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III, living in Pike City, his name’s Roberto. You’ll find—Get back here, you!”
Lense heard a sudden scuffle of background noise and wondered just what was going on down there.
    â€œGot to get back to the situation at hand. You have to get the axe to Bobby, or I’ll haunt you from one end of the galaxy to the other. And don’t worry about me. If I had to, I’d have commandeered a shuttlecraft to get down here and do my job. This is what I’m supposed to be doing, just like you’re doing what
you
have to do. Corsi out.”
    Terrific,
thought Lense.
Somebody else haunting me. Just what I needed.
    She thought about Domenica Corsi, a woman who she’d shared a cabin with for a year and knew almost nothing about.
Yes, but nobody knows anything about her. Except maybe Fabian.
    Her eyes drifted to the drawers under Corsi’s bed.
The axe? What was that all about? Knowing Core Breach, it’s probably some old Klingon cleaver, designed to slay seven
targs
with one blow.
    She got down and knelt in front of Corsi’s bed, then opened the drawers.
    She didn’t see it at first—then she saw a wooden case about a meter long, in the back under some civilian clothes. She emptied the drawer so she could get at it, and took it out.
    It was wood, but it had been sealed with a fixative; she couldn’t feel the wood grain. It had a clear top, and through it she could see the axe.
    It wasn’t a Klingon axe at all. It looked like it was human made, and apparently very old—the handle was made of wood and it was beginning to show signs of age. The axe head rested on what looked like a triangular pillow, a deep blue with white stars on it, and showed wear on the red paint. This was no ceremonial weapon; it had been used.
    And down at the bottom of the case on the glass, there was a brass plaque. The inscription read:
    A firefighter performs
only one act of bravery in his life,
and that’s when he takes the oath.
Everything he does after that
is merely in the line of duty.
In Memoriam—September 11, 2001
    Lense knew the date, and realized what she had to be holding.
    She reverently placed the box down on Corsi’s unmade bed, then turned and left to go back to sickbay.
    Captain’s Personal Log, Stardate 53665.1.
Things are not going well here. The number of advanced cases on the planet has cracked two thousand. The death toll is a hundred and thirteen. Dr. Lense is getting more and more frustrated and tense. I went to visit her in sickbay, and I saw her sitting at her desk working, while Emmett was running around from table to table, with numerous test tubes in his hands.
    She’s getting heavily stressed.
    I realize this is a crucible issue for Dr. Lense—she’s being placed in yet another life-or-death situation, where she is the last, best hope to save the lives of thousands upon thousands of people. Again. She had to do it during the war and failed—or rather, she didn’t live up to her and everybody else’s superhuman expectations—and now she’s in a situation where the number of potential corpses could increase by three orders of magnitude from the last time.
    And I don’t have any way to take the burden off her. Deep Space Station K-7 is the closest help, and it’s a week away. She’s on her own.
    I wonder what I’m actually going to put in the official log about all this.

CHAPTER
5
    T he doors to sickbay opened, and Fabian poked his head in. He saw that Dr. Lense was running between tables and screens and cultures, with Emmett following behind trying to keep up, but moving slowly and jerkily, like an internal motor was misfiring. “Hi, Doc. Can I play through, or is this a bad time?”
    â€œIs there any way in which this could be construed as a good time, Fabian?”
    â€œHey, you’ve still got your health …” Fabian winced at his own stupid comment.
    â€œShut up. What do you