Signs from Heaven (8 page)

Yaffie looked to his left to where Gold supposed Nelois's image was displayed.
“You
—
you created a Sentinel? How could you have done this?”

Nelois finally looked at Gold.
“Because we didn't know that's what the artifacts were.”

“Poppycock!”

Gold glanced at Haznedl—was that really what the universal translators heard?

“Your people have been studying the old text for years.”
Yaffie turned to look at Gold.
“You have one half hour to remove your people from the city before we start firing on Stratos.”

Yaffie disconnected.

Gold looked at Nelois. “You care to tell me why you neglected to let him know about the parasites?”

“Need you ask?”
The High Advisor of Ardana held up his hand before Gold could retort.
“You have my thanks, Captain Gold. Do not worry about Yaffie's threats
—
he does not have the weapons or manpower to blow anything out of the sky.”

The viewer went blank.

“Well,” Gold said to no one in particular, “that didn't make me feel at all better.”

“A
half hour,” Fabian said. He stood beside Bart in the center of what Bart now referred to as the map room. “So what are we supposed to do if we don't get that shield shut off? Find parachutes and hope they open?”

Bart suppressed a smile. His roommate's agitation was well-founded—having just learned that the people they had come to help had decided to blow them out of the sky.

But that didn't lessen what they were doing. Bart nodded at Sonya. “We understand.”

Sarjenka had her tricorder out again. “Fabian, stop doing this. Your temperature's up again.”

Gomez stepped closer to her. “What's happening?”

“His core temperature is rising, and he's exhibiting instances of labored breathing. Those things in his head are messing with his RAS.”

“What's his core temperature?”

“One hundred and two Fahrenheit.”

But Fabian was staring at the paintings.

Bart came up beside him. “You still don't see it, do you?”

“Bart, I've been standing here for ten minutes and I just can't see—” But he did see something—vivid colors that moved and glowed in front of him. And each time he concentrated on a particular painting he heard a tone in his head.

Carol joined them. “Oh, stop making the poor man think. Can't you see he's got a headache?” She looked at Fabian. “There are eleven paintings like this, total. There were eleven gifts Soske gave his wife Miso upon their wedding day, including a hand model of Stratos. His father's dream.”

Fabian nodded. “And there are eleven tones in my head.”

“What?” Gomez said.

Corsi looked from Fabian to the paintings. “You hear music when you look at them?”

Fabian nodded. “Yeah, like when I hear your voice I see indigo, and when I see indigo over there”—he pointed to purplish painting—“I hear a tone.”

Bart crossed his arms over his chest. “So we don't need to cut them down?”

Fabian shook his head. “I just have to remember them—” He looked around, turning where he stood. “And figure out in what order or melody.”

“So what do you think this is?” Corsi said.

Shaking his head, he looked at the paintings, stared at the lines that were different shades and hues of the primary colors of each painting. And as he did an entire piece of music came to him in his head. It was different than the rest. Much like the artwork itself. It was like twenty-first century paintings hanging alongside a Leonardo da Vinci piece in a museum, completely out of sync with—

He gave a small laugh. “That's it!”

Bart gave Carol a sour look. “I hate it when he does that.”

“No, Bart. I see it. Those lines—” He pointed at the left painting. “What is that one?”

He pronounce the word in Ardanan, then translated: “Where he has been.”

Fabian repeated the sounds of the word aloud and the colors of the painting flared.

Everyone in the room stopped when the painting's surface shifted, illuminated, and revealed a patchwork of shapes.

“You can all see that?” Fabian asked. “Neat.”

Gomez moved to stand directly in front of it. “Is that…” She turned and smiled at them. “Is that what I think it is?”

“It's environmental control,” Bart said with a smile. “It's like I suspected. Each of the paintings is a piece of the workings of the city. As a whole they represent the entire blueprint. But Fabe, didn't you find a blueprint or a schematic in the engine room?”

“For diagnostics, yeah.” Fabian stared at the painting. “But not like this. This is an actual schematic of the wiring.” He smiled at Bart. “A real schematic in the true meaning of the word.”

“So you think this can lower the shields?”

Fabian snapped his fingers. “Oh, wait. No. I already figured that one out. What this is”—he gestured to the paintings—“this might give us a way to land the city! You were right about what this is for, what the paintings mean. Meaning within meaning!”

Bart looked at Carol. “Yippie?”

Fabian nodded to the damaged painting with the pole sticking out of it. “What was that one?”

“Luckily, that's not one with a title. Probably a decoy.”

Carol pointed to the one on the far right of the pole. “That one is called,
As above.
”

Fabian moved to it. “Bart, what's the Ardanan word?”

Bart took two steps toward the painting before he heard it.

That sound.

But it couldn't be—they hadn't been anywhere near the triggering mechanism. He turned to see Vanov move away from the back wall, his hard gaze locked on Fabian.

“Fabian!
Move!”

Bart ran to his roommate and pushed him out of the way. Something with the force of a charging bull struck him in the chest, lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the wall. His head struck the hard surface simultaneously. Stars clouded his vision as he fought to understand what had just happened. He could hear voices screaming at him from far away.

And something—something hurt really…
bad
.

Bart looked down and stared.

The last thing he saw before losing consciousness was an eight-centimeter pole protruding from his stomach.

Oh, damn…

E
verything
happened so fast.

Sarjenka had been standing by the back wall when the pole shot from one of the holes camouflaged to resemble an accent light and impaled Bart Faulwell.

Carol and Gomez screamed Bart's name. Fabian stumbled after them, the company of the entire room sprinting for the man pinned to one of the paneled paintings.

Sarjenka ran forward.

Corsi reached out to pull the pole from Bart's stomach.

“Don't
do
that!” Sarjenka yelled out.

Corsi turned a furious face toward her that made Sarjenka stop. “Why the hell
not?
”

Calm down, calm down…. You've got to take your own pulse first before you can calm others.
Taking in a breath, she approached the scene, her eyes focused on Corsi's brilliant blue ones. “Because if that pole has hit major arteries it might actually be acting as a kind of stopper, a thumb in a dike. I need to assess what's been damaged before I can go any further—” She looked at Bart, his head forward, hiding his face. “The wisest thing to do is beam him out with the pole still intact—or snip it off at the margins. Leave that thing in there.”

Fabian moved up beside her, between she and Corsi. His labored breathing caught her attention and she turned to look up at him. He was staring at Bart. “But we can't beam him out. The shield's still up.”

Corsi spun on him. “You just said you knew how to get those shields down.”

He looked at her, his breathing labored. “But I—” He started to wheeze harder and Sarjenka put a hand on his arm. The dendrites must have reached farther around his cerebral cortex.

“No.” He pushed her hand away and took a step back. “I—I'll get back to engineering and shut those shields down.”

“Fabian—” Sarjenka shook her head. “You can't stimulate those dendrites anymore. It will kill you.”

“And if you don't get over to Bart”—he nodded to his roommate, whose face was twisted in anguish—“he'll die.” He put a hand on her arm. “Save Bart.”

Corsi was already punching her combadge and calling for Lense.

“I'll go with him,” Vanov said, coming out of the woodwork. “I'll make sure he gets back to engineering and lowers the shield.”

Fabian, still wheezing, nodded.

“Sarjenka, get over there.
Now
. I'm going with Fabian,” Gomez said. “Corsi, you, Carol, Makk, and Rennan help Sarjenka in any way she needs. Sarj, talk to Lense. You're going to need help—she's the best for this.”

Bart was pinned in an upright position, his feet a mere few inches from the floor. She ordered Corsi and the others to start setting things beneath him to relieve stress on his organs. She didn't want the muscles to tear and rip a hole out of his side.

With her tricorder open she scanned for vitals.

“Sarjenka
—
talk to me! What are the vitals?”

She slapped her badge. “His airway is clear—the pole's hit the aorta. The blood is bright red and pulsatile.”

“How did the pole go in?”

“Inferior to the left costal margin, medial to the umbilicus, but not parallel to the iliac crest.” Sarjenka moved in closer, the smell of blood overwhelming.

“You're right
—
it's clipped the aorta. But I'm also thinking the pole itself is compressing and stanching what could be much worse. Heart rate?”

“One hundred forty beats per minute and rising, and his blood pressure's dropping fast. He's bleeding out—”

“Stop yelling,”
Lense said.
“He's got tachycardia. If the pressure's dropping that rapidly it's definitely the renal artery or aorta or both. Dammit to hell. Is his belly distended?”

Sarjenka moved closer and sat on the pile of blood-soaked display podiums and silks. “No, not that I can see.”

“It might still be filling with blood in his pelvis. That alone can hold a couple quarts. Sarjenka, you're going to have to clamp off the main bleeders to buy time.”

“And how am I supposed to do that?” She looked around at the faces looking up at her. “You're talking about cutting him open!”

“Well, of course. How else are you going to do it?”

“Cut him open with what?”

“With something sharp, you idiot!”
There was a pause.
“I'm sorry. Sorry. Is there not something there you can use?”

“I have it.” Corsi turned. “Carol, hand me that tool kit by the door—the one Fabe brought in.”

Carol did so and Corsi pulled out the portable laser. She handed it to Sarjenka. “Use this.”

Sarjenka, her hand crimson with Bart's blood, took the cutter. “Use
this
? Doctor, she's handed me a portable laser. I can't use this. There's no way to know how far I've cut. I could do more damage than just slicing him open.”

“Sarjenka, just do it. As it stands now he's not going to survive if somebody over there doesn't get that shield down!”

Corsi moved in closer, actually pushing her sleeves up to her elbows. She glanced at Vinx, and then Konya.

“I ain't no doc.” Vinx held up his hands.

“Well, you'd better pretend, Vinx.” Corsi looked back to Sarjenka. “Tell us what to do.”

Fabian, Sonya, and Vanov transmatted into the engine room. Scott, Tev, and the others approached them immediately. News of Bart's accident had already reached them.

“Will he be all right?” Tev asked. “Does Dr. Sarjenka need help?”

“She's fine,” Sonya said. “Carol, Domenica, and her people are helping. Right now, the best way we can help Bart is to lower the shield so we can beam him to sickbay.”

Fabian put out his hands. He was shaking and very aware of the dull aching behind his eyes. He was feverish and didn't even want to guess at his temperature. He moved past all of them toward the center podium.

But Scott stepped in front of him. “Lad, what are you thinking?”

“I know how to lower the shields,” he said. “The reason I can't find anything about them is because they were installed after the city was built. Soske Busk and his father never considered Stratos would need a defense grid of any kind, so when Plasus built one he built it over the existing technology.” He held out his hands. “Think of modern electronics being fused with vacuum tube technology.”

Scott tilted his head to the side. “But can you shut it off without touching that podium?”

Fabian shook his head. “No. He still built it using Busk's original tonal array—harmonics—using a sequence of colors and tones. They were in the vault along with a blueprint on how to move this city and land it.” He frowned. “Only I never got the last note about landing it because that's when Bart was hit.”

“But if you keep using the parasite”—Gomez moved to the podium and touched it—“you could die.”

“Yeah.” He let his exhaustion come through in his tone. He was tired—tired of everyone asking him if he was okay, telling him not to stimulate himself, telling him he'll die. Dammit, he
knew
that! “So I've been told. But if I don't Bart will die. He's got an eight-centimeter pole sticking out of his stomach!”

Her eyes widened.

Scotty put a hand on Fabian's arm but he pulled away and moved past the S.C.E. supervisor to the podium. He looked at Sonya and was instantly ashamed at himself for yelling. He never meant to hurt her.

She was his best friend's fiancée—or would have been.

He cared about her, just as Duff had.

“I'm sorry,” he said, and put his hands out to touch the podium—

—just as the city shook with a violent lurch.

Sarjenka made the first incision, above and below the perpendicular to the point of entry; the idea was to pull the wound apart from side to side. She hesitated for a second, reorienting herself on where the internal organs of a human were.
Is the spleen on the left or the right? Is the heart up the right flank like a Vulcan's?

The wall and ground shook beneath them.

Corsi swore under her breath and touched a bloodied hand to her badge. “Corsi to Gomez. What the hell is going on?”

“We're being fired at from below.”

Fired at?
Sarjenka looked at Corsi.

Lense's voice came through loud and clear.
“Sarjenka, I know about the fire from the planet but you've got to concentrate. Ignore it.”

Sarjenka started to cut again, then pulled back. “This is insane—there's no sterile field. No precision instruments. This is a mechanic's tool.”

“This is real medicine, Sarjenka.”

Scotty spoke this time.
“Apparently we've passed the opposing faction's deadline and they're going to blow us out of the sky. Luckily the same shield that's keeping us here is also protecting the city.”

Corsi answered. “So what does that mean? We're going to sit here and wait for them to get bored while Bart dies?”

“Corsi.”
Gomez's voice came through loud and clear. And angry.
“Zip it.”

Sarjenka took a deep breath and began her cuts, timid at first, being easy so that she didn't cut clean through into a vital organ. She thought about her long hours in ERs all over the Alpha Quadrant during her field year. The chaos had been all around her, though frankly she'd never worked in any emergency situation where the facility was under attack.

“I made the first cut,” she said and took a deep breath.

“Is the fatty tissue bloody?”

Sarjenka frowned. “Not really. It's only pink.”

“Not sure I like that. It means the peripheral blood supply is responding to the drop in pressure. The body's clamping off arterioles and capillaries to conserve blood for the head, heart, and lungs.”

She nodded. She knew all this. Studied it. Watched the recordings. But to see it on someone she knew…someone she liked.

She cut again, in short upward strokes with the laser. A yellow layer of subcu appeared and then she hit muscle. Breathing slowly and deliberately she started cutting the muscle, but at this point cutting wasn't going to move what she needed moved. She turned the laser off and reached in to pull the two sides apart.

Blood spilled over her hands and onto the floor. She couldn't identify the organs that shifted and moved forward.

Corsi came up beside her and pressed her own bare hands into the mix. A glance at the security chief showed her lips were drawn into a thin line, her expression focused.

Sarjenka grabbed the viscera before it fell forward and expertly held it back, gesturing for Corsi to take control of it.

“Hold it all in,” she said to Corsi.

“He's still bleeding,” Konya said as he came to Corsi's right and put his own hands into the bloody mess.

Lense answered.
“And he'll keep bleeding until you find whatever's bleeding and clamp it. Now get moving! This is as good as it's gonna get.”

Once the viscera and incision opening were pushed and held to the sides by Konya and Corsi, Sarjenka gave Lense the okay.

“Now stop the bleeder.”

Sarjenka squinted as she pushed her left hand in and moved the other organs out of the way. “It looks like it missed the stomach, the pancreas is history. It's pretty much a bloody pulp. The pole missed the superior mesenteric artery.”

“Uh-oh
—
is the pancreases auto-digesting? The thing's just a bag of enzymes.”

Sarkjena looked again at the bubbling, pulpy mass. “Yes.”

“Well, if it's gone, then the spleen's history too. Remember, in humans the spleen is an emergency blood reservoir. That's probably where you're getting a lot of this blood.”