Bloodthirst (7 page)

“We'll save the lab for last, then,” he said, and at her expression, added: “I just issued another order, didn't I?”

She nodded.

Fine. Let her stay mad. Why should I worry about her liking me? I should worry instead about protecting myself.
“Do whatever the hell you want, then,” he said, exasperated, and stalked out the door of the lab into darkness.

Getting into the containment chamber was a task that reduced McCoy very nearly to tears and very definitely to curses. Once he had cut away a large enough square of crystal from the containment chamber, he slipped an arm inside up to his shoulder, only to find that the test tubes that sat on the glistening black counter were far beyond his reach. He spent a decidedly uncomfortable moment angling first his head and then his neck, left shoulder, and arm inside the chamber. It was at that inopportune moment that McCoy realized that the hole was not large enough.

He pulled himself out awkwardly, producing a crick in his neck, which in turn encouraged him to comment on the legitimacy of the person who had sealed the chamber.

It took him several minutes to burn away another piece of crystal, but this time he met with greater success. He managed to wriggle in both shoulders and arms, and finally his torso up to the waist. In an effort to reach the sample vials on the counter, McCoy stood on tiptoe, pressing his body as close as the field allowed against the sharp, unyielding edge of the crystal. It was still not close enough.

He leaned precariously further, his fingers and neck stretched out, standing so far forward on the tips of his toes that he was in great danger of falling forward. He strained just a little more.…

At which point he felt a tearing sensation in the muscles of his lower back.

His immediate impulse was to straighten himself, which of course so increased the level of pain that he bent forward again with a groan, supporting himself against the counter with both glowing hands. It took him five seconds to register the absolute futility of his situation, and less time than that to try to reach for his communicator. It was not a fun proposition—reaching backward with his arm dramatically increased the torment in his neck and back—but teeth gritted, perspiring, the doctor persisted until his fingers touched the hard edges of the communicator strapped to his waist. With a grunt, he triumphantly pulled it free.

The communicator slipped from his fingers and clattered on the shiny surface of the counter, well out of reach.

He decided that only one thing could have made the predicament any worse: Spock could have been there to see it.

It wasn't as bad inside the living quarters as Stanger had feared: he could rig the portable floodlights so that the rooms were blindingly bright, stripped of the eerieness that had so oppressed him in the dark corridor.

He wandered through the cabins, aided by the small sketch made by Adams—a dubious choice of informant at best, Stanger thought—and found little of interest in Yoshi and Adams' rooms: the former was spartan, monastic, consisting of no more than a bed, a chair, and a terminal; the latter was disheveled and littered with personal effects, but free of anything incriminating.

Krovozhadny's quarters amazed him.

It was like stepping into a different world, a different era. The ubiquitous colorless carpeting had been covered with a large oriental rug—not a real antique, but a decent replica. There was a heavy wooden roll-top desk, and a four-poster bed, along with tall wooden shelves that held the only true antiques: paper books. One of them had been pulled out and lay open on the desk, next to a brass lamp with a candle inside it. The candle had been burned almost all the way down. Stanger reached out and closed the book gently, then grimaced at the title on the cover.

He felt very sorry that the occupant was now dead. He would have liked to meet her.

As in all the rooms, there was no sign of violence or a struggle. He was in the doorway when it occurred to him that he had forgotten to check the contents of the desk.

The top drawers contained female undergarments in neat piles. Stanger filmed them as instructed, not without questioning the investigative merits of so doing. The bottom right-hand drawer was deeper than the rest. It had been converted to a small refrigeration unit, and inside he found a half-full two-liter lab container and a used drinking glass. He pulled them out and set them on the desk to film them before he realized what was in the container.

Stanger's hand moved instinctively to his mouth.

The blood in the bottom of the drinking glass had long ago dried.

MCCOY REMAINED FOR some time in that unbearable and undignified situation until at last he heard a stifled chuckle behind him.

“Dammit, Stanger,” he growled, recognizing the origin of the sound. “Laugh again and I'll see to it that your next checkup is a painful one.”

The laughter stopped abruptly, but Stanger's voice kept its ring of good humor. “Sorry, Doctor. How did this happen?”

“You don't need to know. Just get me out of here!” Pain made McCoy petulant.

Out of the corner of his eye, the doctor saw Stanger and Lamia lean up against the crystal to study his predicament. “It looks simple enough to me,” Stanger said. “You just need to straighten up.”

“Don't you think I would if I could?” McCoy flared. “I've pulled my damn back! Of all the stupid things”

Lamia interrupted him calmly. “Do you have any pain medication, Doctor?”

McCoy nodded, which made the pain shoot down his back. He clenched his teeth harder. “In the black kit, to the left of my waist.”

The Andorian positioned herself just behind him, then slipped her thin arms inside the chamber and around the doctor's waist. In spite of his discomfort, the humor of the situation was not lost on McCoy.

“My dear,” he murmured, “you have me at a disadvantage.” She didn't answer, and McCoy dropped his lascivious air. “Inside the hypo with the blue coding on it. Set the indicator to four cc.”

He felt a slight tingling as she administered the spray to his backside. The pain eased. He sighed and sagged back into her arms. “Have you considered a job in the medical field, Ensign?”

She answered with a great tug; the doctor felt himself falling backward and slid out with a groan. Lamia staggered, still holding on to him, until the two of them finally regained their balance.

“Thanks,” McCoy said sheepishly, rubbing the offended muscle in his lower back. He did a couple of test stretches. “It's much better.”

Stanger narrowed his eyes at the hole McCoy had cut in the crystal, then glanced at the Andorian. “Do you think you could fit in there?”

“Probably,” she answered, barely civil; apparently their feud hadn't been resolved. McCoy was going to protest until he realized that although she was as tall as Stanger, she was at least a third narrower. She put her long, slender arms through the hole at first, then ducked her head and pulled herself in, sliding on her stomach onto the counter with surprising ease.

McCoy shook his head. “Do you
have
to make it look so easy?”

Lamia was already completely inside the chamber, crawling on her hands and knees. She retrieved the doctor's communicator, clipped it to her belt, and then, with gentle deliberateness, began collecting the vials from the stand on the counter.

“They're not sealed,” she said, looking up at the others. “If they contain samples, shouldn't they be sealed?”

“They
should
, but maybe these folks were sloppy housekeepers,” McCoy said. “Try not to spill any of them.”

Lamia peered down into the vials. “I don't think there's anything to spill.”

“Of
course
there's something to spill,” Stanger argued. “You're not going to tell me that I came down here a second time for nothing.”

Without saying another word, Lamia crawled to the opening in the crystal and thrust the vials at Stanger. He shied away involuntarily.

“Look for yourself, Ensign,” she said, with a slightly nasty inflection on the last word. “There's nothing there.”

Stanger stared. Stiffly, McCoy reached for his tricorder and passed it over the open vials.

“Well, I'll be damned,” he said. “She's right.”

“Nothing!” Mendez thundered on the viewscreen in Kirk's quarters. The admiral's heavy brows formed a threatening V above his eyes. The
Enterprise was
eight hours from Tanis, close enough at last for direct visual contact.

“Nothing, sir.” Kirk felt only relief at McCoy's findings, but Mendez's reaction struck him as odd. The admiral was furious at the situation and not doing a very good job of hiding it. “Tests were run on all labware confiscated on the base. No organisms of any sort were found in the laboratory.”

“Are you sure there wasn't some sort of mistake?”

“My people are extremely competent, Admiral. I trust their report.”

Mendez hunched forward over his desk so suddenly that Kirk instinctively moved back, as though expecting him to come charging through the screen. “Did it occur to you, Captain, that it is a trifle odd to find a completely empty laboratory?”

“Yes, sir, it did.” Kirk managed to maintain his composure, though he cursed himself for flinching. Mendez was bullying a subordinate for no reason other than the fact that the admiral was disappointed. He felt a surge of contempt: how was it possible that this man was José's brother?

“And what do you think that means?”

Kirk's expression was pleasant and respectful, but his jaw was clenched. “One of three things, sir. One, someone destroyed the microbe; two, it has been stolen; or three, it never existed, in which case Adams caught the disease some other way.”

“Tanis is extremely isolated, Captain. Don't you think that the third possibility is rather unlikely?”

“Yes,” Kirk admitted. “Although it doesn't rule it out”

“There
was
a microbe down there, Kirk. All the evidence points to it. And it was destroyed or stolen. And in that case, it was either one of your landing party or Adams.”

Kirk felt his face redden in spite of himself. “With all due respect, Admiral, it was
not
one of my people. Such an accusation is unjustified.”

“I tend to agree with you there, Kirk. I'm sure it was Adams.”

“Or one of the dead researchers”

“It was Adams. The man is obviously mad and murdered the others.”

“He denies it, sir, and the computer says he's telling the truth.” Kirk didn't mention McCoy's reservations. Something about Mendez's dogged insistence made him want to stick up for Adams and the concept of innocent until proven guilty. “And we have no evidence against him except for the fact he was the only survivor.” He also didn't mention the drinking glass better to wait and see what Forensics found before he gave Mendez more reason to condemn Adams.

“The two corpses—were they infected, too?”

“The woman was in the initial stages of infection, but the man was clean. Adams said the man went mad, attacked the woman”

“Impossible,” Mendez snapped. “Why would he kill her if he didn't have the illness?”

“Sir, you're presuming that the illness causes madness. My ship's surgeon claims that Adams seems fairly sane”

“Then maybe you ought to get a new ship's surgeon. I'm not going to argue with you about this, Captain. You're to put Adams under arrest and turn him in to the nearest star base for questioning
now
. Tell them to arrange the proper containment methods.”

The screen went dark, leaving Kirk to wonder exactly what Rodrigo Mendez had against Jeffrey Adams.

Through Kirk's infrared visor, Adams was beginning to look more and more like a doomed soul trapped in the gray shadows of hell. He was still lying weakly on his bed, thin filaments running from one arm to a container of blood above him.

Adams' face was turned to the wall, but at the sound of the intercom coming on, he turned his head and gazed listlessly in Kirk's direction.

Jim said it straight out. “Dr. Adams, I've come to tell you that we've found some evidence on Tanis that implicates you in at least one of the deaths.”

He did not get the reaction he hoped for. Adams' eyes remained dull and uninterested, and he spoke with the faraway voice of a dying man as he fingered the locket around his neck. “What's that?”

“A drinking glass—with Lara Krovozhadny's blood in it. The computer has verified that your fingerprints are all over it.”

Adams turned his gaze to the ceiling and said nothing.

That's it. I've got him, and he knows it.
There was no question in Kirk's mind that Adams was guilty. He pressed his advantage, knowing that the man could not be far from confessing. “Dr. McCoy says you were lying when you said you didn't kill the others.” No point in mentioning that the doctor disagreed with the computer results.

“That's one man's opinion.” Adams turned his face away and muttered something at the wall.

“If you have something to say, you can say it to me.”

Adams looked back at him, and this time there was more energy in his voice. “I said that this is ridiculous! What kind of accusation are you making, Captain? That I killed Lara so I could drink her blood out of a
glass?
”

The glimmer of hope faded. The man was actually going to continue to deny it; McCoy was right. He had to be a total sociopath. “You tell me, Dr. Adams. Is it so unreasonable to ask for
some
kind of explanation?”

“God.” The sick man shuddered. “Who could explain something like that? I don't know. Yoshi must have done it. I told you, he was mad.”

“Then why does the glass bear your fingerprints and not his?”

“I don't know.” There was a note of petulant desperation in Adams' voice. “Maybe he got it from her quarters after I left them”