CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The last sedative did the trick. The girl is finally sleeping. Chapel leans over to tuck her in close to the wall beside her mother. Falling out of bed is one fear she can remove, even if she can do nothing about the terrors of the day.

There had been no tears, no words as she led mother and daughter down the corridor to the last available bunk on the ship. Chapel suspects they're both in shock. But at least they had escaped physical injury, unlike many of their shipmates from the Demeter. Even with the resources of a starship sickbay the Enterprise medical teams had been unable to save the most badly injured.

She stands, closing her eyes, and breathes deep into the arch of a spine too long compressed. After the flashing cacophony of sickbay the quiet is somehow shocking. And she feels odd, as if she's slipped out of sync somehow. When she opens her eyes she realises why. She's never been here before, never actually stepped over the threshold of the captain's quarters.

Kirk was careful like that. Spock and McCoy were regular visitors but crew, particularly female crew, were never invited into the inner sanctum. She takes another deep breath and inhales the same recycled air as in any other cabin. So it must be her imagination that scents the space with something that is unmistakably the captain.

She finds herself unable to resist the temptation to inspect her commanding officer's personal space now she's here. Apart from the colourful pile of data cards spread haphazardly on the desk - paperwork stacking up even while the man who can produce the necessary sign off faces deadly danger on the planet below - the cabin is pin neat.

There's scant evidence that a Starfleet legend inhabits this particular space between the bulkheads.

After five years roaming the galaxy most of the longer serving crew have run out of horizontal surfaces for mission souvenirs. But there's no such clutter here. On the wall an old sailing ship is in full flight above the waves, spume spattered prow emblazoned with the legend Enterprize. The only other evidence of the cabin's inhabitant lies in the alcove above the bed. Books, real volumes of paper and leather, sprout a forest of tattered bookmarks. Careful not to disturb the sleeping occupants below she leans forward to read the spines. John Milton sits sandwiched between Bonner the Stochastic and a well-thumbed copy of John Masefield poetry. On closer examination she can see that the bookmark protruding from the pages is actually a child's drawing. Peter, she thinks. Whatever happened to Peter?

The swish of the doors makes her jump as if she's been caught spraying graffiti on the walls and she turns with a guilty start.

"Christine. I wondered where you'd got to."

The doctor's voice is oddly flat. She gestures to the couple on the bed. "Took a while but they're sleeping." She catches the frown. "I had to put them in here, Len. There isn't another bunk on the ship."

McCoy smiles with a weariness she's rarely seen in all her years as his head nurse. "I know, I know, darlin'. It's fine. You did the right thing. It's not as if the captain needs his cabin right now."

"No..."

He stares round the space much as she'd been doing a minute earlier. "And when he does get back the chances of persuading the darn fool to get off the bridge and lie down... Might as well tell a dog to stop scratchin'..."

The determined 'when' rather than 'if' hangs between them but she doesn't challenge it. The captain always comes back. No matter what the odds. They both need to believe it.

He sighs and walks over to the desk on the other side of the partition. He seems lost somehow, moving like an old man. Which he isn't, not yet.

With one last glance at her sleeping patients, Chapel steps round the mesh to join him.

"So how are the new arrivals? Doctor M'Benga was still scanning when I left, but there didn't seem to be any ill effects from the transporter."

McCoy nods slowly. "Our resident miracle worker saved the day once again. I still don't know what Scotty did - he was mutterin' about some sort of damned quantum level filtration matrix - but it worked. No duplicates." His face darkens. "One of 'em had to be resuscitated in the transporter room - they'd never have survived a shuttle journey."

She touches his sleeve, keeps her voice gentle.

"You did what you could, Len. A lot of those people in sickbay owe their lives to you. The ones who didn't make it were beyond saving."

"Yeah, well... we'll never know, will we?"

He starts to stack the scattered data cards into neat piles on the desk. "If we could just track down their comms signal we could have Jim and Spock back here in the blink of an eye. But there's no trace. Scotty thinks they're down too deep. Or their communicators have been disabled."

The set jaw and the grim expression tells her the doctor's thoughts are a long way from this quiet cabin. And she has a shrewd idea of the doomsday scenarios unfolding in his head.

She'd been off ship recruiting new nurses when the Enterprise visited Alpha 177, but she'd heard all about it from Janice. Had spent long hours hearing Rand's endless theories about "Let's stop pretending", what did that mean exactly? Agonising about how the impostor's actions had driven a wedge between her and the captain. Privately Chapel marvelled at her friend's capacity for self-delusion. James Kirk, the consummate professional, was never going to step over that particular line. She thought it had been a something of a relief all round when Rand had jumped ship for a new career path.

She looks at her boss aimlessly stacking and restacking the coloured squares on his friend's desk. "We'll get them back, Len. The two of them together are pretty much an irresistible force. I'll bet you any money that right now the captain's charming his way out of a tight corner and Spock's engineering some supremely logical solution to whatever fix they're in."

"Yeah. I'm sure you're right. It's just..." McCoy glances up and she's suddenly struck by how much this mission's taken out of him. He looks ten years older than he did before those first casualties materialised in sickbay. "It's a helluva thing, Christine. To see those men firing at innocent civilians like that. To know they're aiming to maim, to kill even. You can't get it out of your head. Starfleet security officers-"

"They're not-"

"-I know they're not, Chris. But they started out that way. And now...well, god knows what they are. All I know is right now Jim and Spock are facing a whole bunch of 'em and, from what I saw, they're going to need a lot more than logic and charm to worm their way out of this one."

He bows his head, pressing his fingers white against the desk. "Sorry, Christine. I-"

The whistle from the comms unit cuts through before he can finish.

"Bridge to Doctor McCoy."

"McCoy here."

"Doctor, you're needed in the transporter room. Mr Scott says the latest sensor sweep has picked up some new bio-signs. He thinks it's the positives, the ones from the original team."

"Does he now? Tell him I'm on my way."

The transformation is instant, as if it's energy rather than information that's been transferred through the simple thumbing of the comms switch.

She follows him as he strides for the door. "Positives? Does that mean what I think it means?"

"Well now, Nurse. I'm a doctor not a fortune teller. But we're long overdue some good news. I have an inkling this might be it."

He leaves her standing outside, staring at the retreating figure now moving at remarkable speed down the corridor. She shakes her head, convinced she's so tired she's hallucinating. At least that's the only explanation she can find for the fleeting impression that just before he turned his head, Leonard McCoy actually...smiled.

-oOo-

Bit of a holding chapter before we get back to our boys down on the surface. Apologies for the delays. Needed some thinking time.