Chapter Text
The Star Beagle Adventures
Episode 13: Close to the Edge Part II - Total Mass Retain
Scene 4: Sad Courage
Sad courage claimed the victims, standing still for all to see…
13.4
Sad Courage
Eva Mendez’s jaw ached. That was nothing new. Her jaw had ached ever since Medical Chief Kara Garrity had used a bone knitter to stitch the tiny bones of her shattered jaw together. Garrity had done as good a job as any field surgeon could do.
A trained surgeon in a fully equipped Star Fleet medical center could remove the shattered bones and replace her jaw with a prosthetic, but the U.S.S. Escort had neither. As a result, the ship’s chief medical technician had been making subtle, ongoing adjustments, primarily to make sure Mendez’s jaw didn’t grow back wrong or become infected.
“It’s time for your adjustment.”
Mendez was horrified. She tried to protest, but her jaw was wired shut and all she could make was a horrified squeak.
It wasn’t Kara Garrity’s voice. Nor her broad, pale, Slavic face.
The face and voice were those of the elderly klingon general who had, less than two weeks ago, stepped off the transporter pad, reached over the transporter control console, and with a solid right hook, shattered her jaw.
“Now don’t move,” Krank said. It wasn’t a Star Fleet issue bone knitter he was holding. It looked like some sort of klingon technology. It looked more like a torture device than any sort of medical tool… Although some part of her brain registered that there really wasn’t that much difference between the two.
But she couldn’t move. Only sit, horrified, frozen in terror as the warrior who had shattered her jaw gently ran a finger along her jaw, followed by the torture device. He made a series of “hmmm" noises as he studied the readings on the device. It was a nasty looking klingon sort of thing with prongs and spikes that didn’t seem to have any purpose.
“Hmmmmm,” Krank said again. With feeling.
“Doctor Krank?” Mendez asked.
The room was dark, dank and the light reddish, the masonry on the walls rough. It looked far less like a surgery than some sort of torture chamber.
It didn’t help that she was strapped onto some sort of cross that was not vertical, but at some sort of incline.
“Hmmmm?” Krank responded.
“What is it?”
“Not good,” the elderly general mused. “Not good at all.” Krank plugged the torture device, apparently some sort of exceptionally ugly medical scanner, into a rather ugly computer and a quite unappealing image of Eva’s jaw was displayed in ugly colors on a quite repulsively designed monitor.
“This looks ugly,” Krank stated.
The tiny, El Salvadoran transporter chief wasn’t certain what the general was referring to. “What looks ugly?”
With a blindingly fast movement, the elderly klingon unsheathed the dk’tahg from his belt and, with the press of a catch under the hilt, deployed the side blades.
Mendez blinked and squeezed her eyes shut in fear.
“This,” said Krank.
Eva Mendez opened her eyes to see that Krank was using his dagger as a pointer.
“And these,” he continued, tapping a number of other points on the monitor. “The repair was only intended to be temporary until we could get you to a proper facility and prepare a prosthetic. These discolored spaces are an infection. One that can lead to hearing loss if it spreads to the small bones of your ear.”
“What can we do to stop it?” Mendez asked, the terror rising in her throat as Krank began laying out a variety of knives and axes on a table next to the cross she was strapped to.
“There is no way to treat an infection of this sort. Transporter technology won’t work because the spores exist partly in subspace. I’m afraid there is only one solution.” He studied the bladed weapons and implements laid out before him.
“Doctor?” Mendez prompted.
Krank selected a large weapon that looked like the unholy child of some sort of axe and sword that should never have been mated, had not their parents forced them into it. Mendez recognized it as a mek’leth.
Doctor Krank hefted it appreciatively.
“There is no other option. I must amputate…”
Eva Mendez screamed.
13.4