Star Trek: Enterprise: Surak's Soul by J.M. Dillard

Author:J.M. Dillard
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Star Trek, Fiction
ISBN: 9780743462815
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2002-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

After giving orders to the helm to make haste for the planet Shikeda, Archer arrived in sickbay just in time to see Trip Tucker administer the last injection to the last crew member, then set down his hypo. Behind him, Ensign Cutler was bent over a diagnostic bed—Phlox, the captain assumed. He stepped up to Trip, expecting the engineer to ask immediately why the ship had gone into warp.

But Tucker seemed not even to notice something that normally would have him chomping to get to his post in order to nurse his precious warp engines. Instead, he looked up at the captain with a gaze that seemed slightly lost.

“Trip,” Archer said softly, reaching out to catch his chief engineer’s upper arm. “You okay?”

Physically, Tucker looked fine—not even tired, even though he’d jumped out of bed in the middle of the night then volunteered to help Cutler inoculate the crew against radiation sickness. That was Trip: always ready for action, always the last one still on his feet. But Trip’s expression was haunted.

[117] “Malcolm,” he said, and even before he turned to look at Cutler behind him, Archer felt dread settle into the pit of his stomach, then spread slowly outward over the rest of him.

There, on the diagnostic beds, were two patients now: Phlox, his eyes and cheeks looking even more sunken than before, and Malcolm Reed, pale and still. Archer did not have to look at the overhead scanners to know what was happening to the two men: life was all too obviously ebbing from them.

He took the stricken Trip’s elbow and guided him over toward Cutler and her patients. She was bent over Reed at the moment, administering a hypo, and she looked intently at the results as she straightened. One indicator on Reed’s overhead scanner moved up very slightly; the others stayed put.

“I just can’t seem to do anything for him.” She faced the captain, her voice filled with the same frustration and anger Archer had experienced when questioning Wanderer.

“How’s Phlox?” Archer asked softly, and braced himself for the obvious answer.

She shook her head. “He’s deteriorating and I can’t stop it.”

Archer let a long moment of silence pass between the three of them before speaking again. “How long?”

Her eyes narrowed slightly with pain. “A day, if [118] he continues declining at the same rate. With Reed, I don’t know yet.”

Archer gave a single, unhappy nod. There might be hope. Hoshi just reported that a traveler from another planet visited the Oanis and apparently had a cure, which they refused for philosophical reasons. Wanderer is helping us track down that traveler right now.” He made the situation sound better than it actually was; it was important for Cutler, at least, to have hope if she was to maintain sanity here in sickbay.

“Good,” Cutler said, but the enthusiasm in her tone was muted. “Any idea how long that’ll take?”

“I’ll check on it and get back to you,” Archer promised. “Trip, we need to take a little stop by engineering. I need you to coax everything you can from those engines.

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