Star Trek Hunter
Episode 6: Breakfast Killer #2
Scene 10: The Ghost of T'Lon
6.10
The Ghost of T’Lon
The Ghost of T’Lon
Kenny Dolphin couldn’t sleep. He got up and looked at himself in the mirror. Over the past two weeks he had lost nearly 30 pounds. That was more than twice what he could safely have lost. He looked and felt emaciated. His hair was still blonde, but more gray had appeared at his temples. His shaggy beard was more gray than blonde. He shaved, but that was only a nominal improvement - the beard had hidden the gaunt look of his face.
Dolphin wandered out of the now vacant director’s lounge into the vacant corridors of the Hunter. It was C shift and most of the crew who were not on duty were asleep. The corridors seemed haunted to him, but he felt, grimly, that he was the one doing the haunting. Until he encountered another ghost.
T’Lon was on Deck 5, standing near the place where her childhood friend had been torn out of the Hunter and ejected into the cold of space, her organs boiled inside her by the radioactive backwash of a cardassian disrupter beam. She looked at Dolphin with hollow, haunted eyes. T’Lok had been buried properly. T’Lon was the ghost here.
Dolphin walked up to T’Lon. He desperately wanted to embrace her, but he could tell that would not be appropriate. She did not have any feelings for him.
“I suppose I should be grateful to you for allowing me to use you during my Pon Farr,” T’Lon said. “You sacrificed a lot for me. I know I told you that I love you. But that person whom you loved - the person who said she loved you - she isn’t here anymore.” She turned to look at the wall.
“It will be okay, T’Lon,” Dolphin said. “Vulcans often lose all emotion in the wake of Pon Farr. Sometimes it takes quite some time before they feel normal again.”
“T’Lok and I had a plan. She was to carry part of my consciousness so that if I lost who I was, she could give that part back to me. I think I am supposed to feel grief that she died. But I don’t.” T’Lon turned to look once again, hollow-eyed at Dolphin, sensing the mingled horror and pity her words evoked in him. “I should feel gratitude toward you. I think I should feel something. But I don’t feel anything. I don’t even care about not having any feelings. I have forgotten what it feels like to care.” She turned her eyes back toward the wall T’Lok had last touched in her desperate attempt to keep from being ejected to her death.
Almost under her breath, T’Lon said, “I am truly carefree.”
Dolphin couldn’t say anything. Horror, pity, love, and loss were battling for dominance in his mind. He watched, numbly, as T’Lon turned and started walking away. She turned back and gave him a strange look, then turned fully toward him, lifted her hand, palm toward him, forming a “V” between her middle two fingers, her thumb extended.
“Live long and prosper, Kenny Dolphin,” she said, quietly, then turned and walked away.
Dolphin lost all track of time, rooted in pity and horror where he had encountered his first ghost. Suddenly terror overtook him and he ran at full speed to the lift. “Medical!” he shouted at the lift. It seemed to take forever for the lift to take him down from deck 5 to the Medical Bay on deck 3.
Dolphin barged into the empty medical office, then into the forward surgery beyond, then into the large surgery that was lined with brig units. All these areas were lifeless.
Desperately, he stormed back to the medical office, then opened the other door into the doctor’s private office. Dr. Tali Shae was seated on her cot, her head rolled back, her legs spread. Mlady was on her knees in front of her. With a sudden yelp, Mlady leapt to her feet and raced out of the office and out of the medical bay at a speed Dolphin had never witnessed before.
Tali Shae howled in pain, her right leg bleeding profusely. “Dermal regenerator!!! Now!!” She pointed at a shelf by the door.
Dolphin retrieved the medical device and quickly brought it to the doctor, who snatched it from his hands and started treating her wounded leg. “Aaaahhh!! She nearly ripped out my artery!” The doctor’s antennae were spasming crazily. She turned her full fury on Dolphin. “What the hell are you doing in this room???!! This room is off limits except for me and the executive staff!!”
Dolphin was terribly confused. “She bit you!!”
“Of course she bit me!! She was feeding!!” Tali Shae took a deep breath. “She always heals me when she’s done. She produces enzymes… Now what the hell are you doing here???”
Dolphin finally remembered. “It’s T’Lon. I think she’s going to try to kill herself…”
Dr. Tali Shae looked even more furious. “Hunter, suicide watch, Ensign T’Lon.”
“Suicide watch initiated,” came Hunter’s voice over the communication system.
“Director Dolphin, you are a senior officer on this boat. You could have initiated a suicide watch.” The doctor took a deep breath. “You need to make things right with Mlady. She is your commanding officer. In case you haven’t noticed, she is a very private individual. Especially about feeding.”
“You were feeding her?”
“Of course I was feeding her,” Dr. Shae responded. “She is not a member of a species. She represents an entirely different evolutionary mechanism - the only example of it we have ever encountered. She may well be the oldest living being in this universe. You need to read her dissertation. It is one of the most secret documents in the Federation, but since she is your C.O., you have access. It includes her autobiography. Now get out of here!”
Dolphin retreated from the doctor’s undiminished fury.
“And Dolphin… don’t let me see your face again for awhile. And I’m not telling you to grow another beard.”
6.10 (of 11)
