Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [3]
Tarasco heaved a sigh. Then he turned back to Rashad. “Poor guy,” he said, referring to the science officer.
But Rashad wasn’t looking at the captain any longer. He was stretched out on his back, eyes staring at the ceiling, and Rudolph was trying to breathe air into his lungs.
Rashad wasn’t responding. He just lay there, limp, like a machine drained of all its power.
Tarasco shook his head. “No…”
Just moments earlier, his first officer had assured him he was all right. He had even asked the captain about Hollandsworth. How could something have happened to him so quickly?
Then Tarasco remembered the way Rashad had lit up in the grip of the phenomenon, like a wax candle with a fierce, orange flame raging inside it. Clearly, they were dealing with matters beyond their understanding.
Tarasco watched helplessly as Rudolph labored to bring Rashad back to life, blowing into his mouth and pounding Rashad’s chest with the heel of his hand. At the same time, Coquillette injected the first officer with a stimulant of some kind.
None of it helped.
“Let’s get them to sickbay,” a red-faced Rudolph said at last.
Numbly, the captain took hold of Rashad under his arms, though he knew his chief medical officer wouldn’t be able to help the man either. On the other hand, Hollandsworth still had a chance to pull through.
He and Coquillette picked up the first officer, while Rudolph and Gardenhire hefted the lanky Hollandsworth. Then they squeezed into the still-open lift compartment and entered sickbay as their destination.
The air in the lift was close and foul with the stench of burned flesh. Fortunately, their destination was just a couple of decks up. As the doors slid apart, Tarasco and the others piled out with their burdens and made their way down the corridor.
In less than a minute, they reached sickbay. Its doors were wide open, giving them an unobstructed view of the facility’s eight intensive care beds, which were arranged like the spokes of a wheel. Three of the beds were occupied, though metallic silver blankets had been pulled up ominously over the patients’ faces.
Damn, thought the captain, his heart sinking in his chest. He had assumed the only casualties were those suffered on the bridge.
Gorvoy, the Valiant’s florid-faced chief medical officer, looked grim as he approached them and took a look. “Put them down here and here,” he told Rudolph and Coquillette, pointing to a couple of empty beds, “and get up to deck seven. McMillan’s got two more in engineering.”
The medics did as they were told and took off, leaving Tarasco and Gardenhire to stand there as Gorvoy examined Hollandsworth with a handheld bioscanner. The physician consulted the device’s tiny readout, crossed the octagonally shaped room and removed something from an open drawer. Then he came back to the semiconscious science officer.
“Hollandsworth will heal,” he told the captain. “I wish I could say that for the others. Do me a favor and cover Rashad, will you?”
Tarasco gazed at his first officer, who was lying inert on his bed, his features slack and his eyes locked on eternity. Moving to the foot of the bed, the captain took the blanket there and unfolded it. Then he draped it over Rashad.
“Amir,” he sighed, mourning his friend and colleague.
Gorvoy glanced at him as he applied a salve to Hollandsworth’s burns. “He lit up like a lightning bug, right?”
Tarasco returned the glance. “The others, too?” he guessed.
“Uh huh. Kolodny, Rivers, Yoshii…all of them.”
The captain considered the man-sized shapes beneath the metallic blankets. “But why them and not anyone else?”
“That’s the question,” the medical officer agreed. “Was Rashad near an open conduit or something?”
Tarasco thought about it. “No. He was near Hollandsworth’s console, though. And it was shooting sparks.”
It was possible the console had had something to do with it. However, the captain’s gut told him otherwise. And judging by the expression on Gorvoy’s face, the doctor didn’t believe it was