Put her through, please.” Rosenhaus took a very deep breath. Here it comes…
“Chapel here.”
“Nurse, I have Dr. McCoy on the line, also. What’s the verdict?”
“The ship’s been completely infected. I’ve got Lieutenant Sulu here as well—he’s in charge of the bridge, with the captain and Mr. Spock both off-ship. I’ve informed him as well.”
Another voice, this one deep and male, said, “You know more about this disease than I do, Doc. What do you recommend?”
McCoy’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “I hate to do this, Hikaru, but the only treatment we’ve been able to come up with is sedation. At that, it’s only a temporary measure.”
“Not only that,” Rosenhaus said, scratching his cheek, “it’ll take forever to administer the sedative.”
“That’s not an issue,” Sulu said. “We can flood all decks with anaesthezine gas.”
“You can do that?” Rosenhaus asked, incredulous.
“Of course,” Sulu said, as if it were the most natural thing in the galaxy. “How long do we have, Doc?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, before we implement any kind of mass sedation, I’d like to check with the captain, and Mr. Scott will need to put the ship on automatic so we don’t fall into the atmosphere when we’re all asleep.”
“You don’t need to do that,” Rosenhaus said. “Some relief crew can come over from the Constellation.”
“Won’t they get the disease?” Sulu asked.
“Of course not. The disease isn’t contractible.” Rosenhaus tried not to sound quite so haughty, but he still felt foolish after his previous blunder.
“All right, I’ll have to coordinate with Commander Takeshewada,” Sulu said with surprising calm, considering that he had a virus that was pumping adrenaline into his body at a great rate. “I’ll need at least an hour to get everyone to report to their quarters and set things up for the replacements. Our best bet is to keep the relief crew on the bridge—as long as they don’t have to do anything too complicated, they can run the ship from there. And then we’ll flood every other deck.”
“Sounds like it should work,” McCoy said.
“I agree.”
“I wasn’t asking your approval!” McCoy then took a deep breath. “Sorry, Doctor. Just goes against the grain to put your crewmates to sleep.”
“As long as the sleep isn’t permanent,” Rosenhaus said. He was starting to understand why McCoy was so snappish. He hated the idea of being helpless. I guess we all deal with that in our own way. Me, I prefer to let it drive me to greater heights.
Within the hour predicted by Lieutenant Sulu, the entire Enterprise staff had reported to their quarters, prepared for a very deep sleep. The chief engineer—an obscenely excitable man, though Rosenhaus supposed the virus could have been responsible for that—had routed all functions to the bridge. Takeshewada had roused the Constellation’s gamma-shift bridge crew out of their beds and they had taken their bleary-eyed places at the different-yet-familiar consoles. Rosenhaus had also brought his junior physician over to keep an eye on things, since the Enterprise’s medical staff was going to be just as incapacitated as everyone else.
Then, finally, the entire Enterprise, save the bridge, was put to sleep.
Rosenhaus had, of course, beamed off the Enterprise at that point, after verifying that neither he nor the relief crew had contracted the virus. Captain Kirk had, he understood, made some sort of speech to his people telling them something no doubt inspirational and encouraging and downright tiresome, but Rosenhaus hadn’t bothered to listen. He was too busy gathering his notes.
When he returned to the Constellation, he saw that a woman under sedation had been placed on a biobed.
He summoned Emil Jazayerli, his head nurse. “Who is that woman, Nurse?”
Jazayerli squinted at the biobed, a habit in the older man that Rosenhaus found almost as annoying as the nurse’s tendency to run his index finger and thumb over his thick black mustache. “That’s the woman that arrived with the Galileo, Doctor.”
Blinking, Rosenhaus said, “The Galileo? There’s another ship in orbit?”
“No, Doctor, the Galileo is an Enterprise shuttlecraft.” He walked over and picked up the woman’s chart, then held it out for Rosenhaus. “I believe she’s a Proximan volunteer with the disease.”
“Oh, right,” Rosenhaus said, taking the chart, “Dr. McCoy’s guinea pig.” He peered at the chart, which showed that her name was Mya Braker, she served as the Representative for the Ninth District, and she’d gotten the disease at the same time as everyone else in the Government Center. “All right,” he said, handing the chart back to Jazayerli, “keep an eye on her EEG and her epi and norepi count. If any of them change in even the slightest degree, let me know immediately.”
“Of course, Doctor.”
It irked Rosenhaus that Jazayerli never called him, “sir.” It probably wouldn’t have bothered him all that much, except that he always called him “Doctor” in a tone of voice that indicated that the nurse didn’t think much of the title. Hardly the right attitude for a subordinate.
Sighing, he went into the lab. Maybe I can convince Decker to let me transfer him off when this is all over.
As he sat down at the desk, he called up the results of his test—which, in all the hugger-mugger on the Enterprise, he hadn’t had the chance to thoroughly look over.
After reading over the results, his pale face broke into a huge grin. I think we’ve done it!
He contacted the bridge. “Is Dr. McCoy still on the surface?”
The communications officer—a friendly youn
g lieutenant named George Howard—nodded. “He’s meeting with the commodore and Captain Kirk right now. You need to raise him?”
He was about to say yes, then changed his mind. “No, he can find out when everyone else does,” he said with a smile.
Frowning, Howard asked, “Find out what?”
“I’ve got a good line on a cure. I’m going to test it now.”
The communications officer’s face split into a grin. “Lew, if that’s true, it’ll be the first good news all day.”
Rosenhaus belatedly realized that gossiping with the communications officer was probably not such a hot idea. “Well, keep it to yourself, George. I still haven’t tested it yet.”
“No problem, Lew. My hailing frequencies are closed till you say otherwise.”
“Good,” Rosenhaus said with a smile. “Sickbay out.”
Howard’s face faded, to be replaced by the computer simulation. Rosenhaus looked it all over one more time. Briefly, he contemplated waiting until he could have a second set of eyes look them over, then decided that wasn’t practical. His junior physician was back on the Enterprise, and McCoy was still on Proxima. Besides, he’ll probably just come up with sixteen reasons why it won’t work, he thought sourly.
He went over to the synthesizing lab, where the stout form of Norma Shickele sat hunched over a computer terminal. “Get off my back, L.R.,” she said in her booming voice, “you’ll have your damn kerylene soon enough.”
“Hold off on that for a minute,” he said, forcing his voice to remain calm. He hated being called “L.R.,” which was, of course, why Shickele insisted on doing so. Rosenhaus also knew he couldn’t afford to antagonize the lab techs because he relied on them in situations—well, much like this one, so he had to be on his best behavior in her presence. She knew that, too, and so always did everything she could to goad him. So far, he hadn’t risen to the bait.
Maybe I can get Decker to transfer her along with Jazayerli, he thought wistfully.
The Brave And The Bold Book One Page 6
