Reconstitution
By Jane
Beta reader: Taryn Eve Reviews, feedback etc to: snowballjane@yahoo.co.uk Category: General/angst Rated: PG-13 (or as Taryn said, "Ewwwwww.") Spoilers: None I can think of Disclaimer: Enterprise is the property of Paramount, not me. Summary: An away team must be rescued by using the transporter.
Lieutenant Malcolm Reed was privately indulging in a childish sulk. To all outward appearances he was busy at his station on the bridge of the Enterprise running a diagnostic on the shielding control system. In reality he was downright fed up. He stared at the viewscreen showing the greenish- blue curve of the planet below - where an away team was right now probably coming face to face with real live dinosaurs. Alien dinosaurs!
As a child he'd been fascinated by the huge creatures whose skeletons he'd seen the day his family visited the Natural History Museum in London. He'd sulked that day too, when they had to leave the monstrous beasts behind and head for the blasted Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
The away team were setting up a remote research station that would record details of the creatures behaviour. Back on Earth, the palaeontologists were probably already throwing a party.
His sulk was suddenly interrupted. "Captain. A toxic gas cloud is enveloping the area where the away team is working," announced Sub- commander T'Pol.
"What?" asked the captain, sounding shocked. T'Pol's news had come out of nowhere. Not one scan of the surface had even hinted at this kind of danger.
"It's highly poisonous, fifteen minutes exposure may be fatal. I'd say they are too far away from the shuttlepod to get there in time," reported the science officer.
Captain Archer prodded the comm button on his arm rest. "Transporter room, stand by to bring up the away team."
"There's a lot of interference." There was a pause. "Sir," came back a voice edged with fear. "We can't get a lock on any of them."
"Malcolm, get down there and help," snapped Archer.
Lieutenant Reed didn't need telling twice. He strode quickly off the bridge. Even in the small turbolift he needed to pace back and forth. The precious seconds were ticking away. Couldn't the damn lift go quicker? His friends were down on the planet. Travis and Trip were both members of the away team. He was out of the lift before the doors were more than half open. In the corridor outside the transporter room door he encountered Dr Phlox, looking more worried than he had ever seen him before.
"I think I might be needed," said Dr Phlox grimly as he stepped through the door after Reed. The lieutenant acknowledged him with a nod and a frown.
Ensign Owen stepped away from the console to allow the more experienced officer to take a look. "I just can't see them, sir," he said looking shame- faced and scared.
Reed focused on the fuzzy readings from the planet. The rest of the room faded into the background as he concentrated. The panic receded, and he felt the comfortingly familiar vividness that came with an adrenaline rush brought under careful control. Then he spotted them. Two small blips hidden within the fuzz. His fingers darted across the controls as he fought to isolate the faint signals. He confidently jabbed the activate switch. The machines around him fizzed into life. Reed focused on the screen in front of him, watching the data streams gradually resolve into the detailed patterns representing two human lives. Then there was the sound of breathless coughing.
Reed looked up. Two young men sprawled on the transporter pad. Both looked dazed and frightened and one was wheezing. Phlox ran his scanner over them both and jabbed hyposprays at their pulse points as Owen helped them to their unsteady feet.
"Go straight to sickbay," Phlox ordered them, failing to disguise the worry in his voice as he looked at the readings from the scanner in his hand. As they left the room, each leaning on the other, he continued: "Mr Reed, the sooner the better."
Reed understood. He turned back to the console looking for new signals as Owen emptied the pattern buffers using the next control panel. Somewhere in the interference were hidden five more blips. "Come on Trip, Travis - where are you?" he whispered under his breath. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a slight irregularity in the fuzz. Then there were two more. "Yes!" he hissed through his teeth, hitting the switch.
He looked up to watch the appearing crew, hoping his friends would be among them. Three figures gradually materialised in front of him. Phlox was running forwards to treat them before they were even properly visible. Then he stopped dead.
It was horrible. It was pink and wet-looking and still moving. It was human. It was inside out.
On the transporter pad, the newly materialised Ensign Jannsen looked around her and screamed. Crewman Davies uncurled from the foetal position in which he had appeared, looked at the Thing next to him and recoiled in horror.
Phlox vaguely waved a scanner in the direction of the pile of flesh and organs. He looked back at the officer at the controls and shook his head. Some things were evidently beyond the scope of medicine.
"Wh-who is it?" demanded Owen as Phlox administered hyposprays to Davies and Jannsen and ushered them off the transporter pad. "Sir! Who is it?" The transporter operator was becoming hysterical. Reed wordlessly motioned for him to return to the second transport control station where the buffers needed clearing out before there could be any attempt to bring up the remaining members of the away team.
"We can't bring them up with this thing! There must be some kind of fault. They might come up like th-that!" Owen was shaking, looking like he was about to run out of the room.
"Mr Owen," Reed spat, "take your position and do your job."
Owen looked stunned by the sharp words but did as he was told. Reed returned to searching for the elusive lifesigns, trying to ignore the gradually fading movements of the Thing on the transporter pad. Hoping for the one in three chance that it wasn't one of his friends. Hoping they weren't being poisoned to death on the planet's surface.
"How's it going, Mr Reed?" The terse voice of Captain Archer broke his concentration.
"We've got four, sir, and one casualty. I think I've got two more signals, I'm just trying to get them cleared up." Reed spoke with a calm that surprised even himself.
"Get them the hell out of there - now!" yelled Archer.
"Buffers cleared sir," muttered Owen.
Reed closed his eyes, offered up a prayer and slammed the main control switch with the heel of his hand. The entire room throbbed as the transporter struggled to resolve the patterns of photons into living, breathing humans. Please, thought Malcolm, please be living, breathing humans. He opened his eyes.
Lying flat on their backs on the transporter pad were Travis and Tucker. Travis stirred and groaned. Phlox was by their side as soon as they were fully materialised. "We have to get them to sickbay," said the doctor hauling the semi-conscious Travis to his feet. Reed and Owen pulled Tucker up between them and headed for the door with the unconscious engineer draped between their shoulders.
As they staggered out of the transporter room Reed glanced back over his shoulder at the crewmember he had failed to save.
*
Reed hefted the chief engineer onto the biobed and staggered backwards to lead against the wall of sickbay. Everything in front of him swam. He closed his eyes and tried to get his balance but his knees gave way. He sank into a crouching position leaning his shoulders on the wall. In his mind's eye he saw the Thing materialise in front of him again. His stomach revolted and he folded over, vomiting in the corner of the room.
When he looked up he saw Dr Phlox looking over his shoulder towards him. He raised a hand to indicate that he was ok, that Phlox should carry on treating the away team. He sat on the floor and watched the remarkable sickbay efficiency.
Now he could work out who it was. He couldn't remember exactly who had gone down to the surface. Travis had piloted the shuttlepod. Trip was the designer of the automated research station and Jannsen was also from engineering. Which meant it must have been one of the biologists.
He swallowed. He'd killed this person and all he knew was that it was 'one of the biologists'. In his mind the Thing on the transporter gurgled and hissed through its final twitching movements.
"They're going to be alright, Mr Reed," said Phlox without looking up from his patients. "The antidote for the poison is taking effect nicely." Reed felt another wave of nausea hit him and retched. An instant later the sympathetic face of Dr Phlox loomed over the shaken lieutenant, who vaguely noticed the hypospray in the doctor's hand. Then Reed's world went black.
*
"It is illogical to feel guilty. You saved six people's lives."
Malcolm shook his head. He was surprised by T'Pol's sudden sympathetic comment but he supposed it was obvious that he wasn't coping well.
The memorial service had just finished for Andrei Petrescu - the man he had killed. The crew were standing around in the mess hall eating canapes - canapes for god's sake! Petrescu had died a messy painful death and the crew of the Enterprise were eating canapes. Malcolm himself had barely been able to eat at all for the past two days. He couldn't keep anything down even when Phlox had ordered him to try, he just kept seeing over and over the Thing that had materialised on the transporter. He had seen in the mirror how grey and ill he looked - no matter how hard he tried to act as if things were normal. No wonder T'Pol felt she had to try to be comforting.
"The transporters are known not to be safe for biological use," T'Pol said, almost sounding exasperated. "That is why they are not used instead of the shuttlepods."
Reed tried to interrupt her. To say he knew all that, but it still didn't help. As he was about to speak, Commander Tucker walked up.
"Malcolm, you look terrible," said Trip. Against his will, Malcolm almost smiled. Trust Trip not to mince words. T'Pol edged away, apparently picking up on the fact that Trip wanted to talk to his friend alone.
"Are you ok?" asked the engineer.
"I'm fine," he shot back. He turned stiffly away from Trip to look out of the window at the starfield.
"I will be fine. No. I'm not fine." His shoulders tensed and he winced, closing his eyes. Petrescu's remains materialised in front of him again and he fought down an attack of queasiness. His eyes shot open. Maybe he should confess.
His voice shook. "When everyone thought we'd killed the Paraagans, I was sure we'd done nothing wrong. And then it all turned out fine in the end. And when we thought Enterprise was destroyed - it all turned out fine in the end. I just keep on waiting for this to all turn out fine in the end. And it's not going to. And this time I'm not convinced I did nothing wrong."
"But that's not what's really buggin' you," said Trip.
Damn, thought Malcom, Trip could be a bit too perceptive at times.
"I wished him dead, you know," he blurted out, addressing the wall as much as Trip. "I stood at that console and I didn't know who it was but I didn't want it to be anyone I knew. And it wasn't. I mean I'd barely ever said two words to the chap and now he's dead. And all I could think was that I was glad that I never knew him."
Malcolm stopped and turned away from the window. He looked into Trip's eyes expecting to see the revulsion he felt. Instead he watched as puzzlement turned into understanding.
"Yeah, well I'm glad too. I mean, I'm glad I'm not dead. I'm glad Travis isn't dead. I'm glad Jannsen isn't dead. It's normal, Malcolm. We care more about our friends." Trip patted him on the shoulder and walked away before Malcolm could start to argue with his words of wisdom.
Malcolm Reed turned back to the window and, too quietly for anyone in the room to hear he whispered: "I'm sorry Ensign Andrei Petrescu. I wish I'd been your friend. I wish I'd made more effort to get to know you. I still might not have been able to save you, but at least I'd have had a better memory of you. I'm going to try. I'm going to try harder to talk to everyone. I don't think I'll ever be everyone's pal like Trip, but I will try harder. I'm sorry Andrei Petrescu."
He closed his eyes and from the depths of memory conjured a mental picture of the young biologist. A studious looking man, with a thick mop of hair and dark eyebrows that met in the middle, materialised on the transporter pad in Malcolm's mind.
THE END
Beta reader: Taryn Eve Reviews, feedback etc to: snowballjane@yahoo.co.uk Category: General/angst Rated: PG-13 (or as Taryn said, "Ewwwwww.") Spoilers: None I can think of Disclaimer: Enterprise is the property of Paramount, not me. Summary: An away team must be rescued by using the transporter.
Lieutenant Malcolm Reed was privately indulging in a childish sulk. To all outward appearances he was busy at his station on the bridge of the Enterprise running a diagnostic on the shielding control system. In reality he was downright fed up. He stared at the viewscreen showing the greenish- blue curve of the planet below - where an away team was right now probably coming face to face with real live dinosaurs. Alien dinosaurs!
As a child he'd been fascinated by the huge creatures whose skeletons he'd seen the day his family visited the Natural History Museum in London. He'd sulked that day too, when they had to leave the monstrous beasts behind and head for the blasted Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
The away team were setting up a remote research station that would record details of the creatures behaviour. Back on Earth, the palaeontologists were probably already throwing a party.
His sulk was suddenly interrupted. "Captain. A toxic gas cloud is enveloping the area where the away team is working," announced Sub- commander T'Pol.
"What?" asked the captain, sounding shocked. T'Pol's news had come out of nowhere. Not one scan of the surface had even hinted at this kind of danger.
"It's highly poisonous, fifteen minutes exposure may be fatal. I'd say they are too far away from the shuttlepod to get there in time," reported the science officer.
Captain Archer prodded the comm button on his arm rest. "Transporter room, stand by to bring up the away team."
"There's a lot of interference." There was a pause. "Sir," came back a voice edged with fear. "We can't get a lock on any of them."
"Malcolm, get down there and help," snapped Archer.
Lieutenant Reed didn't need telling twice. He strode quickly off the bridge. Even in the small turbolift he needed to pace back and forth. The precious seconds were ticking away. Couldn't the damn lift go quicker? His friends were down on the planet. Travis and Trip were both members of the away team. He was out of the lift before the doors were more than half open. In the corridor outside the transporter room door he encountered Dr Phlox, looking more worried than he had ever seen him before.
"I think I might be needed," said Dr Phlox grimly as he stepped through the door after Reed. The lieutenant acknowledged him with a nod and a frown.
Ensign Owen stepped away from the console to allow the more experienced officer to take a look. "I just can't see them, sir," he said looking shame- faced and scared.
Reed focused on the fuzzy readings from the planet. The rest of the room faded into the background as he concentrated. The panic receded, and he felt the comfortingly familiar vividness that came with an adrenaline rush brought under careful control. Then he spotted them. Two small blips hidden within the fuzz. His fingers darted across the controls as he fought to isolate the faint signals. He confidently jabbed the activate switch. The machines around him fizzed into life. Reed focused on the screen in front of him, watching the data streams gradually resolve into the detailed patterns representing two human lives. Then there was the sound of breathless coughing.
Reed looked up. Two young men sprawled on the transporter pad. Both looked dazed and frightened and one was wheezing. Phlox ran his scanner over them both and jabbed hyposprays at their pulse points as Owen helped them to their unsteady feet.
"Go straight to sickbay," Phlox ordered them, failing to disguise the worry in his voice as he looked at the readings from the scanner in his hand. As they left the room, each leaning on the other, he continued: "Mr Reed, the sooner the better."
Reed understood. He turned back to the console looking for new signals as Owen emptied the pattern buffers using the next control panel. Somewhere in the interference were hidden five more blips. "Come on Trip, Travis - where are you?" he whispered under his breath. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a slight irregularity in the fuzz. Then there were two more. "Yes!" he hissed through his teeth, hitting the switch.
He looked up to watch the appearing crew, hoping his friends would be among them. Three figures gradually materialised in front of him. Phlox was running forwards to treat them before they were even properly visible. Then he stopped dead.
It was horrible. It was pink and wet-looking and still moving. It was human. It was inside out.
On the transporter pad, the newly materialised Ensign Jannsen looked around her and screamed. Crewman Davies uncurled from the foetal position in which he had appeared, looked at the Thing next to him and recoiled in horror.
Phlox vaguely waved a scanner in the direction of the pile of flesh and organs. He looked back at the officer at the controls and shook his head. Some things were evidently beyond the scope of medicine.
"Wh-who is it?" demanded Owen as Phlox administered hyposprays to Davies and Jannsen and ushered them off the transporter pad. "Sir! Who is it?" The transporter operator was becoming hysterical. Reed wordlessly motioned for him to return to the second transport control station where the buffers needed clearing out before there could be any attempt to bring up the remaining members of the away team.
"We can't bring them up with this thing! There must be some kind of fault. They might come up like th-that!" Owen was shaking, looking like he was about to run out of the room.
"Mr Owen," Reed spat, "take your position and do your job."
Owen looked stunned by the sharp words but did as he was told. Reed returned to searching for the elusive lifesigns, trying to ignore the gradually fading movements of the Thing on the transporter pad. Hoping for the one in three chance that it wasn't one of his friends. Hoping they weren't being poisoned to death on the planet's surface.
"How's it going, Mr Reed?" The terse voice of Captain Archer broke his concentration.
"We've got four, sir, and one casualty. I think I've got two more signals, I'm just trying to get them cleared up." Reed spoke with a calm that surprised even himself.
"Get them the hell out of there - now!" yelled Archer.
"Buffers cleared sir," muttered Owen.
Reed closed his eyes, offered up a prayer and slammed the main control switch with the heel of his hand. The entire room throbbed as the transporter struggled to resolve the patterns of photons into living, breathing humans. Please, thought Malcolm, please be living, breathing humans. He opened his eyes.
Lying flat on their backs on the transporter pad were Travis and Tucker. Travis stirred and groaned. Phlox was by their side as soon as they were fully materialised. "We have to get them to sickbay," said the doctor hauling the semi-conscious Travis to his feet. Reed and Owen pulled Tucker up between them and headed for the door with the unconscious engineer draped between their shoulders.
As they staggered out of the transporter room Reed glanced back over his shoulder at the crewmember he had failed to save.
*
Reed hefted the chief engineer onto the biobed and staggered backwards to lead against the wall of sickbay. Everything in front of him swam. He closed his eyes and tried to get his balance but his knees gave way. He sank into a crouching position leaning his shoulders on the wall. In his mind's eye he saw the Thing materialise in front of him again. His stomach revolted and he folded over, vomiting in the corner of the room.
When he looked up he saw Dr Phlox looking over his shoulder towards him. He raised a hand to indicate that he was ok, that Phlox should carry on treating the away team. He sat on the floor and watched the remarkable sickbay efficiency.
Now he could work out who it was. He couldn't remember exactly who had gone down to the surface. Travis had piloted the shuttlepod. Trip was the designer of the automated research station and Jannsen was also from engineering. Which meant it must have been one of the biologists.
He swallowed. He'd killed this person and all he knew was that it was 'one of the biologists'. In his mind the Thing on the transporter gurgled and hissed through its final twitching movements.
"They're going to be alright, Mr Reed," said Phlox without looking up from his patients. "The antidote for the poison is taking effect nicely." Reed felt another wave of nausea hit him and retched. An instant later the sympathetic face of Dr Phlox loomed over the shaken lieutenant, who vaguely noticed the hypospray in the doctor's hand. Then Reed's world went black.
*
"It is illogical to feel guilty. You saved six people's lives."
Malcolm shook his head. He was surprised by T'Pol's sudden sympathetic comment but he supposed it was obvious that he wasn't coping well.
The memorial service had just finished for Andrei Petrescu - the man he had killed. The crew were standing around in the mess hall eating canapes - canapes for god's sake! Petrescu had died a messy painful death and the crew of the Enterprise were eating canapes. Malcolm himself had barely been able to eat at all for the past two days. He couldn't keep anything down even when Phlox had ordered him to try, he just kept seeing over and over the Thing that had materialised on the transporter. He had seen in the mirror how grey and ill he looked - no matter how hard he tried to act as if things were normal. No wonder T'Pol felt she had to try to be comforting.
"The transporters are known not to be safe for biological use," T'Pol said, almost sounding exasperated. "That is why they are not used instead of the shuttlepods."
Reed tried to interrupt her. To say he knew all that, but it still didn't help. As he was about to speak, Commander Tucker walked up.
"Malcolm, you look terrible," said Trip. Against his will, Malcolm almost smiled. Trust Trip not to mince words. T'Pol edged away, apparently picking up on the fact that Trip wanted to talk to his friend alone.
"Are you ok?" asked the engineer.
"I'm fine," he shot back. He turned stiffly away from Trip to look out of the window at the starfield.
"I will be fine. No. I'm not fine." His shoulders tensed and he winced, closing his eyes. Petrescu's remains materialised in front of him again and he fought down an attack of queasiness. His eyes shot open. Maybe he should confess.
His voice shook. "When everyone thought we'd killed the Paraagans, I was sure we'd done nothing wrong. And then it all turned out fine in the end. And when we thought Enterprise was destroyed - it all turned out fine in the end. I just keep on waiting for this to all turn out fine in the end. And it's not going to. And this time I'm not convinced I did nothing wrong."
"But that's not what's really buggin' you," said Trip.
Damn, thought Malcom, Trip could be a bit too perceptive at times.
"I wished him dead, you know," he blurted out, addressing the wall as much as Trip. "I stood at that console and I didn't know who it was but I didn't want it to be anyone I knew. And it wasn't. I mean I'd barely ever said two words to the chap and now he's dead. And all I could think was that I was glad that I never knew him."
Malcolm stopped and turned away from the window. He looked into Trip's eyes expecting to see the revulsion he felt. Instead he watched as puzzlement turned into understanding.
"Yeah, well I'm glad too. I mean, I'm glad I'm not dead. I'm glad Travis isn't dead. I'm glad Jannsen isn't dead. It's normal, Malcolm. We care more about our friends." Trip patted him on the shoulder and walked away before Malcolm could start to argue with his words of wisdom.
Malcolm Reed turned back to the window and, too quietly for anyone in the room to hear he whispered: "I'm sorry Ensign Andrei Petrescu. I wish I'd been your friend. I wish I'd made more effort to get to know you. I still might not have been able to save you, but at least I'd have had a better memory of you. I'm going to try. I'm going to try harder to talk to everyone. I don't think I'll ever be everyone's pal like Trip, but I will try harder. I'm sorry Andrei Petrescu."
He closed his eyes and from the depths of memory conjured a mental picture of the young biologist. A studious looking man, with a thick mop of hair and dark eyebrows that met in the middle, materialised on the transporter pad in Malcolm's mind.
THE END