A moment later, Picard knew that at least one torpedo had reached the enemy’s warp core—because the Nuyyad ship tore itself apart in a ragged spasm of bright yellow fire.
The second officer watched the fragments of the shattered craft pinwheel end over end through space, expanding outward from the point of the explosion. There was a macabre grace to the scene, a feeling of something strangely akin to serenity.
He looked back over his shoulder. Ruhalter’s corpse was gone, having been spirited away while Picard was busy with the Nuyyad.
But his work wasn’t done yet. They were still in unfamiliar territory, with wounds to lick and the ever-present threat of another attack—not to mention some serious questions to answer.
And his bridge was on fire.
As Werber, Paxton, and Idun Asmund watched him, Picard moved to the rear of the bridge and found the fire extinguisher he had used before. Then he began spraying down the ruined remnants of the nearest console.
Carter Greyhorse ran his sleek, palm-sized regeneration unit over the flesh of Lieutenant Cariello’s bare shoulder, creating a few more healthy, new cells to replace the ones she had lost to a white-hot spurt of plasma.
The doctor took a moment to examine his work. Satisfied with it, he checked Cariello’s vital signs on her biobed’s overhead readouts. The lieutenant’s systems were all stable, he observed. In a day or so, after she had gotten some rest, there would be no indication that she had been within minutes of losing her life.
Activating an electromagnetic barrier around Cariello to guard against infection, Greyhorse moved to the next bed in line. Lieutenant Kochman was lying there in a stasis field, outwardly unharmed but inwardly suffering from broken ribs, raptured organs, and considerable hemorrhaging.
He would require a good deal more work than Cariello, the doctor reflected. But at least the man was alive.
Greyhorse glanced at the corpses laid out under metallic blankets in the corner of his sickbay. There were four of them in all. Barr, Janes, Harras . . . and, of course, Captain Ruhalter.
If the chief medical officer had had more than twelve biobeds at his disposal, he wouldn’t have subjected the deceased to the indignity of lying on the floor. But to his chagrin, he didn’t have more than twelve beds—and his priority had to be the living.
Greyhorse was on the verge of deactivating Kochman’s stasis field when he heard the sickbay doors hiss open. Glancing in that direction, he fully expected to see someone bringing in another casualty.
But this time, it was different. It wasn’t just anyone being brought in. It was her.
At least, that was the way it looked to the doctor for a split second. Then he realized he was mistaken, and a wave of relief washed over him. It wasn’t Gerda Asmund who was being carried into sickbay. It was Gerda who was doing the carrying.
And it was Commander Leach wrapped up in the woman’s arms, Greyhorse realized—Commander Leach who was lying as limp and pale as death. Clearly, the first officer’s condition would have to take precedence over anyone else’s for the time being.
Leaving Kochman’s side, the doctor crossed the room to the bed containing Ensign Kotsakos, whose injuries weren’t nearly as severe. Deactivating the protective field around the ensign, Greyhorse picked the woman up as gently as he could and deposited her on the floor beside the bed.
He would have preferred to give her the benefit of the field for the next several hours. That would have been the ideal approach. However, Kotsakos would survive without the field. He couldn’t say the same for Leach.
“Put him down here,” Greyhorse told Gerda.
She did as he said, easing the first officer onto the biobed.
The doctor looked up to study the bed’s readouts. Clearly, Leach was in bad shape—even worse than the ragged gash in his temple suggested. His vital signs were badly depressed.
“What can I do?” asked Gerda.
Greyhorse looked at her with the same longing and admiration he had felt the other day, when he had checked her ESPer capacity. But this time, he wasn’t tongue-tied in the least.
“Check the other beds, one at a time, and call out their readings to me.” He pointed to Kochman. “Starting with that one.”
“And Leach?” the navigator asked.
“I’ll take care of him,” the doctor assured her.
She hesitated for just a moment, as if there was something else she wanted to say to him. Then she left the first officer in his capable hands and went to see how Kochman was doing.
Greyhorse drew a deep breath and wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. In that moment when he thought Gerda was injured, he had gone through an eternity of hell in a single second.
He didn’t like the idea of people getting hurt. He was a physician, after all. But if it came down to the navigator or someone else . . . he was glad it hadn’t been Gerda.
As the turbolift doors opened, Ben Zoma emerged from the compartment and made his way down the corridor—phaser in hand.
He had good reason for concern. The moment the battle with the Nuyyad had ended, he had tried to contact the officer on duty in the brig. But there hadn’t been any response—not a promising sign by anyone’s reckoning.
And with the battering the Stargazer had taken, power con duits had been compromised on every deck. There was no guarantee that the brig’s electromagnetic force field was still in place.
Which meant Serenity Santana might be free to go wherever she wanted. Do whatever she wanted.
That made Ben Zoma nervous, given the fact that the woman’s motivations were still in question—maybe more so now than ever, considering they had followed her directions straight into the sights of an enemy battleship.
He hadn’t been particularly suspicious of Santana when Captain Ruhalter brought her aboard. He had believed they were doing the right thing by checking out her warning. And even now, he wasn’t convinced that she was in on the Nuyyad attack.
But he was the ship’s security chief. With hundreds of lives at stake, he had to believe the worst of everyone.
Striding purposefully, Ben Zoma negotiated a bend in the corridor and came in sight of the brig. The first thing he saw was a body laid out on the deck. He recognized it as Pug Joseph, Santana’s guard.
Instantly, the security chief broke into a run. When he reached Joseph, he dropped at the man’s side and saw the blood running from Joseph’s nose and mouth. He also saw the burgeoning bruise over Joseph’s right eye.
He felt for a pulse—and found one. Tapping his combadge, he said, “Security, this is Ben Zoma.”
“Pfeffer here, sir.”
“I’m at the brig,” the chief told Pfeffer. “Joseph is down. I’ll need help getting him to sickbay.”
“Acknowledged,” said the security officer. “What about Santana, sir? Is the field still in place?”
Ben Zoma cursed under his breath and glanced in the direction of Santana’s enclosure. “Stand by.”
He had been so concerned about Joseph, he hadn’t taken the time to check on their guest yet. Getting to his feet, he approached the entrance to the brig cautiously, phaser at the ready. Stopping at the doorway, he craned his neck to get a look inside at Santana’s cell.
The force field was still in place, all right. But Santana was crumpled in the corner.
“Ms. Santana?” he called out, his voice echoing.
The woman didn’t answer. She just lay there.
The security chief sighed. “Santana looks like she’s in a bad way,” he told Pfeffer. “I’ll need help with her as well.”
“On its way, sir,” the officer assured him.
Chapter 8
Captain’s log, supplemental, second Officer Jean-Luc Picard reporting. Now that I have had a few hours to assess our situation, I find that it is even more troubling than I anticipated. Six brave members of our crew perished in the course of the battle with the Nuyyad. One of them was Captain Ruhalter, for whom I had a great deal of personal respect
and affection. Fourteen others are recuperating from serious injuries—among them Commander Leach, who has lapsed into a deep coma. The Stargazer did not fare much better. Her ability to travel at faster-than-light velocities has been significantly curtailed, her starboard phaser batteries are nearly useless and her supply of photon torpedoes has been all but depleted. However, it’s the ship’s deflector grid that sustained the greatest damage. At this point, it can barely protect us from spaceborne particles. Perhaps needless to say, the vidrion-generating enhance ments endorsed by Jomar were completely and utterly destroyed in the clash with the Nuyyad. Unless and until we can secure replacement parts for our shield generators, we will remain vulnerable in the extreme. As for Serenity Santana, our mysterious advisor . . . like Commander Leach, she was rendered comatose in the melee. We are thus deprived of an opportunity to determine her role in what appears to have been a carefully calculated trap—if she indeed had any role in it at all.
Picard gazed at Serenity Santana. She lay still and pale on the flat surface of the biobed, her raven hair spread around her head, her chest rising and falling mechanically.
The second officer wished the woman were awake—and not just because he hated to see her lying there like that, limp and helpless, when she had once been so charming and vibrant. Not just because she was, quite possibly, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
As Picard had indicated in the log he had filed only a few minutes earlier, there were questions he wished to ask Santana. Mainly, he wanted to know how the Nuyyad had discovered the Stargazer—because he didn’t believe for a second that the enemy had just stumbled onto them.
Space was a vast place, on this side of the galactic barrier as much as on the other one. The odds of two ships sensing each other even with long-range instruments were so slim as to almost be absurd.
And yet, they had barely penetrated the galactic barrier when the Nuyyad descended on them. If Santana had something to do with that, if she had betrayed them as Leach feared she would—
“You see, Commander?” called a deep voice.
Picard turned and saw Greyhorse coming toward him, his huge frame looking out of place in his lab coat. The doctor had been attending to an injured crewman on the other side of sickbay.
“As I indicated,” Greyhorse went on, “Ms. Santana has retreated into a deep coma. But at least she’s stable.”
The second officer gazed at the colonist again. Even in her debilitated state, she was a compelling sight.
“Will she come out of it?” he asked.
“That’s difficult to say,” Greyhorse told him.
“Because her brain is different from ours?”
“Among other reasons, yes.” The doctor pointed to the bed’s readouts. “I want to show you something. Do you see those lines, Commander? The two near the top?”
Picard nodded. “What about them?”
“Those are the patient’s brain waves,” Greyhorse explained. He pressed a keypad next to the readout and it changed instantly—the top two lines in particular. “And these were her brain waves when she first came aboard. Do you see the difference?”
He did—but he didn’t know what conclusion he was supposed to draw from the observation. “I’m sorry. I don’t see what—”
The medical officer held up a large, powerful-looking hand. “I didn’t expect you to draw any real conclusions. Let me walk you through it.”
Picard thought that would be a good idea.
“A woman in Ms. Santana’s condition should exhibit precious little brain activity. For example, she should have a very quiet cerebral cortex. However,” said Greyhorse, pointing to the topmost line on the readout, “we see that her cerebral cortex is anything but quiet. In fact, it’s busier now than when she was awake. The same goes for portions of her cerebellum.”
Picard mulled over the information. “So . . . you’re saying some parts of her brain are actually busier in her comatose condition than they were when she was conscious?”
“Exactly,” the doctor confirmed.
“And what do you make of that?”
The doctor shrugged his massive shoulders. “Again, difficult to say. The patient’s brain may have gone into some kind of healing mode. Or . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Or?” Picard nudged.
“If her brain works like those of other telepaths, the patient may have purposely emphasized certain functions at the expense of others—which would suggest the possibility that this is not a naturally occurring coma, but one she induced on her own.”
On her own? Picard thought. He looked at Greyhorse. “I don’t understand. Why would she do such a thing?”
The other man returned his glance. “You are in a better position to know that than I am, Commander.”
Picard turned to Santana again, as if he hoped to find the answer written on her lips. Was it possible that she had shut herself down purposely, in order to avoid answering difficult questions?
Somehow, the second officer didn’t think so. Or was it just that he didn’t want to think so?
“Thank you,” he told Greyhorse. “You’ve given me much to think about. If there’s any change in her condition, even a small one—”
“I’ll be sure to let you know,” the doctor assured him.
Picard nodded. Then, with a last glance at Santana, he left sickbay and returned to the bridge.
Pug Joseph touched the itchy spot just above his right cheekbone and recalled Doctor Greyhorse’s orders not to scratch it.
In a day or so, his regenerated flesh would complete the healing process. Then no one would ever know he had hit his head against a bulkhead hard enough to knock himself out.
Fortunately, the security officer thought, he had suffered nothing more serious than a concussion. Otherwise, he would still be in sickbay along with Kochman and the other worst cases.
And they were the lucky ones, he reminded himself. The captain and some of the others hadn’t made it at all.
Removing his food from the replicator enclosure, Joseph placed it on his tray. First his meat, then his rice, then his vegetables, and finally his juice. Then he moved across the crowded mess hall in the direction of one of its few empty tables.
His crewmates, who were all working triple shifts on one repair crew or another, had gathered in clusters all around the room. They were obviously seeking comfort in numbers—taking the opportunity to vent their sorrows and air their concerns, of which they had many.
The Stargazer had been hobbled pretty badly in the battle with the Nuyyad. With key systems on the blink, people were worried about what they would do if another vessel showed up.
Joseph had thought about that possibility too, of course—and he probably felt the need to talk about it as much as anyone. But there were certain things he wanted very much not to talk about just then, so he had decided he would keep to himself.
Arriving at his solitary destination, he put his tray down and deposited himself in a chair. Then he pushed himself into his table and began to eat, mindful of the fact that he had to get back to work soon.
He was halfway finished when some of his crewmates walked in and took a table next to his. He recognized them as Lieutenant Werber, Chief Engineer Simenon, and a couple of the men who worked for him.
They didn’t acknowledge Joseph’s presence. In fact, they didn’t acknowledge anyone. They were too engrossed in their conversation.
Joseph didn’t want to eavesdrop. He was the kind of person who respected the rights of others, the right of privacy in particular. However, Werber and his companions were speaking so loudly, it would have been difficult not to hear them.
“—upstart is taking the captain’s place,” said Simenon. His expression was a distinctly sour one.
“And he was the one who convinced Ruhalter to trust Santana,” Werber pointed out.
“How do you know?” asked the chief engineer.
“Leach told me,” said the weapons officer.
Simenon s
hook his scaly head in disbelief. “The way that woman twisted Picard around her finger . . . it was disgraceful. And now we’re all going to pay the price for it.”
“You think she led us into a trap?” asked one of the other engineers, a man named Pernell.
Werber chuckled bitterly. “Is there any doubt of it?”
Pug Joseph swallowed and pushed his tray away. Suddenly, he didn’t feel like eating anymore.
It seemed to him that Werber was right. Santana had led the Stargazer into a trap. In fact, she must have begun plotting it long before she set foot on the ship.
But it wasn’t just Commander Picard whom she had hoodwinked. She had pulled the wool over Joseph’s eyes as well. If he had been his usual alert self, he might have figured the woman out in time and warned Captain Ruhalter not to trust her.
But he had allowed Santana to charm him, to draw him in. He had let his guard down. And as a result, they had lost their captain and their first officer, and come within inches of losing their ship.
Joseph promised himself that as long as he lived, he would never let someone like Santana fool him again.
Idun Asmund made a small course adjustment to avoid some space debris and watched the stars slide to starboard on the viewscreen.
Commander Picard, who was standing behind her, nodded approvingly. The hollows under his eyes gave him the look of a man sacrificing sleep and other creature comforts for the sake of doing what needed to be done.
But then, he was laboring under a great burden. He had already scoured the ship for survivors, gotten repairs underway on key systems, and moved the ship away from the coordinates of their battle in case other enemy vessels were on their way.
Truly, Picard was a warrior.
However, he seemed unequal to his task in one respect and one respect only—though he moved around the bridge like a caged targ, he refused to settle into the center seat.
Of course, the captain had perished less than fourteen hours ago. Quite likely, Picard still thought of the seat as Ruhalter’s and avoided it out of respect.
THE VALIANT Page 13