Surak's Soul - J.M. Dillard [48]
As he had feared, Meir was inside—lying neatly on her bunk, hands folded primly on her chest, long blond hair no longer bound in its usual chignon but spread around her, as if she were a sleeping princess from a fairy tale. Archer went to her at once and bent down to scoop her up into his arms. Once she was in engineering, he hoped, she’d be protected from Wanderer and might even regain consciousness as Hoshi had….
But after he slid his arms beneath her shoulders and under the crook of her knees and began to lift her, he paused and studied her more closely. Her head lolled to one side; her features were slack. She looked to be unconscious, but some atavistic instinct told Archer something was wrong. With his free hand, he reached for her neck, and laid his first two fingers where her carotid artery should be.
The flesh there was slightly—only slightly—cool.
Archer could feel no pulse. He lifted his fingers and tried again, in a different spot, then another one, then another.
Lieutenant Meir’s heart was no longer beating.
Archer let her go and for an instant—no more—permitted himself to sink the rest of the way to the deck. He gritted his teeth and growled.
“Bastard! You bastard!”
And he thought of the dead man in the Oani hospital, his features contorted with rage.
How could this have happened? None of the other stricken had died. He remembered Trip saying, Maybe it’s still full.
Then he thought of Hoshi coming to; and realized that it no longer had her, or Phlox, or Reed to feed on.
“Bastard,” he whispered, and pushed himself to his feet. He ran on; there were others to warn, to get to engineering. But before he left, he promised Meir silently that he would return.
A woman’s voice, muffled but familiar: He seems to have stabilized, Commander. I think he’s coming to….
Malcolm Reed opened his eyes, feeling very much as he had the morning after he’d nicked a bottle of gin from his parents’ liquor cabinet and awakened with his first hangover.
Leering over him was the face of Commander Trip Tucker.
Reed groaned. “I knew it,” he muttered, and put a hand to his forehead. “I’ve died and gone to hell.”
“No such luck, you little devil,” Tucker drawled, in the Southern accent that evoked the image in Reed’s head of vowels and consonants slithering down a slide coated in oil. Tucker was grinning broadly, apparently enormously pleased. It took Reed some time, in his weakened state, to realize that Tucker was actually pleased to see him. “I’m afraid you get to stick around with us a little while longer. And that land in Argentina is still safe and in the family name.”
“I was…” Reed sat up and rubbed his forehead vigorously, as if trying to stimulate his memory. “I was in sickbay. Giving injections. Did I pass out?”
Smiling, Hoshi was standing beside Tucker with Porthos in her arms. “You did. Just like Doctor Phlox—his vital signs are improving, he should be back with us pretty soon. And just like I did. But we’re okay now.”
Reed finally found the strength to smile back. “So…it wasn’t radiation poisoning then, was it? A sickness, then, and you’ve found the cure?”
“Neither,” Trip said, and he and Hoshi shared a dismal, if knowing, glance. “It was Wanderer.”
Reed drew back. “I knew it!”
“It’d have been nice if you’d known it a little sooner,” Trip said. He opened his mouth to say more, but Reed was becoming more aware of his surroundings.
“Good lord,” he interrupted. “What am I doing in engineering?” He looked around him, for the first time taking everything in. Phlox indeed rested only a matter of feet away, still unconscious on a cot, with a portable life-support system propped against the nearby bulkhead. Most perplexingly, though, several officers from different departments were milling about, some seated, others standing,