Aronnax In The Abyss
A Vulcan captain and her husband, a long-exiled Cardassian, touch on Deep Space Nine after their vessel is nearly destroyed by an explosion - a suspected piece of tampering by the Maquis. Julian becomes embroiled in the ensuing intrigue - alongside him, so does Garak. Julian can’t decide which interests him more.
Set late in S3, after the events of The Wire, but before the war begins in earnest.
WIP. 15k. Rated M. Julian Bashir/Elim Garak. Features OCs, Ilar Jasek and T’ran. Lots of interspecies romance and cultural differences. This is chapters 1-3.
Chapter One
“There’s a Vulcan trading vessel incoming, Doctor Bashir, and they’ve been hit hard. Part of their hull plating blew apart – electrical burns and air deprivation are the main problems. Estimated thirty injured with moderate to serious injuries, ETA twelve minutes.” Kira’s tone is clipped and sharp, and Julian nods even though she can’t see him.
“Got you,” Julian replies to Kira over the comm link, and when the line goes quiet, he snaps into action. Ordering the other doctors to ready beds and get into place, he moves swiftly down the length of the medical wing, putting things into place – thirty people is a lot for a sudden intake, but he’s ready.
Or, at least, he thinks he is.
It actually takes less than twelve minutes for them to start arriving into the medical bay – members of security beam those injured directly into the infirmary, and Julian barely takes notice of anything around him.
When he’s thrust into situations like this, everything around him dims to darkness. Julian sees nothing, hears nothing, feels nothing except his medical duties: he takes pulses, asks short, pointed questions and does diagnostic tests, and as best as he can, he does what he’s been trained for – he heals. This is what he has trained for since he was a child, nursing Kukulaka and tenderly stitching up his wounds – this, Julian honestly believes, is what he was born to do. Or at least, a rather bitter voice at the back of his head says in an undertone, what I was genetically resequenced to do.
“Who’s this?” he asks crisply of the last patient to be brought into the room; a broad-shouldered man lays her on a bed. She’s a Vulcan woman perhaps some way into her fifties, and there’s a deep laceration across side of her scalp, baring thick, green ooze that has soaked into her dark hair. He runs his tricorder over her, frowning deeply – as a nurse draws a dermal regenerator over the cut, he takes in evidence of something a little more severe.
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