by Peter David
“I beg your pardon?”
“Pheromones. Hermats can detect an elevated pheromone level in most races. It’s a gift. It cues us to rising sexual interest and excitement.”
“I see. And you’re detecting an elevated pheromone level in me.”
“That is precisely right,” Burgoyne said with such confidence that even the unflappable Selar felt a bit disconcerted. “You’re becoming sexually excited . . . more so when you’re with me, I like to think, although that may simply be wishful thinking on my part. I have always been something of a romantic.”
“Commander . . . I am certain that you are quite good at your job . . .”
“I am.”
“But you are unfamiliar with Vulcan biology. It is . . .” And then she caught herself, surprise flooding through her mind. She had been about to discuss such delicate and personal matters as Pon fan with an offworlder. What was she thinking? Why was she having trouble prioritizing? “ . . . it is impossible that I would be interested in you, in any event.”
“Impossible why?”
“I cannot go into it.”
Burgoyne leaned forward with a look of genuine curiosity on hish face. “Why can’t you go into it?”
“I cannot,” Selar said, her voice rising a bit more than she would have thought appropriate. The volume of her response didn’t quite penetrate.
“Look, at the very least, I’d like to be your friend. If there’s some problem that—”
And Selar was suddenly on her feet, and her response was a roar of fury. “I said I cannot go into it! What part of ’cannot’ did you not comprehend?!”
The silence was instantaneous throughout the Team Room. Selar had managed, with no effort at all, to focus all attention in the room on herself. It was hardly a position that she desired to be in. Slowly her gaze surveyed the Team Room. Fighting to recapture her normal tone of voice, she asked, “May I assume you have something of greater importance on your minds than me?”
The crewmen needed no further urging to return to their respective conversations, although there were assorted quick glances in Selar’s direction.
Automatically she put her hand to the underside of her throat. Her pulse was racing. The sounds of the room suddenly seemed magnified. Her temper had flared with Burgoyne, and although s/he might be one of the more irritating individuals that Selar had ever met, s/he was hardly enough to warrant the Vulcan tossing aside years of training and indulging in an emotional outburst.
“I have to go,” she said, exerting her magnificent control over herself.
All flirtation, all smugness, was gone from Burgoyne. Instead s/he took Selar’s hand firmly in hish own. Selar tried halfheartedly to pull clear, but Burgoyne’s grip was surprisingly strong. Belatedly Selar remembered that Hermats had physical strength approximately two and a half times Earth norm. “Selar . . . if nothing else, we’re fellow officers. If a fellow officer is in trouble, I’ll do everything I can to alleviate that trouble. Whatever is wrong with you, I want to help.”
“I do not need help. I merely need to be left alone. Thank you.” And she exited as quickly as she could from the Team Room. This left everyone staring in confusion at Burgoyne. Burgoyne, for hish part, merely raised a glass. “May the Great Bird of the Galaxy roost on your planets,” s/he said to the collective Team Room. S/he finished off the contents of hish glass and then, with a shrug, s/he reached over, picked up Selar’s glass, and knocked that back, too.
• • •
Selar ran as quickly as she could down the Excalibur corridors. Twice she almost knocked over passing crewmen before she made it to sickbay. Upon seeing her return, Dr. Maxwell promptly proceeded to give her a quick precis on the status of the four dozen passengers from the Cambon. But before he could get out more than a sentence, she cut him off with a sharp gesture.
“Is there anything wrong, Doctor?” asked Maxwell, now clearly concerned about the condition of the chief medical officer. “Any problem that I can help with?”
“I am fine,” she replied in a less-than-convincing manner.
“Are you sure? You seem rather flushed. Is there a—”
“Are you an expert on Vulcan physiology?” Selar demanded.
“No . . . no, not an expert per se, although I’m certainly well versed in—”
“Well, I am an expert, Doctor,” she shot back. “I have been living inside my particular Vulcan physiology for quite some time now, and I assure you that I am in perfect health.”
“With all due respect, Doctor, I don’t know as I’d agree.”
“With all due respect to you, Doctor, your agreement or lack thereof is of no relevance to me whatsoever.” And with that she stalked quickly to her office, locking the door behind her to guarantee privacy.
She had no desire to subject herself to a medical scan in sickbay in full view of every one of her staff and technicians. She had no particular concern over the privacy of other crew members when it came to getting physicals or having problems attended to. But now that it was she herself who was in question, her right to privacy had assumed paramount importance. It was ironic, and yet an irony that she was not exactly in any condition to truly appreciate.
She opened an equipment compartment in the wall and extracted a medical tricorder. Adjusting it for herself, she began to take readings.
Pulse, heartbeat, respiration . . . everything was elevated. Moreover, she was having trouble focusing on anything.
Selar reached deep into herself. A calm, cool center of logic was drilled into Vulcans at such an early age that it became utterly ingrained into their nature. Yet Selar was having to relive that training, finding that cool center and tapping into it. Her body, her system, was entirely at the command of her mind and she would force it to obey her commands. Slowly she quieted her hurried breathing. She cleared away every noise, every distraction, until she could hear the accelerated beating of her own heart. She slowed it, bit by bit, replacing the dim red haze which seemed to have taken hold of her with a sedate, serene blue.
She thought back to her first days at the Academy, the first time that she had encountered the Academy pool. Such things were virtually unknown on Vulcan, an arid planet with a steady red sky and a sun so searing that Vulcans had even developed an inner eyelid to shield themselves against its effects. The pool might well have been an alien artifact; indeed, in many ways it was to her.
Clad in a bathing suit, she had stood on the edge of the pool, dipping a toe into it, unsure of what to do. Every logical bone in her body had told her that there was nothing to fear. That fear was besides the point, as it so often was. And yet she could not bring herself to ease herself into the water . . . until the decision had been taken out of her hands when a passing cadet named Finnegan had thought it the height of hilarity to shove her from behind into the pool. She had fallen feet-first into the deep end of the pool . . . and proceeded to drown, since naturally people who are born on a desert planet have absolutely no idea how to swim. The selfsame Finnegan, chagrined, had immediately leaped into the water and pulled out the sputtering Vulcan.
But Selar had taken that first unpleasant experience as a challenge, and every day found her at the pool until she was as good a swimmer as anyone at the Academy. Many was the time where she would simply float in the water, arms outstretched, bobbing with the gentle lapping of the water.
Now she was projecting herself back to that time. She imagined herself floating, floating ever so gently, buoyed as if by lapping waves. Bit by bit, she fashioned her recollections of the Academy pool into a place of escape. The rest of the world, her worries, her concerns, her uncharacteristic confusion, all melted away as she bobbed in the water with no distractions. She felt her composure returning to her, her ineffable logic controlling her actions once more. Whatever was happening to her, it was nothing that she couldn’t control. Nothing that . . .
“Hi,” said a voice. And there, swimming past her in a tight bathing suit that accentuated hish firm breasts, hish
curvaceous hips, and also what seemed an impressive male endowment, was Burgoyne.
Selar snapped forward in her chair, the pool vanishing along with the Hermat intruder. She looked around and found herself, of course, still in her office. A quick scan with the medical tricorder told her that her bioreadings were back to normal. But the image of Burgoyne was solidly rooted in her mind.
She leaned forward toward her computer terminal and said, “Computer.”
“Working.”
“Personal medical log, Stardate 50926.2 . . .”
There was a pause, sufficiently long enough for the computer to prompt, “Waiting for entry.”
Selar could only think of one thing to say, really. Five words that summarized her present situation with simple eloquence.
“I am in big trouble,” she said.
KEBRON
IV.
“HOW MUCH TROUBLE would you say we’re in, precisely?” Si Cwan asked in a low, tense voice.
“A good deal,” replied Zak Kebron.
Between them they had precisely one phaser, the sidearm that Kebron habitually carried whenever embarking on any sort of mission. They’d had no time to grab anything else off the shuttle before the unfortunate ship had blown up.
The science vessel was not terribly large—only eight decks deep—and it was one of the oldest models of such ships. Stairs or ladders between decks instead of turbolifts, and flooring made of grated metal that made a hellacious racket whenever Kebron, in particular, walked on it. Moreover the lighting was dim. Whether it was because they were on battery backup, or had deliberately made it that way just to throw off Kebron and Si Cwan, was impossible to say.
They hunched in a corner as best they could, considering Si Cwan’s height and that Kebron wasn’t exactly built for hunching. “This is insane,” muttered Si Cwan. “Why did they shoot at us?”
“When you’re trying to kill someone, that’s usually a reliable method.”
“But why were they trying to kill us?”
“Immaterial. The fact of it is all we need to deal with.” From the shadows that surrounded them, he was surveying the area as thoroughly as he could,
“We need a plan,” Si Cwan said urgently.
Kebron appeared to consider it a moment, and then he said simply, “Survival.”
“That’s obvious. Are you being deliberately obtuse, Kebron? Our lives are at stake . . .”
Kebron glared at him, and there was extreme danger in those eyes, glittering against the dusky brown skin. “Our lives are at stake because you insisted on trying to rescue your sister. Do not forget that.”
“Of course not. Now that we’ve properly assigned the blame, can we deal with the problem at hand?” Si Cwan waited, but the only response he got was a grunt. Taking that to be a “yes,” he considered the situation a moment and then said, “I say we should split up.”
“And I say you’re a fool,” replied Kebron.
“Why? We’re less of a target that way.”
Kebron scowled at him. “Look at me. Look at you. Look at our size and build. Singly or together, we’re targets. Individually, neither of us can watch each other’s backs.”
“As if you’d watch my back,” Si Cwan snorted disdainfully. “Good luck to you, Kebron. I’ll take my chances.” He started to move out of the shadows, and suddenly he felt Kebron’s powerful hand clamp on his shoulder. Before he could utter so much as a word of protest, Kebron had hauled him back and slammed him into the wall behind them. It shuddered slightly with the impact.
“You’re not a prince here, Cwan,” Kebron said tightly. “You’re not a lord. You will do what I say, when I say it, or so help me I’ll crush your head with my bare hands and save whoever’s out to get us the trouble. Do we understand each other?”
There were a hundred responses that Si Cwan wanted to make, but he choked them all down . . . which wasn’t especially difficult, since he was choking from the grip that Kebron had on him. So all he managed to get out was a very hoarse whisper of, “Perfectly.”
Kebron released him and Si Cwan rubbed the base of his throat as he glared at Kebron. “You’re supposed to be on my side?”
Zak Kebron didn’t bother to dignify the question with an answer. Instead he was listening. “Here they come,” he said slowly, his voice dropping to nearly a whisper.
Si Cwan was listening as well. “Two of them. Do you think that’s all there are?”
“Safer to assume it’s not,” observed Kebron, and this was a sentiment that Si Cwan couldn’t disagree with.
Kebron pointed silently upward, indicating that he was hearing them from overhead. Si Cwan nodded, and then he looked behind them. Ten feet to the rear was a stairway angling to the upper floor, with spaces between the steps. Cwan chucked a thumb in the direction of the stairs, and Kebron immediately intuited what Si Cwan had in mind. They dropped back and tried to duck behind the stairs, but the space was too narrow for the both of them to fit. Kebron pointed a finger at Si Cwan and said, “Decoy.”
Being a decoy was not exactly Si Cwan’s first choice of responsibilities, but there was no time to argue the point. Besides, there was something in the challenging way that Kebron looked at him that angered him. As if Kebron was certain that Si Cwan would never present danger to himself and trust Kebron to bail him out of it.
Si Cwan took up a station directly in front of the stairs, standing about five feet back. Kebron took up a position behind the stairs. There was clattering from overhead and then two pairs of feet descended the stairs. Cwan gasped when he saw that they were two Thallonians. They slowed as they came within view of Si Cwan. Each of them was cradling a strange-looking weapon that Si Cwan didn’t recognize at first, but then he did. They were plasma blasters, and there were few weapons in existence that were nastier.
The two of them stopped several steps above the floor. “Where’s the other one, Si Cwan?” demanded one of the Thallonians. “The one with the voice like rumbling thunder.”
“He died during the first bombardment of your ambush,” replied Si Cwan. “He didn’t make it off the ship.”
“Now, why don’t I believe you?” asked one of the Thallonians. “Are you trying to deceive us, Si Cwan?”
“Where is my sister? Who are you?” he demanded.
They hadn’t budged from their place on the stairs. “You are in no position to ask quest—” one of them started to say.
’Where is my sister, and who are you?” There was a dark, fearsome tone to his voice, and the Thallonians found themselves shuddering to hear it. Once upon a time, to hear such a tone would be tantamount to a death sentence. Even though the unarmed Si Cwan was staring down the barrels of weapons aimed squarely at him from point-blank distance, it seemed as if he was the one who was in charge.
“My name is Skarm,” one of them finally said, and he indicated the Thallonian standing next to him with a nod of his head. “And this is Atol. It is only fitting, I imagine, that you know the name of the ones who are about to kill you. As for your sister,” and Skarm smiled lopsidedly, “that’s for us to know.”
He touched a small button on the side of the plasma blaster and took a step down. He aimed it squarely at Si Cwan, and the former prince merely stood there, dark eyes sparkling with cold fury.
And Zak Kebron’s hands snaked out from underneath the steps, grabbing Skarm’s ankles. Skarm, confused as to what was happening, let out an alarmed yelp, his arms pinwheeling as he tried to halt his forward plummet. He didn’t succeed and he crashed forward, even as the one called Atol frantically tried to figure out what had just happened.
The blaster tumbled out of Skarm’s hand and clattered to the floor. Si Cwan lunged for it and Atol immediately fired off a shot from his own blaster. It was like having a weapon that fired molten lava. The plasma blast stream blew directly in front of Si Cwan, and only Cwan’s speed saved him as he ducked backward. The stream hit the fallen weapon, immediately rupturing the cartridge that contained the plasma field.
<
br /> Si Cwan had a split second to react, and he did the only thing he could think to do. He leaped straight up, fingers desperately grabbing the grillework of the rampway directly above him, and he swung his body upward just as the crippled gun exploded. A stream of flame ripped right beneath him, and he could feel the back of his jacket catch on fire. Instantly he shucked the jacket, allowing it to drop into the flames beneath him, and he felt them licking at him hungrily.
Atol was blistered by the heat, but even so he tried to look down beneath the steps. He had only a split-second warning as he saw the terrible eyes of Zak Kebron, and then Kebron—disdaining the subtle approach—smashed upward, tearing the stairs out of their moorings and sending Atol pitching forward into the flames of the burning plasma. Skarm rolled off the steps as Kebron shoved them upward, and it was clear from the lolling of his head that he was already dead. When he’d fallen, he’d snapped his neck.
Atol let out a truncated shriek as the flame consumed him. It had all happened within the space of a few seconds, and then the ship’s automatic firefighting defenses kicked in. High-powered spray hissed out from hidden pipes lining the sides of the corridor, battling the flames and quickly extinguishing them.
Si Cwan dropped to the ground, landing in a crouch. Kebron tossed aside the twisted remains of the stairs as Cwan went immediately to the fallen Atol. Atol’s body was a mass of burns: the plasma had done its work quickly, efficiently, and horribly. Clearly he was done for, but Si Cwan was not inclined to let him depart quite that easily. He grabbed Atol by the side of the head, yanking him upward. This did him no good, as the skin he was gripping peeled off in his hand, no more than a large, blackened, and charred fistful of flesh. With a grunt of disgust, Si Cwan tossed it aside and elected instead to snarl into Atol’s face, “Where is my sister? Is she on this vessel? Who’s behind this? If you have any hope of greeting your ancestors with a shred of integrity—the ancestors who swore fealty to my bloodline before the birth of your father’s father’s father—then answer my questions now!”
