Ad Astra :: Star Trek Fanfiction Archive ^{Beam me up, Scotty.}

Chapter Text

The Interpreter makes the trip back from the Gamma Quadrant in record time; the Armistice- class is new, and the exact capabilities of their engines are still classified, and so it is only five days from Diane waking up in the wreckage to when T’Volis materializes on the transporter pad. The first officer, a tall Klingon woman, is waiting for her. 

“Doctor,” she says. “I’m glad to see you. Sickbay is this way.” And then, an afterthought of politeness, “I’m Commander J’etris. Please let me know if you or your team need anything. Thank you for coming.”

“What is her condition?” asks T’Volis. 

“Stable, until this morning,” says J’etris. “There was a change.” She makes a small frustrated gesture, minor compared to the distress she’s emanating; she’s painful to be around. “I’m not a doctor, you’d better get the specifics from ours. Something about clotting factors.”

Clotting factors.  A disturbance in those may mean hemorrhagic complications. That’s more in line with what she would expect from a Dominion bioweapon. She braces herself as she enters the Interpreter’s sickbay. 

The sickbay is much larger than that of most starships; the public information on Armistice -class ships indicates that they were originally intended to be able to provide the level of care possible in a starbase hospital, decreasing in-transit mortality, in addition to their role as the center of a line of battle; massive, heavily armed and armored warships with redundant systems. Now, they’re intended for long-haul exploration and responding to massive disasters. 

T’Volis hopes that the sickbay lives up to its advertised capabilities. A long period with minor symptomology, during which the disease can be spread–a logical characteristic of a biogenic weapon. Now, more serious symptoms are developing; it is equally logical to assume that this will be a disease intended to have a high mortality rate, so those symptoms are likely to be painful and significant. They may yet have time. It is not only the mortality rate of a disease that devastated healthcare systems; it is the attention each patient requires. Symptoms that require significant medical intervention and monitoring not only exhaust healthcare staff, but provide opportunities for further transmission. Killing victims quickly is not an effective trait of a biological weapon. Killing victims after a long period of debilitating illness, tying up healthcare resources, infecting and exhausting healthcare personnel, with terrifying symptoms exacting a psychological toll on all involved–that’s a lot more effective in destroying a targeted society. Actual mortality is only one tool of many. 

A simple rule of public health; it is not the simple mortality from a disease that has the worst effect. It is the mortality of healthcare personnel, the conditions and diseases ignored in favor of the outbreak that exact their own tolls, the strain on systems that become unable to rise to usual requirements. Three waves of mortality and morbidity: the disease itself, the disease’s impact on healthcare workers, the disease’s impact on healthcare systems.

No humanoid species handles hemorrhagic illness well, psychologically speaking. There’s a reason it shows up so much in biogenic weapons. 

Tyrell is there, hurrying over with padd in hand; he hands it over to her without being prompted. “Your timing is excellent,” he says. “We detected a crash in her production of clotting factors early this morning. They’ve not returned; she’s on a regular slow infusion of replicated ones. Found it in a historical textbook for treating genetic illness.”

“Not due to trauma to mucosal membranes?” T’Volis asks. “Usually it’s the viral activity that causes hemorrhage.”

“That’s the other thing,” says Tyrell, leading her to the back of sickbay and toward what she assumes is the isolation wing. “Her viral load has cratered as well. There’s a few stragglers, but her immune system is taking care of them. A few other things, actually–look at her liver function.”

T’Volis does. “That does not make sense. Unless something is very wrong with the replicators, such concentrations of waste products should not accumulate, even in a very ill human.”

“And lung function.”

T’Volis hesitates, looking through page after page of report. It’s a complete breakdown of metabolic function–of multiple functions. It’s as if Diane’s body has ceased to correctly process normal elements of her diet and environment, even forgotten normal internal processes. She remembers her background classes on noninfectious and genetic disease. On Earth, there were genetic mutations that could do this to people; an inability to process copper, or produce clotting factors or…

But one at a time. Not all together.

She stops walking. Flicks through the screens again. Looks up at Tyrell. “Captain Chester did not waive the genetic screening in her intake medical evaluation at the Academy, correct?” she says. “Has there been one done since?”

He frowns, and she can see the beginnings of the suspicion coming into his face, just as it has crept into her mind. “No, there’s been no need.”

“Do another one, now,” she says. “A complete one. I will speak with her.”

He nodes, goes to get the materials; she hurries to the single occupied isolation room, bracing herself for what she’ll see. Pauses before turning the corner to send her postdocs away with instructions to assist Tyrell. It is necessary, not a way to buy time. 

That feels false as she thinks it. She walks forward anyway. 

Chester has her back turned to the observation window as T’Volis approaches. She’s sitting up, mostly, her head leaned into the corner of the transparent aluminum wall, dark hair braided tightly to her skull. T’Volis remembers how she favored that hairstyle for camping, or anything that meant she wouldn’t have time to manage or tend it, and the idea of her calmly braiding it that way in anticipation of this illness is strangely disturbing. 

She looks tired. Her shoulders slump, the pale blue of the medical-issue tunic and pants hangs loosely around her shoulders. T’Volis keeps walking, deliberately stepping loudly. Diane straightens at the sound of footfalls, tugs the loose tunic into some semblance of neatness, and tries, at least, to sit upright in the chair. 

She looks bad. It is a simplistic descriptor, but comprehensive. There are dark smudges under her eyes. Her nose is red and her cheeks flushed, her skin grayed and mottled along one arm with a fresh bruise–the lack of clotting factors, one supposes. There is a hollowness to her cheeks, and it looks terribly wrong against T’Volis’s memory of her face round and full of cheer. And in the first moment when she looks up, before it’s smoothed away behind that terrible mask, the artificial one she wore during the war, she looks scared.

Her body is destroying itself, or being destroyed, and this is an enemy she cannot simply fight. Diane does not do well against things that she cannot face.

She stands. There’s a slight lurch to it, as if her balance isn’t what it should be; she does not straighten all the way, her shoulders hunched like she’s guarding herself. Muscle pain, most likely. “T’Volis,” she says, her voice just as warm as T’Volis remembers, even with the tinniness of the speakers, warm and calm as if she’s not dying. “You came. Thank you.”

T’Volis just looks up at her, seeing the way Diane searches her face. “Treating you at a distance would have been ineffective,” she says. “Delays in sample transportation would have entailed substantial risk. Additionally, the discovery of a new bioweapon is of urgent interest to Starfleet Intelligence, and more broadly, Federation security.”

Diane’s mouth quirks. It is not her small amused smile. It’s something grim and faded and struggling. T’Volis remembers what she gathered Diane feared, from the other woman’s silences over the years. Disease, like this, was near the top. “Nice to know they care.”

T’Volis just looks at her, barefoot and standing in a pained hunch, and realizes the other emotion she’s not masking is a hope that’s agonizing to see. “We have some suspicions about the mechanism of action,” she says. “The prognosis is, at this point, unclear.”

“I spent over ten hours marinating in a Dominion bioweapon,” says Diane very dryly. She sinks back down into her chair; her face sheens with sweat. “I don’t expect the prognosis to be good. But the chances of pulling something out of this mess have just increased, thanks to you.” 

That awful attempt at a smile again. T’Volis wishes she would stop doing that. Both of Diane’s eyes look the same, she realizes; there is no difference between the natural and artificial. There are so many wounds there that have been smoothed away.

She finds this, too, upsetting. Like someone has carefully erased everything being a starship captain costs. 

She does not understand why Diane chose this life over a life with her, and now it is killing her, and it is all too probable she will have to watch. 

“That’s not fair, T’Volis.” Diane’s voice had been even, though strained. “We’re in a war. Of course I take too many risks. I’m trying to keep my crew alive.”

“You take more risks than is excused by even that,” T’Volis said, hearing the answering strain in her own. “And as the war has progressed, those risks have increased exponentially. They are far beyond acceptable levels.”

“They’re necessary,” said Diane flatly. She folded her arms tightly across her chest, shoulders hunching in. She was hurt. T’Volis was distressed by this, but hoped it meant she was finally listening. 

“You will do your crew very little good if you are dead,” she said. “I saw the report of the last incident on the Bedivere , and I can see the aftermath of your injuries. Donning appropriate protective gear–,”

“Would have meant one of the four crew died before I could pull them out,” said Diane, flatly. “Sacrificing her life to avoid an easily-treated radiation burn was not an exchange I was willing to make.”

“You didn’t know it would be ‘only’ a radiation burn at the time,” said T’Volis. “You could have been killed, and then all four of your crew would have died, because you would have been unable to assist them.”

“I–” started Diane, and then let out a long breath. “It was a gamble.”

“And you were lucky. This fits with a pattern of increased risk-seeking behavior over the last three months; you have also turned down multiple opportunities for less-risky assignments in which your skills are sorely needed. Assignments which I know well you would personally prefer to front-line combat.”

Pain flicked across Diane’s face, quickly tucked away. “I’m where they need me. I make a good soldier, T’Volis. Unfortunately, that’s what Starfleet needs right now.”

The distress was tangible. Upsetting. What could one say to a partner so determined to tear herself apart, gut the core of who she was on principle? It sounded noble in epic poems. When the being involved was standing right in front of you, when you knew everything she was hollowing out of herself, it didn’t seem like a selfless sacrifice. It was sad, and nothing else. 

If Diane survived this war–which seemed less and less likely–it would not be as the calm, cheerful woman T’Volis had known. There were hard edges developing, a steady core of rage building, a ruthlessness that showed through sometimes like the flash of a claw–that same thing she had glimpsed in the cliffside park. She could see it now, because in the wake of her pain there was something closing down behind Diane’s eyes. It settled in the new lines around her mouth, smoothing her face into an artificial neutrality that was utterly unnatural. 

There was a dreadful finality in the room with them. “I cannot make a bond with someone I am so likely to lose,” she said. “Not again.” She could feel it all too clearly in her imagination, the bright brilliant edges of Diane’s mind going soot gray and flaking, and then the silence. 

She could not bear it. She did love this woman, but she could not bear that connection only to lose it, and the loss seemed inevitable. “Please, Diane.”

“I want to make that promise to you,” said Diane, and then raised a hand and wiped impatiently at her eyes, that very human emotion pushing its way through, inexorable. It was hard to see, her determined defenses failing, and then she raised the other hand and pressed both palms over her eyes. “I really, really do. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to die. But if I make that promise, I’m going to break it, because none of this is about what either of us want . I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I can’t .”

The relationship had ended there. The conversations, the arguments, the regrets and the we’ll try again had lasted longer, but T’Volis had begged her, and Diane had said no, because she couldn’t have done anything else and still been herself, and through the grief afterward sometimes T’Volis felt like she had let a wild thing go back to the desert, after it had curled itself up on her hearth for a brief and wonderful time.