The Red King - Michael A. Martin [68]
Riker felt a surge of happy anticipation, but he carefully reined it in. Anything might still happen. “How long will it be before we know if—”
“Done, sir,” Crandall said with a grin, his gaze rising from the display on his tricorder. “Or near enough to done. The neuromagnetic signatures the entity had imposed on the network are already dwindling as the rokhelh forces them into the background and into secondary and tertiary systems.”
Studying the displays on her own instruments, Daehla nodded in agreement. “Confirmed. The alien programming is being shunted out of primary core systems.”
“Great work,” Riker said, exchanging triumphant smiles with Donatra as he reached for his combadge.
U.S.S. TITAN
Keru lay in one of the sickbay biobeds, reclining against a pile of pillows as he sipped from a glass of cool water. He was as restless as he had been at any other time in his life. Dr. Ree had kept him in sickbay for observation ever since he’d regained consciousness a couple of hours earlier. Of course, he couldn’t blame Ree for his caution; Keru’s chest remained bandaged, despite multiple surgeries and dermal regenerations, thanks to the all but mortal wounds he had sustained during Titan’s skirmishes in Romulan space.
He was grateful that Ree and Ogawa had brought him up to speed on most everything that had happened over the past several days, including the death of Chief Engineer Ledrah, the birth of the Bolajis’ child, Titan’s unexpected relocation to the Small Magellanic Cloud, and the disappearance of Commander Donatra’s hidden fleet, which had evidently been spirited away by some sort of emergent life-force.
I spend a few days on the disabled list, and the whole damn universe spins down into utter chaos, he’d thought more than once, though he knew all the while that such self-centered notions were completely preposterous.
He was also frustrated in that he had been able to learn precious little about what was going on presently. All he knew for certain was that his captain was off the ship—against Keru’s recommendation—leading a boarding party onto one of Donatra’s vessels. His captain was in danger right this minute, as was Commander Tuvok, the man who was currently filling in for Keru as Titan’s tactical officer and security chief.
And Keru knew he wouldn’t be able to do a damned thing to help either of them.
Keru hadn’t forgotten that he had been prepared to leave Tuvok behind on Romulus during the Vikr’l rescue after that operation had begun coming apart at the seams. And although he had merely been following both regulations and the mission profile that day, he still hadn’t quite been able to forgive himself.
You’d better get the captain back aboard in one piece, Mr. Tuvok, he thought. And yourself as well. Otherwise you and I are going to have words .
A piercing shriek interrupted his reverie, causing him to send most of the contents of his glass splashing onto the bed and the deck beneath it.
Despite the pain that lanced through his chest, he swung his bare feet to the floor, discarding his suddenly emptied glass as he turned toward the source of the sound.
In the opposite corner of the sickbay lay Mekrikuk, the hulking Reman whom he’d helped rescue from Vikr’l Prison. Every muscle and tendon in the Reman’s large, chalk-white frame seemed to strain as a scream of pure fright issued from some primal place deep within him.
Keru moved unsteadily in Mekrikuk’s direction, though he saw that Ree and Ogawa were already converging on the Reman’s biobed. Mekrikuk had already stopped screaming, though his eyes remained huge and terror-stricken.
“Tell your captain he must stop what he’s doing!” Mekrikuk said in a surprisingly mellifluous tenor voice. “Now!”
“Maybe he’s hallucinating,” Ogawa said as she prepared a hypospray with a prestidigitator’s speed. “He could be having some sort of drug reaction.”
Or maybe not. Some Remans are pretty damned strong telepaths, Keru thought, stumbling slightly before righting himself against one of the biobeds. The time he’d spent on Trill, tending the telepathic