Immune - Chapter 6

Immune

by Trinneergirl

Disclaimers in Chapter 1

Chapter Six

*Acting Captain's Log. Commander Charles Tucker III. November 21st, 2154.

Enterprise has been going like a dream these first couple of days. So, I've been able to do some essential maintenance on the life supports. The system, the configuration was set up for Enterprise. Taking the system down to minimum has helped, but adding eighty-two stasis units has left the circuits dangerously close to overload. Transferring power has helped, but putting more power into the circuits has exacerbated the overload problem. I've been able to place an additional set of buffer systems in and I'm a lot happier about the safety of those circuits.

I'm working for six hours and sleeping for two, in three shifts, each twenty-four hours. So far the work has kept me going without stressing me unduly. I wish it could stay like this, but I know things will change.

End Log*

The insistent beeping woke the Commander. He looked around, for a moment uncertain of where he was, then he jumped to his feet. He ran across the Bridge to the diagnostic readouts to see a huge EM build-up in the starboard nacelle manifold. Not pausing to dress, he ran to the turbolift in his blues and keyed the door closed. He waited in a fret of impatience for the journey to end, then as the door opened, he ran. Bare feet padding along the metal deck, Trip went at full speed down the corridors, grabbing the vertical handrails to help him round the corners without breaking stride. In superb fitness, he was barely out of breath as he braked late and hit the door to Engineering. He pushed it open and stepped over the high lip. He entered to a wall of alarms and flashing lights. Swiftly making his way up the ladder to the warp engine systems, he took a second to make sure his decisions wouldn't make things worse, then he started work.

It took nearly six hours to get everything under control. Systems that with a full crew would have taken minutes to reset, instead took hours. When he was certain that everything was going well, he checked other systems and found the EM build-up had effected the environmental, hydroponics, and waste management systems. Sighing, Trip realised he would have to go without sleep this shift. He still had to check on all the stasis units. He made a last thorough check of the warp systems to reassure himself, then he left for Environmental. To save power, Trip had reduced the lights to emergency only and the gunmetal grey corridors were in eerie semi-darkness. He jogged along, the sound of his breathing and the slapping of the soles of his feet on the deck were the only noises he heard. Environmental was easier to deal with, taking less than half an hour to fix the problem. Before he could go to Hydroponics and Waste Management, it was essential he check out the crew.

The glass doors to Sickbay slid open and Trip entered. There were six stasis units here, those who had fallen in their quarters and T'Pol, who had fallen first. It had been too long before the hypospray had been used, which was why Trip had given the order to move everyone left at that time to the Mess. These unfortunates were on six of the eight stasis medical life supports here. Additional systems and drugs were being used to boost the stasis modules' own circuitry. Trip checked each of these in the full light of Sickbay, then satisfied, he left for the cargo bays. Passing the Mess, he realised he hadn't eaten anything all day, so he popped in, emerging later with a chicken fajita, which he consumed as he walked to the turbolift and rode to the right floor.

Licking the spicy sauce off his fingers he pulled open a storage locker and pulled out a torch. He keyed open the door end entered, flicking the flashlight on. The powerful beam shone around one of the two improvised hibernaculums. The stasis modules were more efficient at a cooler temperature so Trip shivered, his breath forming plumes of steam at each exhale. Sorry he was in his blue underwear, the tall, slender figure moved between the lines of stasis modules, staring at each readout and shining the torch on each face to determine if there were any problems. Once he was sure each and every person there was doing well, the Commander, shaking with cold, made his way out of the room and to the second cargo bay.

His toes were just showing signs of coming back to life, when he entered the second chamber. He followed the same routine, each unit checked for its workings, each face scanned for a change of colour that could indicate oxygen problems. The last face he looked at was Jonathan Archer. The familiar grief at how he'd seemingly lost his best friend seared through Trip, who found himself wondering for perhaps the thousandth time, what he'd done to deserve being dumped. He sighed, his breath slightly obscuring the Captain's face as it condensed on the window of the stasis unit. Maybe he just didn't look as good in a tight catsuit.

Trip stood, his body trembling with cold, his fingers and especially his toes numb. He tried not to think of this and the other cargo bay as being like a morgue, but like a morgue it was. He turned and left, closing the door behind him. Switching off the torch and depositing it in a locker, he briskly made his way to Waste Management to fix systems and then on to the Hydroponics Bay. Once back on the Bridge, he lay down and, after resetting his alarm, he slept.

Trip found himself standing in one of Enterprise’s corridors. Dim in the emergency lighting, the conduit snaked away in both directions, curving out of sight. Surprised, and with a feeling of slight dislocation from reality, he looked down to see a diagnostic pad in his hand. A quick glance told him he was checking the communications relay systems in this corridor. He was, he noted, wearing a uniform with a yellow stripe instead of his usual red. Confused, he looked at his command lozenges to see four, instead of three and his new dot. The fourth silver square appeared to be bleeding, which was odd. Why was he wearing a captain's uniform? Shrugging it off, Trip turned back to his data PADD. He completed his task and went down the corridor. As he turned the corner, he stopped, shock hitting him hard, his knees shaking. They were here, the crew, lying in the corridor.

He could see T'Pol, her brown eyes open, fixed up. The Captain lay across her legs. His eyes were closed, his face contorted in anguish. There was a gaping rip just under each of their chins. The PADD slipping from his nerveless fingers, Trip walked forward, his startled gaze finding everyone; Hoshi, Mayweather, Cutler, Hess, everyone. They were all dead! All dead. Moving between them, trapped in an unreality, Trip saw every one of them had horrific injuries, like they'd all been torn by a wild animal. He walked amidst the banks of slaughtered bodies. A charnel house made of his comrades. At the end of the corridor was Malcolm Reed. He was sitting up against the wall, a huge tear down the side of his neck, from which blood was pulsing in sluggish dribbles. Malcolm saw Trip and gave a relieved grin.

"Been waiting for you, Captain," he said hoarsely.

Startled and more mystified than ever, Trip looked down at the Command uniform and four lozenges. He crouched in front of the dying man, trying to stem the flow of blood. Malcolm weakly brushed him off.

"No time, sir," he explained. "You have to get Enterprise to where she'll be safe." He coughed blood up with the effort speaking cost him.

"We have to get you to Sickbay!" Trip insisted. The wry smile said it all.

"No good," Reed replied. He swiveled his eyes and Trip turned his head to follow the direction.

He saw Phlox, lying slumped, with two grins on his dead face. A rictus-like baring of teeth above the chin, a broad slash of torn flesh below. Trip looked back at Malcolm, noting with despairing grief that his friend was slipping into death.

"What happened?" he asked. The engineer had to lean in to hear what his friend had to say, the whisper was so quiet.

"He came. Can't fight him! Can't outrun him! He's behind you."

Trip swung his head and stood in one fluid motion. There was a figure. Humanoid, he was tall, well over two metres, a hollow-cheeked, dolorous-looking man. He was wearing a black tophat with a band of black taffeta that bowed behind the hat and fell down the back. A black mourning-suit encased the spindle-shanked, bony figure. His gaunt face and the long narrow hands, folded calmly across his stomach, were grey-white. Around his cold, light-grey eyes were dark shadowings and the lipless mouth had a poorly-applied lipstick of matte black.

With his last breath, as his head fell forward into death, Malcolm hissed, "Run!"

Trip turned to see the light dull from Reed's eyes. Trip turned back to the figure, watching in horror as it lifted off the ground, black, shiny dress shoes hanging in the air and began to move toward him. The figure grinned. Inside the mouth was a vivid blood red and it was packed with rows and rows of pointed, razor-sharp teeth.

Gripped by terror, Trip turned and ran. The flying figure followed, inexorably sailing forward after its prey. Along corridor after corridor, most of which Trip didn't recognise, he hurtled at full pelt until his breath came in laboured sobs and his muscles ached. The figure was closer every time he dared to look back. Cutting down a corner Trip ran into an open turbolift and keyed the door closed. It shut with centimetres to spare and began to move. Trip backed away from the door, panting, shivering with fear. He closed his blue eyes for a long moment in sheer relief. They snapped alert again as the turbolift stopped and opened. Trip's breath caught in a gasp of pure horror as the parting doors revealed the flying figure waiting patiently. It nodded politely and grinned its full set of teeth wide, before moving forward into the lift with the trapped, unarmed, helpless Trip. The strong white hands took hold of his shoulders and smashed the young engineer's body into the wall of the lift. Stunned, petrified, Trip saw the figure swoop towards him and felt his long neck start to receive the points of the sharp teeth.

"NOOOOO!" Trip sat up on the truckle bed on the Bridge, his cerulean eyes dilated and locked wide in fear.

He sat motionless, soaked in cold sweat, his whole body rigid. For a few moments his breathing stopped altogether, then with a sharp inhale and ragged exhale, began again as he realised it was just a nightmare. JUST! He closed his staring eyes, snapping them open a second later as the corpse-grey undertaker his imagination had conjoured up seemed trapped under his lids. He looked around the empty Bridge, forcing a fright-stiffened neck to respond, his eyes seeking each shadow, wondering how a place that was so familiar could now look so sinister, so strange! Finally, the fear receded and he made himself relax. A second later he jumped out of his skin as his alarm sounded.

"Damn!" Trip snapped angrily as he realised what it was, silencing the sound with a sharp jab of his finger.

He gave a shaky sigh and got out of the bed, donning his uniform. He felt stiff, sore and bone tired. His two-hour rest didn't seem to have refreshed him at all. He wanted to go to his own quarters and sleep for a month, but it was totally unfeasible to even take another minute.

"They ain't paying you to sit on your ass," he admonished himself. Walking over to the Captain's chair he tried to make some kind of sense of the dream. Did it mean something? Phlox had told him that his dreams would become more intense as the loneliness and pressure increased. The Doc had asked Trip to catalogue these. Trip made a thorough check of the systems then opened a recording channel.

*Commander Charles Tucker III to Doctor Phlox.

It's the start of the fourth day, Doc, and for the first time I've had a bad dream.*

He paused the recording and moved to the engineering station to double check some of the most sensitive systems before returning. He recounted in detail his nightmare.

*The Captain's uniform seems easiest to understand. I am an acting Captain and right now with my relationship with Captain Archer seemingly about to end and my promotion the catalyst, well, the bleeding fourth lozenge is explicable. The Undertaker was probably just a subconscious image of creeping death that has taken the crew. T'Pol and the Captain were the first to fall ill, so they were the first ones encountered. Malcolm was last to go so he was the last one in the corridor. Malcolm said I had to get Enterprise safe, which I do. It's all easily explained once you think it through. Just a dream. My only problem is that once death was after me, he got me and I failed to save either the ship or the crew.

Computer end recording*

Trip sat for a second longer, brooding on the bad dream, then he shook it off. It was just a dream, however nasty. He hauled himself to his feet with the intention of leaving the Bridge for breakfast and a thorough tour of the warp systems to make sure the EM surge yesterday hadn't caused any more damage. He paused briefly in front of the turbolift doors, then decided that he would go to the Mess via the longer route through the crew quarters. He reasoned that it would do him good to have the walk, it would do the ship's systems there no harm to get an in-person check, and that conserving power meant the less turbolift journeys he took the better. Deep down he acknowledged to himself that the thought of being shut in one of those things right now, with the memory of the flying undertaker still fresh in his mind, was too damn much to face. He turned away and keyed open the door, moving lithely off down the ill-lit corridors.

Breakfast, a tour of Engineering, and a check on the crew later, he took the opportunity to shower, shave, and change his clothes for a new, clean set. He had to transfer his dot from one uniform to the other since, as of yet, he hadn't got more than one. A full Commander once more and feeling heaps better, he quit his quarters and started to make his way to the nacelle housings to check for any heating of the systems that might indicate a problem. The communications panel in the corridor beeped.

"Bridge to Commander Tucker." It was Captain Archer. Trip answered it instinctively.

"Tucker here, sir."

"Trip, there's a problem on the Bridge."

"On my way. Tucker out." He closed the communication.

Four steps away he was hit by the slap of realisation. Going cold with sudden shock, like a dousing of ice-cold water, Trip turned his ice-on-fire blue eyes staring in a storm of incomprehension at the control panel. Captain Archer wasn't on the Bridge. Nobody was on the Bridge! He began to tremble, his breath shortening to panting. There was nobody moving on the ship except him. Was this another dream? Was he asleep? He pinched himself hard but it had no effect. Oh God, what the hell was happening here? He was alone. He knew he was alone. So whom had he just spoken to? And if he wasn't alone? Then the question remained. Who had he just spoken to? Trip looked up and down the corridor. He made a mental note of where he was and started to move swiftly to where he knew the nearest weapons locker was. Cold fear gripped him and wouldn't let go. He wouldn't let panic take him; he would never have become a Starfleet officer at all if he was the sort to fold under pressure. But he was sharply focussed, alert, and on edge.

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