Breath…

Knocked from his lungs on impact…He tried to stop his body from gasping for air, but it was already too late…water choked him…choked his thoughts…

Imzadi!

TITAN

“Will!”

Deanna jerked awake, knowing she was in sickbay, but she was somewhere else too. In the water, drowning…

“Counselor, what is it?” Tuvok was in the next bed, looking at her sharply. He understood the bond she had with her husband, knew her cry was no nightmare.

“Will’s in danger, on the planet. We have to…”

Ree had arrived, his fearsome hands closing gently on her shoulders as she tried to rise. “Easy, Counselor. I advise against undue strains.”

“Will’s in danger,” she repeated. “Tell the bridge.”

The ship shuddered, and Deanna’s heart raced, still on edge from the explosions before. “I fear we are in some danger as well,” the doctor said. “Our maneuvering ability is limited, and we are currently in the outer atmosphere and attempting to remedy the situation.”

“But Will…” His voice was gone, an echoing void remaining.

She felt a surge of terror, of grief, of despair. She knew it wasn’t fully hers—a pang went through Tuvok at her words, touching a deeper well of empathy than he would ever admit to—but she couldn’t help it, couldn’t focus her perceptions to discern between loss of consciousness and loss of everything. She could only feel dread certainty that Will was dead, as her child was dead… my last child…no, her first, the baby was still in her and silently wailing in resonance with her emotions…not born yet and already she knew grief… Imzadi!

“This is no place for an unborn child,” Ree growled, bringing her awareness outside herself again. The doctor was agitated, his breath rasping, his yellow eyes darting ceilingward as the ship continued to shudder. “This is insane, letting infants face perils such as these! We have to do something.”

Contrary to his earlier actions, he began helping Deanna to her feet, cradling her against his large, strong saurian frame. “Come with me, please, Counselor. We must get your child to safety.”

She let him lead her, her mind and spirit numb, until she realized Tuvok was blocking the exit. “Doctor Ree. Where are you taking her?”

“Away from this ship of death! Away from this vile system!”

“Doctor, you are behaving irrationally. I suggest you release her.”

“So you can keep her here? Keep her child in danger? Stand aside!” Matching actions to words, Ree flung the Vulcan into the wall as though he were a toy.

Nurse Ogawa rushed over to Tuvok, checking him, crying, “Ree, please, stop this! What are you doing?”

“Do not interfere, Alyssa! Nothing is as important as protecting this baby. Nothing.” The last was a predatory snarl, and Ogawa quailed in fear of her friend.

But when Ree dragged Deanna out into the corridor, draping her over his back as he launched into a run, she heard dainty footsteps following after and Alyssa’s breathless voice calling, “Ogawa to bridge! Send security…”

Tuvok had just been dazed, and Doctor Onnta was on hand, so Alyssa Ogawa had grabbed a medkit and headed after Ree and Counselor Troi at the best speed she could manage. Perhaps there was a personal bias involved; Troi had been a colleague of hers on the Enterprisefor years, a bond that wasn’t easily broken, and Ree had been a good friend and trusted senior officer for over a year and a half. But there was obviously something wrong with the Pahkwathanh CMO that might threaten Troi and her baby. Personal or not, Alyssa saw her choice as a simple matter of triage.

After calling security, she quickly lost sight and sound of Ree. But from his rantings, it was clear he would be trying to leave the ship, even the whole system. That meant he was heading for the shuttlebay.

No security fields sprang up to stop Ree along the way; that system must still be down, like so many others. Ogawa caught up to him only because he was delayed by a security team. The team was headed up by Lieutenant Feren Denken, a large Matalinian male whose right arm was a biosynthetic replacement for the original lost during Titan’s first mission. His religious beliefs had forbidden the use of prosthetic limbs, threatening to end his security career; but Counselor Troi had persuaded him to consider the possibility that Titan’s multiculturalism could go both ways, and that maybe there was room in his beliefs for interpretation. Captain Riker had helped by getting an old friend of his, then-Captain Klag of the I.K.S. Gorkon, to put in a good word. Klag had also lost an arm in combat and had been persuaded to accept an allograft from his deceased father, in defiance of any number of Klingon beliefs and traditions. His example had persuaded Denken to study his scriptures and realize that his reading of them had been too self-directed; he could better defend the integrity of the living by restoring his full capability to preserve numerous other lives.

But even with two good arms—the new one perhaps better than the old—Denken was no match for a determined Pahkwa-thanh, even one weighed down by a pregnant, struggling Betazoid. Ree’s heavy, rigid tail swung around and smashed Denken into the corridor wall, and Ogawa winced at the sound of a probable rib fracture. “I suggest you have that seen to promptly,” Ree told him.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Balim Cel, a purple-haired Catullan woman, leapt onto Ree’s back and attempted a Catullan neck pinch—actually more a sort of temporary psionic shock induced by touching the thumbs to the base of the skull. But it didn’t work on Pahkwathanh, or maybe Cel just had the anatomy wrong, since she went flying too, skidding to a stop before Ogawa’s feet. “Please, stay out of my way!” Ree growled. “You threaten the child!”

“I threaten you, Doctor!” It was Pava sh’Aqabaa, whose phaser was drawn. “Now put the commander down so I can shoot you, throw your fat tail in the brig, and talk this out reasonably.”