Star Trek_ A Choice of Catastrophes - Michael Schuster [34]
In a matter of seconds, Spock had the panel open. It clattered onto the floor. Inside, Scotty could see a power conduit descending into the depths of the tower.
“Here, Mister Scott.” Scotty turned to see Spock examining the panel. The back had a diagram of a dilithium crystal, and labels on various lines going in and out of the image. He held the tricorder up to the diagram, and it began to beep as it recognized what some of the labels represented—physical measurements like the crystal’s stress level, goniochronicity factor, fourth-dimensional permeation, and so on. The tricorder matched those measurements with the crystal inside the pedestal, then combined them with the text in the graffiti and the information from the other displays, and soon the rest of the data cascaded into place and the tricorder had enough of a baseline to translate any text in the room.
“Sending the UT program to your tricorder, Mister Spock. Have you seen a master display anywhere?”
“Over here.” Spock directed him to a screen displaying the planet, with several lights set into it. One of them was blue, the rest red. Gray lines connected the red lines to the blue one. The blue light was lit, as were most of the red ones.
Spock ran his tricorder over the image. “Our current position corresponds to this red light,” he said, pointing. “It is labeled ‘generator nine.’”
“The red lights are power generators.” Scotty’s finger traced the line between their red light and the blue one. “What would need an output of almost a dozen warp engines to power it?” asked Scotty. “And why scatter them all over?”
Spock consulted his tricorder again. “It is labeled ‘main projector.’”
“What does that mean?”
“Mister Scott, we must find out.”
Scotty nodded in agreement. “Aye.”
Having retreated to his office, McCoy stared at the medical readouts of the three comatose security guards who had just come in: Salah, Fraser, and Santos. They were all espers—less powerful than Bouchard and Petriello, with ratings in the low 080s and high 070s, but that was still above the human norm. Out of curiosity, McCoy had looked up his own esper rating for comparison, and had found it to be 046, about as average as you could get.
Spurred on by a sudden insight, McCoy then pulled the esper ratings of the rest of the crew. The computer displayed the results as a list, in descending order of esper rating.
Some doctor you are. The first thing you should have done was figure out who could be susceptible to this!
Cron Emalra’ehn, a Deltan in security, was a full-blown empath, but he was off on the shuttles surveying Mu Arigulon. The next highest rating after the five victims was in the 060s, but that was well below the threshold of what was considered esper.
Six espers in a population of four hundred was an unusually large percentage. Three years ago, before McCoy’s time, all of the Enterprise’s espers had been killed on a mission. The doctor was determined not to lose these espers.
Being determined isn’t enough. You need results… and you’re not getting any of those.
He’d looked over the notes Mark Piper, the Enterprise’s previous chief medical officer, had recorded. A “negative energy” the ship had encountered had killed all of the espers on contact, except for two. They had been transformed into dangerously powerful beings. There was no apparent connection between that case and the current one.
McCoy brought up the displays of the five espers. Their decline had slowed, but they were still sinking. If he wasn’t able to find a solution soon, every one of them would die. The doctor was stumped, much as he hated to admit it. He rubbed his eyes. The sound of approaching feet made him look up. It was Chapel. “How are you doing?” he asked.
“Nearly done,” she said.
“No,” he said. “How are you doing?”
“All right. I’ve been worse.”
She didn’t look all right, but McCoy didn’t press the point. He probably looked