Perfection, 14 of 28
"PERFECTION"
by Jim Smith
Fine print: I don't own Star Trek and I'm not claiming to. I just own the story. Ask me before you do anything with it.
Chapter Fourteen.
With the Stormwind back under way and its mission clear, Captain Lancaster had only one order for Kreighen: Report to sickbay for a medical workup.
Once there, he was invited (or gently commanded) to bathe. He didn't dare argue. He'd spent most of the last month marooned by General Korok on an uninhabited moon. Upon escaping that predicament, he immediately found himself breaking out of a Federation prison camp, racing headlong to rendezvous with the Stormwind. And so, after the longest shower and shave of his life, he traded in his threadbare uniform for one of sickbay's patient gowns. After that, he spent the majority of his stay waiting on a bio-bed, watching Doctor Ben-Aharon ignore him.
The inactivity was good for him. He'd spent most of the past eight months, if not the entire war, living on the edge of a razor blade. But the cumulative effect was that he found it impossible to relax. His whole body was like an exposed nerve, and he felt like he'd been living on Klingon coffee for as long as he could remember. Rest wouldn't come easy to him. He needed a snort of whiskey. He wasn't likely to get one in sickbay.
After fewer minutes than it felt like, he got tried of staring at the chief medical officer's back. "Doctor?"
"Hm?"
"Did you decide if I'm dead yet?"
"No, that's okay..."
Kreighen furrowed his brow at the non-sequitur, and got up to confront her. As he reached her desk, he found Ben-Aharon laboring over a box of fluff. One by one, she would pick out a ball of the stuff, inject it with some sort of fluid, and place it in a beaker.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Oh," she said when she finally took notice of him. "You didn't need to get up..."
"What. Are. You. Doing?"
"Nothing much." When he gestured, exasperatedly, at the box, and she realized he insisted on more detail, she clarified. "I'm just growing some cultures in dead tribbles."
Somehow the answer was more disturbing than the mystery. "Is this supposed to be some miracle cure for baldness, or death, or something?"
"Hm? I doubt it..."
"Then why the hell--?" He stopped himself, mostly in fear that she might prescribe overnight observation. "Am I free to leave yet?"
She briefly paused her work to glance at a report on her desk. "Your similinhibitizine levels are stable."
"Does that mean 'yes' or 'no,' Doctor?"
"I'll let you know...ah, hello, Captain." She stood up to greet Lancaster, whom Kreighen hadn't noticed coming in.
"Rachel." Lancaster acknowledged Kreighen, but didn't dismiss him. "I'm here for your findings on the commander."
"Right...give me one second..." She rummaged through her tribbles to find her medical tricorder. "Whatever is interfering with the anti-assimilation drugs in the crew, Commander Kreighen doesn't show any of the effects."
"Then I must not have been exposed to whatever affected the rest of you," Kreighen reasoned.
"No," she rebutted patiently. "You don't show any of the effects."
"What's the difference--?"
Lancaster separated them. "We don't have time for this. Is there any reason not to clear Mister Kreighen for duty?"
"There are traces of keniclizene in his system," she continued, "but not enough to indicate long-term use. I don't need to keep him here."
Kreighen rubbed his temples. "Then why have you been keeping me--!?"
Lancaster signaled for him to keep it to himself. "Rachel, I'll need to have a word with Mister Kreighen. Alone."
"Oh, of course!" Ben-Aharon glanced around sickbay, and then pointed to the exit. "There probably isn't anyone out in the corridor..."
Kreighen could hardly believe she said that, but Lancaster showed considerably more patience. "Very good, Doctor," the captain said. "As you were." As soon as she returned to her work, he quietly led Kreighen into her private office.
Once the door was shut, Kreighen had to vent. "She's insane! How do you put up with her?"
"She was in the top thirty of her class at Starfleet Medical," Lancaster explained, and then directed the commander to take a seat. "The best medical officers aren't always the best officers, Commander."
"Jake."
"Hmp?"
"You can call me Jake, sir. Everyone does."
"I shan't," Lancaster replied candidly. "Mister Kreighen, you have presented me with quite the predicament. I am taking my ship deep into enemy territory, based on little more than your knowledge of the situation. And not only are you clearly withholding information from me, you have lied to me as well. Admiral Janeway presented me with a similar dilemma. In either case, I do not appreciate it."
Kreighen understood. "I'm sorry you and your crew got pulled into this, Captain. If I don't seem to care about imposing on you, it's because I know there's nothing I can do about it. My career's finished one way or the other. And even if you don't believe what I've told you, you have to intercept the Hrunting and rescue Janeway."
"Is that all you have to say?"
"Sir?"
Lancaster let out a deep sigh, and spelled it out. "Lieutenant Commander, until you are formally discharged from the service, you are a Starfleet officer. Your first duty is to the truth. Not your fellow officers, not your superiors, not even the Federation--those responsibilities logically follow from your obligation to the truth. Now, I have just called into question your character and your motivations. This is not the time to equivocate, or to rationalize that the net effect of your choices is tolerable. I must know, sir, if you cannot adequately account for your actions, that you have the conviction to stand by them, and accept the consequences."
The impact of his words slowly dawned on Kreighen, until he rose from his chair. He stood as straight as the day he graduated the academy, as the day he was promoted to lieutenant commander, as the day he told Janeway to court-martial him. "I stand by my actions, sir."
"Will you explain to me how it is you knew Admiral Janeway was aboard this ship, or how you discovered the secrets of these Xhiryptyr'x of yours, or why you would have ancient anti-telepathic drugs in your bloodstream?"
Kreighen tensed. "Respectfully, sir, I believe the answers to these questions constitute a threat to the allied fleet, and the entire Federation."
"And that's your final word on the subject?"
"Yes, sir."
"So be it." Lancaster circled the table and stood nose to nose with Kreighen. "For the duration of this mission, I hereby appoint you as executive officer of the Stormwind."