then you shouldn’t be using it. I didn’t see any directional signs in the corridor, either.”
Kirk took a moment to contemplate the paranoia that must exist on a world with millions of slaves held in thrall by only a few thousand Assessors. “If you don’t know where a corridor goes, then you shouldn’t be in it.” He flexed his fingers. “I don’t suppose they wire these to explode.” He pressed some controls at random.
Nothing happened.
He touched the screen, spoke into the speaker grille, punched several controls multiple times. But still no response. Kirk turned back to McCoy. “Moving on. Anything in here we can use to get through the door?”
McCoy led Kirk to an equipment stand and selected several ultrasonic scalpels. Like the instrument McCoy had first used on Kirk, each scalpel appeared to have two parts—a gleaming, metallic operational part, sunk deep into an uncut gemstone that made a heavy, though secure handle.
Kirk held up the egg-sized emerald that held the scalpel McCoy had given him. “Is this some kind of power source?”
“I doubt it,” McCoy said as they returned to the door.
“More of a tradition, I think. Maybe dating back to a time when the Romulans wouldn’t provide any medical care to the Remans. It’s not unusual for primitives to believe the nonsense that raw stones contain some sort of unexplained power.”
“Raw stones like…uranium and dilithium?” Kirk asked.
“Don’t me get started,” McCoy grumbled.
They examined the infirmary’s door, and even in the shadows of the dark room, the key locking points were simple to locate.
Kirk pointed to the first site. “Doctor…”
McCoy expertly switched on his scalpel, and the blade disappeared in a blur of rapid motion.
Kirk was impressed as McCoy smoothly inserted the invisible blade into the narrowest of cracks between the door and its frame. McCoy made a one-finger adjustment to the blade’s setting control, lengthening the blade’s reach.
After a few seconds, there was a satisfying pop, and a wisp of smoke curled out from the door frame. “That’s one,” McCoy said.
Now that Kirk had seen the technique demonstrated, he used his own scalpel on the other half of the door. The pops of severed locks sounded every minute or so, until nine had been defeated. With so many locks, it was clear the door was designed to operate as a pressure seal. That raised the possibility that the corridors beyond could be open to the virtually nonexistent Reman atmosphere. Decompression would be a brutal and effective method for containing any potential revolt.
Kirk braced his hands against the door, then began to force it to the side.
It was like trying to get a recalcitrant horse to budge, but slowly the door began to move.
When it was open enough to enable the two of them to squeeze out, Kirk slowed his effort. He felt no resistance that indicated the door would slide shut again, but he had McCoy ease through first while he braced the door open for him. A second later, Kirk escaped behind McCoy. Together, they slid the door shut again.
“Now which way?” Kirk asked.
McCoy pointed to the right and they started off.
The corridor was almost identical to the one Kirk had walked through on his first visit to Remus. Again he was struck by the fact that there were no other doors or intersections, until they came to what McCoy called the first infirmary.
Kirk tried the door controls. No response.
He withdrew his ultrasonic scalpel and McCoy did the same.
Again, they began to probe for locking points to attack, but then Kirk noticed the door rocked slightly in its frame.
“Bones…step back for a second.”
McCoy complied and Kirk easily slid open the unlocked door.
The infirmary beyond was dark, lit by controls and displays, but empty.
“Looks like Jean-Luc and La Forge beat us,” Kirk said. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”
But McCoy didn’t share Kirk’s assessment of the situation. “Smell that?” he asked.
Kirk sniffed the air. In truth, each world he had visited had its own distinct smell, some more pleasant, some less so. He had judged Remus as having an industrial bouquet: a unique combination of lubrisols, machinery, dry dust. The Romulan Assessors and Remans had their own particular scents as well. The Romulans, musty. Remans, sharp. Kirk knew it was a combination of diet and the differing life-support systems they lived in. But the odors of each new world and species were part of the overall experience of exploration, and Kirk had never been bothered—or offended—by them.
And then he understood what McCoy wanted him to notice.
The sharp, ozone scent of ionized air. The underlying trace of heat and smoke.
“Weapons fire,” Kirk said. He held the scalpel as if it were a knife, one finger ready to switch on its blade. “Stay here,” he told McCoy.
“Say that again, I’ll hit you with my cane,” McCoy answered. He stayed at Kirk’s side as they moved through the infirmary.
“Over there.” Kirk pointed to an overturned equipment tray, its contents spread across the floor.
The smell of burning grew stronger the closer they approached, and Kirk recognized an odor that, in the end, was one of the few that was the same on every world.
Charred flesh.
Kirk rounded an equipment console, nearly gagged as the stench hit him full force.
The body was on the floor directly in front of him, chest open and smoking, organs within it still glistening with green blood and gore.
“Doctor,” McCoy said in shock. He started forward, but Kirk held him back. There was no hope for the dead Reman.
“He was a healer,” McCoy said in dismay, “not a guard. This isn’t right.”
“Jean-Luc didn’t do this, Bones. Neither did La Forge.”
Kirk crouched by the body, refusing to look into the open, staring eyes of the Reman. Instead, he searched the blood-sodden pockets of his cloak, the pouches on his belt.
“What are you doing?” McCoy hissed.
Kirk’s fingers touched rock. He pulled out a metal card punched by a series of square holes and then a small, smoothly polished black stone, no larger than the tip of his thumb. The stone had a small hole drilled through one end, as if at one time it might have been strung on a thin chain or leather strip, to be worn as an amulet.
Kirk examined the metal card more closely in the light from a display screen on a medical monitor. “The Remans authorized to work in this area have to have some way of getting around. This might be a key to access communications and at least some of the doors.”
McCoy seemed unable to take his eyes off the Reman’s corpse. “But if this poor devil still has his key, then how did Picard and La Forge get out?”
To Kirk, the answer was obvious. “They were taken out, Bones. By whoever killed the doctor.”
“Taken prisoner?” McCoy seemed unconvinced. “By who? Who else is there here except Remans?”
“The Romulan Assessors.”
“But they’re Reman, too, Jim. You said so yourself. Anyone condemned to Remus is a Reman.” McCoy leaned more heavily against his cane, and Kirk could see that Reman gravity was taking its toll on him. “You know what I think?”
“I know you’re going to tell me.”
“I think there’s a war going on down here. And I think we’ve landed smack in the middle of it.”
“The third mission,” Kirk said, deciding to speak freely. It was unlikely this infirmary was under observation. Otherwise, someone would surely have come to deal with the Reman doctor’s body and determine what had happened.
“Jean-Luc, La Forge, and Crusher…” Kirk said as he saw McCoy’s look of incomprehension. “They had another reason for coming on this trip.”
