Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ghosts
Commander Richard Kelby
Two weeks have gone by already.
Two whole damned weeks, and it hardly seems like I've shut my eyes.
Three, since the explosion, and so much has happened in that time it feels like my whole world has been turned upside-down and inside out.
I had my doubts (I'll be honest) about taking on the job of rebuilding Sickbay, but since meeting Jeremy Lucas I've discovered a whole new exciting world that I can really get involved with. We're still just drawing up the plans, and I'm loving the feeling of listening to his ideas and finding ways to bring them into being – even, sometimes, to improve on them. It gives me a thrill like a big kid to see his eyes light up when we get some completely new concept springing into being between us.
As soon as the Livingston arrived, my team and I swarmed all over it like a colony of ants, inspecting and inventorying every last component and piece of equipment. Since the ship's scheduled to be decommissioned anyway, we're going to appropriate a lot of her purely mechanical components like IV stands, surgical carts, and storage cabinets and some of her more current technology, like an imaging chamber that's less than a year old and a full set of next-generation hand-held medical scanners. Of course, we can't start ripping her apart right away. She has to serve as our Sickbay until the new facility is up and running, which means that every component we remove from the Livingston will have to be installed and operational the same day on Jupiter Station. Since she came to me from Salvage and not only knows their protocols but re-wrote most of them to improve efficiency while she was working for Mike Rostov, I put Julie Massaro, who ended up becoming my SiC after all, in charge of documenting and scheduling all the equipment transfers.
Jeremy and I, with Julie helping us find ways to streamline and economize where it wouldn't impede patient care, even managed to convince Commodore Tucker to expand Sickbay by 50%. After all, it was working at capacity before the explosion and if we're going to add a new crew to the station for refits and maybe another for renovation, plus additional people in existing departments to meet the higher demands the new staff will place on the quartermaster, the mess hall, sanitation, repair and maintenance, and station security, Sickbay will need more space. Then Jeremy made a suggestion that put the commodore right over the moon. If we could provide six or eight fully-appointed research suites, he said, set around a common hub equipped with a refrigeration unit, imaging equipment, possibly a surgery suite and a few other big-ticket items, we could safeguard against another accident like the one that created the need for all this reconstruction and run the medical research labs more efficiently by having them share some of the major energy-suckers common to medical research. Of course, the commodore didn't just take our word for it – we had to present him with the figures and make good, reasoned arguments, and somehow, a teaching program and a name change got folded into the mix – but once convinced, he forwarded the business case to the financial people and got it rubber-stamped, and within days we got the green light to go ahead.
Meanwhile, Colonel Burnell - in what has turned out to be his last act as head of station security before taking over his new post as second in command of the MACOs - supervised the team that documented every square inch of the damaged interior, as is usually done whenever a potential act of sabotage takes place, because for all the Empress has decided a BII investigation is not needed, she could change her mind, or the next person in charge, who could take over sometime this afternoon or decades from now, might be of a different opinion. I have to admit that for all he seems a completely pleasant guy, Burnell scares me a bit (maybe it's the accent – reminds me too much of General Reed), so I'm more than happy to see Janis Crawley take his place. From what I hear, though, Burnell is making his new offices here on the station, so we'll probably still see him around even if we don't deal with him face-to-face quite as much anymore.
Once the MACOs had documented everything in situ, Rostov, Virts, and Fincke had teams working round the clock to clear out everything that needed to be removed. Working under MACO oversight, now directed by the newly promoted Major Crawley, in case some previously overlooked piece of material evidence turned up, they decided between them what could be salvaged, what could be repaired, and what had to be recycled. Then, last night, Fincke's Gamma shift hosed it all down, scrubbed it clean, and dried it off; and Virts's people installed temporary hanging work lights at different levels so we can see what we're doing until we get some ceilings and permanent light fixtures installed.
So here I am, standing at last in what remains of the old place. Right now there's only the one section of grav plating inside the threshold - big for one, comfortable for two and just room enough for three to crowd onto. It's only there for people to do a final check of their gear before floating off into the vast echoing space, three decks up and three more down, that used to be Sickbay and the surrounding areas. The new medical facility, being designated a critical system, is my sole responsibility; Terry Virts and his team (and anyone that can be shanghaied into helping them) will be responsible for the surrounding labs and offices. Deck plating and bulkheads will be our first priorities, and for that part of the project, Terry has agreed to defer to me. It's hard to believe that a little over a year ago, I was just another asshole working in the scrapyard at Utopia Planitia.
Repairs have been carried out to make the superstructure sound, but once I get my team working, some of it's going to have to be ripped out again and reconfigured to make room for the extra wards and operating theatres Jeremy and I have planned. I can see it in my mind's eye, not just the physical structures, but the life that will go on here – Liz Cutler treating a burn; Jeremy rolling some young recruit into the imaging chamber because he forgot the old adage to lift with his legs instead of his back and herniated a couple of discs. The sexual health clinic, counselling services, and psychiatry are in the back corner along with the office where annual physicals are administered to protect people's privacy; once you enter the door to that suite of offices, nobody knows where you're going or why you're there – but right now there's nothing but an empty space, bare wires and the ends of conduits poking out here and there, and parts of it still showing the scorch marks from the blast.
Personally, I can't wait to get started. I remember Phlox from my days back on Enterprise, and from the day I found out he was stationed here, I have suspected that the tank Commodore Tucker had me build when I arrived was used to house some hapless victim of his demented hobbies. Even though the section that held the tank was pretty well obliterated, and you'd be hard pressed to tell now even where it was, it still gives me the shudders when I think about it and what poor creature lived, suffered, and more than likely died in it. At least with Commodore Tucker and Doctor Lucas in charge, we can pretty well guarantee that there won't be any more horrors like that perpetrated in here.
I'm not particularly superstitious, but I don't really like being alone in here – I prefer it when there are other people around, and the sound of voices – but I asked Crawley to let me in for just a few minutes, so I could get one last look at what I'm starting with before we begin. Innocent people died in that explosion as well as the guilty; I knew a few of the technical staff, though not well. I'm guessing not many, if any, had much say in whatever projects they were working on (one doesn't – or didn't – say no to the Triad), though maybe that's wishful thinking. With the possible exceptions of Liz Cutler and Jeremy Lucas, you don't find a lot of bleeding hearts among the medical staff who've served in the Imperial Fleet for long; it hardens them. Either that or they end up blowing their brains out. Then again, Liz and Jeremy are caregivers, directly responsible for treating patients. Most of the people who worked and died here were lab rats – technicians, researchers, and the like, far more interested in data than patients.
Then I remember the first time I saw Jeremy, so engrossed in his data that he didn't realize he was on camera with a room full of engineers smirking at him.
People aren't as one-dimensional as I'd like them to be. Those lab rats had feelings, too, people they cared about, people who cared about them. Some of them were my friends. Maybe one or two of them even had families depending on them. Hell, Phlox had three wives before he was declared a slave of the Empire for being an alien. I suspect he still thought of them and their children as his family, regardless of who they officially belonged to at the end. Maybe, being a privileged slave in service to the Triad, he was even granted conjugal or family visits. It's just a whole lot easier to think about a couple of cartoon villains, their mad scientist, and his minions being vaporized in an explosion than it is to imagine them as flesh and blood people, with good and bad qualities just like me, human or otherwise.
Haunted? I wouldn't go that far. Till we can get the work teams in, though, I suppose there's some … some lingering feeling of horror here.
But I have some things that are more powerful than any bell, book and candle: I have some bold plans and some fine engineers that will help me make Doctor Lucas's big dreams a reality. And once that happens, the good work that's going to be done in here will be more than enough to dispel any memories of the nightmares that once ruled the place.
"You can hang around here for one more night," I say aloud, defiantly, almost before I know I'm going to say anything. "But first thing tomorrow, we're taking this place back!"
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