Stardate 2260.50
"All mission-essential personnel report to your stations. All family members report to Cargo Bay 3. This is not a drill." Her father's voice blasted through the speakers above her head.
"Get the door open, Erik," she growled, racing to her computer console. "Clinic to the bridge."
Her hands shook as she disengaged the intercom. Her left hand slipped into the front pocket of her medical smock, idly brushing over the little book Tolik had bequeathed her. It was silly because she couldn't read the weird, loopy text, but she'd come to view it as something of a good luck charm.
"Dammit!" Erik roared, fumbling with the door's internal locking mechanism.
"Erik, please hurry!" she called over her shoulder.
"All mission-essential personnel report to your stations. All family members report to Cargo Bay 3. This is not a drill."
"Yeah, I know!" Erik cried.
Dagny's foot began to shake nervously. She tried to reach the bridge again and on her third attempt, Michael Hernandez, the new navigator they'd picked up on Aldebaran last year, answered her call.
"Dagny, we need you down in engineering to inoculate the everyone on board against lambda radiolytic isotopes."
She blinked. Lambda radiolytic isotopes?
The only phenomenon she knew that produced that kind of radiation was a neutronic storm, and those were rare in general and virtually unheard of in this sector. Furthermore, the ship's hull was designed to shield the crew from the ambient radiation present in the vacuum of space and could provide effective protection against Class 5 and below neutronic storms. If non-essential personnel were being told to get to the interior-most part of the ship and she was being told to get ready to inoculate everyone, they must be facing one hell of a storm.
She was also facing one hell of a problem. She didn't have a single dose of trialgenine available because it was incredibly unstable and difficult to synthesize, and with a shelf life of six days, it was impractical to keep it in permanent stock. Unfortunately, it was also the only known compound that could provide organic tissues any reasonable protection against lambda radiolytic isotopes.
"Dagny, respond," Hernandez barked.
She glanced at her chemical synthesizer and shuddered. She didn't have the training or the education for this. She hit the button to active the comm link and choked, "How long do I have?"
"In about twelve minutes, we'll be running into a Class 9 neutronic storm."
She heard Erik freeze behind her and held her breath. Class 9? Surely, she'd misheard him? "S-s-say again."
"Class 9 Neutronic storm. ETA in twelve minutes. Report to Cargo Bay 3 with the vaccines. Class 9. Hernandez out."
She made eye contact with Erik and noticed his face was whiter than the wall behind him. She staggered to the chemical synthesizer and stammered, "Computer, display the compound trialgenine."
A bulky molecule with elaborate aromatic rings and complicated side chains appeared on the screen before her. There was a pull in her gut and a faint ringing beginning in her ears. She had never synthesized anything half as complicated as this.
She reviewed the dosage instructions and uttered a horrified gasp. She couldn't do the exact math in her head, but a quick guesstimate told her that even running the chemical synthesizer at maximum capacity for the next twelve minutes, she would only have enough trialgenine to inoculate about a third of the crew. Every second she wasted was a potential dose that wasn't being made, which translated into another dead friend or loved one.
"He said Class 9… Class 9," Erik babbled. "How did they not see this storm on sensors? It's going to tear the ship apart."
Dagny ignored him and studied the molecule, paralyzed by panic. Trialgenine had thirty-eight different stereocenters—thirty-eight!—and inverting any one of them would make the compound useless. Failing to properly adjust the pH during synthesis could also lead to an ionized form of the compound, making it extremely toxic.
Tears formed in her eyes, making the atoms of the molecule on the screen blur together in an amorphous blob. She'd taught herself almost everything she knew about chemistry, but her mind was fraying. Why hadn't she tried harder to learn how to operate the chemical synthesizer? She leaned over the counter and took in a ragged breath. Lots of people were going to die today no matter what she did.
She heard a loud metallic grinding noise and moments later, a pair of strong hands gripped her shoulders. "You need to get down to Cargo Bay 3 and I need to get to engineering!"
"I have to make trialgenine," she shouted over the alarm, wheeling around to face Erik and noticing he'd managed to open the door.
"There's no time for that," he insisted, pulling her toward him. "In a few minutes, we're-"
"Nothing else matters if I can't get this made," she barked. "Even in the insulated cargo bays, that kind of radiation will probably kill us in minutes without the proper inoculation."
She turned back to the synthesizer and began hyperventilating. Her fingers trembled as they struck the keys to start the synthesis, knowing one wrong entry would mean certain death for everyone aboard the Albret.
"Please," Erik cried. "Please hurry."
"I'm trying," she replied through gritted teeth. "It's a very complicated process."
She scanned through the synthesis steps again, reading the words but feeling too anxious to fully comprehend them. What was reductive amination again?
"We need to go, Dagny," he yelled.
"You go," she pleaded. "I'm sure Arvid needs you, but I'm needed here."
"I love you."
She was in too much shock to register his words. All she wanted to do was cry.
"Dagny?"
So many people were going to die no matter what she did. Maybe Erik. Maybe her brothers and sisters. Maybe herself. Nausea bubbled in her stomach. She turned around to tell Erik again that she loved him too but he was gone.
She kept working, struggling to avoid being overcome by fear and frustration. It took her five more minutes to begin the synthesis, and once the first droplets of solution formed in the hypospray canister, she was nearly overcome by powerful elation.
Drip, drip, drip. One dose, then two, then three. She could sacrifice a dose and run it through the chemical analyzer to ensure it really was pure trialgenine, but there didn't seem much point. If the compound she made wasn't actually trialgenine, they were all dead anyway because she wouldn't have time to readjust the synthesizer, but if it was, then she would be wasting a precious dose.
That was when reality set in. How much time did she have left? Three minutes? Five? The timer on the synthesizer told her she would have thirty-seven doses after five more minutes and there were currently 136 people aboard the ship.
She probably had less than five minutes, given it would take her five minutes to get to Cargo Bay 3 if she ran at a full sprint and took the ladders instead of the slower turbolifts. She had no idea how much radiation would get produced by a Class 9 neutronic storm, but it was safe to assume that once the wave front caught up to them, they wouldn't have a lot of time before devastating radiation sickness set in.
There were just too many variables. Children under twelve needed a smaller dose—she could save more lives if she inoculated the little ones first. How many kids under twelve were there? She raced back to the clinic's main computer to pull up the personnel logs with shaking hands when the alarm fell silent and the loudspeaker cracked to life once again.
"All personnel report to Cargo Bay 3. I repeat—all personnel report to Cargo Bay 3." The fear in her father's voice shattered any vestiges of hope that remained.
She toggled the comm switch and cried, "Clinic to bridge."
Her father immediately responded. "Do you have the vaccines, Dagny?"
"They're very complicated to make," she explained. "I'm only going to have about thirty doses, maybe forty, if I preferentially inoculate the smaller children."
He didn't yell at her about not keeping any vaccines on hand and she didn't justify why keeping them on hand was impossible. She didn't demand to know why the bridge hadn't detected the storm sooner and he didn't offer an explanation. Instead he replied, "We have about a minute until this wave front hits us. Bring whatever you have down to Cargo Bay 3 and we'll just have to figure it out. Skjeggestad out."
The next moments passed in a daze as she wandered back to the synthesizer. Her father was going to die—there was no question. Not only would it not be right for the captain of a ship to save himself before anyone else, her father wasn't the kind of man who put himself before his family. Who was going to decide who lived and who died?
Her eyes were fixed on the chemical synthesizer. Twenty-seven doses. Then twenty-eight. How far could she push it? One more dose? Two more? She needed to get ready to face reality. She uttered a low moan and made her way to the supply drawer to extract a hypospray, but just as she reached the tall cabinet, the ship shook violently.
Her head smashed into the corner of the cabinet and her existence faded to black.
Voris scanned his tricorder over the elderly Vulcan, noting no anomalous readings. "You appear to be in good health, Ambassador Spock."
"I have been following your recommendations."
"Are you still experiencing difficulty regulating your temperature?"
"The medication you administered has provided some relief."
Voris returned to his computer terminal to make several notes. Ambassador Spock's precise biological age was difficult to measure. Using a linear timeline, he was technically only thirty Federation Standard years of age, but that was obviously incorrect. He'd been born on stardate 2230.06, but on stardate 2387.81, he'd been sent back to stardate 2258.39. As it was now 2260.50, it was more correct to say he was 159 Standard years old.
For a typical Vulcan, he was caught between middle age and old age, but Ambassador Spock wasn't a typical Vulcan. The average Vulcan male had a life expectancy of 194 Standard years, but that was a figure with a wide degree of variance. It was not uncommon for full-blooded Vulcans to live beyond 200 years with a healthful lifestyle and adequate medical intervention, but the ambassador's human lineage was wreaking havoc on his physiology. The amount of deterioration in his tissues on a molecular level was the kind of damage seen in the tissues of a 207 year-old Vulcan.
He was theoretically at a stage in his life when most Vulcans would elect to retire and embrace their final years with quiet dignity, but Ambassador Spock refused, preferring instead to devote the remainder of his life to building the New Vulcan colony. There was insufficient data to accurately estimate the average lifespan of a human-Vulcan hybrid, but that would change in the coming centuries. Prior to the destruction of Vulcan, there had been only forty-one human-Vulcan hybrids known to all of medical literature, and nearly all of them had died on Vulcan. But in the two short years since their home world had been obliterated, there had already been forty-seven such hybrids born, as well as numerous hybrids between Vulcans and other species.
But for now all Voris had to go upon was the molecular scans and vital signs of his patient, and given the evidence, he estimated the ambassador would not live beyond five more Standard years, a figure that was probably generous considering the demanding schedule he kept.
"Are you still maintaining six hours of sleep per standard day?" Voris queried.
"When I am able, but I have not been as diligent in recent months."
"I must recommend that be increased to eight hours, though that is only my recommendation. I cannot compel your compliance."
"I shall attempt to meet those requirements, though I do not anticipate that will be feasible in the coming weeks."
The ambassador was probably correct. They were traveling to Aldebaran to continue negotiations with Blue Horizon, the Terran mining company whose future rested in the hands of Vulcan voters. Should Vulcans elect the isolationist Ba'taklar party to key positions within the government, Blue Horizon would likely face bankruptcy because it had invested so heavily in future mining operations on New Vulcan. Now that the moderate Storilayar and progressive Vinem-lar parties had agreed to work together, a Ba'taklar majority was unlikely, which was welcome news for the Blue Horizon Corporation.
The initial purpose of Ambassador Spock's visit had been to discuss Blue Horizon's timetable for beginning trilithium mining operations, but the Laurentians, who had ceded New Vulcan to the Federation in 2255 with the guarantee that they would be entitled to twenty percent of the mineral rights, were now asking for a larger share. Then when the leadership of the potential Terran, Denobulan, and Tellarite colonies heard of the meeting, they also insisted on being present. A simple consultation had devolved into a difficult situation very rapidly, but the specific details of the Aldebaran visit were of little concern to Voris. He was only along for the journey to attend to the ambassador's health, as well as the health of the nineteen other Vulcans aboard the small transport ship.
He activated the chemical synthesizer and prepared to generate a dose of desmogine, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory compound for treating age-related neuropathy in Vulcans. When he removed the canister from the machine, he noticed his hands were shaking.
He inhaled deeply to center himself, recognizing it was just an unfortunate early symptom of his looming pon farr. It would still be months before the plak tow and in the meantime, he would simply have to increase his meditative efforts to conceal these minor disturbances.
Voris gripped the hypospray tightly, administered the dose into Spock's neck, and stepped back. The ambassador's eyes caught sight of Voris' trembling hands.
"Are you well, Dr. Voris?"
"I shall be," he replied, turning away.
"My father tells me you intend to marry T'Rya, sister of the Vinem-lar leader."
"Yes." A one-word answer seemed sufficient. Voris did not prefer to discuss private matters with the ambassador because their relationship had always been that of a doctor and a patient. Spock was his cousin, but they had little in common. He'd never met the younger incarnation of Spock, who was half human and twenty years his junior, and though he currently served as physician to the elder version of Spock, he was still half human, more than a hundred years his senior, and for most intents and purposes, a stranger.
"I presume the union is political in nature," Ambassador Spock continued.
"Largely, yes."
"When do you intend to marry?"
"Shortly after our return from this diplomatic mission."
"I can find a way to manage, should you need to return to New Vulcan prematurely."
He experienced a flicker of embarrassment and immediately quelled it. Was Voris' impending pon farr really so easy to deduce? He began considering the circumstances and decided it probably was, even based on the limited circumstantial evidence the ambassador had. He encouraged his patients to do more to reduce the stigma of the regrettable condition, but he was unable to comply with his own advice. It was simply too uncomfortable to discuss.
"If you have no other concerns, ambassador, I would prefer to spend an hour meditating before end meal."
"Certainly." Spock stood to leave, but before he could take a step, a piercing alarm rang over the internal communications broadcast network and red lights began flashing on the walls.
"Attention crew and passengers—Starfleet has issued a general warning for an approaching neutronic wave front. Please report to the bridge for further instructions. Sevel out."
The Sekla was a small transport with an internally located bridge and it took less than a minute for Voris and Ambassador Spock to arrive. The transport's eleven crewmembers and the ambassador's staff of seven were already present.
"Report," the ambassador ordered.
Sevel, the elderly captain of the Sekla replied, "Starfleet has issued a priority warning for this sector following reports of a Class 9 neutronic storm."
Spock cocked an eyebrow. "Are we able to escape the wave front?"
"Unknown, ambassador. There is nothing on sensors to indicate the presence of any neutronic storm within two light years of our position, but I believe radiolytic anomalies could explain the error in the sensors."
"Indeed," Spock replied. "Kappa and lambda radiolytic isotopes could mask the signature in long-range scans. What does Starfleet report?"
"Four vessels have sent distress signals within the past hour and thus far, none have responded to subsequent hails from Starbase 2," Sevel replied. "Using the last known locations of the three ships and extrapolating it to the average velocity of a typical Class 9 neutronic storm, we should encounter the wave front in 19.4 minutes. The Sekla is serving at your pleasure, ambassador, but it is my recommendation that we disengage the warp engine to prevent damage to the plasma injectors and generate an inverse warp field to lock the ship in place for the duration of the storm."
"Can we attempt to outmaneuver the wave front?" Spock asked.
Sevel stood to the side, revealing a star chart. "According to estimates, we could attempt to do so with a thirty-four percent chance of success, but without adequate data to precisely predict the speed and direction of the storm, I would not advise it."
"I concur," Spock replied. "What is the composition of the hull?"
"It is reinforced duranium," Sevel explained. "If we polarize the hull plating and draw power away from non-essential systems to reinforce the shields, it will provide adequate protection from most of the storm's effects, though the crew will need to be inoculated against kappa and lamba radiation."
Both men glanced at Voris and without a word, he nodded, left the bridge, and breezed down the corridor to the Sekla's small medical facility. 19.4 minutes was not much time to produce twenty doses of trialgenine, but he had a secondary concern. Several forms of radiation were known to accelerate pon farr cycles, but because of the enormous taboo against discussing the condition, very little research existed describing the types or dosage of radiation necessary to induce a negative effect.
He began the synthesis of the vaccine, knowing it was illogical to concern himself with matters beyond his control. He could inoculate himself against radiolytic isotopes, but there was nothing he could do if he entered pon farr. When the vaccine synthesis was complete, he tested the product for safety and loaded the canister into a hypospray and returned to the bridge. As he walked, he fought an irrational fear that began nibbling at the edge of his thoughts.
An alarm sang somewhere in the distance. It sounded so pretty, so insistent. Dagny's head rolled on the ground and she opened her eyes. A stabbing pain hit her stomach and she turned her head to vomit. The watery mess that spread across the floor contained a fair amount of blood.
She put her hand down and tried to stand but her body didn't seem to be working. The alarm continued. What was going on? Her brain pounded angrily against her skull and she closed her eyes. She was so tired and everything ached.
"Warning, radiation detected," called the ship's automatic alarm before resuming its distant tone.
Radiation? Her mind was foggy but she had a vague recollection of synthesizing a compound. Her throbbing head rolled to the right and she noticed a hypospray tucked underneath her hand. The gnawing pain in her gut continued but she didn't have the energy to sit up. She'd never felt so exhausted in her life.
Then it hit her: the radiation. She wasn't tired… she was dying. The neutronic storm. Erik. The vaccines. The garbled memories didn't make much sense, but she knew she needed get vaccines down to cargo bay 1. Or was it Cargo Bay 3?
Her hands began to slap weakly at the floor as she tried to get to her feet. Another blast of nausea resulted in more bloody vomit. It took all the energy she had to get herself onto her hands and knees and even then, she felt too weak to maintain the position for long. She clutched the hypospray in her hand and tried to crawl, slipping several times in the stomach contents covering the floor.
"Warning, radiation detected."
"I know," she said, her speech slurring.
She made it to the bench with the chemical synthesizer and tilted her head back. It was so high; she would never be able to reach it. She tried several times to stand and eventually resorted to half-standing, half-climbing up one of the bench's legs to reach the synthesizer. Her awkward fingers probed at the hypospray canister in the machine, but with her reduced dexterity, it took multiple tries before she was able to extract it and insert it into the hypospray.
"Warning, radiation detected."
She collapsed back onto the ground and closed her eyes. All she wanted was sleep. She tightened her grip around the hypospray and feebly slammed it into her neck. As the cool liquid flowed through her veins, Dagny's world once again went dark.
Voris sat quietly on a stool near the back of the bridge with the ambassador and the rest of his staff while the crew of the Sekla monitored the neutronic storm outside. They'd experienced significant turbulence when they'd collided with the wave front, but now that they were inside the storm, it was impossible to tell anything was out of the ordinary, aside from hampered communications and fatal levels of radiation sweeping through the ship. Voris had inoculated everyone and continued to closely monitor their health, but the trialgenine appeared to be functioning.
No one was showing any immediate signs of radiation sickness—nausea, vomiting, disorientation, dizziness, fever, weakness, fatigue, or hair loss. Cellular scans also showed no discernable levels of damage or decay, but it was logical to continue to be vigilant.
They seemed to have averted radiation sickness, but even Voris couldn't deny his growing level of agitation. It was taking more effort to subdue his emotions and the most logical explanation was that despite the trialgenine inoculation, the radiolytic isotopes were still interfering with his neural tissues. He would enter pon farr sooner than he anticipated, but how much sooner was impossible to determine.
He closed his eyes and resumed his meditative efforts, but was almost immediately disturbed when the navigator announced, "I am receiving an automated distress signal from the Albret."
Everyone in the small operations room shifted their attention to him. The Albret was well known to Vulcans. 8.7 percent of all Vulcans currently alive owed their existence to the Terran salvage ship.
"Hail them," Sevel ordered.
"There is no response and I am only detecting one weak human life sign. The Albret will come within transporter range in four minutes, seventeen seconds."
"Bring the survivor aboard. Initiate a site-to-site transport to the medical bay," Sevel replied, glancing at Voris.
"Understood," the navigator replied.
Voris didn't need to be told what to do. The Sekla's small clinic wasn't as well insulated as the bridge, but he lacked the resources to treat this person anywhere else. When he arrived in the clinic, he sterilized his hands in a gentle UV bath and immediately programmed the chemical synthesizer to produce trialgenine and arithrazine, the standard protocol for treating radiation sickness in humans.
"Captain Sevel to Dr. Voris," called a voice through the intercom.
He pressed the button and replied. "I am here."
"Prepare to receive the survivor in thirty seconds."
"Acknowledged."
He waited patiently by the biobed and half a minute later, his patient appeared. She was a young woman in a white smock covered with bloody vomit. Blood from a deep wound near her temple caked her reddish hair. Streams of blood also poured from her nostrils and mouth and bloody stool soaked the legs of her trousers. He didn't need his tricorder to understand her condition was critical.
He immediately administered the trialgenine and arithrazine, took a quick set of vitals, and set to work cutting away her soiled and contaminated clothing. Though the levels of kappa and lambda radiolytic isotopes were already quite elevated inside the Sekla, she was emitting three times the amount of radiation present on board the ship, therefore, removing her clothing was the simplest and most immediate way to begin the decontamination process.
How she had managed to survive those levels of radiation in the first place was nothing short of remarkable. She either had to have been inoculated or confined to an area of the ship with substantial shielding. As he pulled her clothes away and prepared to incinerate them, a small book fell from the pocket of the white smock.
The Teachings of Surak. Fascinating.
He picked up the small text and rather than destroy it along with the rest of her contaminated possessions, he sealed it in a small inorganic decontamination chamber along the side wall. When he turned back to her, he noticed a bright blue pendant on a silver chain hanging around her neck. It would also need to be removed before he could initiate the biobed's decontamination protocols, but he hesitated.
He knew from his years of working with human patients that they tended to place considerable value on inanimate objects like jewelry. He thought of T'Sala's candle that he'd removed from his apartment in San Francisco and experienced a twinge of irritating anguish. Rather than pull on the delicate chain and break it to quickly remove it, he took the extra three seconds to gently unclasp it and placed it in the inorganic decontamination unit with her volume of the Teachings of Surak.
"Captain Sevel to Dr. Voris."
He stretched his arm to reach the panel on the wall by the door and replied, "I have received the patient. A human female in critical condition. I shall send a more thorough report once I have completed emergency interventions."
"Understood."
He closed the hood of the biobed, initiated the decontamination cycle, and programmed the chemical synthesizer to produce three doses of hydronalin. The arithrazine would stop the effects of the radiation, but it would do little to correct the damage that had already been done. As he waited for the hydronalin synthesis to complete, he turned back to his patient and took another set of vitals. Her blood pressure was falling and her heart rate was increasing, but he'd anticipated this.
Sixty seconds later, the decontamination cycle was complete and the levels of radiation on her surface tissues matched the levels present in the ship's environment. Then he set to work assessing the internal damage. He scanned his medical tricorder over her abdomen, noting her pale skin was already reddening in places, signaling the development of radiation burns.
She was thin and possibly suffering from minor nutritional deficiencies, which he understood were common among individuals who lived transient lives aboard salvage and transport ships. He made a note to administer a dose of supplemental nutrients and continued his scans.
Fresh blood continued to flow from her nose and he wondered why the synthesizer was taking so long to produce the necessary hydronalin to counteract the neurovascular and hematopoietic effects of her radiation poisoning. He began to feel aggravated and realized that by treating her, he was exposing himself to greater levels of radiation, which was probably having a negative effect on his neurochemistry as well.
The machine chimed, informing him the hydronalin was ready to be administered. He inhaled a deep breath and noted his hands were shaking worse than before. It was unfortunate, but it couldn't be helped. Within seconds of giving her all three doses of the hydronalin, her eyes flicked open and she gasped.
Her irises were the lightest shade of blue he'd observed in many years. Several blood vessels had burst in her left eye, staining the white part a brilliant red color. She choked, sending bloody spittle down her chin. She looked at him, her eyes full of terror, and began to moan. The woman was almost certainly in excruciating pain, but she tried to sit up.
"Please remain still," he encouraged her.
She struggled and made a second attempt to sit up. Large clumps of her roan-colored hair remained on the headrest of the biobed. "Car-go… car- ca- ca-"
"You have been exposed to high levels of radiolytic isotopes," he explained. "I am going to administer a sedative. It will ease some of your discomfort."
She shook her head, uttered a raspy scream, and tried pulling herself into a sitting position a third time. The woman's mental state was clearly altered as a result of the radiation poisoning and quite possibly from her head injury, and though he greatly disliked what he had to do, he recognized it was the only logical option available.
While it was both logical and ethical to comply with a patient's wishes during a routine procedure, the protocols of emergencies were quite different. He could treat her without her consent to control an emergency that posed an imminent threat to her life or the lives of others, and if he could not continue to treat the effects of the radiation on her body, she would die.
He extracted the pre-programmed hypospray from his front pocket and gave her a fast-acting sedative. She quickly drifted back into unconsciousness and Voris felt a twinge of dread as he studied her face. She was the lone survivor of a ship that probably had a crew of several hundred. Voris understood the devastation and isolation that came from surviving when so many others did not. When it was safe for her to regain consciousness, she would have to be told the truth.
It took another hour of treatment protocols to reverse the most serious internal damage. Even after stimulating her bone marrow to produce more blood cells, her immune system would take months to recover and she would need to be on a restricted diet while the lining of her gastrointestinal tract regenerated. She would make a full recovery, but it would take time.
When he finally got her stabilized, he sent his report on her condition to Captain Sevel and ran a scan on himself. He was still physically unaffected by the radiation, but his mood was quite altered. It was requiring more effort to keep his emotions under control and at the rate he was deteriorating, he suspected pon farr would be upon him in approximately one to two weeks.
He balled his hands into fists, took several slow breaths, drank a glass of water from the replicator, and began treating his patient's less critical problems. She had a deep laceration to her left temple and upon further investigation, he discovered a hairline fracture of her sphenoid bone. He prepared the bone knitter and dermal regenerator and when he brushed her hair out of the way to expose the wound, a large clump came loose in his hands.
His treatment protocols had already averted the worst of the blistering and ulceration to her skin, but hair follicles were particularly sensitive to radiation and hers would have been killed almost immediately upon exposure to the radiolytic isotopes. Over the course of the next few hours, she would probably lose all the hair from her body, but hair was a minor cosmetic concern and was easily regenerated.
When he verified she had no other injuries, he replicated a set of thermal clothing, dressed her, and adjusted the temperature of the biobed to prevent overheating. He was in the process of setting up a nutrient drip when her eyes opened once again. Her lids were sluggish but she turned her head to look at him.
"Where?" she breathed.
"I am Dr. Voris. You have sustained severe radiation poisoning, but you are being treated aboard the Sekla, a Vulcan diplomatic vessel. What is your name?"
She blinked slowly several times and mumbled, "Dagny."
He glanced at her vitals, noting they were still weak but stable. "I am going to perform an examination and ask you a series of questions. Do you understand?"
She muttered her lethargic consent. He pulled his tricorder from his pocket and said, "I am going to check your pupils. You will see a bright light."
"I know," she whispered.
He gently lifted her left lid with his thumb and pressed the button near the end of his tricorder to activate the flashlight. She winced at the light, but her pupillary response was normal. He performed the same test with her right eye and received a similar result.
"Are you in pain?"
"Uh… hum…"
He considered the possibility of giving her another sedative, but he needed to finish his screening in a timely manner to determine if he needed to adjust her course of treatment. "Please describe the pain."
"My stomach… hurts…" She gasped.
"That is a common symptom of radiation sickness," he replied, measuring a dose norvaline in his pre-programmed hypospray to lessen her pain.
"Everything itches," she moaned.
"Dermal irritation is a typical side effect of the decontamination reagents, but I can administer an analgesic that should alleviate most of your discomfort. Do you consent?"
"Please," she begged. "It hurts."
He gave her the norvaline and waited several minutes for it to take effect before he resumed his assessment of her mental state. "Can you tell me the date?"
Her head rolled along the headrest of the biobed. Her eyes lingered on the white tunic he'd dressed her in.
"Can you tell me the date?" he pressed.
He felt a tingling sensation on his hand and realized she'd taken hold of it. Voris felt a peculiar emotional surge and gasped, pulling his hand back immediately. She was completely indifferent to what had just happened, but that was hardly surprising. She was not only mildly delirious, but she was also human and likely unaware of the Vulcan taboo against touching a stranger's hands.
It would have been easier to ignore if he were he in complete control of his mental faculties, but due to his rapidly approaching pon farr, her very intimate touch been extremely unsettling. He took a series of deep breaths, reminded himself that she was his patient, and asked her the date again. Under normal circumstances, it would be inappropriate for a male in his condition to treat female patients, but the circumstances were not normal. Her condition was still serious and he was the only physician available to care for her, so he would simply have to take greater care to distance himself from her physically.
She muttered something he couldn't understand, so he cautiously leaned forward and asked her to repeat herself.
"Where are the others?" she asked, her speech slurring slightly.
Voris stood up straight and gazed at the thin woman, her body ravaged by radiation sickness. Her pale eyes stared back at him, soft and serious.
"They died, didn't they?" she mumbled.
He took a slow breath and replied, "Yours was the only lifesign detected aboard the Albret."
Her initial response came in the form of a silent tear descending her left cheek. She was quiet, her eyes locked on him. He felt the warm tingling sensation return to his hand and realized that their hands were once again touching, except that this time, he had been the one to reach out to her. His unconscious and very human response to her pain was baffling.
Then Dagny began to howl. It was a primal, angry, woeful sound that reverberated to the core of his soul. It transcended the wide gaps in their genders, cultures, and species. It was the universal sound of pain and loss, one confused heart reaching out to another to find some sense of understanding. He gripped her hand tighter and looked away, ashamed of the emotions brewing within him that he could not control.