It was difficult to say exactly why Kirk was so different. It could simply be that Gees was an older man, but there was more to it. The captain felt he couldn’t ask his men to place themselves in danger unless he did the same himself. Sometimes, Giotto thought there must be some underlying issue, but he had to admit that Kirk’s style got results. The captain always got the job done.
Giotto regularly walked the path of danger; it was difficult to complain about getting shot at when you put on the red shirt. It went with the territory.
TWO
Stardate 4757.4 (0924 hours)
In sickbay, well over a dozen people had come in for various injuries from the repeated jostling the Enterprise had taken. Chapel had called in Nurse Thomas, along with med techs Brent and Abrams. Additional help was required while the other duty nurse, Zainab Odhiambo, worked on burns. McCoy’s patient was an engineer who’d suffered multiple fractures of his arm when he’d unexpectedly been knocked off a catwalk. Simple enough to treat with a bone knitter, but time-consuming.
McCoy had been worried that the aftereffects of the distortion would continue, but it seemed as though they’d gotten the ship under control, letting the doctor work without interruption.
He was about halfway through the bone repair when Brent and Abrams came up to him, startling him. He was about to grumble at them, but their somber expressions stopped him. Something bad must’ve happened. McCoy switched off the regenerator. “What is it?”
“Coma,” replied Abrams, his trademark scowl deeper than normal. Brent nodded wanly. They worked together frequently, but McCoy had always thought them an odd pairing. Clifford Brent was a skinny, black-haired man who more often than not looked worried, whereas Robert Abrams was a stouter man, with thin, brown hair, whose face seemed molded by perpetual displeasure. Whether Brent was worried because Abrams was unhappy, or Abrams was unhappy because Brent was worried, McCoy had never been able to discover.
“How… never mind. Nurse!” McCoy shouted across the room. Both Chapel and Odhiambo turned toward him, looking expectant. “Zainab, please finish up here.” He turned to the injured engineer, who looked understandably dejected. “You’ll be in good hands.”
That done, he joined Brent and Abrams at the end of the ward, where a tall, thin man in a gold command uniform lay on a biobed. The face looked familiar—McCoy had passed the man in the corridors…. Bouchard. Wasn’t he from Neu-Stuttgart?
A glance at the life-sign monitor above the bed told McCoy all he needed to know: each indicator was depressingly low. The periodic bleeps that indicated respiratory and cardiovascular function were too widely spaced. “What happened to him?”
“We don’t know, to be honest,” Abrams said. “Apparently he just fell over.”
McCoy glared at him, but it was Brent who explained. “We really don’t know, Doctor. He works in phaser control, and his fellow officers brought him in just now. They said he collapsed in the middle of the room.”
“When we hit the distortion?” It wouldn’t exactly be difficult to do that, as McCoy well knew.
“Seems likely,” said Brent.
His colleague shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. They acted surprised; it couldn’t have been that.”
From the corner of his eye, McCoy spotted someone in blue approaching him—Chapel. McCoy was glad to have Christine and her insights at his side. He touched a control on the side of the monitor to skip to more specific readouts of the man’s brain. “Well, he’s definitely in a coma. Readings don’t point to any physical trauma.” He switched back to the summary display, about to give an order for a more detailed analysis when he noticed something wrong. “Neuron activity is dropping. He’s dying.” But not if he could do something about it. “I need a hypo of dalaphaline and a neural stimulator.”
The med techs ran off without more questions, and he inspected the monitor again. Without knowing what was actually wrong, he couldn’t bring the man out of the coma. All he could do was slow down Bouchard’s decline. If he was lucky.
What he needed right now was information—as much as he could get. He asked Chapel for the man’s medical records.
“Olivier Bouchard,” she said, reading off a data slate, “assigned to phaser control since transferring here. He’s been in sickbay twice before. Routine physicals. Nothing out of the ordinary. He’s never even been in a landing party. No previous brain injuries.”
A low grunt escaped McCoy. “I’m not surprised. It would’ve been too easy.”
The monitor bleeped loudly. Bouchard’s levels were now dangerously low. McCoy turned to demand where the devil Brent and Abrams had gotten to, and found that Brent was already hurrying over, hypospray in hand. “Dalaphaline,” he said, delivering it to McCoy.
In one swift motion, McCoy set it for five cc’s and injected it into Bouchard’s jugular. The drug would boost his nervous system and help his brain keep going. He looked up at the monitor, though he knew the change wouldn’t happen instantly. The readings stopped plummeting only for a few seconds before resuming their decline.
Chapel came up to him then, holding a whole tray of devices suited for brain analysis and repair that she’d taken over from Abrams. “Thank you,” McCoy said, grabbing the neural stimulator. Lifting Bouchard’s head gently with one hand, he slid the arc-like device underneath and positioned it around the man’s parietal bone. After a few seconds, it squealed to indicate a connection with the brain’s regulatory centers, and small lights on it began to flicker accordingly. The doctor pressed a button that would start the preprogrammed stimulus sequence.
Impatient, he counted to ten. Now this should have an immediate effect. McCoy glanced up at the monitor.
Nothing.
“If there’s no physical cause,” he said, increasingly worried, “then what’s slowing his brain down?”
“Infection?” suggested Brent. “Virus?”
“Can’t be,” McCoy said, “he hasn’t been off the ship. The only recent possibility of infection is C-15’s anatid flu, but biofilters would stop that from getting aboard.”
“Blood analysis?” Chapel asked, grabbing an empty hypospray.
McCoy nodded. “Worth a try—but we need to treat him immediately. This man is dying.” Desperate to try anything, he adjusted his hypospray. “Ten cc’s should do the trick.”
Still no reaction. He didn’t understand—what could be causing this? By all appearances, there was nothing wrong with the man.
You have no idea what to do, do you?
McCoy shook off the thought. The problem was that the dalaphaline took too long to work through the bloodstream. If injected into the brain—
It was insane. It was dangerous. He could remember reading journal articles about how terrible an idea it was.
But all he needed to do was give Bouchard a little nudge. He set the hyprospray for just two cc’s and reached out to place it against the man’s skull, where the frontal and parietal bones met.
This time, Chapel grabbed his hand. “Doctor, what are you doing? You can’t increase the dosage again,” she whispered sharply. “You’ll kill him!”
“He’ll die otherwise.” McCoy gestured up at the readouts with his free hand. They were as low as they could be without Bouchard being dead. “I’ve never seen this outside of one of Spock’s healing trances.”
Chapel didn’t let go. “He’s not Spock. No human being can take that much neural stimulation.”
“I do this, or he dies,” McCoy said, hoping to drive home their lack of options. With a short but vigorous shake, he freed his hand. Before Chapel could react, he had jabbed the hypospray through the tangle of Bouchard’s thick hair and into his skull.
The monitor began bleeping alarmingly. A few of the level indicators shot straight up. Over the course of his career, McCoy had probably done crazier things, but nothing with so uncertain an outcome.
“His brain’s going into overdrive.” Reproach coated Christine’s words.
And just like that
, the bleeping stopped. The levels slid back down to where they were before—but no lower. They weren’t decreasing.
He’d done it! McCoy allowed himself a small smile. “Well, look at that. Perfectly fine.”
Chapel’s look was more than enough to indicate how she felt.
“Well, not fine,” McCoy admitted. “But stable. That’ll give us time to figure this thing out.”
Chapel locked eyes with him. “Yes, Doctor.”
For a young ensign fresh out of the Academy, a posting on a Constitution-class ship operating on the edge of explored space was a plum assignment. It still amazed Chekov that he’d been picked for the Enterprise, a ship with a name that went back centuries.
As a new officer, he’d worked in multiple departments to familiarize himself with all areas of the ship’s operation, intending to develop a specialization later. So far, he’d alternated primarily between the sciences and operations. Today, he was not only serving as the senior science officer of the Columbus, but also security backup.
As soon as the call from Captain Kirk had come in, Chekov had began running toward the part of the complex Yüksel had set off for, phaser in one hand, tricorder in the other. Chyort poberi! How could he have done something so stupid? He couldn’t get a fix on Yüksel’s communicator, nor did his tricorder detect any human life signs. There was a small amount of interference, but he didn’t think it was blocking all scans. There was nothing here to find.
He found himself becoming tangled up in vines, barely able to move. Captain Kirk’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Mister Chekov!” He couldn’t see the captain, but he sounded close.
“Over here, Captain!” he called back.
There was some rustling off to Chekov’s side, and moments later, Commander Giotto emerged from a bush, Captain Kirk and Ensign Seven Deers right behind him. Giotto immediately began surveying the area, while Kirk walked over to Chekov.
“Ensign,” he said, looking stern, “report.”
“Yüksel was looking at this part of the complex, while I was inspecting the launch pad.”
“Have you detected anything unusual?” asked the captain.
“No, sir,” said Chekov.
“You split up?” asked Giotto.
“Yes, sir,” said Chekov.
“Ensign, what did we say when we landed?”
“I know, sir. I am sorry, sir.”
“You might be sorry, but he’s—” Giotto cut himself off when the captain shot him a look.
“Right now,” said Kirk, “we need to focus on finding Yüksel. It sounded like he said ‘beneath the surface,’ so check for ways underground. Tricorders out, phasers on stun. Commander, you’re with me. Chekov, you and Seven Deers stick together.”
Chekov nodded. “You can count on me, sir. We’ll find him.”
“I hope so, Ensign,” said Giotto.
Did he have to rub it in? Chekov elected to ignore Giotto and took a look at his tricorder screen instead. “There are two areas of dense plant life ahead, sir. I believe that he would have gone to one or the other if he was—”
“Good thinking, Mister Chekov,” said the captain. “Giotto and I will take the far one. You and Seven Deers wait for Tra and Rawlins, then take the other.”
After about an hour, most of the casualties had been discharged, though McCoy had retained a couple to monitor their injuries. He’d ordered Odhiambo, Brent, and Abrams to get something to eat—Chapel too, but she said she wasn’t hungry. He didn’t believe her, but he had enough to worry about.
In his office, McCoy sat down with the readouts of Ensign Bouchard’s brain scans. It was a damned puzzle: no trace of a current infection, nor any other plausible cause, and yet the man was dying. What could be wrong? Since Chapel was so intent on helping, he had her check with phaser control to find out exactly what had happened.
He skimmed through a few dozen pages of data before a whiff of a very subtle perfume reached his nose. Chapel had returned and was standing in his office doorway. “Go ahead and sit down, Nurse.” She deserved some time off her feet; she looked at least as tired as he felt—and of course her shift had started quite a while ago. “What did you find out?”
“According to three witnesses, he fell over after the distortion. Everything was steady and clear. Bouchard was crossing the room when he suddenly collapsed.”
McCoy nodded. “That fits with his injuries. Some bruising on the shoulder from where he hit the floor—but nothing else.”
“Nothing in the cranial region at all?”
McCoy spun his monitor around to show Chapel Bouchard’s readouts. With M’Benga off on Mu Arigulon, McCoy didn’t have another physician to discuss medical conundrums with, but Chapel had been a promising bio-researcher before enlisting. He would have consulted her even if M’Benga had been on board. “Symptoms, but no cause,” she said. McCoy refrained from saying anything, letting her work through the issues herself. “No hemorrhaging, no brain injuries. Blood sugar normal, carbon dioxide normal. And yet he’s down to level four on the Glasgow scale.”
McCoy just nodded. “I don’t mind a good mystery, but this one’s a bit too much for my taste. The only medical problems listed in his record are things that happened to the whole crew, like the spores on Omicron Ceti III.”
“How could he come down with something this serious that affects no one else on the entire ship?” asked Chapel.
Doesn’t affect them yet. McCoy brushed the thought aside—no sense worrying about something that hadn’t happened. “There’s only one thing that stands out about him, and only in the context of a brain injury.” He was about to flip through the pages of medical data when the intraship squealed. Annoyed at the interruption, he jabbed the button. “Sickbay here.”
“Doctor, this is the bridge,” the voice of Lieutenant Uhura replied. “Lieutenant Sulu is taking the ship back up to warp speed.”
McCoy asked, “Could there be another of those space sandbars out there?”
“We’re proceeding forward at warp one,” said Uhura. “It’ll take a while to clear the zone of spatial distortion, but we should get through smoothly enough to avoid any ill effects.”
McCoy could hear the slight uncertainty in her voice. “Or at least that’s the theory, right?”
“Sulu decided it was the safest option. There are distortions both ahead and behind now.”
“What does the captain think of this plan?”
“There’s a lot of subspace interference, and I haven’t been able to punch through yet. Expect warp speed in another thirty seconds.”
“Well, good luck to Mister Sulu, then,” McCoy said as he flipped off the comm. “And to all of us.”
“You’re worried,” said Chapel.
“I’m always worried when one of my patients is dying from something I don’t know how to treat. And this time it’s even worse because we keep getting tossed about like a toy in a hyperactive child’s hands. Forward into unimaginable danger, that’s the Starfleet way.”
And your way, too, to be fair, even if for different reasons.
As if to mock him, the deck plates vibrated slightly, indicating that the ship had begun the transition to warp speed. All too aware of how the last warp jump had gone—McCoy’s back still hurt from the fall on the bridge—he gripped his desk as the ship accelerated…
And nothing happened.
“Well, that went better than last time,” he said, letting go—but slowly. “Maybe Sulu does know what he’s doing after all.”
Chapel gave him a disapproving look. “Doctor—”
“Yes, Nurse?” He wondered if she’d actually say it. He’d welcome it, certainly. Sometimes he needed someone to tell him to stop grumbling and get to work, and Jim wasn’t here to do that.
“Nothing,” she said. “Let’s get back to Bouchard.”
“Right.” McCoy pulled back the monitor, retrieving the page he wanted. “Take a look at this.” He turned the screen around to show her.
“Aperce
ption quotient of twenty over a hundred and one, and a Duke-Heidelburg score of two hundred sixty? He’s an esper.”
“Right. Overall ESP rating of eighty-seven.”
“I don’t have much experience with human telepathy.”
McCoy turned the screen back around. “According to the report, he’s not powerful enough to be reading anyone’s mind on a conscious level, but he can pick up on things. This says it was first noticed because of his skill at board games in school. Always knew what his opponents were going to do, but never quite why.”
“Good attribute for a phaser officer.”
The typical human was no more telepathic than your average rock, but extrasensory perception had been scientifically documented in human beings in the early twenty-first century, and the number of recorded human espers had risen steadily ever since. Even so, they were still fairly rare.
“Could that be it?” asked Chapel. “Have we come into contact with any psychic phenomena?”
“Not that the science section has noticed,” said McCoy. “Just these spatial distortions.” The deck hadn’t moved at all this time, thankfully. It looked like the warp field was going to stay stable. “No energy fields, nothing. Our best hope is to keep him at his current level until we get to a starbase with better medical facilities.”
“I wish Mister Spock were here,” said Chapel, a little wistfully. “He could tell us if something was out there.”
McCoy snorted. “I doubt it. Vulcans are touch telepaths. He’d be just as oblivious as you and me.”
“He could do a mind-meld,” Chapel pointed out, almost stubbornly. “Go straight to the source.”
“And I bet he could also play us ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ on his damned Vulcan lute!” McCoy snapped. “We need to focus on what we can do, not what we wish we could do.”
“Right now, we can’t do anything!” Chapel forced the words out abruptly.
Star Trek®: A Choice of Catastrophes Page 4