Turning in his seat, Pennington regarded the interior of the dilapidated cockpit before looking down the short corridor leading to the ship’s equally cramped and decidedly untidy passenger compartment.
“Three days to get there,” he said. “Maybe you could spend some of that time straightening up around here, mate.”
Quinn leaned back in his seat, releasing another sigh as he reached up to rub his bloodshot eyes with the heels of his hands. “I had to fire the maid. Feel free to strap on an apron if you’re bored. I’m getting me some shut-eye.” As he closed his eyes, he added, “And it’s twelve days, round trip.”
“Twelve days?” Pennington repeated, aghast. “Where the hell are we going?”
Several moments passed before Quinn opened his eyes once more. “Oh yeah, I forgot. What I said before, about picking up somebody? That wasn’t a lie. We’re going to Yerad III first, to pick up a guy and bring him to Ganz.”
“You’re kidding.” In the month that had passed since first meeting Quinn, Pennington had taken the time to learn as much as he could find about the Orion merchant prince whose ship currently was docked at Vanguard. From what he had learned, the journalist had decided that Ganz was a most unsavory individual, someone to be avoided if indeed one possessed an ounce of common sense or self-preservation instinct.
When Quinn spoke this time his voice had already taken on the groggy drawl of someone fighting to stay awake. “It’ll be fine. Trust me.” There was something else, but by that point the man’s voice had deteriorated to little more than an incoherent mumble, though Pennington thought he picked up something about T’Prynn and what sounded like an observation of how her legs looked in the newest version of Starfleet uniform for female officers.
This wanker is going to get me killed.
15
Looking across sickbay in the dimmed light, Anthony Leone could only shake his head.
I like to stay busy, sure, but…comeon.
He took little comfort in the lame attempt at sardonic observation, and in fact he felt a bit guilty that he might even think such a thing given the current circumstances. Forcing away the errant thought, Leone walked to the nearest diagnostic bed, one of four in the Endeavour’s intensive-care unit of sickbay—each of which was occupied—to better study the readings on the patient status panel overlooking Ensign Karen LaMartina. The young woman had suffered upper-body burns and a concussion when a circuit panel blew out in the second round of strikes against the starship.
When she arrived in sickbay across the shoulder of a burly engineer, Leone noticed that her rescuer had taken a bit of a beating himself from the same explosion. Rather than hang around to have his own wounds examined, the engineer instead remained only long enough to offer a hasty report of what happened before dashing off, full of adrenaline and the desire to resume his duties so long as he was able. Leone had yet to see him return, which made the physician wonder whether the man truly was more able to perform than he appeared or had instead collapsed somewhere in the bowels of the ship.
And that’s just one of five thousand things going on aboard this ship right now, none of which I have a damned clue about.The thought only fueled his already mounting frustration as he gritted his teeth and forced himself to focus on the one thing of which he was most aware at the moment: the number of casualties crowding his sickbay.
Before him, LaMartina wrestled in obvious discomfort from her injuries. Stepping closer, he placed a hand on her arm. “Pain?” he asked, and the young ensign nodded. Leone reached for a hypospray that had already been positioned nearby by Dr. Bruce Griffin, his ever-prepared assistant CMO. Adjusting the dosage on the hypospray, Leone pressed the device to LaMartina’s neck and injected the analgesic, the medication entering her bloodstream on the heels of the hypospray’s compressed hiss. He saw the sedative’s effects begin to take hold immediately, with his patient’s eyes fluttering and her facial features beginning to relax.
Weakly, she reached out to touch his arm. “I’ve been…sleepy….”
“It’s the medication, Ensign,” Leone said, his short-sleeved tunic allowing him to feel the clammy touch of her fingers on his bare skin. “You’ll be fine.”
“Wait,” LaMartina said, tightening her grip around his slender forearm. “I thought I heard…did you say…the captain was killed?”
Leone’s own throat tightened a bit as it did every time he bore bad news to a member of the crew, patient or not. “I’m sorry, Karen,” he spoke softly. “Yes, Captain Zhao is dead.”
He watched as the woman pressed her eyes closed and sighed deeply. Leone never was one to couch his words in circumstances such as these; he knew it really did not soften the news of someone’s death by coming up with some euphemism. Captain Zhao had not passed away. He had not merely left behind this mortal plane in order to enter another realm of existence. He had died. Attempting to dull or deflect such a grievous tragedy in large, flowing vocabulary, Leone had learned, never succeeded in making death any less painful or worrisome to those still living.
“But, we’re going to be okay,” he said after a moment, reminding himself with a small amount of irritation that his priorities now remained not with the dead but with the living. “ You’regoing to be okay.” He patted her hand before placing it at her side. “Rest now, and I’ll be back in a bit.”
Looking up, he saw Dr. Griffin regarding him from the foot of LaMartina’s bed, the younger man’s expression one of concern. Sensing this was not a conversation he wanted held in front of his patients, Leone directed his assistant to his office. He fell more than sat down in the seat behind his cluttered, disorganized desk, waiting for the door to hiss shut before looking to his colleague and friend.
“Something wrong, Doctor?”
“Well, I was just wondering,” Griffin said as he ran his hand through his sandy brown hair, “if you’ve heard anything about what happened back at Erilon.”
Leone released an exhausted sigh. “Maybe you were on break or something, but I’ve had my hands full the last couple of hours. Wanna enlighten me?”
Obviously put off by Leone’s remark, Griffin clasped his hands before him. “I’m only bringing it up because, to hear some people tell it, the captain might not be dead.”
Frowning, Leone allowed a scowl to darken his features. “Really? And what makes them say that?”
“The word is that Commander Khatami just left him behind when she pulled up and ran,” Griffin said, his eyes growing wider as he offered the unpleasant notion. “He could still be fighting it out against…well, whatever happened down there.”
Leone knit his brow and made a fist with his right hand while cupping it in his left. He admitted to himself that he would have given a limb right then and there for a full report of just what actually occurred back at the encampment, but he could trust only what little information he did have, along with his gut instinct when it came to Khatami as he had known her for these past couple of years. “And you…buy into that account of events, Doctor?”
“Dr. Leone, I’m only saying…”
“And I’m only saying that you have an opportunity to put a lid on whatever rumor mill you seem to be tapped into,” Leone said, leaning forward in his chair and adding an edge to his voice that made Griffin straighten his posture. “From what I’ve been told by people who were actually down on the planet, whatever it was that tore through the base and our landing party did so quickly and aggressively. There’s no reason to believe that anyone survived.” At least, that was according to what little information Lieutenant Xiong was able to articulate before Leone escorted the Starfleet archaeologist to his temporary quarters and sedated him.