"Sir, I don't know what happened, the doors are open

and I-"

"I dinnae care wha' happened!" Scott roared. "I care how

ye plan to fix it!"

"Aye, sir, we have teams circling around to cut off the

first group. Knockout gasses have been released into the

air in the refugee areas to keep the rest of them quiet.

I've sent all the rest down towards the shuttle-bays,

that's where the main group seems to be headed. But sir,

we're short handed, we can't -"

"Aye, lad, I know." Scotty rubbed his hand over his face.

~Think man, ye hae to think!~ His mind felt smothered in

cotton wool and the conviction was growing that the

captain had handed him a problem he couldn't solve this

time. There were too many wild civilians running through

the corridors, not enough crew. The away teams were out

of contact. He had tried to order Harry Pateman to the

bridge to report and the fat man had refused point blank.

Perhaps he should go down to lower decks where Pateman

and his team were quartered. But then, he shouldn't leave

the bridge.

~Think, man! Think!~

In three months on Vulcan, Larssen had had a certain

amount of time on her hands. Her medical treatments

had been time-consuming, but not all encompassing, and

in the time she had had to herself she had taken

advantage of the opportunity to learn as much about

the teachings of Surak, and the Vulcan disciplines, as

she could. Three months was not very long, and

Larssen had no illusions that she was particularly

gifted, but she had mastered some of the more basic

visualisation techniques that Vulcan children learnt

to understand and control the processes of their

minds.

It had not occurred to her that she would be putting

them into practice quite so soon.

She became a stone, and fell away from the pain. The

pain followed, catching her and crushing her hard

enough to pulverise even the hardest rock. She made

herself diffuse and open and as hard to crush as mist

and the pain dissolved into a haze that coloured every

part of her, dieing the grey vapour that was Larssen a

bloody red. She made herself solid so that the mist

billowed harmlessly against her and the mist was

suddenly a thousand steel tipped arrows that tore

through her.

Forcing her eyes open, she saw that she was on her

hands and knees. At the thought, her hands and knees

exploded with pain and she gagged and vomited.

~I can make it stop I can make it better I can make

you feel good, but first you have to

Let

Me

In.~

"Fuck. Off." Larssen said, and spat bile on the

floor.

~Oh, that's no way to talk to me, is it, Lieutenant

Corrina Larssen? Not when I have the power to do this

- and this - and *this* - to you.~

Larssen screamed then, for the first time. She

hunched on the floor, like a supplicant grovelling to

the monster before her. Loretta, head cocked on one

side, still swinging her dangling feet, watching

Larssen with an eagerness that was as nauseating as

the pain.

"Loretta - if you can hear me -" Larssen gasped, and

then howled as agony lit her spine. "If you can - stop

this - if you -"

~Ifni, Ifni, help me now. Whatever god looks out for

minor technicians and junior officers, this is your

chance to shine.~ Every memory she tried to pull up

of the Captain or Commander Spock in a difficult

situation - get to your goddamn *feet*, Lieutenant! -

was ripped away in a torrent of pain and fear and

shame. Larssen tried desperately to cling to each of

them but the pieces of her past - of the self she had

made in Starfleet - shredded and flew. Helplessly,

she saw Lieutenant Corrina Larssen fall to bits and

those bits go swirling out of her grasp -

One lingered for an instant, perhaps because the

*thing* saw the pain it caused her. Sitting on the

side of a bath in an abandoned science outpost,

scarred with frostbite and sobbing like a child -

~ It seemed so unfair that she was sitting here warm

and safe when the owner of the bath oil, the owner of

the clothes, when Bob Grenwood, were cold and lost and

alone out in the storm. It was Bob who troubled her

most. They had been side by side through the journey,

the same challenge, the same training, and yet somehow

she had survived and Bob had died. It was

incomprehensible. She, Corrina Larssen, had not been

a better person than brave Bob Grenwood. She had not

tried harder, she had not been all that more

experienced, and yet here she was... what had made the

difference? Had it been luck? Or had she been less

wholehearted than Grenwood, holding back from the

reality of their situation and from him? Had that been

the difference that saved her?~

- and then it, too, slipped from her

grasp and was gone.

~No!~ Larssen thought. ~No, no, *no*! You can't take

it - not *all* of it - I need it, dammit, damn you,

how am I supposed to know what to do, I need to know,

I can't remember, I need to remember -

What would the captain - what would Commander Spock -

how would Sulu - ~

~Oh, Larssen, you're hardly up to their standards.~

Huddled on the floor, she gathered every shred of her

past that she could grasp and clutched them to her,

Pateman Kirk the Academy, Initar ward-mistresses

schoolyards, snow Spock Grenwood - ~this is me,~ she

thought, holding it to her, ~this is what I am, this

is who I am, this is the truth of Corrina Larssen.~

And she let it go.