Star Trek Into Darkness Page 0,61

but I’m not sure everyone should. Not until we know more about what I’m looking at right now. A lot more.”

Located between the supposedly secret advanced new drive and the control compartment that had threatened to cut off McCoy’s arm, there was something else. A sizeable additional compartment. What it contained wasn’t part of a drive system at all.

It was a human being—a man, to be exact. His skin was terribly pale. Which was not inappropriate, as he was as frozen solid as ice.

Though portions of the Enterprise’s sickbay were designed to, if need be, accommodate alien life-forms who bulked considerably larger than human, it still proved a difficult and awkward task to wrestle the disarmed torpedo all the way into one of the examination rooms. That was where Kirk and Spock found Carol Marcus hovering over the deactivated weapon, gazing down at the restful, pale-white face of the man lying within. His age was indeterminate. His physical age, Kirk reminded himself. There was no telling how long this man had lain in his present state. Seated on a nearby bed, McCoy acknowledged their arrival with a nod. Shirtless, he sat patiently while one of his nurses tended to his injured arm.

“What have you learned?” Kirk immediately asked Marcus.

“A little. Not nearly enough.” She indicated the torpedo and its unlikely, unreasonable, and utterly inexplicable contents. “It’s brilliant, actually. Somebody managed to shrink the drive unit to the point where they had room for an additional compartment and retrofitted the space that had been freed up to accommodate a cryogenic capsule. A portion of the onboard stored energy meant to maintain the weapon’s electronics and related systems was redirected to sustain the capsule’s functionality.” Marcus shook her head at the wonder of it all. “A capsule like this requires only minimal power to sustain cold stasis for a considerable period of time.”

Kirk’s gaze shifted from her to the figure in the torpedo. There was no movement, of course, not even a rising and falling of the chest or a flexing of the nostrils. The man lying within was not breathing. Which, given his current frozen state, was not conclusive of anything.

“Is he alive?”

Standing on the other side of the torpedo, McCoy spoke up. “Yeah, he’s alive. His vitals are minimal, barely detectable, but they’re there. Slowed waaayyy down. To levels you’d want if you chose to take a long nap on the floor of the Antarctic Ocean.”

Kirk pressed his chief physician. “Can he be revived?”

McCoy was plainly dubious. “Not without the proper equipment. You can’t improvise this sort of thing. The same science that was used to put him in this state has to be used to bring him out of it. If we try to bring him back without the proper instrumentation, the attempt could kill him as soon as revive him. . . . This technology’s beyond me.”

“How advanced, Doctor?” an obviously intrigued Spock inquired.

“It’s not advanced,” Carol explained. “That cryotube is ancient.”

“We haven’t had to freeze anyone since the earliest days of deep space exploration,” McCoy added. “The discovery and development of warp capability made this particular branch of biotech obsolete. An instant antique. And speaking of antiques, that’s the most interesting thing about our friend here.” He winced as pain flared in his injured arm.

“I did a quick scraping off his right shoulder. Less than a flea would take, nothing he’d notice even if he was awake. But enough to run some tests.” McCoy nodded at the torpedo and its frozen occupant. “He’s three hundred years old.”

Kirk exchanged a meaningful glance with his science officer. Though neither man spoke a word, their thoughts were aligned.

The two armed security officers on duty at the entrance to the brig had to move swiftly to open it. As fast as Kirk was moving and as angry as he was, he might have gone right through the door. He wasted no time confronting the room’s single prisoner.

“Who are you? Why is there a man in the torpedo we examined?”

Gazing back through the barrier at the intent Kirk, the prisoner sighed tiredly.

“There are men and women in all the torpedoes, Captain. And I put them there.”

Once again captain and first officer exchanged looks. Kirk repeated himself.

“Who the hell are you?”

It was a question the prisoner had been asked too many times before; one which he had been forced to answer far more often than he wished. But no one had asked him in some time, he reminded himself. So despite how much