Star Trek (4 page)

To everyone's astonishment, the heavy attack seemed to have little to no effect. The ship merely resumed its bizarre squatting position, targeted the
da Vinci
with deadly accuracy, and returned fire. The Federation vessel rocked violently. The impact knocked Duffy out of his
chair, and he fell heavily for the second time that day. He was bruised and bloody, and something felt wrong in his hand. Once this was over, he'd have to go see Lense.

“Ineffective, sir,” said Corsi in a low, angry voice, stating the obvious. She continued to fire on the ship's appendages.

“Evasive maneuvers. Transfer all power to the forward shields. Let's take its hits here. Try different parts of the hull before we back off,” said Gold. “Nothing's completely invulnerable.” But he didn't sound too certain.

Now Corsi directed the
da Vinci
's phasers randomly. She attacked the rear appendages, the bow, the stern. At one point, when the ship raised itself again to fire, she got a clear volley in at its underside.

It stumbled. One spiky leg waved frantically.

“That's the spot, Corsi!” cried Gold.

Heartened, Duffy leaned forward as Corsi fired again. The ship collapsed. It clambered to its “feet,” but Corsi knew where to aim now and was merciless. After five more rounds, the ship teetered for a moment, fell heavily, and lay still.

Silence on the bridge. The ship was motionless; they had disabled it. Duffy let out his breath. He hadn't been aware he'd been holding it. All at once, he became conscious again of the alien piece of equipment he'd been clutching in a death grip.

“Captain,” he said, “I recovered this from the vessel. I think it's a tricorder of some kind. We may not have been
able to access the main computer, but this might have something on it worth knowing.”

Gold's eyes lit up. He and Geordi exchanged looks, and La Forge grinned.

“Duff-Man found a key,” said La Forge with a trace of pride. After all, Duffy had been under his command at one time. Duffy grinned back.

“La Forge, you and Faulwell start trying to figure out how to use this key. Nice work, Duffy.”

“Thank you, Captain.” It made the terrible pain in his hand worth it.

“Permission to go to sickbay to check on 110,” said Gomez.

“Granted,” said Gold. “You two,” he said to Faulwell and La Forge, “get on this tricorder immediately. Now,” he continued, rising and walking down to the screen, “little ship, are you really disabled, or do you still have a trick or two up your sleeve?”

Duffy held his injured hand and watched Gomez leave. He knew why she was going, and he understood. It wouldn't kill him to wait until she'd finished with 110 to get his injury treated.

Dr. Elizabeth Lense hated this part of the mission. She'd much rather be attending her other “patient.” The dead one, lying on a biobed, awaiting examination with the patience of, well, the dead. But 110 needed her attention now.

The Bynar was spasming on the bed, his eyes rolling back and forth underneath tightly shut lids. He wasn't breathing. Lense went into automatic pilot, making the right judgment calls and movements without even thinking about them.
Get him breathing. Stabilize the erratic heartbeat. Monitor brain-wave activity
. Her hands flew over the small, prostrate figure, attaching monitors, sensors, hypospraying concentrates of this and that.

At that moment, the ship rocked violently. It would appear as if the hitherto dormant ship had been awakened. Lense swore softly under her breath. Sickbay lost power momentarily, and the emergency backup mechanisms kicked in.

She had a brief flashback to a similar scene aboard the
Lexington
in the middle of a battle. Voices were crying out her name, shrieking in agony, begging for help. There had literally been blood almost everywhere in sickbay. Patients with injuries from fractured skulls to severed limbs to sucking chest wounds filled sickbay and overflowed into the corridor. There hadn't even been the chance to set up the shuttlebays to handle the sheer volume of wounded. The stench of so much blood had been almost unbearable.

Eighteen of the dead and injured had been her own staff. She and the EMH, an efficient but cold and sarcastic image, had been the only ones able to treat the wounded.

She remembered Jenson, dying in her arms even as she buried her hands almost to the wrist in his wound, trying
to hold closed a slippery, severed artery with her fingers because she couldn't reach her tools. And Galloway, who kept refusing treatment in order to bring in others more gravely injured than she, breathing her last quietly in a corner, when she couldn't bring in any more.

Lense had been able to save about a quarter of them. One lousy quarter of the screaming, bloody people who had begged her for help, pleaded with her to ease their torment.

Damn it. Damn it all to hell.

“Stay with me, 110,” she whispered, although she knew the Bynar could not hear her. She couldn't treat him when the ship was this chaotic. The best she could do was make sure he didn't fall off the bed, and that the pieces of medical equipment strapped to his little body stayed put.

For what seemed like an eternity, the ship shuddered under attack. Finally, it appeared that the worst was over. The power surged back on.

Lense turned her full attention to 110. The cortical stimulator was doing its job, and the spasming slowed, then stopped. A quick glance at her tricorder told her that the immediate danger had passed, though only a complete examination would reveal what, if any, permanent damage the Bynar had incurred.

She took a breath. She could use an extra pair of hands. “Computer, activate the EMH,” she ordered. At once, the slim, somewhat elegant figure of Emmett appeared.

“Good morning, Doctor—oh, dear,” said Emmett. “What happened?”

Lense noticed that his dark eyes had quickly taken in everything she had done before he asked his question. Good. She had never had so apt a pupil.

As he spoke, the door to sickbay hissed open. Lense turned her head quickly and saw that it was Sonya Gomez.

“Can you fill us in, Sonya?” she asked.

Gomez stepped closer, looking down at the Bynar with her arms folded tightly across her chest. “No one's really sure,” she said. “He was attempting to interface with the computer aboard the alien ship when it appeared to send a massive shock throughout his system. He was caught in it for a few seconds, and then it shot him across the room. We had him beamed up the instant he was released.”

Lense extended a hand for Gomez's tricorder, which had captured the whole event. She reviewed it in silence, Em peering over her shoulder.

“Who was working with him, or was he by himself?” asked Lense, handing the tricorder back to Gomez.

“Bart was with him at first, but he came over to look at the pilot's remains after we noticed the—the holes.”

Lense glanced up sharply at the hesitation in the other woman's voice. As a previous victim of burnout herself, she was always keenly alert to the manifestation of the symptoms in others. But Gomez appeared to be all right.

“Holes?” Lense demanded.

“Of course. You've been so busy keeping 110 stable, you haven't had a chance to look at the body,” said Gomez. “There were holes in each of the arms. It was impaled on the chair.”

Lense glanced quickly over at the pilot's body. Sure enough, there were three holes in the lower arms. Gomez was clearly a little rattled, and who wouldn't be, upon discovering a body that had seemingly been impaled on sharp spikes in the command center of an alien vessel that had just gone on a city-wide rampage? Gomez wouldn't be human if
that
hadn't unnerved her at least a little.

“The pilot's not going anywhere,” she said with a touch of black humor. “Right now, I'm more interested in 110. Did he do anything, touch any specific button? He had to have triggered something, or else the computer would have exploded the minute he tried to interface with it.”

“You'd think so,” said Gomez, moving hesitantly to stand beside the Bynar. “And he probably did, but no one was watching.”

“What about his own tricorder?”

“He hadn't activated it. He never does.” She looked miserable. “Captain Gold's reprimanded him about it before. It's just not in the Bynar nature. Between their evolved brains and the buffer they carry with them at all times, they seem to have everything they need.”

“Perhaps when they're on Bynar, but not when they're all the way out here,” snapped Elizabeth. It could take days to translate the information stored on 110's
omnipresent buffer. But only the Bynars could figure out that gibberish. “If he'd recorded what happened in a way we could understand, we'd be a lot closer to knowing how to help him.”

“The pilot,” said Em slowly.

Lense and Gomez turned as one to look at him. “What about the pilot?” demanded Gomez.

Em seemed a little uncomfortable at suddenly being the center of attention. “Well,” he began, “according to your tricorder, Commander, the incident occurred as the pilot's body was being transported out. We've seen that it was attached in some fashion—you used the word ‘impaled'—directly to the ship. Perhaps there were sensors that were triggered when the body was removed from the chair. The ship has to be operating on automatic commands. Maybe the removal of the pilot activated it.”

“Very good, Emmett!” said Elizabeth. She was proud of the EMH's deductive reasoning, but a little embarrassed that she hadn't figured it out herself. A quick glance at Gomez confirmed that the other woman shared her discomfiture.

Lense turned back to the supine figure of the Bynar. “There are first-degree burns on his hands and face,” she said. Whatever had happened to him had been bad enough to burn right through his protective gear. “Em, can you take care of those for me, please?”

“Certainly, Doctor,” Em replied, and began to run the dermal regenerator over the injured flesh while Lense continued.

“There appears to be no permanent damage to the brain. If he'd been human, there might have been, but Bynar brains are set up to be able to handle bursts of computer-generated information. Their limbic system can take an awful lot, more than almost any other humanoid species could. Whatever the ship's computer did to him seems to have caused no lasting damage. You may tell Captain Gold I expect a full recovery. One more piece of the puzzle.”

“Can you awaken him? The captain will have a lot of questions.”

Lense hesitated. “Let's give him some time. I want him more stable before I force him into consciousness. While we're waiting, I can begin the examination of the pilot.” She nodded her curly, dark head in the pilot's direction. “She should have a great deal to tell me about her race, if not necessarily her ship.”

Gomez lingered, looking anxiously at the still Bynar. “Sonya,” said Lense gently, “I'll let you know the minute we learn anything.”

Gomez nodded her head, knowing a cue when she heard one. “Thanks, Doctor.” She turned and exited, running smack into Duffy.

“Sorry!” Gomez said.

“No, it's my fault. Wasn't watching where I was going.”

Lense looked at the two of them. It wasn't a secret they had once been involved. And, judging by their awkwardness
around each other when they weren't in the midst of a mission, they hadn't figured out what to do about that past involvement.

Duffy was wincing and clutching his hand. “Oh, no, did I hurt you?” said Gomez.

“No, no,” Duffy protested through clenched teeth. “I was heading down here to get this fixed.”

“I'm sure I didn't help it any,” said Gomez. “Sorry, Kieran.” She hastened out.

Lense smiled. “Let me take care of that for you.” The injury wasn't serious, just a bad sprain. When she was done, Duffy flexed his hand and gave her a grateful look.

“Thanks, Doctor. See you, Emmett.”

“See you, Lieutenant Commander Duffy,” said Emmett with perfect correctness, if too much formality. Lense would have to work on that with him.

Lense turned back to the task at hand. Her gaze traveled up and down the small, slight frame on the bed. Space had not done its usual fine job of preserving the body in this case. According to what the away team had reported, the ship had continued to maintain atmosphere, and the body had decayed normally. At the moment, it was safely encased by a forcefield; Starfleet SOP for the
da Vinci
in bringing any nonliving organic matter aboard.

Lense glanced at the readings. Nothing dangerous detected. She could safely eliminate the forcefield, but she would keep the body in stasis. Otherwise, the smell would be unbearable, and she wanted to prevent the body from
decaying any further. She touched a button, then stepped beside the body.

A thought occurred to her. “Emmett,” she said, “have you ever performed an autopsy?”

“I am perfectly capable of performing an autopsy.” He looked offended. “It's a standard part of my programming.”