Текст книги "Reap the Whirlwind"

Автор книги: David Mack

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

6

Lieutenant Ming Xiong grinned as he jogged down the passageway with his overstuffed duffel bouncing on his back, in a hurry to reach the gangway to the Sagittarius.

It had been more than two months since he had last set foot on the Archer-class scout vessel. He had served on several ships during his twelve years in Starfleet, but this small outrider, with its close quarters and tight-knit crew, was his favorite. On his last visit, Captain Nassir had given him a going-away gift: a green utility jumpsuit like the ones worn by the crew, with his name stenciled on its chest flap. As simple as it had appeared to be, its presentation had marked him as an honorary member of their spacefaring family. He was one of them. Wearing it now, he felt freer than he had in months.

As he neared the bay four gangway, he peered out an observation window into the cavernous docking bay. The tiny starship was concealed inside a metallic cocoon, within which transpired a flurry of activity. Robotic crane arms were swapping out modular sensor packages from its primary hull. Technicians in environment suits moved across the ship’s gleaming exterior, repairing minor bits of wear and tear. An auxiliary gangway had been extended from Vanguard’s maintenance complex, which ringed the core of the station. Xiong knew, from the mission profile that he had helped write, that several pieces of brand-new classified equipment designed by him and the rest of the researchers in the Vault—the station’s secret research facility—were even now being hurried aboard the diminutive vessel.

He nodded to the Vanguard security detail guarding the gangway entrance and paused briefly to identify himself. The deck officer in charge verified Xiong’s credentials with ops and waved him past, down the gangway to the Sagittarius. As soon as the trim young anthropology-and-archaeology officer turned a bend in the gangway and was out of the guards’ sight, he resumed jogging, eager to reach his destination.

Seconds later he stepped through the ship’s sole airlock hatch, which was located on the port side of its primary hull. Both its inner and outer doors were open, as was routine for ships docked in the main bay. Then he was inside, on the main deck. The Sagittarius had only three decks. Its lowest level, along the belly of the primary hull, was the cargo deck. Most of it had a ceiling so low that the taller members of the crew had to duck to move around; the rest was crawlspace, for storing a variety of gear, tools, and spare parts.

The main deck was the heart of the ship. It housed the bridge in a heavily shielded forward compartment. On either side of the bridge were quarters for the captain and the first officer, the only two members of the crew who had the honor of private accommodations. By privilege of rank, the captain’s berthing was the one closer to the ship’s only head and shower, which everyone onboard shared. Four crew compartments—two to starboard, two to port, all recently reconfigured—housed the other twelve members of the ship’s complement. At the broad aft curve of the slightly pointed oval were the common galley and the sickbay. Next to the XO’s quarters was the ship’s lab.

The crew spaces on the main deck ringed its outer edge. The core was completely packed with computer mainframes, sensor hardware, and a hefty complement of miniaturized probes.

Engineering and a little-used transporter bay occupied most of the space on the top deck. There also were a few access points to a number of tight crawlways used for making emergency repairs on such systems as the sensors and the ship’s two phaser emitters. A self-contained probe-launching apparatus dominated the forward portion of the deck. Forward of the transporter bay was a hatch for descending into the ship’s computer core for hands-on repairs.

Because the ship was too small to require a turbolift system, movement between the decks was achieved by traversing steep, wide-planked metal ladders. Passages between the cargo deck and the main deck were made amidships either to port or to starboard; traffic between the main deck and the top deck was limited to a single aft ladder, which terminated in the transporter bay.

And, just as Xiong had remembered, the entire ship looked immaculate and smelled sweetly, antiseptically clean. I guess Dr. Babitz’s war with germs marches on, he mused.

His attention was drawn momentarily aft by the sounds of metal crashing against metal, followed by a string of bellowed profanities and vulgarities in several languages. Sounds like a bad time to drop in on the master chief.

A feminine voice came from close behind him: “Welcome back, Ming.”

Xiong turned to face Lieutenant Commander McLellan, the second officer. He smiled and set down his duffel. “Bridy Mac!”

The raven-haired woman gave him a brief but friendly hug. “You’re early,” she said.

“I wanted to get settled before the briefing,” he said.

She reached out, pinched a loose bit of his jumpsuit’s sleeve, and smiled. “Looks like you’re already blending in.”

“Captain Nassir did tell me to wear it the next time I came back,” Xiong said. “Is everybody back onboard already?”

McLellan replied, “We’re in full scramble, trying to load up before we ship out.” She motioned for him to follow her. “Come on, you can bunk with Ilucci again.” He picked up his duffel and followed her aft. She moved with swift and graceful strides befitting her experience as a marathon runner. As he caught up to her, she said in a confidential hush, “I went below and took a look at the new toys you sent us. Crazy stuff.”

“Hot off the workbench,” he said. “All prototypes.”

“Experimental gear? Classified briefings? We’re gettin’ into something interesting, aren’t we?”

Xiong couldn’t help but chuckle ruefully. “Trust me, Bridy Mac—you have no idea.”

“All right,” Captain Nassir said to his gathered crew, “everyone settle. We’ve got a lot to cover and not much time.”

Even though the galley of the Sagittarius doubled as its conference room, it was barely large enough to accommodate the entire crew at once. Xiong waited patiently while the group came to order. It still pleased him to see that everyone wore the same style of olive-drab coverall with simple insignia. No one’s uniforms had special markings, not even the captain’s.

Xiong stood in front of the compartment’s one wall monitor. Standing to his left were Nassir and Commander Terrell. Vanessa Theriault and Bridy Mac stood together to Xiong’s right, along with a comely young Andorian zhen, the ship’s helm officer and navigator, Lieutenant Celerasayna zh’Firro.

Seated at the table closest to Xiong were the engineers; all were noncommissioned officers except for one enlisted man. Ilucci sat up front. Behind Ilucci, Threx used a metal pick to clean between his teeth. The sight disturbed Xiong, who reminded himself that the brawny Denobulan had worse habits. Opposite Ilucci were Torvin and Petty Officer Second Class Karen Cahow, a tomboyish blond polymath.

Behind them, at the next table, were the ship’s field scouts, who doubled as its security detail. The lead scout and head of security was Lieutenant Sorak—a lean, tough-looking, white-haired Vulcan man who had recently turned one hundred eighteen years old. With him were Razka and Lieutenant Niwara, a female Caitian whose reputation as a loner was well earned.

Dr. Lisa Babitz and her right-hand man, Vietnamese-born medical technician Ensign Nguyen Tan Bao, sat at the farthest table. Babitz had the impeccable posture of someone who feared that any surface she touched would be rife with germs. Tan Bao, on the other hand, was casually sprawled, leaning back on his elbows, his long, thick hair spilling over his shoulders and framing his boyish face.

Within ten seconds of Nassir’s request, the crew of the Sagittarius fell quiet and turned their attention to Xiong.

“The first thing you need to know is where we’re going,” Xiong said. He pushed a yellow data card into a wall slot to call up a star map on the viewer. “Our destination is the fourth planet in the Jinoteur system, about six days from here at your best speed. The Klingons have tried to go there twice, and they’ve taken a couple of heavy beatings from automated defense systems on the planet’s three moons. We kept a close eye on them both times, and we’re hoping to learn from their mistakes.

“The reason we’re shipping out early is that we detected a Tholian ship there. Unlike the Klingons, the Tholians haven’t been shot at. We don’t know why—but we’ve got a few ideas.” Xiong paused as he saw the Vulcan head of security raise his hand. “Question?”

“Yes, Lieutenant,” Sorak said. “What is the strategic importance of the Jinoteur system? Why are we—as well as the Klingons and the Tholians—interested in it?”

Leave it to a Vulcan to ask a simple question that demands a complicated answer. “Its overall strategic role is not yet fully understood,” Xiong replied. “But we believe it to be the element that reconciles a number of mysterious discoveries made recently throughout the Taurus Reach.” He inserted a red data card into a second wall slot connected to the monitor. An image of the Taurus meta-genome appeared on screen. From the back of the room he heard Dr. Babitz gasp softly.

“This,” Xiong said, “is the Taurus meta-genome. It’s a complex genetic artifact, containing hundreds of millions of chromosomes’ worth of chemical information. Only the smallest part of it seems to be used to create living organisms. Most of it appears to be a remarkably complex form of data encryption.” He pushed a few buttons next to the screen to pull different information from the data card. As the image onscreen changed, he continued, “Variants of the meta-genome have been found on three planets so far: Ravanar IV, Erilon, and Gamma Tauri IV.”

He ejected the red data card and inserted a blue one. Side-by-side images of huge, obsidian artifacts appeared onscreen. The longer Xiong had studied them, the more he had come to think that they resembled giant, black-glass spiders suspended over their mirror-reflection counterparts. “On Ravanar IV and Erilon, we also discovered these artifacts. Our best estimates indicate that they could be hundreds of thousands of years old. The Tholians destroyed the artifact at Ravanar, but the crews of the Endeavour and the Lovell secured the larger one on Erilon for further study. We’ve barely begun to figure out what these things do, but at least one of their functions is to serve as the command-and-control hub for a planetary defense system.”

Another raised hand drew Xiong’s attention to Ilucci. He nodded to the chief engineer. “Go ahead, Master Chief.”

“You said the Tholians destroyed the artifact at Ravanar?”

Xiong replied, “Yes.”

With palpable ire, Ilucci asked, “Does that mean the Tholians really did destroy the Bombay?”

For a moment Xiong wondered if he ought to evade the question somehow, but then he decided to play it head-on. Commodore Reyes said to give them the truth. They might as well get all of it. “Yes,” Xiong said. “The Tholians ambushed the Bombay and destroyed it. Certain elements within Starfleet sabotaged the reporting of the incident to give the Federation Council an excuse not to go to war, so that we could continue our covert mission to unlock the secrets of the meta-genome.”

Despite lowering his voice, Threx’s sarcasm was heard by all as he muttered, “Oh, that’s just great.”

“Lock that down,” Ilucci snapped in a harsh whisper.

Xiong sorted through his collection of data cards, chose two more, and put them into available slots beside the monitor. He thumbed a switch to activate the first of them. Probe-captured images of glowing, rocky debris filled the screen. “The planet Palgrenax,” he said. “Or what’s left of it. Our best intel suggests the Klingons found something like the artifacts on Erilon and Ravanar IV. As with the Endeavour at Erilon, a Klingon cruiser in orbit of Palgrenax was fired upon by a planet-based weapons system. The Klingons responded with force—and apparently triggered a response that caused whatever they were fighting to blow up the planet.”

Once again, Sorak raised his hand. After Xiong pointed to him, the Vulcan asked, “Can you tell us who or what the Klingons might have been fighting?”

Unable to prevent the grim shift in his countenance, Xiong said in a grave tone, “Yes, I can.” He activated the second new data card and looked at the monitor. “This.”

Moving images stuttered across the screen. Footage recorded with tricorders during the first and second battles against the black entities on Erilon showed the lethal killing machines from a variety of perspectives. More than two meters tall and vaguely humanoid in shape, they streaked across a bleak gray winterscape, churning up vaporized snow and ice as they went. Their arms ended in conical points that, in more than one image sequence, proved capable of tearing humanoids in half or skewering them with a single blow. A repeated motif of the montage was the utter ineffectiveness of phasers against the beings, who looked as if they were formed from volcanic glass.

The video ended abruptly, leaving the Sagittarius’s galley heavy with stunned silence. The normally unflappable Commander Terrell gave voice to the group’s shared horror: “Holy shit.”

“Yeah, that about sums it up,” Xiong said without irony. “We were able to hold them off for a while with force fields, but the best defense proved to be a crude energy-dampening field. That enabled us to recover the body of one of them, which we found out contains large quantities of the meta-genome.”

Sensing that it would be best to move on rather than let the crew dwell too long on the images of carnage from Erilon, he reactivated the Jinoteur star-system map on the monitor. “Now for the link. When Starbase 47 was still under construction, an alien carrier-wave signal was found to be interfering with several critical onboard systems. Lieutenant Farber from the Lovell was able to stop the carrier wave by transmitting a response on the same frequency. We’ve since learned that strings of data inside the carrier wave match certain sequences common to all varieties of the meta-genome. Duplicating it has given us leads on several worlds within the Taurus Reach that might merit further study.” He pointed at the star map. “About two months ago, my team and I pinpointed the Jinoteur system as the source of the original carrier wave. When we took a closer look at the system, we discovered that it’s…well, not normal.”

Xiong called up a more detailed, computer-generated animation of the system, with each planet and satellite following a track of a different color. He narrated as the animation’s focus shifted and reoriented itself. “Jinoteur is a large white star with five planets, no two of which occupy the same orbital plane. That alone might not have been remarkable, except for how extremely they diverge from the ecliptic.” Pointing out the wildly different paths of the planets around their star, he continued, “The orbital planes of the first and fifth planets are nearly perpendicular. The second and third planets follow paths almost equal in their offset from the ecliptic—but tilted at complementary angles. The fourth planet is the closest to level with the star’s equator.

Entering instructions to the computer via the wall-mounted control panel, he continued as the animation zoomed in on the fourth planet. “The first three planets in the system have two satellites each. The fourth planet has three, and the fifth planet, a gas giant, has four. In every case, the orbital planes of each planet’s moons are exactly parallel to one another and perpendicular to that of their planet, with the result being that none of the moons can ever come between their host planet and the star. Even weirder, every satellite exhibits the same rotational peculiarity: the same side always faces outward, away from the center of the system. For even one satellite in a star system to do that would be unusual. For all thirteen moons in the same star system to do so suggests deliberate manipulation—especially since we’ve detected artificial structures on the outward-facing hemispheres of each moon.”

Razka, the Saurian scout, interjected, “Sounds like a defensive system.”

“Yes,” Xiong said. “That was our conclusion, too. Which is why we let the Klingons go in first. Turns out we were right.” Turning to Captain Nassir, he added, “The planet-based weapons systems at Erilon and Palgrenax were extremely powerful, sir. The ones at Jinoteur are even deadlier. We might have a way to make your ship look less like a target to whatever’s guarding the system, but you should still be cautious.”

“I think you can count on that, Lieutenant,” Nassir said with a modest grin. “Now, why don’t you tell us about the new equipment you and your team packed into our cargo bay?”

“Aye, sir,” Xiong said, happy to oblige. “Analysis of the Shedai body we—”

“Excuse me,” said McLellan. “The what body?”

Ah, yes, Xiong realized. Forgot that part. “Shedai,” he said. “It was a term the Tholian ambassador used several weeks ago during a meeting with Ambassador Jetanien. We think that it might be a proper name having to do with the entities we encountered on Erilon. For lack of a better term, it’s what we’re calling them.” McLellan nodded her understanding, so Xiong pressed on. “As I was saying, analysis of the Shedai body has enabled us to make some educated guesses about what kind of signals and stimuli it might respond to.”

He removed the data cards currently loaded in the control panel for the monitor and loaded in four new yellow cards. He switched images quickly while he talked, extolling the virtues of each piece of technology that appeared onscreen. “Some of what we’ve been working on are upgrades to your deflectors and shield emitters, to make you less noticeable to the Shedai.

“Beyond that, we’re working on signal-based lures, which’ll draw the Shedai’s attention but interfere with their perception; and signal dampeners, to keep you from being noticed during close encounters. We’ve also modified some hand phasers, which might help us defend ourselves better than we did on Erilon.” Shutting down the monitor, he added, “Best of all, my team kept all these items simple to use and lightweight, to make them more easily field-deployable. The specs are all available on your main computer.” He looked around. “Any questions?”

Bridy Mac met Xiong’s seeking gaze. “You said the word ‘Shedai’ came from the Tholian ambassador. What’s the link between the Tholians and the Shedai?”

“We’re not really sure yet,” Xiong admitted. “We’ve noted some similarities between Tholian crystalline physiology and the crystal-lattice structure of the Shedai body we captured. Also, the Shedai seem capable of making a direct neural link with their technology inside the artifacts; it might be similar to Tholian touch-telepathy, or it might be something completely different. Part of why we need to go to Jinoteur is to get more hard data.” Around him, a few people were nodding. The rest seemed lost in their own thoughts. “If there are no other questions…?” No one spoke. “Captain,” he said as he stepped to the sideline and yielded the floor.

Nassir moved in front of the monitor and addressed the room, at once relaxed and authoritative. “Our first order of business,” he said, “is to leave port and start our journey without being detected by the Klingon patrol ships cruising this sector. Thanks to Commodore Reyes, we have a plan for doing precisely that.” He used the control panel to summon an image from the docking bay outside the ship. “The colony ship Terra Courser leaves Vanguard in twenty-one minutes. We’ll be leaving with her, hugging her belly all the way out of spacedock. That’s where we’ll stay until she goes to warp. Then we’ll follow her, using a few of Ilucci’s trademark warp shadows to make ourselves look like a subspace echo on the trailing edge of her warp eddy. The Terra Courser will change her bearing at Arinex, but we’ll keep going straight till we reach Jinoteur.”

Helm officer zh’Firro asked, “Is there a risk of the Terra Courser’s crew detecting our presence? If they signal Vanguard for assistance, we’ll be exposed.”

“Their bridge crew is running interference for us,” Nassir said. “They know they’re helping us fake out the Klingons, but that’s all.” A few thumbed buttons on the control panel summoned an image of the Tholian ship above Jinoteur IV. “Our first assignment after reaching Jinoteur is to determine what that Tholian ship is doing there. If it’s hostile, we’ll be cutting this party short—that’s a battleship, people; I’d rather not tangle with it if I don’t have to.

“On the other hand, if it’s neutral, or if we can get past it, our orders from Commodore Reyes are to mount a full survey of the planet’s surface. That includes mapping, geological survey, collecting bio samples, the whole drill.” Nassir looked to Sorak. “Lieutenant, familiarize yourself and your scouts with the new gear from Vanguard. If the Shedai are waiting for us on Jinoteur, let’s be ready to meet them head-on.”

“Understood, sir,” Sorak said.

Turning to Ilucci, the captain said, “Master Chief, our energy signature needs to match the Terra Courser’s perfectly when we leave spacedock in twenty minutes.”

“You got it,” Ilucci said, and his engineering team nodded in agreement.

“Ensign Theriault,” Nassir said to the young science officer. “Work with Lieutenant Xiong. Learn everything you can about the Shedai. Be ready to join the field scouts when we do our survey on Jinoteur.” Theriault nodded without saying a word.

“Dr. Babitz,” Nassir continued. “We have several forensic reports and autopsy files of interest from Dr. Fisher. I suggest you review them in detail with Mr. Tan Bao.”

“Aye, sir,” Babitz said.

The captain clapped his hands together. “Mr. Terrell, Bridy Mac, Sayna, join me on the bridge. It’s time to go. Dismissed.” Everyone rose from their seats and quickly exited the galley, making haste for their duty stations.

Xiong watched the crew snap into action. Nassir paused beside him and said, “Care to join us on the bridge, Ming?”

“Yes, sir,” Xiong said. “I’d love to.”

Nassir gave him a paternal slap on the back. “Glad you’re back for this one,” he said with a restrained grin that betrayed his excitement. “This is what being in Starfleet’s all about.”

Most of the time Xiong found himself at odds with his commanding officers, but this time he couldn’t have agreed more.

Dr. Jabilo M’Benga toweled his hands dry as he exited the scrub-out room beside the operating theater. He had endured a long day of treating emergency cases. Now the last of his critical patients was on the way to recovery, and M’Benga was free to deal with the mountain of paperwork that had accumulated in his office.

In the past twenty-four hours, M’Benga had seen a variety of cases, each one coming on the heels of the last. A civilian cargo handler had suffered internal injuries after being pinned under a falling stack of filled crates, which had been knocked over by a colleague’s inept control of a load-lifter; a mechanic in Vanguard’s starship-maintenance complex had accidentally amputated three of his fingers by failing to obey proper safety protocols for storing his plasma cutter; one of the station’s operations officers had slipped on a diving board in the Stars Landing natatorium, breaking her left ulna and giving herself a concussion and an intracranial hemorrhage; and a nine-year-old girl from the colony ship Centauri Star had been rushed into the ER in a state of anaphylactic shock after discovering the hard way that she was allergic to Ktarian eggs.

In other words, a slow day in Vanguard Hospital.

A hot cup of coffee and a warm raspberry croissant were in the forefront of M’Benga’s thoughts as he walked through the parting doors of the ER and into the brightly lit blue-gray corridor outside. He turned right toward the turbolift that would take him back to his office. Before the ER doors closed behind him, the nasal drone of a nurse’s voice squawked over the hospital’s intercom. “Code Two in the ER. Repeat, Code Two.”

M’Benga turned about-face and sprinted back inside. Code Two meant that one of the station’s senior officers was in need of medical assistance. Code One would have meant that Commodore Reyes himself was in distress.

He scrambled past nurses and patients, weaving his way toward the main admissions area for the ER. Despite having been at the far side of the complex when he’d heard the call half a minute earlier, he was still the first doctor to arrive. A nurse and a medical technician had gathered around a crumpled form on the floor, a dark-haired female Vulcan officer in a red minidress. Pushing his way into the circle, M’Benga lifted his medical tricorder and started running a standard diagnostic scan on the unconscious Lieutenant Commander T’Prynn. “Nurse Martinez, report,” he said.

Martinez continued her own tricorder scan as she answered. “She walked in and collapsed, Doctor. Her pulse, body temperature, and neural activity are all elevated.” The young brunette adjusted her tricorder. “There’s no sign of injury, but synaptic patterns in her somatosensory cortex are consistent with extreme pain.”

The data on M’Benga’s tricorder screen confirmed Martinez’s report. He looked up to see that other members of the hospital’s staff had belatedly joined the huddle around T’Prynn. “Someone get me a stretcher,” he said. “We need to move her to a biobed.” As the people around him hurried to fulfill his request, he puzzled over T’Prynn’s bio readings. They were unlike anything he had seen during his residency on Vulcan. Despite his wealth of experience in treating Vulcan-specific afflictions, he was at a loss to pinpoint the nature of T’Prynn’s malady.

“Stretcher comin’ in,” said Dr. Gonzalo Robles, who was assisted by a fourth-year Andorian medical student named Sherivan sh’Ness. Martinez and the med tech stepped aside while Robles and sh’Ness eased the stretcher under T’Prynn. M’Benga helped them straighten the Vulcan woman atop the stretcher. He beckoned to another doctor. “Steinberg, give us a hand here.” To the group he declared, “Let’s move her to exam one.” With six sets of hands on the stretcher, they lifted T’Prynn easily from the floor and carried her in a well-practiced march to a nearby exam room. Gently they set the stretcher on the biobed. Martinez, sh’Ness, and Robles worked in concert to lift T’Prynn just enough to slide the stretcher out from under her. M’Benga activated the biobed and watched the fluctuations in T’Prynn’s vital signs.

“Nurse,” M’Benga said. “Prep five cc of asinolyathin.” Martinez nodded and moved to a pharmaceutical cabinet to load up a hypospray. Robles and Steinberg hovered on the other side of T’Prynn’s bed, while sh’Ness and the medical technician watched from a few meters away.

Robles eyed the cardiac indicator on the display board above the bed. “Look at that,” he said with amazement. “It’s like she’s in the middle of a workout.” He pointed at the pain-level indicator. “Good Lord, her pain reading’s off the chart.”

“Weird,” Steinberg said, folding his arms over his chest. “I’ve never seen a Vulcan have an anxiety reaction like this.”

As he accepted the hypo from Nurse Martinez, M’Benga said to the two physicians, “Her condition is not the result of anxiety. Of that I am quite certain.” He injected the light dosage of analgesic medicine into T’Prynn’s jugular vein. In less than two seconds, the pain indicator on the board dropped from its maximum level to within a few notches of normal. “That seems to have dealt with the symptom,” M’Benga noted, “but as for the cause, we’ll have to run some—”

T’Prynn’s hand shot up and locked around his throat. Her grip was viselike, and her open eyes were ablaze with fury. The speed of her attack caught everyone in the room off-guard. It took a very long second for Steinberg and Robles to start scrambling around the bed to M’Benga’s aid. Martinez overcame her surprise and rushed forward to restrain T’Prynn while the medical technician hurried to a wall panel to summon security. The medical student remained paralyzed with fear in the doorway.

Before anyone could finish what they were racing to do, T’Prynn let go of M’Benga’s throat. The fire in her eyes abated, and she took a deep breath. Everyone stopped and waited to see what she would do next. M’Benga coughed twice, then gasped for air as he massaged his throat.

In a calm but alarmingly uninflected tone, T’Prynn said, “Please forgive me, Doctor. My reaction was one of reflex.” Her eyes traveled from Martinez to the other two doctors. “There is no cause for concern,” she said to them. “It is not necessary to restrain me. I am in control of my actions.”

Still trying to work the burn out of his esophagus, M’Benga found T’Prynn’s declaration a bit hard to believe. If his guess was correct, she was masking her symptoms. To confront her about it in front of others, however, would be both improper and fruitless. Matters such as this required tremendous tact when dealing with a patient of any species, but especially so when interacting with a Vulcan. To the others in the room, M’Benga said with his injured rasp of a voice, “Leave us, please.”

The other doctors and the medical technician left quickly, taking the shocked medical student with them. Nurse Martinez hesitated, but M’Benga gave her a reassuring nod and said, “Close the door.” With obvious reluctance, she did as he asked, and he was alone in the exam room with T’Prynn.

She sat up and turned to drop her legs over the edge of the bed. He watched her with a clinical eye, seeking any of a number of subtle cues that were particular to Vulcan body language. In addition to a few signs of hidden discomfort, he detected ephemeral micro-expressions that reinforced his suspicion: a tensing near the mandibular joint, a twinge at the corner of her left eye, an inward curl of her upper lip. “You are in profound distress,” he said to her. “Please relate your symptoms to me.”