Bloodthirst

by J. M. Dillard

  “Enough to check it out.”

  “Well, that says something as far as I’m concerned. So you want me to stir up a little trouble, eh?” Waverleigh rubbed his hands together lasciviously. “Well, thank God. I’m tired of trying to create my own excitement around here.”

  “I thought driving a desk was exciting,” Jim said sarcastically. From the moment Quince had been transferred to HQ, he had done nothing but complain long and loud of boredom to anyone who would listen.

  The remark struck too close to home. Quince’s lips twisted in a wry little grin. “Don’t you ever let anyone talk you into a desk job, Jimmy. I’d give anything to be back out there again.” He forced a less serious tone. “I’ve tried a dozen times to get myself busted back down to captain, but they’re wise to me now. No matter what outrageous thing I do, they ignore me.”

  Kirk nodded at the holo. “That’s because your captain’s quarters would be a little crowded.” He meant it as a joke, but for some reason the smile that stayed frozen on Quince’s lips went out in his eyes.

  “Ke opted not to renew our contract,” he said shortly. “She’s got the kids with her now. I get ‘em in a few months.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jim said, feeling like a fool, “I didn’t know.” He could think of nothing better to say.

  “So’m I. But hey.” Quince shifted in his chair and waved a hand at the stuffed animal on his desk. “Jimmy, you’ve met Old Yeller here, haven’t you?”

  Jim’s discomfort eased. He grinned and shook his head, more in resignation than in answer to Waverleigh’s question. Quince was famed as a practical joker, and once he got a notion in his head, it was best to play along. “Quince, where in the galaxy did you get that?”

  Waverleigh looked scandalized. “Why, the folks back home sent him to me. Jimmy, I’m shocked. Haven’t you ever seen an armadillo before?”

  Jim shook his head. “I thought they were extinct. But I can’t say that I’ve missed much.”

  “It’s a good thing he can’t hear you say that.” He stroked the little animal protectively. “Actually, Yeller used to be a bit livelier, back before old age caught up to him.”

  “Or the taxidermist, from the looks of it,” Jim said.

  Quince scowled at him. “Yeller passed out of this vale of tears long before that, I’ll have you know. But he’s still pretty personable. Go on, say hello to him, Jimmy.”

  Knowing Quince, it was a trick, but Jim bit anyway. “Hello, Old Yeller.”

  At the sound of Jim’s voice, Yeller’s long head poked out of the shell and his narrow muzzle yawned open. “Hello, Jimmy,” he said, in Waverleigh’s voice.

  Kirk started, then laughed. “Admiral, you are weird.”

  “Yeah,” Waverleigh answered smugly. “You should have seen the look on Stein’s—that’s my aide—face the first time Yeller said hello to her.” He settled back in his chair. “Well, look, Jim, I’ve got to hop this morning, but I’ll let you know what I can find out about Mendez.”

  “Don’t get yourself into trouble,” Kirk said seriously. “Just see what you can piece together about Tanis. Find out why we were ordered not to answer the distress signal. Find out who signed the order.”

  “Some orders are confidential. Does this mean I get to bend the rules a little bit?”

  “For God’s sake, the last thing I want you to do is get yourself into trouble. Don’t do anything illegal.”

  Quince grinned wickedly. “Jimmy, I get the feeling you don’t trust me.”

  “I don’t. I know better.” Kirk hesitated. “Just don’t forget to consider the fact that Mendez just might be involved in something illegal, and be willing to do anything to protect himself.”

  “In other words, be discreet.”

  “In other words, don’t do anything stupid. If you get too much heat about it, forget it. I’ll find some other way.”

  “I promise not to get myself into trouble,” Waverleigh said with a wink.

  “You be sure and do that,” Kirk told him.

  Chapter Five

  THE OBSERVATION DECK was silent and dark, its only source of light the stars that shone down through its invisible roof. Fierce, bright stars, undimmed by atmosphere or moons, rather like Andor’s night sky, though the constellations were wrong. As a child, Lamia had thought it a great adventure to steal outside with one or two of the other children and sit in the open field gazing up at the star-littered sky. Sometimes, when she felt a need for it, she would sit alone.

  She was alone now, and lonelier than she had ever thought possible; yet in the midst of her grief, she could not have faced another living being, not even Lisa Nguyen.

  Thank the stars the deck was deserted, except for one or two shadowy figures, their faces turned up and reflecting starlight.

  The message had been waiting for Lamia when she got off duty. The light on her terminal was flashing, and she keyed the message onto the screen. No face, no voice, no name. A written transmission that could have been sent by a stranger. And yet she knew immediately, crushingly, who had sent it.

  You are no longer ours.

  With that ritual phrase, she was cut off. No family, no tijra, no home, nothing to tie her to Andor or anywhere else in the universe, for that matter, save the small, impersonal cabin she shared with Lisa. She was free now, free to float among the stars free to float aimlessly, outnumbered and alone.

  Lamia crossed the deck quickly, her footsteps absorbed by the thick carpeting. She was intent on one thing: reaching a cubicle reaching safety, privacy, darkness, so that she could properly grieve. She made it to a cubicle and reached for the door just as someone else did. She brushed against a warm hand and opened her mouth to apologize.…

  And closed it again as she recognized Jonathon Stanger.

  Well, hell, Stanger told himself pessimistically, isn’t that just your luck? Try to find a little privacy, a little peace of mind only three people on the whole deck, and you get to wrestle with one of them for a cubicle.

  But the hand he touched was pool, inhuman. He gaped up at the Andorian. In the starlight, her hair shone like spun silver. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “Go ahead.” And then berated himself for forgetting that he was supposed to be annoyed with her.

  She had clearly not forgotten. “No, thank you.” She turned away with a graceful, sweeping motion that also managed to express her disdain.

  “Lamia,” he began helplessly. He should have let her go, should have pretended to be disgusted himself, should have held on to the humiliated anger that had erupted in him in the rec lounge. But he couldn’t. You fool, why do you give a damn about what she thinks of you? Isn’t this how it started with you and Rosa?

  He did not let himself answer his own questions.

  She stopped with her back to him, breathing heavily as if she had been running, and he watched as her wide, triangular shoulder blades rose and fell under the red uniform. It made him think of an insect fanning its wings. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I was rude yesterday. I wanted to apologize.”

  “It’s all right,” she said, without turning around. Her voice sounded oddly strained.

  It was not the reaction he’d hoped for. This time he injected a little good humor into his tone. “I just didn’t want you to get the impression I was always so temperamental. I had a few things on my mind”

  She lowered her head, resting the fingers of one hand against the bridge of her nose. “Would you please just leave?”

  He took it the wrong way at first and swung around, ready to stomp off in the other direction (not that stomping made any audible difference with the carpet). And then it suddenly registered the way she’d really sounded when she said it. Desperate. Agitated. But not angry. He turned back.

  “Hey, are you all right?”

  Stop it, fool, this is how you got started with Rosa.

  But she wasn’t all right. She was fumbling blindly, trying to open the door to another cubicle blindly, because she was upset. He knew Andorians
saw very well in the dark. He came up behind her while she was still struggling with the simple latch. “Hey.” He put a hand on her shoulder. No padding to speak of, bones so thin and fragile it made him afraid to press too hard. Ridiculous, of course; although she was thinner and leaner, the different muscle insertion actually made her race stronger. She was probably a match for him in hand-to-hand.

  “Hey,” he repeated. “Something happen today? Bad news from home?”

  She faced him, her eyes wide with panic. “I don’t have a home anymore.”

  You fool, his mind started up, and then melted away at the sight of the pain on her face. Distrust, suspicion, all of it melted away, except for the need to help her.

  “Here.” He pushed open the cubicle, helped her in, sat next to her, and put a supportive (supportive, Stanger? or something else?) arm around her narrow shoulders. He could feel the large, strong heart hammering against her back, could feel the huge lungs that took up most of her upper torso fill and empty themselves. She moaned for a while, but didn’t cry, because she wasn’t human.

  Her hair smelled of grass and sun.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  She told him. Some things he knew about, such as the plague that began centuries ago on Andor, that made most of the female babies sterile. About the great responsibility placed on fertile females to raise large families, and how the custom continued even after the plague had left and the population come back.

  Some things he didn’t know: about her thirty-eight bezris, a term that included all sisters, brothers, and cousins as equal, and how she missed them. About the horrible fight with Tijra when Lamia resisted the expected path and left for Starfleet Academy, about how certain Tijra had been that Lamia would surrender to loneliness and return home before she ever accepted her first assignment in space

  About how Lamia wished now she had waited for an assignment aboard an all-Andorian ship. About how humans disapproved of the Andorian need to discuss personal matters openly, how they seemed to feel emotional honesty was in bad taste. How cold they were to each other How it was a form of hypocrisy, of repression, of not telling the truth Of how nice Lisa Nguyen was, and how Lamia always worried Nguyen would think she was going on too much.

  He said nothing; he just listened, and gave her thin shoulders an occasional pat. And wondered what the appropriate Andorian gesture of comfort was.

  She fell silent after a while, so he talked a little bit about his own family. (As he recalled from a long-ago class, on Andor, one confidence deserves another.) He told her about his folks being doctors, about how scandalized they were to have raised a son who not only was a jock, but wanted to go into (horrors!) police work.

  He had no intention of confiding anything to her about Rosa, or the Columbia.

  At the end of it, she looked up at him and smiled, the first really convincing one he’d seen her wear, and he caught himself thinking how beautiful she actually was.

  Dammit, Stanger, when are you going to stop being such a fool?

  * * *

  “Chris?”

  She opened her eyes. On the other side of the containment panel, McCoy smiled at her.

  A good sign, she thought. I’m okay. She returned the smile broadly and sat up. Until that minute, she’d convinced herself she had the disease. She’d felt dizzy and disoriented, growing weaker with each passing second. What an incredible hypochondriac she’d been! It couldn’t have been the head wound. She touched her hand to the back of her head. McCoy had used the sonic adaptor on it—there wasn’t even a tiny scar. She felt foolish, just like the proverbial med student who promptly came down with the symptoms of the latest disease being studied.

  “You tested positive,” McCoy said, and she suddenly realized that the hand that gripped the lab report was white-knuckled.

  She slumped back on her elbows, the idiotic grin still on her face, and said the first thing that came to mind. “That’s too bad. Airborne mode of transmission?”

  McCoy shook his head. “Contact. Adams must have touched your head wound.”

  “So I’ll wind up like him,” she said, with sarcasm that bordered on bitterness. “Killing people and drinking their blood.”

  “Of course not,” he soothed unconvincingly. “We’re very close to a breakthrough on this, Christine. The lab might have a way to stabilize the anemia.”

  “Uh-huh,” she answered automatically, barely hearing him. It was the same line she had tried to get Adams to believe. “Let me guess. The cure is a stake through the heart.”

  McCoy’s smile sagged a bit at the corners. “Actually, it’s filling your mouth with garlic and then cutting off your head. But we’re trying to work the kinks out.” The smile faded entirely. “Dammit, Chris, do you have to make jokes about it?”

  “Look at you,” she retorted. “Grinning like the cat that ate the canary. How am I supposed to react? Would you feel better if I yelled at you?”

  “Probably.” McCoy’s face relaxed a bit; he put one arm against the crystal and slumped. “I kinda feel like yelling at someone myself.”

  “All right, then. I think it stinks. If I could get my hands on Adams, I’d throttle him. So much for helping the sick.”

  His expression darkened. “Ditto.”

  Chapel sighed. “Don’t look quite that sad, Leonard. It makes me feel like I ought to cheer you up, and I’m not up to it right now.”

  “Oh. I’m not permitted to smile or frown. Maybe I should have sent Spock in to tell you.”

  She smiled in earnest. “Now that wouldn’t have been such a bad idea.”

  “Look, I was telling the truth about the lab. They’re testing something right now. We could spring you out of here in a couple of days.”

  “That’s good. I guess I can hang around that long.” She tried to look convinced, but she knew her eyes were anxious.

  Kirk snapped on the viewscreen in his quarters less than a split second after it whistled. “Kirk here.”

  At first the screen remained completely dark. He thought it was a malfunction until he remembered to key up the infrared filter.

  “Spock here, Captain.” The tall, slender figure of the Vulcan appeared in shades of black and white. “You asked me to contact you when the landing party was ready to beam down.”

  “Thank you, Spock. Could I talk to McCoy?”

  The first officer stepped away from his viewer. Behind him, Kirk caught a glimpse of the group on the landing pad—Adams lying on a stretcher, wearing a field suit for the purpose of keeping the virus in rather than out. He was flanked on either side by two people from Security. Tomson had shrewdly sent the new Andorian and Snnanagfashtalli, since neither was likely to be affected by the virus if exposed, and both were able to get along in the dark. Still, McCoy had insisted on everyone suiting up, including Spock.

  McCoy neared the viewer, blotting out the others behind him. He was the only one wearing an infrared visor. “Yes, Jim?”

  “How’s the patient doing? Think he’ll survive the transition?”

  “He should. My only concern is that they have enough stores of O negative blood. They say they do. He’s one tough customer, Jim. He’s on continuous transfusions, but I think he’ll make it.”

  “Is that your captain?” Adams said weakly off-screen.

  McCoy paused.

  Adams spoke again. “Tell him he’s sending me to my death. I want him to know that. Tell him I warned him.”

  McCoy’s visor shifted beneath the matrix as the doctor raised his eyebrows. “Well. I guess you heard that.” He lowered his voice. “What was that all about?”

  “Never mind,” Kirk answered grimly. “Just get him set up and then get the hell out of there, Doctor. I don’t want any of my people being exposed a second longer than they have to.”

  “Well, since I’m probably the only one affected"” McCoy turned his head to look at his alien companions—I appreciate the sentiment, Captain. I promise not to hang around. McCoy out.”

  The docto
r returned to his place on the transporter pad to the left of Snnanagfashtalli.

  “Beaming down now,” Spock said.

  As the transporter hummed, Kirk signaled the communications officer.

  “Lieutenant Vigelshevsky here.”

  “Get me the head of Star Base Nine, please.”

  “That would be Commodore Mahfouz, Captain. I’ll have him right for you.”

  Vigelshevsky disappeared from the screen, replaced first by darkness and then by the hawkish face of Mahfouz.

  “Commodore Mahfouz here.”

  “Commodore. This is Captain James Kirk. Did our landing party arrive safely?”

  “All in one piece.” Mahfouz was bronze-skinned and white-haired, with eyebrows so long they almost obscured his eyes. “Admiral Mendez is seeing to them now.”

  “Admiral Mendez is there?” What possible excuse could Mendez have contrived for coming? Or was he so arrogantly confident that he didn’t care what suspicions he aroused?

  “Yes, he has taken charge of transporting the prisoner. Would you like to speak with him?”

  “Yes, thank you, Commodore.” Kirk attempted to swallow his surprise.

  Mendez appeared on the screen. From his expression, it was clear to Kirk that their dislike was mutual. “What is it, Captain?”

  “Admiral. I just wanted to check on Adams’ beamdown”

  “Your Dr. McCoy is getting him situated in the medical facilities down here.” He scowled. “Anything else?”

  “Well, sir, I’m surprised to see you here. Star Base Nine is a long way from Starfleet Headquarters.”

  “This is an important matter.”

  “Yes, sir. But I’m sure Commodore Mahfouz’s security is adequate. Certainly there was no need to send an admiral”

  “Maybe I had other reasons for coming out to Star Base Nine.” Mendez’s swarthy face crimsoned. “I’m tired of listening to your veiled accusations, Kirk. The fact that I may be personally involved in this is none of your damn business.”