Star Trek: Voyager: Invasion!: The Final Fury by Dafydd Ab Hugh

Author:Dafydd Ab Hugh
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, Star Trek
ISBN: 9780671040987
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1999-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

13

“AM I DEAD?”

Kes waited anxiously in the transporter room, standing first on one foot then the other, while the away team took about nine years, an entire Ocampan lifetime, to materiallize. The stranger, an emaciated human who looked like a ghost, sparkled into view with that horrible question on his lips: “Am I dead?”

After Kes embraced Neelix, she propelled the stranger—Redbay, according to Tuvok—straight to sickbay, while everyone else headed bridgeward.

In sickbay, Kes watched, concerned, while the Doctor checked Redbay quickly and determined that there was nothing physically wrong with him aside from a few broken bones, deep lacerations, bruises, and general ill treatment.

Kes desperately wished she knew if Neelix were safe; but she remained with the doctor. Redbay suffered from a deep psychological wound that would be difficult to cure while still on a starship … perhaps impossible, as soon as the young lieutenant recovered sufficiently to realize their dire predicament. He had lost quite a lot of weight and had clearly been tortured physically and psychologically. The man looked like a walking corpse. His color was bad, bone-white, and he did not lose the long-distance stare.

“Am I dead?”

“No,” said Kes; “you’re aboard a Starfleet starship.” Lost in space, forever, never to return. You may as well be dead, she did not add.

The doctor took up the conversation.

“You have some severe injuries which I will now heal, if you’ll stop squirming long enough to let me do so. You may feel some discomfort and stiffness for a few days, especially in the wrist. Try not to use it as much as usual. In fact, try not to use it at all.”

“This is the U.S.S. Voyager,” said Kes, “but you’re still in the Delta Quadrant. My name is Kes, and this is the doctor. The captain’s name is Janeway; she’s the one who rescued you with the Vulcan. Neelix, the other one who rescued you—not the Vulcan, the third one—is my … a Talaxian native.

“Kes is my assistant,” the doctor explained.

Kes watched Redbay carefully; in fact, she had struck up the conversation, hoping to jar his mind away from his morbid hallucinations.

“Is this hell? Am I in hell now?”

Kes sighed and began telling Redbay all about the Voyager and how it came to be in the Delta Quadrant. I’ll entertain him all night, if I have to, she decided bleakly, concerned about the patient’s frame of mind.

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