Space: The Final Frontier | Star Trek

Chapter 21

"Are you out of your corn-fed mind?" Bones bellowed at Jim. "You're not actually going to listen to this guy? He killed Pike, he almost killed you, and now you think it's a good idea to pop open a torpedo because he dared you to?"

Jim folded his arms across his chest. "Why did he save our lives, Bones?"

Spock shrugged. "The Doctor does have a point, Captain."

Bones' face scrunched up as if he had just tasted something extremely bitter. "Don't agree with me, Spock. It makes me very uncomfortable."

"Perhaps you, too, should learn to govern your emotions, Doctor." Spock scolded Bones. "In this situation, logic dictates-"

"Logic?" Bones scoffed. "Oh, my God! There's a maniac trying to make us blow up our own damn ship and you're talking about-"

Jim held up his hand to stop the childish bickering. "That's not it. I don't know why he surrendered, but that's not it. Look, we're gonna open a torpedo. The question is how."

"Okay." I rubbed my hands together, trying to take charge and steer the conversation in a productive direction. "Jim, you called Scotty. Is there anything he can do for us?"

Jim shook his head. "No, he says he would have to actually be there in front of it to be any help."

"But, Jim, without Mr. Scott on board, who exactly is qualified to just pop open a four-ton stick of dynamite?" Bones' Southern accent showed itself more as he became more agitated.

Spock's eyes did that weird shifting thing; the one he did when he was thinking hard. "The Admiral's daughter appeared to have interest in the torpedoes and she is a weapons specialist," he suggested. "Perhaps she could be of some use."

Jim furrowed his brows. "What Admiral's daughter?"

"Carol Marcus." Spock dropped the news on us as if it was something that we had all already been aware of. "Your new science officer concealed her identity to board the ship."

"When were you going to tell me that?" Jim inquired.

"When it became relevant. As it just did." Spock's facial expression indicated that he saw nothing wrong with how he had chosen to handle the situation.

With that, Jim headed off to find Carol. The rest of us went our separate ways and I made my way down to the medical bay to see if I could take a look at Harrison's blood. When I arrived at my desk, I was happy to see the bag containing the vile of blood sitting right where I had asked Bones to leave it.

Pulling on a pair of medical gloves, I carefully fished the vial out of the bag and set it on the small rack beside my microscope. Reaching for a slide, I made sure it was clean before grabbing a small syringe, dipping it into the blood, drawing some up into the syringe, and placing a few drops onto the slide.

Once the slide was ready, I powered the microscope up and set the blood under the lens. It took me a few minutes to focus on the cells, but once I head a clear view, I could immediately tell there was something different about this blood as compared to regular human blood.

While most of the blood cells moved at a very normal paced, uniform rate, there were a few that moved around so fast that I could barely focus on one before it disappeared out of sight again. Before long I found myself falling down a rabbit hole of examining and performing tests on the blood. It fascinated me that what seemed like such little differences in the cell motility and function could produce such vast changes to the body as a whole.

I remembered back to when Jim had punched Harrison over and over again, yet never for a second did Harrison's calm demeanor waver. His body seemed to be altered in a way that either prevented damage in the first place or executed an unbelievably rapid healing rate.