Captain's Blood

20

ORBITAL REACHES, REMUS, STARDATE 57487.5

Kirk had found food packs in a cooler, and McCoy had found a medical kit with a Romulan compound that eased the discomfort in his legs. But the most restorative part of their flight to orbit was dialing back the shuttle’s gravity, eventually reaching Mars normal, one-third of Earth’s.

In the copilot’s seat, McCoy was thinking of a few more modifications to make life simpler in the future. “I might have to give up on my internal leg implants,” he mused. “Maybe face the inevitable and get a powered chair when we get back to Earth.”

Kirk moved his attention back and forth from the shuttle’s controls to the viewport, looking for anything out of the ordinary. So far so good, he thought. “That sounds encouraging.”

“Encouraging?” McCoy snorted. “Me in a hoverchair?”

“You’re talking about when we get back to Earth, Bones. That implies you expect we’ll find Joseph, Scotty, Jean-Luc and his crew and get out of this.”

“Well, of course we will.” McCoy patted Kirk’s shoulder. “Someone’s got your boy, Jim. I know as well as you do that you’d never let anyone get away with that. And I don’t care if I have to cut off my legs and crawl to get him back. So we are going to get him back. And everyone else. Even if we are a mite shorthanded.”

Kirk didn’t require, but appreciated, the additional confirmation that the greatest treasures his career and adventures had brought him were Joseph and his friends—his family. Spock’s loss remained raw.

McCoy seemed to sense what he was thinking. “I wish Spock was here, too.”

Kirk rallied with some effort. For Joseph’s sake, he had to focus on the present, not the past. “C’mon, Bones. You’re supposed to say, Spock’s the one who got us into this mess.”

“Exactly. Which is why I wish he was here, so I could tell him so, to his face.”

A chime sounded from the board and Kirk shifted in his chair to check the distance readings.

“Is that her?” McCoy asked. He leaned forward to peer through the viewport.

The Calypso floated a half-kilometer ahead of them. She had no running lights, and her navigation beacon was off, but her distinctive lines were just perceptible in the backscatter of light from the night side of Remus.

“Right where we left her,” Kirk said.

“You sound surprised.”

“Bones, we were told she was adrift. Generators out. No power.”

“You’re right,” McCoy exclaimed. “Scotty said the boarding party shot her up.”

“But there she is,” Kirk said. “In trim. And the passive sensors show she’s warm.”

The captain and the doctor looked at each other.

Kirk was already planning his next move. He knew he couldn’t risk using active sensors while cloaked. The Remans would be looking for their stolen shuttle, and an inexplicable sensor burst from empty space would be little different than decloaking and firing all the plasma jets at once.

“You think someone sent up an engineering crew?” McCoy asked.

“I would have thought they’d tow her to a salvage dock,” Kirk answered. “Reman resources seem to be spread pretty thin. I can’t imagine they’d think it was a good idea to repair a ship they didn’t own.”

“You think there’s someone aboard her now?”

“I think we’re going to find out.” Kirk placed his hands on the inertial maneuvering controls, and the Calypso suddenly filled the viewport as he swiftly brought the shuttle to within ten meters of the ship, then began to slowly travel around her, as if conducting an inspection tour.

After a few minutes, the shuttle neared the primary cargo airlock on the deck above the engine room. Kirk was still using passive sensors, but this close he was able to use light amplifiers to bring up detailed images of the Calypso’s hull on a control board display. “Something’s not right.”

“Care to be more specific?” McCoy asked.

“Scotty said the intruders’ ship grappled onto us, but there’re no signs of it on the hullplates around the airlock.”

“Maybe they came in through the emergency lock.”

“Already checked that. We passed it a minute ago. And if they’d come in any other entry point, we’d have depressurized.”

“Which means,” McCoy said, caught up in Kirk’s reasoning, “they must have transported in. The same way Joseph was transported out.”

Kirk stared at the image of the cargo airlock, wrestling with the mystery. “A small ship, like this shuttle, can pass through navigational shields—provided it moves slowly enough. Fast-moving objects are hazardous, so they get deflected. Slow-moving objects are likely friendly, so they can pass through.”

McCoy voiced Kirk’s supposition. “You think a shuttle—a cloaked shuttle like this one—slipped through the nav shields, then beamed the intruders in and Joseph out?”

“If they could do that, why make us think we’d been grappled? Why send intruders aboard?” The scenario was possible, but it didn’t feel right to Kirk. Joseph’s life-sign readings were unique. A standard scan could pick him up anywhere on the Calypso in under a second and he could have been beamed away without a fight.

“There’s got to be a simpler explanation.”

“Two explanations, actually,” McCoy said. “How did the intruders get aboard? And how did Joseph leave?”

Kirk sat back in his chair as an electrifying idea came to him. “Bones! Remember what Spock always said…”

“Jim, Spock was always saying everything.”

“No, about mysteries! Sherlock Holmes mysteries! Vulcans love him. ‘When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ “

“That sounds like Spock.”

“So if it’s impossible for Joseph to have left the Calypso, then the only improbable possibility that remains is that—”

They said the last words together: “—he’s still on board!”

The transfer from the cloaked shuttle to the Calypso was as straightforward as Kirk had hoped. The shuttle’s autopilot was easy to set for stationkeeping, and he locked its position a mere five meters from the Calypso’s emergency airlock. Then he and McCoy floated over in their Romulan environmental suits.

Five minutes after blowing the hatch on the shuttle, the two of them were standing in the deck four corridor of the Calypso, still in their Romulan suits, though with their helmets and gloves off.

The ship sounded as she always had, even to the background hum of the warp engine on standby. The deck was level and the gravity felt normal.

McCoy sniffed the air. “It even smells better,” he said.

Kirk sniffed. McCoy was right. The damp, musty, livestock smell he had found so objectionable was gone. But another scent had taken its place. “What is that? Cedar?”

McCoy shrugged, the motion of his thin shoulders barely noticeable within the heavy folds of his yellow suit. “Some kind of disinfectant.”

“Well, that proves my son didn’t have anything to do with it.” Kirk unstrapped the green-metal cane from McCoy’s safety harness, handed it to him, then began peeling off the remainder of his own environmental suit.

They placed the yellow suits back in the emergency airlock, then headed for the bridge, walking quietly, avoiding the turbolift. Though Kirk was convinced Joseph was somewhere on board, he was worried that his son was not alone. It was the type of question he could have answered quickly and easily with a standard tricorder, but doing so could alert Reman surveillance satellites that someone was aboard a supposedly abandoned spacecraft.

The bridge wasn’t quite as squared away as the rest of the ship. Kirk noted evidence of the disruptor fire Scotty had described. But he also saw a few places where disruptor scorches had been scrubbed or painted over. More importantly, though, all the duty stations were operational.

“Elves,” McCoy finally said. “That’s your answer, Jim. The ship has elves.”

“Or that ghost Joseph was looking for.”

“Right,” McCoy said. “I’d forgotten that. He was convinced there was…” McCoy tapped his cane on the deck. “You don’t suppose we have a stowaway?”

Kirk hadn’t considered that. But someone was responsible for cleaning up the ship. “Let’s check the galley, find out what’s missing from stores.”

The galley was in better shape than the bridge. No sticky mess of empty tranya glasses and chocolate pudding cups—no reassuring evidence that through it all, his child’s ordinary life had continued on. If anything, the smell of disinfectant was even stronger here.

McCoy sniffed the air again and smiled. “Now I’ve got it. It’s the disinfectant that’s stocked in sickbay.”

Kirk checked the maintenance readouts on the replicators. “Well, someone’s been eating something…this replicator was used three hours ago. Milk? Apple? One chocolate chip-cookie…”

Kirk’s heart skipped a beat.

McCoy beamed. “I know what that means, Jim. There’s a five-year-old boy on this ship, and there’s someone here taking care of him.”

“Someone let him eat only one cookie.” Kirk desperately wanted to believe McCoy was right.

McCoy squeezed his arm. “He’s here, Jim. I know it. Let’s go check sickbay.”

“I could perform surgery in here,” McCoy said approvingly.

If the bridge was partially squared away and the galley clean, then sickbay was immaculate.

Kirk immediately scanned the cramped medical facility looking for any sign of his child. Nothing. If Joseph were on the ship, he was somewhere else.

McCoy, however, already seemed to have found something of interest in a supply locker. Kirk looked over the doctor’s shoulder, saw medical supplies and standard instruments, but nothing that appeared to warrant the examination McCoy was giving them.

“Something in there?” Kirk made an effort to curb his impatience to continue the search for his son.

“Nothing’s missing,” McCoy said. “But it’s all been…rearranged.”

Kirk saw a flicker in McCoy’s eyes, as if he had just had an idea, but then censored himself.

“Bones…?” Kirk was about to tell him to say whatever was on his mind.

But McCoy narrowed his eyes, gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

Someone’s watching us? Kirk covered and played along. “Where do you think we should look next?”

“Engineering.” McCoy limped toward the door, keeping his eyes resolutely focused straight ahead.

Kirk followed, almost hoping that his reading of the situation was correct. If someone were watching them, that someone could be the person guarding his son. Not a Reman, nor a believer in Joseph as the new Shinzon. Either of those would have taken Joseph off the ship.

McCoy paused in the corridor outside sickbay, then waved his cane forward. “Let’s take the turbolift.”

“I thought we were trying to keep a low profile.”

McCoy tapped his hip. “My leg won’t handle the ladders. Besides, if whoever’s on this ship hasn’t heard us yet, then there’s probably no one on board.”

Again, McCoy followed his words with a subtle shift of his eyes, and Kirk accepted that for whatever reason, he was simply to follow the doctor’s orders.

McCoy motioned him into the turbolift, then stepped in after him, staying as close to the doors as possible as they slid shut behind him. But as soon as the car began to move, McCoy spoke quickly and urgently. And what he said made sense.

“Jim, it’s Janeway’s EMH. He’s Joseph’s ghost. He’s the one who rearranged my sickbay. And from what I’ve read about him, I think it would be the simplest thing in the world for him to create a holographic illusion of a transporter effect to make it appear that Joseph had been beamed away. He’s the one taking care of Joseph!”

Kirk stared at McCoy, both angry and relieved by the doctor’s speculation. What was the Doctor doing on Calypso in the first place? And why wouldn’t he show himself now?

The turbolift car stopped.

McCoy’s reasoning reached its natural conclusion.

“Is Picard keeping secrets from you?”

The lift doors opened before Kirk could tell McCoy that he’d guessed right. But from the way McCoy turned away without waiting for his answer, Kirk was almost certain McCoy already knew the truth.

The engineering compartments were nothing like those on a starship. The warp core and engine components filled almost all available space and were accessible only by cat-walks and narrow ladders.

Kirk was like a man on fire, intent now on flushing out the captor of his son. But there was room for a dozen flesh-and-blood stowaways behind the power conduits and life-support regenerators. The steady rhythmic rush of the engines would preclude hearing any of their movements. And if the holographic doctor was able to duplicate the cloaking effect of a Starfleet isolation suit, then he could stand unseen only inches away.

There was only one place he and McCoy could converse privately and securely. “Let’s get back to the shuttle,” Kirk said loudly. “I think you’re right: Whoever was here is obviously gone.”

McCoy signaled his agreement, and they left the engineering compartments together. When they boarded the turbolift to return to deck four, they entered the lift more slowly than the last time so as not to cause suspicion, making room for an invisible passenger, just in case. They kept their conversation innocuous.

Ten more minutes, Kirk told himself as he and McCoy walked without hurrying toward the emergency airlock. Then they’d be in the shuttle, where he could work out the final, comprehensive strategy. Soon, Joseph, soon, he vowed.

And then, like so many of his plans on this tortuous voyage, that vow, too, became meaningless.

The Calypso rang with the sound of an airlock mating to its cargo door.

Intruders.

Again.