Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [169]
Greyhorse was on the verge of deactivating Kochman’s stasis field when he heard the sickbay doors hiss open. Glancing in that direction, he fully expected to see someone bringing in another casualty.
But this time, it was different. It wasn’t just anyone being brought in. It was her.
At least, that was the way it looked to the doctor for a split second. Then he realized he was mistaken, and a wave of relief washed over him. It wasn’t Gerda Asmund who was being carried into sickbay. It was Gerda who was doing the carrying.
And it was Commander Leach wrapped up in the woman’s arms, Greyhorse realized—Commander Leach who was lying as limp and pale as death. Clearly, the first officer’s condition would have to take precedence over anyone else’s for the time being.
Leaving Kochman’s side, the doctor crossed the room to the bed containing Ensign Kotsakos, whose injuries weren’t nearly as severe. Deactivating the protective field around the ensign, Greyhorse picked the woman up as gently as he could and deposited her on the floor beside the bed.
He would have preferred to give her the benefit of the field for the next several hours. That would have been the ideal approach. However, Kotsakos would survive without the field. He couldn’t say the same for Leach.
“Put him down here,” Greyhorse told Gerda.
She did as he said, easing the first officer onto the biobed.
The doctor looked up to study the bed’s readouts. Clearly, Leach was in bad shape—even worse than the ragged gash in his temple suggested. His vital signs were badly depressed.
“What can I do?” asked Gerda.
Greyhorse looked at her with the same longing and admiration he had felt the other day, when he had checked her ESPer capacity. But this time, he wasn’t tongue-tied in the least.
“Check the other beds, one at a time, and call out their readings to me.” He pointed to Kochman. “Starting with that one.”
“And Leach?” the navigator asked.
“I’ll take care of him,” the doctor assured her.
She hesitated for just a moment, as if there was something else she wanted to say to him. Then she left the first officer in his capable hands and went to see how Kochman was doing.
Greyhorse drew a deep breath and wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. In that moment when he thought Gerda was injured, he had gone through an eternity of hell in a single second.
He didn’t like the idea of people getting hurt. He was a physician, after all. But if it came down to the navigator or someone else…he was glad it hadn’t been Gerda.
As the turbolift doors opened, Ben Zoma emerged from the compartment and made his way down the corridor—phaser in hand.
He had good reason for concern. The moment the battle with the Nuyyad had ended, he had tried to contact the officer on duty in the brig. But there hadn’t been any response—not a promising sign by anyone’s reckoning.
And with the battering the Stargazer had taken, power conduits had been compromised on every deck. There was no guarantee that the brig’s electromagnetic force field was still in place.
Which meant Serenity Santana might be free to go wherever she wanted. Do whatever she wanted.
That made Ben Zoma nervous, given the fact that the woman’s motivations were still in question—maybe more so now than ever, considering they had followed her directions straight into the sights of an enemy battleship.
He hadn’t been particularly suspicious of Santana when Captain Ruhalter brought her aboard. He had believed they were doing the right thing by checking out her warning. And even now, he wasn’t convinced that she was in on the Nuyyad attack.
But he was the ship’s security chief. With hundreds of lives at stake, he had to believe the worst of everyone.
Striding purposefully, Ben Zoma negotiated a bend in the corridor and came in sight of the brig. The first thing he saw was a body laid out on the deck. He recognized it as Pug Joseph, Santana’s guard.
Instantly, the security chief broke