Caretaker - L. A. Graf [31]
"Initiate emergency--!"
Without further warning, the alien transporter beam caught her, choked off her breath, spirited away her words. Janeway could only rage in frustrated silence as the engine room around her dimmed, faded, and then was gone.
* Sensors indicated contusions, edema, and development of a local subdermal hematoma. Suggested treatment: An analgesic/anti-inflammatory regimen, in conjunction with application of cold packs once the ship returned to noncombatant status.
"You're not seriously hurt," the patient was informed as per Decision Track Number 30. "You can return to your station."
Immediately, the transporter engaged and removed the patient from sickbay.
Upon query, sensors verified that no high-level organic life remained within the sickbay. Decision Track Number 1047 initiated manipulation of the holographic interface to display a translatable facsimile of irritation. A channel to the bridge was opened, and the vocalization subroutine reported, "This is the emergency holographic doctor speaking. I gave no permission for anyone to be transported out of sickbay." Four hundred thousand nanoseconds elapsed with no discernible activity over the intercom channel. "Hello? Sickbay to bridge."
Accidental Abandonment Subroutine self-activated one million seven thousand five hundred twenty nanoseconds later.
"I believe someone has failed to terminate my program," the vocalization subroutine informed the empty starship. "Please respond...."
Chapter 7
Sunlight sparkled off the surface of a small, clear pond, reflecting back through the weeping willows to dance around a summer sky as smooth and blue as a china bowl. On the big, sprawling white house, the shutters and porch rail were painted the same color, once upon a time.
Through the years, though, sun, wind, and rain had finally faded the paint to a shade more like robins' eggs than sapphires. It was still a pretty effect, Paris decided, even if it had no place here, seventy thousand light-years from the very Terran Midwest it so chillingly resembled.
"Come up here... come on now..."
Paris jerked around, startled by the unfamiliar voice, and nearly ran into Harry Kim as the ensign jumped in equal surprise while trying to carefully extricate himself from a rampant flower bed.
There was crew all around them, Paris realized as he put out a hand to steady Kim. Scattered as far away as the barn and the tree line, some of them, but all apparently unhurt and unrestrained. At the foot of the house's long, wraparound porch, Janeway and a group of disoriented engineers milled in a small knot while a smiling, gray-haired woman in a flowered housedress and apron waved to them from the top of the stairs.
"I've got a pitcher of lemonade and some sugar cookies," she called cheerfully.
Tapping Kim on the elbow as a signal to follow, Paris jogged forward to join up with Janeway's small band. "Captain...?" he began, then cut himself off. What are you gonna ask? "Who is this lady?" "What're we doing here?" She's the captain, he reminded himself, not omniscient.
Although, sometimes, good captains almost managed to be both.
"Don't believe your eyes, Mr. Paris." Her own eyes flicked across the reading on her tricorder as the old woman on the porch waited with smiling patience. "We've only been transported a hundred kilometers--" Janeway looked at the old woman, then cocked her head upward with a thoughtful frown. "We're inside the Array."
Beside her, Kim passed his own tricorder over the porch stairs, the neatly trimmed grass. "There's no indication of stable matter. All this must be some kind of holographic projection."
Janeway nodded and slipped her tricorder back onto her belt.
Above them, the hollow clink-clunk of ice dropping