“It looks like I’ve got rocks in my gut,” Terrell said.
Captain Nassir and Dr. Babitz stood together in the sickbay of the Sagittarius, listening to the wounded first officer’s report over the comm. Babitz took notes on a data slate. “Clark,” she said, “how long has it been since you were hit?”
“About fifteen minutes,” Terrell said.
The slim blond surgeon nodded. “Do you have a tricorder?”
“No,” Terrell said. “Just a communicator and signal dampener.” He grunted in pain. “I forget—how long does the battery last on this thing?”
Nassir replied, “Twelve hours, enough time for a round trip. I’m sending Sorak and Razka to bring you back.”
“No, sir, don’t,” Terrell said. “We didn’t know the Shedai was there until it attacked—and even then it didn’t trigger the alert on our tricorder. Sorak and Razka would be sitting ducks.”
The captain tensed to argue when Dr. Babitz shook her head. “Captain, I’m sorry, but Commander Terrell’s been hit near vital organs. He doesn’t have that much time.”
Defeat was too bitter for Nassir to accept. “What about the ATV? Are the riverside trails wide enough to—”
“No, sir,” Terrell said, his voice weary and resigned. “If they had been, we’d have used the ATV in the first place.”
Desperation colored the captain’s tone. “Dammit, Clark, we’ve already lost Niwara. I’m not leaving you out there.”
“You have to, sir. The Shedai have learned to evade our sensors—that means the ship is vulnerable. Don’t do anything to draw their attention. Stay under cover as long as possible.”
Nassir shut his eyes and hung his head in grief. Some captains could accept with stoic grace the loss of personnel in the line of duty. But on a ship this small, with such a close-knit crew, it was difficult for Nassir to suppress his feelings when harm befell his shipmates. Maybe I can blame it on hormones, he thought, blinking back tears. He was getting older and was past his pheromone prime. Deltan men his age had learned to accept the changes in their biochemistry that came with middle age and the profound emotions that attended them.
None of that made losing a friend any easier.
The captain collected himself as best he was able. “Thank you, Clark, for keeping your head when I’m losing mine.” He looked at Babitz. “Doctor, I need to go.”
Dr. Babitz nodded and offered a sad but consoling smile. “I’ll maintain an open channel,” she said. “I’ll stay with him.”
“Thank you,” Nassir said softly. Then he stepped away and walked out the door. He headed for the ladder to the top deck, hoping to smother his grief in the myriad details of work. There really was nothing more to be done for Terrell, whose advice to protect the ship was the only sensible course of action.
Guilt shadowed Nassir’s thoughts. His sense of duty told him that he owed it to Terrell to stay on the comm until the end came, but he had watched too many friends and comrades die over the years, and this was a loss he could not bear to witness.
On the top deck of the Sagittarius, Master Chief Ilucci had put everyone to work, including Nassir. Ranks were often treated as a formality on the ship, so Nassir did not think it unusual to find Ilucci, a noncommissioned officer, giving instructions to superior officers such as Sorak and zh’Firro. Watching the ship’s chief of security and flight controller assist Ilucci in rebuilding a piece of the sensor array, the captain knew that if Bridy Mac were on her feet, she would no doubt be pitching in.
As would Niwara, he thought, mourning the slain Caitian. She had been the least social of all the members of the crew, but she had never lacked discipline, dedication, or enthusiasm for her work. Her absence, he was certain, would be felt by the crew for a very long time—especially by Threx, who had never been able to conceal his deep if inexplicable fondness for her.
For now, however, they all had work to do. Nassir’s own background in warp engineering had made him Ilucci’s first choice to help run diagnostics on the warp nacelles, to make certain that they would be ready to function as soon as the fuel pod arrived. With the impulse reactor down for repairs, he and the master chief had resorted to using short pulses of energy from the ship’s battery reserves to activate each individual warp coil in each nacelle, one at a time. It was not exciting work, but it was specific, and it demanded one’s full attention—making it the perfect activity for someone trying not to think about something else.
Some of the crew had been awake for more than twenty-four hours. Between the lack of sleep, the stress of combat, news of casualties on the ground, and the hard work of fixing the ship, fatigue was wearing them down. Everyone’s steps were falling heavily on the deck. Nassir’s own eyelids fluttered as he worked, caught between his body’s desire for sleep and his impulse to resist and remain in motion.
“How’s it goin’, Skipper?”
Nassir turned to see the bedraggled chief engineer eyeing his handiwork. “Slow but steady,” the captain said. “I’m about two-thirds of the way through the port nacelle.”
Ilucci nodded. A change in his demeanor struck Nassir as odd. “You’re quiet tonight, Master Chief,” he noted. Then he asked in a confidential tone, “Something on your mind?”
“Just thinking about Theriault,” Ilucci said. “Whether she made it to shore.” He looked at his feet. “If she’s all right.”
Already stung by the loss of Niwara and Terrell, the captain wasn’t ready to abandon hope for Theriault as well. “She’ll be okay, Master Chief,” he said. “We’ll find her.”
A crooked smile suggested that the chief engineer didn’t completely believe Nassir’s assurance, but he was either too polite or too desperate to admit it. “Keep at it, sir,” he said. “I have to go check on Cahow before she freaks out.”
“Good luck,” Nassir said, feeling genuine sympathy for Ilucci. Karen Cahow was a great mechanic, but her phobia of being on planet surfaces was profound. A native of deep space who had spent most of her life in the reaches between the stars, Cahow thought of natural gravity wells as enormous navigational hazards to be avoided at all costs. According to her service record, her recruiter had doubted she would be able to endure sixteen weeks of planetside basic training. Thanks to her drill instructor’s advice and a prescription for antianxiety meds, however, Starfleet had gained a first-rate—if slightly neurotic—starship mechanic and junior petty officer.
As he finished testing another warp coil, Nassir heard someone climbing the ladder to the top deck. He looked over his shoulder to see Dr. Babitz clamber out of the ladder well. She swiveled her head and seemed to recoil from the widespread grit and grime that had been produced by the repair effort. He presumed that she was suppressing her natural inclination to clean and disinfect everything within reach as she walked to his side and said quietly, “Sir, you need to come back to sickbay.”
It had been more than two hours since he had left her to keep a vigil over Terrell. He had expected this to be over by now. “I can take the bad news here, Doctor.”
“Captain,” Babitz said, dropping her voice to a whisper. “He’s alive. Please come with me, quickly.”
He put down his tools and nodded to Babitz. “After you.” Not until they had descended the ladder and were almost back to sickbay did he realize that he had been caught so off-guard by the news that he had forgotten to be happy about it.
The doors of the ship’s tiny sickbay swished shut behind them. He followed her to one of the room’s two biobeds, on which Bridy Mac lay sedated. Standing on the other side of her bed was medical technician Tan Bao, monitoring her vital signs. Resting in the second officer’s lap was one of the signal dampeners. It had been activated.