Bloodthirst (30 page)

Almost Junior-Grade Lieutenant Nguyen, Kirk corrected himself. Tomson had asked him for permission yesterday to put through a rush request for Nguyen's promotion. Evidently, Nguyen was shaken by her near-fatal run-in with Adams and was thinking of leaving the Fleet. Tomson was not above using bribery to keep a good officer, neither, Kirk decided, was he. He had forwarded Tomson's request with his approval.

But he was surprised to see that she had put Nguyen in charge of her former attacker. He supposed that the point was to get Nguyen to confront her fear and master it; but one look at Nguyen's eyes made Kirk doubt the wisdom of the idea. Maybe it wasn't fear so much that Nguyen needed to overcome, but hatred.

He put on his visor and smiled at her.

“Captain,” she said. She did not smile back. Beneath the filter, her eyes were somber.

Kirk walked to the side of Adams' bed. Three beds down, Stanger writhed under the restraints and moaned softly, as if he were having a bad dream.

Both were being transfused, but Adams seemed spiritless after Stanger's violent attack on him. He rolled his head on his pillow to look at Kirk. His expression did not change.

It was more than recuperating from the concussion that had weakened him. McCoy had said that Adams' illness had advanced to a new stage, that the virus could no longer maintain stability. Adams was dying, and Kirk looked at him without the slightest sympathy.

“Mendez knows you're on board.” Jim said it not as a threat, but a simple statement of fact. “Unless you tell me what I want, I'll turn you over to him as soon as we arrive at Tanis.”

“Tanis?” Adams' eyes widened, half hopeful, half afraid. He turned his head back to stare at the ceiling and said, “What do you want to know?”

“I need evidence. Evidence to convict Mendez. Unless you'd prefer to take the fall alone.”

“No,” Adams whispered. He closed his eyes. “I wouldn't.”

Kirk waited for a while for the man to speak, but Adams remained silent. “Spock thinks there's a body still down on Tanis, a Vulcan who died of the original virus.”

Adams was silent for a long time. At last he said, as if remembering something very unpleasant, “Sepek. The first to die. By that time, the virus had already mutated.”

Kirk leaned over the bed. So it was true. Spock was right after all. “Two forms still exist?”

“They did. I don't know if the R-form”

“Effective against Romulans,” Kirk said quickly. No doubt certain members of Fleet brass had not been content with conventional weapons against their enemies.

Adams did not contradict him. “I don't know if it still exists. Sepek is dead, and the lab is decontaminated. All samples were destroyed—though I suppose recovering Sepek's body would show dead organisms and traces of the disease.”

“That will have to do.” Kirk said.

“As long as you have me,” Adams added, with a hideous grin that made him look like a skull. “You need me, don't you?”

Kirk stared at him with open hatred. “Not quite as much as you need us. But I have more questions. It strikes me as rather odd that a microbe should mutate from a form deadly to Romulans into a form deadly to humans.”

Adams shook his head weakly, his tone suddenly that of the scientist. “No. Such a rapidly proliferating virus can go through a hundred generations in a day. It wasn't surprising that an alternate version was dangerous to another life form.”

Kirk listened, unconvinced. “And most importantly, how can we recover Sepek's body? We didn't pick it up during our search.”

“That's because it's hidden in a specially sealed stasis tube on the base. We couldn't have a regular stasis room like you have on the
Enterprise
. The assumption was that a corpse was likely to be contaminated, given the nature of our business.”

“Odd,” Kirk said, more to himself than to Adams, “that a Vulcan would be involved in illegal research.”

“Sepek misled Mendez. He pretended to be a rebel Vulcan, an outcast.” He looked up at Kirk. “They
do
happen, you know.”

“So I've heard,” Kirk said dryly.

“But after a while it became clear he was working for Starfleet after all, trying to stall our project. When Mendez found out, he had us arrange an ‘accident.' It was easy enough, since at the time, the R-virus was dangerous only to Vulcanoids. Unlike the mutated form, it brings death swiftly.” Adams paused soberly. “It could decimate the Romulan population in a matter of months.”

Kirk shook his head. What kind of man was Mendez, that he would risk everything—his career in the Fleet, his son, his freedom—to get revenge against the Romulans? “Is there anything else we could use as evidence? Anything at all?”

“Showing that a Vulcan died of a genetically engineered virus doesn't prove much, does it?” The death-mask grin crossed Adams' face once more. “I guess that's all you have except for me.”

Stanger cried out in his sleep again, and Kirk turned away. They had said that Stanger had come very close to strangling Adams, that he had grabbed Adams by the neck and pounded his head against the wall.

Kirk felt envious. He walked past Ensign Nguyen and nodded. She nodded back politely, but beneath the visor, hatred smoldered in her eyes, and he knew it matched his own.

After Kirk left, Lisa stood silently in the darkness and watched her prisoners.

Adams closed his eyes and seemed to sleep, but even so, it was hard for her to look at him for very long. She hated him with a bitterness she had never known before. He had made her think she was going to die, and she could not forgive him for that. She was young, too young to have to face that yet. Adams, no one, had the right to make her face up to anything as terrifying as her own mortality.

At the same time, the experience had made her think, and she was glad of that. Otherwise, she would not have accepted Rajiv's offer.

Of course, up until tonight, Lisa's mind had been made up to go to Colorado. Now, she found herself wavering again, and it was all Lieutenant Tomson's fault. It was Tomson who had put Nguyen in charge of the search, Tomson who had assigned her (over Lisa's loud protests) to watch over Adams. It was Tomson who had forced her to face up to what had happened to her.

And the most infuriating thing about it was, Tomson's strategy was working. Lisa was still full of venom for Adams and what he had done to her, but she found she could control herself. She could stand guard over him and not strangle him with her bare hands. The fear was there, too, but becoming more manageable with each moment's passing. True, she had almost died
almost
, but she hadn't. She was alive, and the encounter she had feared most of all had occurred, and she had survived again.

She was beginning to remember why she loved the Fleet.

“Rosa,” Stanger cried out softly. He had grown so violent at the sight of Adams in the nearby bed that McCoy had sedated him, but he was beginning to come out of it.

Lisa glanced at Adams: still sleeping. She took a sideways step toward Stanger, careful to keep Adams in the periphery of her vision. “It's all right, Jon.” She said it low so that Adams wouldn't hear.

Stanger stared up at her, his eyes wild, lost, and struggled against the restraints to sit up. The sight of him broke her heart. Jon was a good person; even in the throes of the disease that had turned Adams into a killer, he had saved her life. He didn't deserve what Adams had done to him. Lisa blinked back tears, grateful that Adams was not watching.

“Rosa,” Stanger repeated piteously.

She placed a hand on his arm and said, “I'm here.”

Her touch seemed to calm him for a moment, at least. Then his face contorted as if he were going to cry. “Rosa why didn't you tell them?”

“Tell them what?” She humored him.

“That the phaser was yours.” He started tossing from side to side. “But you didn't even
tell
me. Fell out and blew the damn bulkhead right out. Everybody there. And I never even
knew
.”

Blew the bulkhead out—what were Acker's exact words? She could see him sitting in the security lounge, scanning the room with his bright blue eyes to make sure Stanger wasn't nearby, and saying:
Fell out and blew the bulkhead out in the officers' lounge, right in front of the first officer! Talk about bad luck.

Lisa's mouth dropped open. “Jon are you saying the phaser wasn't
yours?”

“I waited for you,” Stanger whispered hoarsely. “I took the blame and I waited for you to come forward. I thought you cared about me, Rosa, but you never came.”

“Hush.” She put a pale hand to his dark forehead and found it moist and warm to the touch. She marveled: all this time, and Jon had silently swallowed the blame for someone named Rosa, had given up his rank.…

And suddenly there was no longer any doubt in her mind about Colorado. It was quite clear what she had to do.

“You never came,” Stanger moaned.

Lisa stroked his forehead again. “I'm here now,” she said, and actually found it in herself to smile.

CHRIS CHAPEL STRUGGLED against encroaching consciousness. She'd been floating peacefully for how long? Forever. A long time, but it didn't matter. She was content to sleep, and didn't want to wake up, ever, ever, ever

She fought it as long as she could, but the mist began to lift, and as it did, her senses slowly returned. Feeling was first: the sensation of breathing, the rise and fall of her chest, the slightly cool temperature of the room, the yielding support of the diagnostic bed beneath her. Hearing was next, the sounds muffled and indistinct to start, then all at once sharp and clear. She listened with her eyes closed, staring into gray velvet nothing, and heard a baritone lilt, one she recognized. The face came to her immediately, but not the name.

Her vital signs are stabilizing. Heme level rising. She's coming out of it. Tell Tjieng it works!

She understood each word by itself, but together they made no sense at all. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and stared into the very face she had just conjured. “M'Benga,” she remembered. Talking was difficult. Her mouth was very dry.

M'Benga's smile spread from one corner of his dark face to the other. “Christine! You have no idea how glad we are to see
you!”
He handed her a glass of water without her even asking.

“Bless you,” she croaked, propping herself on one elbow. She took a small sip and swished it over her parched gums before swallowing. Not too fast, don't want to get sick. There was an odd taste in her mouth, metallic, like iron. As if she had bitten her tongue

A horrible thought occurred to her. “Did I” she stammered, hardly able to imagine it, much less say it. “Did I turn into another Adams?”

M'Benga's smile broadened. “You never got to that stage, Chris. Besides, you're just not the type.”

She smiled weakly at that. “Have I been out long?” So many questions. If it were just easier to talk

“A few days.”

“Wow.” No wonder she felt weak. She looked around, and noticed with incredible relief that the lights were
on
and they didn't hurt. But something was wrong. Someone was missing.

“Where's Leonard?” she asked, trying not to sound hurt. Certainly, if she'd been that sick, McCoy would have been here to see her the instant she woke up.

The smile faded. M'Benga sighed. “Christine, you're not going to believe this.…”

How do I keep getting into these messes?
McCoy asked himself, opening his squeezed-shut eyes to darkness overlaid by the glimmer of his field suit. It was a rhetorical question. He knew full well how he had gotten into this particular mess: he had volunteered. And it made perfect sense for Jim to take him up on the offer. After all, he had been down to Tanis twice before and was most familiar with the layout.

A light flared in the darkness next to him and he could just distinguish the shimmering outline of Spock's form. It had made absolutely no sense at all for the Vulcan to go, but apparently he had said something to the captain that convinced Jim to send him. Some mumbo-jumbo about Vulcan burial rites and responsibility, McCoy perceived, though he knew better than to try to ask Spock about it when the Vulcan got that inscrutable look.

The beam from Spock's flashlight swept the room in a slow, steady arc, across bare walls, across the containment chamber with the hole McCoy had burned in it.

“This is it,” McCoy said. “The lab.” The field suit muted his voice and made it sound faraway to him, as if he had stuffed cotton in his ears. In spite of being vaccinated, he had decided to wear it; no telling what other sorts of surprises down here Adams might have forgotten to tell them about. For Spock, the danger of exposure to the R-virus made the suit mandatory. McCoy sighed and wished he were anywhere else at the moment. If he could have his choice, he would be in sickbay, where M'Benga was watching Chris Chapel right now. Tjieng's lab had come up with something to stabilize the anemia, and before he left, the last thing he had done was to convince them to try it out on Chris. She was part of the medical staff, after all, and it was more ethical to use her as a guinea pig than Adams or Stanger. Besides, Chris would have volunteered.

It was true, and no one disagreed. Still, Tjieng smirked at him knowingly when he suggested it.

Maybe that's why I feel so damn skittish. Worried about Chris. No reason for this place to still give me the willies.

Of course, they
had
come down here to recover a body. Spock motioned with the beam. “The vault would be this way,” he said. McCoy followed, staying just a little behind the Vulcan as the light cut a path before them. They walked slowly out of the lab, into the narrow, claustrophobic corridor McCoy remembered all too well.

Now that the doctor understood how the virus worked, he knew that the deceased Vulcan they were recovering could not have survived indefinitely in stasis. If Adams' R-virus worked anything like the mutated H-virus, poor Sepek would probably have come out of his coma anywhere from ten to forty-eight hours after he was in stasis. How long depended on how severe his anemia was when he went into the coma. At a critical level, the virus would “waken” him to search for blood, preferably transfused. But Sepek had been sealed into the vault without any hope of escape. McCoy flinched mentally at the vision of the man, clawing at the sealed lid of his tube with his last shreds of incredible Vulcan strength.…He had no doubt died weeks ago.