The Red King - Michael A. Martin [69]
Keru watched as the head nurse slapped the hypo into the doctor’s outstretched claws. Ree quickly placed the device against Mekrikuk’s battle-scarred neck. The hypo’s contents instantly hissed home and the Reman went slackly unconscious a moment later.
Keru noticed then that Ogawa was glowering at him, though in a good-natured manner. He was, after all, Noah’s adoptive “uncle,” a member of her chosen family because of their shared history of pain and loss. “You need to get back into bed, mister. Or do I have to have you restrained?”
Keru offered her a weak smile and lofted his large hands in a gesture of surrender. Then he noticed a slight draft coming from the air circulation system, and realized only now that his sickbay gown had left his aft section entirely unshielded.
“All right, Alyssa. I’ll go quietly. But I need to call the bridge first.” And some pants might be nice, too, he thought.
Seated in the command chair on Titan’s bridge, Christine Vale watched the constellation of viewscreen blips that constituted Donatra’s runaway fleet and felt vaguely uneasy. Occasionally she glanced at the main science station, from which Jaza was conspicuously absent.
Belay that thought, Vale. The bridge is no place for infatuations, she told herself. Then she paused for an instant to consider Riker and Troi, whose relationship had gone about as far past infatuation as imaginably possible. On the other hand, I ought to be able to get away with marrying him.
Looking away from Jaza’s console, which was now occupied by Lieutenant Eviku, Vale noted that Frane had remained standing beside the turbolift. He watched the screen, as still and silent as a gargoyle. Admiral Akaar, who had come up from the main transporter room a few minutes earlier, also stood nearby, apparently keeping an eye on Frane as much as on the viewscreen. Frane, for his part, seemed to be studiously avoiding the Capellan’s piercing basilisk stare.
“Riker to Titan .”
Will Riker’s voice, though filtered through her combadge, sounded calm and businesslike, which reassured her somewhat. But only somewhat. Her faint sense of dread persisted.
“Vale here. Go ahead, Captain.”
“We’re making excellent progress here. We should have manual control over the entire fleet in just a few minutes. The entity inhabiting the computers knocked everyone unconscious with anesthezine gas. We’re reinitiating all environmental and life-support protocols right now, to blow every deck of every ship clear of the stuff. I’ll advise you as soon as the operation’s complete.”
The captain signed off, and Vale slumped back slightly into the chair, sighing in relief and simultaneously blowing a stray hank of her fine auburn hair away from her face.
Dakal turned from the forward ops station and fixed her with a puzzled stare. “Commander, I’m picking up some pretty strange readings.”
Vale rose and glanced at the Cardassian cadet’s console. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, until she glanced to the starboard science station, where Eviku was obviously studying the very same readings.
“This is not good, Commander,” Eviku said, the Arkenite’s seashell ears twitching on either side of his elongated head.
Titan rocked, forcing everyone on the bridge to grab at chairs, railings, or consoles until the inertial dampers compensated, leveling things out a second or so later. It felt as though the ship had been struck very hard by something large and blunt. But Vale had seen the data on Dakal’s console, so she knew that no such thing had occurred.
She also knew that what had apparently just really happened might turn out to be infinitely worse.
“Yellow alert, Mr. Dakal. Raise shields.”
“Aye, sir,” Dakal said. “But I haven’t quite figured out yet what hit us.”
Vale breathed a pungent Klingon oath under her breath. “Open a channel to the capt—”
“Keru to Vale.” As Dakal complied with her order, she tapped her combadge. “Vale here. It