Surak's Soul - J.M. Dillard [24]
“No!” Hoshi cried, in spite of herself, then firmly bit her lip. Whatever was happening here was sacrilege; Uroqa would have been outraged. Yet Phlox watched the procedure with hopeful fascination, and T’Pol with serene detachment.
T’Pol turned to see her at once, and immediately went to her side.
“What is it?” Hoshi asked, lowering her voice. Her outburst left her somewhat embarrassed; obviously the doctor and T’Pol would only do something that would help discover what had killed the Oani. Yet, after seeing how Uroqa had cared for Kano, Hoshi could not help feeling protective about her, even if a body was all that was left.
T’Pol’s cool demeanor never flickered. “This is Wanderer,” she said, gesturing toward the body. “The energy field that contacted me. Apparently, it has abilities that can discover the cause of the Oani’s extinction. It has merged with the corpse in a diagnostic procedure. I am here in order to translate for the entity.”
“Oh. Good. Well, I’m glad that you’re all right,” Hoshi said awkwardly. She had no desire to move any closer to the strange creature inside Kano’s body, so she handed the Vulcan the disk. “Here. Would you give this to Doctor Phlox? It’s the latest compilation I made of the Oani medical logs.”
T’Pol tilted her head somewhat quizzically, as though she were going to question why Hoshi didn’t give it to the doctor herself—but the human woman didn’t give her the chance to ask. She turned swiftly and headed out of sickbay without another look back.
Perhaps she should have been fascinated: after all, here was an amazing creature, unlike anything the humans had ever seen—but Hoshi wanted nothing to do with it. There was something irreverent, even callous about the way it had moved inside Kano’s body…something that left Hoshi filled with a curious foreboding that she could not explain.
On the bridge, Archer finally got the call he’d been waiting for.
“Captain…Phlox here in sickbay.”
“Report, Doctor.” Archer was literally sitting on the edge of his seat; it had been a perfectly quiet shift, and there’d been nothing to distract himself with, other than his own thoughts and the sight of the blue-green world on the viewscreen.
“Wanderer has explained to me what killed the Oanis.”
“Wonderful!”
Phlox sounded doubtful. “I wouldn’t necessarily describe it in those terms, Captain.”
“Explain.”
“Apparently, solar winds caused a shift in their stratosphere, which permitted a rare form of harmful radiation which had always been present to kill them.”
“What type of radiation?”
“Wanderer isn’t being specific in this regard, Captain. It has no name for the radiation, though it’s extremely good at sensing different types. It has no name because we have no name for it—we haven’t discovered it yet, nor have the Vulcans, so it doesn’t know how to explain it to T’Pol. As Wanderer said, it’s extremely rare. And…” Phlox paused ominously.
“Say it, Doctor,” Archer demanded, even though he knew he did not want to hear the answer.
“And it’s fatal to humans, Vulcans, Denobulans…most humanoids, in fact, if exposure is sustained.”
Archer let go a silent breath, as though he’d been firmly struck below the breastbone. He had insisted on keeping the ship in orbit around Oan, for fear of spreading a disease. “How much exposure?”
Phlox did not answer for a beat, and Archer demanded with anger—anger directed entirely at himself—“How much exposure, Doctor?”
“I just had T’Pol ask Wanderer. Apparently, Wanderer doesn’t know. This is its first encounter with humans.”
“Well, ask Wanderer what it can do to help us avoid this type of radiation sickness.”
Another pause, then Phlox responded, “Wanderer says it can do nothing. If any of us are going to be ill, we’ll probably start showing signs soon.”