Immune- Chapter 12

Immune

by Trinneergirl

Disclaimers in Chapter 1

Chapter Twelve

Trip awoke to the sound of what sounded like a dozen alarms going off at once. He sat up on the truckle bed, took a moment to gather his wits, then ran to the diagnostic board. What he saw froze him to the bone. Life support was failing. All the work that he had done had been for naught. He had worked himself to the bone to keep these systems functional and, for reasons beyond his understanding, they were faulting across the board. Every relay in the system seemed to be registering imminent catastrophic failure! Trip made a brief check of all the other systems, then ran from the Bridge. He took the turbolift down, waiting in a fret of impatience for the door to open so he could get to the environmental controls. He ran as fast as he could until he reached the right door and opened it. He made to enter, then stopped. He stood, surveying the damage with devastated eyes. Numb, Trip entered the space, picking his way through the debris. His expertise soon enabled him to pick out the evidence from the other detritus. Trip looked at the ruined systems, shaking his head in wonder. It had been a bomb.

What kind of device it had been didn't worry Trip much right now, though he suspected from the shards it had been a chemically-timed explosion. Enterprise had been due to leave the Vort Cloud today. Thanks to Trip's efforts, she had been early. It seemed this was Kurt Wilkinson's last attempt to make sure Trip died in shame, taking everyone with him. The Crewman had rigged a bomb in the life-support systems. What should have happened was that the pulse caused by the explosion caused surges in the relays that would blow all the life support pods, killing the crew, even Kurt himself. The surge of electrical energy at having all the stasis modules switched off simultaneously, would have blown nearly every other relay in a cascade that would have eventually reached the warp core. Enterprise, Trip, and the remains of the crew would all have been vapourised in the matter, anti-matter explosion.

Trip had spent a lot of time transferring the huge current needed for the life supports into smaller units of transference with higher resistance ratings. He had been worried that the continual stress on the single life support grid had been too much. As such, the explosion hadn't blown the life support grid, but the damage was extensive. All life support would fail in ten to fifteen hours. Trip simply didn't have the time to fix this alone. Too many other systems needed constant attention. If he tried to fix this, the engines would fail. Trip crouched as the enormity of his situation hit him. Everyone was going to die. Trip panicked briefly, then got a grip on himself. He had been through too damned much to let Wilkinson beat him now. His brilliant mind cast about, trying to find a solution.

Thirty hours. In thirty hours the Trayia would be there to help the Enterprise crew. Each of the O2 cylinders in the shuttlepods, the utility craft, the medical bay, and the EV backups held twenty hours of air. Twenty hours of normal breathing. Those in stasis were using about a third of that. There were nearly sixty hours worth in each tank! And all the cylinders were full. Trip had made sure after the life support systems had been sabotaged before. Galvanised, Trip stood and did what he could in a brief time to delay the failure of the life support grid. He left and made his way to the shuttle bays. He found a trolley and began loading the huge cylinders from storage onto the flat-bedded carrier. It took all his strength to move them; normally, at least two crew members were needed to shift them safely. Six at a time, Trip pulled the cylinders to the cargo bays and wired them into the stasis modules. Each one took five minutes or so to hook up. It was taking a lot of time.

After twenty-four of the cylinders were up and running on the emergency air, Trip went to Engineering. He purged the dust from the intake manifolds one last time, glad that job no longer concerned him now they were free of the Vort Cloud. All the critical systems needed checking. Fighting back impatience, Trip did his job diligently. He was using triage to decide the recipients of the oxygen, but only to a degree. The Captain, Jonathan Archer, had been first, Helmsman Travis Mayweather, Doctor Phlox, Communications Officer Hoshi Sato, Armoury Officer Malcolm Reed, and a number of security, medical, and engineering crews were also wired to the bottles of O2. But the First Officer, T'Pol was in Sickbay and, until Trip could get up there with the bottles, she would have to wait. If the life support grid failed now, the six in Sickbay would last longer anyway as the medical room had a back up generator.

Hours later, Trip ran back from an emergency in the deflector array, which, naturally, was the other end of the ship to Engineering. He entered the mighty room where the warp-five engine stood and carried on with his work. He had found time in between taking out and fixing two of the plasma injectors, realigning the dilithium matrix, and running a full diagnostic on the anti-matter injector, which had led to three hours in a small, dark conduit, replacing relays on-line,(when normally the whole reactor assembly would have to be off to allow anyone to do it safely), to transfer and attach another eighteen oxygen cylinders. Sweating with effort, Trip emerged, hot and dirty from the conduit. He picked up a hypospray and injected himself twice. The first was a pain-killer. Lying on his back, twisting around white-hot circuits, to get to the relays in the conduit, had hurt his cracked ribs acutely. The second drug was a booster, adrenaline, glucose, caffeine, and a series of chemicals to keep him awake.

When he could feel both injections taking effect, Trip did another check of all ship’s systems, profoundly relieved that there were, for the moment, no more emergencies. In fact, just for once, everything seemed to be going fine. Trip was more than relieved. All of the spare O2 cylinders were already taken from storage and the EV area. Trip would have to remove them from the shuttlepods and utility pods from now on and that would take time. Forgetting about rest or food, the Chief Engineer set about his task, opening the pods and carefully extracting the heavy cylinders. He finished the crew in cargo bay 1, then started on cargo bay two. Just as the last of the cylinders had been taken and moved to the temporary hibernaculum, an alarm sounded. Trip knew what that meant. life support was about to fail completely. Feverishly he wired up the final cylinders, forcing himself to concentrate on the task. Finishing the last, he stood and ran again to Environmental.

Pounding down the corridors, Trip could feel his heart thumping hard in effort. If he didn't switch off the power to the system when it failed, it could still cause Crewman Wilkinson's cascade explosion. Trip had had to keep the power on to maintain the units for as long as possible to give him a chance of attaching the O2 cylinders. He reached the door of Environmental and keyed it open. Sparks flew across the space, the air was hung with the smell of burning and ozone. Raising an arm to cover his face, Trip ran in and across. He felt for the lever that would stop all the life support functions and he grabbed it, letting go instantly with a yell of pain. It was too hot to hold! Trip thought for a second in the howling sirens, crackling, spitting electrical systems, and fireworks of spark showers. He unzipped his jumpsuit and slid it off his shoulders. He dragged off the black shirt and wrapped it around his burned hand. He reached up again and took hold of the switch. A burst of sparks caught him across the back, scalding the blue singlet and touching firebrands across the exposed skin of his neck, shoulders and the back of his arms.

Trip cried out, then forced himself to ignore the pain along with the pain in his hand. He dragged on the switch, using all his weight to pull it down. The switch, expanded into its space by the heat, was difficult to move. Trip took hold of the lever with both hands and used every gramme of strength to tug on the recalcitrant switch. He could feel the build-up of electrical power in the system. His skin was in goosebumps as his hairs stood in reaction to the static in the air. He could see arcs of blue leaping from the main power grid, smell the increased ozone, hear the ‘zzzzzzz’ as each electrical pulse arced. Finally the lever moved, shrieking in protest as it came down. As it reached the bottom, the noise died away. All the separate breakers came on, transferring power safely away. In a quiet that seemed as deafening as the noise that preceded it, Trip leaned his forehead against the wall and sobbed for breath. He could still hear a low humming and realised in sudden fear that the build up of electricity in the main power grid had to breach soon. Very, very soon. He threw himself to the floor just in time.

An electric blue-white lighting bolt surged from the grid and arced into the room, the sound was mind-blowing, the dangerous energy expending itself as a forking twist of light and a bang of incredible decibels. The concussion wave from the boom nearly knocked Trip out. As it was, it took a couple of minutes for him to come round in the aftermath of the discharge. Slowly he stood, becoming aware of the pain in his hand, across his back and in his ribs where he had thrown himself down. Dazedly, he looked round at the damage. At what one person's hatred had done. How could Kurt Wilkinson, even in his madness have tried to destroy Enterprise? To take Earth's future, to stamp on it and shatter it in this way? It didn't seem possible that this beautiful ship had nearly been taken from history forever, just because of the delusional loathing of one man. Lifetimes of effort, the work of thousands of people, all nearly destroyed by the evil in one, twisted mind.

Trip made sure the destroyed area was secure. Once he was sure he left for Engineering. As soon as the main power to Environmental went out all life support was lost. All the crew in the cargo bays were safe. All six in Sickbay were on two hour's worth of emergency power. Trip needed to make sure the systems were safe ship-wide then he could go to Sickbay and wire up the severely infected crewmembers to the oxygen in the medical stores. Then he would don an EVA suit, wait until the air ran out in the ship, and rely on the air from a cylinder of his own until the Trayia could arrive. Reassured that the two fires in the ship caused by the power shift had been contained and suppressed automatically, although a lot of oxygen had been wasted, Trip, feeling his injuries more and more, left for the medical bay. His right hand felt tight with the burns he'd sustained from the lever, his back crawled with painful knots of branded flesh.

Once in Sickbay the young Commander found a dermal burn cream in a cabinet. Opening his hand, he winced at the bright red, shiny texture of the skin. He held the cream in his left hand, the cap in his teeth, and unscrewed the top. He squeezed it onto his hand and, after replacing the lid, he carefully smoothed the stuff into the burns. It caused instant relief, taking the pain away, cooling the burning skin and beginning to make new skin immediately. Trip found a latex glove and slid it on the injured hand. The less air that got to it the better, which, Trip considered, made a nice change from trying to get more air to everything else. His shoulders would just have to wait. He couldn't reach the peppered burns himself and there was no one else to do it. Wearily, he made his way to the medical storage cabinet and stood, looking at the emergency cylinders. There were six of them. And there were six patients. There was no cylinder left for him. To keep him alive. The only other air cylinders had been destroyed in the bio-lab explosion. This was it. Trip knew there wasn't enough air on the ship to last until the Trayia got to the rendezvous.

The young Commander felt all the tension in him fade away. All the worries about fixing the bio-labs, the life supports, undoing the jury-rigging he had done, sorting through the ship-wide, level one diagnostic that Captain Archer was sure to order, went away. The dealing with Kurt Wilkinson's hatred and his criminal acts, the failure of his friendship with Jon Archer, and the consequences of his Command rank, all faded into nothingness. Everything came down to this fine point in time. He needed air to breathe and there wasn't any. Not for him. He was going to die. The old saying, 'It concentrates a man's mind wonderfully to know he's going to be hanged in the morning', flashed through Trip's mind and he knew the adage was right. Enterprise would make it, Jon and the crew would make it. He wouldn't. He didn't want to die, but now that it was inevitable a kind of unreal calm descended upon him. The price for his life was one he had always been prepared to pay. It would be nice if, maybe, it wasn't required to be paid in full so soon. The blue eyes filled with tears, but he blinked them back. There was still a lot to do while life lived inside him. Plain hard work was what was needed now. Not tears.

Trip sighed and reached for the cylinders. He wired up each bio-bed from the oxygen to the stasis unit. T'Pol was last. Trip stared at the beautiful face through the glass of the module. He stood and got a PADD from the side, typed on it briefly and, opening the unit, he placed the PADD under her arm. Closing the pod, Trip left Sickbay for the Bridge he had left nearly seventeen hours before. He ran the usual routine systems checks then opened a channel to the Trayia. The head surgeon and CMO, Sau'mara, was giving Captain Dan'een a progress report when the hail came through. Giving each other concerned looks, the Captain ordered the signal put through to the Bridge screen. Commander Tucker appeared, dirty, disheveled, and without his black top under his uniform. They spoke to him and he managed through his exhaustion and pain to tell them what had happened.

"I've run out of oxygen cylinders and I don't have one for me," he explained. "I thought of taking Crewman Wilkinson's, but that would make me no better than him and I'd rather die than live with that notion knocking around in my brain. There's about six hours of good air here for me. I'll just about be able to make sure Enterprise gets to the rendezvous point. I've prepared the air lock so you can enter and there's all the information you need to know about the stasis pods and Enterprise on its way to you now." Trip pressed a switch and transferred the technical schematics. "Just, please, save the crew," he begged the pale watchers. "Don't make this a total waste of my life!"

Dan'een was about to tell Trip that the Trayia would reach the rendezvous about the same time as Enterprise when he was stopped by Sau'mara's hand on his wrist.

"Just get your people to the rendezvous," Sau'mara soothed. "We'll do the rest." Trip nodded gratefully.

"Thank you," he replied. "When you see Captain Archer, will you tell him that it was the greatest honour of my life serving under him?"

"I will," promised Captain Dan'een.

"I'm very sorry I won't get to meet you both," Trip revealed. "Enterprise out." Captain Dan'een turned to Doctor Sau'mara, when the viewscreen returned to a view of warping stars.

"Why wouldn't you let me tell him we'd be there soon?" he asked. Sau'mara sighed.

"You saw his state, Captain. I cannot raise within him any hope that may prove false. He will strive to get Enterprise to the coordinates with all his strength. He cannot see beyond that. Right now he is too exhausted to be able to grasp the idea beyond getting the ship to safety. It has been his priority from day one. Now, with all his spare concentration, strength, and determination burned away with the events, the trauma he's been through, it is all he can understand. To tell him to think beyond that point right now, might, indeed would, derail him completely." Dan'een nodded his understanding. He turned to the Chief Engineer of the hospital ship.

"Push everything to the red line, Mel'tar," he ordered.

"Yes, sir," Mel'tar complied and started to do all he could to get the Trayia to the destination safely and more quickly.

Commander Tucker had six hours of good air left and a six-and-a-half-hour journey to complete.

Continue to Chapter 13

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