Bloodthirst (19 page)

Chris had simply slipped away. She should not have gone into a coma; and once in the coma, she should not have died. For some inexplicable reason, the virus had acted on her system in an entirely different way than McCoy had observed in Adams. It had shut down Chris' systems, one by one. And McCoy had no way of stopping it, no way of explaining what was happening.

And since Chris had never wakened, he'd never even had the chance to say good-bye.

Oh, he'd managed to get her lungs breathing again, managed to keep her heart beating but the brain wave stayed flat. In some strange way, he felt that he had been through this before, tried to argue for this before and knew that he was wrong to keep Chris alive. She was gone. And yet, he could not quite bear to let her go.

He left her there on life supports and went into his office, where he did something he had never done before. He drank bourbon while on duty.

The problem was, he couldn't get drunk enough for it to help. He didn't want to get too drunk, because of Nguyen. She had recovered beautifully from surgery, but Tjieng had promised to have the lab results any minute now. It wouldn't look good for him to be passed out at his desk.

After two shots of whiskey, McCoy came to the conclusion that Chris simply couldn't be dead. He needed her. He had started missing her back when she went into the coma, and already sickbay seemed terribly empty.

The simple fact of the matter was, he loved her. Not romantically, of course; both of them had been hurt too much for that. But he cared about what happened to her. He loved her like family, and God knows, he didn't have much family to lose. No, Chris simply couldn't be dead. McCoy decided against taking her off life support. Adams Adams knew what had happened to her. Security was bound to catch him soon, and when they did, he would be able to clear up the mystery.

McCoy heard steps outside his door. Tjieng? Had she come to bring the results in person? He opened a drawer with the thought of hiding the whiskey glass inside. But the steps faded away, and McCoy forgot them. If he could just get his hands on Adams for a few minutes

The intercom buzzed jarringly at him.

He snapped it on. “McCoy here.” Saying just those two words required a supreme effort.

“Tjieng here, Doctor.” He could hear the sympathy in her voice, the unspoken apology for disturbing him, and he thought of the old saw that bad news travels fast. Hesitantly, she asked, “Is it really true about Chris?”

“It's true.” His voice sounded harsh and bitter to his own ears. “It's true but she's still on life support. I keep thinking maybe Adams—maybe there's something about the disease, about the coma, that we don't know.”

McCoy sensed implicit disapproval in her silence.
Go ahead
, he thought savagely.
Go ahead and say that I should just let her go.

“It doesn't seem right somehow.” Tjieng's voice was sorrowful. “But I have some good news.”

McCoy did not even lift his head.

“Nguyen and Lamia. The two people from Security. Both tested negative.”

“Negative,” McCoy repeated. His mind registered the fact as a good thing, but it did not penetrate the layers of grief.

“You can release them from isolation. From what we gather, the virus is spread through contact, just as you suggested. Exchange of body fluids—blood, saliva—increases the risk of infection. But Nguyen has a strong immune system. She managed to fight off the infection. She's a real survivor.”

“So it's not that highly contagious.” McCoy struggled to make the connections. “That's good. I'll relay that to Security. McCoy out.” He started to close the channel.

“Doctor, there's more. We're distilling a vaccine for use now. I'll call when it's available for distribution.”

“Good,” McCoy said. He switched the intercom off before Tjieng could protest and leaned forward in his chair until his forehead rested against the cool, hard surface of the desk.

He ought to go tell Nguyen the good news; after all, she'd seemed so depressed. But he remained where he was, exhausted from grief. He heard someone outside the door again, and argued with himself to get up. Maybe someone was looking for him.

But at the moment he really couldn't give a damn.

Nguyen lay in the loneliness of the isolation unit and forced herself, once and for all, to stop weeping. The tears had been almost steady since she regained consciousness, and they both surprised and embarrassed her. She had always been an optimist, the type of person who overcame hard luck and never let it get her down, and the overwhelming depression that enveloped her now had so taken her off guard that she was quite unable to deal with it.

After an initial flurry, sickbay had become empty and quiet. McCoy had disappeared after showing her how to signal him, and she'd had a chance to think, to try to understand her reaction.

She had been horribly, terribly frightened, beyond all ability to reason. The fear still oppressed her: it hovered in the background, waiting for another chance to surface.

She'd been ashamed until she realized it wasn't the fear of Adams, or the dreadful fact of what he had done to her. Not at all.

It was the nearness of death, the realization that her life might be no more than what it had already been. That this was all there would be for her, and there was no more time for anything else.

When she'd first come to, she'd cried, from shock and sheer relief that she'd survived. The relief faded quickly, as soon as she'd realized that Adams had probably infected her. A lingering illness, with no cure, no certain fate in sight. It was not a cheerful prospect, but it brought with it the chance there might be time

Then, this morning, Chapel had died. Nguyen tried to remember when Chapel had gotten sick so that she would know how much time she had left.

Her thoughts strayed again to Rajiv and the others. She wanted to write back, to let him know what had happened to her, to let him know that if she lived, she would do everything in her power to join him. But each time she tried to begin a letter, it came out sounding too melodramatic.
(Dear Rajiv, by the time you receive this, I will probably be dead… .
) And the glowing screen pained her eyes until she finally leaned back and closed them.

Outside her unit, the door to sickbay
swooshed
softly. She didn't open her eyes; whoever it was, she didn't care. While she knew that someone would be coming soon to tell her the test results, she had already convinced herself they would be positive so that when she was told, the disappointment would be less.

Light footsteps paused for a moment in the outer room, went past the isolation units, back into the storage areas. There was the sound of someone carefully going through equipment. Something surreptitious about the noise made Nguyen open her eyes.

The sound stopped. Whoever it was had apparently found what they were looking for. The footsteps headed back toward Nguyen again.

The man in the cloak paused. In the light, Nguyen could see the cloak's color for the first time—how opalescent quicksilver shimmered over the deep red velvet. As her mind registered its beauty, her body registered fear.

Her first response was to press the alarm on the side of the bed, but she stopped herself in time. If McCoy came immediately, Adams might kill him outright—or at the very least, the doctor would be exposed to the infection. If only she could press the intercom next to the bed and whisper into it without Adams noticing

But Adams stopped and turned slowly until the front of the hood faced Nguyen's isolation unit. She froze, motionless except for the insane beating of her heart.

Fingers emerged slowly from under the bell-shaped sleeve, touched the intercom, disappeared again.

A cold-hot thrill passed down her spine. If he came inside, there was nothing she could do now to stop him. He couldn't know the code, she repeated to herself like a prayer. There's no way he can know the entry code.…

“Care to join me?” Adams invited, and laughed weakly. He knew she would not summon McCoy. And then, smoothly, he swept out of the room. The door closed behind him.

Nguyen pushed herself up on wobbly arms and hit the intercom. “Dr. McCoy! No, don't come. Adams was just here”

You're probably wondering why I've called you all here
, Lieutenant Ingrit Tomson thought as she stood in the Security briefing room and stared at the eighteen faces—half of them sleepy, half of them not—that comprised the entire Security squadron. Of course she did not say it. Natives of her frozen home world, Valhalla, were supposed to be a cold and suspicious lot, even more humorless (some said) than the Vulcans. Tomson was indeed suspicious by nature—a definite advantage in her profession—and as far as humor was concerned, she kept hers in check. Especially at the moment; no point in causing these people any more cognitive dissonance than was necessary. Those who had been wakened in the middle of their night—Snarl and a handful of others—already looked confused enough. Except for Stanger. He gazed expectantly at Tomson.

She cleared her throat and stepped to one side of the podium, resting a milk-white hand on it. “The captain has informed me that we have an intruder on board. The evidence indicates that it is Jeffrey Adams.”

She let the murmurs stop before she continued. “Adams attacked Ensign Lisa Nguyen and then fled. The transporter room and hangar deck have been alerted, but so far he has made no attempt to leave the ship.” She paused for a moment to let the information sink in. Stanger made a move as if to stand up and say something, but held himself and kept his eyes focused intently on her. “Nguyen is all right. Her injuries were serious, but she was saved by the appearance of Ensign Lamia. Both Nguyen and Lamia are in sickbay, where they will remain until it is determined whether or not Adams infected them.”

Tomson's voice was without inflection, but she said the words with true regret. She'd been watching Lisa Nguyen for a couple of years now, and of all her people, Tomson trusted Nguyen the most. She'd been planning to have her promoted to lieutenant, junior grade, to her second-in-command. It was not a decision she had made lightly. She liked Nguyen, and was sorry to see this happen to her.

Adams' appearance brought with it an additional problem: who was to assume command of the night-shift search. While Tomson was tempted to extend her own shift to twenty-four hours a day, she realized she would have to delegate. But Nguyen was the only one she trusted enough to delegate anything to.

“As usual, we'll split into two shifts. I'll be coordinating the first one. Those of you on duty will be assigned a specific area to search. First, though, you will report to sickbay for a briefing by Dr. McCoy on the necessary precautions.” She paused. “That's it. Those of you not on duty are dismissed—but I want you here fifteen minutes before your shift so you can report to sickbay first.”

The audience rose; the night shifters lingered for their assignments; the day shifters began shuffling out. All except Stanger. He stood off to one side of the podium. She stepped over and narrowed her eyes at him.

“Do you have a question, Ensign?”

“Yes, sir.” His voice was lowered so that the others, who were speaking softly to each other, could not hear. “Who's coordinating the search for the night shift?”

Tomson let her lips press tighter together. She resented the question; she'd been hoping against hope that McCoy would call to say Nguyen had had a miraculous recovery. As it was, she was forced to choose from among a bevy of junior-grade ensigns, none of whom had the seniority aboard the
Enterprise
, much less the experience. “I haven't made that decision yet.”

“I'd like to offer myself for consideration, Lieutenant.” If Stanger was still smarting from being chewed out the other day, he did not show it.
Handsome
, she caught herself thinking, looking at his dark, broad features, smoothly arranged in a display of respect and responsibility. For an instant, the face of al-Baslama flashed in front of her. She canceled the image immediately, but was left with an odd sense of hatred for the man standing in front of her.
You'd like to take Moh's place, wouldn't you, Stanger?
she thought with sudden resentment.

“I realize I, haven't made a very good impression, Lieutenant, especially being late the other day” Stanger continued. “But in spite of any rumors you may have heard, I'm very competent. I've organized a number of searches in my day, and I'm damn good at it. I've been trying to think of a way to show you that, sir.”

She gazed at him without answering for a moment. She often used silence as a means of unsettling people, but Stanger did not squirm. He simply stared right back at her.

“I need someone to supervise evening shift,” she answered finally. “You're day shift.” He started to say something and she silenced him with a look. “I need everyone on day shift I can get, with Nguyen and Lamia out indefinitely.”

“Then let me do the next day shift, and the following evening shift. I'll take Esswein's place. He can rest up, and then take my place tomorrow morning.”

She approved inwardly of his determination, but did not show it on her face. “You're either very sincere or very slick, Mr. Stanger.”

“Both, sir,” he said, straight-faced. “And determined. Nguyen and Lamia are my friends. I want to find Adams. Will you consider it?”

She used silence again, but again it failed to ruffle him. When she finally did speak, she was thinking more of Mohamed al-Baslama and his spotless record than she was of Stanger and his feelings. “Acker Esswein will be temporary second-in-command,” she said abruptly. “Quite frankly, Mr. Stanger, I can't trust you not to screw up again.”

His expression did not change, but as she turned away, she thought she saw a shadow fall over his face.

Sulu settled in his chair at the navigation console on the bridge and tried to keep his mind on his work. It wasn't easy; Chekov had already laid in the course, and there was very little for a helmsman to do except sit and make sure that nothing went wrong with the equipment. And once they arrived at their destination in the Sagittarian arm, Sulu's greatest challenge would be to slow the ship to sublight speed in order to facilitate star-mapping. Such uninspiring work was bad enough on an ordinary day, but today there were other factors working to increase Sulu's restlessness: the shipwide alert in the middle of the night about the intruder on board, and the rumors about the attack on Nguyen and Chris Chapel's closeness to death. The truth was impossible to get. McCoy was talking to only a few, and those few weren't telling.