STAR TREK: The Lost Era - 2336 - Well of Souls

by Ilsa J. Bick

  And she missed Nigel. Nigel Holmes had been with Garrett from the moment she took command of the Enterprise four years before. She’d trusted Holmes; he’d saved her life on two occasions; and then she’d failed to save his. The Enterprise had been too far away from Holmes’s shuttle when it came under attack from renegade Klingons, and Nigel had died.

  Aloud, she said, “I think we’re like two porcupines, Jo. I’m prickly about Nigel, and Halak’s got whatever ghosts he’s carting.”

  “So you haven’t made the poor guy’s life any easier.”

  “I think I just said that.” Garrett felt the muscles of her jaw and neck tighten. “If you have a point, make it.”

  “I thought I just did. Even before all this with Batra, it’s safe to say that you didn’t exactly trust or respect the man. I know, I know,” Stern held her palm like a traffic cop signaling a stop, “things aren’t looking too good for him right now. Frankly, when I tell you what’s on my mind ...”

  “There’s more?”

  “Don’t get snide. All I’m saying is that you might be right not to trust him, but that’s not my point. My point is that if you treat someone like a visitor you’d just as soon boot out the airlock without a helmet, it shouldn’t be a surprise if the guy feels he can’t come to you for help, or advice. Answer me this,” Stern leaned on her folded forearms, “did you ever, once, invite this guy to have dinner with you? Once?”

  “What does that ... ?”

  “Fine, I’ll take that as a no. And how often did you and Nigel have dinner? Or coffee? Or just plain talk?”

  Too many times to count. “All right, point taken,” said Garrett. She toyed with her mug. “I’ll admit that it’s been very hard since Nigel ... died. I just can’t get used to not seeing him on the bridge, that’s all. And it’s not what you’re thinking.”

  “And what am I thinking?”

  Garrett drew in a deep breath. “Come on, Jo, we’re both grown-ups here. You’re thinking love affair, right? Well, you’re dead wrong. We were very good friends, and that’s it. I was ... comfortable with him, and it’s been a long time since I felt comfortable with a man.”

  “You mean, anyone who wasn’t Ven.”

  Garrett gave her a frank look. “That’s right. Once burned, twice shy, I guess. I can work with men, fine. But talk? Really talk? That’s another kettle of fish.”

  Stern shrugged. “I don’t doubt that you work with men just fine. I’ve heard no complaints. Actually, the crew respects you, a lot. We’ll get to the crew in a sec. Go on.”

  “There’s nothing more to say. I miss Nigel, and it’s my fault things worked out the way they did. He’s dead because I made a command decision. I feel like I killed a friend, Jo, and I have to live with that.”

  “Okay,” said Stern, nodding. “Okay. But there’s no reason that Halak has to live with it. The poor guy didn’t do anything but show up, you know? You want to keep beating up on yourself, go right ahead. I wouldn’t recommend it, but be my guest. But don’t take it out on Halak. He’s got enough problems.”

  “All right, Doc.” Garrett exhaled. “Point taken. Now what’s this about the crew?”

  Stern gave her a searching look, as if weighing whether to drop it and go on, or pursue what they’d been talking about. “A couple of things,” she said, evidently deciding on the former. “Just want to put a bug in your ear, that’s all. I did morning sick call. It was packed. An awful lot of somatic complaints. You know the drill: fatigue, upset stomachs. Headaches.” She eyed Garrett.

  Garrett ignored the inference. “And?”

  “Crew’s pretty shook up. They want to point fingers. Understandable.”

  “Anyone in particular?”

  “More shook up than anyone else? Yeah. Castillo.” Sighing, Stern threw her hands up in a what-can-you-do gesture. “I don’t know, Rachel. Like I said, maybe it’s good we’ve got a psychiatrist aboard this time around.”

  Garrett’s concern was immediate. Castillo was young, she reflected, and he had all the qualities youth possessed: enthusiasm, energy, passion. He was also loyal, and stubborn to a fault.

  But she should have known that, no matter what face Castillo showed her every day, he would feel Batra’s loss as keenly as Halak. Batra and Castillo had been an item for several months, and then Halak had shown up, and that was that. Garrett knew what everyone knew. Castillo and Batra were still friends, but on a ship—even one with over 700 souls aboard—privacy was hard to come by, and there had been a few times on the bridge when Garrett sensed the tension between Castillo and Halak. (And now, in light of what Stern had said, Garrett wondered if she hadn’t helped that along.)

  “He’s that bad?” asked Garrett.

  “Let’s just say that he wouldn’t mind if Halak went somewhere far away and never came back,” said Stern.

  “He told you this?”

  Stern hiked one shoulder. “In not so many words. He talks. I listen. Right now, I’m not inclined to do anything more, but I might.”

  “Order him to see Tyvan? For what it’s worth, whatever he’s going through hasn’t affected his work. I haven’t picked up on anything other than what you’d expect.”

  “Of course not. You’re the captain. Castillo practically worships the ground you walk on, for crying out loud. You think he’s going to let you see anything? Anyway, I said I might send him to Tyvan. Depends on how things shake out. Actually, I’m hoping he goes on his own. Be good for him to come to that realization instead of being ordered.”

  “You think this is going to be trouble when Halak returns to duty.”

  “Yeah,” said Stern, and paused. Then: “If he returns to duty.”

  Garrett’s eyebrows shot for her hairline. “If? He’s hurt that badly?”

  “Oh, no, it’s not that. His arm’s much better. He can use it without a lot of difficulty. His side, too, though that cut was pretty damn deep. Three more centimeters to the right, and that knife would have gone into his kidney. He bled like stink. That’s why he finally passed out. I had to give him a couple of transfusions just to get his blood pressure off the floor. Amazing, he managed to stay conscious long enough to pilot that shuttle. Chalk it up as one more mystery.”

  “Mystery.” Garrett gave Stern a narrow look. “Referring to?”

  “Well, that Ryn business for one.”

  “Old news, Jo. He was cleared and reassigned.” Privately, the fact that Halak had transferred always bothered Garrett. She knew it was unfair to judge Halak by that fact (You’ve been judging him all along. It’s no wonder he’s in this mess.) but if she’d been in command of the Barker, she might have done the same thing: request that Halak be reassigned. On the other hand, if Halak had been a good first officer, she’d have fought for him to stay, or tried talking him out of it.

  (And if he’d been Nigel ...)

  Shut up, she told the voice, just shut up.

  “And a couple of the Barker’s crew ended up dead, too,” Stern was saying. “Anyway, for what it’s worth, Tyvan’s done an evaluation. Halak might have opened up with him. If not, then Tyvan will have something to say about that, too.”

  “Mmmm.” Garrett reserved judgment on Dr. Yuriel Tyvan. She didn’t know the El-Aurian psychiatrist well. To be honest, she’d deliberately avoided him ever since he’d come aboard during a stopover at Starbase 5. “I’m not sure that Halak will feel he can talk very freely with a psychiatrist who’s doing a return-to-duty eval.”

  “Your paranoia’s showing.”

  “Come on, Jo. This is Starfleet. In the good old days, they used to board people out of the military for psychological reasons. Frankly, I don’t see how a psychiatrist can serve two masters: Starfleet and the patient. You doctors have a lot of power ... don’t make faces. You know I’m right. Relieving people from duty, making recommendations on retention, or return to duty ... things haven’t changed that much. I’m not sure I blame Halak; I wouldn’t feel free to spill my guts to a psychiatrist who I know is going to turn arou
nd and talk about what I just said with everybody else.”

  “I don’t think Tyvan’s like that. Anyway, the idea’s worth a try. We both know what deep space can do to people.”

  “I don’t remember that the early starships had any need for a psychiatrist.”

  “Couldn’t prove that by Mac,” said Stern. “He’s got more than a couple of stories about crazy crewmen.”

  It took Garrett a moment to place the reference. “Mac. You mean Leonard McCoy? Have you talked to him about Tyvan?”

  “Yup. Mac and I go back a ways, you know that. Anyway, I called his office back at Starfleet Medical right before we picked up Tyvan. Know what he said? The scuttlebutt’s that Starfleet’s thinking about posting families together for deep space exploration.”

  “Kids on a starship? Families? I don’t believe it.”

  “I don’t make up the news. I just report it. It’s just a rumor, but the way Mac was talking? I think Tyvan’s an experiment. You put families aboard a ship, maybe there won’t be so many divorces, separations. People will be happier. ...”

  Something must have changed in Garrett’s face because Stern stopped and looked chagrined. “Sony, Rachel. I have a big mouth.”

  Garrett shook her head and retrieved her coffee. The mug was cold; a chalky scum oiled the surface. But she held onto the mug just to have something to do with her hands. “Don’t worry about it, Jo. I’m past the divorce. Really. Now, what do you want to tell me about Halak? What did you mean if he returns to duty?”

  Stern looked as if she wanted to say something else but changed her mind. “Okay. It’s this: Do you understand, and I mean precisely, what Halak was doing on Farius Prime to begin with?”

  Garrett frowned. “No. What someone does on R and R is his business. He said he was visiting an old family friend. That’s his right. Farius Prime isn’t proscribed, so he didn’t break any regulations by going. But you do have to question his judgment about taking Batra along.”

  “No.” Stern screwed up her face in a frown of disagreement. “That was an accident, Rachel. Batra was a grown woman who made a choice. A bad one, as it turned out. You can’t blame Halak for that. What you can blame him for is his not being exactly helpful about filling in the gaps and the discrepancies.”

  Garrett was alert to the change in Stern’s tone. “There’s a problem.”

  “Yeah.” Stern laced her fingers together and leaned her forearms on her desk. “Rachel, his story doesn’t jibe. Not all of it, anyway.”

  “Which part?”

  “How about a lot of it? Right now, he’s sticking to it. He and Batra go to the bazaar, then they see this ... what’s her name ... this Dalal character. They have dinner. Then they’re on their way back to the spaceport when this Bolian and a goon jump them, force them into an aircar, and take them out to God knows where for God knows what. Wherever they’re going, there just happens to be a shuttle. Halak doesn’t know why or how; it’s just there. Then there’s a scuffle. The Bolian has a pulse gun; the goon has a knife. Halak gets knifed, but Batra manages to get the knife away from whomever’s got Halak and she stabs the Bolian, the one with the pulse gun. Then Batra’s killed, and then Halak shoots both the Bolian and the goon. Only ...”

  “Only what?”

  “Only there’s no ionized residue on Halak’s skin. There is on Batra’s, around the entry wound. But if Halak pulled the trigger on the Bolian and another goon, then there should be blowback. There isn’t.”

  “Meaning he didn’t use the pulse gun.”

  “Not damned likely. And if there was another goon, he remains a mystery because I can’t find a trace of him anywhere—no blood, no DNA, nothing. On the other hand, the blood on Halak’s clothing? Two types, his own and the Bolian’s.”

  “He said that Batra stabbed the Bolian. If Halak struggled with the Bolian, he’d have the Bolian’s blood on his clothing. That jibes.”

  “Rachel, Halak had that Bolian’s blood all over him—under his nails, in his hair, on his neck. His cheeks, for God’s sake. Not to mention bone and stuff that tests out as cerebral cortex. Bolian.”

  “And from that you infer ... what?”

  “You ever take a good look at blood spatter? Well, I have. Did a bunch of forensics work when I was in training before I decided on going the deep space route. Now, blood oozes. It pools. It flows. And it spurts, but only if the heart’s still pumping. What the spatter pattern looks like depends on how the body’s positioned; how much you get on you depends on your relationship to the body. Now to get all that blood where it ended up, I figure the Bolian was lying on his back and Halak was on top, maybe straddling him.”

  “So what are you thinking?”

  “That he sure as hell didn’t stab the Bolian to death. You don’t get Bolian brains under your fingernails if you’re stabbing him.” Stern shrugged, rubbed her neck with her hand. “Jeez, Rachel, I dunno. All I know is that the evidence suggests that Halak didn’t use a pulse gun or a phaser, and he may not have used a knife. The evidence suggests that he bludgeoned the guy to death.”

  “Could it be that things just happened too quickly? Mixed him up?”

  “Sure. In fact, I’d say that would be par for the course. I’m no psychiatrist, but trauma’s funny. Either you remember everything—how things smelled and tasted and even what clothes you were wearing—clear as a bell, or it’s all a jumble. So I’d be inclined to let it go except for a few other things. That wound, Rachel, the one on Halak’s back, and his left arm? They’re old.”

  Garrett was startled. “Old? What do you mean?”

  “I mean that he was stabbed all right, only it happened earlier and then the wounds dehisced, pulled apart, probably as a result of the fight with the Bolian. By the time I got to them, rudimentary epithelial regeneration had already begun. So I couldn’t close them right away. Tissues don’t heal as well, more chance of infection. I had to leave the wounds open, let them granulate in a bit, and then close them up. I did the second surgery on his back yesterday. Only when I tested the skin around his wounds, I found evidence of antimicrobial packs.”

  “What?” Garrett was flabbergasted. “But then that would mean ...”

  “He got knifed much earlier, and someone patched him up. Only the question is who? This Dalal?” Stern leaned in closer. “An interesting question, isn’t it? I’ll tell you something else. Halak lost a lot of blood, only where is it? There wasn’t enough soaked into his clothes, or pooled in that shuttle, to account for the way his intravascular volume was down. So he did his bleeding, only not in the shuttle.”

  As astonishing as it was for her to think it, Garrett found what she thought even more incredible to say aloud. But she did anyway. “You think he’s lying.”

  Stern hesitated. “God, I hate going that far, especially with a fellow officer, and I happen to like Halak quite a bit. Let’s just say I don’t think it’s so cut and dried, pardon the pun. There was undigested food in Batra’s stomach, so she had a meal before she died, and I have no doubt she was shot. Only she was pretty banged up, her jaw especially. But, Rachel, get this: she bruised. Her tongue was lacerated, like she bit herself. Only there were no clots, and the tissue was regenerating. If Halak’s correct in his sequence, she died before she had a chance to bruise, and there ought to have been blood clots in her mouth. There weren’t. And here’s a kicker: There are traces of an antiseptic salt in her mouth. Someone tended to her, too.”

  Garrett sat very still, her headache forgotten, absorbing the implications of what Stern was saying. If Halak hadn’t outright lied, then he was omitting a great deal. But omissions were not, in and of themselves, crimes. Stern hadn’t found anything to contradict Halak’s assertion that he’d killed in self-defense, and no one on Farius Prime was even admitting to, or advertising that someone had misplaced a Bolian.

  “You said there were a few things that didn’t jibe,” Garrett said. “The wounds, the blood spatter.”

  Stern ticked the rest off on her fingers.
“The amount of blood loss, and Batra’s bruises. The stuff in her mouth. And one more thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  Stern’s eyes zeroed in on Garrett. “Dirt.”

  Chapter 14

  His companel shrilled, and Tyvan jumped.

  “Shouldn’t you answer that?” asked Bat-Levi.

  “Oh, it can wait,” Tyvan lied. He knew who it was: Bulast, to remind him that Halak’s inquiry, delayed three days while Starfleet Intelligence rummaged around his ship and the commander mended, would begin in fifteen minutes.

  “Oh,” was all Bat-Levi said, though the skin above her eyebrows furrowed in a slight frown. He read her meaning: Hails weren’t things an officer could afford to ignore.

  The hail cut the air again.

  “One second,” said Tyvan. Nothing was more important than being with Bat-Levi right now; he was sure the captain would see it that way. Still, since his chair—black leather, high-backed—squatted in front of his desk, he faced the unenviable task of hoisting himself around in his seat to grope for the audio cutoff: an undignified posture for an officer, he reflected, so it was good he wasn’t one to stand on ceremony. Tyvan rummaged around and killed the audio in mid-bleat. “No, I shouldn’t answer that,” he said, dropping back. “You came by to see me. Something must be wrong.”

  “Wrong?” said Bat-Levi. The horizontal furrows above her eyebrows deepened, and her eyes narrowed, as if she worried that she’d made a mistake, or thought this was some sort of test. “Why do you say that? This is when I’m scheduled to see you. Session four. You schedule, I come. Simple as that.”

  So she didn’t know. She had no idea. Very interesting. When Bat-Levi had shown up at his office door twenty minutes before, Tyvan had to contain his surprise, especially given the fact that he had to be very elsewhere in short order. He’d been about to put her off and ask why she was here, now, didn’t she realize what day it was, but then caught a glimpse of the unmistakable shine of unshed tears in her overly bright black eyes. And then he’d understood and he’d kept his mouth shut, let her come into his office, her servos squalling, and get herself settled. She hadn’t been angry, thank heaven, or even distantly polite; she’d seemed tired and wrung out, and her movements were slower, as if she carried some greater weight than her prosthetics.