New Frontier

by Peter David

  “With all respect, Captain, I believe I recognize that tone of voice.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes, I do. That’s your I-don’t-agree-but-I’ll-say-anything-to-avoid-an-argument-I’ll-probably-lose tone.”

  He didn’t slow his stride, but a small smile did flicker across his lips. “I don’t know that I’d concur with the ’probably lose’ part, but the sentiment has merit.”

  “Captain, we are not going to be able to function if you do not tell me your state of mind at any given moment.”

  “Not my style, Commander.”

  “I’m sorry . . . what? Your style?”

  Calhoun had stopped walking directly in front of the entrance to a cargo bay. He seemed to be listening carefully for something.

  “Your style?” Shelby said again.

  “Commander, later.”

  “Captain, I believe this indicates a larger issue that should be—”

  The door suddenly slid open and a tall, dark red, and apparently very angry Thallonian intruder was barreling through it.

  “I said later!” shouted Calhoun.

  Calhoun seemed to register on the Thallonian’s personal radar as nothing more than obstruction, something to be cleared out of the way as quickly and expeditiously as possible. Shelby, reacting in the proper procedure for such an emergency, slapped her comm unit and managed to get out, “Shelby to Secur—!” just as the Thallonian charged.

  The captain moved so quickly that it seemed as if he weren’t even hurrying. A quick step took him to the side of the Thallonian’s path, and then Calhoun’s right arm was a blur. His fist slammed into the side of the Thallonian’s temple, striking a pressure point with such precision that the Thallonian was unconscious before he even fully realized it. His eyes disfocused and his hands clutched spasmodically at thin air. And then the Thallonian pitched forward and hit the floor. It seemed as if Calhoun were in a position to catch him, but the captain’s arms remained securely at his sides as the Thai-Ionian thudded to the floor.

  The entire thing—the attack, the defense, and the dispatching of the opponent—had all occurred so rapidly that Shelby had barely finished the word with “—ity . . .” before the Thallonian was laid out in front of her.

  Calhoun was staring down at the Thallonian with cool dispassion, and then Zak Kebron emerged from the cargo hold. “You called, Commander?” he rumbled.

  “Quick response, Lieutenant,” Calhoun said without missing a beat. “Well done.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Zak.

  “If I am not mistaken,” Calhoun continued, staring down at the prostrate form, “we are graced with the presence of Lord Si Cwan of the former Thai-Ionian Empire. Lieutenant,” and he gestured in Si Cwan’s general direction.

  Kebron reached down with one hand and picked the insensate Si Cwan off the ground. “Brig or sickbay, sir?”

  “If we put him in sickbay, under the careful ministrations of Dr. Selar, he will likely wake up with no headache. In the brig, he’ll wake up feeling like his head’s going to fall off.” He gave it a moment’s thought. “Brig.”

  Kebron seemed to smile almost imperceptibly. “Good.” And he proceeded to cart Si Cwan off down the corridor.

  As he did so, Calhoun turned to face Shelby and smiled. “Now . . . you were saying?”

  She looked at Kebron’s departing form and then back to Calhoun. “You knew he was down here. You weren’t coming here by coincidence. You knew perfectly well that that man, Si Cwan, was in the cargo hold.”

  “Yes.”

  Calhoun could see rage starting to build within Shelby, her body trembling in barely restrained fury. The door was just closing to the cargo bay when Shelby stormed through it. Calhoun followed her in, more out of curiosity than anything else.

  The workers looked up as Shelby entered, but before any of them could say anything, Shelby snarled with barely contained fury, “All of you, out! Now!” Even under ordinary conditions they would not have been inclined to question an order, but considering Shelby’s demeanor they were practically tripping over each other to evacuate the area. Shelby turned on her heel, smoldering, as Calhoun entered the cargo bay, the doors hissing shut behind him. Before he could get a word out, she turned and said with unbridled ire, “How dare you? How dare you!”

  “Shouldn’t you be asking for permission to speak freely?” he said, unperturbable.

  “To Hell with that and to Hell with you, Mac! How dare you not inform me that you were aware we had an intruder on board! I’m your second-in-command! If I learn anything of importance then I inform you immediately, and I expect the same courtesy from you!”

  “I’m afraid I can’t agree. There will be times, Elizabeth,” he replied in a formal tone, “when information will be on a need-to-know basis. And if, in my judgment, you don’t need to know, then I can and will exercise discretion to keep that to myself.”

  Her flat hands swept the air in an impatient gesture. “Understood, of course, understood. But there is a line, Mac, between keeping things to yourself on the basis of Starfleet security, and keeping things to yourself out of some sort of misplaced need to prove yourself.”

  “I have no such need, Elizabeth, I assure you.”

  “Oh, bullshit,” she snapped. He raised an eye at the profanity, but she steamrolled on. “You have plenty to prove. You walked out on Starfleet, carrying guilt with you for years, and now you’re back with more responsibility than you’ve ever known, and you’re out to prove that you can do it all. Captain Mackenzie Calhoun, the one-man band of the Starship Excalibur. Well, it doesn’t work that way, Captain. Not on any ship that I’ve ever been on. You think you’re Atlas, carrying the entire universe on your shoulders, and if anything on this ship goes wrong, it’s your fault. It wasn’t true on the Grissom, and it’s not true here.”

  His face clouded. “Leave the Grissom out of this, Elizabeth. If you have something to say, say it and be done with it.”

  She looked down, the initial force of her fury spent, and then, still studying the floor, she told him, “All I’m saying is that part of being a team means that everyone has responsibility, even though you have the ultimate responsibility. But even though you have that ultimate responsibility, your priority still has to be functioning as part of that team. That’s where your priority has to lie. That’s where your first allegiance has to be. To the Excalibur and the people on . . . her . . .”

  Her voice trailed off. He stared at her, a carefully maintained deadpan firmly in place, as he said, “Funny. I was saying that earlier and you were arguing with me about it. I’m glad you’ve come around to my way of thinking. If you’d care to join me at the brig . . .?” And as he headed out of the cargo bay, the doors slid open to reveal the assorted crewmen who had vacated the bay moments earlier. They were trying to look nonchalant or otherwise occupied; in short, like anything except people who were eavesdropping. They quickly dispersed, leaving Shelby alone.

  “I hate that man,” she sighed.

  HUFMIN

  VI.

  THE CAPTAIN OF THE Cambon didn’t realize the danger until it was too late.

  His name was Hufmin, he was a veteran star pilot and occasional smuggler from Comar IV, one of the worlds in the outer rim of the former Thallonian Empire. With many of his usual customers and routes in disarray, he was nevertheless turning a nice profit by offering his services to some of the more well-to-do refugees of the collapsing Sector 221-G. At least, that had been his intention. But somewhere along the way, as he had lent his aid for what had been intended as a mercenary endeavor, he had discovered—much to his annoyance—that he had a heretofore unknown streak of sentimentality. Perhaps it had been the desperate look of some of the women, or, even worse, the grateful faces of the children looking up at him. The Cambon’s comfortable complement was twenty-nine passengers; Hufmin crammed on forty-seven, many of them at less than the going rate and some of them—God help him—gratis. He considered it nothing short of a major weakness o
n his part. He could only hope for two things: that when this immediate crisis was over he would come to his senses, and that he did not suffer any misfortune, since he firmly believed that no good deed went unpunished.

  With the Cambon’s facilities stretched beyond capacity, Hufmin decided to take a chance and cut through an area that was off his usual routes. On his starmaps it was listed as the Gauntlet, a holdover from more than a century ago when fleets from two neighboring worlds would take to the space between the worlds and blast away at each other. But that was long ago, and the area hadn’t been a shooting gallery for ages. Granted, it had been the firm grip of the Thallonian Empire—to say nothing of the Thai-Ionian’s summary execution of the warring planetary heads as a warning to all concerned—that had brought a nominal peace to the area. And granted that, with the fall of the Thallonian Empire, anything could happen. But Hufmin couldn’t believe that if the situation were to change, it could possibly happen fast enough to be a threat to his ship or its passengers.

  He thought that for as long as it took for the first of the attack ships to drop out of warp.

  He had gotten halfway through the Gauntlet when his sensors began screaming alarms at him from all sides. Frightened passengers began to call to him, asking what was going on, and all he could tell them to do was to shut up and buckle down. He couldn’t believe what his sensors were telling him: attack vessels on both sides of him, all of them many times the size of Hufmin’s modest transport, taking aim at each other. They didn’t give a damn about him. They were only interested in blowing each other out of space.

  Unfortunately, the Cambon was squarely in the way.

  Hufmin banked furiously, slamming the controls forward, as the Cambon desperately tried to get clear of the area before the shooting started.

  The vessels opened fire and suddenly the entire area of space was a hot zone. The ships fired with no particular grace or artistry, making no attempt to pinpoint respective targets and try for maximum damage with minimum fuss. Instead it was as if they were so overjoyed to have restraints removed from them that they simply let fly with everything they had. Blasts flew everywhere without regard for innocent bystanders. The attitude of the combatants was simple: Anyone who was within range should never have wandered in there in the first place.

  The Cambon was hit twice amidships, and then a third time. The engines were blown completely off line, and only the laws of physics saved it, for the impact of the blasts sent the ship spiraling wildly. And since objects in motion tend to stay in motion, the Cambon was hurled out of immediate danger as the already existing speed of the ship carried it away from the firefight which had erupted in the Gauntlet.

  Which did nothing to solve the Cambon’s longterm problems. Hufmin desperately tried to keep the ship on course, but failed completely. The ship was utterly out of control. Hufmin endeavored to concentrate on fixing the situation. But it was all he could do to focus on the problem at hand, for he had cracked his head fiercely on the control consoles when he was first hit. There was every likelihood that he was concussed. Indeed, he felt a distant blackness already trying to settle on him, and it was all he could do to fight it away.

  He hit the autosend on the distress signal and prayed that someone would hear it. And then he vomited, uttered a quick prayer that they wouldn’t fall into a sun, and slumped to the floor.

  Out of control, unpiloted, and with apparently no hope in hell, the Cambon spiraled away into the void. Behind them two mighty fleets continued to shoot at each other, uncaring of the damage they had wrought. Without ten minutes the battle was over, as battles in space tend to end fairly quickly. The surviving ships limped back to their respective homes, and word was sent out that the Gauntlet was to be avoided at all costs.

  Word that the Cambon would have been happy to spread . . . provided that anyone on it survived to spread it.

  VII.

  CALHOUN STOOD OUTSIDE the brig, his arms folded. Si Cwan was standing inside, rather than sitting. Calhoun hated to admit that he was somewhat impressed by this; he could tell from the semiglazed look in Si Cwan’s eyes that the Thallonian was fighting off ripples of pain and residual dizziness. He could just as easily have been seated, but something about him—pride, determination, arrogance, stubbornness—prompted him to be on his feet.

  “Feel free to sit,” Calhoun invited.

  “I wish to remain taller than you,” replied Si Cwan.

  Inwardly, Calhoun smiled. Outwardly, all he did was glance at Shelby, who was standing at his side for a reaction. She rolled her eyes in a manner that simply said, Men. Of course, that might have applied equally to Calhoun.

  “I am Lord Si Cwan,” Cwan said archly.

  “Captain Mackenzie Calhoun. Would you care to tell me why you stowed away on my vessel?”

  “How did you know I had done so?”

  “I ask the questions here,” Calhoun said sharply.

  Unperturbed, Si Cwan replied, “As do I.”

  Zak Kebron was standing nearby, his massive, three-fingered hands on his hips, watching the questioning. “Shall I break him in half, sir?” he asked. There was no eagerness in his voice, nor trepidation. It was merely a matter-of-fact query.

  Calhoun gave it a moment’s thought. “Go ahead, Lieutenant. If nothing else, it’ll cure him of his annoying standing.”

  Kebron nodded and reached for the button to deactivate the field so that he could enter the brig and fold Si Cwan backward. Shelby looked from the expressionless Calhoun to Kebron to Si Cwan, who looked slightly disconcerted by the abrupt direction that matters were taking. She turned so that her back was to Cwan as she whispered to Calhoun, “Captain! With all due respect, you can’t do that!”

  “I’m not,” Calhoun said reasonably, making no effort to keep his voice down. “Lieutenant Kebron is. Lieutenant, go ahead. Break him in half. Or a sixty-forty split would suffice. This isn’t an exact science.”

  Shelby stared intently into Calhoun’s eyes . . . and then understanding seemed to dawn. She turned back to Si Cwan and said, “I tried. I tried to talk him out of it. He won’t listen to me. If it’s of any consolation, I’ll be sending a stern report to Starfleet in regards to this heinous treatment. If you’ll excuse me,” and she started to walk away.

  Kebron shut off the forcefield and stepped in, immense fists flexing.

  “Wait!” Si Cwan said, taking an unsteady step backward. Then he cleared his throat, trying to regain his composure. “Wait,” he repeated, far more calmly this time. “I see no reason that we need to be adversarial about this. I . . . need passage back to my system. Back to Thallonian space.”

  In quick, carefully chosen phrases, he laid out his situation for them. Who he was, his desire to turn home, his need for protection that only a starship could provide.

  “And you felt that sneaking on board was preferable to simply approaching the captain directly?” asked Shelby.

  “I had already broached the notion to his superiors,” Si Cwan said. “They had refused me. To encourage a subordinate officer to take actions counter to the sentiment of his superiors—even though they were sentiments that angered me—would have been dishonorable.”

  “But that’s what you’re doing now, isn’t it?” Shelby countered. “You’re asking him to countermand those orders.”

  “I am already here,” replied Si Cwan. “It is a different situation. I am giving him no choice but to countermand them and accept me as a passenger.”

  “So it’s all right to force someone to help you, but it’s not all right to simply ask them,” asked Shelby. Si Cwan made no reply, but merely gave a small shrug.

  “What makes you think I won’t toss you out of the ship right now? Leave you to fend for yourself? For that matter, what’s to stop me from simply throwing you bodily out into space right now?” Calhoun asked. Shelby knew damned well that, for starters, Starfleet regulations would stop him. But she said nothing since she didn’t want to undercut her captain . . . and besides, one never kne
w with Mackenzie Calhoun. Shelby was ninety-nine percent sure that he wouldn’t take such an action, but it was the remaining one percent that made her hold her tongue.

  Unaware of what was going through Shelby’s mind, Si Cwan replied, “Because to do so would be a tremendous waste of material. One does not become a leader of men by wasting material and opportunities when they present themselves.” Si Cwan looked and sounded utterly confident. Whether he genuinely was or else was simply putting on the act of his life, Calhoun wasn’t entirely sure.

  “And what purpose would you serve on my ship, may I ask?”

  “Goodwill ambassador. A connection to what once was in the hope of building that which will be. A guide through areas of space which are unfamiliar to you.”

  Calhoun snorted skeptically. “A guide? Why don’t I just make you ship’s cook while I’m at it?”

  “Captain,” said Si Cwan, taking a step forward. Kebron growled warningly low in his throat, and it sounded like two asteroids crunching together. Si Cwan stopped where he was and wisely took a step back. “You are entering my home. My backyard, as you would call it. Quite simply, it would be the height of stupidity to toss aside any potential resource. The question becomes: Are you a stupid man?”

  “Watch your tone,” Zak Kebron warned him.

  “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, Captain, considering my candor . . . how did you know that I had smuggled myself aboard in that cargo?”

  “Mislabeling, actually. Several bills of lading had been misplaced, and technicians were using tricorders to run quick scans on cargo contents. Saved us having to go through them box by box.”