by Diane Duane
“That may prove difficult, Commodore.”
“Do it,” Danilov said. “You know what you stand to lose if you don’t.”
Jim had a pretty good idea. “One thing, Commodore. What is the Federation’s stance as regards the commander’s request for asylum?”
“They granted it.”
Jim raised his eyebrows. “Probably just as well we never had a chance to tell the Romulans so,” he said. “A fight could have broken out.”
Danilov looked grim.
“As regards Bloodwing, Commodore,” Jim said, “what if her commander declines to cooperate?”
“Then you are to return to RV Trianguli immediately for debriefing and reassignment.”
There were about thirty things that could mean. “Yes, sir,” Jim said.
“You are to state that you understand my orders and will comply with them fully and without reservation.”
The silence got long. Then Jim turned around to look at Uhura. “What happened to the signal, Commander?” he said.
They exchanged a long look. After a second, she glanced down at her console. She didn’t do anything that Jim could see, but she said, “We seem to have lost it, Captain.”
When she looked up at him again, her expression was too neutral to read.
“Thank you, Uhura,” Jim said. “That will be all for the moment.” He turned away, looking at Spock.
“Captain…” Spock said.
“Mr. Spock,” Jim said, “I will want to see you in my quarters briefly in about half an hour. Mr. Sulu, set a course matching Bloodwing’s. Pursue her, at warp eight. If you need more speed to catch her, use it. Estimated time to intercept?”
“Twenty minutes, Captain, if we’re on the right course. She may have altered.”
“Make that an hour from now in my quarters, Mr. Spock. Uhura, hail her, and at the very least get a course update from her if she’s not willing to decloak. Sickbay!”
Sickbay had been in turmoil when McCoy got there. The place was full of security personnel who were holding phasers on three people, all on diagnostic beds now. Lia was working busily over one of the two prone forms, getting the scrub field set over him. Another nurse, big, broad-shouldered, mustached Tom Krejci, was tending to the second patient, a young man sitting up in bed and holding a sterile pad over a disruptor wound on his head. Only a graze, McCoy thought, for anything better targeted would have burst the young man’s head like a rock dropped on a melon. “Put those things down,” McCoy said to the security people, “I know this boy, this is tr’AAnikh. He’s all right. Tom, what did you give him?”
“Ten mils of orienthrin for the shock, and fifty mikes of entrivate-B for pain relief.”
“Give him another five of orienthrin, to be on the safe side.” McCoy lifted the sterile pad, looked quickly under it. “Then get busy regenerating that; shouldn’t take you more than five minutes. Make sure you keep that protoplaser set below three—Romulan dermal perfusion’s a little more leisurely than ours.”
“Right, Doctor.”
“Okay, son,” McCoy said to tr’AAnikh, replacing the sterile pad, “you just hold that there a couple minutes more. Here, have some ale.”
Tr’AAnikh sat looking in astonishment at the bottle McCoy had shoved at him as the doctor moved over past the second diagnostic bed. The figure lying there was half draped under a silvery heatcon blanket. Without turning away from the sterile field she was working under, Lia said, “I’m sorry, Doctor. He was already gone when they brought him in. Massive internal disruptor injuries.”
McCoy nodded, pulled the blanket up to cover the face, then turned to look over Lia’s shoulder at the occupant of the third bed. “He’ll be ready for you in about two minutes,” she said, her attention focused on the hologram of the patient’s organs that had formed under the sterile field cowl. “Nearly stable enough to start work. Dr. M’Benga’s on his way.”
“Good.” McCoy pulled off his duty tunic, chucked it into a nearby clean-or-recycle chute and turned back to the diagnostic bed where tr’AAnikh was sitting. “How’d you get over here in the first place?” McCoy asked, taking the high-sleeved surgical tunic that Krejci handed him and pulling it on. “I don’t imagine they let you just waltz in and beam out of there without any authorization.”
“The Senator helped us,” tr’AAnikh said. “Senator Arrhae i-Khellian. She gave us a device that let us get to the infirmary on Gorget and get the Praetor out without the alarm being raised. Then Hhil and I went to the transporter room with the Praetor. The guards there tried to stop us…” He looked sorrowfully at the blanket-shrouded form on the next bed.
“They failed,” McCoy said, hurriedly sealing up the surgical tunic, “and I suspect that’s going to be worth something shortly. But I’m truly sorry about your friend.”
“He knew this might happen, and he was prepared for it,” tr’AAnikh said. “He and I both wanted to help the commander, and the captain…and the Senator said this was the best way to do it.”
“I hope she’s right,” McCoy said. “You lie back and rest now.” He turned back to Burke. “Lia, is he ready?”
“All set, Doctor. Recorders are running. Field’s on invasive visual.”
“Right. What have we got?”
Under the sterile field’s archlike canopy, and over the patient’s ravaged chest, a holographic representation of the contents now superimposed itself, the tissues of the various organs and systems differentiated by shade and intensity of color. Shadowy forms of organs missing or damaged overlaid themselves on the originals. Right now the respiratory and cardiac systems were outlined and highlighted in strident red, indicating both massive trauma and failure status, and showing some big initial forcefield bypasses that Burke had installed to keep the vascular flow going around the patient’s heart. “Extensive dorsal supradermal and infradermal burns,” Burke said. “I’ve been infusing adjusted saline by inguinal veinpak to compensate. Extensive crenation of superficial muscular and fascial tissue secondary to disruptor damage. I’ve debrided the blasted tissue, saved some noncrenated tissue for cloning—it’s in the hopper now and first divisions are ongoing. The rest can wait. A lot of intestinal damage, but nothing serious once he’s stable. No major bleeding, and I stopped the leakage from the mesentery. The big problem’s the heart, as you can see. Someone over there’s a good shot.”
“Too damn good,” McCoy said, looking at the holographic image of the heart. It was a mess, already once partially exploded by disruptor fire, and roughly patched by the Romulan surgeons—they had merely butted the tears in the ventricles together with mechanical crimps and sealed them with inorganic adhesives, and the patching was rapidly coming undone without any replacement connective tissue to keep it in place. Give them the benefit of the doubt—they may have planned surgery later. But now the heart had a new set of tears in it from the attack that had just happened. So. Save or replace? “Mmm. Primary-degree disruption involvement to upper simulpericardium, anterior atrium, superior diaphragmatic stosis, secondary-degree damage to centricardium, upper right ventricle, upper left ventricle, medial upper ventricular septum.” And look at it, they left all this exploded cellular material in place at the edges. That would never have healed. I know they can do better than this! Did someone over there not want him to survive? Well, tough luck.
“The AV and periHV rhythms in the heart muscle have gone sporadic,” Burke said. “They’re full of transient conduction spikes due to enzyme flooding, and the new tears are pulling the old ones open. It won’t hold long; it’s going to rip itself apart again, if it doesn’t stop first.”
“Damn,” McCoy said softly. “Patching this is going to be a nightmare. Still, we can’t risk an artificial heart under the circumstances.” Especially since, if things got lively out there and the ship lost power while maneuvering, a heart made of nothing but forcefields would do the Praetor no good at all. “Let’s rebuild this on the double, and get a spare growing.” McCoy poked a spot with the guide protopl
aser. “There’s the AV node. Lia, harvest me some tissue from there. And for God’s sake don’t let it stop contracting! I don’t want to have to waste time jump-starting it later—”
From the nearby instrument tray, Burke picked up what McCoy routinely referred to as the “magic wand,” a foot-long chromed instrument that liaised with the pattern buffer of the surgical transporter under the diagnostic bed. She slipped the wand into the hologram, focused the harvesting field into it in the form of a little sphere of yellow light, used the control on the side of the wand to enlarge the sphere a little, then tightened the sphere’s volume down again. “That enough?”
“Hell, take the whole thing. It’s not doing him any good at the moment.”
The sphere sparkled with transporter effect and vanished, taking the tissue with it into the waiting container of growth medium. “Tom?” Burke said.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Sickbay!” said Jim’s voice out of the air.
“McCoy here.”
“Report, Bones.”
She’s right, it won’t hold, McCoy thought as he spotted the aneurysm forming in the equivalent to the vena cava, swelling out and out like a blown balloon. Oh no, you don’t! Sweat burst out on his forehead as he grabbed the “guide” protoplaser that Lia handed him, set it for “vascular” and “designate,” and swiftly traced a glowing path through the hologram from about two centimeters above the aneurysm to about three centimeters below it. The surgical support system built into the sterile field cowl immediately emplaced a small tubular forcefield into that spot inside the patient, and “marked” it in glowing red for reference. Just as the forcefield patch snugged down and mated to the vessel at the cellular level, the aneurysm blew like a badly patched tire, dark green blood flooding the forcefield segment and turning it brown-black. Lord, that was close.
He swallowed, his mouth briefly too dry to speak. “Three people down here, Jim. One dead. One alive and known to me, not seriously injured. One in pretty bad shape—that’s the Praetor, Jim. Big hole in his gut. Heart’s all ripped up. But we’re in luck,” McCoy added, glancing at one of the readouts in the visualization hologram. “He’s a pretty regulation T-positive. I was wondering whether some fraction changes had crept into Romulan serology over time, but it seems not…”
“Aren’t the T-types rare?” Jim said.
The door hissed as M’Benga came hurrying in, took in the scene at a glance, and immediately started pulling off his duty tunic. “Relatively speaking,” McCoy said. “But we’ll be okay for a while. I have enough synthetic cuproplasm from the reserve stock we keep down here for Mr. Spock to keep Gurrhim’s plasma balance acceptable, while we clone the extra fractions needed from the samples Ambassador Sarek left us. M’Benga, you sterile?”
“Five seconds more.”
“Good. I’m playing Little Dutch Boy here at the moment, and there are better things for me to be doing. Come reroute these damn bleeders before one of them blows sky high the way the cava just tried to. Every vessel in here’s been weakened by the disruptor blast, and we’re going to have to fuse in physical replacements for all the majors in the next five minutes.” M’Benga slipped in opposite him across their patient, next to Burke. “I want you to ’plast the ones I’m force-patching just as soon as I finish each one.
“Spock, would you be willing to go on marrow stimulants for a couple of days if we need some more whole blood?”
“Certainly, Doctor.”
“Good. Stop in and see me later. I’ve got my hands full right now…” He slapped the guide protoplaser into Dr. M’Benga’s outstretched hand, picked up another one, and started patching another major vein. “Lia, get me eight pieces of ten-by-ten idioplast and slot them into the transporter pad for Dr. M’Benga’s protoplaser, and after that, prep eight more. Then stick two units of cuproplasm into the patient to start with, and prepare three more; he’s exsanguinating like mad. And beam out that serosanguinous fluid in the peritoneum before he drowns in it!”
“Right. Tom?”
“Got it. Our other patient’s okay, I’ll circulate. Here’s the cuproplasm. The AV’s cloning.”
“What did they do to this man besides shoot him?” M’Benga said softly, starting to patch another of the bursting major coronary vessels.
“Precious little,” McCoy muttered. “Which may have been their intention. Because, good God, man, I would have thought those people’s medicine was a little more sophisticated than this. Look at those burns. Is laser cautery and autografting the best they can do? Got to do something about that after we tend to the major organs. Lia, there’s another leak in here, he’s losing what blood pressure he has, hurry up!”
“Plasm’s running, Doctor—”
“Start another, and find that leak!”
“Bones,” Jim’s voice said, “will he live?”
“Maybe. Depends on him. I’ll let you know. But meanwhile we should be grateful that whoever tried to kill him was in so much of a hurry. Now let me get on with this!” McCoy finished patching another of the vessels attached to the heart.
“That’s the other three big vessels idioplasted,” M’Benga said. “The fuse is good and tight. Want me to ’plast that one?”
“Yes, and then start regenerating the nerves while I re-butt those tears in the ventricle and weld them,” McCoy said, using the protoplaser to mark two torn pieces of tissue and touching the control that would make the pressor function in the manipulation field pull them together. In the holographic image they met, and he drew the protoplaser down the juncture. Granular scar tissue grew and spread between them in its wake, welding them together. “Then start resealing the simulpericardium. We’ve got to get this thing going again real quick.”
M’Benga was silent for a moment, then swore under his breath. “The nerves aren’t responding.”
“Goddam alien myelin! Never mind, right now we’ll concentrate on the mechanical aspects.” He started sealing another tear in the upper left ventricle. “Will you look at the thickness of this heart muscle? Let’s hope it’s diagnostic of more kinds of strength than one, because it’d be real annoying to lose this man in post-op. Meanwhile, if we patch it right, it may actually hold. Tom, let’s go, we need more idioplast here!”
“Bloodwing’s responded, Captain,” Uhura said. “But just with her course. Mr. Sulu has it now.”
“She’s accelerated to warp nine, Captain,” Sulu said. “Heading deep into Romulan space—what we would call the neighborhood of 450 Arietis.”
Jim shook his head. “Well, don’t lose her, Mr. Sulu. Match it.”
“We may ha’ no choice but to lose her after a while,” Scotty said from engineering. “We canna maintain warp nine for long.”
“Warp ten now, Captain,” Sulu said, shaking his head. “Sir, she shouldn’t be capable—”
She sure wasn’t at 15 Tri, Jim thought. “Bloodwing!”
No reply.
“Bloodwing, reply!”
Nothing.
Jim’s face set hard. “Mr. Spock—”
“Enterprise,” Ael’s voice said, “apologies for the delay. We had a technical problem. Are you intact?”
“Yes. But others aren’t. Ael, where the hell are you going?”
“Not to ch’Rihan, if that is what you thought,” Ael said. “I have no interest in chasing Gorget and Pillion just now, though I confess to interest in the new technology Pillion used to attack us. But for now we can safely let them go. Those who attacked us have paid the price. Meanwhile, I have an urgent appointment in the Artaleirh system. What I must know is, are you coming?”
“You’d better believe it,” Jim said. “I am not letting you out of my sight. And when you finish whatever it is you have in mind at Artaleirh, you are coming back to Federation space with me…or else.”
“When we are done at Artaleirh, Captain, I will gladly come back with you, if you still insist. And if, by that point, Starfleet does. But for the next sixteen hours, which is the time
it will take us to get there at this speed, let us allow the matter to rest. We have trouble enough ahead of us.”
“Which is another thing. Scotty, can we do sixteen hours at this speed?”
Scotty sounded annoyed. “With adequate warning, aye. And with constant attention. But we’ll suffer some failures and burnouts as a result, and we’ll need downtime afterwards, a couple of days’ worth for sure. And are we expected to fight when we get wherever we’re going?”
“Of a certainty,” Ael said calmly. “There are nine Grand Fleet vessels meeting us there. None of them, I think, are expecting Enterprise, but when they see Bloodwing, they will certainly be intent on destroying it, and I feel sure they will try to extend the courtesy to you as well.”
Scotty was muttering under his breath. Jim could hardly blame him. “I take it, though,” Jim said, “that you’re expecting help of some kind.”
“Yes,” Ael said. “This will be a major engagement, and if conducted properly, it may much shorten this war. I rejoice that you will be present, for your appearance will give the Rihannsu fleet as much pause as the presence of all the other ships that will be arrayed against them.”
It was flattery of the most outrageous kind. Still, flattery had to contain a kernel of truth in order to work at all. Jim smiled through the anger…just a little. “And another thing,” Jim said. “Since when can Bloodwing maintain this kind of speed? What the devil have you done to your engines?”
“Well,” Ael said, “since we left home space, Master Engineer tr’Keirianh has been experimenting with a propulsion concept our people came up with a while ago. Grand Fleet had abandoned it as too dangerous an idea and sent it back to the researchers for more work. But you know how engineers are, once a better way of doing something is suggested to them. Tr’Keirianh simply could not let it be, and eventually he found a way to make it work. If one creates a small local singularity and connects it to the warp engines—”
“Oh, no,” Jim said softly, and rubbed his forehead gently, where the headache was already starting. Practically in unison with him, “Oh, no!” Scotty said, from down in engineering.
