Chapter 31

Chapter 31

Brett carried Robyn from the shuttlebay, Cooper and Merle out ahead of him to clear the corridors. They could have used the transporter on the shuttlecraft, but he didn’t want to try disassembling and reassembling Robyn’s molecules in this state. At this point he wouldn’t take any chances with her.

As he ran, he looked down at her to make sure she was still breathing. Her skin still had the chalky tone of a corpse and her lips a blue tinge, but for the moment she was still alive. The wound across her midsection had turned an olive green that didn’t bode well for her future survival. He had to hope Dr. Chen could find a way to save Robyn.

A medical team was already assembled in sickbay, Dr. Chen in a surgical gown and mask. “What happened to her?” she asked after Brett set Robyn on the operating table.

“They hit her with some kind of club tipped with poison,” Brett said. “Is there anything you can do for her?”

“I’ll have to take some readings and see if I can come up with an antidote. In the meantime we’ll do everything we can to keep the captain alive,” the doctor said.

“You’d better do more than that. You’d better save her,” Brett growled. To his surprise, he grabbed Dr. Chen by the front of her surgical gown. “You got that?”

“Commander, let go of me.”

Brett complied, looking down at his feet in shame with tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Doctor. This is my fault. If I’d gotten there in time—”

“I’m sure you did what you could. Now let me do what I can for her, all right? You can wait in my office if you want.”

Only then did Brett look around him at the wide-eyed medical staff and then at Cooper and Merle. The young ensigns had gone as pale as Robyn. They were just kids after all; too young to expect a superior officer to melt down like he had.

For the moment he was still a Starfleet officer. With Robyn on the examination table at death’s door, he was in command. About time he acted like it. Straightening and forcing himself to stop crying, he said, “That won’t be necessary, Doctor. I’ll be up on the bridge.”

“Let me have someone check you out first in case you picked anything up down there,” Dr. Chen said. She motioned for a nurse as young as Cooper and Merle to lead Brett to an examination table along the wall.

The nurse waved a scanner over Brett and then looked at the results on a tricorder. “I don’t see anything seriously wrong,” she said. “Your electrolytes and glucose are low, though.”

Now that she mentioned it, Brett did feel his stomach rumble and dryness in his throat. “I guess I could use a meal.” He sniffed at the air. “And a shower.”

He hopped off the table and found Dr. Chen studying a tricorder of her own with a much more worried expression than her nurse. “Let me know the moment anything changes,” he said.

“I will, Commander. I won’t let anything happen to Captain Lichen. You can count on it.”

Brett nodded as he left sickbay. Cooper and Merle waited for him in the corridor outside, having slunk out in the wake of his tantrum. “Everything will be fine, Ensigns. I’m going to my quarters to clean up. In the meantime, I trust you can handle things up here?”

“Yes, sir,” they said as one.

He started off towards his quarters, paused, and then turned around. “And good work on finding us. Using the shuttlecraft was a great idea.”

“Thank you, sir,” they said, again in unison.

Chuckling to himself, Brett went down to his quarters. The moment of levity collapsed as he thought about he and Robyn at that age. Back when he had been in love with her and when he thought she was in love with him. Though he supposed her love of Starfleet had always come in first.

That love had brought her to the Serparnian system in the first place and drawn her to Serpalal Prime, possibly to her death. At least she would die in the line of duty, like her husband. For her that was the highest honor possible.

This line of thought did nothing to cheer Brett up as he showered and put on a fresh uniform. The worst part came from knowing he’d caused all this by firing on the Sunigwil. Without his panicking that day, Slonix would never have joined up with a scumbag like Streng and not just Robyn but at least fifty other Starfleet officers would still be alive.

Under the circumstances a beer or three from the replicator would have hit the spot, but Brett asked for a mug of coffee instead. He was in command of the Orion until Robyn recovered—if Robyn recovered. Until then he couldn’t show up on the bridge drunk. That’s what Robyn would have wanted from him, to act like a Starfleet captain.

After finishing off a meatloaf sandwich that tasted almost as bland as his grandmother’s, Brett headed up to the bridge. In the turbolift he tried to think about what Streng would do now. No doubt the chief steward thought his little Skolip trick had finished off Brett and Robyn. His next move then would be—

The moment the bridge doors opened, Brett called out, “Ramirez, any sign of other ships on the sensors?”

“Nothing, sir.”

Brett didn’t expect this to remain so very much longer. With the captain and first officer of the Orion dead, Streng would send Slonix out with their patchwork battleship to finish off the rest of the crew. They would want to hit the Orion in orbit so it couldn’t maneuver, except that might bring the ship down on Serpalal Prime, causing untold devastation.

A worm like Streng wouldn’t care about the slaughter of a few thousand civilians, but he would care about the damage this would do to the Serparnian Liberation Army’s reputation. No, he would want Slonix to engage the Orion out in unoccupied space where only the evil Starfleet personnel would die. Then they could use the footage in another of their propaganda pieces.

“Merle, bring up a map of the system,” Brett said. A map of the Serparnian system appeared on the viewscreen. Brett studied the planets and other objects, trying to imagine where Slonix would wait to pounce.

With the captain and first officer dead, Slonix would assume the Orion would make a hasty retreat to get help. Somewhere on their egress route, he would attack. Where? “Cooper, what’s the quickest route out of here?”

She read off the coordinates and then projected the course over the graphic of the system. The course brought them within a million kilometers of the mining colony in the asteroid belt. That’s where Slonix would wait for them, tucked away in the asteroids until the Orion came limping past on its way home.

They would have to prepare a surprise for Slonix when he did finally strike.

His communicator beeped. “Commander, it’s Dr. Chen. I think I’ve isolated the poison in the captain’s system. I should be able to create an antidote.”

“That’s good news, Doctor. Keep me posted,” he said. Inside he wanted to do a merry jig in celebration of this news, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t risk losing face in front of the crew again by acting like a fool.

It’s what Robyn would want.