Stardate 76675.4; August 29, 2399
EPISODE
114
Edited by Peter Bossley
Written by Chris Adamek
ADDITIONAL CHARACTERS
Overseer
Artanis
Lieutenant Ashton
Angela
Christopher
Councilor
Nicholas O’Connor
Admiral William
T. Riker
High Overseer
Xi’Yor
Overseer
Zeratul
Chapter 17
THUMP-THUMP…
Alan
Christopher perched uncomfortably on
the edge of the chair nearest Sarah Hartman’s desk. In the past, Alan always thought of it as a comfortable, relaxing
place to sit and sleep while Sarah babbled incessantly about one superfluous
medical procedure or another—but on this dark day, the chair felt as if it were
made of stone, for Alan took no comfort in its appealing curves.
Dead to the world, he sat and stared into oblivion,
just listening to his steady heartbeat thunder in the cavernous void between
his ears.
THUMP-THUMP…
Sarah sat at her desk, her lifeless eyes simply
gazing into the computer screen. Alan
didn’t know how long she had been there, but she looked terrible. Her hair was frazzled. There were bags under her eyes, and deep
lines creased her weary face. For the
first time in his memory, Alan thought that Sarah looked stressed…
He understood the feeling. So twisted and knotted were the nerves in
his stomach, Alan wasn’t entirely certain normalcy could be restored. He didn’t eat. He didn’t sleep. He
rarely thought—and when he did, those thoughts would invariably turn to Erin
Keller…
THUMP-THUMP…
“I did everything that I could,” Sarah quietly
stated, her somber eyes dropping away from the computer terminal. She couldn’t bring herself to look Alan in
the eye. “The damage was just too
extensive…”
Alan didn’t know what to say. In fact, he barely had the mental capacity
to form words in his weary mind. He
just sat, his mind’s eye fixed upon the fading memories of Erin Keller. He remembered her angelic smile… her girly
little laugh… that quirky sense of humor… and her love of life in general. As far as Erin was concerned, every moment
of every day was a gift…
But today was no gift. Every single torturous moment of this dark, insipid day was a
living hell—and the day was still young.
Alan was not entirely certain he would live to see its conclusion.
Sensing his pain, a glint of sadness crept into
Sarah’s pallid face. “I’m sorry.”
Again, Alan found himself at a loss for words. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to feel or what to
do. He was dazed and confused, lost and
alone on a turbulent sea of emotions he knew not how to navigate—but unless he
did something, he knew that he would soon find
himself on the bottom of that sea, forever mingling with those fools not wise
enough to tread the frightful waters.
THUMP-THUMP…
“Can I see her?”
Those were the first words that came to mind. With the memory of Erin’s delicate features already fading, Alan
wanted his bleary eyes to fall upon perfection one last time…
Sarah was more than happy to oblige. “Of course,” she said. There was a lingering sadness present in her
voice that Alan simply could not comprehend.
These things weren’t supposed to happen…
THUMP-THUMP…
Sarah pushed herself away from the desk and slowly
wandered back into the dimly lit sickbay.
It was late at night… or was it early in the morning? Alan didn’t really know. Ever since Erin’s… death, time had passed at
an utterly surreal pace. It lurched
forward. It crawled. Painful eternities passed between each
second, mercilessly dragging Alan Christopher into the oblivious depths of
despair.
He didn’t want to go.
But he had no choice.
THUMP-THUMP…
The morgue was a fairly unassuming wall tucked both
out of sight and mind in a secluded corner of the sickbay. Alan had stood in its ominous shadow a
handful of times—so infrequently that he could recall each and every
instance. Brian Keller. Rachael Meyer. Stephanie Kerrigan.
Erin Keller.
THUMP-THUMP…
Her hand trembling, Sarah tapped a short sequence
of commands into the keypad beside Erin’s stasis chamber. Once the lock was unsealed, she stepped away
from the chamber and fell into place at Alan’s side. No words were spoken. She
simply touched a caring hand to Alan’s shoulder, and then left him to the
unhappy reunion.
The physical contact flipped an emotional switch in
the back of Alan’s mind. As the stasis
tube slowly pulled away from the wall, Alan suddenly felt a raw lump climb into
his throat. Tears welled in his eyes,
and the giant knot in his stomach tightened until it finally managed to tug at
his heart…
Erin was pale and lifeless. Where once there had been a magical little
smile, there now existed a solemn frown.
Her ethereal brown eyes were now devoid of their former charms, forever
hidden beneath Erin’s delicate eyelids…
And then, of course, there was the giant,
bloodstained blade that protruded from Erin’s chest. Alan instantly recognized the sword as a jen’talak, a lethal weapon once wielded by the
Elorg to combat their most feared and hated adversaries. But how did it find its way into Erin’s
chest?
“I put it there,” said Xi’Yor, malevolence dripping
from his every word. The Overseer
suddenly stood opposite Alan Christopher, happily gazing upon his handiwork.
A raging fury immediately tore through Alan’s
emotional barriers. He clenched his
fists, gritted his teeth, lunged toward Xi’Yor and…
…Woke up in bed.
It was just a dream. A very bad
dream.
The
remainder of the night passed without incident, and Alan Christopher awoke the
next morning feeling both rested and somewhat unsettled. Erin was still under Sarah Hartman’s care in
sickbay and Xi’Yor was indeed aboard the ship… but the pair had yet to cross
paths, and if Alan had his way, they never would. Last night’s unsettling nightmare would not come to pass.
After
fiddling around in the bathroom for a few minutes, Alan emerged into the living
room with far a simpler matter on his mind—breakfast. Though the nightmare dulled his usual morning apatite, Alan
nevertheless felt hunger pangs in his stomach.
He slowly wandered over to the replicator and ordered a cinnamon Dutch
apple bagel for himself, a bowl of cereal for Angela, and two glasses of orange
juice.
And
just as breakfast materialized in the replicator’s basin, little Angela
excitedly scurried into the kitchen.
“Daddy!” she happily exclaimed as she climbed into her chair at the
breakfast table.
“Hey!” Alan smiled. If ever he needed refuge from a foul mood, he needed to look no
further than his daughter. The little
girl was an eternal ray of sunshine.
“How are you this morning? Did
you sleep good?”
She
provided a generous nod. “I dreamed
about blue giraffes, Daddy! They could
fly, so we went to Zarbadan!”
“Zarbadan?”
Alan carefully placed Angela’s breakfast on the table, and then went back to
the replicator to grab his own. “Where
is Zarbadan?”
“It’s
a million light years away!” Angela replied.
Her bright blue eyes darted downward—and in one quick maneuver, she
hopped down from her chair, plucked a wayward sheet of paper from the floor,
and returned to the table with a map of the Milky Way in hand.
It
was a crude rendition of the galaxy, but the fact it was indeed shaped like a
spiral was indication enough of Angela’s intelligence. Highlighted in some far-flung corner of the
Delta Quadrant was a bright pink circle that undoubtedly represented the
mythical world of Zarbadan. “I drew a
kitty, too,” Angela promptly added, flipping the paper over to reveal her
rendition of a little gray cat.
Alan
grinned. “Wow,” he exclaimed. “I wish I could draw as good as you! Why don’t we hang this by the replicator?”
But
Angela shook her head. “I want to give
it to Mommy,” she said, a hint of sadness creeping into her voice. It had been a few days since Erin’s
accident, and Angela was moderately concerned about her mother.
While
he made great efforts to assure the little girl that her Mommy was fine, Alan
had thus far kept Angela away from sickbay.
But with Erin on the mend, Alan felt that today was the perfect day for
a happy reunion. Besides, after that
unpleasant nightmare, Alan was also rather eager to meet with Erin. “All right,” he quickly decided, “we’ll go
and see Mommy today.”
Erin
Keller felt like crap. When she moved,
every single muscle in her body cried out in pain. Despite the incredible amounts of medication flowing throughout her
body, she still had a slight headache, and her stomach was more than a little
bit queasy… But she was alive, which
was more than she could say for the shuttlecraft Darwin. Its remains were no doubt buried under a
fresh blanket of snow somewhere on the frigid plains of Rebena Te Ra…
And
that voyage to Rebena Te Ra had certainly made things interesting. While she couldn’t remember much of anything
that happened after the Darwin crashed, Erin learned that during the few
hours they actually spent on the icy planet, more than two weeks passed for the
rest of the galaxy. She would still
have to examine the data, but as far as Erin could tell, all of it would be
severely out of date…
Of
course, Erin knew that she wasn’t going to examine much of anything until she
was a bit closer to a complete recovery—and much to her chagrin, Doctor Hartman
seemed to have dozens of tests to run.
Erin stopped keeping track after the fourth neurological examination,
but she was reasonably certain the Doctor had performed a dozen or so
additional tests. It prompted Erin to
wonder just how badly she had been injured…
But
before she had a chance to wonder too long about her averted fate, Erin heard a
faint hiss as the doors slid apart. She
wearily glanced away from the patch of ceiling that had held her attention for
the past few hours, and was relieved to see Alan and Angela wander into the
sickbay—and she smiled, already feeling a little bit better.
“Hey,
Pookie!” Erin chirped once Alan and Angela got a little closer. Her voice sounded about as bad as she felt;
it was weak and raspy, and though she uttered only two small words, it took a
great deal of energy to get them out.
But
Alan didn’t seem to notice. Flashing
his most charming smile, he carefully shoved aside a lock of stray hair that
had wandered onto Erin’s face and said, “Hey, Honey… Look who I brought to see you.”
Just
then, Angela’s little blonde head popped up beside the biobed. She must have been standing on something,
but Erin couldn’t imagine what it might have been—nor did she really care. She was just glad to see her little
girl. “Hey, Angela!”
“Mommy!”
she happily exclaimed. “Daddy said you
got hurt in an accident!”
Erin
nodded. “The shuttle crashed,” she
explained, deciding it best to leave the details vague. “But Doctor Hartman says I’m going to be
okay.”
“When
are you coming home?”
That
was quite a good question. Amidst all
of the testing, never did Sarah mention an estimated time of departure. “I don’t know,” Erin admitted. She assumed it would be a few more
days. “Soon, I hope.”
“We’ll
see about that,” Sarah suddenly interjected.
She wandered up to the biobed with a tricorder in hand, apparently ready
to start the next round of tests.
Hoping
for some more concrete answers, Alan’s gaze drifted over to the Doctor. “How is she doing, Sarah?”
“I
think she’s going to make a complete recovery,” said the Doctor without any
hesitation, “but all of that trauma did some damage to Erin’s kidneys. Both of them are failing. I’ve tried to repair the damage on two
separate occasions, but I’m starting to think it’s a lost cause…”
A
pang of concern registered in Erin’s mind.
She didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, but… kidney failure was
certainly something that warranted a bit of concern. “I assume you’re going to replace them?”
Sarah
provided an enthusiastic nod. “I’m
preparing a set of biosynthetic implants even as we speak. You’ll be back on your feet in five or six
days.”
Erin
could live with the time away from work.
There were a dozen things she could do with five or six days to herself…
read a book, play with Angela, study Talyere’s data… she just hoped she didn’t
wind up spending all of that time in sickbay.
Obviously
relieved that Erin’s prognosis was a good one, Alan expelled a sigh of relief—but
as he backed way from the biobed, there was still a considerable weight upon
his shoulder. “As much as I’d like to
stay and chat, I have a visitor to tend to down in the brig…”
And
Erin understood completely. “Xi’Yor?”
“He
defected a few days ago,” Alan quietly confirmed. “We met with him in a remote star cluster about a six hours
ago. He’s currently spending some
quality time in the brig.”
“You’re
skeptical?” asked Erin. She certainly
was.
Alan
almost chuckled. “Skeptical and then
some…”
Five
minutes later, Alan Christopher strode into the brig. It was only the beginning of the longest day of his life…