Star Trek by Glenn Hauman Read Free Book Online

Because I guarantee you, if you don’t let me do this,
your
career will be over. I will report to the board of inquiry that you overrode the advice of your ship’s medical officer, and as a result, allowed millions of sentient beings to die needlessly. Your career—no, your
life
will be over. I can do it with or without you, Captain, and frankly at this point I don’t care which. You can’t do it without me.
    I can save lives here, Captain, and by God I will
not
let you or some silly law prevent me from doing that. Now, are you going to take responsibility for what’s going to happen, or am I?
    Captain, it’s going to take me at least an hour before I can start applications. I have to finish designing the resequencing enzymes and run them through computer modeling, and Fabian has to finish rewiring the transporters. I have work to do either way, so you have an hour to make up your mind. With or without you, Captain. In the meantime, get out of my sickbay and let me work.
    TRANSCRIPT ENDS
    * * *
    What else could I do? I left.
    To be honest, arguing wasn’t going to do anything but escalate the situation, and she might make good on her threat. And in any case, it would have wasted valuable time.
    I believe her threat is not an idle one. There are only a few people on the ship now. She could certainly claim medical authority to have me removed from command, even temporarily, leaving her free to do whatever she was going to do anyway.
    She has given me an hour to make a decision. But if this decision is going to be made, it’s going to be made by rational people thinking it through, not because one stressed-out person blackmailed another into it. I do not cave in to blackmail.
    I dislike having to essentially hand over command to a member of my crew because they have more relevant knowledge of the issue at hand than I do. Does that give them the right to usurp the center chair whenever they feel like it?
    On the other hand, someone’s got to drive. Shouldn’t it be the best driver?
    Ordinarily, yes. But what if you know that the driver is going to break laws?
    Honestly, I’m less concerned about the laws being broken than I am about Lense being broken. Because, like it or not, she’s the only option I have. And so I have to be extra careful about using her without breaking her.
    So does that mean that I’m going along and indulging her power trip, even for a few minutes?
    No. I want to save the population here as well. But the principles of the Prime Directive apply here. The Prime Directive says, basically, that we shouldn’t tamper. Internally, the same concept guides our thinking on tampering with ourselves. The original impetus was in reaction to the Eugenics Wars, but the point is we do not have the right to alter our biology to such a radical extent that it gives such a huge evolutionary advantage. And that’s what Dr. Lense is proposing here. To be given more than what we’ve been born with. If the laws regarding genetic enhancement were as inconsequential as she tried to make them out to be, she wouldn’t have spent two months on Starbase 314 having her life pored over.
    I can hear Rachel telling me, “God never gives anybody more than they can handle.”
    Actually, that’s not what I’m hearing. The voice is not from the
shul,
it’s from the kitchen. She was with our youngest granddaughter, Emily, who was visiting from Florida when she was seven. I came upon them in the kitchen, praying for snow. Emily had never seen the white stuff except for the holovids, and was looking to frolic. Rachel, even more so, to play with a granddaughter in the snow. She was even more excited than a seven-year-old. The only problem was it was the beginning of December, and I knew at that time of year the odds of getting snow in New York were almost nonexistent. And I told them so, and that praying for snow was a dumb idea.
    Rachel looked at me, then at