Surak's Soul - J.M. Dillard [44]
It was enough to totally distract Trip, who had been sitting on his haunches in his engineer’s trance, scanning the warp engine with a sensor newly calibrated to pick up the most sensitive energy fluctuations. He scowled over his shoulder at Archer. “What the heck is that?”
Archer had his suspicions, but did not answer; he gave it one more try, this time choosing a single channel. “Archer to bridge.”
Another squeal. The captain punched a control and tried sickbay, only to grimace again at the annoying static. Admitting defeat, he cut off the channel for the final time. Communications were definitely out.
“Coincidence?” Trip asked dryly.
“Too much of one. Sounds like T’Pol has already had that interesting little talk with our friend.” He did not add, Let’s hope she comes back; he was utterly concerned she would not, and the thought that Wanderer, who had so deceived her, might now harm her filled him with outrage.
“Captain.”
He glanced in the direction of the urgent summons to see one of Cutler’s commandeered medical assistants—a lieutenant from the science department—waving frantically at him.
Beside the lieutenant, lying on the portable bed, Hoshi Sato was blinking and looking at her surroundings, her brow wrinkled with confusion.
Archer was next to her in a heartbeat, overwhelmed with delight at this unexpected turn. “Hoshi! How do you feel?”
“Gross,” Hoshi croaked. “Am I delirious, or are we in engineering?”
Archer grinned. “You’re not delirious.”
She paused, and then a look of horrified remembrance came over her features. “Oh my God—Wanderer! Captain—”
“We know,” Archer said gently. “Wanderer killed the Oanis. Wanderer apparently tried to kill you. That’s why we’re in engineering—apparently, the warp drive emits some form of energy that disrupts it. We’re hoping that’ll keep us safe from it. Given the fact that I’m talking to you, I’m going to say that’s a pretty sound assumption.”
“No, you don’t understand!” Hoshi was so agitated, she clasped the captain’s wrist. “Kano—the Oani woman, the corpse that we brought up from the planet’s surface. Wanderer used it—animated it. I guess it needed a humanoid in order to interface with the computer.”
Archer felt himself pale. “My God…Ensign Cutler said a corpse was missing from sickbay.”
Hoshi’s expression remained distraught. “Captain, Wanderer is using it.”
For an instant, Archer closed his eyes and shook his head. After a long silence passed between them both, the captain said at last, “All right. At least we know what we’re up against. But we’ll find a way to put a stop to it.”
They both looked up at the sound of the doors to engineering opening. T’Pol entered—all in one piece—and despite the recent horrifying revelation, Archer couldn’t hold back a faint grin.
“T’Pol! Thank God you’re all right!”
The door closed behind the Vulcan; she paused just beyond it, and studied Archer with ostensible detachment. “No deity was involved, Captain. The fact is that Wanderer considers me ‘sentient,’ and therefore will not harm me.”
She said it with utter coolness—but Archer felt he detected a hint of humor in her pretense at literalness.
Trip, however, took umbrage. His work trance broken, he turned his head—body still crouching—to address T’Pol. “You’re saying that Wanderer considers us something less?”
She remained unruffled. “Correct. Because it could not communicate with you humans—or with the Oanis—it feels it has the right to feed off your bodies’ electrical impulses.”
“Let me guess,” Trip said sarcastically. “It’s a personal friend of Ambassador Soval’s.” He turned back to his work.
“You are free to insult my superior,” T’Pol said, “but you might find it consoling to know that Wanderer considers us Vulcans ‘primitive,’ and just barely sentient. It therefore ignored my attempts to reason with it.”
“I think it killed the Oanis,” Hoshi said weakly, “by convincing another alien, a Shikedan, that the Oanis