Intellivore - Diane Duane [71]
“Ohhhrgh,” said Riker’s voice, “the noise. We can’t be dead; heaven is quieter than this.”
“On your feet, Number One,” Picard said. “Mr. Data. Damage?”
“Damage to decks forty-two through thirty-eight—fortunately, our own antimatter pods were spared. But we have serious hull ruptures in the lower and upper decks of the secondary hull. I fear we have many casualties, Captain.”
“I would say,” said Picard, “so has someone else.”
“I would say so, Captain,” Data said.
Chapter Ten
“ONE HUNDRED FORTY-SEVEN, dead, Captain,” said Riker, very wearily. “Thirty-two on Enterprise, all the rest on Marignano.”
The conference room was very quiet. It was a quiet caused not so much by shock as by weariness. The two days between the present moment and the intellivore’s attack had been extremely busy.
Around the table were seated Enterprise’s command crew, along with Dr. Crusher, and Marignano’s bridge crew, minus the senior conn officer, who had been killed in the aftermath of the explosion.
“We’ll be ready for the ceremony later this evening, Captain,” said Riker, glancing down at the padd in front of him. “Twenty hundred.”
“Very well.” Picard looked down toward the other end of the table, where Captain Maisel sat, looking as subdued as Picard could ever remember seeing her. “Captain?”
“We’ll be holding ours at twenty-two hundred.”
“Very good. I’ll be there.”
Silence fell for a moment or two. Then Picard said, “Status of the repairs?”
“All the hull breaches have been mended,” Riker said. “We have, though, sustained some major structural damage. When the intellivore blew, it gave us a kick in the pants of a kind that starships don’t usually survive.”
Mr. La Forge nodded. “Fortunately, because of Data’s good offices, the ship was on a very specific heading at the time, rather than tumbling; otherwise, the shock wave probably would have shredded us.”
“All right.” Picard turned to Crusher. “Doctor?”
“Besides the death due to trauma secondary to the explosions,” Crusher said, “we had two fatalities due to the drugs used to induce unconsciousness during the attack. One of them appears to have been an atypical allergic reaction. In the other case, the EEG never recovered after having been flattened. The cause is indeterminate.”
Picard nodded.
“Something else, though,” Beverly said, “has been producing some concern. A lot of people have been reporting nightmares—painful, frightening ones. Many people have trouble remembering these when they wake up, which may be a good thing. There have been so many of these reports that I find it difficult to attribute them to posttraumatic stress syndrome as such. I would suspect that in some cases, these people’s unconsciousness may not have been as completely profound as I would have liked, with the result that they experienced some of the kind of thing Data went through. Other beings’ memories … other creatures’ suffering.”
“Will the effects fade, do you think?” Captain Maisel said.
“I’d like to say I thought so,” said Crusher, “but I just don’t know yet. I’ve been prescribing mild sedatives or alpha, or both, for those continuing to complain of problems. So far, these treatments seem to be effective. We’ll just have to keep an eye on everybody.”
“We will.”
“Meanwhile,” the doctor said, “our other patients remain unchanged. There were some of my staff who were half hoping that once we found and killed what had sucked these people dry, they might all wake up, but I’m afraid that particular fairy tale just isn’t going to come true.” She smiled, just a small smile, and very sad. “Starfleet has been alerted. We’ll be spreading these people among a great number of different facilities specializing in human neural and neurophysiological problems. We’ll discharge our patients to the emergency medical facility on Starbase Four-forty. It’s on our way.”
“Yes,” Picard said. “Those orders have come in—we’ll be there in about two weeks, and we’ll be dropping