Tress Trojet’s Personal Log, supplemental.

We didn’t know. We didn’t know what was different this time from the hundred times before. The why hardly mattered. This time, when we activated the warp drive, shuttlecraft Tar’Hana leapt forward, faster than the speed of light. We closed the distance between us and Caelum Station in minutes, rather than weeks.

Much later, we learned the brave story of the Starfleet crew that breached Underspace to destroy the Vaadwaur technology interfering with subspace outside the Ochides System.

But first, I came face to face with my own hubris.  Not Marl’s hubris.  Tress’s.

“Hurry up, ensign,” Doctor Weld said, barking the words at Trojet. His words never faltered while a nurse cinched his maroon surgical scrubs in place. “My patient! Tell me every step of how you mutilated my patient.”

Stomping through the Caleum Station’s hospital in most of an environmental suit, Trojet fumbled with the helmet between her hands, nearly dropping it. Even then, some instinctive part in her dreaded the idea of putting it down. Consciously, she couldn’t understand why. Would she still need it later aboard the space station? Was she afraid someone would trip over it?

“The patient showed signs of severe respiratory distress,” Trojet reported, focusing, tightly focusing on speaking precisely. “I observed cyanosis of the lips, and the biofunction monitor confirmed tachycardia and oxygen saturation below seventy percent. Our shuttle suffered damage under attack from a Vaadwaur fighter craft. The patient’s surgical frame was torched in the explosion, and the medkit was crushed too.”

Doctor Weld nodded at Trojet, but his gaze didn’t linger. A nurse put a surgical cap on his head while he pulled gloves over his hands. He squinted and stared into the middle distance.

Impatiently, he blurted out, “So what did you do? The sensor readings of his lungs are peculiar.”

Her voice rising half an octave, Trojet replied, “The only tool halfway salvageable from the medkit was the neural stimulators. Purely non-invasive, I promise. I placed them on his chest, one over each lung, and I used them to regenerate his damaged alveolar cells and improve gas exchange. The stimulators manipulated the lipids in the cells in the same way they would stimulate lipid-rich myelin sheaths.”

Trojet narrowed his eyes at her. “That’s a beguiling thought, and mildly horrifying too.”

“He’s still breathing,” Trojet pointed out.

“He’s still breathing,” Weld echoed.

“Might that mean,” Trojet tentatively asked, “I can observe your surgery?”

“Absolutely not!” Weld said. “You will go nowhere near my patient, considering you ignored that same order last time. In fact, go fetch Ensign Nnekin from the shuttlebay. He can observe the surgery.”

Hurt and perplexed and stifled and shameful, Trojet said, “Yes, doctor,” somehow expressing all those things in two words. Eager to please, she pivoted on her heel and sprinted down the corridor. In less than thirty seconds, she nearly crashed into Ensign Qelreth, who boggled as if Trojet were a wild targ in a nursery.

At the last second, Trojet flung herself against the bulkhead to avoid even touching Qelreth. Even that choice earned Trojet another furrowed brow and an antennae swerve.

“He’s still breathing,” Trojet insisted.

She didn’t wait for a reaction. She was too scared to see what it would be.

They weren’t friends.  There was little more than paste between them.

Trojet plopped the helmet back over her head, and she kept on running.