The Soldiers of Fear (7 page)

With a hand not yet completely steady, La Forge put his VISOR back on. "Lieutenant."

He sounded calm. If Redbay hadn't seen him fall out of the Jeffries tube in a panic, he would have thought that La Forge had felt nothing.

"I can see two crew members who still haven't controlled themselves," Redbay said, letting La Forge know that his panic was not unique. "Anderson seems to be coming out of it. I haven't been able to get to the warp drive to see what's happening there."

"Great," La Forge said, and he didn't have to explain what he meant by that. If La Forge had panicked and fallen out of a Jeffries tube, and Redbay had panicked and allowed a laser to damage a console, then what kind of damage happened to the warp core?

La Forge pulled himself to his feet. "Engineering to bridge," he said as he stood.

"Go ahead, Mr. La Forge."

Redbay found the captain's normal response unusually reassuring. But La Forge frowned. He had worked with Picard a long time. He might have heard something in the captain's voice that Redbay hadn't.

"Captain." La Forge paused and glanced around, then took a deep breath and continued. "Something pretty strange just happened down here. I don't know how to describe it. We all seemed to panic for no reason at all. Two of my ensigns are still huddled in terror on the floor, and I don't know what's going on near the warp core. There might be some systems damage. I'll need help from the bridge in running a systems check."

"That isn't possible at the moment, Mr. La Forge."

Now Redbay heard it too. There seemed to be an abnormal amount of caution in the captain's tone, as if he were choosing his words too carefully.

"Then, sir, give us five minutes before attempting to use any major system. I need to check"

"Mr. La Forge," the captain interrupted as if he hadn't heard La Forge at all. "Did you have the screens on during the last transmission?"

La Forge glanced at Redbay. Redbay shook his head. He had been working on the screens, not watching them.

"No, sir," La Forge said.

"Fascinating." The captain's comment was soft, as if he were mulling that piece of information.

The silence seem to stretch too long. Finally La Forge said, "Captain?"

"Mr. La Forge." Picard's voice seemed somewhat stronger. "We have a problem that extends beyond engineering and the bridge. We must assume that the entire ship has felt this wave of terror. Repair what you can, Mr. La Forge, but remain at your posts."

"Yes, sir," La Forge said.

"Geordi," Picard said, his voice lower, almost as if he were asking a favor. "Get your crew on their feet again, if you can. We need to discover where this feeling is coming from, as quickly as possible."

"Lieutenant Redbay and I are already on our feet," La Forge said, "and Anderson seems to have regained control as well. Between the three of us, we should be able to get the rest of engineering in order."

"Good," Picard said. "I need a report as soon as you can get it to me."

"Aye, sir," La Forge said.

Redbay swallowed convulsively. It was taking most of his strength to stand beside La Forge and look calm.

La Forge's hand went to his VISOR again, then dropped to his side. "I suspect we don't have much time."

"I suspect you're right," Redbay said. "I think those of us who can work should. If we find a way to block whatever is causing this, the others will come around immediately."

La Forge glanced at his crew members. One ensign was still huddled in a fetal position, but the other one was sitting up, his skin green, his eyes glazed. He was tracking, though. Redbay suspected he had looked like that only moments before.

"I'll scan," La Forge said. "You run diagnostics. Let's see how fast we can find the source of this."

Redbay nodded. He liked being busy. Being busy kept his mind off that feeling of terror gnawing at the lining of his stomach. He went back to the console and picked up his tools. Beneath the control, beyond the terror, he had the awful feeling that something was missing.

Something that should have guided them all.

He bent over another console and started the diagnostics.

Then he realized what was wrong.

No one had ordered a red alert.

If Picard was right, then the entire crew had been hit with a bolt of fear, a literal assault on the senses.

A clear attack and Picard had not called a red alert.

He had probably been too shaken to think of it.

And that worried Redbay even more.

SICKBAY GLEAMED.

The extra beds were lined against the wall, the emergency equipment was out on tables, and extra medical tricorders hung from pegs near the door. Beverly Crusher had even ordered her assistants to place the research tubes into medical storage so that they could use the experiment area during any emergency that might arise. The handful of patients, three sick with the xotic flu, were in the farthest wing of sickbay, tended by one nurse who was instructed to watch the monitors for any fluctuations.

Beverly tucked a strand of red hair behind her ear and looked at the readings on the diagnostic bed one more time. She had prepared her trauma team, not her research team. After working on Lieutenant Young, however, she wondered if she had made the right decision.

Lieutenant Young was still wrapped in the diagnostic bed, only his head and feet visible above the equipment. Aside from an odd series of bruises across his chest, arms, and ankles, he had suffered no obvious physical wounds. Yet he was nearly comatose.

She had thought, when he first beamed up, that he had had serious internal injuries, or some type of head wound. But as she examined him, then stabilized him, she discovered his lack of physical injury.

Obvious physical injury. She had to keep reminding herself that the key word here was "obvious." Lieutenant Young who looked, in some ways, younger than her son wesley was dying.

And she could do nothing about it until she determined the cause.

Two of her assistants were running double-check scans on his blood and urine. She was also having them run DNA tests and tests for obscure viral infections: for anything that would cause Young's abnormally high blood pressure, his increased adrenaline and endorphin readings, and his extra white-blood-cell count.

The thing she didn't tell her assistants was that she was afraid she knew the cause.

One of her hobbies was the history of medicine throughout the known worlds. It fascinated her that Vulcan developed the art of acupuncture during roughly the same developmental period Earth did even though the planets were not in communication at that time and the cultures were in different states of growth.

Terminology also interested her: the phrase "in good humor" once meant "in good health" because Terrans once believed that the body was filled with "humors" and that if those humors were in balance, then a person was healthy. She didn't believe in humors any more than she believed in using leeches to bleed a cancer patient, but she did know that some ancient diagnoses held a basis in fact.

She ran a cool hand over Young's forehead. No fever, yet his skin was damp and clammy to the touch. His eyes were open, but they didn't see her. Instead they focused on the ceiling. Occasionally he would moan and cringe. And when he did, his heart rate increased, his breath stopped in his throat, and his blood pressure rose.

She could bring the levels down, but she couldn't predict when the situation would repeat.

And she knew, as clearly as she knew her own name, that Lieutenant Young's ill health was being caused by something within his own mind.

In the terms of the medieval physicians of Earth, Lieutenant Robert Young was being frightened to death.

Literally.

And search as she might for a physical cause an implanted chip, a stimulant in the brain stem, a chemical trigger in his bloodstream she could find nothing.

She suspected that he had seen something he could not live with, and his conscious mind, overloaded, was trying to cope in the only way it could. It was overloading his body, trying to force it to shut down.

And it was up to her to stop that.

She dabbed sweat off Young's forehead. Sometimes she felt no better than those medieval physicians who believed that humors governed the body. There were parts of the body human, Vulcan, Klingon, it didn't matter that no one understood.

This was one of them.

She needed Deanna. If anyone could help this boy, Deanna could.

Beverly reached for her comm badge when suddenly a wave of terror filled her. The feeling was so intense that it knocked her to her knees. She banged her head on the diagnostic table as she fell.

The boy was going to die.

They all were going to die.

And she could do nothing. She was perfectly helpless. As helpless as she had been the day Jean-Luc arrived with the news that her husband was dead.

That she would raise Wesley alone.

The ship would be filled with a mental plague, causing everyone to die of fright, and she, a trained physician, would have to stand by.

Helplessly.

Her head hurt.

The beginning of the plague.

She knew it.

Bobby Young was only the beginning, and now it had passed to her. Soon she would lie on a diagnostic table while her assistants fluttered over her. Then they would fall, one by one, victim to this unnamed terror

Someone behind her screamed.

The plague was spreading.

She put a hand to her head, near the source of the pain, and felt

A lump.

It hurt to the touch, hurt even worse when she pressed on it, making the headache increase.

Something crashed behind her.

She whirled.

One of her assistants she couldn't see who had made a white flag out of God knows what, and was waving it from below one of the examining tables.

A white flag.

She frowned. Then giggled, despite her terror. A white flag. No one recognized a white flag anymore. It once meant surrender. Save the bearer from harm.

Save the bearer from harm.

Cautiously, she peered above the diagnostic table. Young was writhing within his confines, his eyes rolling in his head.

Young.

Save the bearer from harm.

She glanced around the room.

Except for her assistants, she was alone.

The flag waved, slowly, like a metronome.

Tick.

Save the

Tick.

bearer from

Tick.

harm.

Her throat was dry. She had never felt such terror in her life. Something was wrong. Something was

Lieutenant Young choked.

She rose by instinct, opened his mouth, and cleared the passageway. Her fingers were shaking. She couldn't concentrate. She forgot what she was trying to do.

Save the bearer from harm.

That was her duty. Her oath.

I swear by Apollo the physician, by Aesculapius, Hygeia, and Panacea

His throat was clear.

and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgment the following Oath:

But his tongue was bleeding.

I will prescribe regimen for the good of my patients

She cleansed his tongue, moved it aside, and propped up his head.

according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.

He was breathing regularly again.

His eyelashes were fluttering.

And her terror was subsiding. Or more accurately, she had it under control.

Never do harm to anyone.

And it was the oath, the Hippocratic oath, that had saved her. Hippocrates, Father of Medicine, a Greek physician who came from a famous family of priest physicians, and who wrote more than seventy treatises on medicine ...

Knowledge.

It was knowledge that was keeping her calm. Her mind could overcome anything. Hadn't Dr. Quince told her that during her internship on Delos IV? Her mind was more powerful than any drug. More powerful than anything.

Even fear.

She was standing without assistance. Even in the middle of that terror, she had managed to help Lieutenant Young.

Now she had to help her assistants because she needed them.

She peered over the examining table. Ensign Cassidy was sitting below, both hands clutching the white flag, which was still waving back and forth.

Beverly swallowed. "Etta," she said. "Etta, it's Beverly. You're in sickbay. Put down the flag. You're safe."

Ensign Cassidy looked up, her round face pale with fear. "Don't let them get me, Doctor," she whispered.

"They won't, Ensign. No one is here. Captain Picard warned us this would happen. There are Furies outside. Remember the Furies?"

Ensign Cassidy nodded.

"Use your mind, Ensign. Overcome the fear. Put it aside. Remember your medical training. Your fears don't matter. Your actions do."

In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients. Beverly shivered. The fear was there, below the surface. But she could control it.

Ensign Cassidy lowered the flag. "What's causing this?" she whispered.

"Something from outside us." Beverly took a deep breath. "I need you to focus the others. Remind them of their tasks as medical personnel. Even Lieutenant Young can feel this, and he doesn't seem to feel anything else."

She stopped, the fear caught in her throat. A real fear this time.

Deanna!

"Computer," she said, not caring that the fear filled her voice. "Locate Counselor Troi."

"She is in her quarters."

Deanna. Who was sensitive to everyone's mood. Who could feel what the entire ship was feeling.

Terror like this overloaded a human. Lieutenant Bobby Young was dying from it. Imagine what it would do to Deanna.

Beverly turned to Cassidy. "Keep an eye on our patient. Contact me if there's any problem."

Ensign Cassidy blinked. Her expression was clearer. "I'll be all right," she said.

"Good," Beverly said. That made it easier for her to leave.

And she had to. She had to get to Deanna.

Beverly headed out the door at a run, spurred on by fear. But not the fear sent by the Furies. This fear was for her friend's life.