Surak's Soul - J.M. Dillard [40]
“Yes, sir.”
Archer punched the control and on instinct began to head for the door—then stopped himself. The problem with the corpse he had dismissed as an oversight—Cutler was overstressed, overworked, overwhelmed…she had moved the Oani and no doubt forgotten about it. The captain had thought to head for sickbay, to check on Hoshi himself, then to the bridge since it was only an hour before his regular shift began anyway. But his brain, fatigued and still hovering near the half-waking, half-dreaming state where insight dwelled, seized on a sudden idea, halting his body in midstep.
“You…”
Hoshi had been speaking to someone else, not directly to Archer. She had opened the channel, but she had been interrupted before she had been able to address the captain. And her tone had been…not normal. Archer paused, remembering the emotions carried on that single word. She had sounded angry. Accusatory.
There was only one other person—creature, Archer corrected himself—working in the lab with her.
Wanderer.
Revelation born of pure instinct overtook him, and with it, a sense of dread that left him physically chilled—not out of personal fear, but out of the sickening realization that he had voluntarily been playing host to the very entity that was killing his people, that had killed all the Oanis, and had done so without leaving a trace.
He headed back to the companel and pressed the control, now beyond awake, all tiredness forgotten; he could barely hold himself still for the millisecond before Cutler replied, again in a tone that was beyond exhausted.
His words came rapid-fire. “Cutler, I want to know the instant you find Hoshi how she’s doing—and I need to know whether Wanderer is still in the lab with her. If your medic doesn’t return at once, I want to know about that, too. I don’t want anyone else being alone with Wanderer—”
There was a dazed pause as Cutler struggled to digest everything; then she said, her tone a bit more alert, “Hold on, Captain. The orderly’s coming back right now—you’re right, he’s carrying Hoshi. She’s unconscious…”
“Ask him. Ask him whether Wanderer’s still in that lab.”
Another pause; Archer listened as Cutler repeated the question, and heard the negative reply even before she could relay it to him.
“I heard, Ensign. I want no one going near that lab anyway. Wait in sickbay until you receive further orders from me. Archer out.” He pressed another toggle. “Archer to bridge.”
“T’Pol here.”
“Sub-Commander. I need to talk to you—in private, where Wanderer can’t hear us. Is there any possible way for us to do that?”
Archer entered engineering to find Trip Tucker already on duty—like his captain, an hour before his shift. T’Pol was already there and waiting, arms folded, looking as fresh as if she had just risen instead of spending the last two nights without sleeping. Trip looked haggard, but intrigued—even more so after one glance at the captain’s taut expression.
“Wanderer refuses to enter engineering,” T’Pol explained, the instant Archer stepped through the doorway. “Apparently, something about the warp engines disrupts its energy patterns.”
The information gave Archer yet another reason to find the hum of engines and the vibration beneath his feet even more reassuring. “There’s a problem with our new friend,” Archer said.
T’Pol tilted her head expectantly.
“I believe the cause of the mysterious deaths is Wanderer,” the captain continued. “Hoshi tried to contact me from the lab. She wasn’t able to finish what she was trying to say. All she managed to say was ‘You…’” He gave it the same accusatory intonation he remembered hearing.
“Son of a…” Trip let go a breath of surprise; the emotion was soon replaced by anger. His eyes narrowed. “No wonder it gave us that cock-and-bull story about radiation we couldn’t detect.”
“For some reason, it’s killing us,” Archer said, with vehement conviction. “Just like it killed the Oanis.”
T’Pol regarded him with cold-blooded