by Ilsa J. Bick
Halak’s eyes drifted to Garrett’s then back to Jase. “Mourn your dad. Grieve for him. But take a good hard look at your father and then tell me that your mother’s wrong.”
“No, no,” Jase moaning, his chest convulsing with sobs, “he’s not dead, I’m not ready, I’m not ready for this, I don’t want to see this. It’s not fair.” Jase turned aside and buried his face in Halak’s chest. Jase began to cry in that open-mouthed despairing way of young children when their heart is breaking. “It’s not fair, I’m not ready, I’m not ready!”
“It’s all right,” said Halak, wrapping his arms around Jase’s shoulders. He held the boy. “It’s all right.”
Garrett’s vision blurred with tears. She felt Kaldarren’s fingers scrabbling at her wrist. She turned back; Kaldarren’s dark eyes were fixed on hers.
“Listen to your doctor,” he said, his voice hitching. A spasm of pain made his face twist. “She’s right. If I go aboard your ship…if they find…a more compatible match, they will…will hop. Rachel, they can’t die, and they are more of them here, they’ll bring others, they’ll…force them, and I’m not sure how…how much longer I can…I can…”
“Don’t talk,” said Garrett, hot tears tracking down her cheeks. She clutched his hand to her chest. “Ven, please, please, don’t talk.”
“No,” Kaldarren hissed. “You have to listen. My data…my data.” He subsided, took a deep breath, and seemed to gather the last of his strength. “Tricorder has it all. Take that with you. Don’t let this be…be for nothing. Don’t…” His back arched, and his teeth clenched in a sudden spasm. “Don’t!”
“Ven!” cried Garrett desperately. To Stern: “Do something! Anything!”
Face set, Stern fitted a hypo and jetted the solution into the angle of Kaldarren’s neck. Almost instantly, Kaldarren’s muscles relaxed; his head lolled to one side.
Garrett looked up, apprehension etched into her features. “Did you…?” The words died on her lips, but her meaning was clear: Did you kill him?
They had known each other so long Stern read Garrett perfectly. “Not my call to make, Rachel. That was just a strong painkiller.”
Stern replaced her hypospray, then pushed up and bent over Pahl. There was an atonal whirling sound as she ran her tricorder over the boy. “This one, we can help. Jase was right; there’s nothing here. Far as I can tell, his brain’s shut down, that’s all. Traumatic withdrawal. The sooner we get him aboard, the less psychological damage there’ll be.” When Garrett didn’t respond, Stern continued, “Rachel, we don’t have much time.”
“What do you mean?” asked Halak. Jase had quieted, but he still held the boy in his arms. “What’s going on, Captain?”
“One word,” said Stern, pushing to her feet. She winced as her knees cracked. “Cardassians.”
The color drained from Halak’s face. The face he turned to Garrett was grave. “Captain?”
Without looking up, Garrett nodded. “In a minute. Jase.”
Halak felt Jase stir, and in another moment, the boy lifted his face from the hollow of Halak’s chest. Jase’s face was splotchy and swollen from crying, but his eyes were dry now, his tears spent. Without another word, he disengaged himself from Halak’s arms, and Halak let him go.
Jase dropped to his knees. Put his arms around his father’s neck. “I love you, Dad,” he whispered into Kaldarren’s ear. “I’ll always love you.”
There was no indication that Kaldarren heard, and after a few seconds, Jase kissed his father’s cheek and stood. He backed away until he stood a few inches from Halak.
Halak didn’t touch him. He said only, “It’s hard, son.”
The boy nodded but didn’t turn around. Wordlessly, they watched Garrett.
Still kneeling by Kaldarren’s side, Garrett pulled first her right then her left hand from their respective gloves and let her bare fingers trail over Kaldarren’s features. She closed her eyes. This is what it’s like to be blind and so you memorize the face of the person you love and you pour all your love into a single touch.
Garrett touched Kaldarren’s face again and again: tracing his broad forehead, that fine nose, his high cheekbones. And something extraordinary happened. With every pass of her hand, Kaldarren’s face softened beneath her fingers; the deep lines etched on his face smoothed; and she heard his breathing grow less labored and more like sleep. At last, Kaldarren exhaled a long, deep sigh.
It’s his soul. Garrett knew this was absurd, but the thought sprang to her mind anyway. He’s letting go, but I’m here, I have him, and I’ll carry his soul like memory.
Finally, Garrett ceased. She opened her eyes, sat back on her heels, and let her hands rest on her thighs. She stared down at Kaldarren for a long moment.
Good-bye, my love. Kaldarren’s face wavered in her vision, and the hot burn of tears pricked her eyes. Good-bye.
She stood then, her heart full of grief, her will stronger than steel. “I’m ready,” she said, cupping Jase’s hot cheek with her right hand. Their eyes met, and for an instant, she imagined that their minds joined, and that Jase knew what his parents had shared. Or maybe it was just an illusion.
Then Garrett pulled on her gloves and retrieved her helmet. She clipped her helmet to her waist, and the snap was crisp and sharp. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Chapter 35
The problem with a stationary orbit, lunar or otherwise, is that it’s very boring. Same scenery, same bunch of coordinates. Same old, same old. Talma yawned. Well, at least, she was comfortably bored.
Only one real glitch so far: an odd signature about an hour ago. At first, she’d thought nothing of it. It had been a simple variance in the far end of the electromagnetic spectrum—there briefly and then, just as quickly, gone. Hunkered down behind the planet’s larger moon, she had no way to study the blip further. Sure, it could have been a ship, but then where had it gone? Her mind drifted to the Cardassian scouts she was sure were only hours away, if that. But a Cardassian scout ship would have continued its sweep, and she would have seen the ship on sensors as it came out of her blind spot. So, probably just a glitch and this was understandable, what with all the junk in this system. Talma smiled. How apt.
And speaking of Vaavek: Talma rechecked the ship’s chronometer, saw that it was only five minutes later than when she’d last checked, and cursed. He was late.
Why? Two possibilities: Either Vaavek had found the portal and was simply delayed, or he hadn’t. Following from those conclusions, if Vaavek had found the portal, Halak was dead. If he hadn’t, Halak was still alive but wouldn’t be for long. Ditto for Vaavek, actually. (Her mother always said she never had learned to share.)
Of course, if she was planning on vaporizing Vaavek, likely the Vulcan had worked out a way to do the same to her. She’d have to be careful around him—doubly so if he’d found the portal.
She’d manage. That was the problem with Vulcans; they could exaggerate, but they weren’t devious. So Talma doubted that Vaavek had bothered to sabotage the T’Pol’s engines the way she’d sabotaged the shuttlepod. If they hadn’t found the portal and Halak was still alive—something she could ascertain in a flash before the shuttlepod even got close—all that would be required was one phaser hit in just the right spot…
Her concentration was broken by a shrill bleat from the T’Pol’s comm. Talma started, her heart ramping up a beat or two as a squirt of adrenaline coursed through her veins. The bleat came again, and Talma confirmed: Vaavek’s signal, all right. Set on a prearranged frequency, piggybacking onto the periodic signal emitted by the neutron star. Any ship in the vicinity (a Cardassian scout, say) wouldn’t hear or suspect a thing, not unless it knew what to look for. Vaavek was on his way back, with the goods.
A signal within a signal: again, simple. Elegant. Clean. Just the way she’d done with the Enterprise, coning her signal inside another signal. A grin tugged at the corners of her lips. Those dopes. Out-thunk by a dirt-poor kid from one of the roughest plane
ts in the galaxy.
The signal came again.
Engaging her sensors at maximum—the better to avoid unpleasant surprises in Cardassian trappings, my dear—Talma nudged T’Pol from lunar stationary orbit. She was delighted that the scenery was about to change.
“Got something,” said Glemoor.
Bat-Levi, who was seated in the captain’s command chair, leaned forward. “What?”
“Movement,” said Glemoor, and he was reminded of his perusal of old Earth history: literature of submarine battles and then of classic Starfleet maneuvers. James T. Kirk, as he remembered rightly: a splendid warrior, Glemoor decided, and superb tactician. Kirk’s first run-in with Romulans, for example: a classic and required reading for any tactical officer interested in the principles of stealth warfare.
“Movement?” Bat-Levi echoed. She stepped down from the command chair and hovered behind Glemoor’s left shoulder. “What? A warp signature? Impulse engines?”
“No,” said Glemoor. “I mean, movement.”
Castillo, who had called up the same display on his station, shook his head. “I don’t see anything.”
Bat-Levi’s eyebrows mated as she bent to study Glemoor’s readings. “He’s right. There’s nothing there.”
“No, there is. It’s simply that you don’t know what you’re looking at.” Glemoor’s tone wasn’t smug; he was just imparting facts. “There’s too much interference in this general vicinity to distinguish easily between true vessel signatures, or plasma trails and ambient ionized plasma. So, in addition to my usual sensor scans, I’ve calibrated the sensors to detect changes in the wave particle fronts surrounding both the planet and its moon, on the theory that a ship might be hiding there.”
In response to Bat-Levi’s quizzical expression, Glemoor added, “Think of it as trying to scoop up a cracker from a bowl of thick soup. If you chase your cracker, you set up a displacement of the soup itself.”
Castillo brightened. “I get it. There’s so much stellar soup out there you looked for compression of wave fronts.”
“All right, I’m impressed,” said Bat-Levi. “So, is it the T’Pol? Or a Cardassian?”
“The T’Pol, I think. The degree of displacement is too small for a Cardassian.”
“Shall I plot course for intercept?” asked Castillo.
“What about that, Glemoor?”
“Nothing from the planet’s surface yet, Commander.”
“But there must be something,” said Bat-Levi, “otherwise, the T’Pol wouldn’t be moving out.” She glanced over her shoulder at communications. “Bulast?”
The Atrean shook his head. “Nothing.”
Bat-Levi pursed her lips. “Then why is she moving? There’s got to be something…”
“Wait,” said Bulast, suddenly. His fingers stroked the controls at his console. “Got it. Same trick she used before. Coned inside the periodic bursts from that neutron star. A signal.”
Glemoor cut in. “Something else, Commander.”
“The captain?”
“No,” Glemoor said. “On long-range sensors. Company, closing fast.”
Seated in the pilot’s chair of her shuttlecraft, Garrett opened a channel to Halak in the Vulcan shuttlepod. “Think she got it?”
“Positive.” Halak’s voice was marred by pops and crackles of static. “She ought to be moving out from behind the larger moon any minute now.”
“Let’s hope.” Garrett looked over at Stern who sat in the co-pilot’s chair. “Well?”
“Too much damned interference,” Stern muttered, twiddling with the shuttle’s sensors, “like pea soup, I don’t see how you expect me to look for Cardassian scouts, they’d…ah! Got ’em.”
“How many?”
“Two. Closing fast. They’ve got a bug up their thrusters, all right.”
“That bug would be us,” said Garrett, bringing the engines on-line. “Or the T’Pol. Let’s hope it’s the latter. What about the Enterprise?”
“Still nothing. She’s gone, all right.” Stern gave Garrett a narrow look. “You sure you don’t want to just sit this one out?”
“We’ve got a much better chance if we’re moving. Hunker down here, and we might as well hand out invitations for those Cardassians to take potshots.”
“We’re not exactly fast, you know. And our range…”
“Let me worry about that. Besides,” Garrett plotted a course out of the system, “there are two of us. With the T’Pol, that makes three. If I were those Cardassians, I’d go for the bigger ship because I’d know there’s no way a smaller ship would get far.”
“Oh, that’s comforting. Let’s hope the Enterprise isn’t too far away.”
Otherwise, we’re on our own. Stern didn’t say it, but Garrett thought she might as well have. It had been Garrett’s call: getting the Enterprise out of harm’s way if the Cardassians showed up (as they just had). If Bat-Levi had followed her orders, the Enterprise had left the system at the first sign of the Cardassian scouts. So that meant her ship would be heading for the rendezvous coordinates: seven light years away.
She glanced back over her shoulder at Jase who huddled on a chair just behind her station. “Buckle up. I want to see that restraining harness on.”
“Sure.” Jase managed a wan grin. They’d bundled Pahl into restraints on a makeshift hassock aft. It would have made Garrett feel better if Jase were with his friend; Jase would be that much closer to an environmental suit if they had to evacuate. But Jase had refused, and Garrett hadn’t the heart to press it. They’d just take their chances together. On reflection, Garrett thought that was probably the way things were meant to be.
She watched as her son reached over his shoulders with both hands, grabbed the buckles of his restraining harness, and tugged them down. “Snug it. And hang on now, okay? It might get rough.”
“Promises, promises,” Stern grumbled, shrugging into her own harness.
“If we’re lucky, they’ll go after the T’Pol and leave us be.” Garrett punched up the Vulcan shuttlepod. “On my mark, Halak.”
“Ready, Captain.”
“On three, two, one. Mark!” Garrett punched up her engines. There was a perceptible jolt, the rush of a red-hued landscape, and then the blackness of space, stars.
As one, the two ships rocketed up from the planet.
The way was dark as pitch. Chen-Mai blundered along, rebounding off rock walls, the round hump of his helmet banging against stone. He might as well be blind.
He was dead. Chen-Mai felt a bubble of panic pushing at the back of his throat and his chest heaved, trying to pull in air. Or as good as dead: He’d die down here if he couldn’t find his way back. My God, but the air was so close! He ran his naked hands along the rough stone; he’d pulled off his gloves because the fingers were too padded and once the light went, he needed to have more feeling. The walls, they were closing in, he couldn’t breathe! Chen-Mai’s chest was tight, and he struggled to breathe, breathe, breathe….
Hyperventilating. He was getting dizzy. The sour taste of bile filled his mouth, and Chen-Mai doubled over, vomited until his stomach was empty and all he could do was hack dry heaves. Sagged back against stone.
Calm, he had to be calm. Chen-Mai pressed the back of his left hand against his forehead. Sweating like a pig. Hot, so hot in here, the air so close. He had half a mind to get out of this infernal suit, then maybe strip Kaldarren or Mar—yes, Mar, because Kaldarren had something wrong with him, and Chen-Mai wouldn’t touch him, wouldn’t take the chance—yes, he could strip Mar of his suit when he found the room again because he would find the room, he would.
But he might not. Chen-Mai turned his head aside and hawked up foul-tasting spit. There was more than way out of here, there had to be. So he had to keep his wits about him. But which way was out? He had a sense that he was heading down deeper, and that was wrong. That turn he’d taken a while back: He shouldn’t have done that. But he’d been certain he was circling back, to the chamber where he’d been, w
here that Kaldarren had tricked him….
He tripped over something—a rock lip, a stone perhaps—staggered. Pitched forward into the darkness. He managed to get his hands out in front and caught himself, but the tunnel floor was uneven and dropped a half-meter. Then the heels of his hands banged into the hard rock, and he heard something snap in his right wrist.
Chen-Mai screamed and then he screamed again. His scream bounced off the low walls and reverberated in the darkness. Rolling onto his left side, Chen-Mai cradled his shattered right wrist against his chest. He couldn’t see his wrist, wasn’t sure he wanted to, but he knew that it was broken.
Now, something else: something wet, warm on his fingertips, the fingertips of his left hand. And an odd smell, like wet metal, damp rust. Cautiously, he wormed the fingers of his left hand around his right wrist. Grazed against something sharp, and then moist fabric. Odd. Maybe he’d torn his suit and…
Bone. Chen-Mai’s eyes bulged in the darkness. The jagged ends of bone that had torn through his skin.
Chen-Mai threw his head back and howled.
At just about the same time that Talma spotted both the shuttle and shuttlepod—and before she had a chance to even wonder about why a Starfleet shuttlecraft was in the vicinity much in the less in the company of Vaavek’s shuttlepod—she also saw the Cardassians, barreling her way.
“Hunnh!” Her breath rushed out of her lungs in surprise. For a brief instant, she was absolutely frozen in place, her mind slamming on the brakes. She watched the Cardassian scouts get larger and larger, closer and closer…
She snapped out of her shock and tried to get her mind working. The Cardassians were here, now, early. But how?
Her forehead crinkled. Could it be the signal, the one Vaavek had sent, that alerted them? But no—as quickly as she had that thought, she dismissed it—the signal had come first, then the Cardassians appeared, and then…
Her eyes went round. Then Vaavek had lifted off the surface and in the company of the shuttlecraft. Too far away for her to figure out where the shuttlecraft had come from, which ship, though she had a fair idea.
