Chapter Three
In which our heroes seek out answers, find an old friend, and wish that they hadn't.
Beverly never felt entirely at ease when she was on the bridge. She was a bridge officer, able to command the ship if Jean-Luc ever saw a need for it, but when she was only here as a doctor, she never knew quite what to do with herself.
As it was, today she sat in the seat to the captain's left watching Dytallix B grow larger and larger on the view screen. She was always anxious when assigned to an away team, usually an excited, anticipatory sort of nervous, but today she wasn't sure what sort of nerves were making her adrenaline flow. She felt shaky, and her insides trembled if she clenched her muscles too tightly.
"Assume a standard orbit, Mr. Crusher, and scan the temperate zone of the planet for life signs." Jean-Luc stood, taking a few steps forward until he commanded the center of the bridge. If he was as nervous as she, he didn't show it. He looked entirely in his element, strong profile concentrating on the viewscreen before him.
"Aye, Captain," Wesley replied. Beverly looked determinedly away, not wanting to embarrass her son by letting her pride show. She snuck a peek over at him, though, at the helm and was pleased to see Jean-Luc's hand resting on the back of Wes's chair back as he leaned over to watch the scan progress. "I'm not picking up any life signs, sir. The planet appears to be deserted. Although…."
"Yes, Mr. Crusher?"
"There is a slightly higher concentration of carbon dioxide in one of the mine entrances as compared to the average atmospheric concentration. It's not much, but it could mean there's been someone there recently. Very recently."
"Well done, Ensign. Transmit the coordinates for that location to transporter room three. Doctor, you're with me. You have the bridge, Number One." Picard crossed to the turbolift and gestured for Beverly to follow.
"Captain, at least take a security officer with you," Will protested, though it seemed more perfunctory than sincere to Beverly.
"I will be fine, Number One. I have my phaser and Doctor Crusher is quite the shot. She'll keep an eye on me." The lift doors shut behind them. "Deck Six."
The lift seemed slow. It was entirely a matter of perception, but she couldn't help feeling as though they were stuck in a time dilation. She checked her phaser. It was slung on her hip, opposite her tricorder, which made her feel ever-so-slightly like a gunslinger, pearl-handled double-barrels at her sides. She touched the handle of the weapon, hoping she wouldn't need to use it.
The lift stopped and they exited, Jean-Luc first, Beverly following close behind. Neither had spoken during the ride down. Still in silence, they walked towards the transporter room. Maybe she was tricking herself, but Beverly thought she could see hesitation in Jean-Luc's step. Finally, just outside the transporter room, he stopped and turned to her.
"Beverly, I don't know what we're going to find down there. You don't have to-"
"It has taken me two days to convince you that you can't beam down there alone. Do you honestly think I'm going to change my mind now?" And it was the truth. She had spent most of the journey from Earth convincing Jean-Luc to let her come along. She suspected he'd finally agreed simply to get her to be quiet, but a part of her wondered whether he wanted someone there with him who understood the difficulty of the task and hadn't had the heart to admit it from the start. "Besides, you've been sitting on the bridge so long your aim is getting sloppy."
"Sloppy? I am not sloppy, Doctor." His indignation was more mock than anything.
"I'm afraid you are, Captain," she goaded. "No, as your doctor, I couldn't let you go alone. You need me."
Jean-Luc stilled for a moment. "Yes," he said quietly, "I do."
Beverly wavered, wondering what he meant by that. He must have seen the uncertainty play across her face because the soft expression he had worn vanished and he strode into the transporter room. She followed.
Chief O'Brien was on duty, and this didn't surprise Beverly. The enlisted man was one of the captain's favorites.
"Mr. O'Brien, I trust you've received the transport coordinates?"
"Aye, sir. As soon as you're ready," O'Brien replied, stepping behind the console.
Beverly stepped onto the transporter pad, taking up her favorite spot. Jean-Luc joined her, his hand briefly going to the phaser at his hip before he nodded at the chief.
The disconcertingly pleasant, bubbling sensation enveloped Beverly and she closed her eyes. Transporting was such an odd experience. She had tried keeping her eyes open a few times before but had found it too disorienting. The tingling subsided almost as quickly as it had come and she opened her eyes to find herself standing in front of a rather unremarkable ramp descending into a hole in the ground. The sun was at her back and her shadow stretched before her until it disappeared into the darkness of the mine.
Jean-Luc stood a meter or so to her left, his shadow merged with hers further down the ramp. A cold breeze blew in her face from the dark side of the planet. "This is the place where Walker had me meet him. The same mine."
The perpetual twilight around them was strange, even a bit eerie. It had none of the warmth and beauty that Beverly had always associated with sunset. Instead, it felt stagnant and ominous.
"Ready, Doctor?"
She nodded and reached for her tricorder, initiating a scan. "Still no life signs. Do you suppose we should start with the mine?"
"I think that's wise."
They both descended into the mine. Beverly's tricorder screen lit up for a moment in response to the darkness before the long-abandoned computers and lights flared to life. She glanced around briefly before walking straight to the computer console nestled in an alcove cut into the stone walls. The Federation insignia rotated slowly against the black background. She out to touch the screen but stopped short, instead scanning the display for cellular residue, but there was none present. Now certain that she wasn't disturbing any evidence, she pressed her fingertips to the glass.
"The communications subsystem is still running," she told Jean-Luc.
"Are there any logs?" He sounded as though he was only half listening. Beverly glanced over her shoulder and found that he was standing in the far corner of the mine, studying his surroundings with an intensity Beverly found a bit perplexing.
She scrolled through a few screens. "The last recorded transmission is…fifteen years old. No help there."
"No, there wouldn't be…"
"Feeling cynical today, are we?"
"What? Oh, no, I'm sorry." He crossed the mine in a few long strides and came up behind her. Beverly was a little unnerved that he was so close. His chest brushed her upper arm as he leaned forward to scroll through the transmission logs himself and she held her breath. "There shouldn't be any records. A code 47 communiqué is designed to trigger self-deleting protocols whenever it's used. They can be tracked as they come in but once the transmission end they're gone. I must admit, I had hoped otherwise…"
Beverly let out a silent breath as Jean-Luc stepped away.
"Are you sure this is the same place you were contacted from?" It was a logical question, she thought. Perhaps the transmission hadn't shown up on the computer here because it hadn't originated from this console.
"Yes." For a moment she thought he was simply going to leave it at that, but he continued. "I recognize that mark on the wall."
Beverly looked to where Jean-Luc had been standing a few minutes before and saw a large, deep gash in the stone. The edges of it were blackened, as though the stone itself had been burned away. She walked to it and ran her fingers over the roughened rock. Pulling the hand sensor from beneath the scanners on her tricorder, she initiated a scan and ran the whirring little device over as much of the cut as she could reach.
"It's recent. I'd say no more than two or three weeks. And it's from a Starfleet phaser, type II. Was it here when you met Walker and the others?" She turned to face Jean-Luc who was staring intently at the floor of the cavern. No wonder Will wouldn't let him come on away teams, she mused. He's all over the place.
"No, it wasn't. It's got to be more recent than that."
"Well, let's think about this logically then. As far as we know, no one has been to Dytallix B except the four of you-Scott, Walker, Rixx, and you- and now me in the last fifteen years. No records of ships in and out or anything?"
"Seems like a fair assumption to me. I'm not sure it matters either way. All we're really concerned with is, say, the last month." Jean-Luc had stopped pacing and was watching her. Beverly pulled a nearby storage crate away from the wall and sat on it rather unceremoniously.
"Alright. If no one has been here but the five of us, that group has to include whoever sent you the code 47. It wasn't you and it wasn't me. It can't have been Captain Scott. She arrived back at Earth before the Enterprise did and she's been at Medical ever since you destroyed the mother parasite." The parasites had left their hosts, but they had caused massive damage in doing so. Beverly had read a few of the reports and the details were grisly. Of course, the phaser hits Will and Jean-Luc had gotten in on the hosts weren't helping matters, but Beverly blamed herself for that. She had told them to set their phasers on kill. There wasn't anything else she could have said-the parasites simply didn't react to anything lower, but she still felt bad for the damaged that had been done. There were times when she wondered whether she would have made the same recommendation if it had been another officer on Earth fighting. She liked to think so, but if she were being honest with herself, she couldn't say for certain. Her judgment was always a little off when it came to Jean-Luc, try as she might not to let that be the case.
"What about Captain Rixx?"
Jean-Luc shook his head firmly. "Rixx was on the list of The Thomas Paine's infected. He's been under strict medical observation for as long as Scott has."
"Really? He's Bolian, isn't he? I'd love to see those medical records. When we get back to the ship, will you remind me to contact his medical officer? The more we can find out about how these things work the better. I have a suspicion it's going to become important."
"I hate to agree, Doctor, but it does look that way doesn't it?" Jean-Luc grimaced and looked at the ground. "Well, then, if it wasn't you and it wasn't me or Scott or Rixx, then where does that put us?"
Beverly didn't answer. The only logical answer left wasn't a logical answer at all. "I don't-"
"Beverly! Look, do you see them?" Startled, she stood quickly, looking around. She had no idea what he saw but she certainly didn't see it. "Footprints, there."
"Jean-Luc, those are just ours."
He shook his head. "No, look, there. Neither of us was in that corner. And there-"he pointed at the ground between the computer and the ramp leading out of the mine. "Drag marks."
And then she saw it: a wide, uneven swath of dust on the ground just about the width of a body. It carved a haltingly jagged path, marred in a few spots by her and Jean-Luc's boot prints. Beverly felt a tiny tingle of fear drop down her spine. Someone else was here, or had been quite recently. Knowing it intellectually and seeing the proof laid out before her were totally different things. She felt an urge to put her back up against a wall, but fought it.
"I suppose we've got a manhunt on our hands, then," she said.
"Or a body hunt."
"Either way, we're looking for someone alive."
Jean-Luc cocked his head at her. "How do you figure that?"
"If whoever made these marks dragged themselves out, they had to be alive to do it. If someone killed them and then dragged the body out, shouldn't we find the murderer?"
He nodded his response. "This planet is highly inhospitable, though, Beverly. I would be surprised if anyone could survive too far from the mines for more than a day or so. But you are correct. Either way, we have a search party to organize.
"Picard to Enterprise."
"Enterprise here, Captain." Will's voice sounded odd and nasal in the thin air.
"Number One, I wonder if you would have Mr. Worf transport down to my location with a party of security officers."
"Aye, sir. They're on their way."
…
Beverly sat on a crate outside the mouth of the mine, watching security officers in yellow scamper across the desolate landscape before her. They were far enough away now along their search transects that Beverly could imagine them as funny little insects scurrying about. Watching them, she was surprised at how rough the terrain was. From her vantage point, the warm side of the planet looked like a fairly smooth piece of rock, but every so often, one of the officers would disappear into a hole that Beverly hadn't spotted and wouldn't re-emerge for a matter of minutes.
She had wanted to join in the search, but Jean-Luc had protested, claiming to need her at the temporary base camp they had set up. Search teams had spread out from the line of mines in Dytallix's temperate zone and were canvassing the dark and light sides of the planet simultaneously. Jean-Luc wanted Beverly in the middle so she could respond quickly no matter which hemisphere she was called to. As much as she had wanted to join in the search, she couldn't say she was sorry that she didn't have to brave the extreme heat or cold. Of course, she could have joined the third team, which was searching the mines, but Jean-Luc was heading that himself.
Worf stood a few meters away from her, at attention and ready to respond at a moment's notice. What he was planning on responding to, Beverly hadn't the faintest idea, but she admired the Klingon for his gusto at any rate.
"Worf, I was talking to Deanna a few days ago and she was telling me that you teach a mok'bara class. I had no idea!"
"Mok'bara is essential to any warrior's training, Doctor. It provides practice in strength, agility, balance, and…mental discipline." Worf didn't take his eyes off his search team as he spoke. He was such an intense personality, but Beverly had to admire him for that.
"I took a class in it myself, when I was younger. I don't remember much about it but I enjoyed it quite a lot. It's wonderful that you've such a sizeable class." Beverly was just glad to hear that at least some of the crew was exercising in a way that wouldn't end with her fixing a broken wrist or sprained ankle.
"You are welcome to attend any time you wish, Doctor. I would consider your presence a great honor. Standard mok'bara attire is on file with the replicators."
"Thank you, Worf. I may just take you up on that offer." It certainly would be a good way to get a little exercise into her day. Beverly was beginning to feel more and more like a large slug instead of a person. Ever since she had stopped dancing and Wesley had gotten old enough that she wasn't chasing him around the house all day, she hadn't managed to get herself back into a routine of physical activity.
Worf turned towards the dark side of the planet. Beverly followed his gaze over her shoulder. The search party was no longer in sight.
"Worf to Ensign Leving. Your team is out of visual range. Confirm your location." The Klingon caught Beverly's eye for a moment before beginning to walk towards the spot where his officers should have been.
"Leving here, sir. I think we've found something. You might want to come take a look." The transmission was crackly. "We're located about 90 meters from base camp at a bearing of 2 degrees. There's some kind of pit, sir…"
Worf took off at a run. Beverly waited only the time it took to contact Jean-Luc before following.
They arrived at the side of a shallow depression in the rock, Worf calm as ever, Beverly panting and gasping in the cold, thin, oxygen-depleted air. Jean-Luc came up next to her before she even had a chance to assess the situation, slightly out of breath but still very much in control of his respiration. Fighting the urge to roll her eyes at him, Beverly swung her legs over the side of the crater and hopped in.
A crowd of security officers knelt on the ground in a huddle. Beverly parted them with ease and pulled her tricorder from her belt. It was dark. The pit was deep enough that whatever sunlight reached this far was blocked by its rim. Her fingers numb from the cold and the run from base camp, she opened her tricorder and dropped to her knees next to the body that lay curled on the ground. Even in the darkness, the red and black captain's uniform was visible. The four metal pips on the collar were freezing under her palm as she turned the man's face up towards her.
"Walker," she breathed. Her lungs tightened but she pushed the feeling aside. He was impossibly cold, but his skin was pliant beneath her hands. She pressed two fingers beneath his jaw, feeling for a pulse and was not surprised when she couldn't locate one. "Jean-Luc, it's Walker."
She heard Jean-Luc slide down into the pit and a few seconds later he crouched next to her. A mere formality at this point, she scanned his with her hand sensor. When the device began to whir faster and the tricorder began beeping out a regular, albeit slow pattern, she couldn't help but laugh.
"What? What is it?" Jean-Luc peered closer at the screen.
"He isn't dead! I don't believe it, he isn't dead." She thrust the tricorder into Jean-Luc's hand. "Does somebody have a search light?"
Someone must have, for a few moments later, a beam of light fell onto the scene before her. Walker's face was a dull, waxy grey. He certainly looked dead, but he wasn't! Beverly's heart raced in her chest, but her fingers were steady as she turned him on his back. As they closed around the back of his neck, however, her spirits plummeted. Slowly, she rolled his head to the side and examined him.
"No…," she hear Jean-Luc murmur next to her. He had seen it too. On the back of Walker's neck was an unnatural, sharp little protuberance, one Beverly had seen before. "He's been infected."
