Star Trek_ A Choice of Catastrophes - Michael Schuster [23]
“But what?” McCoy asked. “The best we can do is treat one patient at a time.” And maybe not even that. He just barely kept himself from swearing: the shard had penetrated too far into the Saurian’s reptilian eye. “I’m not going to be able to get this out without taking this man to sickbay.”
He finally made his way over to Four. Though she was indeed trapped underneath a table, her legs weren’t fractured. No ruptured arteries, either. McCoy knew she was in considerable pain. Wasting no time, he motioned Leslie over, and together they lifted the table off her. A damned heavy bit of furniture that could have done much more damage—Four didn’t know how lucky she was. “There you go,” he said as he gave her a dose of painkillers, “you’ll be fine. We’ll send somebody to get you to sickbay.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” she said in a small voice.
He’d helped another person—but what worried him now was Three. They hadn’t heard from him since McCoy had had everyone count off. A check of his tricorder revealed another life sign, very faint, in a corner of the room. When he moved his light there, a hard-to-define shape turned into the body of someone slumped on the floor. McCoy hurried over.
It turned out to be a man, unconscious. No, not unconscious—comatose.
The man’s foot had been injured in the distortion, but there was no brain damage that McCoy could detect.
And just like that, McCoy felt himself deflate. What was wrong with the man? He’d obviously been fine enough to talk in the immediate aftermath of the distortion. Like Bouchard’s, this man’s readings were getting weaker by the moment. McCoy checked the emergency medical kit, but there was no dalaphaline in it.
“Lieutenant!” he called, shining his light across the room. Leslie looked up from where he was working on the Saurian. “We need to get this man to sickbay right away. Help me open the doors.”
It likely won’t matter, even if you hurry. This man is dying before your eyes. And you have no idea why.
Scotty eyed the sky warily. The clouds were thick and dark now, but the shields were keeping the Hofstadter safe as it moved closer to the energy reading. A light rain was starting to pelt the shields, but thanks to the thick, insulated hull, it was almost silent.
But Scotty couldn’t shake the feeling they were moving in the wrong direction. “Mister Spock, that poor lad could be out there in this blasted weather.”
Spock’s steady hands held the shuttle as level as possible, given the forces that were hitting it, and he did not look away from his console as he answered. “Negative, Mister Scott. The cap—”
A loud clang of thunder reverberated through the ship’s hull. Scotty noticed that the view outside the shuttle was completely obscured. The rain had picked up immensely, and all he could see was pouring water. The shuttle rocked back and forth as the winds redoubled, but the commander did not flinch.
A chirping alarm drew Scotty’s eyes to the displays in front of him. “Shield status is impaired,” he said. “The weather is hitting us harder than it should.”
“Is the weather the cause of the impairment?” asked Spock.
Scotty began checking the circuits, but he already knew the answer. “No, sir. It’s something else.”
“Mechanical fault?”
Scotty knew that Spock was simply being thorough, but he couldn’t restrain himself. “These shuttles can take whatever you throw at them, Mister Spock! I’ve been over every circuit my own self. It’s some kind of interference.” His eyes narrowed as he traced the interference’s progression through the circuits. “The pattern is the same as what’s affecting our sensors.”
Spock nodded. “Weather report, Mister Jaeger.”
Scotty swiveled his chair around to see that the geo-physicist was peering into his tricorder. “I still don’t know what’s causing this,” Jaeger said. “It has the marks of a hurricane, yet it’s forming over the land, not the water. There’s no warm front that I can see. But all signs indicate that the farther we head south, the worse it gets.”
“Thankfully, we are almost at the source of the energy