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Immune- Chapter 11

Author - Trinneergirl
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Immune

by Trinneergirl

Disclaimers in Chapter 1


Chapter Eleven

Trip woke, aching in every bone. He felt like he'd been racked. He forced himself to turn over onto his back, maneuvering himself carefully on the narrow bed. He closed his eyes for a long moment, wishing he could sleep some more, but knowing he had to rise. There were systems to check, diagnostics to perform. He opened his eyes to stare straight into the leering face of Kurt Wilkinson. Standing from his stooping position, the crewman swung the long-handled axe he had in his hands round in a big circle. Trip's dark-blue irises widened in terror as he realised he couldn't move in time.

"No!" Whether he screamed the word or whispered it, he didn't know. Kurt used all his strength as he buried the heavy, steel-edged axe-head deep into Trip's chest, shattering the ribs and plunging inside the cage to splash heart and lungs to the four winds.


The cerulean eyes flew open and Trip gasped, clutching a fist to the centre of the chest. He sat up as though galvanised by the dream, finally forcing himself to breathe as he realised it was another horrible nightmare. Looking down, sure enough his alarm was due. It went off a few seconds later. Why his subconscious fed him such horrors to wake him a few seconds before his alarm went off was something Trip didn't know, but would like to stop. He winced as his ribs dully ached and sharply pained in tandem. His head began to thump and Trip knew that another lovely day had started. He gave himself a dose of painkiller, sighing as the magic potion pushed the pain back. He rose and began to study the ship's systems. When he had worked out his priorities for preventative action for the day, Trip sat in the Captain's chair and began his daily reports.


*Acting Captain's Log. Commander Charles Tucker III. 26th November 2154.


Having managed to subdue Crewman Wilkinson, I have had a few hours sleep. Enterprise needs work done in rerouting the EPS grid through several major subsystems to prevent the one line feeding life-support from overloading. Of course all the subsystems are in conduits which, normally wouldn't be a problem, but I am not looking forward to trying to do the work with the cracked and broken ribs Wilkinson's attack left me with. It makes doing this so much harder! I guess all I can do is my best.


End Log*


Trip sat for a long moment. His face drawn and pale, his dark-blue eyes locked on the nothingness of dust on the viewscreen. Finally he blinked and sighed.


*Commander Charles Tucker III to Doctor Phlox.


Hi, Doc. I know you only wanted me to tell you my dreams, but... I guess I need someone to talk to. I have never felt so lonely as I do today. Coping with the ship, that was hard and even, at times, desperate, but it was nothing personal, y'know? Things go wrong on a starship and you have to put them right. At the moment I have to put them right on my own. But this stuff with Crewman Wilkinson.... Doc, I just woke up near bursting with terror 'cause I dreamed he'd caved in my chest with an axe. There's still another week before I exit the Vort Cloud and eight days beyond that to Dryalia. I'm afraid, Doc. He tried to kill me using everything I am. He's an exobiologist, anything I touch or eat might be infected. He doesn't care how many people die as long as I'm one of them, he's shown that all too clearly.


He hated me for no other reason than petty envy. Became consumed with a desire to humiliate, degrade, and destroy me just 'cause I'm good-looking and good at my job. I worked so hard to get where I am. Do most people believe I simply floated into the job of Chief Engineer on my charm and being the Captain's friend? It makes me feel as if all my achievements are worth nothing. Wilkinson even thought I'd made full Commander by.... my relationship with the Captain. That's a joke, isn't it? The Captain doesn't think I'm worth the rank. He doesn't think I'm worth much of anything anymore. He was the best friend I ever had. I keep asking myself what I did to drive him away. Why wasn't I enough? I used to crack the occasional joke to lighten things up, but I got so hurt seeing his looks of contempt I barely bother now.


I'll never forget the evening T'Pol celebrated a year on Enterprise. I still can't figure why the Captain asked me there. He and T'Pol showed so damn clearly that they both thought I was beneath noticing. By the end of the evening I felt like my whole body was scalded with boiling water. I just wanted out so much! That was the evening I knew my days on Enterprise were numbered. Sooner or later my position would become untenable. I'd been hoping that the Captain would forgive me for whatever I'd done to make him turn away from me. I finally realised that it was me he'd come to dislike. It's the best thing for everyone that I go. Maybe I'll learn a lot in the Vulcan Starship Programme, and at least I'll know why they feel contempt for me.


Computer End Message*


Trip noticed that he'd been crying. Surprised, he wiped the tears away and stood. Making his way across the Bridge to the turbolift, his heart felt like lead in his chest, his injured body was racked with aches and pains that the analgesic only kept at bay. To dose himself to the point of real pain-killing would reduce his capacity for work, and Trip knew it was only his extraordinary capacity for work that had within it the small chance that the crew would survive this. His step had lost the grace that so characterised him, he paced slowly, tiredness and the aching ribs preventing free movement. His face was pale and drawn, deep shadows under the eyes. He keyed the turbolift door and stepped inside mentally enumerating all the things he had to do that day.


It was the start of a week that was the nearest thing to a living hell that the young Commander had ever experienced. Sleep, instead of a refuge, had become a never-ending series of nightmares. Upon awaking, aching in every limb and not one whit refreshed, Trip checked the bridge systems, made his log reports and left. All the things he'd had to put off until another day as emergencies took priority, started to become emergencies themselves. Trip had come to dread the sound of another alarm going off as he went from place to place, fixing, jerry-rigging, replacing, purging, scanning, running diagnostics. Always it seemed that the emergency was the other side of Enterprise to where he was. Sod's law.


He managed to keep up his appearance, for his own fading morale more than anything. He no longer bothered to change the spot that showed he was a full Commander from uniform to uniform, leaving it beside his bed in his quarters. He strip-washed carefully, unable to shower with the ribs taped, then donned fresh clothes. By the time he fell into, or more often than not, onto his truckle bed, either on the Bridge or in Engineering, he was sweat-soaked and grimy with crawling through conduits, hunting behind panels, and scouring the depths of systems without number, fighting to keep ahead of the rip-tide of problems that threatened to drag him under.


His emotional state had deteriorated bit by bit into a kind of detached despair. All he had left was focussed on Enterprise and her systems. A kind of dislocated heaviness had descended upon him as he went about the ship. Concentration was such a monumental thing for him, and so damned essential for every task, that it became his be all and end all. The expressive, open, emotional Trip had been replaced with a blank-faced man, a continual crease of worry between his eyes, who scarcely noticed his surroundings as he moved about. He was caught up in prioritising, planning, anticipating until, if anyone at all had been there to tell him the universe existed outside Enterprise's hull, he would have had some difficulty believing them.


Twice a day, without fail he checked his colleagues, moving from stasis module to stasis module, shining a torch into the hibernating faces. Every time his flashlight beam picked out Kurt Wilkinson, the fear bubbled up within him, a numbness in his mind as he tried again, and failed again, to truly comprehend how he could have ended up on the whip end of so much loathing. He still had no idea if he and Enterprise were safe now, a concern that manifested itself as dreams where Kurt did him terrible harm, put him through grueling humiliations and worse, sexual degradation. Often Jonathan Archer was there in the background, watching without emotion, ignoring Trip's pleas for help. No wonder he awoke every time even more worn out than when he'd gone to bed leaden with exhaustion.


When the young Chief Engineer did manage to snatch a moment to eat, the worst aspects of his situation took over. Whatever he chose, his fear that it was laced with Kurt's poisons meant that Trip was revolted by the food. He sat, telling himself he must keep his strength up, but it did him no good. He cut every portion smaller and smaller. Each tiny forkful was raised as Trip did everything he could to stop the retching. His throat working, his eyes full of tears, he forced the morsel of food past his lips and teeth. Fighting to keep the heaving from taking over, he chewed and chewed, pressing a clenched fist against his burning brow as he made himself swallow. Just a couple of those and he was done. Any more and he'd throw up what he'd already eaten and it had cost him too much to get it down. He was trembling with the effort.


He knew how serious this was. When he stared briefly in the mirror in his quarters as he shaved, he could see just how thin he was getting. The workload and the worry on top of his anorexia had made the bones of his face protrude, his cerulean eyes grow too big for his face, his long neck become scraggy. His uniforms, made to fit an already slender man, were hanging off him. He was becoming skeletal and it frightened him, but his body's revulsion against food stopped him from eating enough to sustain him properly. The galley was groaning with food, the hydroponics were filled to bursting with fresh produce and, in the midst of plenty, Trip Tucker was starving to death. Figuring Wilkinson wouldn't have had time to contaminate the medical supplies, Trip had started to inject himself with doses of essential proteins, vitamins, and minerals, medical products to revive and treat the starving. They kept Trip alive, but only just.


Trip walked back to the Bridge late in the evening after another unsuccessful attempt at eating. His schedule of six hours on - two hours sleep, for each twenty-four hour day had been shot to hell and back. He hadn't been near a bed for nearly forty-eight hours and had twice had to resort to taking stimulants to keep alert as he battled a series of serious breakdowns. He'd purged the dust from the intake manifolds again and checked on his crewmates before trying to take in some food. The tuna steak would have been easier for him to eat if it had been crawling with Klingon Gagh worms. He gave up after four tiny bites. He knew that he was becoming dangerously weak and took a salt, mineral, and protein sachet with him to the Bridge. Picking up a glass he'd sterilised he poured the sachet in and added water he'd tested twice for every known poison.


Trip sat in the Captain's chair, sipping the drink, which would've tasted awful, if he had been capable of comprehending it had a taste. Lately his capacity to understand the simple things, hot, cold, light, dark, was fading to a uniform nothingness. His ability to taste had gone away as well. Trip recognised the signs of clinical depression and had even given himself doses of an antidepressant, but he was slipping into the black waters of mental illness without check. Only his strength of will kept him on, traipsing round the ship, trying to keep everything going. Without that immense will, Trip would've curled up in a corner and given in. But he was driven on to get his colleagues safe.


He stared blankly at the viewscreen. For so long now, the only view out of any window and here on the Bridge from the viewscreen itself, was the formless grey dust. As it impacted the deflector dish the Doppler shifting around the warp field made the dust glow slightly orange. It reminded Trip of heavily overcast skies lit from underneath by orange sodium lamps. It was difficult not to feel claustrophobic as the gloomy Vort Cloud seemed to press against the windows, hemming him in, trapping him. Trip shivered at the thought. The blue eyes blinked as a flicker affected the viewscreen. Oh no, not the viewscreen too! What was wrong with that now? Trip waited to see if it would deteriorate further, if he could get any clues as to what was wrong. The screen flickered again, then went black.


But not entirely black. Far from it. Ahead of Enterprise was the galactic core, a brilliant glowing mass of orange, red, yellow, blue, and white stars, staggeringly beautiful, The rest of the screen only seemed dark in comparison, but in reality it was strewn with the lights of a million suns. This was the light never seen from Earth and its immediate environs as it was blocked by clouds of dust, one of them the Vort Cloud. Trip was transfixed by the view for a long moment before he could comprehend.

"We're through!" he whispered to the empty Bridge. "We did it, we're through!" Trip poured the drink down his throat and placed the glass on the floor. He restarted the communications link and opened a channel. He began to hail Dryalia. Within a few seconds there was a response.


Upon the viewscreen came the image of Chancellor Gi'eon. A lovely woman in her middle years, slender and willowy as a reed, she was nevertheless a tough negotiator. She had dark brown straight hair, with red highlights, pale skin, and eyes as green as chartreuse liqure. A delicate patterning of pale pink tiger stripes ran down each temple, defined her cheekbones and jaw, then ran down her neck. She was wearing a long ecru dress with a dark, blood-red robe over it. She smiled as her image first appeared, then as she saw Trip, alone, desperately thin and drawn, the smile faded to a look of deep concern.

"Commander Tucker," she began. "We had not expected to see Enterprise return so soon. Where is Captain Archer?" Apart from Crewman Wilkinson, hers was the first real voice Trip had heard since Malcolm Reed had succumbed to the illness.


"Chancellor Gi'eon," he replied. "The crew of Enterprise, including the Captain, have been stricken with Dryalian Meningitis. Our doctor was able to make a palliative from my blood, but all the crew are in stasis. We don't know how to cure this, Ma'am. We've come back to beg for your help." The Chancellor reacted with shock.

"We will do all we can," she promised. "Commander, are you the only member of your crew still awake?"

"Yes, Ma'am," Trip confirmed.

"Why?" she asked. "And for how long?"

"I had a Xyrillian pregnancy, a couple of years back," explained the Commander. It left me immune. I've been coping alone for just over two weeks.

"Would you wait a moment, please Commander?" Gi'eon said.


The screen returned to the spectacular view of the galaxy. Trip waited, distantly amused that he'd traveled all this way to be put on hold. When the screen changed again, Trip was seeing not Gi'eon, but an older man of the same species, grizzled pepper and salt hair and darker skin and stripes. His eyes were a paler green, shrewd, and deeply kind.

"Hello," he said in a voice that was deep and endlessly reassuring. "I'm Doctor Sau'mara," he introduced himself, "head physician of the hospital ship Trayia."

"Commander Charles Tucker III," Trip replied politely. "Of the starship Enterprise. From Earth."

"Chancellor Gi'eon has told me you have a medical emergency onboard."

"Yes," Trip confirmed. "Eighty-two cases of Dryalian Meningitis."

"Just tell me what has happened," Sau知ara commanded gently.

"Take your time, Commander. Just run through everything."

The doctor listened intently as the young Commander on his viewscreen went through the events of the last two weeks. Sau'mara was appalled by Trip's appearance, but was more worried by his mental state. How Tucker had done all he had, was beyond the Dryalian Doctor's imagination. He was close to collapse, that was obvious. No race had ever tried to get through the cloud of dust before. Scientists on both sides theorised that, as no signals had ever come through, there were no beings there. Enterprise had changed that, opening up millions of inhabited worlds to both sides. Her arrival had been so historic that every Dryalian knew all about it. Sau'mara remembered Trip well. On a world where everyone's eyes were green or brown, he was the first blue-eyed person most of them had ever seen. The tall, slender, handsome Commander, charming his way through diplomatic encounters had been difficult to forget.


The skeletal wreck seated on the Captain's chair on Enterprise was now a bag of bones, his skin grey and sallow, deep rings around eyes that were dulled from their former luminous cerulean blue. Trip's movements were stiff and slow and he was finding it difficult to concentrate. Sometimes stammering, the deep, gentle Southern US accent recounted a workload and stress rating that Sau'mara couldn't comprehend anyone coping with. To know Dryalian Meningitis had broken out and that Trip had had to bring the ship back alone was a horror enough. But the fact that the illness was deliberate and caused Trip to have to endure a desperate fight for survival with what sounded like a severely dangerous and insane man, made the Doctor wince in pity.

"That's about everything," Trip finally said. "This is a warp five vessel, but I can only maintain her at warp four point five right now. And I don't know how much longer..." He trailed off, thinking about all the things he had to do.


"Commander, there's a binary system, Red Giant, White Dwarf, about six light years from your location. Do you see it?" Sau'mara asked. Trip looked down at his navigation monitor. He nodded.

"I see it," he replied.

"Can you change your heading to go there?" the Doctor asked. "There's a lifeless planet orbiting the binary."

"I can," Trip conceded. "Why would I want to?" Sau'mara smiled gently.

"Trayia is a hospital ship, Commander," he revealed. "We can do nearly warp seven. We have already set a course for the binary and can meet you there in two days. You should be there in a day and a half. We are fully capable of dealing with an emergency such as this; it's really what we're for." Trip, who had expected to have to go on for at least another seven or eight days to get to Dryalia, felt his eyes well with tears. Just two more days! It didn't seem possible.


"I'll change course immediately," the Chief Engineer responded. "Thank you!" His words were heartfelt.

"Then I'll see you there," Sau'mara said. "Trayia out." The screen returned to stars.

Trip stood and moved to the helm. He disabled the auto pilot, changed the headings, implemented a new auto programme with the break from warp and the orbital path plotted, then re-engaged the auto pilot. With a heart lighter than it had been for days, Trip left the Bridge to start work on the ship's systems.


Captain Dan'een turned to Sau'mara having watched the starfield warp in front of him. He and the head doctor stared at each other.

"He doesn't have two days, does he?" Dan'een asked calmly. Sau知ara shook his head slowly his green eyes sad. The Captain's jaw tightened in grief. He turned to a younger man beside him.

"Get us there, as quick as you can, Mel'tar," he ordered. Mel'tar, the Trayia's Chief Engineer, pale behind his tiger stripes from wondering how the hell his Enterprise counterpart had coped running an entire starship on his own, nodded.

"I can give you seven point two," he promised. "We'll get there about the same time."

"Whatever it takes short of putting this ship in danger. We are his, their, only chance of survival," the Captain commanded.

"Yes sir," Mel'tar acknowledged and left to push his engine to its limits.


Dan'een and Sau知ara looked at each other again. They had learned to work well together. Whilst Captain Dan'een ran the ship and took decisions that kept her safe, Doctor Sau知ara had total control of the Medical staff. She was a huge vessel, capable of housing four hundred patients, with full surgical, laboratory, and pathology as well as every kind of specialist field. There were many warring factions in that area of space. Dryalian's kept out of the fray and provided medical help impartially to all, a bit like Switzerland on twentieth-century Earth. Just in case someone wanted to refute the Dryalian treaties, she was armed to the teeth and could outgun most battleships. Fortunately, as yet they hadn't had to do much more than display their weaponry for the other side to back down.

"Well, I'd better get my staff ready," Sau知ara stated. "I have 83 patients to take care of soon."

"Your staff will have 83 people to take care of," Dan'een guessed, smiling. He knew Sau知ara too well. "You will have one."

"If he makes it," Ceded Sau'mara gravely. The two exchanged a serious nod, then the elderly Doctor left the Trayia's Bridge.


Continue to Chapter 12

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