Текст книги "Reap the Whirlwind"

Автор книги: David Mack

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

19

Through the dense silhouette of the Jinoteur forest, the sky paled with early morning light. Niwara gathered up the perimeter security devices that had helped protect the site next to the river, where she and Terrell had camped for the night. The first officer busied himself securing their packs for travel.

“How much longer do you want to continue downriver?” she asked, hoping that he would not be hasty to abandon the search.

He looked at the brown water flowing past, then peered downriver as if looking there for the answer. “As long as we can,” he said, “or until the captain orders us back.”

A gentle pass of Niwara’s nimble paw powered down the last sensor device. It retracted into itself, becoming compact for storage and transport. She picked it up and tossed it into her secondary pack. At the riverside, Terrell adjusted the settings on his tricorder. “Still no sign of her,” he said. He looked worried as he added, “And the interference is getting worse.”

“What’s it from?” She squinted at the shafts of white light that cut through the jungle at shallow angles. “Is it solar?”

Looking skyward, Terrell said, “I don’t know.” He put away the tricorder. “I can’t tell if it’s natural or artificial. All I can say for sure is that it’s intense and it’s everywhere.”

Niwara cinched shut her spare pack and was about to walk over and claim her main pack from Terrell when a change in the air bristled her whiskers. An ozone smell and a galvanic tingle made the fur on her tail stand at attention. She stood absolutely still, searching with her ears, her eyes, and her nose. Terrell noticed her hyperalert state and remained quiet. With slow, cautious motions he reopened his pack, then drew his type-2 phaser from his belt. Together they waited.

Overhead, the sky was clear. A soft breeze rustled the foliage around them and brushed the surface of the river with small ripples across the current. There was no sign of danger, no matter where the Caitian scout directed her acute senses, yet she remained certain that something hostile was nearby.

Then she felt it. A cold breath announced its presence. The glow of dawn through the trees dimmed. Daylight faded.

Giant blades of dark flame appeared in mid-jab, lancing out of the jungle in lightning blurs of shimmering indigo. The beam from Terrell’s phaser passed through them without resistance.

Niwara dodged the first thrusts and called out, “Run, sir!” Twisting to evade another death-stroke, she cried, “Take cover!” The bladelike projections behaved like serpents, attacking and recoiling repeatedly. One agonizing strike tore off part of her right shoulder and spun her around to see that Terrell was already under attack, surrounded and taking serious hits to his torso. A glancing blow across the back of his head stunned him. He dropped his phaser.

She sprinted toward him and leaped, knocking him backward into the river. Wounded and dazed, he submerged for a moment, then spluttered back to the surface. Niwara knew that merely submerging him would not be enough to protect him; he would need the signal dampener.

An overpowering blow swept her legs and hurled her into the air. Marshaling her species’ natural agility, she rolled through her landing and somersaulted toward the pack that held their signal dampener. As she rolled to her feet, a pointed tentacle of crackling energy slammed into her abdomen and impaled her. Slashes of glowing violet severed her left front paw. She let herself pitch forward and landed on her right paw.

The pack was only a couple of meters away. Pulling with one arm and kicking with both legs, she fought against the agony in her gut, ignored the sharp impacts falling on her upper back, blocked out the burning sensation that began to consume her. Sinister coils of scarlet fire entwined her legs and tried to drag her backward, but she refused to lose ground.

Centimeters now. Almost within reach…

Her fingers grasped the already opened pack and pulled it on its side toward her. She thrust her hand inside and grabbed the signal dampener. It activated with a simple push of a button. Extending her arm to throw the device to Terrell, she saw a blade of nightfire tensed above her.

She made the throw. It was a clumsy lob. The device barely made it to the river’s edge, where it rolled over the caked mud and disappeared into the murky currents. In her last moment, she looked for Terrell, but he was already gone.

Then a storm of cutting blows fell upon Niwara and ended her suffering with oblivion.

Getting knocked into the river had been a boon and a curse. Coughing out the dirty water had racked Terrell’s wounded body, but the momentary respite from the melee had given him a chance to collect his wits. He wished as quickly that it hadn’t.

A quartet of fearsome tentacles congealed into existence from empty air directly above him. His feet slipped on the muddy riverbed. Dammit, I’m off-balance, and I can’t move worth a damn in the water. Watching the tendrils assume the form of undulating spears, he braced for the worst.

The signal dampener thudded onto the mud in front of him. Niwara’s arm was still curled from having made the throw. A barrage of glowing shapes stabbed at her in a frenzy of violence. As the device rolled down the sloped riverbank into the water, Terrell saw that it had been activated.

He dived after it.

There was nothing to see under the water, so Terrell made his best guess and searched with his hands, making broad overlapping circles ahead of him, shifting side-to-side. He brushed the fist-sized object, which lay half-embedded in the soft mud. His fingers closed over it like a trap and yanked it free. He clutched it to his chest and kicked with what little strength he had left.

Panic propelled him for what felt like forever on a single breath. When his lungs screamed for air and his leg muscles burned from the effort of fighting to go forward and also stay submerged, he reluctantly surfaced. He lifted his head above the water slowly, expecting attack…but found only silence.

Daylight and a slow breeze greeted him as he waded ashore and collapsed in an exhausted heap atop the signal dampener. Mud had collected inside his jumpsuit and his boots. Sand and grit caked his close-cropped hair. He took a quick inventory. Phaser’s gone, he noted glumly. Left the tricorder behind. Checking his belt, he was relieved to find his communicator still firmly in place.

He was careful to keep the signal dampener close as he gingerly pulled off his torn, soaking-wet, muddy jumpsuit. Every move he made hurt enormously, and the pain in his midsection grew worse by the minute. Inspecting his own injuries, he winced at the sheer number of deep puncture wounds on his chest and abdomen—in particular, one deep wound that he knew ought to be bleeding copiously but instead was scabbed with the same peculiar crystalline substance that had encased McLellan’s leg after her brush with the Shedai. He recalled Tan Bao’s report that the crystalline substance was prone to spread quickly—and that when it made contact with vital organs, it would be fatal.

Vital organs are where I just got hit, he realized. Best-case scenario, I’ll be dead by noon.

Though Terrell was normally not one to foist his problems onto others, he decided as he reached for his communicator that in this case a call for help was definitely in order.

“It looks like I’ve got rocks in my gut,” Terrell said.

Captain Nassir and Dr. Babitz stood together in the sickbay of the Sagittarius, listening to the wounded first officer’s report over the comm. Babitz took notes on a data slate. “Clark,” she said, “how long has it been since you were hit?”

“About fifteen minutes,” Terrell said.

The slim blond surgeon nodded. “Do you have a tricorder?”

“No,” Terrell said. “Just a communicator and signal dampener.” He grunted in pain. “I forget—how long does the battery last on this thing?”

Nassir replied, “Twelve hours, enough time for a round trip. I’m sending Sorak and Razka to bring you back.”

“No, sir, don’t,” Terrell said. “We didn’t know the Shedai was there until it attacked—and even then it didn’t trigger the alert on our tricorder. Sorak and Razka would be sitting ducks.”

The captain tensed to argue when Dr. Babitz shook her head. “Captain, I’m sorry, but Commander Terrell’s been hit near vital organs. He doesn’t have that much time.”

Defeat was too bitter for Nassir to accept. “What about the ATV? Are the riverside trails wide enough to—”

“No, sir,” Terrell said, his voice weary and resigned. “If they had been, we’d have used the ATV in the first place.”

Desperation colored the captain’s tone. “Dammit, Clark, we’ve already lost Niwara. I’m not leaving you out there.”

“You have to, sir. The Shedai have learned to evade our sensors—that means the ship is vulnerable. Don’t do anything to draw their attention. Stay under cover as long as possible.”

Nassir shut his eyes and hung his head in grief. Some captains could accept with stoic grace the loss of personnel in the line of duty. But on a ship this small, with such a close-knit crew, it was difficult for Nassir to suppress his feelings when harm befell his shipmates. Maybe I can blame it on hormones, he thought, blinking back tears. He was getting older and was past his pheromone prime. Deltan men his age had learned to accept the changes in their biochemistry that came with middle age and the profound emotions that attended them.

None of that made losing a friend any easier.

The captain collected himself as best he was able. “Thank you, Clark, for keeping your head when I’m losing mine.” He looked at Babitz. “Doctor, I need to go.”

Dr. Babitz nodded and offered a sad but consoling smile. “I’ll maintain an open channel,” she said. “I’ll stay with him.”

“Thank you,” Nassir said softly. Then he stepped away and walked out the door. He headed for the ladder to the top deck, hoping to smother his grief in the myriad details of work. There really was nothing more to be done for Terrell, whose advice to protect the ship was the only sensible course of action.

Guilt shadowed Nassir’s thoughts. His sense of duty told him that he owed it to Terrell to stay on the comm until the end came, but he had watched too many friends and comrades die over the years, and this was a loss he could not bear to witness.

On the top deck of the Sagittarius, Master Chief Ilucci had put everyone to work, including Nassir. Ranks were often treated as a formality on the ship, so Nassir did not think it unusual to find Ilucci, a noncommissioned officer, giving instructions to superior officers such as Sorak and zh’Firro. Watching the ship’s chief of security and flight controller assist Ilucci in rebuilding a piece of the sensor array, the captain knew that if Bridy Mac were on her feet, she would no doubt be pitching in.

As would Niwara, he thought, mourning the slain Caitian. She had been the least social of all the members of the crew, but she had never lacked discipline, dedication, or enthusiasm for her work. Her absence, he was certain, would be felt by the crew for a very long time—especially by Threx, who had never been able to conceal his deep if inexplicable fondness for her.

For now, however, they all had work to do. Nassir’s own background in warp engineering had made him Ilucci’s first choice to help run diagnostics on the warp nacelles, to make certain that they would be ready to function as soon as the fuel pod arrived. With the impulse reactor down for repairs, he and the master chief had resorted to using short pulses of energy from the ship’s battery reserves to activate each individual warp coil in each nacelle, one at a time. It was not exciting work, but it was specific, and it demanded one’s full attention—making it the perfect activity for someone trying not to think about something else.

Some of the crew had been awake for more than twenty-four hours. Between the lack of sleep, the stress of combat, news of casualties on the ground, and the hard work of fixing the ship, fatigue was wearing them down. Everyone’s steps were falling heavily on the deck. Nassir’s own eyelids fluttered as he worked, caught between his body’s desire for sleep and his impulse to resist and remain in motion.

“How’s it goin’, Skipper?”

Nassir turned to see the bedraggled chief engineer eyeing his handiwork. “Slow but steady,” the captain said. “I’m about two-thirds of the way through the port nacelle.”

Ilucci nodded. A change in his demeanor struck Nassir as odd. “You’re quiet tonight, Master Chief,” he noted. Then he asked in a confidential tone, “Something on your mind?”

“Just thinking about Theriault,” Ilucci said. “Whether she made it to shore.” He looked at his feet. “If she’s all right.”

Already stung by the loss of Niwara and Terrell, the captain wasn’t ready to abandon hope for Theriault as well. “She’ll be okay, Master Chief,” he said. “We’ll find her.”

A crooked smile suggested that the chief engineer didn’t completely believe Nassir’s assurance, but he was either too polite or too desperate to admit it. “Keep at it, sir,” he said. “I have to go check on Cahow before she freaks out.”

“Good luck,” Nassir said, feeling genuine sympathy for Ilucci. Karen Cahow was a great mechanic, but her phobia of being on planet surfaces was profound. A native of deep space who had spent most of her life in the reaches between the stars, Cahow thought of natural gravity wells as enormous navigational hazards to be avoided at all costs. According to her service record, her recruiter had doubted she would be able to endure sixteen weeks of planetside basic training. Thanks to her drill instructor’s advice and a prescription for antianxiety meds, however, Starfleet had gained a first-rate—if slightly neurotic—starship mechanic and junior petty officer.

As he finished testing another warp coil, Nassir heard someone climbing the ladder to the top deck. He looked over his shoulder to see Dr. Babitz clamber out of the ladder well. She swiveled her head and seemed to recoil from the widespread grit and grime that had been produced by the repair effort. He presumed that she was suppressing her natural inclination to clean and disinfect everything within reach as she walked to his side and said quietly, “Sir, you need to come back to sickbay.”

It had been more than two hours since he had left her to keep a vigil over Terrell. He had expected this to be over by now. “I can take the bad news here, Doctor.”

“Captain,” Babitz said, dropping her voice to a whisper. “He’s alive. Please come with me, quickly.”

He put down his tools and nodded to Babitz. “After you.” Not until they had descended the ladder and were almost back to sickbay did he realize that he had been caught so off-guard by the news that he had forgotten to be happy about it.

The doors of the ship’s tiny sickbay swished shut behind them. He followed her to one of the room’s two biobeds, on which Bridy Mac lay sedated. Standing on the other side of her bed was medical technician Tan Bao, monitoring her vital signs. Resting in the second officer’s lap was one of the signal dampeners. It had been activated.

“The signal dampener all but halts the spread of the crystalline substance,” Babitz said. “The dampeners were made to cut off the Shedai from whatever drives them. Whatever that stuff is, it’s part of the Shedai—and we can shut it down.”

“Excellent work, Doctor,” Nassir said.

She grinned sheepishly. “I can’t take the credit, sir.”

“Thank me,” Terrell called out over the still-open comm channel. “I was the one who asked why I wasn’t dead yet.”

Hearing his friend’s voice coaxed a smile from Nassir. “Good work, Clark. Way to beat the odds.”

“It’s a living.”

The captain turned to Babitz. “Doctor, now that we know the dampeners affect the crystalline virus, can we exploit that somehow? Neutralize it? Reverse it?”

Babitz and Tan Bao traded conspiratorial grins. “We’re already working on it, sir.”

“That’s it,” Babitz said to Tan Bao, forcing herself away from the electron microscope viewer. “I need a break.”

Her eyes burned from staring at computer screens. The hours had passed swiftly as she and Tan Bao lost themselves in the mystery of the Taurus meta-genome and its link to the crystalline virus. They had taken turns running tests, analyzing the results, and comparing their new data to what had been collected during Dr. Fisher’s autopsy of a Shedai. There had proved to be as many parallels as there were divergences.

After peering for hours into the intense emerald glow of the microscope’s shielded display, Babitz’s vision had to readjust to the dim illumination in the sickbay. The ship was running on very low power to conserve its emergency batteries. Most of the power being used on the Sagittarius at that moment was consumed by the computers and analyzers in sickbay; letting Babitz make such intense demands on the ship’s dwindling energy resources had been a calculated risk by Captain Nassir. She was determined not to make him regret his gamble.

Tan Bao watched numbers and gauges shift on a screen as the analyzer concluded another round of subatomic scrutiny on samples of the crystalline substance. Dejected, he sighed and said, “Nothing, Doctor. Just more of what we already know.”

“We must be missing something,” Babitz said. She got up, stretched, and twisted a crick out of her back. Then she walked over to stand beside McLellan, who lay sedated on a biobed. “Tan,” she said, “join me. Let’s just stop for a minute.”

He swept his long, thick black hair from his face as he got up. His eyes were bloodshot. “I feel like we just keep running over the same old ground,” he said. “I don’t understand why the substance’s anabolic activity petered out so quickly in Vanguard’s lab, but here it just keeps on moving.”

“Living tissue, for one thing,” Babitz said, recalling Dr. Fisher’s report. “The computer models predicted that this virus would consume a humanoid in a matter of minutes.” She frowned. “Which makes its much slower progress here confusing. I also can’t figure out why Vanguard’s samples became inert within minutes of being deprived of living tissue to interact with, but the samples we found on Bridy Mac’s leg remained active even when the flesh began to decay.”

Tan Bao stared at the signal dampener in McLellan’s lap. “We were using the signal dampener from almost the minute she got hit till we got back to the ship, which has its own dampening field. If that’s what’s slowing this stuff down, then whatever makes it spread has to be external,” he said. “And if the Shedai signal is boosting its activity, that might explain why it’s still active on a dead limb…. That’s the only reason I can think of that the dampener would make any difference.”

Pieces of the puzzle began to fit together in Babitz’s imagination. “Do you remember what Xiong said about the Shedai carrier wave that was sent from here? He said it contained strings of data that matched chemical sequences common to all samples of the meta-genome.” She rubbed the tips of her index fingers against her thumbs, a nervous habit that asserted itself when her concentration was focused. “What if that signal is what sustains the crystalline virus?”

“That would explain why the dampener impedes it,” said Tan Bao. “But is it just an energizing field? Or something else?”

Remembering more of Xiong’s briefing from six days earlier, Babitz started formulating a plan. “Xiong also said that his team had replicated the carrier-wave signal and used it to pinpoint other planets of interest. How would that have worked?”

“They must have identified the part of the signal that provoked responses from the artifacts on the planets,” Tan Bao said. In a flash, he caught up with Babitz’s line of reasoning. “So if we figure out what part of the signal the virus reacts to, we can modify it and send our own signal to neutralize it.”

Reinvigorated, Babitz left McLellan’s bedside and moved to one of the computer stations. Tan Bao followed her. She asked, “Have you finished sequencing the virus’s genome?”

“Yes,” he said, entering commands at his own console. Based on the files he was accessing, Babitz knew that he had anticipated her next order. “Use Xiong’s algorithm for translating the sequence into a Shedai carrier-wave signal.”

“I’m all over it,” Tan Bao said. His fingers tapped in a blur, calling up data and executing commands on the computer. “Computer’s translating the sequence now.”

Keeping up with him wasn’t easy. “When it’s done, I’ll search for that signal pattern in the Shedai carrier wave,” she said. “First, I’ll see if Xiong’s people identified any command triggers in the signal.”

The computer banks hummed with activity, their volume and pitch rising slowly in step with Babitz’s excitement. We’re close, she told herself. I can feel it. She felt warm and a little bit dizzy. Palming a light sheen of perspiration from her forehead, she waited anxiously for the computer’s results.

“I’ve isolated a set of trigger sequences,” she said.

He replied, “We have a signal pattern for the virus.”

“Running the search routine,” Babitz said. “If we’re lucky, we might find a partial match somewhere in the—” A shrill tone from the computer cut her off. She checked the display, then checked it again, stunned at her good luck. “We have a match.”

Tan Bao leaned forward and eyed the results. “Whoa,” he said. “That’s not just any match—it’s a perfect match. The whole pattern.” He pointed at the screen. “Ahead of it and after it—are those trigger sequences?”

Babitz was unsure. “Possibly,” she said. “They have a few chromosomes in common with other triggers in the meta-genome, but I don’t think these have been documented before.” She shook her head. “It’s hard to believe Xiong’s team didn’t find the virus’s genome in the signal.”

“None of their samples of the virus lasted long enough to be gene-mapped,” Tan Bao said.

“How do we apply this? Couple the virus’s signal with a trigger we don’t understand? How do we test it?”

After pondering the issue a moment, Tan Bao said, “We could run tests on the severed part of Bridy Mac’s leg. See if we can neutralize the crystalline substance without affecting the tissue underneath.” He reacted to Babitz’s dubious look by adding, “It’s a lot safer than testing it on Bridy Mac, and a lot more useful than testing microscopic samples.”

“Fine,” Babitz said. “Set it up on bed two.” Even though McLellan’s severed appendage had been in stasis all this time, the odds of it being viable for surgical reattachment were all but nonexistent at this point. If using it as a test sample made it possible to save McLellan’s life, and maybe also Terrell’s, then it would be a worthwhile sacrifice.

She watched Tan Bao remove the leg from storage and set it on the sickbay’s other biobed. He welcomed her help setting up an array of automated surgical implements and modified scanners directly above the bed. As he made the final adjustments to the equipment, Babitz watched with fascination and fear as the sparkling crystalline texture crept slowly across the necrotizing limb.

“We’re ready, Doctor,” Tan Bao said.

She joined him at a control panel for the surgical suite. “Embed the virus’s sequence and the trigger that follows it into a five-second carrier-wave pulse, and focus it on the leg,” she said. “On my mark.” Flipping switches and adjusting sliders on the panel, Babitz hoped she knew what she was doing.

“Signal encoded,” Tan Bao said.

“In three…two…one…mark.”

The machinery above the bed thrummed with power and glowed slightly as the pulse was beamed at the severed limb. The effect was immediate and dramatic: the dark glasslike shell on the leg spread several centimeters in a matter of seconds. “Turn it off,” Babitz said. Tan Bao cut the power.

“That could have gone better,” he said.

Despite the fact that the experiment had produced the opposite of her desired result, she trembled with excitement. “Tan, there were two chemical triggers linked to that gene sequence,” she said. “Set up a new pulse. This time, use the trigger that precedes the sequence in the meta-genome.”

Tan Bao returned to the computer, edited the signal data, and relayed it to the surgical array. “Ready, Doctor.”

Babitz’s ears were hot, and her face was flushed with nervous anticipation. Her mouth was dry, her voice thin and slightly raspy. “Same as before, with the new sequence embedded.”

“All set,” Tan Bao said half a minute later.

“Engage,” she said.

Another deep hum of power accompanied the emission of a pale blue glow that bathed the leg on the biobed. Just as rapidly as the last attempt had advanced the crystalline substance across the limb, this one made it retreat.

“Maintain the pulse,” Babitz ordered. Tan Bao flipped an override control and prolonged the bombardment. In less than a minute, she saw no evidence of the crystalline virus on the leg. “Stop,” she said, reaching for a medical tricorder. A quick scan confirmed what was shown on the gauges of the biobed and the surgical array’s sensor displays: all traces of the crystalline virus had been eliminated from the severed limb.

Behind her, Tan Bao marveled at the results. “That’s amazing,” he said.

“We’re not done yet,” she said. “Create a new signal. Revert to the first trigger sequence. But after it, paste in the signal equivalent of Bridy Mac’s DNA pattern.”

For the first time since she and Tan Bao had worked together, he balked at her order. His voice betrayed his alarm and suspicion. “Doctor…what are you trying to do?”

“According to Dr. Fisher’s research,” she explained, “this substance becomes inert almost immediately when it expires. It doesn’t break down, like organic tissue—it becomes inert. That suggests to me that it was nonliving matter to begin with.” She nodded toward the limb on the bed. “So if this signal can have that effect on a crystalline matrix, wouldn’t it be interesting to see what it can do for flesh and bone?”

Worry crimped the young man’s brow. “Doctor, I’m not really comfortable with what you’re proposing here. We don’t understand this technology well enough to use it like this.” He gestured toward McLellan. “For all we know, putting her DNA pattern into that signal might create a clone.”

“Fair enough,” Babitz said. “Put her leg back in stasis. We’ll run a test.”

“What kind of test?”

She was losing patience. “Put it in stasis. Now, Tan.”

Reluctantly, he did as she had ordered. While he secured the limb back inside the stasis pod, she reset the signal emitter to the first configuration, the one that had multiplied the crystalline virus. “Set up a sterile containment field around the empty bed,” she said. Once he had done so, she said, “We’ll try sending a pulse of the first signal into a sterile area to see if it spontaneously generates a sample of the virus. If it works, your cloning theory will have evidence to back it up. But if not, then I’d propose that our hypothesis should be that the signal is a catalyst, not a creator.”

Without waiting for him to respond, she initiated the pulse and let it continue for ten seconds. When it ceased, she checked her readings, then invited Tan Bao to inspect them. “No trace of the crystalline virus,” she said. “Bring the leg back out of stasis. I’ll prep the pulse with McLellan’s DNA sequence.”

A sullen expression conveyed his objection to what she was attempting. She knew that it was a long shot; if it went wrong, the head of Starfleet Medical would likely excoriate her for violating numerous safety protocols. Tan Bao set McLellan’s severed lower leg on the biobed and stepped clear.

They might revoke my medical license for this, she thought while she finished preparing the new signal. Or they might give me a Carrington Award. That’s to say they would, if all this wasn’t classified to the nth degree.

She initiated the pulse.

The bulky gray machinery above the bed droned as it powered up. A reddish glow enveloped the leg on the biobed. At first Babitz thought that nothing was happening. Then she glanced at the biobed’s gauges. All traces of necrosis had vanished, and the rigor mortis in the severed limb was reversing. The calf muscle slackened, and the exposed tissue took on the sheen of a freshly amputated limb. She terminated the signal and prepped the version that neutralized the crystalline virus.

“Wrap the leg, then remove Bridy’s signal dampener and focus the emitter above her bed on her wound,” Babitz said. “We’re neutralizing the virus first, then we’re reattaching her leg.”

Even though Tan Bao still wore a glazed stare of shock, he obeyed without argument.

Five minutes later, McLellan’s body was cleansed of the invading crystalline matrix, her wounded thigh was wrapped with a sterile biodegradable cover, and Tan Bao brought over her severed leg and placed it on the biobed in its proper place. “I’ll get the surgical cart,” he said.

“Not yet,” Babitz said. “I want to test one more hunch.”

He looked fearfully at McLellan. “Doctor, this isn’t a test on a severed limb.”

“I’m aware of that, Tan, and I’ll take full responsibility if it goes wrong. Step back.” She pressed the severed leg against the wound, taking care to align bones and cauterized veins and arteries as closely as possible. Satisfied that everything was where it should be, Babitz returned to the control panel for the surgical array, pinpointed its emitter on McLellan’s wound, and loaded the signal pattern with the second officer’s DNA sequence. Please don’t let this be a mistake.

She pressed the button and activated the array.

Then she stood next to Tan Bao and watched a miracle happen. The reddish glow traveled from McLellan’s abdomen to the ankle of her severed leg and back again several times, and then it focused a blinding ruby glare on the space between her body and her detached limb. Bridy Mac’s leg rematerialized by degrees.

One minute after the procedure had begun, Babitz deactivated the array and gazed in wonder at the healed second officer.

“Prep a version of the pulse with Commander Terrell’s DNA,” she said to Tan Bao. “Then start working on a way to make it portable. It might be our only chance to save him.”