by Peter David
Mekari was watching Soleta’s disruptor.
Soleta was watching Mekari’s eyes.
She saw it in his eyes before he saw it in her disruptor. The sudden gathering of nerve, the quick flash of, Now in his mind which signaled his intent a half-instant before he actually did it.
Soleta dropped to the ground just as he swung his weapon back up and fired where she had been. Soleta fired off a shot and the disruptor struck him squarely in the chest, knocking him off his feet and sending him crashing back against a wall. His own weapon clattered from his hand as he sagged to the ground.
Soleta, holding her own weapon firmly, not letting down her guard for an instant, crossed over and knelt next to him. He was staring fixedly into the air at nothing. There seemed to be no sign of life in him. She turned to call to Sharky.
Mekari snapped upright, howling in fury. Whatever he was wearing under his guardsman armor had absorbed the blast from the disruptor, or at least had diminished the damage enough to leave him alive and kicking. His head had had no such protection, which was obviously why he hadn’t made his move earlier and taken his chances with her shooting at him.
His move was so abrupt, so unexpected, that it caught Soleta completely unawares. Before she knew it, a wide sweep of his hand had knocked her disruptor away. She tried to reach for his shoulder, to render him unconscious, but her position was bad. Given a few moments to reposition herself, she might have been able to accomplish it, but he didn’t present her with them. The much larger Romulan grabbed both of her hands in his, shoved them back and her down. Her arms pinned under her, Mekari was atop her, driving his knee into her stomach. She gasped, the air knocked out of her, and he kept her flat on her back, one hand planted firmly on her chest, the other at her throat. He had her completely helpless.
“You are a feisty one,” he snarled, and there seemed to be a primitive form of appreciation in his eyes. And there was something else in there, too, a desire dark and primeval, building up with a fearful life all its own.
He brought his mouth savagely down upon hers, and his breath stank, and horror rampaged through Soleta’s mind as his hands began to do things and she realized what was about to happen. And there was the voice once more in her head, but it was not her own voice but her mother’s, screaming, No, not again, not again, not again . . .
Soleta snapped.
With a strength that Mekari could not have known that she had . . . with a strength even she did not know she had . . . Soleta swung her legs up and around his midsection. She clamped them together like pincers and began to squeeze. She had positioned them directly under the joint of the armor’s torso section, where there was no protection, and Mekari suddenly felt his lower ribs bending under the strain. Soleta’s expression was not remotely Vulcan. It was barely that of a sentient creature, but rather the infuriated expression of a feral beast.
Mekari was shoved partway back, and that was all Soleta needed to pull her arms out from under her. She twisted, drew one leg out and under him, relieving the pressure on him for a moment but giving her better leverage, and she thrust out with the leg, sending him toppling back. Before he had even hit the floor she was upon him, quick as a cat, and Vulcan training was gone from her, the nerve pinch was gone from her. Now it was her Romulan blood hammering through her, and she utterly gave herself to the savage call of it as she brought both her fists together down on his head. The blow stunned him momentarily, and then he tried to fight back, but Soleta did not provide him the opportunity. She started pounding on him, without letup, and in her head she could hear the screams of her mother, just as she had imagined them all these years, but they were screams of triumph and retribution, of getting back a piece of that which she had lost.
Soleta lost awareness of where she was or what she was, the world turning to a black haze around her. She knew she was doing something with her fists, but she could no longer remember what.
And then firm hands were grabbing her from behind, hauling her into the air, shouting, “Enough! Enough!” She whirled, ready to lay into whoever had interfered, and through the cloud of fury that permeated the air around her, she saw Sharky looking at her with a mixture of concern and fear. She raised her hands and he flinched automatically, even as he called, “Soleta! Enough, I said! He can’t hurt you! Look! Look!” And there was such force in his voice that Soleta was able to force herself to turn and look down at Mekari.
His face was covered with blood, all his own. His nose was broken, his right eye pounded shut, the left in the process of closing. His lips were going to be the size of balloons by the time they were done swelling. She wasn’t sure, but she thought his jaw might be broken.
Her breath rasped in her chest as she fought to bring her adrenaline levels back to something approaching the norm. Sharky looked with blasé fascination at Mekari’s ruined face, and he commented, “I could be wrong about this, but I think I’ve just lost my contact for Romulan ale. I don’t think he’s going to be especially cooperative in the future.”
She tried to speak, but nothing would come to her. It was as if her vocal cords were paralyzed.
“All right . . . here’s what we do. We take off and just dump him into space.”
She couldn’t quite believe she’d heard him properly. She looked at Sharky, who was staring back at her with impassive, dead eyes, not unlike the Earth creature for which he was named. “You mean . . . kill him?”
“Ah, she’s found her voice. Don’t sound so appalled, girl. If it hadn’t been for me, he’d probably be dead already, at your hand.”
“That was . . . in a battle.”
“That was no battle. That was a slaughter. Leaving him alive could lead to complications, as could discovering his corpse. Unless you have your phaser with you. We could just incinerate—”
“No. We push him out of the ship and just go.”
“That, girl, would not be the wisest—”
“It’s what we’re doing, Sharky,” and there was something in her tone, something in her look, that made it very clear that any other option was not going to be an acceptable one.
Sharky clearly was weighing the possibilities of what he would likely encounter from Soleta, in terms of resistance, if he followed the course that he had proposed. Obviously he thought better of it, because he finally said, “You grab the head, I’ll take the legs. We toss him and get the hell off this planet, while we’re still able to.” All Soleta was able to manage was a nod.
Together they picked up the unconscious Mekari and dragged him to the gangway. They glanced around, saw no one in the immediate vicinity, and then pitched him off. Mekari rolled down the length of the gangway and onto the ground with a thud. Sharky didn’t even give so much as a backward glance as he headed to the control room to fire up the ship and depart Romulus. Soleta, for her part, didn’t move from the spot. Instead she simply looked at his unmoving body until the gangway cycled shut, cutting him off from view.
McHENRY & KEBRON
“I DON’T LIKE YOU,” said Adulux, and he pulled the trigger of the gun that was right up against Kebron.
They always say that at the moment of your death your life flashes before your eyes. Kebron had heard that any number of times, but had never believed it. Yet now, much to his astonishment, he found it to be true.
He saw stretched before him, or behind him as the case may be, a life of isolation. He had separated himself not only from his fellow crew members, but from his fellow Brikar. He tried to determine why that was the case. What was it that had driven himself to his solitary state? And the profession that he had chosen! He was a security chief, someone who was conditioned and accustomed to suspecting everyone of being a threat.
He had never had a serious relationship with anyone, Brikar or otherwise, in his life. As he had so succinctly put it at one point, he did not desire romance. He had goldfish instead, and they were more than enough for him.
Had he taken advantage of his massive build, his invulnerability and s
eparateness, to construct a life for himself where no one and nothing could touch him in any way? Why? Perhaps here, at the end of his life, he should use what microseconds were left to him to take a long, hard, piercing look at himself and determine, once and for all, where the truth of the being known as Zak Kebron truly was.
He considered that for perhaps half a microsecond before deciding that it was a stupendously bad idea and he should be content with dying as he had lived: in blissful lack of self-awareness. Self-awareness was useful if you were then going to use that knowledge to change. He had no intention of doing so. So forget it.
At that moment, Mark McHenry fell on Adulux.
No one in the room had any idea where in hell McHenry had come from. One moment he wasn’t there, the next, he was. He crashed down on Adulux, sending the shot wild, and it chewed up a section of the floor but otherwise did no damage.
Adulux, however, did manage to hold on to the blaster even as he and McHenry went down in a tumble of arms and legs. Adulux tried to disentangle himself and bring the blaster around to fire on Kebron once more. But McHenry, quickly discerning what was happening, knocked the blaster from Adulux’s grip. It skittered across the floor and came to a rest some feet away.
Credit Adulux with refusing to accept turnabouts in his fortune. He tried to make it to the blaster, but McHenry wasn’t letting him go. Instead he had wrapped himself around Adulux’s middle and was holding him firmly. Adulux let out a howl of fury and tried to shove McHenry off him, and suddenly two large feet were planted directly in Adulux’s path. He looked up, and then up even further.
Kebron stood over him, looking extremely displeased. “One side, McHenry,” he said, and without waiting for Mark to comply, he grabbed Adulux by the front of his shirt and hauled him to his feet.
“You,” he said sharply, “have been a good deal of trouble.”
He pivoted and threw Adulux halfway across the room. Cautiously and correctly, he sent him tumbling away from the blaster, so that he couldn’t snag it and start more trouble. Adulux crashed to a halt against the far wall, but he was still not done. He tried to haul himself up . . .
. . . and then Zanka was upon him. For she had picked up the blaster and she was now holding it by the business end. She swung it fast, sending the butt crashing against Adulux’s skull. Adulux let out a moan and sank to the floor.
“This is all your fault!” she shouted, obviously far from done. “You tried to kill Kebron! That’s all you ever do, is try and hurt people! Well, I’m tired of it! I’m tired of you, and all the things you’ve done!” She reversed the blaster and aimed the business end at him. It was quivering slightly, reflecting the fact that her hands were trembling, but her face looked determined. “And now I’m going to . . . to . . .”
“You’re not going to do anything,” Kebron informed her. He had gotten to his feet and now was walking across the room, looking quite calm and in control.
“He tried to kill you!”
“Zanka, if I killed everyone who tried to kill me . . .” Then he paused, giving the matter some thought. “Actually, I suppose I do tend to kill everyone who tries to kill me. But that’s usually in combat situations. This is a helpless person . . .”
“He might not stay helpless! If I leave him alone, he might try to come after me and . . . and . . .”
“He won’t,” Kebron said firmly, his gaze never wavering from Adulux. “For he knows that if he does, I will come after him. You would not want that . . . would you, Adulux.”
Adulux, thoroughly intimidated, managed to shake his head.
Zanka did not appear entirely convinced. But she appeared to lack the resolve to fire the weapon and put an end to Adulux. After long moments of indecision, she lowered the weapon and handed it over to Kebron. Kebron took it and gave a brisk nod of approval.
“And . . . what about you? And me?” asked Zanka.
“There is not,” Kebron said firmly, “a you and me. Your attentions are flattering. But that is all they are. I do not reciprocate.”
“Why not?” There was a tinge of desperation to her voice.
It actually stirred something within him. The fact that it did so annoyed the hell out of Kebron, who definitely did not need any sort of entanglements fouling up his life. “The simple fact, Zanka, is that I am not who, or even what, you think I am.”
She stared at him uncomprehendingly, and then understanding seemed to shine within her. “I . . . think I understand. You are saying . . . you do not like women.”
“What?” It took him a moment to comprehend. “Oh. No, I’m not saying that.”
“You do like women, then!”
“No. I don’t like anyone. People annoy me. That’s why I do what I do. So I can shoot people while earning a living.”
“That seems very . . . sad.”
He shrugged. He liked shrugging. It was eloquent in its silence.
McHenry, in the meantime, had not gotten up. Instead he was simply sitting on the floor, staring toward nothing. It was an attitude that Kebron had seen him display on any number of occasions. It had always annoyed him. It still did. “McHenry,” he started to say.
And to his surprise, the response he got was a curt “Shhh!”
It was understandable that Kebron was startled. McHenry was rarely forceful or vehement about anything. But this time, he actually seemed to have something very specific on his mind. Kebron couldn’t begin to guess what it was. The thing was, McHenry’s thought process—by his own admission—tended to be all over the map. If McHenry was actually focusing on just one thing, that was a very daunting prospect. It made it seem as if practically anything was possible.
“What’s he doing?” asked Zanka.
“Shhh!” was Kebron’s reply.
Zanka shrugged because she’d seen Kebron do it, then turned her attention back to Adulux. Her face darkened as she saw him there, crouched in a corner, looking not at all threatening. He was rubbing his head where she had struck him. “If I hadn’t disappeared, you would have killed me, wouldn’t you,” she demanded.
“No,” he said softly. “I know that’s what you’d like to believe . . . because it makes it that much easier to demonize me in your own mind.” He looked up at her and said sadly, “I’ve made mistakes. I know I have. I guess the biggest mistake I made was thinking that it’s always possible to make up for mistakes. And it’s not. So . . . so if we get out of this, I just . . . I want you to know that you really, truly, don’t have to live in fear of me. Sometimes it just takes getting some sense knocked into you.”
“All right, well . . . well, good,” she said uncertainly.
He turned his back to her then and just sat there, looking very small and not particularly threatening.
“Platypus,” said McHenry.
Of all the things that Kebron had expected him to say, somehow that wasn’t very high up on the list. “What?” he asked.
“None of this makes any sense,” McHenry said slowly. “The tests that we and the others were subjected to, wildly random, like they were drawn from a hat or something. The haphazard nature of it all. There has been any number of instances where superior races . . . or, at least, so-called superior races . . . subjected captives to a series of tests. If you believe the autobiography of James Kirk, it frequently happened to his people during their mission. But they always seemed to be designed around learning something about us . . . or even teaching us something as well. This, though . . . this has all just been idiocy.”
Zanka and Adulux were looking at each other in confusion. “What is he talking about?” said Zanka to Kebron. “He’s talking as if . . . as if there’s other beings, or races, or some sort of . . .”
“Quiet,” Kebron said.
“Don’t you tell her to be quiet!” bristled Adulux.
Kebron fired a glance at him. “You, too.”
There was something in the way Kebron looked at him that made Adulux realize that saying anything further might be counterproductive to hi
s health.
But even if they had been inclined to try and keep chatting, the booming voice that filled the room at that moment would certainly have silenced them.
“Idiocy! How DARE you!”
The almost sepulchral voice filled the room, and Adulux and Zanka both let out high-pitched screams of horror. Even Kebron was taken aback by the intensity of it.
McHenry didn’t seem at all fazed. His expression was carefully neutral, his manner unruffled. “That’s right. Idiocy. If you ask me, you’re losing your touch.”
“And who asked you!” More than anything, the owner of the strident voice sounded irked that McHenry was not the least bit intimidated, or even startled. “You little nothing! You no one! You—”
“Master of chaos and confusion,” McHenry said, folding his arms and looking more amused than anything. “Gamester. Trickster. I was thinking of all manner of things, and along what I like to refer to as the tortured paths of my mind, I thought of the duck-billed platypus. And that, in turn, for no reason I can really put my finger on, made me think of you.”
Kebron was completely lost. He had no idea whatsoever what McHenry was talking about. Nor was he accustomed to seeing the erstwhile helmsman in this manner. Usually McHenry spoke as if he were preoccupied with something else—anything else—beside whatever they happened to be working on at any given moment. It was as if he was in his own time zone somewhere. But now, McHenry was so focused that he seemed to be one big targeter. He even seemed a little taller somehow.
What struck Kebron the most, though, was that the booming voice had stopped talking. It almost seemed to be thinking about what McHenry had said.
And then it spoke again, and the voice had lost a bit of its ostentation. In fact, it sounded almost . . .
. . . flattered.
“Did you really like it? The platypus, I mean.”
“It had you written all over it. Anyone with twenty-twenty hindsight could see that,” said McHenry.
There was a sudden flash of light, and Kebron automatically took a step back. The green, long-limbed alien was there . . . and then another burst of light, and the alien vanished. He was replaced by what appeared to be a human male of somewhat moderate size, black hair combed back, and a look of barely restrained contempt in his eyes that was intertwined with an almost blasé amusement.
