Pantheon - Michael Jan Friedman [73]
She had never seen him display much emotion. But she saw it now. His eyes blazed beneath lowered brows.
“Damn it,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me about this, Beverly?”
Crusher shrugged. “It happened just a few minutes ago. And we don’t normally bring in visitors to help with patient care.”
He struck the biobed—hard. “When it comes to Cadwallader, I am not just a visitor. I’ve put a lot of effort into this woman over the years. When she’s hurt, I want to know about it.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Crusher told him, stiffening under his barrage. Then she remembered the circumstances, and she forced herself to take a gentler approach. “I know how you feel, Carter. She’s your friend—”
“She’s more than my friend,” Greyhorse said. He glanced back at Cadwallader. “At Maxia, we had taken some direct hits. Sickbay was a mess—fires all over. And debris—I was pinned under some of it. It was nearly impossible for me to get out—or for anyone else to get in.” A pause. “She refused to leave—at least until she knew if I was alive or dead. Cadwallader and Picard and a few others stayed behind while the shuttles were taking off. Finally, she found me—cut me free of the wreckage just before sickbay became a bloody inferno. And with some help hauled me onto the last shuttle. By then I’d lost consciousness—too much smoke inhalation.” He turned back to Crusher. “If not for Cadwallader, I would have died a pretty grisly death.”
“I didn’t know,” said Crusher.
Greyhorse cleared his throat, a little embarrassed. “Now you do.” He tilted his head to indicate the patient. “Phaser burns? Where in God’s name did she get those?”
Crusher cursed inwardly. Too late, she looked up at the monitor above the bed, which had a full display of Cadwallader’s tissue damage. Any doctor worth his salt could tell the molecular disruption patterns had been caused by a phaser beam.
There was no point in lying. Greyhorse was good; he would see through any explanation she could make up.
“Come on back into my office,” she told him. “It’s a long story.”
Geordi shook his head. “This is crazy. Absolutely crazy. As if the slipstream wasn’t trouble enough!”
Picard’s intercom voice was ominous: “Keep an eye out in your section, Commander. If this killer of ours is as enterprising as he seems, and as adept at engineering…”
“I get the picture, Captain.”
“Good. Picard out.”
Geordi regarded Data, who was sitting on the other side of the chief engineer’s desk. He took a deep breath, let it out. “It’s getting scary,” he told the android.
Data looked apologetic. “Intellectually,” he said, “I recognize the concept. However, as I am myself incapable of fear, I cannot share the feeling.”
Geordi grunted. “No need to be sorry about that. Right now it’s important we keep our heads. No matter who’s getting shot at—or sabotaged in the holodecks.”
He regarded Wesley and Simenon through the transparent wall of his office. They looked as tired as he felt—particularly the Gnalish. With his snappy sense of humor and his alien appearance, it was easy to forget that he was verging on elderly. But a few days’ worth of theoretical headbanging had made him start to look his age.
One thing he knew, at least, was that Simenon hadn’t been responsible for the phaser attack. The Gnalish had been with him during the power dip and every moment thereafter.
Unless he had an accomplice…
“Should we not join the others?” Data prompted. “They will be wondering what is keeping us.”
“I was just thinking,” Geordi told him. If there was more than one person involved in the murder attempts…a conspiracy…
Simenon could have arranged the holodeck incident—and left the phaser attack to someone else. Maybe the Gnalish was able to get a signal to his co-conspirator that a blackout was in the offing, and that it would be a good time to take another shot at Morgen. Maybe—
“Nah,” he said out loud. Why look for a complicated solution when it was most likely a solo operation? It was hard enough to believe one person