Bloodthirst (26 page)

“How is he?”

McCoy did not answer for such a long time that she turned away from Stanger to look back at him. For an instant, his professional facade vanished and nothing but pure grief showed on his face. She knew then what he was going to tell her, and she was furious at him because she did not want to hear it. She clenched her fists until her nails dug into her palms, and raised them up as if she were going to strike McCoy. She was very close to killing him.

He saw it and did not flinch, but put his hands on her upraised arms and gently lowered them. She fell against him too grief-stricken to make a sound.

How could this happen?
She wanted to scream again, but all she could choke out was the angry word, “How ?”

“From the level to which the infection had progressed, I would say he was infected the day before he was vaccinated. The vaccine only served to speed things up a bit.” McCoy paused, as if speaking was a great burden for him. “He's in the chamber because at first we were afraid there was some problem with the vaccine. There wasn't.”

“So everyone's safe,” she said softly, her eyes on Jon's still, gray form. Everyone else, that is. It wasn't fair; but then, nothing seemed to be fair anymore. The universe had become a dark and unjust place.

It struck her that for the first time his face was relaxed and free of bitterness. She sensed very strongly that he had carried with him a secret that had distanced him from her, and she was sorry now that he had not known her well enough to trust her with it.

“I'm sorry,” McCoy said gently.

She straightened. She had been angry out of pure selfishness, out of concern for what would happen to her now that her family and friends were gone. It wasn't fair to Jon. She stood very still watching him and thought about him instead of herself. What happened to her was no longer important. She held herself back from traditional mourning; the wailing sounds would probably bother McCoy, and she guessed that Jon would have found them embarrassing. He would have preferred that she act reserved, so she stood woodenly, staring at his body. Her knowledge of Terran beliefs about death was vague, but she hoped that wherever Jon's human essence had gone, it was an easier place for him.

She was not aware when McCoy left her alone. She stood Watch at the foot of Stanger's bed until 1300 hours, and then she went back on duty.

An hour later, McCoy called a medic and had Stanger taken down to stasis. He had sincerely liked the man, in spite of the rumors he'd heard about his background, and simply wasn't up to seeing him there in sickbay. If the medic hadn't arrived when he did, McCoy thought grimly, he would have gone stark, raving mad.

He would have sent Chris' body down, too—there was no point in letting the decay process take hold, and the mere presence of her body was a reproach—but he kept telling himself that he was going to make himself do the autopsy. Chris would not have wanted anyone else to do it.

Besides, there was his medical duty. They needed all the information they could get on this disease. Vaccine or not, they obviously didn't have enough knowledge of how the virus behaved in a human host. Studying it in the test tube could tell them a lot but not enough. Had Chris known, she would have volunteered for the autopsy. It was the one last medical contribution she could make in her life, and it wasn't fair to her to deprive her of that chance.

It took him several hours to get up the courage to go into the room where Chris' body lay covered by a sheet. He pulled it back. Chris was still beautiful, still pink-cheeked from the recent transfusion. Amazingly, her skin had not acquired the pinched, waxy look of death. He had thought that looking at her body would help him to accept her death; instead, it only made it harder to believe. He started to sway on his feet, on the verge of sobbing again. He wanted to gather her in his arms.

Instead, he called the medic and had her body taken down to stasis.

Five hours after his last attempt, Kirk went down to his quarters and tried again to contact Waverleigh.

For the past five hours, he had waited for Quince to get in touch with him. Surely he wasn't going to send a titillating message like that and then just let Kirk stew?

Quince had to be in big trouble. So much trouble that he didn't dare attempt to communicate with the
Enterprise
again.

Jim argued with himself: was it brash of him to contact Waverleigh directly at Fleet headquarters? He might be getting him in even more trouble.

But he wanted Quince to know he got the message. And if Quince was already in trouble, it wouldn't matter whether Jim spoke to him now or not. There had to be
something
he could do to bail Quince out.

Uhura relayed the channel. Instead of Quince's broad, smiling face, a uniformed Andorian male appeared on the screen. “Admiral Zierhopf's office.” The
Enterprise
had moved closer to Earth, so that the delay was now only a few seconds.

“Zierhopf? I was trying to contact Admiral Waverleigh's office.”

“No one seems to be answering there yet.” The Andorian smiled an unusually unnatural smile, showing yellowed teeth. “When the admiral and his aide are not in their office, communications are routed through this terminal. Could I take a message?”

Kirk squinted at the insignia on the aide's gold tunic. “No, thank you, Lieutenant. I'll try back”

“I do know one office where he's very likely to be this time of day. Hold on one moment.”

The screen flickered and changed. “Admiral Tsebili's office,” the young man said. He looked the quintessential Vulcan: long, sharp nose, pointed ears, and perfectly straight, even bangs framing a high forehead. His youth did nothing to soften the severity of his features; his brows arched upward at an even sharper angle than Spock's. He reminded Kirk of a primitive painting of Surak the Reformer he'd once seen in a museum. “My name is Sareel. May I be of assistance?”

“I'm looking for Admiral Waverleigh,” Kirk said, relieved to be in the competent hands of a Vulcan.

“This is Admiral Tsebili's office. I will connect you with Admiral Waverleigh's.”

"No,”
Kirk said, but the Vulcan was too fast, too efficient, and had already cut him off. He stared at the gray screen and felt his frustration mount as Waverleigh's viewer signaled its owner in vain. God, how he hated bureaucracies!

And what was he going to do if Waverleigh wasn't there? Dear God, had Quince fallen off the face of the Earth? Or was he merely playing one of his practical jokes?

He was about to close the channel when a figure appeared on the screen. “Admiral Waverleigh's office. Lieutenant Stein here.” The aide who answered was female, human, with a demeanor far older than she appeared to be. She was answering at Quince's terminal, standing hunched over the desk, as if worried that by sitting in the admiral's chair, she would commit the ultimate sacrilege.

“Thank God,” Kirk said fervently. “You wouldn't believe what I've been through trying to get here. Is Quince in?”

“No,” Stein said. Her hollow brown eyes regarded him strangely, as if she had trouble making sense out of the question.

Kirk felt another urge of irritation.
What kind of rejects do they have working at Command?
“Lieutenant, I need to speak to the admiral
now
. How can I get in touch with him? Surely someone must have some idea where he is.”

Her mouth began working, but no sound came out. She closed it. He got the impression that she was trying hard to surpress a case of the giggles.

Not
the giggles something else. Suddenly, he understood. He jolted forward at the screen, knowing without believing. “Stein, what's happened? What's happened to Quince?”

Her entire face quivered. “There was an accident, sir. He somehow lost control of his skimmer over the bay. I just I just” Her voice trailed off and she swallowed hard. A fat tear fell from one eye and dripped neatly onto the desk without ever touching her cheek. “You'll have to excuse me, sir. I just found out myself a few minutes ago.” She collapsed into Quince's chair and put her head on the desk and sobbed. Her elbow struck the gold frame that generated the holo of Ke and the kids and knocked it down.

It was in the later part of the evening when M'Benga buzzed McCoy.

“Doctor? Hope I didn't wake you. I know you sometimes turn in early.” His voice was slightly higher-pitched than normal, as if something had him totally baffled.

“It's all right. I was up,” McCoy answered. He had been lying on his bunk, staring at the ceiling, from time to time letting a stray tear run down the side of his face and into his ear. He did not expect to sleep at all tonight.

“Look, I know this sounds crazy, but” M'Benga hesitated and gave a short, embarrassed laugh. “We seem to be a little confused up here. Did you decide to go ahead with an autopsy on Stanger?”

“No. I was going to do one on Chris today, but” McCoy trailed off. He was still in no mood to think about it. Blessedly, M'Benga did not pursue it.

There was an awkward pause, and then M'Benga said, “Well, did you order the body moved for any reason? I was going to take a tissue sample.”

McCoy was beginning to be irritated. “I had Kenzo take it down to stasis if that's what you mean.” Wasn't it bad enough that Stanger had died without having to go through the third degree on what he had done with the body? Why the hell couldn't M'Benga just go down and check stasis himself, without rubbing McCoy's nose in it?

“I knew it was supposed to be in stasis, Doctor. I asked you as you were going off duty” M'Benga stopped and suddenly changed his tone. “I'm sorry, Leonard. I'm sure you don't remember. I know how you must feel about Chris. I miss her, too.”

It took some time for McCoy to bring himself to reply. “Maybe if you checked with Tjieng”

“I already did,” M'Benga answered emphatically. “Leonard, you're not going to believe this, but I've checked with the microlab, everyone in sickbay, the medics, and stasis. Everyone insists the body has to be in stasis. You're the last person I called. In all my years on this starship, I've never heard of a body being misplaced.”

McCoy frowned, for the time being ignoring his sorrow. “You went down to stasis yourself?”

“I did. The chamber with Stanger's name on it was open, as if the medic had taken it down there and intended to put it in but never finished the job.”

“Did you check with Kenzo?”

“Yes. He said he put Stanger in the chamber around 1700.”

“Well, he didn't just get up and
walk
out,” McCoy said tartly. “Obviously, someone in another department has taken him and forgotten to report it.”

“I can't imagine who that would be.” M'Benga's tone was dry. “Think we ought to let the captain in on this?”

“What's the point? Give it till morning. If we haven't found it by then, I'll tell him. But there's no point in getting someone in trouble unless we have to. Can your culture wait until tomorrow?”

“I suppose so.” M'Benga sounded dubious. “But doesn't this strike you as rather
odd?
”

McCoy sighed. “Quite frankly, everything on this ship strikes me as odd these days, Geoffrey.”

It was very early in the morning when Tomson decided to contact Lisa Nguyen, so early that the ship's corridors were still darkened. Still, she'd had a hunch that Nguyen would be up, and, as usual, her hunch was right. Nguyen answered the signal looking drawn and tired, but very conscious.

Tomson hated small talk, so she got right down to it. No point in asking if she'd wakened Nguyen, since she obviously hadn't. Even if she had, it was not in her nature to apologize for her actions. “Ensign. Dr. McCoy tells me that you're able to report for duty today.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I understand that you're still talking about resigning. But for the time being, I am in dire need of someone to coordinate the night-shift search.” Especially with Stanger gone; but then, she had promised herself she wasn't going to think about Stanger “
he practically died in your arms
” anymore. She had spent most of the night doing just that, and fighting back a rare emotion for her: guilt.

Nguyen turned even paler than before, making the dark circles under her eyes look huge. “Sir, I couldn't”

“It's not a question of could or couldn't, Ensign. It's a question of need. I am hereby appointing you my second-in-command.”

Nguyen stared at her uncertainly, then finally swallowed whatever it was she had really wanted to say, and said: “Yes, sir.”

Tomson was going to cut the conversation off right there, but she surprised herself. “I need you, Nguyen,” she said suddenly, without changing her tone of voice. “You're good with people. I'm not. I need a second-in-command my people feel comfortable with, one they can trust. A go between. One who can see my orders are implemented without antagonizing everyone.”

“You don't antagonize people, sir.” Nguyen's voice had changed, become concerned; she was thinking about Tomson instead of herself. “You're just abrupt, that's all. And we trust your judgment.”

“I wasn't asking for your opinion, Ensign. I was telling you the way things are.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I'd like to see you in my office a few minutes early, to brief you on the search for Adams.”

Nguyen blanched visibly at the name. No matter. The best way to get her over it was to put her in charge of finding him. It was no wonder the woman couldn't sleep, with him running around the ship. And Tomson couldn't sleep herself. Going on the third day, and her security team still hadn't found Adams! They should have found him within three hours, not three days, and Tomson had been going over and over in her mind how she had failed. It would never have occurred to her that she was not somehow personally to blame.