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“Come on, Doctor! I don’t have any medical equipment, and I don’t know how to work your ship. Please, you have to wake up!”
There was a groaning sound. Hang on, had that come from him? With another groan, he opened his eyes. Above him, Belinda’s brightened, and she smiled. “Oh, thank God. How do you feel, Doctor?”
He considered, and then sat up slowly. “My head’s killing me, but I’m alive. And so are you, which is good. What happened?”
“The TARDIS crashed. You don’t remember? You did hit your head. I mean, so did I, to be honest.”
She did have a visible bruise, but no blood, it seemed. “Crashed? Why would we have crashed?” Now he stood up, so he could go to the console. The TARDIS... Well, she seemed all right. Just not moving. And, as he tried various switches, levers, and buttons, apparently unwilling to change that. “Curious.”
“Doctor, we really should be examined, the both of us. Otherwise, there’s no telling what injuries we might have. They could be serious.”
He looked at her. “That’s true. And I have an idea.” Bending over the console, though it hurt to change position like that, he rummaged until he found what he was looking for. “Here. Got it from your old namesake planet.” With a flourish, he passed her the X-ray blanket.
Belinda raised her eyebrows. “All right then,” she said, taking it from him, “sit down. Carefully. Let me have a look.”
Obediently, he eased himself back to the floor. Belinda held out the blanket in front of him. “Hmm.”
“And what’s my prognosis, Nurse Belinda?”
“Well, I’m no radiologist, and you’re not human, but I’d say you’ll live. I don’t see any sign of bleeds or skull damage. Which isn’t to say you don’t have every right to be in pain, after the knock your head took.” She folded the blanket over one arm and offered him a hand.
He took it, standing up. “Thank you. Now, may I return the favor?” He nodded to the blanket. She was right that the pain wasn’t fading as quickly as he’d like, much as it was a genuine relief to hear she didn’t see anything serious. But he wanted to be sure about her, as well. “My name isn’t just for show, I promise.”
“Fair enough.” She handed him the blanket.
Spreading it out in front of her, he examined the image. “I’m pleased to report that I don’t see any bleeds or skull damage, either. I expect we’ll both mend.” He folded the blanket and shoved it back where he’d stashed it before. “That is, as long as we can figure out where and when we are, and why we seem to be stuck here.”
“Right.”
At first, none of his view screens gave him anything useful. “All right then, if you’re going to be like that, why don’t we try resetting the telemetry coordinates to compensate?” He suited actions to words. With a buzzing sound and a pop, all the screens shut down – only to start up again. “Aha! Here we are!”
“Okay, but where’s that?” Belinda wanted to know, leaning over next to where he was looking.
The Doctor blinked. “Nowhere. I mean, just space, not any particular destination. And... in the 23rd century. Now that’s interesting.”
“Definitely not home, though,” was Belinda’s response, not quite under her breath.
“I know,” he said quickly. “I’m sorry, babes. I’m trying.”
She nodded. “I know. Sorry.” Summoning a smile, she added, “What else can you tell us? Anything about how or why we crashed?”
“These readings suggest some kind of massive energy wave caught us,” said the Doctor. “I can’t get much detail. But it looks very much like...” He scrolled through the readout again. “We’re inside a very large ship.”
“You mean the TARDIS is inside another spaceship?”
“Exactly.” After another, longer-range scan, he straightened. “And I have good news and bad news.”
“Do you? All right, bad news first.”
That request didn’t surprise him. “The bad news is, the TARDIS is inside what seems to be an enormous scavenger ship, that hunts other ships and strips them of their fuel and materials.”
“Ah. But there’s good news?”
“Yes. The good news is, it would appear that these scavengers didn’t recognize the TARDIS as anything worth looking at. So we’re not being scavenged – we just happened to get caught up inside while they were going after someone else.” Of course, even apart from still needing to get out of here, that meant there were probably other people stuck here, and they might need help.
And the Doctor had an idea. Naturally, he did. Somewhere inside the TARDIS were a few suits that would let them walk out into this graveyard of ships. And if they could trigger whatever mechanism that must exist that would release the clamps holding all the ships in place, then that would be half the battle. Even though some of these ships, if he’d seen correctly, were from planets – or empires – that he wouldn’t classify as friendly.
While they did find the suits, that was about where the Doctor’s plan took an unexpected turn. Back in the console room, he was about to explain to Belinda which direction might take them toward some kind of controls when a faint vibration passed through the TARDIS. Then one of his screens gave an alert.
“Oh, hello there! Our next-door neighbor freed themselves before we did! And...” he trailed off, making sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him. “No way. It’s the Enterprise!”
At Belinda’s uncomprehending look, he explained, “The USS Enterprise. Only one of the most famous ships in the galaxy! I’ve always wanted to see her from the inside.”
“Great. How did they free themselves? Can we do the same?”
He was about to answer when the mouth of the huge ship that was their captor opened, revealing another Federation starship. This one, he didn’t recognize immediately, although he could tell she’d seen better days. More importantly, though, he could also tell she was about to fire. “Hold on to something!”
They both gripped the TARDIS console just in time for the whole scavenger ship to shake. The Doctor’s head had not appreciated that jolt, and he guessed Belinda’s wouldn’t have, either. But there wasn’t time to worry about that. “They shook us loose! We’re getting out of here.” With the flick of a lever, the turn of a dial, and the push of a button, he had them following the Enterprise out of the exit.
It wasn’t a moment too soon, either. The other starship – Bellerophon class, if the Doctor was remembering his Federation vessels correctly – had just pulled a maneuver even he didn’t know whether he’d be crazy enough to try: it had actually released one of its warp nacelles into the scavenger ship. The only reason they would do that would be to-
The explosion rocked the TARDIS and the two Federation ships, but nowhere near as much as the scavenger ship. Despite the very uncomfortable results of the shockwave, neither he nor Belinda fell again, which was fortunate.
~~~~~~
Belinda was sure she hadn’t quite caught everything that had happened in the last fifteen minutes or so. She didn’t know what kind of bomb, or explosive something, that other ship had put into the big scavenger ship. Nor did she follow, at first, why the Doctor had been so astonished, and then horrified, after the smaller one shot some kind of weapons at the scavenger ship, destroying it.
“It’s not that I don’t understand that ship doing anything to save their fellow Federation crew,” he said, as he kept the TARDIS following the ship that had caused the explosion, “but a vessel of that size...” With one hand, he pressed a few buttons. Whatever happened next caused him to huff out a breath. “As I thought – it had thousands and thousands of crew.”
“The scavenger ship?” That was a lot of people dead. She was beginning to understand his mood.
The Doctor nodded. “And the Federation doesn’t usually make itself judge, jury, and executioner, especially for that many living souls, all at once.”
“They’re all dead?” She felt cold, all of a sudden, moreso than she had when the Doctor had told her they were trapped inside that ship.
“Dead or dying.” His voice was grim.
“Can we save them? Any of them?” She was a nurse first.
He shot her a gratified look before turning his attention back to one of the console screens. “We’re going to try. It’s too late for most of them, but with any luck at all...”
At that, she could feel the mindset she’d developed while on A & E rotation settling back over her, as natural as breathing. “Right. And if there isn’t any luck, we’ll make it ourselves.”
~~~~~~
After everything that had happened that day, Christine was looking forward to food, a shower, and bed, in that order. Though she had a sinking feeling that the last one might not be as satisfying as she hoped. There was a good chance she would be dreaming about the thousands of human life forms – humans – that she had been a part of killing today. She knew no one blamed her – hell, no one really blamed Acting Captain Kirk, either. And of course she wasn’t sad that their actions had saved Enterprise and all her friends.
It was just... Even in the war, she had never been part of an action that turned out like this one had. It had been a while since she could have claimed to have upheld her oath to “Do no harm” with any honesty, but this felt different. She wondered what M’Benga would have done, if he’d been on that bridge with them. The thought exercise didn’t really help her feel better.
Just as she was about to leave sickbay before the next shift came on duty, an alert she’d never heard before chimed. That was followed by a sound that was much stranger: a grinding, echoing, almost wailing sound. Before she’d absorbed either, a blue box that looked like some kind of old, wooden storage container appeared in front of her. It definitely hadn’t come via transporter, either.
Christine was belatedly looking around for a phaser when the door opened and a stretcher came out, pushed by a dark-skinned woman who met her eyes and immediately said, “Are you a doctor? This man needs medical attention.”
Looking down, Chapel saw a humanoid male covered in obvious wounds. He was bandaged in places, but she could see that the other woman was right. She cleared her throat. “I’m a nurse. What happened?” She motioned toward the nearest biobed.
“He was in an explosion. And probably suffered damage to his lungs and other organs from lack of oxygen afterward,” said the dark-skinned woman, as the two of them maneuvered the stretcher and then worked together to lift the man onto the bed.
Chapel began to scan him as soon as he was in position, her movements automatic as her brain caught up to what the woman had said. She was about to ask if the woman meant what she thought she meant, but the severity of the man’s injuries pushed that concern aside.
The only conversation that happened during the next few minutes involved them stabilizing the patient. By the time they had stopped his internal bleeding, repaired his broken bones, and gotten his internal organs back into an acceptable range of function, Chapel knew one thing for sure. “You’re a nurse, too. Aren’t you?” The other woman had worked too efficiently, with too much confidence, for that not to have been true. Granted, she’d seemed a little unfamiliar with some of their tools, but every time Christine had explained something, the other woman had understood immediately.
“Yes. My name’s Belinda. What’s yours?”
“Christine.” She reached out a hand, thought better of it and took off her gloves before reaching out again.
“Nice to meet you, Christine,” said Belinda, also taking off her own gloves before shaking her hand. “And thank you.” Her accent sounded kind of like La’An’s, Christine realized.
“For what? Just doing my job,” said Chapel. “Thanks for getting this man here in time for us to save him.”
Belinda nodded. “Our – my, um, ship isn’t equipped for this kind of medical care.”
Christine blinked, looking back at the blue box for the first time since the stretcher had come out of it. “Your ship. Right.”
Belinda blushed. “It doesn’t look like much, does it?”
“Well, if it had enough in there for you to keep this guy alive until you got him here, it must be more, uh, impressive than it looks.” She yawned then, completely involuntarily. “Sorry. It’s been a long day.”
“For me, too.” The other woman yawned, too. Then she turned her attention back to the patient. “So. I should ask: do you have an estimate of when he’ll be stable enough to move?”
Chapel consulted the biobed’s readouts. “I’d say another hour or so. Why, does he need to be somewhere?” She trusted Belinda, but that was more of an instinctive thing. She knew there was no other real reason besides the woman’s competence as a nurse.
“Not exactly,” said Belinda.
Then the door of the blue box – ship – opened again, and this time, a handsome dark-skinned man came out. “It’s not so much that this man needs to be somewhere,” he said, “but that Belinda and I can’t really hang around, and he’s our responsibility.” Now, this guy’s accent was different yet again. He sounded like Lieutenant Scott.
“And who are you, exactly?” Christine asked.
“I’m the Doctor,” the man announced. “You’ve already met Belinda. We’re traveling together.”
“Doctor, huh? Then why weren’t you helping save this guy? Why’d you leave it to us?”
“That is an excellent question,” said the man. “I could say that I knew you two would have it well in hand, and that would be true, but it wouldn’t be the real reason. The real reason is a bit of a long story, so I’ll get straight to the point: I really shouldn’t spend much time at all on this ship, because I don’t want to cause any Federation officers to violate the Temporal Prime Directive.”
Chapel felt her eyes widen. She gave a glance at Belinda, who just seemed confused. “Seriously?”
“Very,” the Doctor said. Nothing about the way he spoke, or his facial expression, suggested anything but the truth. “It was a calculated risk bringing this man here at all. It’s just that what Belinda told you about the equipment in our ship is sadly accurate: I – we can do first aid, but not much beyond that.”
“Okay.” Chapel pushed a strand of hair out of her face. “You know, I should have called for security when your ship first showed up. I’m guessing you’d prefer I didn’t.”
“You’re correct. I can’t stop you if you choose to. Neither of us will resist if you want to have security come and take us away. What I can do is give you my word that we only came here to get help in saving this man, and we’ll take him with us as soon as you say it’s safe to do so."
Once again, he seemed sincere, and Chapel found herself wanting to believe him. Before breaking at least a half dozen rules, though, she spoke to Belinda. “You trust this guy?”
Belinda nodded. “I do.”
“Then I guess I do, too.” She sighed. “Somehow, it’s not the craziest thing I’ve done today.”
The Doctor smiled. “The life of an explorer, eh? You never know what’s going to happen from day to day, or even minute to minute.”
“That’s one way to put it,” muttered Belinda, but she was smiling, too.
There was a short pause. Christine was trying to think of a question she could ask without risking a violation of the Temporal Prime Directive (and not having much luck), when the door to sickbay opened. To her surprise, it wasn’t the next shift coming on, or even anyone from security. It was Pelia.
“I better not have come all the way here only to—” she was saying, but she cut herself off as she took in the scene. Her wide eyes stayed the longest on the ship that this Doctor and Belinda had appeared in. “It worked. I can’t believe it actually worked.”
“What worked?” Christine asked. She knew she was tired, but she was getting kind of fed up with not knowing what the hell was going on.
“My artron energy detector,” said Pelia, as if that explained anything. Then she came closer and raised a hand to point at the Doctor. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
The Doctor blinked. “Have we met?”
“Oh, don’t play coy with me,” Pelia shot back. “You know full well that we have. And besides, why else would I have installed an artron energy detector aboard this ship?”
“That is a very good point,” said the Doctor. “But you’ll have to excuse me... Wait. Hold on just a tick here – Pelia? I didn’t know you were on the Enterprise.”
“Or you wouldn’t have come, would you?” Pelia sounded irritated, but there was mischief in her face. “I’m not surprised you didn’t know. I don’t make a habit of making sure everyone knows where I’ve been, unlike certain people I could name.”
Laughing now, the Doctor shook his head. “Look, as much as it’s lovely to see you again, I was just telling Nurse Christine here that I really shouldn’t be here at all, much less interacting with more crew members.”
Pelia rolled her eyes. “Of course not. But you love to stick your nose where you shouldn’t. It’s kind of your thing.”
It was Belinda’s turn to laugh. Or maybe it was a scoff.
“See, she knows it, too,” was Pelia’s response to that. She turned to Belinda. “I suppose he’s got you following him around on his wild adventures now.”
“Something like that,” admitted Belinda, clearing her throat.
The Doctor quickly pointed out that Belinda had just worked with Christine to save the man in the biobed. Pelia acknowledged that but had another point to get to: “I know you’ll leave whenever it suits you, Doctor, but I’m here to make sure you don’t go without taking your white elephant with you!”
“My-” the Doctor stopped. His charming smile faded. “Pelia, you can’t seriously be calling the incredibly rare Hothnyllian communicator I gave you – that you asked me for – a white elephant!”
“What else would you call a gift that not only didn’t work when you gave it to me, but needs an element that doesn’t exist in this quadrant or the next in order to be repaired?”
This seemed to knock the wind out of the Doctor’s sails. They argued for another minute or so, with Christine and Belinda trading baffled looks. When Pelia pulled a very odd-looking (and apparently very heavy, based on the way she moved it) object out of the bag she was wearing on her shoulder, though, the Doctor sighed and took it from her. “It wasn’t a trick, you know. I genuinely forgot about the laradinum issue.”
“Fine. Just take it away so I never have to look at it again,” Pelia huffed.
He raised his hands, one holding the weird metallic thing, and nodded. “I will.” With a glance toward the man on the biobed, he said, “Actually, if Nurse Christine can confirm this man will be all right, we really should get going.”
Christine looked at the man’s readings. “He’s... doing better than I expected. If you can keep checking his vitals for at least another half hour, and you can promise he’ll be under your supervision until he regains consciousness, I would be willing to release him to your custody.”
“We can make that happen, right, Doctor?” asked Belinda.
“Indeed, we can,” the Doctor agreed. “Thank you again for your very capable efforts to help us save him.”
“Uh, you’re welcome.”
“A piece of advice: when you’re done traveling with this joker,” Pelia said to Belinda, as they carefully moved the man back onto the stretcher he’d arrived on, “make sure he doesn’t leave you until you’ve confirmed that you’re back where and when you want to be.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me. I was already holding him to that,” Belinda told her.
“Good.”
In the silence that came after the strange blue ship disappeared (and what was with that truly bizarre sound it made, anyway?), Christine cleared her throat. “I guess I can’t ask you to tell me the story of how you two met? You and, uh, the Doctor, I mean?”
Pelia frowned. “I suppose Starfleet or the Federation might complain about it. And the details might not interest someone without an engineering background, anyway.”
Christine didn’t think it was possible for a story involving the Doctor to be boring, but she appreciated Pelia’s attempt to make her feel better about it. “Well. I’m late for going off shift, so...”
“Oh, don’t let me stop you,” said Pelia, moving out of the way of the door.
“What – do you mind my asking what you’re going to do?” The Lanthanite woman was staring at the spot where the ship had disappeared.
Pelia pulled out a tricorder. “I’ll be checking to see if the tracking device I put on that blasted communicator is working.”
Christine opened her mouth, closed it, wished Pelia luck, and finally left sickbay. Maybe when she was more well-rested, she’d be able to come up with some way of getting Pelia to tell her story without technically breaking any rules. Or maybe when she woke up, this would all have been a crazy dream.