THIRTEEN

Stardate 4758.2 (0540 hours)

The damnedest part of it all was that Scotty couldn’t do any of the work himself, stuck on his back. Mister Spock continued to dodge weapons fire from the Farrezzi fighters, while trying to protect the Columbus. Scotty was reduced to being a manual, cross-referencing scans of the recovered satellite and the working one while directing Cron Emalra’ehn and Jabilo M’Benga.

“Yellow wire to green wire,” he directed.

“Which yellow wire?” asked M’Benga. “There are three.”

Scotty looked again at the screen of his tricorder. “The medium-sized one.” M’Benga moved to connect the two wires, but Scotty caught him just in time. “Not that one—the medium one.”

“Damn,” M’Benga murmured, reaching into the guts of the machine. He grasped the correct wire easily; he might not have an engineer’s eye, but he had the sure hands of a surgeon.

“Easy, Doctor,” said Scott, turning his attention to Emalra’ehn. The security guard was using a hyperspanner to reactivate the defunct fusion microreactor. It needed an initial charge, and the preternaturally calm Deltan could hold his hands steady long enough to do it. “You’re almost there, lad.”

Emalra’ehn nodded. “This is trickier than that time on Argelius…”

“Concentrate,” interrupted Scotty wearily.

The Hofstadter rumbled as it took another hit. Spock had used some of the weather sats for cover, but the fighters had blasted straight through them. Two well-placed shots by Spock had hit the engine of one of the fighters. The effect was minimal—the shuttles were still being chased.

“Got it.” M’Benga looked relieved.

Scotty checked his tricorder. The particulate energy had increased a hundredfold. “Thank you, Doc.”

M’Benga nodded. “All things considered, I’d rather stick to medicine.”

“Are you ready, Mister Scott?” Spock called from the front of the shuttle. “Our time is limited.”

“Almost, Commander.” Scott checked the charge of the microreactor. “We’re good enough.”

The worst part of the plan was that there was no way to remotely control the satellite. Someone would have to go out there with it. Emalra’ehn had volunteered.

“Ready, lad?” asked Scotty.

M’Benga was helping Emalra’ehn check the seals on his EVA suit. “Ready,” said the young man.

Spock flipped on the comm. “Columbus, are you ready?”

“Aye, sir,” answered Kologwe.

“Accelerate to full impulse,” ordered Spock. “Linear course.”

Scotty felt the overtaxed engines of the Hofstadter surge.

Once Emalra’ehn was outside the shuttle, they needed to have him set up just right.

“Open hatch now,” commanded Spock. M’Benga tapped the hatch control, and it swung open.

Emalra’ehn climbed up onto the recovered sat, putting his feet on one of its projecting emitters. “Ready.”

“Maximum impulse,” reported Spock.

“Matching speed,” said Kologwe.

“Stand by,” said Spock.

Scotty caught the eye of Emalra’ehn, who gave him a thumbs-up.

“Go.”

All the Farrezzi had been awoken. They had been horrified, but once they saw the playback, they believed Kirk. None were trained in combat. Horr had suggested that the New Planets Cousins had deliberately gathered laborers, hoping to obtain passive slaves.

Kirk raised a hand to get the Farrezzi’s attention, but their reaction was difficult to gauge, since no heads turned. “Attention requirement!” he shouted. “If this ship goes to warp, it will be impossible to keep you from being sold. You know what the New Planets Cousins plan to do. We have to stop them.”

He walked over to the unconscious slaver and picked up its gun. Holding it up, he turned to the crowd. “Who knows how to use this? We need to arm ourselves.”

A dozen Farrezzi were each waving two limbs in the air and saying something. Kirk could only make out the closest one.

“Statement: I possession ability of weapon use. I hunter training completion.”

The others squeaked in affirmation. Maybe they’d be successful after all.

Cron Emalra’ehn gripped the satellite as tightly as he could while M’Benga and Rawlins picked it up from either side. Cron saw Rawlins wince as the weight pulled at his shoulder. The doctor counted off, and they shoved it—and him—out the hatch. The force field crackled around him.

The Farrezzi fighters were coming up fast. Behind the Hofstadter, the Columbus flew cover, interposing itself between Emalra’ehn and the approaching fighters.

He reached inside an open panel on the satellite, twisting a dial. His tricorder told him that the satellite was locking on to a target. Using his tricorder, Emalra’ehn could adjust the direction.

“You okay, lad?” Scotty asked.

“Calibrating sights.” Emalra’ehn was stunned by how calm he sounded. He hoped he had understood Scotty’s instructions.

“Ninety seconds,” reported Jaeger. Time was running out.

“Power looks good,” said Scotty.

Emalra’ehn’s visor lit up—the Columbus was taking fire.

“I’m lined up. Let’s do this.”

“Affirmative,” Spock said. The Hofstadter dipped down slightly, then disappeared as Spock threw its engines into reverse.

This was it—Petty Officer Cron Emalra’ehn alone in the cosmos, with two enemy fighters.

“Now.”

“Copy that,” said Kologwe.

Seven Deers took one of the back seats in the Columbus to monitor the shield systems. They were taking quite a pounding, but they were needed if this was to work. Glancing forward, she could just make out a purple-and-silver dot ahead—Emalra’ehn hanging onto a Farrezzi satellite.

The Columbus slipped to one side. A moment later, a beam stabbed out from the satellite, hitting the closest fighter.

“Hofstadter is also firing,” reported Tra from the navigator’s seat. It had come up from behind.

An alarm chimed on Tra’s controls. “Other fighter is firing!”

The Columbus lurched to one side, intercepting the Farrezzi fire before it could reach Emalra’ehn. The shuttle’s deck rumbled as it took the direct hit. Seven Deers shivered at the thought of what those things could do.

Seven Deers didn’t envy Emalra’ehn out there one bit.

McCoy called the rest of the medical staff in to compare notes. Now that he knew he wasn’t the only one hallucinating, he wanted to find out who else had been affected.

Initially reluctant to say anything, Cliff Brent admitted that he was hearing people, too: Ensign Laverne, who’d died while he was treating her wounds, and his aunt Marys, who’d always blamed him for anything that had gone wrong. Nurse Odhiambo’s only voice was her brother Vijay. Ensign Messier reported only a niggling doubt—nothing that she’d classify as a hallucination. However, Abrams and Thomas weren’t experiencing anything out of the ordinary. Only McCoy and Chapel were seeing people.

“We’ve all been idiots. I thought the stress was getting to me,” McCoy confessed.

The progression had been similar for everyone who was suffering from hallucinations. First a feeling of doubt, then a voice that became specific, and finally the images of people. McCoy had heard the voice the earliest, and he’d started seeing things first, too. Chapel hadn’t seen anything until a couple hours ago.

“This gives me four times the data,” McCoy said, “if not more.” He sent Chapel to ask Uhura and Padmanabhan if they had been seeing things. Meanwhile, McCoy took readings of Brent, Odhiambo, and Messier.

“What do you think is causing it?” Brent asked, concern etched into his face. “Is it the same as what’s affecting the coma patients?”

“I think it is,” said McCoy. “Four of us experience hallucinations at the exact same time five people drop unconscious? If these cases aren’t related, I’ll turn in my license.”

Chapel returned, reporting that Uhura and Padmanabhan had not been affected. Uhura had been concerned when Chapel explained what was going on, but Chapel had assured the lieutenant that everything was under control.

“It will be,” said McCoy. He asked the medical computer to check for correlations with the espers. McCoy studied the results with satisfaction. “Exactly what I suspected—there is a connection. Our brainwaves spike just after theirs do.” He pulled up the espers’ readings. “They’re deteriorating faster than before.”

“Are they influencing us?” asked Chapel. “Or are we looking at two effects with the same cause?”

“What are your esper ratings?”

“Zero-four-nine,” she said.

Brent thought for a moment. “Somewhere in the high thirties, I think.”

“Zero-three-four for me,” Odhiambo said.

McCoy’s was 046. “None of us have any real extrasensory abilities. But we’re the only ones affected…” The doctor let the sentence trail off.

“It has to be something specific to sickbay,” Chapel said, finishing the thought for him. “Abrams and Thomas have been working outside of sickbay for most of the day.”

McCoy said, “I think the espers are behind it. Are they trying to contact us?”

Chapel gave him a doubtful look. “Why this way? What kind of message are they trying to send by amplifying every little self-doubt?”

McCoy stared at the readings, but the longer he did that, the clearer it became that there was only one option. “I’ve been using neural suppressant,” he said slowly, “but that’s the wrong approach. What I need is a neural stimulant.”

“You can’t!” Chapel exclaimed.

“Oh yes, I can,” McCoy said. “You’re going to put me under, Christine. I want to talk to them.”

“Hold her steady, lad,” Scotty said. “More power to your target lock.”

“I’m trying, Commander!” Emalra’ehn’s voice was heated.

As Scotty watched on his tricorder, the energy beam hit the Farrezzi fighter. The Hofstadter drew closer from behind as the fighter’s engines failed.

“Sixty seconds.” Jaeger sounded nervous.

Finally, the fighter began to glow red as the energy proved too much for it.

“Cut your beam, Petty Officer,” Scotty ordered the Deltan.

“Yes, sir.”

Seconds later, the phaser beam from the Hofstadter lit the fighter up white-hot.

“Break off!” shouted Jaeger, but Spock was already doing it. As the Hofstadter veered, the fighter exploded, rocking the shuttle. Scotty felt the deck lurch beneath him.

“Fighter destroyed.” Spock checked his controls.

The last fighter was closing in on Emalra’ehn. “Fire, lad!” shouted Scott.

“Power’s too low! I have to wait for it to recharge.”

Damn. If only he was out there—he knew a few tricks, but they were too complicated to explain to Emalra’ehn. “Hang on, lad. We’re coming.”

Spock brought the Hofstadter’s phaser to bear on the last fighter, but it was getting perilously close to Emalra’ehn. Without weapons, there was nothing Columbus could do.

Suddenly, the other shuttle split off. “Maybe if we ram it—” began Kologwe.

Spock cut her off. “Unwise. Try to envelop the satellite in your shields.”

“Fire now, Cron,” said Scotty. The microreactor was up to twenty-five percent, enough for several seconds’ firing.

Emalra’ehn muttered something. Scotty couldn’t make it out. “Repeat that, Petty Officer.”

“What if I dumped all that energy out one of the projectors at once, instead of in a sustained beam?”

“It couldna take it,” said Scotty. “You’d blow up for sure.”

“I thought so.”

“Well, then fire!”

The Columbus was trying to match the sat’s speed, but its engines were near burnout. Emalra’ehn did nothing as the fighter gained ground.

“What are you—” Understanding dawned. “Oh no, laddie.”

Spock had figured it out, too. “Fire, Petty Officer. That is a direct order.”

“Ten seconds,” came Jaeger’s voice. The engines of both shuttles were on the verge of overloading.

“Sorry, Mister Spock. I’m—”

“Just do it, laddie! Dinna be suicidal!”

A split-second pause. “Aye, sir. Firing.”

Scotty breathed a sigh of relief.

The beam stabbed out from the satellite, joining Hofstadter’s phasers. It wasn’t enough. Spock cut the engines, and moments later, the Columbus was dead too. The fighter was right on top of the satellite.

The explosion threw Scotty violently across the shuttle before his head hit something, and everything went black.

Giotto hated waiting. The aliens had not given up, pausing only during the blastoff sequence. Now they were using some device to cut through the door—a kind of plasma cutter, judging from the way it sliced through the metal. He wondered if he could take out an entire assault squad.

Chekov was awake now. He was seated with his back against the wall, silent. He was trying to process, looking first at Giotto, then at the unconscious Farrezzi, then, finally, at the door.

Giotto’s communicator sounded. “Giotto here.”

“Kirk here. We’re on our way to you.”

“Chekov and I are trapped in a sealed room, with a lot of angry Farrezzi outside. Any sign of Yüksel?”

“Unfortunately not. Right now we’ve got to stop this ship from going to warp. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Good luck, Captain.”

“Same to you, Commander. Kirk out.”

“We”? Had Kirk said, “We’re on our way”?

Back to waiting. Perhaps the key to keeping Chekov from revisiting the horrors he’d lived through was to engage him in conversation. “So, Ensign, do you still think I’m your father?” Not the best opening.

Chekov was still glassy-eyed, not focusing on any object longer than a few blinks. “No, sir. I am sorry about that,” he said, his voice as distant as his gaze and completely emotionless.

“It’s fine, Pavel. Can you tell me something about your father? What does he do?”

“Do, sir?”

Damn, his mind was slow now. “I mean, what is his job? I assume he’s still working?”

Chekov shook his head slowly. “No, sir. He retired.”

“Ah? What did he do before, then?”

“He was a teacher, sir.”

“Oh. Did he like his job?”

“Um… I suppose he must have, at first. Later, he complained more and more… about the children. They didn’t know how to behave anymore, he kept saying.”

“Sounds to me like he’d become disillusioned.”

“Maybe, sir,” Chekov said.

“There must’ve been something about it that kept him going.”

“I suppose so, sir.”

Giotto needed to get Chekov to focus on something else, like getting out of here. Anything but what he was obviously still thinking about.

“Chekov,” he said, “tell me about your time at the Academy. Did you like it there?”

“Yes, sir. It was very educational.”

“You sound like Mister Spock. I asked if you liked it there. As in, did you have a good time? Make many friends?”

“Ah, sorry, sir.” Chekov was still as distant as before. “I made a few new friends. I even met somebody I fell in love with.”

“Oh? Tell me about that.”

“Her name is Irina. She attended the Academy for a while, and we spent some time together.”

“The fact that you don’t say more leads me to think it didn’t end well.”

Chekov looked pained. At least he was thinking about something else. “We… separated. She dropped out, there was an argument, we discovered that each of us wanted something different, and there was no future for us together.”

“Do you regret splitting up? Excuse my prying, Ensign, but you sound like you do.”

“Then, I did. It was all a big mistake. I doubt you’re interested.”

He was right, but Giotto wasn’t going to admit that. “I am. You seem uncomfortable talking about it. Wounds still raw?”

“You could say that, sir. I mean, we both knew it wasn’t going to work, but that didn’t change how I felt. And still do.”

“My dad used to say you weren’t a man if you hadn’t had a broken heart.” What Giotto didn’t say was that he’d always thought this was a load of bullshit.

Chekov didn’t reply. With his beaten face—the left side of it was starting to turn purple, and there was an open cut on his chin—his matted-down hair, and bloody uniform, Chekov looked like a man out of options.

Even if they made it out of here alive, which now seemed at least within the realm of possibility, Giotto was kicking himself that he’d let the situation unfold so that the captain had to come to his rescue. This was something a good security chief just didn’t do. And despite—

“They hurt me.”

Chekov was once again staring straight ahead, with wide, empty eyes. Giotto decided to wait, to see if anything more followed that revelatory statement. He knew it was a first step on a very long and difficult road.

“They wanted to use my phaser, but I wouldn’t tell them how… so they used their own devices.”

“They—” Giotto interrupted himself to glance at the door. The plasma cutter had made it halfway along the bottom. He couldn’t let them continue. He fired at the spot where the cutter’s beam was coming through. There was a hiss, followed by intense light, and then the beam was gone. Giotto hoped he’d destroyed the tool, but he’d at least slowed them down. “They’re outside, they can’t reach you.”

“Commander, they wanted to know everything I knew. I gave them nothing, but they wouldn’t stop. They kept asking and hurting me, and I wanted to stay brave and silent and courageous, but…” He broke, then. It was terrible to witness—even for Giotto, who’d had his share of traumatic experiences. A young officer, reduced to a sobbing heap.

“They can’t hurt you now.” Giotto stretched out his hand to pat Chekov on the shoulder, but he caught himself. Chekov didn’t need superficial consoling gestures, he needed actual help.

The sound of a plasma beam being switched on made him turn again. It would come down to a final showdown. He was up for it. The anger he felt was fueled by what they had done to Chekov. Giotto watched the small, thin flame cut across the remaining section of the door. When it reached the side frame, it was switched off. Any moment now, he knew, the door would open, and they’d be outnumbered.

Outside, he heard muffled noises that sounded like weapons fire, interspersed with high and low squeaks. Chekov was lying on his side, sobbing violently, his arms slung around his knees.

Then, the noise outside died. Giotto raised his phaser, waiting for the door to open. Something was stuck in the thin gap in the door the cutter had left. He heard clanging noises, followed by a strange, multipitched groaning. Slowly but surely, the door rose. Before long, Giotto could see the ends of tentacles, but then, he spotted a pair of black boots.

“Ensign, everything’s going to be okay,” Giotto said. “The captain’s here.”

Much to his surprise, McCoy found himself wishing Spock was aboard. The Vulcan could have mind-melded with the comatose patients.

The doctor spent half an hour running simulations, trying to determine the best way to reach the coma patients. McCoy believed if he was awake when he took the stimulant, he’d simply see more hallucinations. If he was unconscious, he wouldn’t be able to control what happened. The computer confirmed that putting his brain into a heightened state while deprived of outside stimuli was the best way.

When McCoy told Uhura what he planned to do and why, she was stunned. “You’re telling me the medical staff has been seeing hallucinations, caused by the comatose espers. And your solution is to place yourself in a coma to find out why, thereby removing the only doctor the Enterprise has?”

“Uhura, I believe that they are trying to tell us how to free the ship, but I’m too distant. This way I go to the source.”

The lieutenant studied McCoy, shaking her head, finally saying, “Permission granted.” Before McCoy could leave his transformed lab, she added, “Leonard, this better work. I’ll never forgive you if it doesn’t.”

“I’ll be fine.” McCoy turned and headed to the ward.

“Here’s your chance to get away from it all,” Jocelyn said pointedly. “Talk about duty in the far-off reaches. Are you looking to kill yourself? That’s certainly going further than anyone has ever gone before. And if you don’t come back—oh, well.”

“Jocelyn, I have to.”

“You ‘have to’ do this, don’t you, Dad?” Joanna asked. “Just like you ‘had to’ leave me on Cerberus. How convenient that all the things you ‘have to’ do let you abandon your responsibility.”

McCoy was stung, because there was a kernel of truth in what they said. It wasn’t the first time he’d volunteered for an incredibly dangerous mission.

He was lying on a biobed, one over from Salah. The medical computer had suggested that proximity would be best.

“Are you done yet, Nurse?” he asked.

Chapel was adjusting the bed’s monitors, taking far too long. “Almost, Doctor. We can’t be too careful.”

McCoy shifted uncomfortably. Was it just him, or had the beds gotten harder? Maybe he was just tense.

“Is this really you? The Leonard I know gave up when things got difficult,” muttered Jocelyn, somewhere to his left, but out of sight.

“Is it impossible to imagine that I’ve changed?” he snapped.

Chapel looked startled. “Was that—”

“Yes,” he said. “Sorry. Sometimes I forgot they’re not really here.”

Chapel adjusted the controls. “We’re set, Doctor.”

“About damn time,” muttered McCoy. “You’ll need to knock me out with sonambutril first—”

“I was paying attention when we rehearsed this five minutes ago, Doctor.” Chapel was on edge, but then they all were.

McCoy stared up at Chapel, who was holding a hypo-spray in her hands. “Would you do me a favor, Christine? In addition to the one you’re doing me right now, I mean?”

“Of course, Doctor. What is it?”

“Sulu,” he said. “Check up on him, will you? We need all the senior staff we can get, and unless he’s falling over, release him for duty.”

“I’ll do that,” Chapel said. “Now, are you ready?”

Was he? Was he ready to have his mind plunged into who-knows-where to try to contact people they weren’t sure were looking for help?

“That’s right, son. Run away from it all again.”

Hell, yes—he was ready. “Put me under.”

“Here we go.” Chapel took one last look at the monitors, then plunged the hypospray into McCoy’s upper arm.

Relief flooded through McCoy’s body, penetrating every organ. He felt himself relax, truly relax, for the first time in weeks. “Well, I’ll be. This is almost better than—”