Surak's Soul - J.M. Dillard [5]
“Poor sod,” Reed murmured. “Probably died trying to save her.”
As the Enterprise officers gently eased the male to the floor, Phlox leaned forward and ran a scanner over his chest. “Dead.” The doctor turned and swiftly made his way over to the reclining patient—a female. “But she’s alive!” His tone was one of pure triumph; as he ran his medical scanner over her, he reported, “But weakening with each second. Electrolyte readings differ from those found in the dead victims….” He opened his medical case and prepared an injection. As he administered it, the blue-green bed flickered, then began to brighten, shot through with glowing phosphorescent veins.
“A nutrient bed,” Phlox murmured, while he attended the woman. “Probably to counteract the weakness. I’ll wager it’s to help stabilize her electrolytes….” He trailed off, absorbed in his work.
Archer, meantime, could not help noticing the expression on the male victim’s face; of all the dead the captain had seen, only this man’s countenance was not peaceful. Indeed, his features were contorted with what a human would call outrage, even—Am I reading my own cultural cues into this? Archer wondered—recognition, as if he had recognized the cause of his own death and been incensed by it.
“Anyone else still with us?” Archer asked softly of T’Pol, who was busily scanning for readings.
Her eyes narrowed. “No survivors in this building. But roughly zero-point-five-four kilometers northeast, there’s one fairly strong signal left.”
“And the others?”
Her gaze grew pointed. “There are no others, Captain. Not on this island. Not anymore.”
You said there were eleven, Archer almost said, then realized the futility of challenging the accuracy of T’Pol’s reading. In the moments since they’d arrived on the island, nine of those survivors had died.
He made a decision. “Stay with her,” he told Phlox, who was busily bent over the surviving female. “Reed, Hoshi, you come with us. T’Pol and I are going to go find the last survivor and bring him back here; Hoshi, we might need your help communicating after all.”
“Fascinating medical apparatus,” Phlox murmured, his gaze fixed on his patient, but Hoshi nodded in acknowledgment.
“Aye, sir.”
Despite the fact that they were in the midst of a city, T’Pol led the captain, Reed, and Hoshi into what seemed to be a livestock facility, where smooth-skinned quadrupeds, looking rather like overfed manatees on legs, lay motionless, perished in their separate stalls. Troughs of untouched grain and water lay in each pen. Overhead were storage lofts holding containers of what appeared to be feed.
There was an endearing ugliness about the creatures, and the fact that the pens were clean and in fact padded for comfort made Archer somehow sadder than he’d been before. It was hard enough to witness the death of a sentient being, who was aware of his own mortality; but there was a special poignancy about the demise of a less intelligent creature who trusted others for its care. The image of his beagle, Porthos, flashed in Archer’s mind.
A single glance at Hoshi’s heartbroken expression made Archer look away. Reed managed not to react, but his brow remained deeply furrowed, and one corner of his mouth was pulled taut with horrified pity.
“All recently deceased,” T’Pol said clinically, passing them with no more than a cursory glance.
Archer hardened his attitude and followed the Vulcan closely, focusing on the task at hand. “So the plague—or whatever’s caused this—has affected their animals, too.”
“With the exception of some of the smaller fauna,” T’Pol remarked—then came to an abrupt halt, lifting a hand for silence.
Archer and Reed stopped behind her; Hoshi, last in line, bumped into them both.
The two women heard the noise first—of course, given T’Pol’s acute Vulcan hearing and Hoshi’s amazing exolinguistic ears. Both looked upward, expectantly, at the same area in one of the lofts.
Hoshi uttered a few tentative sounds in the aliens’ tongue, her voice a little higher-pitched than normal—whether from proper pronunciation or fear, Archer could not tell.