Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Four

Fate, Hanging By a Single Thread

Commodore Charles Tucker III

I've never in my life known time to pass this slowly.

Somehow I get myself back into my schedule, if only to stop Eloise breathing down my neck. But I'm operating on auto-pilot, and I can only hope my responses and decisions actually make sense, because the greater part of me is up there in Sickbay, watching Jeremy Lucas fighting to save a man's life.

Well, I guess that's what he's doing, because he hasn't commed me yet. He could be sitting there staring at a corpse for all I know, blaming himself for not being able to achieve the impossible.

I should go to Liz. I should tell her I don't blame her for being taken in. I should tell her he's still alive, that there's still hope. But for all that in my head I really don't blame her for being hoodwinked by one of the most cunning bitches in Starfleet, in my heart I'm absolutely furious with her for acting rather than talking. Seems like she's already hating herself enough, if she's been self-harming, but still, what the fuck, when everything was just starting to turn in the right direction, couldn't she spare ten seconds to wonder if she was doing the right thing? Considering the power Malcolm holds, the stability he represents for the entire Empire, and the changes he can make to improve the lives of even its most insignificant citizens, just how fucking self-centered is she? When she knows the odds we're fighting against, when she knows the work we've all put in to get to where we are – where we were, until this morning – then what the fuck made her pick a knife up instead of just showing him the evidence and calling him on it?

Well, yeah. I suppose I can't blame her for being taken in at first. I mean, I believed it, and I knew the spoofing program existed; I just didn't think about it till Austin mentioned checking to see if the recording was a fake. So I'm not in any position to point fingers too readily either. After all I've said about trusting the guy, I fell for the first thing to present me with a real test of it.

But she's his lover, for Christ's sake. If anyone should believe in him, she should. Instead of which, she swallowed the bait hook, line and sinker. And this is where it's got us.

'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned'. Sounds like something Shakespeare would have come up with – Malcolm would know. But thanks to this particular scorned woman we're all poised on the lip of hell, and the life of the one man who could have saved all of us from tipping into it is dangling by a thread.

I suppose, given what she's been through over the last couple years – actually, since Major Maladjustment first picked her for his favorite chew-toy to begin with – she's been through enough to unscrew anyone's grip on reality; Mama was right – you can't expect perfection from a part that's riddled with stress fractures. And the spoofing program fooled a pack of suspicious MACOs, so she was never going to be able to tell there was anything wrong with it. But still, for fuck's sake, this was all our lives she was throwing down the pan. If he dies, I truly don't think I'll ever be able to forgive her.

I press my thumb to a PADD, approving a requisition handed to me by Terry Virts. I haven't the first damned idea what he's asked for or why he needs it.

I have to get a grip. I have to.

I go down to lunch because that's what's in my schedule. I don't want to eat. I'm not hungry. I force down half a plateful of ravioli and push the rest of it away, feeling sick.

"Lucas to Tucker." The comm. sounds just as I'm going out the door, and I practically jump to the panel before anyone else can get there first.

"Tucker here."

"Commodore. Please come to the Intensive Care Unit at your earliest convenience."

His voice is completely neutral. As I scoot for the nearest turbo-lift, not even taking the time to reply, my mind tries frantically to extrapolate any hint of a tone from it. Is he scared I'll lose it if he gives me the news in front of others that all his hard work has been for nothing?

By the time I reach the ICU, I'm running; whatever the news is, I want it now.

An orderly looks up as I crash through the doors, and points me to one of the alcoves that's sealed off by a privacy curtain. Hardly slowing my pace, I fling myself through the tiny slit in the fabric.

…Lucas. And Malcolm; a Malcolm in a bio-bed, with an oxygen mask over his face. The readings on the monitor above his head are active, the reader beside him shows a steady pulse. His face is gray, and he's clearly unconscious.

But he's alive.

I clap both hands to my face to stop all the staff hearing me gasp out the greatest big sob of relief I've ever let out in my whole damned life.

=/\=

My knees have turned to straws. It's a good job Jeremy's quick off the mark, because he just about gets me to a chair before I sit down whether there's anything to support me or not.

"Is he gonna be okay, Doc?" I ask huskily, unable to take my eyes from the slow fall and rise of Malcolm's ribs under the sterile sheet.

"I can't say yet." The doc looks utterly exhausted. "He died four times while we were working on him. The last time I honestly thought we'd lost him for good.

"We'll keep him in an induced coma for another twenty-four hours. I won't be able to offer a prognosis until the end of that. For one thing, the blood loss was so massive he could have suffered brain damage or organ failure due to hypoxia and for another, there's still a significant risk of a blood clot moving to the heart or the brain. We're not out of the woods yet, Commodore. Not by any means."

I stare around me at the technological marvels this place contains, quite a few of which were reverse-engineered from the Defiant. Many of them are unbelievably complex, but none of them can wave a magic wand and tell me what's going on behind those closed eyes opposite me.

Organ damage would be bad enough, but with the expertise we have, most organs can be replaced – and unfortunately, with the casualty rate we have, there's no shortage of donors available. Brain damage, on the other hand, could be catastrophic. He might be only slightly affected, maybe something that the appropriate physiotherapy could fix. But worst case scenario, he could be left the equivalent of a fucking vegetable.

Rather belatedly, I go to the gel dispenser and disinfect my hands. Then I shake Jeremy's, because I don't know anyone else who could have pulled off this miracle. Okay, maybe I have to wait another twenty-four hours before we find out exactly what we've gotten back, but at least we're not ordering the coffin – not just for Malcolm, but for all our hopes of better days.

He smiles wearily at my thanks. "You're more than welcome, Commodore. But if by any chance the general does pull through this, he'd better remember he left four of his nine lives on my operating table."

Now that I have some kind of shred of hope to hold on to, I'll have to share it with others who are waiting as anxiously as I've been. And I suppose that one person in particular will want to see him, and won't believe he's alive till she has.

I put that idea to the doc, but he shakes his head. He's willing to speak to her, but he's not allowing her to get past that curtain – not until the patient is conscious and capable of deciding for himself whether he wants to see her or not.

Well, that's something, even if it's not what Liz will probably want. In the circumstances, though, it's as much as she can expect. I comm. Burnell and ask him to have Liz escorted up to the ICU; he can surely extrapolate the news from that, though I'll go down and talk to him in person when I'm feeling more settled myself and I've gotten this over with.

I haven't seen her since she was escorted out of the conference room this morning, and she looks a mess. For one thing she's woozy – one of the MACOs volunteers that she had to be sedated, reminding me of Burnell's verbal report – and her arms are bandaged, the sight of which makes my stomach do another somersault. I'd have guessed that she went absolutely crazy when they locked her up, but if I didn't already know better, I'd probably have assumed she'd been injured somehow in a struggle with her guards. I damned sure wouldn't have imagined anything like the self-inflicted bite wounds that I know lie beneath the gauze. If I'd had the attention to spare I'd have ordered her sedated before they put her away, knowing how she was likely to react, but at least they seem to have caught her in time to stop her doing any serious damage.

"I have to see him," she whispers as soon as she's through the door. "I've got to see him. I've got to…"

I'm still pissed as hell about the selfishness of her actions, so when her first words are about what she wants and what she needs, I just put a hand over my mouth and walk away. I know anything I might say to her would be ugly, and while a great big part of me really wants to say something to hurt her more right now, the rational part knows that wouldn't make things any better. Hell, it wouldn't even make me feel better in the long run, because eventually I'd just feel guilty for hurting a friend – and one who's already suffering in every cell in her body.

"I'm afraid not yet, Lieutenant." Lucas interposes his body firmly between her and the alcove, his voice and manner gravely kind. "After all, you did try to kill him, m'dear, and from what I know of the things he's been through in the past couple of years, he's probably going to need some reassuring that he's safe before he'll be comfortable with any visitors, let alone the person who put him here."

Her eyes are swollen with tears, and two more escape and trickle down her face. "I'm so sorry, so sorry… It was a mistake … a terrible mistake…"

"Of course it was." He takes her hands and pats them comfortingly. "I don't believe anyone here would imagine you would knowingly and deliberately try to harm the general unless in the most extraordinary circumstances."

"But how is he?"

Being as both of them are experts in their field, he responds by giving her a load of technical stuff, which I can't follow and don't try to. Now that there's at least some hope that we haven't lost everything, I'll admit I find it easier to feel some compassion for her; I'm sure that the mess her hair is in is at least partly because some of it's missing, and her drained, devastated little face is the color of chalk.

As Lucas finishes the tech stuff, I wander back to join them and wave the MACO guard over to take Liz back into custody. With the guard on my left and her on my right, it would be natural for me to put a comforting hand on her back or her shoulder and sort of supportively steer her in his direction right now, but I don't want to comfort her. I certainly don't want to touch her, and in fact, at this moment I'd rather not even have to look at her.

"Back to the Brig for you, Lieutenant," I try to say as evenly as possible. I don't want her to know how angry I am right now. She's liable to try to defend herself, and I won't want to hear it, and things will just get really ugly from there. "Try to get some rest now."

The look she gives me should drop me to the deck; do I think she's going to shut her eyes till she knows if he's going to be okay? But for all that, she knows when I'm giving an order I'm not prepared to have disobeyed, at least as far as going back to the Brig is concerned, and I'm definitely not in the mood to take any shit from her. I want her safe and I want her where someone can keep an eye on her, and I want her controlled if any one of the bad outcomes that are still possible where Malcolm is concerned actually happen, but I'm the last person who should be looking after her right now, because I want to hurt her, too. I want to punish her for being so goddamn thoughtless and selfish. So she gives one last, sad look at the curtain, turns around and walks back out of Sickbay and into the care of the waiting MACOs, who escort her back to the turbo-lift.

I heave a sigh that feels so heavy I'm half surprised I haven't exhaled half my lungs. Now I have to get ahold of Mike and Anna, and put Burnell more squarely in the picture. Though we still have a long, long twenty-four hours to wait.

And twenty-four hours can be an unbelievably long time.

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