Stardate 2261.34
Safi expelled the nipple of the bottle from her mouth and made an ugly face. Dagny knew better than to push her to eat more. When she was done, she was done and besides, they didn't have a lot of extra formula to feed her these days. She set the bottle on the counter, stole a glance at the stew, which was really more of a soup, and tossed a dishrag over her shoulder just as Voris appeared in the doorway.
"How'd it go with the council?" she asked, lifting Safi to her shoulder to burp her.
"Anja has agreed to reopen the clinic tomorrow," he replied, bending down to remove his shoes.
"Well, that's good news." Dagny grabbed two bowls from the cupboard and began setting the dinner table in between delivering gentle pats to her baby's back.
Voris did not reply, but Dagny hadn't really expected him to. No doubt he didn't view reopening the clinic as a hard-fought victory so much as an inevitable eventuality in the wake of having done the best he could against the blight currently devastating the colony's greenhouses.
He had spent the past four days researching the strange disease, puzzled by both its hardiness and affinity for a wide range of plant species. He had enlisted Dagny and Aisla as research assistants, giving them both crash courses in mycology and plant biology in between sending them to the greenhouses for more samples and asking them to monitor time-sensitive experiments.
He had isolated a novel strain of mold quite easily and within a day, had identified several compounds that could eliminate it. Unfortunately, finding one that was toxic to the mold without also being lethal to the affected plant or the people who would eat them had proved more challenging. After testing no fewer than sixty-eight separate chemicals, he found one he believed would work and had just come from submitting his findings to the council, along with a revised plan for isolating sick plants from healthy ones and decontaminating workers prior to entering and leaving the greenhouses.
In all, Greenhouses 1 and 2 were declared a total loss and as of yesterday, the mold had been reported in Greenhouses 5 and 7. Now all anyone could do was wait and see if Voris' solution would work. He was Vulcan and so she sort of imagined he could logic the pressure away, but she didn't envy him for holding the fate of the entire colony's food supply in his hands.
"Can I assist you with anything?" he asked, entering the kitchen.
Dagny considered the tired expression in his eyes. It was a look of resigned defeat.
"I think I have it handled," she replied, adjusting her hold on Safi and wondering if it would just be easier to put her down in her crib.
"Just because you are capable of doing it on your own does not mean you could not benefit from assistance," he replied, flicking his eyebrows slightly upward.
Dagny gave him a patient smile. "The stew is done and could go on the table."
As they sat down to dinner she asked, "So did the council say anything about the requisitions we asked for?" The clinic was fast running out of many essential items that they used to easily replicate. Unfortunately, their replicator remained in the custody of the dispensary in Tunnel 3, seized as an item "essential to the colony food and energy supply."
Voris lifted the lid from the pot and ladled some of the contents into his bowl. Dagny had tried adding a little water to increase the volume, but it was now clear that no one in their right mind would call what she was serving a stew. It almost seemed generous to call it a soup.
Voris offered her the ladle, picked up his spoon, and replied, "The council took our requisition list for review and I am to meet with them tomorrow afternoon to hear their decision. I am not optimistic that many of our requests will be honored."
"What's there for them to review?" she scowled. "They don't know anything about medicine. How are they supposed to know why we need more catheters? I doubt any of them even know what a catheter is! Or if they even care. I bet they'd care if they ever ended up in the clinic, needing-"
"We have had this discussion many times," Voris interrupted, his voice cold but patient. "I cannot speak for the council; I can only relay their decisions to you."
Her face was growing hot and the baby in her arms started to fuss. When she heaped two spoonsful of the runny stew into her bowl with more force than she intended, Safi started to cry. Dagny gritted her teeth, frustrated that she'd upset her daughter.
"Perhaps you would like me to hold her while you eat?"
"You're eating too," she mumbled, trying to be more delicate and deliberate in her motions while she bounced the baby in her lap.
They dined in silence and despite the squirming baby in her lap, it was hard to miss Voris' reluctance to eat. Maybe he didn't like it? That didn't seem likely; she'd never known him to be particularly picky. She considered each spoonful going into her mouth, and though it was painfully watered down, she thought the taste was acceptable enough.
"Is something wrong?"
His eyes darted upward. "Clarify."
"You don't seem to be eating dinner. I added a bit of water to see if I could stretch it into two meals, so I'm sorry if it's not to your liking."
"It is adequate," he responded. "Thank you for preparing it."
Dagny nodded, scraping her spoon along the edges of her bowl to collect all the stray remaining diced vegetables. Describing her meal as adequate was hardly a glowing review, but Voris had never been one for gushing over anything. "Um, you're welcome, I guess, but you're not really eating it though."
"I am simply trying to conserve what we have."
"We pick up our rations tomorrow and we still have most of what you brought home the other day."
"I have heard from a reliable source that rations will be reduced another twenty percent within the week."
"You're listening to rumors now? That can't be very logical."
"Reducing rations based on current events is the only logical option open to the council," he countered. "And if you will remember, I just came from speaking with them."
"Even so, you still have to eat."
"I have eaten."
"Eat more," she sighed, rising from the table to place her squirming child in her crib.
"I am satisfied that my minimum nutritional needs have been met."
Dagny could hardly believe what she was hearing. She'd grown up knowing about wanting another helping at the dinner table but holding off so her younger siblings could have their fill, but even back then, she wouldn't have called a single ladle of watery stew enough food. And Voris was much larger than she was.
"I would feel better if you had another helping," she replied, sitting down on the corner of the bed and half-heartedly trying to settle Safi down.
"And I would prefer that you drop the matter."
The coolness of his tone hurt, but she wasn't willing to give up so easily. "I know you're the doctor here," she began, carefully lacing sarcasm through her words, "But that's not enough food to meet anyone's minimum nutritional requirements. I wouldn't last long eating that much, and I'm only half your size."
"Our needs are quite different. I am Vulcan and possess a more efficient digestive system than you. Additionally, you bear the physically expensive burden of producing the breastmilk that accounts for nearly three-quarters of our daughter's diet. Therefore it is only logical that you require more food than I do."
His rationale changed her view slightly, but not for the better. She suddenly felt sick at the idea that Voris was going hungry so she and Safi could eat. A profound desire to share in his sacrifice began battling a powerful need to feed her child. Tears threatened to roll down her cheeks but she managed to choke them down and tried to think happy thoughts to keep from upsetting the baby.
Several hours later she found herself tucked beneath his right arm, warm beneath the pile of blankets heaped over their bodies. For the first time since they'd begun sharing a bed, Dagny wasn't dead as soon as her head hit the pillow and Voris fell asleep first. His slow breaths trickled across the back of her neck every twenty seconds or so and the coarse hair of his legs tickled her calves beneath the sheets. How strange it was to experience him like this. Despite everything going on in the world beyond their home, she felt secure and safe but because of everything going on, she was also wide awake.
A tugging sensation rippled through her lower belly and though she tried to dismiss the thought before it could fully form, it occurred to her that she was quickly growing aroused. She felt horrified and baffled at the same time. Was he really all that appealing? From a physical standpoint, she wasn't entirely sure. Or was she? He wasn't classically handsome—not by her limited human standards anyway—but he certainly wasn't ugly. The image of his long, lanky figure and plain yet kind face swirled in her mind's eye, spurring her sudden physical interest forward. She felt so powerless to stop it, then wondered if she really wanted to. Was she really so attracted to Voris?
Of course she'd known she cared for Voris ever since his brush with Orion lungworm, loved him even. After Safi's birth, she'd sort of come to terms with it, choosing to classify it as a platonic affection between two people who were being held hostage to a wild situation. She recalled briefly thinking she was falling in love with Voris the night she broke her arm falling down the stairs after the shock of seeing him kiss Vaksur—that memory was a punch in the gut—but she hadn't really ever been attracted him in any romantic sense, had she?
Voris had said they shared a bond, but a bond didn't have to mean any kind of special attraction, so it had been easy to write off those temporary lovesick feelings as a by-product of mental transference from Safi during pregnancy. Then Safi had been born and their lives had turned upside down and she hadn't had much time to think about it in between changing diapers and wondering how to keep them all fed and clothed and clean. For whatever stupid reason, was thinking about it now. The warm press of his body against hers made it impossible to think about anything else.
It was overwhelming because it had come out of nowhere, but in the darkness of their room with no one to see her, she smiled broadly and blushed. When had she crossed the threshold from respect and appreciation for Voris to genuine love and now attraction? There was another pull in her belly, then sheer panic.
She thought of all the steamy dreams she'd had during the early days of her pregnancy. How many times had she wondered if Voris had picked up on that during their countless mind melds? She thought of the evening they'd conceived Safi in the diplomatic guest quarters of Valder Station in orbit of Aldebaran. Few memories remained of that night—their minds had been such a mess—but her body was in rebellion and unexpectedly begging her to reenact it.
It had been almost a year ago now. She had spent a whole year without her family, but in that same time she'd been piecing together a family of her own. There was still sadness, sometimes, but there was no longer any loneliness. Dagny groaned inwardly, abruptly understanding how her mother had stayed perpetually pregnant. Her mother had loved children and had few skills other than caring for them, and her father had stayed so busy as the captain of the ship. A new baby every few years meant having something to do and later, another person for company. If Dagny didn't work with Voris and see patients every day, she could almost see herself falling into the same trap. Her unanticipated attraction was suddenly the most ridiculous of thoughts—the last thing she and Voris needed right now was another baby. Of course, there was birth control…
She shook her head as if it would help her banish the thought. Voris stirred behind her and she wanted to kick herself for doing anything that might wake him. Why was she thinking about him this way? Voris groaned in his sleep, wrapping his arm more tightly around her body and drawing her closer to him. Her breath caught in her throat and her heart became a frantic flurry of pulses. The hungry pull in her belly returned and she spent the next hour battling the psychology of it, wondering if her sudden sexual interest in Voris was just some subconscious effort to keep them together or whether Adelaide's theory was proving true and she had stumbled upon a good, steady partner first and become smitten later.
It was maddening, being pinned so close to his sleeping body and feeling what she now felt. Girlishness over her growing infatuation mingled with helplessness as she realized Voris probably didn't feel the same way about her. He'd never given her any indication that he was interested in her romantically or physically. The old fears that he cared for her only because she was the mother of his child resurfaced, raw and ugly. Just as her mind began to grow tired of gnawing on this bizarre development and overanalyzing every lumpy facet of her and Voris' relationship, he uttered a low moan and pulled her body even closer to his.
She froze, keenly aware that despite his being asleep, Voris was obviously just as aroused as she was. It wasn't just the mildly sexual groan, she could feel the evidence of his arousal pressed tightly against the bottom of her right buttock. A shocked giggle threatened to escape from her throat as she tried to rationalize it away. She knew blood flowed much slower during sleep, a fact that made nocturnal erections not only possible, but quite common. Facts meant so little when feelings were involved however, and so she went back to agonizing over where things stood between them until eventually drifting into a restless sleep.
By some miracle, Safi slept through most of the night and when her cries finally woke Dagny, she lazily pulled herself into a sitting position and realized Voris was gone. It was probably better that way. How was she supposed to face him now? As she rolled out of bed and moved to investigate whether Safi was crying because she was wet or hungry or both, she caught sight of the time and panicked. The clinic would open in half an hour. Why hadn't Voris awoken her?
She rushed through her morning routine, doubling up on activities like brushing her teeth and combing her hair where she could. When she opened the preserver to help herself to last night's stew for breakfast, she was shocked to discover an abundance of carrots, potatoes, and even two tiny sweet potatoes in the bins at the bottom. It was nearly twice as much as what they'd had the night before. Voris said he was trading for extra food, but what could he possibly have to trade that would be worth this much?
The fact that he was dealing in the black market at all set her nerves on edge. Prior to the clinic's closure while they dealt with the mold in the greenhouses, they were seeing at least two or three patients every day who had been roughed up as a result of illicit trading gone wrong or revenge for secret food caches being raided. She sighed, thankful that at least he wasn't operating one of those surface gardens. Rather than dwell on the surprise surplus lurking in her preserver, she dumped half of the stew into a bowl and nursed Safi while she shoveled food into her mouth.
Five minutes before the clinic was due to open, she trod downstairs with Safi in her arms to find Voris setting up the clinic for the morning's patients. After being closed for four days they were certainly in for a busy morning. She wanted to ask him why he'd let her sleep in and where all the vegetables in the preserver had come from, but the moment he turned to look at her, the blood started to pulse through her cheeks as memories of the night before clouded her thoughts. Maybe he really was handsome.
"Good morning," he offered, his voice void of any hint that he was aware how suddenly her feelings for him had shifted.
"Morning," she croaked, striding to the crib they kept for Safi by the computer.
He was in the middle of maintenance on one of the tricorders and didn't look up as she marched past him. "I did not anticipate you would be in the clinic until later."
"Why?"
"You and Safi were both quite asleep when I arose this morning."
"Why didn't you wake me up when you got up?"
Voris blinked. "It was unnecessary."
"How do you figure that? The clinic's been closed for four days. We're going to be swamped."
The clinic door opened and Dagny was about to tell whoever walked through it that they weren't open for another three minutes, but it was Aisla. "Good morning, lovies!"
Voris acknowledged Aisla then looked back at Dagny and replied, "Because Aisla, Hadrian, and the orderlies will be here to assist me. Your face is becoming quite flushed. Are you feeling well?"
Her voice emerged as a high-pitched whisper. "Yes, w-why do you ask?"
"Voris is right—your face is turning bright red," Aisla quipped.
"I'm fine." She didn't like being on the defensive against both of them any more than she liked turning bright red whenever Voris looked at her.
Aisla wagged her eyebrows as if she didn't really believe her and seemed poised to say something, but then she looked back and forth between Dagny and Voris and a small grin crept onto her lips. Aisla knew. She had to know. To Dagny's intense relief, she said, "The line's already halfway down the tunnel. Are we almost ready to go?"
The morning went by in a blur, full of patients complaining of headaches and stomachaches and everything in between. Many of the problems they were seeing were the result of short term hunger. Almost every single patient remarked about the fact that they were skipping occasional meals—some jokingly, others far less so.
The second patient Dagny saw that morning was a young mother who explained that she split her head open when she stood up too quickly and got dizzy, then lost her balance and fell. When she related that she hadn't eaten in two days because there had been a mix-up with her ration coupons and she was portioning out all the small amounts of food she had to her two children, Dagny almost felt compelled to give her some of the potatoes and carrots from their preserver but in the end, she couldn't do it.
She hated this new mentality she was developing, of wanting to tend to her own family first. Today they had more than enough, but who knew what tomorrow would bring? When they first arrived here, it had felt like the entire colony went out of their way to welcome them with household goods and food but now most people seemed hesitant to offer so much as a smile.
Though she stopped periodically to tend to her daughter, they worked clear through lunch and just as the activity in the clinic started to subside, he donned his cloak and announced he was leaving.
"Why? Where are you going?" she blurted.
"I believe I informed you I had a meeting with the council this afternoon regarding requisitions for the clinic."
"Oh." She felt silly for acting so shocked that he would leave without warning during the middle of the day. "I suppose I'll see you when you get back."
"It would be difficult for you to see me sooner," he replied, giving her the look he reserved for her frequent lapses in logic.
It was almost as if he were teasing her, which was usually annoying, but today it was mildly cute. The look in Voris' eyes changed slightly, revealing an expression of curiosity. Before she could let him see her face go red again, she turned around and pretended to be very busy cleaning the biobeds. After he left, she turned the task over to one of the orderlies and picked up Safi.
"Don't think I don't know," fluttered a gleeful voice behind her.
"Know what, Aisla?"
"I see everything."
Dagny clenched her jaw and spun around. She tried to think up some words to deny it, but her face glowed red hot.
"Are you and Dr. Voris… together? Officially?"
Dagny looked around at the handful of orderlies lurking around and in a low voice replied, "No. Of course not."
"But you want to be."
"I- I don't know."
"What's not to know? You two are wonderful together and you have a beautiful baby girl."
"I don't think he thinks of me like that."
"It is hard to tell with Vulcans," Aisla sighed. "Have you told him how you feel?"
"Ugh, no. What if he- what if he doesn't…"
"Feel the same way? I bet he does. I bet he could, with a little encouragement."
"What do you mean?"
Before Aisla could answer, the clinic door burst open and peace officers carried in two badly injured Gorn men. They sprang into action and soon, more officers came and dropped off two seriously injured human men. Where had all these peace officers come from? It seemed like half the colony had been arbitrarily assigned to police the other half. Either that or they were somehow spawning out of the walls.
She asked one of the orderlies to go fetch Voris and when the girl shrugged and said she didn't know where the council was located, Dagny didn't argue. Instead, she turned to the next orderly and told him to do it. All four of her patients were in terrible shape. The Gorn had injuries consistent with a severe beating while the humans were a bloody mess of claw and bite marks. It didn't take Vulcan logic to know a terrible fight had taken place.
One of the humans died of blood loss within a minute of his arrival and despite her shock, she didn't hesitate to move on to the next patient. Safi was screaming in her crib and Dagny pleaded with the girl orderly to take care of her while she got down to the business of tending to one of the seriously wounded Gorn men. He died several minutes later, but given the extensive crush injuries to his chest, it was hardly surprising. Most of his organs appeared to be halfway crushed.
The minutes ticked by and she wondered what was taking Voris so long to get back. Had the orderly known where to find him or gotten caught up in some other mess? When fifteen minutes had passed, she barked at one of the peace officers to get on the clinic's comms and find a way to summon Voris back to the clinic. The man glared at her—why were they even still here, anyway?—but he did as she asked. The second human patient died not long after, probably from internal bleeding, and Dagny felt ready to come apart at the seams.
"Where the hell is Dr. Voris?" she shouted at the peace officer, as though it was his fault Voris had failed to materialize.
"The council's office isn't responding," he whined, shouting to be heard over Safi's cries.
She, Aisla, and Hadrian threw everything they had into keeping the second Gorn patient alive. He was breathing on his own and not as bad off as the others had been, but his condition was still quite serious. Both forelimbs had multiple compound fractures and his tail was a crumpled mess. Dagny doubted whether Voris would be able to save the mangled limbs, but she did her best to keep the circulation flowing through them.
Just as they started to stabilize their patient, another wave of injured colonists descended upon the clinic, all of them sporting similar injuries to the first four.
"What the hell is going on out there?" Dagny yelled to no one in particular. Some of the new patients were ambulatory; some of them were peace officers.
"There was a riot outside of the old freight office," a human man said. His hand concealed the right side of his face but the blood oozing out from between his fingers told Dagny that the wound it hid was probably a serious one.
"It started in the Gorn tunnel," someone else corrected.
"I just came from Greenhouse 8," a woman insisted. "It's a madhouse there."
Soon people were arguing with each other over where the riot was and it started to become clear that at least three serious, violent incidents had broken out all over the colony in the span of less than an hour. The casualties continued to trickle in and eventually Safi stopped crying. It broke her heart that she didn't have time to properly tend to her daughter, but three people were dead and at least three more were well on their way.
They needed surgery. They needed a doctor. Where was Voris? Anxious dread welled in the pit of her stomach and every time the clinic door opened, she feared it would be another peace officer carrying Voris' dead body over his shoulders. The clinic was almost at capacity and soon she was begging the remaining orderlies to check in and triage the new patients while she, Aisla, and Hadrian worked to get everyone stabilized.
She was engrossed in her efforts to patch up a nicked brachial artery and keep a middle-aged human man from bleeding to death when she saw the clinic door spring open out of the corner of her eye and for a second, she thought her worst fear had come true. Two peace officers supported the weight of a tall man between them and from the slackness of his body and their lack of urgency, it was obvious he was dead. She fought the urge to scream, even after she realized it wasn't Voris. It was Jacob Diels.
She looked around wildly, wondering if Khel was in the clinic. No. How would she react to such a tragic loss? Probably much the same way Dagny would react, if the roles were reversed. She blinked away tears and kept working, all the while wondering what was happening to the colony outside the clinic's doors and desperately willing Voris to come back to her. Even without the riots, he should have been back by now.
When one of the peace officers asked if they could be of any assistance, she swore at him, barking at him to find the doctor. He got on the clinic's direct comms again and much to her surprise, came back to her five minutes later with a dark expression on his face.
"Ma'am, you're looking for Dr. Voris, the Vulcan guy?"
"Yes! He's a doctor and this is a clinic. We need him here!" she snarled, pointing to the badly maimed arm of her human patient. "People are dying."
"Uh, I'm- uhm, I'm afraid he's been detained."
"Detained?" she spat, her voice so ugly it almost sounded mocking. Still, she couldn't deny that her heart was bursting with relief that he was in fact alive, even if he was in jail.
"He's been detained on suspicion of rioting, along with about thirty other people."
"You're joking. He wouldn't participate in a riot. He's Vulcan."
"Don't shoot the messenger, ma'am, I'm just relaying the information to you as I get it."
"Listen, I don't care if he shot someone in the face with a phaser—not that he would. He's the only person on this colony capable of dealing with this," waving her free hand around at the mostly full clinic.
The officer gave her an apologetic look and walked away without another word. Two hours later, all six of the critical patients had died, most of the serious patients had been stabilized, and many of the people with minor injuries had been patched up and sent on their way. All in all, nine people were dead. She couldn't blame herself for the three that had been brought in that way, but looking at the bodies of the six who had died on her watch filled her with rage and anguish she could barely define. She wasn't sure Voris could have saved all of them, but she was almost certain that he could have saved at least some.
Things were still very tense in the clinic and several of the patients were touch-and-go, but as she watched Aisla try and heal a little Suliban girl's broken leg, something inside her snapped.
"Aisla, will you watch Safi for me?" Her voice came out a garbled, shaking squeak as she stormed toward the door.
"Of course lovey, but-"
She was out the door and marching up the tunnel and never heard the rest of Aisla's objection. Was she being reckless, walking out of the clinic while they were in the middle of a crisis? Were the tunnels even safe? Was she a bad mother for leaving her baby in a crowded clinic in the care of someone who was up to her elbows in catastrophe? Was she going to make things worse by showing up at the jail and demanding to speak to someone in charge? The answers to her questions in order were probably yes, no, perhaps, and almost certainly, but she was too outraged to care.
The moment she stepped inside the jail's lobby, her stalwart fury faltered as the faces of dozens of battered and forlorn prisoners gazed back at her. There were at least fifty people crammed into five cells, each designed to hold maybe two or three inmates. She thought she would instantly find Voris, but the cells in the back were largely obscured from view and the only person her eyes would focus on was Khel. She was in the front cell and sat with her forehead pressed up against the bars, her mouth slightly open and a blank look in her tear-streaked face. She didn't even seem to notice Dagny staring at her. She'd wondered earlier if Khel knew about Jake, and the fierce grief staring back at her told her that Khel most certainly knew her husband was dead. Where was baby Christopher?
"Can I help you?" asked a man standing behind the desk, his voice full of irritation.
She finally managed to look away from Khel and saw a portly man in a uniform slightly too small glaring at her. She straightened her shirt and replied as confidently as she could manage, "I need to see Dr. Voris."
"The doctor's being held in custody until he can be questioned about his role in the riot."
Rather than fume about how Voris couldn't have possibly been involved in leading a riot, she responded, "We need him in the clinic. People are dying."
Based on another cursory glance around the jail, quite a few of the inmates needed medical care also.
"I have my orders," the guard replied. "No one goes anywhere. Not even the doctor."
"Is there someone else I can speak to?"
"Constable's busy. You can speak to me."
"I don't think I can," she replied through gritted teeth. "You don't seem to be understanding that there are people literally dying in the clinic because they need surgery and the colony's only doctor is being held in a jail cell."
"Maybe the colony's only doctor should have thought of that before he went and got involved in a riot."
Even though she didn't for a moment think Voris could have been involved in any of the riots, she placed her hands on the counter to hide the fact that they were shaking and said, "If he could just come back to the clinic and tend to some patients, I'm sure he would be willing to come back to the jail afterward. He's an honest man-"
"Everyone's honest, until they aren't."
"You think he would leave and not come back? He's the doctor; everyone knows him and besides, where is he going to go?"
"Lots of people have gone missing in the past few months. I don't care what anyone out there does, I'm only responsible for what the people in here do. Your doctor is in here and he's going to stay in here until I hear otherwise."
"What is wrong with you?" Dagny cried, slamming her hands on the counter and drawing the attention of several nearby prisoners.
The man narrowed his eyes and leaned over the counter. "Do you want me to show you the inside of a jail cell too?"
"I don't know," she retorted. "Do you want to end up in the clinic one day after another riot and find out there's no doctor to help you?"
"One more word out of your mouth and you'll be spending the night here," the man replied, his voice suddenly soft and sweet. "Probably a couple of nights."
She snapped back to her senses. Getting herself arrested wasn't going to help the situation and certainly wouldn't help Safi. Aisla would take care of her, but how would she eat? The blood drained from her face. Surely she could find Constable Kilpatrick or Anja or someone else on the council and talk some sense into them.
She wanted to raise objections about the bruised and bloody people sitting in the cells too, but he had said one more word would land her in there with them, and if he wouldn't let the doctor out to save people in the clinic, she doubted whether he would let prisoners out to go to the clinic for treatment if their injuries didn't look life-threatening. Or maybe he didn't care about how serious their injuries were. Maybe he was the kind of ass who got off on power and would be perfectly content to let someone die of slowly collapsing lungs in a cell. Who could say?
She first tried the council's office but it was closed and swarming with half a dozen peace officers, probably because the door was busted in. She tried the greenhouses, dispensary, auditorium, and the tavern, but she had no luck finding anyone who might have both the sense and power to get Voris out of jail. Eventually she trudged back to the clinic, worried she'd already been gone too long. She found the clinic less full and a bit more subdued than it had been when she left, aside from Safi, who was screaming her head off in Aisla's arms.
"Any news?" the Orion asked as Dagny collected her baby.
"Voris is in jail, along with about five percent of the colony, the officer at the desk won't listen to reason, nine people are dead, no one has enough to eat, and everyone is turning on each other," she replied, her chin starting to quiver.
Aisla rubbed her forehead and nodded. "Things have quieted down a little bit here. Jae-suk still hasn't woken up and I'm afraid Darla's brain is swelling."
"Can you find your aunt and tell her what's going on? We need to get Voris back here as soon as possible."
"Say no more," she murmured. "We'll get this taken care of."
After Aisla left, Dagny paced around the clinic and convalescent ward, checking on the patients who remained while she breastfed her hungry baby. She agreed with Aisla's assessment about Darla Green's cerebral edema and based on the biobed's readings, her brain activity was falling off fast. Even if Voris were to arrive now, he doubted there would be anything he could do to salvage whatever was left. It seemed liked the body count would soon climb to ten. Less than half an hour later, it did.
She tried to keep calm and upbeat for Safi's sake and one of the afternoon orderlies took on the task of trying to entertain her while Dagny made her frequent rounds. She sent the staff home around 1900 hours, urging them to get whatever rest they could. Two of the peace officers tried to stay behind to keep an eye on the Gorn man on account of the fact that he was being charged with murder, but he was unconscious and cuffed to one of the beds in the ward and the officers seemed utterly exhausted. It should have been harder to get them to leave, she thought, but she was glad they left without much of a fuss.
Just as she was getting ready to shut down the clinic for the night, she saw a lone figure limping toward the clinic. Voris. She jogged out to meet him, horrified once she got close enough to see his face in detail in the dimly lit tunnel. His face was a bruised mess covered in dried blood and his left eye was swollen shut. He held himself in such a way that made it hard to believe his injuries didn't extend beyond his face.
"Oh Voris," she croaked, slowing up when she reached him and trying to extend her free hand to him, as if she could somehow help.
"I am injured but I will survive," he replied, taking her hand and giving it a small squeeze before nodding in the direction of the clinic. "Let us go home."
The anger she felt earlier toward the peace officers and guard at the jail paled in comparison to what she was feeling now. Not only had they conspired to keep Voris from saving lives in the clinic, they'd denied him basic medical care. She hated herself for not speaking up on behalf of the prisoners. What kind of awful place had Bergeron colony become? What kind of awful person was she becoming for not speaking out?
"What happened? They said-"
"Not here," he interrupted, dropping her hand and focusing on two peace officers patrolling the tunnel up ahead.
She walked at his pace and once safely inside the clinic, she laid Safi down and ordered him to strip off his shirt so she could assess the extent of the damage and start putting him back together. His shoulders and torso were splattered with bruises that would only darken in the next couple of days and his left collarbone didn't match the right one. He didn't argue and Dagny didn't even bother collecting a full inventory of his injuries—she just grabbed the nearest available bone knitter, tricorder, and tissue regenerator and got to work. She rambled about the events of the past six hours—all the deaths and peace officers and when she got to the part about Jake and seeing Khel in jail, he simply took her hand and said, "I know."
She sat down on the biobed next to him and gently touched his swollen face before raising the tissue regenerator to his eye. He winced but didn't pull away. "What happened, Voris?"
"I am in pain and quite fatigued," he replied, turning toward her. His one good eye looked at her with an expression that almost seemed sad.
"I refuse to believe you were part of a riot," she said. "Just tell me you weren't part of a riot."
He gripped the hand tracing the regenerator over his face and lowered it back into her lap. "Will you allow me to meld with you?"
His request caught her completely off-guard. Voris seemed vulnerable and that frightened her. She readily agreed, not remembering her newfound attraction to him until it was too late. If he detected it at all, he didn't acknowledge it. Instead, he spent the next minute telepathically exposing her to everything that had happened to him that afternoon and evening.
He had been on his way to meet with the council when he saw several people yelling outside the freight office. Several of the colonists were demanding access to the Oglethorpe and Jake Diels obviously refused. When the peace officers arrived, a fight broke out over who actually owned the ship and whether or not the Federation had any right to keep them quarantined on this planet and soon it devolved into whether or not the council had any right to withhold the food or keep people from replanting the crops on the surface. Then people started to throw rocks. He could remember being struck in the side of the head, losing consciousness, and waking up in a fifteen square meter jail cell with eleven other people. He had tried to look after his fellow cellmates' injuries as best as he could, but without medical supplies, there was little he'd been able to do and as far as he could discern, no one was as severely injured as he was. He had sat and tried to meditate his pain away until about half an hour ago, Aisla's aunt, Anja, had stormed into the jail and ordered the officer on duty to release him.
When he was done, he loosened his grip on her face but Dagny wasn't ready to let him go. She carefully slipped her arms around his neck and pulled him into light hug, careful not to aggravate his injuries. "I was so worried about you. I don't know what I would do without you."
"You would find a way to endure," he mumbled. "Our daughter needs you."
"And I need you. Voris, I-" She was on the verge of admitting everything to him, her infatuation and feelings, but then she wondered if he already knew. If he knew and wasn't acknowledging it, then that had to mean he didn't feel the same way.
She fumbled with the tissue regenerator and resumed her efforts to restore his broken face and body. It took nearly an hour and the bruises hadn't completely disappeared and no doubt he would be sore for a few days, but he would live, just as he said he would. He and Safi retired upstairs while she did one last check on the patients in the convalescent ward, then she joined them.
Voris was already asleep by the time she crawled into bed and just like the night before, she was tortured to sleep by her own thoughts. Several times she heard the faint grumble of his stomach and she was sure he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast or maybe even the night before. She wanted to hate him for it and beg him to eat something, but he was only doing what pretty much everyone else on the colony was doing—going hungry so his child could eat. She loved him so hopelessly and every time she thought about him not loving her back, it crushed her a little more. Even if she could live without him, she didn't want to.
2261.40
Voris trailed his fingertips along Safi's spine, relaxing the pressure as he made his way up to her head. As he began to release his hold on her, her body slackened and her arms went outward to try and catch herself on his forearms before she fell onto the bed. She had mastered holding her head up but still lacked the strength to completely support her own weight while seated. This was not unusual however, as she was only three months and six days old as of today. At five and a half kilograms, she was still quite small compared to either a typical Vulcan or human child, but her physical and mental development appeared to be progressing normally.
Safi began to frown and tried to stuff her right fist in her mouth. She was hungry, but Dagny was not yet home and there was only one more bottle of fortified Vulcan breastmilk to last for the next two days. He glanced at the clock, curious why she hadn't returned by now.
Approximately three hours ago, Dagny had gone to visit Khel, who was handling the death of her husband very badly. Perhaps she'd lost track of time, as humans so often did. In a bid to entertain his daughter until her mother returned and could breastfeed her, Voris picked her up and carried her downstairs to the clinic where there was more room to walk with her. He was unsure what she found appealing about the practice, whether it was that the clinic was more visually stimulating than their quarters or whether she simply liked the sensation of being carried along for a walk, but it was the surest way to pacify her, aside from feeding her.
Unfortunately for Voris, after several laps, Safi had decided her father's methods were not going to be sufficient to quell her agitation on this particular occasion. She began to fidget and whine, so Voris took her into the empty convalescent ward and tried his luck there. He walked up and down the row of beds, but she refused to be calmed. Eventually he resigned himself to sitting on the edge of the bed nearest the door and positioning on his lap so he could see her face.
She looked so unhappy. He tried Dagny's method of bouncing her up and down, but ultimately, it was a novel technique that proved effective. He lifted her up high on his chest and in his efforts to adjust his hold on her, she fell forward slightly, planting her palm on his jaw. There was a sudden jolt of unintentional mental transference that he immediately blocked, but the brief experience stunned his daughter.
He pulled her away from his chest and found her mouth locked open in wonder. That expression lasted for approximately three seconds before she uttered a sound that was a perfect blend of a laugh and a scream. Her blue eyes glowed with curiosity and delight and for a moment, Voris felt tempted to forge a formal, paternal bond with his daughter.
Her smile reminded him of Dagny, but almost everything else about her reminded him of himself, from her striking black hair and medium complexion to her short nose and long face. Because Voris also strongly resembled his father, the tiny person staring back at him was almost a mirror image of her grandfather, Silek, a man who had called her a half-breed and disowned his son for wanting to raise her. For all his logic, he was not above appreciating irony.
She was not so completely like Silek, however. Her eyes were large, round, and blue, much like Voris' mother's had been, though the pale hue could only be attributable to Dagny, who claimed to have inherited this trait from her father. Soon the appeal of trying to touch her father's face lost its luster and Safi once again began to whine and squirm.
Just as he stood up to begin walking with her again, the clinic door burst open and Mike Yates stormed inside. He and Voris exchanged looks, Voris looking at Mike with hesitant curiosity and Mike looking at Voris with mad urgency. The tunnel was relatively quiet, but he could hear screaming far off in the distance. Mike frantically motioned for Voris to approach and once he was within arm's reach, Mike clasped a hand over his wrist and began to pull him through the door.
"I cannot go with you," he replied, shaking his head and wincing from the strain Mike was putting on his left arm. He'd broken his collarbone during the riots and it was still a bit tender. He nodded to Safi and said, "I cannot leave my daughter."
Mike pointed at Safi with his thumb and nodded, a gesture which he understood to mean that wherever he wanted Voris to go, Safi should come also.
"I can get my PADD so that we can communicate more effectively," he began, but Mike pulled harder on his wrist.
Safi began to howl and Mike looked at her anxiously, then grabbed Voris' free hand and placed it on his face. Understanding it was an emergency, Voris didn't retract his arm but instead slid his fingers into position to initiate a mind meld. Several seconds later, he ripped his hand away. Mike nodded, almost as if asking Voris if he understood what he needed to do.
He understood perfectly. He wanted to collect Dagny, but there was no time and she was not in as much danger as he and Safi were. Without stopping to collect any supplies, Voris followed Mike into the tunnel and toward the stairs, then was directed into the narrow, unmapped passage where Eury had once led him to a dying Harold. Mike did not go with him, but Voris didn't need a guide any longer.
Before proceeding into the sliver in the rock, he turned to Mike. He wanted to give Safi to him and go seek out Dagny himself, but he wasn't sure he had time and the last thing his daughter needed was to be orphaned, so he carefully mouthed the words, "Dagny. Please. She is with Khel."
Mike gave a slow nod and then took off at a brisk pace, hopefully to find Dagny, Khel, and Christopher and ferry them to safety as well. Voris bounced Safi up and down, certain he had done the right thing in choosing to secure the safety of his child before the safety of his… Dagny, but gravely disliking that he had been forced to choose at all.
It was pitch black and Safi's cries echoing off the wall were disorienting. They pushed further, squeezing and ducking through narrow cracks of gallicite. More than once he slammed his head, knees, and elbows into rocky protrusions that he couldn't see, but he kept going and did his best to remain calm and try to soothe his very agitated daughter. It occurred to him that perhaps his daughter had sensed the collective terror growing in the colony and been trying to warn him before Mike had even arrived.
He spied a light up ahead and soon they arrived in an opening that was approximately two meters wide by six meters long and not quite high enough for Voris to stand without scraping the top of his head. There he found three Romulans and Kor'la, the Klingon councilwoman sitting next to a small lamp. About two minutes after he arrived, two more Klingon women appeared, along with Nhael, her twins, and Malen and Maera.
Malen giggled with delight and hugged Voris around the legs. Nhael scolded him and urged him to keep his voice down, but Voris dropped to one knee and spoke softly to him.
"You must be quiet, do you understand?"
"Why?" Malen asked.
Voris wasn't sure how much Standard the boy had picked up in the months since he'd last seen him. Another Romulan man and Rigelian woman appeared at the entrance, leaving Voris to wonder how many more people they could safely fit in this space. He turned back to Malen and replied, "Because the Gorn have invaded Bergeron colony. They have come to kill Romulans and Klingons."
"You're not Romulan," one of Nhael's twins spat. "Why are you hiding like a dog like the rest of us?"
"Because the Gorn will see a pair of pointed ears and shoot first and probably not bother to ask questions later," Kor'la barked from behind him. "Now shut up and sit down."
"Do not speak to my son that way," Nhael snapped. "Who put you in charge?"
"This colony did, when they elected me to the council."
"And some great job you have done," Nhael spat. "Riots, no food, now Gorn swarming the planet while we hide like vermin in the tunnels. What is next?"
Kor'la stood up, a move no doubt intended to accentuate her great size and intimidate Nhael, but due to the constraints of the ceiling, she was forced to stoop. The two women seemed ready to come to blows and Safi started to whimper.
"Nhael does raise a valid point," he said, hoping to diffuse the situation. "We cannot remain in this cavern indefinitely."
"True," added the Rigelian woman. "There's no food. No toilet. We can't even stay here for more than a couple of hours."
"And somehow I doubt the Gorn plan to leave any time soon, what with all this dilithium here," said one of the Romulan men.
"You are right," Kor'la said, her voice a hostile growl. "We cannot stay here forever, but the Federation is coming."
"Like we're supposed to believe that?" the Romulan man laughed. "And what will they do? Try and reason with the Gorn and ask nicely to leave us alone?"
"I do not lie, petaQ," Kor'la sneered.
"Why would the Federation come now if they were not willing to assist us after the last attack?" Voris interjected.
"And the last attack was the Gorn, wasn't it?" Nhael added. "Not that the council would ever admit it."
"There was no need to stir anti-Gorn sentiment," Kor'la replied before turning to Voris. "And the Federation is coming now for one very simple reason—negotiations with the Laurentians have stalled once again."
"What does that have to do with anything?" snapped another Romulan man.
"Because the Laurentians supply approximately sixty percent of the Federation's dilithium. They may not regard many of the colonists very highly, but they will protect these dilithium resources," Voris replied, not taking his eyes off Kor'la, who flashed an ugly, crooked smile. "How do you know the Federation is en route to provide assistance?"
"We received a transmission from Starbase 141 early this afternoon," she explained. "They have dispatched a Starfleet ship and it will arrive in four days."
"One ship?" the Rigelian woman scoffed.
"Four days?" one of the Romulan men added. "What if we're all dead by the time the USS Gornkiller gets here? They'll find us: they have scanners."
"The gallicite in the rock reflects communications, scanners, and transporters," Voris replied. "And we appear to be located within a deep vein of it. As long as we remain quiet and no one in the colony alerts the Gorn to our presence, there is no reason they should ever find us."
"The doctor is correct." Kor'la's lip curled as she added, "You may complain like little children if you must, but the Federation is our only hope of salvation."
"Surely one ship will be insufficient to the task of expelling the Gorn," Voris countered, echoing the Rigelian woman's sentiment.
Kor'la shrugged. "It is more than none and they have sent the Federation's own flagship."
Voris nodded to himself. He knew the ship well. His cousin, Ambassador Spock had once been its first officer and his other cousin, Commander Spock, was its current second-in-command. The USS Enterprise was coming.