The captain groped blindly for his seat as he staggered backwards, as if struck by a blow. He finally managed to sit down, doing so heavily, as if the weight of the earth were upon him.
"How the hell did this happen?" Yilaan, still standing, demanded angrily.
"Power flow was apparently not shut down in a conduit that he was working in; it came back on and he was hit full force. There was almost nothing left," Wu replied sadly.
"What? What do you mean power wasn't shut down? That's ludicrous," Yilaan yelled at Wu on the viewscreen.
"Power was shut down, Commander," Lt. Commander Wu said exasperatedly, "but the computer suddenly kicked it back on. I'm very sorry. We're launching a full investigation, but....."
"But your investigation won't bring him back now will it?" Yilaan seethed at Wu.
Wu frowned and they stared at each other for a long moment. Yilaan used this opportunity to directly probe his mind. Though not easy to do over great distances with non-telepaths, and though it thoroughly disgusted her to even make the attempt, her anger was enough encouragement to make telepathic contact with Wu. She didn't believe Wu; not for a moment. She probed his mind while he stood there, blinking at her, not saying a thing. 'He's telling the truth?' she thought incredulously after probing him for a moment. 'But there's this duality again. What are you?' she half-asked in her mind, half-probed with her telepathy towards the part of Wu she had never seen in a human being before, and didn't understand. Suddenly, her mind wrenched against her; her connection to Wu was broken, by whatever it was in his mind that she sought to find out more about. Her hands went to her temples; she had a throbbing headache. Her head started swimming. 'I have to tell the captain,' she thought to herself. She tried to mouth the words needed to inform the captain that something wasn't right, but no sound would come. 'I have to tell the captain,' she struggled. 'I have to......to.....'
"Thank you for your efforts Harry," the captain said quietly about a minute or so after Wu and Yilaan had stopped vocally arguing.
Wu nodded, and the viewing screen switched back to stars. The captain sat, jaw set, teeth gritted in an attempt to keep his feelings inside. Reiv and Gates both sat, swivelled around in their chairs, facing him, with forlorn looks on their faces. After a few moments, Captain Freeman opened a panel on the right hand-rest of his command chair and flipped a switch. A comm-signal went off throughout the ship as the captain prepared to address everyone over the intercom.
"Captain to crew. It is with great sadness that I report to you that Chief Engineer Commander Jevor has been lost on board the U.S.S. Monroe, in the line of duty. His loss will be keenly felt, especially by those who knew him well. He was, in every way, a tribute to the uniform." The captain tried to come up with something else to say; after pausing in his ship-wide address for several moments, he finally ended with a hurried, "A memorial service will be held at 0900 tomorrow. Captain out." The captain closed the intercom connection and sighed loudly. "Yilaan, I'll be in my quarters," Freeman said, turning to face his first officer, who by this time had her hands over her face. He laid a comforting hand on her shoulder and was about to console her on Jevor's loss and comment on how everyone knows the risks that come with a Starfleet uniform. He was thus unprepared to catch her when she flopped over, unconscious.
"Medical team to the Bridge!" Reiv shouted into his communicator. The Bajoran helmsman went over to help, as did his Human counterpart at navigation.
"She's breathing anyway," Ensign Gates said matter-of-factly as they laid her down and waited for the medical team to arrive.
Moments later, the medical team whisked on to the Bridge, and carted Commander Yilaan down to Sickbay. The captain said, "I'll be in Sickbay; Ivanovna, keep an eye on things here." She nodded as the captain and the medical team, along with an inert Betazoid, left the Bridge hurriedly.
Dr. Giovanni was waiting when the team arrived and immediately went to work. She quickly performed several tests, as the life-signs of the commander fluctuated. "Ten c-c's Nourop," she said to one of her nurses, the first spoken words of the affair. The nurse gave her a hypospray of the required item, and Dr. Giovanni injected it into the commander. Yilaan's life signs stabilized, though at a low level. Giovanni smiled faintly to herself and continued to run tests. After about ten minutes of this, she punched several keys on her hand-held message pad, and handed it to an assistant. "Have the computer replicate these medicines right away," Giovanni ordered briskly, referring to what she'd entered on the message pad. The nurse nodded and jogged off to carry out her order.
"What's going on, Doctor?" the captain inquired from where he had stood, out of the way, during the whole procedure.
"There's been severe trauma to her brain," Dr. Giovanni reported. "Specifically, the center of her brain which is responsible for her telepathic abilities. Activity there is dangerously low, and the damage has affected the rest of her brain to a lesser extent."
The captain opened his mouth as if to say something, then stopped. After a moment or two of thought, he finally asked, "What caused it?"
"She was attacked telepathically somehow. That's only a guess, but it's the only thing I can think of that makes sense."
"Attacked?" the captain said, his voice belying a rising anger.
The short, raven-haired chief of medicine nodded. "Don't ask me how, or by what, but the damage is consistent with an attack. I've seen something like this in medical journals," she added.
Yilaan suddenly stirred and rolled over on her side, nearly falling off the examining table. Giovanni rushed over as Yilaan started violently twitching. "Captain, help me keep her still!" Giovanni barked. The captain did as he was asked, and both officers struggled to keep Yilaan on the table. An assistant of Giovanni's also came over to help.
Yilaan's eyes suddenly flashed open as she screamed aloud. Panting for breath she jerked her head around wild-eyed. She saw the captain and smiled, relaxing somewhat at the same time. "Captain," she whispered. He moved his ear closer to her as she continued. "Captain.........not true. Not true. Something else is there!" Her voice began to rise in volume and the captain backed away a bit. "Something terrible!" She began to scream, "Horrible! Get it out! It's not true! Jevor......" She then collapsed, and the computer medical scanners started beeping as her life signs dropped to dangerously low levels.
Giovanni rushed to grab a hypospray, cursing under her breath all the while. She injected Yilaan with something, and the latter's life signs stabilized again. She then injected Yilaan with a sedative. "I'm going to have to keep her sedated for awhile, I think," Giovanni said to the captain.
"Will she be okay?" Freeman asked with a worried note in his voice.
Giovanni nodded, "I believe so; she just needs a chance to heal. She's strong and young yet, and all."
"What she said didn't make much sense," the captain said, referring to Yilaan's outbursts.
"That's not surprising sir. Her mind was barely aware of her surroundings; I'm sure it was grief for Jevor mixed with pure delusion," Giovanni said. "My dad would often get the same way after too much liquor at his gambling parties," she sighed.
The captain nodded. "Keep me apprised of her condition, Doctor," he said, ignoring her comment about her father. "I'll be on the Bridge."
The captain's mind was on his fallen officers as he rode the turbolift to the Bridge. 'Something's not right about this,' was his gut instinct, though he couldn't put his finger on anything.
He arrived on the Bridge in short order. "Ivanovna, open a channel to the Monroe," Captain Freeman ordered as he sat in the command chair.
"Wu here," Lt. Commander Wu said, his face suddenly appearing on the viewscreen.
"Wu, I want the remains of Jevor returned to us immediately. Can you beam them over to our Sickbay?" Freeman said, a little harshly.
Harry Wu nodded, "Sure thing Mark; stand by. Wu out."
Freeman informed Sickbay to stand by for Jevor's remains, and to conduct an autopsy on them once they arrived. Reiv swivelled around to face the captain, an inquisitive look on his face. However, the look on the captain's face made him think better of inquiring about the autopsy, and he turned back around to man his station.
No more than five minutes could've passed before Lt. Ivanovna suddenly broke the silence. "Captain, I'm detecting an energy surge, bearing 213, mark 19," she said suddenly.
"Put the area on the main viewer," the captain said. A shimmering of stars greeted the bridge crew.
"I'm getting a signal from the Monroe," Ivanovna reported.
Wu's face appeared. "Captain, we've detected an energy surge, bearing...."
"Yes, we know," the captain interrupted irritably. "Is it a cloaked ship, do you think? Being this close to the Romulan border and all...."
Wu started to respond that he was going to raise the shields just in case, when Ivanovna interrupted the conversation. "Captain! Two Romulan warbirds decloaking, at previous location of energy surge."
"This deep in Federation space?" Reiv said incredulously under his breath.
"Shields up! Go to red alert," the captain ordered. "Hail the Romulans," he said, while Wu gave similar orders to his own crew.
"No response," Ivanovna said after a few moments. "Captain, they're locking weapons!"
"Bring phasers and photons to ready; prepare to return fire," Freeman said grimly.
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