Chapter 2

I hate Tuesdays, too.

I woke up about seven or eight hours later. Odd, André should have gotten me up before this. Usually my first officer rouses me the moment morning watch begins. Guess he decided to be merciful and let me sleep. Lying there I could feel the pulse of my ship around me, she was awake and moving, her crew alive and happy. The effects of our take last night had already spread through the crew. For some reason, snatching a prize, even one as small as a shuttle, from beneath a Romulan's nose was invigorating. The com snapped me out of my reverie. I've gotta get a mute button for that thing. I rolled over and hit the button, "Yeah?"

"Keath? Carpenter, you might wanna come down here. I've got something you are definitely going to want to see." The good doctor had that edge of excitement in his voice that told me that I needed to get to sickbay pronto.

"Right, Doc, I'll be there in a sec." I clicked off the com unit and got out of bed. Having neglected to change last night, getting to sickbay was easier than expected. I strolled in to find a very energetic CMO racing towards me.

"What's up, Doc?" I asked with the slightest bit of mirth in my voice. I only got to see this side of Carpenter when he either A was looking over the data from some new species that we encountered or B found the cure to some particularly strange virus that had been ravaging the crew for weeks. It was the excitement of a new discovery, a break-though, a solved puzzle. But there was something else in his manner. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but it wasn't normal.

"I was trying to synthesize blood for our guest for the past five hours but I couldn't get the mix right. There was something very strange about his genetic makeup that was throwing off the corpuscle and white-blood cell count..."

"Whoa, hold up. Gimme the short version, and in English please." The only thing I couldn't stand about Carpenter was the fact that he would ramble on and on in medical lingo and not really care about the rest of us not being able to understand him. It was very annoying and I learned, through years of experience, to cut him off at the pass, so to speak.

"Sorry, basically, this kid's only half-Vulcan."

"So? You deal with half's all the time."

"Yes, but not this type. His other half is humanoid." Now that was weird.

"Human? That seems like a contradiction. What Vulcan in their right mind would marry a human?"

"Beats me. But we've got the proof that it happened sitting right here." He gestured to the beds behind him.

"So, what's his condition? Is he going to make it?"

"Oh, yes, he'll be fine, I think." Bad choice of words to hear a doctor say.

"'You think'?"

"Well, physically speaking, he'll be fine. He's in a kind of healing trance right now, should be coming out of it soon. I've got him doped up on enough sedatives and antibiotics to keep him from either feeling pain or developing any kind of infection. He should make a full physical recovery. What I'm not sure about is whether or not he'll make a full mental recovery."

"And what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Come here, I'll show you." Carpenter led me over to a computer terminal. He sat down and pulled up about five different files. "I took these tests, all standard, to find out the extent of the damage. All that basically consisted of a dislocated shoulder and some torn ligaments and muscles around that shoulder, I don't think he will be able to use his left arm for about a week. He has three cracked ribs on his left side, but nothing really damaging. What I'm really worried about is this." He pulled up what looked very much like an X-ray of the Vulcan's skull. "You see this line here?" he pointed to a thin white stripe across the back of his skull. "This is a very long skull fracture, and a very dangerous one at that. Skull injuries release a ton a blood into the brain, and, what this is telling me is that there may have been a great deal of damage done to his cerebral cortex. I think that this guy is going to have a pretty potent case amnesia. Unless he had some incredible luck, he won't remember anything for a long time."

"That's not good, John." I just used his first name; I must be really serious about this. "Is there anything that you can do?"

The doctor sighed. "Unfortunately, no. Brain trauma has to resolve itself. There is nothing that I can do except wait. Actually, I think that you can do more than I can."

"What do you mean?"

"When he wakes up, the first thing that he needs is a friendly face. If he feels threatened or anxious, that will reverse any good that is body is trying to do. He also needs to be put into situations that would be normal for him. The brain learns through association. If he comes into contact with familiar things, some memories may be sparked, which could then snowball into more memories."

"And how do I fit into all of this? Doc, I'm a soldier, not a brain surgeon."

"I know that. I only want you to be there when he wakes up. Talk to him, find out if he remembers anything, and, if not, offer to help him remember. Also, find out what is familiar and get him into contact with those things on a regular basis. You're the CO, you can do all that."

"Let me rephrase that. I'm a soldier not a psychiatrist. The only thing I know about memories is that I hate mine."

"But he may like his. Not knowing who you are or where you come from is a very painful place to be. I'm not asking for an expert on this, Keath, I'm asking for a friend. Please, help me help him." I sighed; there was no escaping Carpenter when he was in one of his save-everyone-from-everything moods.

I touched the com link, "André?"

"Yes?"

"I'm gonna be busy in sickbay for the rest of the day, can you mind the shop for me?"

"Yes."

"Thanks, call me when if anything big happens."

"Done."

"Alright, Doc, you got yourself some help. What do I do?"

I don't really like sickbay that much. I don't know why. It just seems so cold and sterile and quiet. It's deathly quiet. When my ship was built, I had sickbay surrounded by a thick wall of noise canceling materials to keep the patients asleep while we were fighting. But, what seemed like a good idea at the time was now creeping me out. I felt like I was cut off from the rest of my ship. I had been sitting in the same room as the Vulcan for the past three hours. I was bored out of my mind by the first twenty minutes and had decided to do something that I never had time for: reading. Reading was one of the pleasures that ship captains get denied. We are either too busy with paperwork or fighting or raiding or keeping our ships from being torn apart at the seams. Needless to say, I had a long list of books to catch up on and was proceeding to do so while waiting for the Vulcan to awaken. Thus, I was deeply immersed with the throws of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain by hour five when I got the impression that something wasn't right. I tried to keep reading, hoping that whatever this feeling was, that I would pass. But it didn't, if anything it got stronger and more apparent. Someone was watching me. I looked up sharply to find that my fellow inmate was staring at me. I had never really gotten a good look at his face before; it was either hidden behind a facade of blood or deadened by sedatives. But now, now it was different. His eyes made his face live, they were inquisitive, though hidden behind levels of pain and confusion, very human, very…afraid?

"Welcome back to the land of the living," I said as gently as I could. There was fear in his eyes, though it was hidden deeper than any other emotion I could see. He blinked, like he was trying to focus on me. I stood up from the terminal where I had been reading and moved over closer to him.

"Where…where am I?" His voice was a deep baritone, gravelly almost, choked with pain and slurred by the sedatives.

"You're in sickbay aboard the pirate ship Crimson Assurance." He blinked slowly.

"Pirate?" The voice was now a whisper, I could read confusion all over his face.

"Yeah, pirates. But don't worry, we're not all that bad. And no one's going to hurt you here." He closed his eyes for so long that I thought he had drifted back into sleep. I was about to go back and read some more when I saw his eyes open again.

"You are…the captain?" He seemed to be struggling for words, or fighting to stay conscious, I couldn't tell which.

"I'm Major Harper, commanding officer of the Assurance. You should really get some sleep." He looked just about dead where he lay, the sedatives were finally kicking in like they were supposed to.

"Am I a prisoner here, Major?" By the look in his eyes, that question was laying heavily on his mind at the moment. I needed to answer it in a way that would give him some peace.

"No, right now, you're a patient, and I suggest you sleep. We can discuss your status when you feel better." That looked like it hit home. The tension on his face relaxed slightly as he closed his eyes and surrendered to sleep. I went and sat down to keep reading.

Carpenter told me to go to bed around midnight. "I've got our guest drugged so bad that he probably won't wake up 'til tomorrow afternoon. You won't do any good if you're half-dead yourself. Go get some sleep." I had stopped arguing with the doctor on medical matters a long time ago. And after finishing Yankee and getting halfway through Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, bed was looking mighty inviting right now.