I'm sorry this chapter is so late; I've had a lot going on... winter break... Christmas... school... that stuff. Anyway, here is chapter 2. There's still not much of a plot; it's mostly character-development-type stuff. Enjoy!
Captain Lylan channeled all her excitement into her grip on the arms of her chair. It was almost too much to keep herself from vibrating in her seat. But the captain couldn't bee seen as anything other than a pillar of strength by the crew, and shaking herself out of her chair would not help her create that image.
Speaking of images, she had other matters to attend to. She rose form her (comfortable) seat. "Lieutenant Kres'sh, come with me, please. Commander, you have the bridge."
With that she walked off the bridge and into her ready room. Thel followed after her, and as she seated herself behind her desk, he stood formally across from her. "Sir?" he asked.
Sara put her hands on her desk. "Now, I know what you do before you come on board this ship is your business, but what I witnessed last night was unacceptable for a Starfleet officer. I do not want that kind of behavior to be repeated. If you are incapable of controlling yourself, you should reevaluate whether you belong on my ship. Is that understood?"
Kres'sh opened his mouth, but thought better of whatever he was going to say. "Understood, sir," he said.
"Good." She leaned back in her seat. "You may return to your post."
After the doors closed behind Thel, the captain rested her head on her hands. With an odd sense of detachment, she observed her own raised pulse and anger responses. Small wonder, she thought, that she was feeling resentment toward her chief of security. The Andorian's innate hostility aside, his actions had been unacceptable. No matter what the other man had done, Kres'sh was a Starfleet officer. Hopefully, it was an isolated incident and would not repeat itself. Sara's head ached at the thought of having to call security on the Chief of Security...
Every captain she'd served under, every simulation and ship's log she'd watched...they'd all made it look so easy.
The chirp of inter-ship communications caught her attention, and, pushing a stray lock of hair into place, she sat up and pressed the button that activated the screen. "Lylan here."
If the face on the other end noticed anything odd in Lylan's face or posture, it betrayed nothing through its mask of Vulcan composure. "Captain, may I remind you that your physical has been scheduled for 1400 hours this afternoon?"
"Yes, thank you, Doctor." She leaned closer to the screen. "Doctor, what would you say to joining me later for a game of chess? I've got nothing else to do during my lunch break, and it seems like the perfect time for us to get to know each other."
T'lea hesitated for a second, then nodded. "That would be acceptable," she decided. "Now, if you would excuse me, sir, I have another physical to attend to. T'lea out." The screen went dark.
Alex tucked her legs underneath herself, settling into her seat. Except for a few other off-duty officers, the mess hall was vacant—a prerequisite to her presence there. There was also, of course, the man sitting across from her, who was a prerequisite as well.
It seemed to her that Mark must consider it one of his primary purposes in life to extract her from her quarters and place her in uncomfortable situations, most often with the excuse that she needed to "get out more often." However, on more than one occasion, his efforts had resulted in her having anxiety attacks.
"Are you sure you're okay?" he was asking. "You look kind of pale."
She considered for a moment. "I think so," she said, but her voice came out a bit fainter than she had intended. "I'm just... nervous, I guess." She hugged herself, looking down and to the left.
Mark rested his forearms on the table. "Well, I don't see why," he said bluntly. "What do you have to be nervous about?"
"I don't know. It's just that the whole time I was on the bridge, I was terrified. I kept thinking I'd make a mistake and embarrass myself."
"Like stage fright."
"Yeah, I guess so." She bit the edge of her lip. "Do you think I made a fool of myself? I noticed that people kept looking at me, like I was doing something wrong."
Mark was taken aback. "No—you did fine. Why wouldn't you?"
For a moment, after he said it, Mark was afraid she wouldn't recognize the rhetorical question, but for once her thinking was a little less literal than usual. "You're right. I'm being silly. I'm just anxious because this is the first time I've ever served on a starship. I'll be fine once I get used to it."
Mark nodded mutely, anticipating the volley of words that followed.
"I could hear every sound on the bridge. Every time someone moved in their seat, or touched a button, it was like it was right next to me. That must have been what made me so tense—I couldn't block out any of the sounds. Or, I might have already been tense, and it made me more sensitive to what was going on around me, which only added to my stress. Actually, it must have been that, because I'm not usually that sensitive, so something, like stress, must have made me more so."
Mike looked at her. "Well, maybe you should bring it up during your physical. It couldn't hurt."
In the time he'd known Alexandria Thatcher (and in the considerably greater length of time that he'd known of her through Luke), she had always had trouble functioning in everyday situations the way other people did. Sure, sit her down in front of an exam computer and she'd blow you away, but put her in a room full of people or ask her to make eye contact during a conversation, and she would be at a loss.
When he'd first met her, through her brother, he'd thought she was rude, or proud. Then, as he spent more time with Luke, he'd realized that she was just shy. Who wouldn't be, if they were as lost as she sometimes seemed to be? It made it hard to be anything but her close friend, what with her tendency to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, as he thought of it—that is, she said whatever came into her mind when she thought of it, and didn't think there was anything odd about it.
"That's a good idea. You know, I've never met a Vulcan before. Have you? I've always been interested in their culture. The idea of a completely logical society is so interesting. I wonder if..."
Mark listened halfway as she continued emptying the contents of her mind onto the table. This was the part of being a surrogate brother that he found the most difficult. Alex's thoughts were, in fact, usually very interesting, especially to a scientist, for whom an analytical pattern of thinking was natural. The problem with Miss Thatcher was that she tended to over-analyze certain things.
Did she really anyone other than a scientist would be interested in the genetic similarities between bacteria strains from Vulcan and Romulan colonies?
On the other end of the mess hall, unnoticed by the other members of the crew, Captain Sarajul Lylan was leaning back in her seat (six feet on the floor, her grade school teachers would have reminded her) and perusing the contents of a crew roster. Yes, she had already reviewed it before coming aboard, and yes, she had even picked a few of its members herself, but she had little else to do, and somehow it felt right to be doing this instead of reading that new novel Dad had sent her the month before.
Who was she kidding?
She closed the current file being displayed on the padd, and pulled up one of her own.
The title assaulted her with its massive font size almost immediately. Beyond, it read. Below it was a map of explored space, over which was superimposed an image of a starship traveling directly toward the viewer.
The next "page" displayed the table of contents, which listed a preface followed by twenty-seven chapters and an afterword. She selected the first chapter; the preface would be a waste of time until she actually knew what the book was about.
Feet padded across the carpeted floor. A chair slid out, and Carol Lylan sat down by her elder sister. Sara put down her padd. "Hi, Carrie," she said.
"Hello, Captain," Carol replied playfully. "What are you reading?"
"Nothing..." Sara met her sister's gaze. "It's something Dad sent me. It's a book."
"What's it about?"
Sara glanced at the padd. "I have no idea; I haven't even read the first page yet."
"Oh."
"So, what brought you here," Sarajul said, switching gears, "ship's business, or something else?"
The engineer leaned back, mimicking her sister's posture before she had come in, but her eyes were like ice. "I just thought I'd talk to my sister, whom I hadn't seen for three years until she docked a shuttle in this ship's hangar deck."
Sara looked at her hands. "Carrie..."
The younger sister continued, the anguish in her voice mounting. "Three years, Sara? That's a long time. Now, I'm sure that even with all the exciting things you were doing aboard the Freedom you could have called, just once in a while. But no. You were the Mighty Commander Lylan, who couldn't be bothered with a lowly lieutenant, even if she was your sister. I guess all those years you spent with that pitiful excuse for a father must have paid off. You're just. Like. Him."
By the end of her tirade, she was practically foaming at the mouth. There were few others in the mess hall, but Sara was still glad Carol had had the sense to keep her voice down. Hoping her sister wouldn't attack her again, she said, "Carrie, look, I'm sorry. Can we talk this over later, and somewhere more private? Like my quarters? Or yours?"
Slowly, Carol nodded. She stood. "That's just fine. I'll see you this evening, then." Her voice was surprisingly calm.
Just before she walked away, Sara added, "Lieutenant, if your feelings are going to affect your performance of your duties, I suggest you put in for a transfer right away."
"Don't worry, sir," Carol said with a bitter smile. "I'll do my job."
"I'm sure," the captain muttered as her sister walked away.
Not fifteen seconds later, Sara found herself with another visitor. Elni Daron slid into the very seat Carol had just left, leaning against one arm of the chair. "Don't worry, Mr. Nguyen has the bridge. I sensed some pretty hot tempers in this area, so I thought I'd come investigate." His captain did not respond, and Daron abandoned his strategic levity. "Was it your sister?"
The first officer didn't need the responding "Yes" to tell him he was right.
"I understand there are some hard feelings between the two of you. You don't want to talk about them, do you?" Part of the second-in-command's duty was to ensure the functionality of the crew, including the captain. However, as a Betazoid, this particular first officer took it upon himself to act as a sort of part-time counselor, much to the relief of the ordinary Human ship's counselor, Tina Redding, who anticipated a very large work load in the future.
Sara snorted. "Hard feelings? She hates me."
"True." That much had been clear from the bridge. "I don't suppose you have any idea why, though."
"Yes, I do."
Her voice became very matter of fact. "When I was fifteen, and she was ten, our parents decided to get divorced. Brilliantly enough, things were arranged so that I went our father, and she went with our mother. We kept in touch and got together from time to time, but it was never the same.
"When I graduated from high school, I joined Starfleet. Carrie did the same. By the time she graduated, I was already a lieutenant. Soon, I was promoted to Lieutenant Commander, and then Commander... and I found I had less and less time for sending subspace messages to my sister.
"Finally, about four years ago, our mother became ill. It Carrie came back to Earth to be with her. I... I had just been posted as the first officer of the USS Freedom, and I wanted to be on the ship when it launched. Mother's sickness wasn't serious, but right before I left Carrie and I had a big fight. She thought that by leaving I was betraying our mother, abandoning her. After that, I stopped talking to my sister. I hadn't seen or heard from her until I came aboard the Atlas yesterday."
Elni sat up. "And that's why she was upset with you." Sara nodded.
The Betazoid was a bit surprised at his captain's unusual openness. In his observation, Humans tended to protect this sort of thing. Perhaps Sarajul Lylan was different.
"Captain," said a musical voice. Without looking, Elni recognized the telltale mental barriers of a Vulcan.
Lylan's face lit up, and her mood improved considerably. "Hello, doctor. Are you here for that chess game?"
There was a hint of an unidentifiable something behind those walls as T'lea responded, "Of course, Captain. You were the one who requested it." Annoyance? Amusement? Decades of mind disciplines made it impossible for Betazoid empathy to tell.
Elni stood. "I'll leave you two to your game, then."
Both women nodded at him as he left. The board was set, and the players were ready.
About five minutes into the game, Sara said, "Doctor, I want to ask your unbiased opinion about something." She almost missed the Vulcan's next move while watching her eyebrow creep up her face. "Or, someone, actually."
"Who?"
"Lieutenant Kres'sh."
T'lea nodded. "The security officer. An Andorian."
"Yes. Has he seemed... unusually hostile to you? I mean," she chuckled, "for a non-Vulcan."
If she weren't Vulcan, T'lea's voice might be said to have been dripping with disapproval. "He is, after all, an Andorian. They are an extremely aggressive and warlike race. Hostility is to be expected."
Sara made her move, her brow wrinkling in confusion. "Mm... I spoke to him not too long ago. You see, I encountered him in a... an establishment back on Earth, the night before we left. I just stopped him from beating a man to pulp. I don't know what the fight was about, or who started it, but I told Kres'sh—he was in uniform and everything—that his behavior was unbefitting of a Starfleet officer. When I spoke to him this morning, he still seemed resentful."
When the captain was silent for a prolonged moment, T'lea understood that she was expected to respond. "I do not understand what you want my opinion about, Captian."
"I was wondering if there were anything in Kres'sh files I should know about... anything that might indicate that there might be a repeat of that incident?"
T'lea moved again, capturing one of Sara's pieces. "Captain, it is not logical for you to be asking me this."
Sara's expression lingered somewhere between intrigued an amused. A smile quirked at the corners of her lips. "Oh?" She captured one of T'lea's pieces in return.
The doctor inclined her head. "Based on my understanding of Human emotionalism, you would appear to be overreacting. While the lieutenant's behavior is indeed disappointing, the circumstances surrounding it were entirely unknown to you. It would not be prudent to make any judgements when so many unknowns remain. Furthermore, although you are right to express your wishes against such an altercation taking place aboard the Atlas, may I remind you that Lieutenant Kres'sh is a trained Starfleet officer, and a Security Chief, no less. If he were not capable of handling such situations, he would not belong aboard this ship. Check."
T'lea was uncertain whether her captain's unreadable expression was due to the pieces on the board or what her opponent had just said. Finally, she said, "You're right, of course, as I expected." She moved her pieces so that her king was no longer in danger.
"Checkmate," T'lea said.
Sara glared at the board for a second, as if she suspected some trick. Then, she grinned. "Well, I guess I should have expected that, too. But it won't be nearly so easy next time." She stood to leave.
"Next time, captain?"
Lylan gave her her biggest smile yet, the kind that, if T'lea had been able to recognize it, would have indicated some kind of mischief. "You don't think I'll let you get away with beating me like that, do you, Doctor? Besides, this has been very therapeutic. I think we'll get along well."
Not knowing quite what to make of the statement, T'lea could only think to reply, "Be certain that you do not forget your physical, Captain. It is scheduled for tomorrow morning at 0700 hours."
"Don't worry, I won't forget."
T'lea switched off the medscanner after running it over the ensign's body one last time. "Mr. Barrows, I ensure you that you are entirely healthy. Please leave now."
Ensign Barrows nodded uncertainly. "If you say so, Doctor. So you're sure..."
"Yes, Ensign. If you would please remove yourself from the table; I have other patients to attend to."
Obligingly, Tyler vacated the biobed.
"Doctor..." Barrows hesitated.
T'lea dismissed him. "Go." She entered some information to a padd.
Barrows left. A few moments later, with a hiss of automatic doors opening, he was replaced by a tiny yellow-haired woman—who looked more like a girl. Of course, T'lea recognized her face from the ship's personnel files, and quickly gave it a name. Ensign Alexandria Thatcher, age 19 Earth years, newly graduated from the Academy. The CMO had found this individual's files particularly interesting.
Alex Thatcher stood with her arms folded over her chest, not in stubbornness, but in as a feeble protection against the very formidable Vulcan standing across from her.
"Ensign Thatcher," T'lea acknowledged. "Please remove your uniform and put on the medical gown. The restroom is at your disposal."
Alex took the proffered garment silently, and obediently headed for the enclosed area. Once inside, she stripped down equally as silently, and emerged clad in the blue dress-like piece of clothing.
Thatcher's physical went smoothly until T'lea, in response to something she had read in the ensign's file. She ran tests on the young woman's eyesight, hearing, and senses of touch and balance. What she found were slightly unusual readings, by Human standards, but according to Miss Thatcher's medical records, they were not unusual for her.
Her eyesight was actually slightly better than normal. Her hearing responded well to conventional tests, but when a test for the ability to distinguish spoken words was applied, the results were disappointing. Her balance also left some things to be desired. T'lea considered the fact that the problems might be linked.
Throughout the physical, T'lea questioned the ensign casually. The responses were exact and honest, but Thatcher did not provide any information outside of her—sometimes extensive—answers. With a normal Human, the exchange would have evolved quickly into a conversation. With this particular Human, it remained a simple trading of questions and answers.
By the end of the physical, the doctor had gathered enough evidence to corroborate the diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome that stood unmistakably at the top of Alexandria's psych profile. Based on what she knew of the disorder—one that Human psychology had been aware of in one form or another for centuries—Ensign Thatcher's behavior fit with it perfectly. Social awkwardness, lack of coordination, sensory distortion...all were symptoms of the mild Autism spectrum disorder.
"Ensign, have you experienced any... sensory problems lately?" she inquired.
The Human considered. "Well...there was yesterday, on the bridge... I was having trouble tuning out all the sounds everyone was making. It was kind of overwhelming. Does that count?"
"Yes. Do such things happen to you frequently?"
"Well... mostly when I'm nervous, or stressed out."
T'lea nodded, as if this confirmed something she had been thinking. "I can prescribe a medication that will lessen those effects, if you choose. However, it may also cause some dizziness and disorientation."
"Are there other options?"
"Yes. You can begin speaking with the counselor to devise a method of coping with or even preventing these incidents. You could also decline any treatment, if you think the problem is not serious."
Alex considered it for a while. "I think I'd pick talking to the counselor."
T'lea nodded. "I will have her contact you later. You may go."
As Ensign Thatcher left, T'lea noted that the girl's behavior seemed very logical... for a Human. Yes, she did certainly have emotions, but it seemed that she did not allow them to control her. T'lea decided that it would be worth keeping an eye on this individual's progress. At the very least, it would be an interesting study, as she had never observed the effects of Asperger's Syndrome firsthand before.
"Sickbay to Captain Lylan," a disembodied voice intoned.
Reluctantly, Sara answered, "Lylan here. What is it?"
"Captain, your physical was scheduled for 0700 hours. It is now 0710. If you continue to delay, I will have to reschedule you for another time."
Attempting to hide her embarrassment, Sara replied, "That won't be necessary, doctor. I'll be right there." She nodded to Commander Daron as she headed to the turbolift; he took her place in the center seat.
"Sickbay," she told the lift, and moments later, with no indication of movement other than the lights on the wall, the doors opened to reveal her destination.
She strode over to the station where T'lea was waiting, reading some file or another. Hearing her approach, the Vulcan looked up. "Captain."
"Sorry I'm late. Let's get this over with."
T'lea had to work quickly to make up for lost time. When the captain objected to her haste, she simply reminded the Human, in carefully selected, logical terms, that it was her own fault for forgetting and going to the bridge instead of coming directly to sickbay.
Sara didn't tell her that she hadn't forgotten, exactly; she found the procedure of the physical extremely redundant, as she was in perfect health, thank you, and would be much more useful on the bridge than in sickbay under the metallic scrutiny of various diagnostic machines. At least, that's what she told herself.
She did tell her CMO about the time she and her sister (before The Divorce) had gotten in trouble at school for gluing the school bully's locker shut and hacked the computerized controls of said locker to berate the aforementioned student quite loudly once the door had been unglued, respectively.
T'lea's response was to repeat her request for the captain to please step onto the scale so she could be weighed.
Later, Lylan repeated her attempt at humor by referring to the ship's current technical problems (the majority had not been solved in the past three days). "You'd think that by the 24th century we'd have figured out a way to make starships that work more than ten percent of the time."
The doctor paused for a matter of seconds, barely long enough for Sara to notice, let alone realize that it was in response to her joke. "Captain, I would advise you not to make any more purposeless comments for the duration of your physical. The process will be over more quickly if you do not interrupt."
"They're not purposeless!" Sara objected. "Humor is a proven method of reducing stress levels and increasing quality of performance. I thought that as a doctor, you of all people would understand that."
Much to Sara's dismay, however, none of her comments received a reply after that point. She left feeling slightly indignant at the Vulcan's somber ways, not that she really blamed her. The Vulcan, on the other hand, saw no logical reason for her human captain's behavior and was only able to conclude that Captain Sara Lylan was simply an illogical being.
After Captain Lylan left the bridge, Commander Daron leaned back in his seat, overseeing the activity of the Alpha Shift on the bridge. The overall emotional atmosphere was calm, maybe even a little bored. Surely they were nearing their destination—a small, lifeless system near the Neutral Zone.
"Ensign Thatcher, what is our ETA to the Hyskan system?"
"Um, twenty hours. Sir." She was oddly nervous for someone answering a simple question, he noted. In fact, Thatcher was oddly nervous in general. So far, though, it hadn't been a hindrance, and Daron decided to "leave well enough alone" (a Terran saying) in this case.
Hyska VI had unusual geographic formations, according to the report from the scouting ship that had mapped the area a few months ago. Now the Atlas was being sent there to conduct further studies, to investigate whether the formations had been artificially created. Ever since the revelation in '69 of the existence of the ancient humanoid race that had seeded its genetic material throughout countless star systems, Starfleet had been enthralled by the historical mystery—at least, the scientific departments had. The idea of a common ancestry for so many of the galaxy's intelligences was too important to ignore.
Still, Elni had his doubts about Hyska VI. The planet was interesting, yes, and the geographical formations could have been artificially created, but... something just didn't seem right. It was too close to the Neutral Zone for one thing. And the Romulans had been unusually active recently. Putting two and two together, Elni suspected there was more to this mission than met the eye.
It had been four years since the Reman takeover of the senate, and the government of Romulus was barely recovered from the effects. That, at least, was according to the last reports. The Federation, along with all other parties, had been completely shut out of Romulan affairs. Even intelligence reports brought back only vague, useless rumors.
But long-range scans had been able to detect the unusual amount of Warbirds just beyond the Neutral Zone. Over years of working with humans, Commander Daron had developed some fairly accurate instincts, and right now those instincts were telling him that that was the real reason the Atlas was going to the Hyskan system. Only time would tell, though, if anything would come of it. More human idioms.
Elni wasn't aware of how much time had passed until Captain Lylan reentered the bridge with a swoosh of the turbolift doors. He relinquished the center seat, returning to his former position at the Master Situation console. Only nineteen hours to go.
Mark lay stretched out on his bed, his feet dangling off the end. His eyes followed the lines of text on the padd: the latest book Alex had loaned him.
Eventually, he realized that he was reading the same line over and over again. He put the padd down, sighing at his lack of concentration. He was off-duty, and he supposed he should be taking advantage of this fact to either get some sleep (despite the fact that it was the middle of the afternoon) or spend some time in the crew lounge, getting to know some of his shipmates.
At the moment, he didn't much feel like doing either. His mind told him that he should be well-rested for his physical tomorrow, and for when the ship reached Hyska VI. As a senior officer, he would have to get to work right away when he came on duty, maybe even participate in a landing party. The idea wasn't unpleasant.
As for the idea of going to the crew lounge or the mess hall... well, at the moment it just didn't seem right. What would he do there? He only even knew one person out of the hundreds on this ship, and she'd run the other way sooner than join in anything involving large crowds. So he'd sit alone, which would defeat the point, or he would join some of his new crew mates and get to know them.
At any other time, that would have been a great idea, so why not now? Maybe he was coming down with something.
He groaned at the thought, his mind jumping to his impending physical. It was set for the next morning, just before he went on duty. What would it be like, he wondered, having the Vulcan doctor examining him like that? Probably cold, impersonal, not unlike the machines she would use. Vulcans were like that. There had been one, an engineer named Senik, on the ship when Luke had died. How could he have forgotten? When the landing party had been attacked, it had been Senik who had called for beam-up... after Luke had been taken.
When they had finally retrieved the broken, bleeding body, the doctor had told Mark sadly that there was little he could do, that even if Lieutenant Thatcher did recover, it was likely that he'd never recover from his injuries, especially the ones to his spinal column and nervous system. In the end, it hadn't been an issue—there was nothing left of his friend to worry about, unless you believed in an afterlife and all that.
Even after the captain's official notification-of-death message, Mark had felt the need to speak to Luke's family personally. He'd met them before, occasionally, but it was still awkward to call them about such a sad, sad, subject. Hours had been spent comforting his grieving mother over the light years; hours more answering all his sister's questions. Mr. Thatcher had remained aloof; the death of his eldest child had marked him deeply and permanently. Unable to fully express, or even acknowledge what he felt, Luke's and Alex's father, private man that he was, had retreated into himself, behind a carefully-erected emotional wall, and eventually self-destructed.
Leaving his family with one more loss to mourn.
Mark, ever the faithful friend, had kept in touch with them the whole time. It was in this way that he had begun to get to know Alexandria. She had had so many questions about her brother at first. Did he like the Stormcloud? Had he made a lot of friends there? How close had Mark and he been?
Some of her queries had leaned a little toward the odd. How many decorations did he have in his quarters, and what kind? Where had he spent the most time? Mark finally realized what she was doing—building a mental picture of the environment her brother had spent his last days in.
She was an odd creature, to be sure. But what with her innocence and honesty, it was only natural to like her. And with all the information she was constantly spewing, it was impossible not to get to know her. But she was vulnerable, too, more so without her brother and protector. It was in anticipation of this that Luke had made a request of Mark some months before his death.
"You have to promise me something," he'd said, out of the blue.
Mark had been taken by surprise. "What?"
"If anything happens to me..." he'd cut Mark's forthcoming remark about how ridiculous that was "...I need you to take care of Alex. She's like a baby, and Mom and Dad never really knew how to handle her. Promise you'll look out for her."
And Mark had, never anticipating how quickly he'd need to fulfill that promise.
It had been a mark of Luke's character, he mused, that compulsion to see to everyone else's needs first. Because of that impulse, he had been immune to prejudice, accepting everyone equally and openly, no matter how badly he though of them.
Smiling wryly, Mark realized that he was depicting Lucas Thatcher as nothing short of an angel. The irony of that idea made him laugh aloud. There had been no shortage of times the man had fought—physically or otherwise—for his beliefs. It had even landed him in front of a board of inquiry once, when they were both ensigns. But that was another story...
She sat motionless on her bed, leaning against the bulkhead.
Her mind drifted through a reality all its own, totally unrelated to the outside world.
Within this state of existence, time was not a factor.
There was only thought, and silence.
Even her bodily functions were slowed, an indicator of her extremely relaxed state.
In her own way, T'lea was in a state of total bliss.
It was a staple of Vulcan existence, as essential to their psychological makeup as their trademark logic.
A wailing alarm jerked T'lea out of her meditative trance. Red lights flashed. Within seconds, T'lea stripped out of her meditation robes and donned her uniform. Then, with inhuman speed, she darted out of her quarters and down the corridor, passing other rapidly-moving crew members on her way to sickbay. She did not give even a passing thought to the cause of the red alert; it was more important that she preform her duties to the best of her abilities and preserve the lives of the Atlas crew.
The automatic doors opened on a frenzy of activity in sickbay. The instant she stepped in, a nurse appeared by T'lea's side to inform her of the current status of each of the patients. None of them had been on the ship long, but everyone in sickbay was already aware that the Chief Medical Officer would tolerate nothing less than top efficiency, especially in an emergency.
T'lea headed straight for the most injured patients. So far, these were fairly simple; a few broken bones, a large gash or two, and one minor phaser burn. All were treated easily and quickly.
It was then that a pair of disheveled ensigns entered, carefully carrying a third between them. As soon as the young man had been placed on a biobed, T'lea began examining him.
The extent of his injury was evident even to the naked eye. The whole right side of the man's body looked as if it had been crushed. There were extensive burns, as if from some kind of explosion, especially across his face.
Without looking up from her patient, T'lea asked, "What happened?"
One of the ensigns, a female, answered, "We had followed some of the Hyskans into cargo bay two, and we were about to ambush them, when one of them fired and hit a container. It exploded. Kyle was the only one nearby."
The Vulcan accepted the conformation of her theory with equanimity. She stored away the hint about the ship's status; let the security officers worry about security matters. She would need all her concentration to put this human back in working order.
It was difficult to know where to start; the biobed screen showed that the internal damage was severe. The most immediately life-threatening was a fractured rib near the man's lungs, which could puncture one of them given the chance.
As T'lea set to work, delivering orders as serenely as if she were patching up a child's skinned knee, she couldn't help but pick up bits of information from the background.
"...Hyskans on Deck 11...send someone to intercept them..."
"...multiple disruptor wounds...must be getting weapons from the Romulans..."
"...some kind of telepathy. I swear, there's no way they could have seen or heard me coming!"
"...never seen bruises like these. What kind of..."
"...got to be kidding me! There's no way..."
As more and more chatter filtered through her attempt at selective deafness, an image began to form in T'lea's mind. It seemed that the inhabitants of Hyska VI were opposed to the idea of the Federation conducting geographical surveys there. A group had boarded the Atlas, and were apparently attempting to either divert it or destroy it.
Having repaired the young security officer's broken rib, T'lea turned the bone knitter on his right leg. The fractures were slightly less severe there, since the leg bones are the strongest in the body, but they were still very bad. It would be very helpful to know what had been in the exploded container, but neither of the patient's companions knew, and there was no time to check the records. She would have to make do.
T'lea had just begun healing the first of many fractures in Ensign Halley's right arm when she heard the telltale chirp of a communicator. "Bridge to sickbay."
"T'lea here." The voice calling from the bridge was definitely male. Commander Daron.
"Doctor, you need to come up here now. The captain's been injured."
I hope you liked it! Please review. Chapter 3 will (hopefully) be up soon.