28
“First order of business,” Cecil Solanko said. “Get Commander Data to the camp.”
The crew was standing outside the station, which was still without power. Solanko had estimated that they had another seven or eight hours before the autoshutdown would start, and tensions were high. Josefina Rikkilä felt as if she were racing against the clock. Earlier, no tech was working; now the combadges had reconnected. It should have been a relief, but it wasn’t—it just meant another unknown variable.
“Transporters are still down,” Malisson said. “And I wouldn’t recommend using them.”
“Agreed,” Solanko said.
Rikkilä raised her hand. “Permission to speak freely, sir?”
“Go ahead.”
“I went through the full round of field-medic training at the Academy. I can put together a simple gurney to transport the lieutenant out of the station.” She gestured over at the table. “I can dismantle some of this furniture.”
“Perfect,” Solanko said. “Talma, you help her. Malisson, keep working on that replicator. Get as many rations as you can out of it.”
Malisson turned back to the replicator, below which sand still littered the floor. She was running the replicator off a battery she’d retrieved from dismantling some of the laboratory scanners. It gave the replicator power, but that didn’t mean it was functioning normally.
“Muñoz, you and I will focus on moving equipment over to the camp.” He nodded once. “Let’s go.”
Rikkilä joined Talma over by the table. “We can use this as the frame,” she said. “Although we’re going to need to break it in half.” She frowned. “It’s too big. And the phasers—”
“No phasers,” Talma said glumly. That had been one of Riker’s orders before he set out for the beach with Doctor Crusher.
“Much harder without our equipment,” Rikkilä muttered. Her field-medic training had covered some of these kinds of contingencies—what to do if you didn’t have access to a replicator or a padd—but it hadn’t covered a full-on power failure. Still, she had learned how to create a gurney using standard equipment.
Like phasers.
“The table’s not one piece,” Talma said, flipping it on its side. “We can separate the top from the legs easily enough.”
“Good point,” Rikkilä said. The table had clearly been replicated in pieces and then assembled afterward. They quickly removed the legs and set them aside. “If we can brace the tabletop,” Talma said, “I bet we can snap it in half.”
Rikkilä’s eyes were itching—smoke. It was coming from the common room.
“Sorry!” shouted Malisson from over by the replicator. “I’m trying to get some protein packs from this stupid thing—”
The smoke belched out, thick and black, and hung around the rafters of the common room.
“Is that the battery?” Rikkilä asked.
“No, it’s the replicator itself!” Malisson sounded exasperated. The smoke grew thicker, forming into dark clouds. “There’s no fire,” she added.
“That’s something, at least,” Rikkilä said.
The smoke hung heavy, like an encroaching storm. Rikkilä hoisted up the table and leaned it against a clear spot on the wall and nodded at Talma.
“Let’s see if my Bolian martial-arts training comes in handy,” he said with a grin, and then he hoisted up his left leg, hooking it at an angle. Rikkilä held her breath as he slammed his foot into the table.
There was a loud, sharp crack. A line arced through the material of the table.
“It’s working,” Josefina said.
Talma brought his foot down on the table a second time. Splinters of material scattered up into the air. The table cracked in the center.
“Third time’s the charm,” Talma said, and kicked again.
The table snapped in half, the bottom piece skittering out across the floor. But the top piece didn’t clatter down like Rikkilä expected. It had jammed into the wall.
“Oh no,” she breathed. She ran up to inspect the wall. “The biomass,” she said. “It’s getting soft!”
“That’s not possible,” Talma said. “We have eight more hours, and Commander Riker hasn’t given the execution code.”
“I know. But look!” Rikkilä grabbed the piece of the table and tugged. It came away easily, bringing with it a few flecks of biomass. She pressed her fingers against the indentation. It still felt solid, but there was a faint sponginess that sent a chill down her spine.
She tapped her combadge. “Rikkilä to Solanko.”
“Go ahead.”
“We have a problem here.”
Josefina Rikkilä knotted the last bedsheet around the makeshift gurney, securing the final handle. She was in the sleeping quarters, working quickly. It was hard to stop herself from looking up at the walls, trying to see if they had gotten softer in the time it had taken her and Talma to assemble the gurney.
“Malisson can’t find out what’s happening with the station.” Solanko strode into the sleeping quarters. “But the biomass is definitely starting to decay.”
“It shouldn’t be starting so soon,” Talma said.
Solanko’s face was dark. “I know. Which is why we need to work fast. I hope you have some good news for me.” He gestured at the gurney.
“We do,” Rikkilä said. “Just finished.”
“Perfect.” Solanko walked over to where the gurney was set up on a bed. Rikkilä had wrapped the table in sheets stripped from the beds, knotting them the way she’d learned in training to create the handles. Now all they had to do was transfer Lieutenant Data onto it.
“As soon as the lieutenant is secured at camp,” Solanko said, “I want the two of you gathering as many supplies as you can from the station. With the biomass softening, we don’t know how long we’ve got.”
“Understood,” Talma said, and Rikkilä nodded in agreement.
“Now, Ensign,” Solanko said, “how do we do this without an antigrav device?”
“Push the beds together,” Rikkilä said. “Minimize the space.”
Talma was already on it, shoving the bed with the gurney up against Data’s own bed.
“One of you at his head, the other at his feet,” Rikkilä said. “I’ll help lift from his center.” She had learned how to transfer patients in training—antigrav devices and transporters weren’t always available in the field—but she hadn’t expected to have to do it on her first away mission.
Talma and Solanko arranged themselves. Rikkilä slipped her hands under Data’s hips. He was unmoving, his face blank. She only hoped they would be able to bring him back once they were on the Enterprise again.
“Count of three,” she murmured. “One. Two. Three.”
With a burst of breath, all three of them lifted Data off the bed. Josefina’s grip was light, but she could see the strain in Solanko’s and Talma’s arms as they moved Data sideways, setting him on the gurney.
She allowed herself a sigh of relief. “We did it.”
Solanko was already twining the handle around his arm. “Let’s get him to camp.”
As they lifted up the gurney, Rikkilä’s chest was tight: she had visions of the sheets unwrapping, of Data crashing onto the floor. But her work held, and Solanko and Talma headed toward the exit, the gurney holding fast between them. Josefina grabbed ahold of the third handle, which she had affixed to the front of the gurney, and guided them into the hallway, toward the front exit.
Malisson was back at the replicator, muttering under her breath as more sand piled up.
“I got some water,” she called out as they moved Data past her. “But it’s salt water. At least the battery is holding up.”
“Keep trying,” Solanko said. “I can send Muñoz foraging for food. Water’s going to be more precious.”
The smoke was still hanging in black clouds near the ceiling, and Rikkilä thought she caught a dark, earthy scent. A whiff of mulch.
Biomass.
They spilled out into the sunlight. The sun was at a high angle in the sky, bright and golden. Doctor Crusher and Commander Riker said to come find them if they weren’t back by sunset. Which seemed like too long.
The team had started building the camp about five hundred meters away from the station, to give themselves plenty of space in the event that it collapsed unexpectedly. It didn’t seem far when they’d been hiking out here with the initial supplies. But carrying the lieutenant made the walk feel like a hundred kilometers. The sun was sweltering; sweat dripped down Rikkilä’s spine. She could see the flash of red from the emergency tarp, a stunning contrast against the endless sweep of pale grass.
“Almost there,” Solanko grunted.
Rikkilä’s arms strained. The tent loomed up ahead, the material flapping in the breeze.
“Place him out of the sun,” Solanko said as they approached, and Rikkilä directed them into the tent proper. With a sigh, all three set the gurney down in the grass. Rikkilä stumbled away, her arms shaking.
Data’s eyes flew open.
“Lieutenant?” Solanko’s eyes were wide beneath his sweat-soaked forehead.
Data lifted his gaze. “Lieutenant Solanko. Lieutenant Talma.” He turned his head. “Ensign Rikkilä. Where am I?”
Rikkilä pulled out her tricorder and knelt down beside him. The tricorder appeared to be reporting that everything was normal with the android.
“We brought you outside to the camp,” Talma said.
“The camp?” Data sat up abruptly.
“A lot has happened since you’ve been out,” Solanko said. “But the most pressing thing is that the station is going to collapse.”
Rikkilä kept scrolling through her tricorder readings. Why had he woken up? Taking him out of the station seemed to be the differentiating factor. Isolating him from the rest of the tech in the station—
A loud, distant thump rang out across the field. Rikkilä scrambled to her feet, her gaze turning toward the station.
A dark plume rose up against the violet sky.
“The station,” Rikkilä gasped.
Commander Solanko’s combadge chirped, and Malisson’s voice chimed out.
“Commander—it’s starting.”