Crisis of Consciousness (22 page)

“Let me just seal—”

Taking the medkit, the captain turned back toward the turbolift.

“That’ll be all, Nehring. Carry on.”

When Kirk returned to the lift, Palamas was waiting dutifully. Her eyes held a sadness, and the captain followed her gaze to the other side of the corridor. Repair crews were cleaning debris from the walkway as crewmen hurried by. Nothing unusual. But against one bulkhead was a blood stain. Perhaps one of the seventeen now in sickbay. Hopefully not one sent to the morgue.

He couldn’t be thinking of that now. And neither should she. “Look what I found,” Kirk said more brightly than he felt as he handed her the medkit.

As he stepped into the turbolift, she reciprocated his smile with one of her own. “Thank you, sir.”

“Let’s hope we don’t need it.” The captain took the lift control in hand. “Engineering.”

They traveled faster this time, probably because debris had been cleared from the turbolift tubes. In under a minute the doors opened to reveal the engineering deck.

They entered main engineering to find a mad hive of activity. Crewmen in red moved crisscross from console to console, from one ladder to another, all carrying a tool or a replacement part or piles of circuits. Scotty stood in the middle of this pandemonium, focusing it and directing its flow.

Maneuvering around the traffic, Kirk and Palamas strode to the chief engineer.

“Just a moment, sir,” Scott said to Kirk, then called to the upper tier. “Sanchez, you can’t bypass that from there. You know better, lad.”

The engineer sounded exhausted, and the captain noticed he was holding his wrist at an unnatural angle. Palamas saw it at the same time and pulled the scanner out of her medkit.

“He needs to sit down,” she told Kirk, running the Feinberger from Scotty’s left hand, up his shoulder, then back down. “You need to sit down, Mister Scott.”

“I don’t have time to sit,” he said, then turned to a crewman behind him. “Remember you can’t replace that circuit with power less than fifteen percent. Boost each auxiliary bypass to level six. That’ll reroute enough away from the node you need to repair. If you don’t, you’ll blow the whole subsystem.”

Palamas cast an exasperated look at the captain, then took Scott by the elbow of his good arm and guided him to the chair near the status board by the entry.

As he was practically dragged away, the engineer continued to bark out orders. “Mister Gross, if I see you hold that probe like that again, I’ll have you replacing impulse points for the next year.”

“Sit,” Palamas ordered, and Scotty looked to Kirk for support.

“Doctor’s orders,” Kirk said.

“But, sir, I need to—”

“No, sir. Sit,” Palamas ordered.

“You’re as bad as Doctor McCoy,” Scott said.

Kirk smiled at Palamas, but she was bent over the chief engineer studying the readings. He was glad he’d grabbed the better medkit. The chaos seemed less organized without Scott.

Kirk grabbed the arm of a passing engineer—who nearly clouted his captain on the jaw before he saw who’d seized him.

“Sir! Captain!”

Kirk took the man by his shoulders and pointed him at Scott. “Crewman Hong, you are now the chief engineer’s legs.”

“Sir?”

“I’m ordering Engineer Scott to sit here and not move. You, Mister Hong, are to run where he tells you, relaying his orders as he instructs. He is not to get up from this spot until Lieutenant Palamas or I say so. Understood?”

“Yes, sir. Completely,” Hong said, sharing an awkward look with Scotty.

The chief engineer sighed, but realized it was useless to protest. He nodded toward the auxiliary booth above them. “Tell Gudapati I want every change he makes to those intercooler circuits documented. If we don’t keep our records current, it’s like not keeping ’em at all.”

“Aye, sir,” the engineer said, and hurried off.

Palamas took Scott’s middle finger and pushed it upward. He winced hard and yanked his hand away. “Definitely a broken wrist,” she said.

Nodding, Kirk could see that his wrist was red and already swelling.

“Didn’t the blasted scanner tell you that?” the engineer protested.

“I can help the pain,” Palamas told Kirk, “but this kit doesn’t have a splint.”

“We can make one,” Scott said. “Get Hong back here. We can—”

“No,” Palamas cut him off. “We need a real wrist splint, and I shouldn’t be the one setting it. The scaphoid bone may be shattered. That’s permanent nerve damage if we do this wrong and possible diminished use of your thumb.”

Now the engineer looked as if he was in mental as well as physical shock.

Now what? Kirk didn’t like being off the bridge any longer than necessary, but the work that needed to be done would be done faster with Mister Scott in charge.

Moving to the nearest intercom, the captain hit the button with the bottom of his fist. “Kirk to sickbay.”

Silence.

“Kirk to sickbay.”

Nothing.

“Stay here. Do what you can,” Kirk told Palamas as he moved toward the exit.

“Where’re you going, sir?”

“To get McCoy.”

FIFTEEN

“Don’t you ‘Bones’ me, Captain! That won’t end well—for either of us.” Leonard McCoy didn’t hold back when in his own sickbay.

“Doctor . . .” Kirk began again.

“Look at this place!” McCoy pointed at the overflowing examination room. “Another coolant leak on deck seven. We’re overloaded and M’Benga and Chapel have already taken medics and supplies to triage on site.”

Kirk knew what McCoy was saying was right, and inwardly he was embarrassed that he’d even asked. But
Enterprise
needed her chief engineer. “We’re talking about Scotty . . .”

“I’m deliberately
not
talking about Scotty,” McCoy barked. “I’m needed right here, right now. People could die if I leave.”

McCoy was right.

“So unless you’re injured, Jim,” the doctor continued, “and with all due respect to your captain’s braid—get out of my sickbay!”

Lifting his arm, the captain showed McCoy the wound he had ignored.

“You would have to be hurt, wouldn’t you?” The doctor turned and grumbled to himself, “Figures he’d find a way to have the last word.” He motioned to a nurse in a blue jumpsuit. “Sakura! Get over here. See to the captain’s wound and give him a wrist splint kit.”

“Can I have Sakura?” Kirk suggested.

“I need him. Palamas can handle it.” The doctor stormed off to the inner ward.

Kirk smiled at Sakura as he approached. He took the captain’s right arm gently in one hand while he scanned it.

“You’ll have to forgive the doctor, sir,” Sakura said in that tone medical people used when doing an examination, as if nothing was going to hurt, and if it did, it should be ignored. “He’s . . . well, he’s in a touch of a snit today.”

“You heard all that?” Kirk motioned toward McCoy.

“Deck twelve heard it, sir.” Sakura unsuccessfully tried to hide a smirk.

Under his breath, Kirk said, “I hate when he’s right.”

Sakura pulled out another instrument and applied it to the wound. There was a slight prickling sensation and Kirk watched as the gash began to heal. The nurse sprayed on a bandage that would promote healing.

“If it’s any consolation, Captain, he hates it when you’re right, too.”

Oddly, that
was
comforting. Kirk had a list of concerns: his ship, Spock, Pippenge, the Kenisians, and the
na’hubis
. There was something reassuring about McCoy’s consistency. If the doctor could take the time to bark at him, maybe the situation wasn’t as grim as it seemed.

“Sakura! Stop lollygagging and get back here,” McCoy called from across the sickbay.

Comforting.

RUNNING THE SCANNER
over Mister Scott’s wrist again, Palamas didn’t like what she saw. The swelling wasn’t only due to injury, but internal bleeding. That was likely the cause of his dehydration. “You’ve not been drinking enough,” she told him.

She’d already asked Hong to bring some water. What was keeping him?

“Aye,” Scott said, “a glass of water would be a sight for sore eyes.” He began to rise, as if to get himself one.

“You can’t go running about.” She pressed lightly on his shoulder with one hand, but it was enough to keep the engineer in place. “You stay put. Captain’s orders.”

“Ugh,” Scott groaned. “It’s just a wrist.”

Scott was clearly still in pain, so she loaded ten cc of a painkiller into the hypospray and gave him the dose.

“An injured wrist means you can disobey Captain Kirk? I’ll have to remember that.”

“I didn’t say that,” he sighed.

“Hong will be back with the water in a moment,” Palamas assured him.

“I hope not. He should be telling Kozachok about that variance in the G-6 output.”

“If it’s above ten percent, they’ll see it and reduce the power flow to compensate.” Palamas smiled.

Brow furrowed, Scott looked up at her skeptically. “And how would ya know that?”

“Mister Scott, my field of expertise is archaeology and anthropology, but my
profession
is Starfleet. I went to the Academy.” She scanned him again and tried not to frown a bit at his readings. “It didn’t hurt that my uncle was an engineer’s mate on a cargo vessel.”

“You know engines?”

“I do,” Palamas said warmly. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“No. You were cross-trained as a field medic, so I thought . . .”

“Only since coming to the
Enterprise
. I was at Starbase Ten for six months before being assigned here. You know what they do a lot of?”

“Starship repair.” A weak smile turned Scott’s lips.

“Exactly, Mister Scott.” She gripped his good hand to check for clamminess. His palm was wet.

As he gave her hand a tight squeeze in return, his smile strengthened a bit, and he said, “Call me Scotty, lass.”

For every degree of power his smile lacked, she brightened her own. “I will, if you continue to call me lass. It’s very charming.”

“I call every lass that,” Scott scoffed.

She patted his hand. “So you do.”

Hong appeared with the bottle of water, which she took and fed to Scotty, not letting him hold it himself.

The engineer croaked orders to his subordinate, who ran off as quickly as he could.

They were silent for a while, as Palamas continued to let Scott sip water slowly. He closed his eyes and relished it until jolted awake by the ship creaking around them. The structural integrity fields had been put through the wringer.

As had the chief engineer, who grunted in disdain. “Do you feel that?” He tried to rise again, but once more she easily pushed him back.

“Working now would be a mistake, Scotty,” she said. “We have to wait for the doctor.”

Weak but still annoyed, he sank back into the chair. “All right, Lieutenant. All right.”

“Does everyone call you Scotty?”

“Aye.”

“Now, don’t tell me your mother called you ‘Scotty.’ ”

“Don’t be daft,” he grumbled. “My mother called me—” He stopped himself, clearly not wanting to divulge the name. “Well, never mind what she called me.”

Palamas smiled playfully, saying, “Well, now I have to know.”

“Do you?” He laughed, and it was good to hear.

“I do.” Palamas leaned down close. “Whisper it to me.”

Scott stayed silent. He just sat, half smiling, half grimacing.

“You’re not going to tell me?” she asked, mock-pouting just a touch, if only to amuse him.

He shook his head.

“Monty?” she offered. “I bet it was Monty.”

“Uchh,” he grunted.

“I’ll take that as a no.” Giving him another sip of water, she put her right index finger on her chin, exaggerating a thoughtful pose. Palamas didn’t care what his mother called him, although she was curious. She was only more interested in keeping Scott talking, not just to keep his mind off any pain, but to keep him from working. “It wasn’t just Montgomery. Sonny boy?”

Again, he shook his head and, judging by his bemused look, she was at least keeping him entertained.

“Is there some reason I’m not allowed to know?” she prodded.

Scott sighed. “Life on a ship,” he said. “I tell you, everyone—well, maybe not Mister Spock—will be calling me what my mother did by the end of watch.”

“I wouldn’t mind this watch being over.”

“That, lass, depends on how it ends.”

LEONARD
M
c
COY
had worked in a war zone. He’d found cures for alien diseases on primitive planets. He’d damned near invented a few treatments he thought would never succeed. But just now he’d have traded it all for another set of hands.

“Sakura, finish that up and get over here!”

It was McCoy’s fifteenth operation of the day, and there were more waiting. M’Benga and Colone were treating radiation poisoning and other injuries that were keeping them just as busy: burns, breaks, lacerations, and contusions.

None of the work was complex—he wasn’t discovering an alien antigen—but by sheer volume, he and his staff were spread thin.

His current patient, Chief Touré, had a deep enough wound that he’d have to slowly close it. Except he didn’t have time for that right now; all he could do was bandage it and keep the woman stable.

“Doctor?” Sakura was at his side, ready to act.

“Get me a pressure bandage refill, type forty-five.”

“You have the last canister, Doctor.”

“How can we be out?” McCoy barked.

Sakura began to answer but the doctor cut him off.

“Never mind. Go to my office. The cabinet to the left of the door. Middle shelf. There’ll be a box of physical bandages. They’ll have to do.”

Immediately, Sakura dashed off.

A physical bandage wasn’t as good as the chemical kind, which would bind itself to the organic matter beneath it and exert the exact amount of pressure needed, but it would do the job.

There were times McCoy eschewed technology, but not when it came to medical advances. The tools and machinery at his disposal were more than his life’s focus, they were necessary for the well-being of those in his care.

When Sakura returned with the bandages, McCoy snapped the box open with one hand and let the lid drop to the deck. Sakura picked it up.

Unraveling the material, the doctor applied it, then pressed tightly until it grabbed hold. After ten seconds, the bandage would maintain whatever pressure had been applied. It was effective, if less comfortable for the patient than the usual kind, which would have given the patient more normal movement.

“At least it’s not gauze,” McCoy grumbled.

The nurse grunted his agreement, though McCoy wondered if the younger man had even seen gauze outside of a museum.

McCoy was irritated because he had to use a non–spray-applied bandage. And yet, the material he did have was still complex and technical: soaked in chemicals that would bond with the skin and assist platelets in clotting. An advanced bandage that he was complaining about as if it was as primitive as mud salve.

As soon as Chief Touré was squared away, McCoy turned to his next patient, Crewman Roath. The medical tricorder said he had massive blood loss.

Quickly, Sakura and McCoy tried to suture his wounds, but the crewman wasn’t reacting well to the treatment. At a certain point, a body could only help so much in its own healing process.

“Did you give him that Rigelian blood therapy?” McCoy asked.

“Yes, sir, as per your orders.”

“Damn.”

Despite being in shock, Crewman Roath began to stir.

“Am I gonna be okay, Doc?” he asked weakly.

“Of course you are, Roath.” McCoy patted him lightly on the shoulder—one of the few areas that wasn’t injured. “Don’t you worry.”

Even in a barely conscious state, the boy was still anxious, and McCoy shared a concerned glance with Sakura.

“Are you doubting me, crewman?” the doctor asked with mock indignation. “Is that what I see?”

“No, sir,” Roath said feebly. “I . . .”

“As long as you take your doctor’s advice, you’re going to be fine. You hear?”

The young crewman nodded very slowly and slightly. “Yes, sir.”

“So, you just relax and let me do my work.”

“Okay,” he sighed.

“You know,” McCoy continued as he worked on the crewman’s wounds, “worry ages us. It makes us tired, and we need you to be strong for recovery, not spending your energy frettin’ on my part of the job.”

Roath’s lips turned up ever so slightly into the smallest of smiles. If he had energy, he might have chuckled.

“We’ll get you all fixed up,” the doctor assured him. “And then out of here. I can’t have my sickbay filled with people taking up space who don’t really need my care, you know.”

Again, Roath tried to laugh but couldn’t quite manage it. With a soft moan, Roath lost consciousness, and then the biobed indicated his passing.

This—
this
is what McCoy was always complaining to Kirk about. The loss of life, of young potential. A life of possibilities—gone.

McCoy couldn’t allow tears to well.

“Who’s next?” McCoy asked Sakura as he placed his hand on Roath for a quick moment, wishing him a silent goodbye. “Come on. Who’s next?”

“YOU REALIZE THIS
will retard the destructive extent by only two percent more than the previous simulation.” Spock inserted a program module into the side of the prototype mine.

Sciver pulled the module back out, double-checked it with his tricorder, then placed it back into its receptacle again. “With the rest of the
na’hubis
safe in storage, so long as we escape the initial blast radius, the cascade should dissipate after a time.”

Raising a long finger of protest, Ambassador Pippenge asked, “How many star systems fall within the ‘after a time’ estimate you so casually assert?”

Spock raised an appreciative brow. The Maabas ambassador began as the spokesman for a xenophobic and protectionist people who were at the infancy of their embrace of the Federation. Now, he was advocating for the people of the galaxy, not just his own planet.

“We cannot be certain—”

“Seventeen,” Spock interrupted. He nodded toward Sciver. “According to your own simulations.”

“Most of those systems are uninhabited,” the Kenisian pointed out.

“Six have a total of eight inhabited planets.” Handing Sciver the next component directly, Spock continued, “Of those, three have thriving ecosystems, two of which have intelligent life on an industrial, pre-warp scale. One other may develop such a civilization within the next thousand years.”

The Kenisian scoffed. “You can’t know that.”

“How many lives?” Pippenge pressed.

“You saw the data.” Spock wanted the Kenisian to answer—to say the number.

Pausing, he suddenly examined the mine component as if it were a foreign object. With Spock and Pippenge staring at him, Sciver eventually croaked out a reply. “Approximately four hundred million.”

The Vulcan sensed the internal battle going on within Sciver. Unsure how many distinct personalities could be at play within him, Spock was certain that they were not in agreement.

The more that incongruity could be exacerbated, the better.

“Approximately?” The Vulcan cast a downward glance at the Kenisian. Zhatan was very exacting when she threatened the Maabas. She had the number of sentient inhabitants counted within one percent. A scientist should be able to articulate the specific number.