“It helps promote the healing process,” M’Benga said. “In a Vulcan healing trance, a patient concentrates his or her strength, blood, and antibodies on the injury. Simulating the heat and aridity of Vulcan facilitates this effort.”
A weak tremor of life passed through T’Prynn’s wrist, under Fisher’s fingertip. “Whatever did this to her,” he said, “I don’t think blood or antibodies are gonna fix it.” He looked at her face, which was neither placid nor troubled—merely blank. “And you can call this a healing trance if it makes you feel better, but when I was in medical school we called this a coma.”
M’Benga finished marking the chart and set it back into a slot at the foot of T’Prynn’s bed. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “If this is a healing trance, it’s the deepest one I’ve ever seen. But even if I’m wrong, and it is a coma, I see no harm in making her comfortable.”
Fisher withdrew his hand from T’Prynn’s wrist. “Agreed,” he said. He gently tucked the thermal blanket back into place at the bed’s edge. Drawing a breath as a prelude to a sigh, he inhaled the bracing odors of surgical sanitizer and the harsh disinfectant used to mop the hospital’s floors. Exhaling, he felt fatigue spread through him. It had been a manic day tending the wounded and dying from the attack on the Malacca, and this was the final stop on his evening rounds. He plucked T’Prynn’s chart from the slot at the foot of the bed and skimmed it quickly. “I see we finally got her real medical history,” he said.
“Yes,” M’Benga said. “It makes for fascinating reading. Those deep-tissue injuries and skeletal fractures I detected during her physical were sustained during a premarital ritual combat called Koon-ut-kal-
if-fee. Usually, the challenge is made by someone who wants to marry a person betrothed to another, so they can fight their rival for the mate. When T’Prynn asked her fiancé Sten to terminate their marriage compact, he refused and challenged her to the duel. Apparently, his aim was either to force her to change her mind or to deny her the right to claim another mate in the future…. So she killed him.”
“Charming,” Fisher said, almost dreading to see what other dark secrets of Vulcan culture were hidden in its details. “Is that why she’s been hiding these records?”
M’Benga conveyed his doubt with a tilt of his head. “I don’t think so. The Koon-ut-kal-if-fee is a legally protected Vulcan ritual. Unless she assaulted or killed a fellow member of Starfleet, or an unwilling participant, her actions would be entirely lawful under Vulcan jurisprudence.”
“Murdering people over sex and marriage,” Fisher mumbled. “Logical, my ass.” He glanced peremptorily at M’Benga. “And don’t go lecturing me about why I shouldn’t be appalled by this Koon-ut-whatever business.” Flipping through the rest of T’Prynn’s medical file, he noted the pattern of her anxiety attacks, which had become more severe and more frequent over the course of several decades. “If it wasn’t the legal fallout that worried her,” he speculated, “I’ll bet it was these seizures. A history of mental illness would shred her security rating. She’s probably been afraid of being relieved of duty.”
Nodding, M’Benga said, “With good reason. Now that her records have been declassified and Starfleet Intelligence has our report, they’ve revoked her security clearance. If she ever wakes up, she’ll be lucky to avoid a court-martial.”
Fisher dropped the data slate with T’Prynn’s chart back into the slot on the bed and heaved a dejected sigh. “If she ever wakes up, she’ll be lucky, period.”
31
Three minutes past 0800, Reyes settled into the chair behind his desk and checked the data feeds from the Federation. Sipping from his day’s first mug of coffee, he scanned the headlines. He didn’t have to look far to find what he sought.
It was the top item on every news feed, and it carried the byline of Tim Pennington: “Starfleet Officer Orders Destruction of Gamma Tauri IV.” Running beside it on more than half of the major news services was Pennington’s story about his excursion to Jinoteur IV, the mysterious life-forms of that now-vanished star system, their attack on the Sagittarius, and their link to the Gamma Tauri IV disaster.
Reyes took another sip of his coffee, decided it was too hot, and reclined slightly while he puffed gently across the top of his morning beverage. The mug was almost painfully warm in his hands. He considered paging Yeoman Greenfield and asking her to bring him more sugar.
His desktop intercom beeped. The indicator for Jetanien’s private comm channel lit up. Reyes blew another breath over his coffee and set the mug gently on his desk while the intercom beeped again. He leaned forward and pushed the switch to open the channel. “Reyes here.”
“Diego,” Jetanien said, sounding like someone who was pretending to be calm but failing miserably, “I thought you might like to know that she is already on her way up.”
Even though his friend couldn’t see him, Reyes nodded. “I figured as much.”
“We don’t have much time,” Jetanien said. “Once she gets there, you and I will not be permitted to speak further. I need to ask you some very direct questions, and I would appreciate the courtesy of succinct, truthful replies.”
Choosing not to waste time by mocking Jetanien for asking someone else to be succinct, Reyes replied simply, “Fire away.”
“Was this your doing?”
“Yes, it was.”
Agitated clicking noises tapped over the intercom channel. “Were you aware of the story’s contents before you released it for publication?”
Reyes swallowed another half-mouthful of coffee. “Yup.”
This time a low groan underscored the telltale scrape of Jetanien anxiously grinding his beak back and forth. “Was your action in any way coerced?”
“Nope.”
“Diego, this next query is vital,” said Jetanien. “Does the reporter know about the meta-genome, the Jinoteur carrier-wave signal, or the Shedai energy waveform?”
“No,” Reyes said. “All he knows is what he saw with his own eyes—and that’s all he wrote about.”
Another round of groaning and clicks issued from the intercom. “A most regrettable turn of events, Diego.” After a few seconds of heavy silence, the Chelon asked, “Is there anything that I can do for you before she arrives?”
“Yeah,” Reyes said. “Have someone bring me more sugar.”
Pennington relaxed in a comfortable chair at the outdoor café, on the plaza near the edge of Stars Landing. The crescent-shaped neighborhood of elegant civilian buildings gleamed under the pale morning glow of an ersatz sky inside Starbase 47’s terrestrial enclosure.
He was glad to be back at one of his favorite haunts on the station. Only a few other places on Vanguard made eggs Benedict, and none prepared it as well as it was made at Café Romano. Pennington gave the credit to Matt, the café’s chef-proprietor, for his ability to make consistently perfect Hollandaise sauce.
It was five minutes past 0800. Pennington was half finished with his breakfast and triple espresso; his latest story was less than ninety minutes old, and already it had provoked a storm of controversy throughout the interstellar newswire services. In one feature article, he had linked the obliteration of Gamma Tauri IV to inconsistencies in Starfleet’s account of the deaths of its personnel on Erilon, the destruction of the U.S.S. Bombay, and a previously unknown species that had controlled the suddenly missing Jinoteur star system.
Pundits at some news services had called his account of events on Jinoteur IV fiction, but so far none had been able to discredit his video evidence of the beings known as the Shedai, and no one could explain the system’s disappearance. Independent sources had already verified the complete annihilation of Gamma Tauri IV by photon-torpedo bombardment, and Starfleet had reluctantly confirmed its role in that tragedy.