Wounds, Book 1 (2 page)

“All right, all right.” Bashir held up both hands, palms out. “Enough. I get the picture. I don’t suppose it matters that I didn’t know about any of this; that it happened in the context of a greater paranoia about the shape-shifters; and that I’m not responsible for Selden
or
that paranoia. But I hear you, Elizabeth, I—”

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped. “‘Elizabeth.’ Like we’re friends. We’re not friends. You don’t even know me, Bashir.”

“My God.” He looked as if she’d slapped him in the face. “So now I’m your
enemy
? Elizabeth, that’s irrational, that’s—”

“What,
crazy
?” Oh, that just burned her. Gold, Bashir, people, her whole
life
…everyone treating her like someone who needed
care
, so much
understanding
.
Poor Elizabeth; she’s so fragile
. Like she was some crazy woman ready to crack an airlock without a helmet. “I came by my degree honestly. I came by my
brain
honestly.”

“God, I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. First Trill, now this; I can’t fathom this run of bad…” Sighing, Bashir pinched the bridge of his nose between his right thumb and index finger as if he were very weary. Like she was just one more thing in a series of spectacularly
bad
things heaped on at once. “Look, I was six bloody years old. Everything that happened when I was a child was utterly out of my control, and, enhanced or not, I still have to work hard. And I fail, I make mistakes, I bollix things up more than you can imagine, and a good deal more often than just in medicine. We both must. We
have
to because we’re only human. I’m just a person, Elizabeth. Whether I’m theoretically better, what’s the difference? What counts is what we do with what we’ve got.”

“Yeah, right. Except we’re going for the same prize. I’d like to see a level playing field myself. Gee, what’s it like to succeed all the time? Must be kind of nice.”

“Oh, completely. But, you know, people are so very uncooperative; they’re so
fallible
. They insist on dying before you can do a damned thing, or their feelings for you
change
and then—” He broke off and stared at his fingers knotted in his lap. When he looked up, his eyes were bright. “Would you like me to withdraw? Oh, wait, no, I can’t now, of course, can I? What was I thinking? Because then you’ll blame me for making it all too easy. I’m really in one of those no-win scenarios, aren’t I? I do nothing, you hate me. I do something, same result. Or you blame me, and that comes out to the same thing. I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that there’s absolutely no guarantee that things on the
Lexington
would have worked out differently even if you’d been there. Maybe you’d have been killed.”

“Unlikely. Sickbay’s a pretty secure area.” A lie. That first shot blasted a chunk out of the
Lexington
’s sickbay and took out virtually her entire staff, and she was wondering just what the hell was wrong with Starfleet engineering specs, that they couldn’t reinforce sickbay better than
that
.

“But not impossible.” He paused. “Since we’re being so very honest, then I’d point out that you’re making me out as some sort of monster: your personal scapegoat for all the failures you’ve had, real or imagined.”

She wasn’t expecting that. “What? I haven’t failed. I’ve
never
failed,” she said, knowing she was lying again. (What, after all, was her paper about? Not one of her more shining moments, that was for sure. And why
had
she written about Dobrah? Was it because Dobrah was unfinished business? Because thinking about him was like a claw ripping her heart, making it bleed?) “This isn’t about me. Let’s just stay on point, okay?”

“No, let’s not. What, did you think I’m your personal punching bag? Not on your life. You give me far too much psychological importance.”

“So you’re my counselor now?”

“Stop that,” Bashir said. “You may be narcissistic and more than a little grandiose—”

“And you’re not? Fancy that, the great Julian Bashir, Frontier Doctor—”

“But you’re not a stupid woman,” he said as if she hadn’t spoken. “So don’t act like one. You want to hang something on me, go right ahead. But this isn’t about my competency, or even my enhancements. This is about you. This is about
your
competency.”

“My competency’s not the issue here.”

“The hell it isn’t. Now maybe without my enhancements, I’d have been a big zero. Just a nit. But it takes more than intelligence to make a person. No amount of enhancement can change fate, Elizabeth. You can’t control everything. The universe will do what the universe will do.”

She knew it was cruel and wrong, but she said it anyway. “Gee, I wouldn’t know about the universe, not being perfect and all.”

His face seemed to crumple. He looked away. She stared at him, every muscle quivering, her brain screaming that she was being unfair, that she
was
narcissistic, and Bashir was right.

No, that’s wrong. You’re a doctor, you can’t have doubts. In an emergency, you act first, have second thoughts later. You have to believe in the rightness of your constructions, or else everything falls apart.

Bashir let go of a long sigh. “You’re wrong, Elizabeth. Perfection, real or imaginary, has nothing to do with fate, and I’m not perfect. Never have been, and never will be. I’m not a freak, not a monster. I make mistakes all the time. I’m human, and I have feelings to hurt.”

She never had a chance to reply. Later on, she wondered what she’d have said and thought. It would probably have been something just as cruel because she didn’t want to cut him a break. Couldn’t afford to because being kind meant taking a good, hard look at herself and she sure as heck wasn’t going to do that. But, right then, she never got the chance.

Because in the next instant, the computer screamed, and everything went to hell.

Chapter
2

I
t was like being whacked in the face with a club. Something broke over the runabout. Or the
Missouri
simply plowed through something, shattering space the way an icebreaker smashes through a thick shelf of solid ice. Her neck whipped back and forth, like a heavy flower on a slender stem. Her console rushed for her face, and she shouted, twisting to one side, throwing her arms out. But she wasn’t fast enough, and her left temple cracked against plasticine hard enough that her vision blurred with pain.

Dazed, she heard Bashir hit: a solid
smack
as his face connected with the forward viewing port. Crying out, he fell back into his seat, and a fount of bright red blood gushed from his nose. More spurted from a rip in his scalp.

“Oh, my God.” She half-stood, and then the
Missouri
spun in a drunken, counterclockwise whirl. There was a sputter of circuitry followed by the ozone stink of fried relays. The runabout porpoised and bucked and then their gravitational unit must have stuttered because the impact caught Lense like a punch to the midsection. Her feet left the deckplates and she smashed against a science console aft. The duranium hull groaned and the deckplates shuddered so much the vibrations rattled into her teeth.

The waves kept coming. They were so fast, the runabout’s inertial dampeners couldn’t keep up. Lense gasped for breath as centrifugal force palmed her back, pinning her to the deck like a bug to cardboard. Her muscles quivered as she pushed up. She made it to all fours but another hit sent her pitching forward. The point of her chin banged off the deckplates the way a billiard ball ricochets against a bumper. Gagging, she coughed a spray of bright red blood.

“What is it?” Choking, she backhanded blood from her mouth. “What the
hell
is it?”

“Some kind of distortion waves!” Bashir was at the helm, battling for control. “All around! Like rips in space! Can’t pinpoint the origin! Are you all right?” He spared her a quick glance over his shoulder, and her gut iced. An oily slick of blood coated his face like a mask, staining his teeth orange. The ooze was turning his uniform from blue to purple.

Then his eyes widened: black rimmed with white outlined in blood. “Oh, dear God. Elizabeth,
fire
, there’s a fire; the
transporter
—!”

She smelled it then: the astringent odor of molten plasticine. Balls of black smoke boiled from the ceiling-mounted transporter assembly, and her throat seized against the smoke’s acrid sting. Then there was a brilliant yellow flash that left her dazzled as a shower of sparks arced to the deck, and tongues of red-orange flame licked along a bulkhead.

Get up get up get up!
Rolling, Lense snagged the edge of a seat, hauled herself to her feet, then staggered to an emergency locker. Dragging out an extinguisher, she clicked it to life. White fire suppressant spewed in a white cloud, and she aimed up, but then the ship yawed to port and flipped so violently she lost her balance, her boots skidding like she’d slipped on sheer ice. She lost the extinguisher; the back of her head cracked against the deck, and then she saw the extinguisher spinning high as a baton before arcing down, straight for her face.

“No!” Tucking her head to her knees, she rolled. But she was too slow. The extinguisher glanced off her spine with a solid, brutal
thwack,
and she screamed.

“Elizabeth!” Bashir, frantic. “
Elizabeth
!”

“I’m all right!” Through a haze of pain, she saw Bashir’s back; the drizzle of his blood; the way his shoulders hunched as he fought with the ship.

Got to get to him…he’s losing too much blood…got to put out the fire…

Somehow she made it to her knees and then she was crawling on all fours, grappling for a handhold on the science console just aft of Bashir’s seat. Only everything was blurry and she was breathing hard, and sour bile burned the back of her throat.

Head hurts…can’t breathe…where’s the control for…can’t black out, not now…

She was shaking and it took all her focus and concentration to get her fingers to obey. But they did, and in the next moment, there was the faint electric blue shimmer aft. She huffed out in relief as black smoke and flames flattened against the force field. Then she did the only thing she could think of: shut off life support from the field aft and evacuated all the air.

No air; fire will suffocate
. Her head was fuzzy and she shook it clear, hard to do when the ship was still jittering so badly it was a wonder they hadn’t already broken apart at the seams.
Bashir’s bleeding; have to get to him; we’ve got to call for help…

“Bashir,” she began—and then her voice died in her throat.

Because all of space gathered, knitted into a tight ball, a single point, and the stars winked out.

Chapter
3

T
he rainbow blur of stars and black space peeled back, and they shot into a vast stretch of absolutely nothing the way a toboggan hurtles into a long, dark tunnel. There was a pause, a sensation of jumping from one place to another. And then, faster than thought, the
Missouri
rocketed through, and then there was space and there were stars. The turbulence was gone, and things should have been better.

But they weren’t. They were speeding up, not slowing down; she could tell by the heavy drag of gravity’s fingers pulling at her skin. Then she looked forward and saw why: a murky, soot-stained ball of a planet, dead ahead, filling the viewing port and looming closer by the second.

“Bashir! Bashir, we’re in a gravity well; you’ve got to pull up,
pull up
!”

“I can’t!” Bashir armed blood from his eyes. “The plasma injectors shut down. All I’ve got are maneuvering thrusters, and our shields…”

“I see them,” she said, her voice grim. Shields were at thirty percent, plus the runabout had taken major structural damage along the starboard hull. If Bashir couldn’t correct their approach angle or get into a stable orbit somehow, the runabout would simply split open and spit them out in a rush of sudden depressurization. Or they might just burn up. Or, more likely, both. “Can you ditch us?”

“I can try. What about the planet?”

She brought up sensors, thanking whatever deity was watching over them that they still worked. “M-class, high levels of atmospheric contaminants, pollution, silicates and copper arsenicals, lots of radioactive decay. Partial pressure of carbon dioxide’s higher than Earth.”

“Can we breathe it?”

“Not very well, but we don’t have a lot of alternatives. Sensors reading three continents: two north, and an island continent, about the size of Australia, to the south with a big inland sea or lake. Low salinity, no aquatic life there; mountains north, stretches of desert, and some kind of big industrial complex south.”

“All right, I’ll try for the water. Jettison a distress buoy. Then break out the suits just in case, a medical kit, whatever supplies you can.”

“I’m on it.” She was already moving but with aching slowness, the gravity sucking at her legs like thick mud. A wash of harsh yellow light fanned in, bright enough to throw shadows. Startled, she glanced over her shoulder and saw fire sheeting over the front viewing port, the friction of their passage through the atmosphere igniting a ball of flame like a meteor. The
Missouri
was burning up.

No time! We’ll never make it down in the ship! Got to evacuate now, now!
The runabout was jittering again, and there was a guttural roar so loud that she gritted her teeth as the sound pummeled her brain.
Just focus, get the suits; get Bashir into his suit; then we blow the hatch, use the suits’ thrusters to get us down and pray like hell our force fields don’t cut out before we hit or…

The equipment locker was aft of the force field she had thrown up against the smoke, but the transporter fire was out. She stabbed the controls, bleeding in air to equalize pressure before bringing the field down. Then she dragged two suits and helmets from the equipment locker. Even as she tugged one on, her mind was already skipping ahead.