Gabriel waved a feeble hand at all of them. “Hi. Welcome to the hellhole.”
“Hellhole?” Corsi asked. Carol couldn’t help but notice that there was an anticipatory tone in the security chief’s voice. Almost as though she were looking forward to running into trouble. “Maybe we should begin with you instead of Captain Picard, Professor Collins.”
“It’s a joke, Corsi,” Carol said, trying not to sound as irritated as she felt with the woman. Gabriel’s sense of humor had always been perched precariously on the edge of normal. At that moment, Carol couldn’t think of a single non-academic who ever got his jokes. To help smooth the situation along, she asked, “Gabe, how many digs have you nicknamed that after a few months?”
Gabriel’s brow furrowed. “Don’t know. How many have I actually been on?”
“If you’ve lost count,” she said with a grin, “we’re in more trouble than we thought.”
Gomez stepped into the conversation, “Professor Collins—”
“Call me Gabriel, please,” he said, his expression softening. “The only people I make call me ‘Professor’ are my students.”
Carol tried hard not to notice that the charm had switched on once again. It had always been instinctive for him. She’d suspected that even marriage wouldn’t be able to shut off his natural ability to charm the cassock from a Vulcan priestess, but she’d also never expected to be proven right.
Gomez, at least, didn’t seem to be falling prey to it. She gave a gentle nod and said, as friendly as Carol had ever heard her be, “All right then, Gabriel. What, exactly, are the problems you’ve been noticing? We were informed of equipment malfunctioning as well as an illness affecting members of your dig team. Our sensors picked up a field resembling thoron radiation before we landed. This much exposure shouldn’t be that harmful, but we’re prepared to evacuate your entire crew if necessary.”
Gabe looked as though someone had put raw sewage into his dinner. “Evacuate? When we’re this close to the objective? I’m afraid not, Commander.”
“We were afraid you’d say that,” Gomez said, turning toward Corsi. “Commander, I could use your team’s help setting up the phase discriminators and the pattern enhancers.”
Corsi gave a curt nod. “You’ve got it.”
Sarjenka shifted the medkit on her shoulder. “There still appears to be time, Gabriel. And we might be able to buy more of it. If there is anyone on your team who needs medical assistance, please tell us where to find them.”
Gabriel waved a hand toward a large, black, dome-shaped tent a few meters behind where they stood. “Probably should start with Jean-Luc. He’s in there. Data’s probably with him. I don’t think he’s left there since the captain went down during dinner the other night.”
“Could you please clarify what you mean by ‘went down’?” Sarjenka asked.
“Passed out,” he said. “Said he had a pounding headache, went to get some yenara-root tea, and we haven’t seen him conscious again since. Honestly, we’re all worried about him. Nobody wants to go near the tent; they think he’s got something contagious. I’ve got four others with varying degrees of his condition. Probably just a matter of time before it gets to the rest of us.”
Sarjenka shot a look back at Falcão. The two of them pulled breather masks out of their kits, made sure they were over their mouths and noses securely, and headed toward the tent Gabriel had pointed out. The kid’s concern over whether or not the rest of the team should do the same thing was written all over what Carol could see of Sarjenka’s features.
Carol’s stomach knotted at the notion of what losing Picard might do to the crew of the Enterprise. She didn’t have much use for captains playing archeologist, and Carol had disagreed with several of Picard’s decisions over the years, from his (to her mind) botched handling of the Boraalans to his forced reuniting of the Mariposa colony. That last one was a mess the da Vinci had had to clean up late last year. Still, he was the captain of the flagship, and Carol knew just how much was at stake if they didn’t bring him back at least relatively unscathed.
When Sarjenka ducked into the darkened tent, she saw Picard lying on his back on a cot, with Lieutenant Commander Data—at least, from the pictures she’d seen of the android, it looked like him—standing beside the bed, holding a medscanner over his captain. Data looked intent on the scanner’s display, a perplexed look on his features. The light from the tricorder was the only light in the tent. Captain Picard must be in the middle of a migraine attack.
“Commander Data?” she asked, lowering her voice just enough to still be heard through the mask, “How may we be of assistance?”
Dantas followed Sarjenka in and, apparently noting the darkness and the tone of Sarjenka’s voice, she gently placed her own medkit on the grass at their feet and softly said, “Commander, we’ve been sent to assist with the injured.”
Data turned away from the scanner just long enough to see Sarjenka. In the faint light, she noticed a surprised widening of his eyes. Almost as quickly as it appeared, it was gone, as though he’d had a brief emotional response to seeing her, but shut it down as quickly as possible. She’d heard a rumor among the engineering staff on the da Vinci that Data had managed to not only get a chip that allowed him to experience emotions, but had also learned how to turn it off.
If all sentient life forms could be so lucky.
“Sarjenka?” Data asked.
She took a step back. “Yes,” she said, her voice wary. “Do we know each other?”
Something happened to the android at that point. If he’d been flesh and blood, Sarjenka might have thought him conflicted about her presence. His chin lifted slightly, almost as though he wanted to say something, but thought better of it.
That was all it took for her to realize that the answer to her question was “yes.” She began foraging through her memories, trying to come up with a moment in the last eight years that they’d met. The attempt yielded no results.
Must have been the chapters on him in artificial neural anatomy class.
Sarjenka shoved the rest of the questions into the back of her brain. One, however, refused to be ignored.
Sarj, there are eight hundred ways you could know who he is, but how would he know your name?
Sarjenka closed her eyes, willing herself to concentrate on the task at hand. There would be a time for answers later. Patients first, always. Pulling her own scanner out of the medkit, she opened her eyes—trying to ignore the prickling feeling over every square centimeter of her skin at the android’s presence—and ran the device over Picard’s body, concentrating on his head. Much to her own admiration, Dantas managed to quietly set up the mini-laboratory in an empty part of the tent’s curvature. “How is Captain Picard doing?” Sarjenka asked, holding the scanner out beside Data’s to compare the information. Even after a few months around the engineers, she knew better than to try to import the information from his tricorder. Traiaka only knew what it would bring with it to damage her own unit.
“His situation is deteriorating,” Data replied, sotto voce. “The headaches are increasing in intensity.”
“And the only thing he’s been given for the headaches is the tea?”
“Yes.”
Sarjenka checked over everything she could think of. Picard’s serotonin and niacin levels were both within a normal range, no sign of vasoconstriction or a problem in the trigeminal nerve axons. His pupils were only slightly dilated, suggesting that even the atropine levels were hovering near normal. Well, it doesn’t totally eliminate my theory about the resemblance to belladonna. It doesn’t give me more to go on, though.
Still, she reached into her medkit for some rizatriptan and gave him a quick injection. It was an older treatment, but one of the few in her arsenal that she knew shouldn’t interact with the chemicals in the yenara-root. “That should at least dull the headache in a few minutes. Commander,” she said, gesturing to Dantas to join them, “may we step outside, please? I need to ask a few questio
ns, and I don’t wish to disturb the captain any more than we already have.”
“Of course.”
Granted, Picard hadn’t moved since she’d walked into the tent, not even when she’d opened his eyes to check the pupils, but it was still a good medical precaution. Rest for the patient is never a bad idea.
When Sarjenka, Dantas, and Data were far enough away from Picard’s tent that she felt comfortable with them speaking in their normal voices, Sarjenka removed her mask and said, “Commander, I need you to be absolutely certain whether Captain Picard has been given any medications for these headaches beyond the yenara-root tea and what I just gave him.”
There was a familiar sincerity in both his voice and golden eyes as he said, “I am certain.” She wasn’t sure quite why, but she believed him.
In the corner of her eye, Sarjenka saw Makk and Commander Gomez finish linking a pattern enhancer to one of the phase discriminators, switching on the field.
Data showed no reaction.
She checked her tricorder against herself, and—save for the readings that differed due to her species—the rest were identical to Picard’s. Taking a deep breath first, she said, “All right. What I gave him should be sufficient to get him up and around from the migraine in about an hour, unless we have interaction issues. Although, from what I’ve been able to determine, those two medications should play well together. Has he ever had a problem in lower-gravity situations that you’re aware of?”
“Captain Picard has never had an adverse reaction to low- or zero-gravity situations.”
That backed up some of the things she’d read in Picard’s official medical file, so at least she knew Data was going to be reliable on that front. Have to remember to let Commander Gomez know that. Not now. Can’t let Data know we were questioning his own ability to function. “Okay, so it’s not the gravity difference.”
Data gave Sarjenka a slightly off look. She couldn’t quite figure out what it was, but after he mysteriously knew her name, she knew there was something strange going on. Filing it away in the “deal with this later” portion of her brain, she tried to ignore the varying expressions that crossed the android’s golden features.
“The natives offered us the tea to treat the headaches,” Data said. “I scanned the tea, as well as the yenara root itself before allowing anyone to consume it. There are no substances that would be harmful to humans. It has proven to be quite an effective treatment.”
“Yes,” Sarjenka said, “that was in your report to Starfleet Command, and thank you for that. It may not appear to be harmful to humans, but there are enough similarities to an old human folk remedy that it does concern me. There’s a chemical in the yenara root that only comes out when it’s made into the tea, but it may act like atropine in the body. Has he mentioned any difficulty swallowing, stopped perspiring, or exhibited any unusual anxiety levels?”
Data shook his head. “None that I am aware of.”
“I’ll track down some of that root,” Dantas said, finally lifting her own mask. Shrugging, she added, “Maybe there’s a compound that he’s allergic to in it.”
“Captain Picard has no known allergies,” Data replied.
“That’s what his medical file said as well. However, with all due respect, Commander,” Sarjenka said, “the critical word there is ‘known.’ The human body chemistry changes periodically. He might not have been allergic to this years ago, and suddenly now he is. Although what he’s presenting are not the typical signs of an allergic reaction.”
“I’ve seen stranger,” Dantas said. “Friend of mine in the Academy? Anytime she drank real red wine and not the synthetic stuff, she woke up the next morning with a puffy rash over half her face.”
“Rashes are typical allergic reactions,” Sarjenka said, more to Data than Dantas, and more apologetic for her assistant’s ability to distract from their purpose than correcting of the woman. “Your security chief said that the captain had also been wounded by projectile weapons fire?”
“I have treated Captain Picard’s wound,” Data replied, “but the others would not allow me to attend to them.”
Sarjenka and Dantas exchanged a puzzled look. “Why not?”
“They were adamant about being treated by an android. They refused.”
Dantas hefted her pack onto her right shoulder and gave them a beleaguered sigh. “Archaeologists. You can take them through history, but just getting through one day of their lives in this day and age? Scares the hell out some of them sometimes. You take care of the captain, boss. Leave the technophobes to me.”
Replacing her mask, Sarjenka followed Commander Data back into the tent and straight over to Captain Picard’s cot, smiling at Dantas’s calling her “boss.” Get used to it, Sarj. You’re CMO now. That didn’t change the fact that it was still strange to hear it.
Pulling her medical tricorder out, she took more readings. Holding it beside Data’s once again, she realized the readings were identical to the ones she’d taken before, as well as every other reading Data had taken. She tried not to curse, but it slipped out anyway. Walking back outside, she threw her mask against the nearest tree, tapped her combadge and said, “Sarjenka to Falcão. We’re going the old-fashioned route. Looks like the equipment is already affected. The phase discriminators aren’t working. Don’t trust your tricorders.”
“Good thing we brought the really scary needles then,” Falcão replied. Sarjenka could almost hear the smile on the medtech’s face. One day, she’d understand Dantas’s dark sense of humor, but she doubted it would be anytime soon. “Between all of the catalysts and reactants you packed, we should have enough to hand-test everyone’s brain and bodily functions without the tricorders. Provided you remember that class at the Academy.”
“I think I remember how to take spinal fluid samples, Dantas,” Sarjenka responded. “That’s the really long needle in the eyeball, right?”
The laughter on the other end of the combadge suggested that her attempt at sarcasm had been successful.
“Get back to work. Sarjenka out.”
“I am sorry,” Data began, “but I fail to see the purpose in placing a needle in your patient’s eye to test spinal fluid.”
Sarjenka’s cheeks turned a darker red. “It’s a joke, Commander. I’m sorry. The crew of the da Vinci, they tend to use sarcasm to help them cope when they’re stuck in situations that may not be optimal. I don’t understand the psychology of it yet, but I’m attempting to fit in, that’s all.”
Data’s expression turned from one of concern to one of almost paternal pride. “Ah, excellent work.”
Sarjenka tapped her combadge again, not wanting to admit how much Data was beginning to give her a case of the creeps. “Sarjenka to da Vinci.”
There was static in the connection this time, but she heard Captain Gold’s voice over it. “Gold here. What’s going on down there, Sarj?”
“Captain, we may have a medical outbreak down here. I’d like to have a quarantine put on the planet until we can figure out what’s causing this and find a way to stop it. I can’t guarantee we’re not dealing with an airborne pathogen here. If Starfleet could spare a transport vessel for people once we’ve cleared them for departure, it would be good.”
More static, then, “Understood. I’ll…cont—…Starfleet Command… da Vinci out.”
Sarjenka hoped that meant the captain would take care of things, help keep this situation from getting to the pandemic that a part of her expected. Oh, admit it, Sarj. You just want to have your first stint as CMO make Federation history for reasons other than your species.
That was when a retching noise sounded from the tent behind them. Sarjenka ran back and pulled the flap aside to see Picard trying to sit, but leaning more over the edge of the bed, vomiting. When he finally stopped, he seemed to realize there was light coming into the tent, and turned his gaze toward where Data and Sarjenka stood.
Data immediately moved to clean up the mess, while Sarjenka yanked the tent flap sh
ut to eliminate the extra light, pulled out her scanner, and tried once more to get readings. Not even his blood pressure had changed.
The tricorders really have dummied up. You’re stuck…oh, how did Ekaran put it? Oh, yeah, healing without a net. Think, Sarj, think. Nausea and vomiting usually go hand-in-hand with a severe migraine. It’s not that unusual. Best get all of the information you can while he’s conscious.
“Captain Picard,” she said, “My name is—”
“—Sarjenka?” he finished, his surprise coming in a raspy voice thanks to the abuse his throat had taken. “I’m so sorry.”
And with that, he fell back against the bed, losing the battle with unconsciousness once more.
Corsi, with Vinx and Konya in tow, walked toward Christine Vale’s tent with a mixture of trepidation and—she’d never admit it, not even under duress—hope. It had been too long since she’d seen Vale. Too much had happened, and she was actually surprised to realize that she was looking forward to catching up.
“So, boss,” Vinx said from somewhere behind her. “Ya think some gang of grave robbers got in here and stole some of their loot?”
Corsi wanted to reply, but Konya beat her to it with an exasperated, “Thank you, Captain Obvious. I’m sure the boss has several working theories.”
Actually, she didn’t, but the Betazoid’s confidence in her was nice to hear. She also had to admit that for Vinx, “Captain Obvious” wasn’t a bad nickname. His ability to state the obvious was almost Vulcan at times. “That’s what we need to speak with Lieutenant Vale about, gentlemen,” she said. “We need to see what information she’s managed to get so far.”
Star Trek™ Corps of Engineers: Remembrance of Things Past Book One Page 4