THE VALIANT

by Michael Jan Friedman

  “It has to be,” Pelletier insisted.

  “If I can say something?” Hollandsworth cut in.

  Tarasco nodded. “Go ahead.”

  The science officer looked around at his colleagues. “We’re all assuming that Agnarsson is going to use his abilities to hurt us—to work against us. I’m here to suggest that he may decide to help us. In fact,” he added, “I think he already has.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Womack.

  “When I was lying in intensive care,” said Hollandsworth, “recovering from my burns, I felt as if there were someone there with me—encouraging me, helping me to heal. At the time, I didn’t know who it was, or even if the feeling was real. But now, I think it was Agnarsson.”

  The captain looked to Gorvoy. “Is that possible?”

  The doctor regarded Hollandsworth. “He did recuperate a little faster than I had expected. But then, everyone’s different.”

  “Then it is possible,” Tarasco concluded.

  Gorvoy shrugged. “Who knows? The man can read minds and move objects around. Maybe he can help people heal as well.”

  “Talk about your godlike beings,” Womack breathed.

  “He’s no god,” said the chief engineer, dismissing the idea with a wave of his hand. “He’s just like you and me.”

  The security chief chuckled bitterly. “Except he can steer the ship just by thinking about it.”

  McMillan shot him a dirty look. “Imagine if it was you who had been altered. Would you want to be caged up like an animal? Especially when you hadn’t done anything wrong?”

  “This isn’t about justice,” Pelletier maintained. “It’s not about right and wrong. It’s about survival.”

  “And what’s the point of surviving,” McMillan asked him, “if we’re to throw right and wrong away in the process?”

  “Hundreds of years ago,” said Hollandsworth, “people in Salem accused their neighbors of being monsters and murdered them, because they feared what they didn’t understand.” He looked around the room. “Is that what we’re doing? Lashing out at our neighbor out of ignorance? And if I do that, who’s the real monster here—him or me?”

  “We’re not lashing out at Agnarsson,” Pelletier argued doggedly. “We’re just talking about restraining him.”

  “For now,” McMillan told him. “But what happens if your restraints don’t work? Once you’ve taken that first step, it’s a lot easier to take the next one, and the one after that.”

  “As someone once said,” Hollandsworth added, “we’ve established the principle . . . now we’re just haggling over the price.”

  Pelletier didn’t answer them. Instead, he turned to Tarasco, his eyes as hard as stone. “What are you going to do, sir?”

  The captain frowned as he thought about it. Coming into this meeting, his inclination had been in line with his security chief’s—he had considered the idea of having Agnarsson watched closely and, if necessary, confined to his quarters. However, McMillan and Hollandsworth had made some good points in the man’s behalf.

  Agnarsson had been one of them, right from the get-go. He had risked as much as anyone to carry out the Valiant’s mission to the stars. And even if he hadn’t, he was a human being. As McMillan had stated so eloquently, the man had rights.

  “For the time being,” Tarasco decided, “I’m just going to talk to Agnarsson—let him know he’s treading on thin ice.”

  Pelletier didn’t look happy. “And if he starts throwing people around instead of blankets?”

  The captain looked him in the eye. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  Chapter 3

  Captain’s log, supplemental. I have had another conversation with Geirrod Agnarsson. This time, I made it clear to him that I wouldn’t tolerate his tampering with any of my ship’s systems, or for that matter, frightening any of my crew. I also told him that he was to cooperate fully with Dr. Gorvoy in his efforts to explore Agnarsson’s condition. Agnarsson seemed to understand the consequences of diverging from my orders and promised to follow them. For the time being, I’m willing to believe him.

  Chantal Coquillette had heard the stories about Agnarsson’s manipulation of the helm controls.

  But when she entered the intensive care unit, he didn’t look like a superman. He just looked like a normal human being, engrossed in one of Dr. Gorvoy’s beloved mystery novels.

  “How are you doing today?” the medic asked, her voice echoing from bulkhead to bulkhead, emphasizing the loneliness of the place.

  Agnarsson looked up from his book. “Just fine.”

  The eyes, thought Coquillette. She had forgotten about his weird, silver eyes. But truthfully, even those weren’t enough to make him seem like some alien entity, ready to tear the ship apart on a whim.

  He still looked human. He still looked like the man who had helped bring their engines back when they were stranded.

  “Can I get you anything?” she asked.

  Agnarsson appeared to think about it for a moment. “I don’t think so,” he decided. “But thanks for asking.”

  The medic shrugged. “Don’t mention it.”

  “I guess you’re here for another scan,” said the engineer, still intent on his mystery novel.

  “You don’t sound happy,” Coquillette replied, removing her bioscanner from its loop on her belt. “I thought you liked me.”

  Agnarsson looked up again. This time, he smiled a little beneath his wild mustache. “I do. I just wish Doctor Gorvoy would let me out of here. I’m going a little stir crazy.”

  “Hang in there,” the medic told him.

  She wished she could tell him he would be released soon. However, it didn’t look like that was going to take place—not until Gorvoy and his staff understood what had happened to him.

  An hour earlier, the doctor had injected a drug into Agnarsson’s bloodstream which would make his neural pathways easier to scan. Coquillette’s was the second of three scheduled examinations. By the time they were completed, Gorvoy hoped to be able to come up with a hypothesis.

  And if he couldn’t do that? If the neural scan didn’t shed any light on the mystery? The medical team would simply have to come up with another approach to the problem.

  Coquillette played her bioscanner over Agnarsson from his feet to the crown of his head. She was almost finished when she noticed something. Agnarsson’s hair . . . it had flecks of white in it.

  She was sure they weren’t there the last time she saw him . . . and that was just the day before. Besides, the engineer was a young man—thirty at the outside. How could his hair be losing its pigment already?

  Unless whatever had altered him . . . was still altering him. It was a chilling thought—because if Agnarsson was changing on the outside, he might be changing on the inside as well. He might be getting stronger.

  Fighting to remain calm, Coquillette checked her readout to make certain the requisite data had been recorded. Satisfied, she replaced the device on her belt.

  “See you later,” she told Agnarsson, hoping her anxiety didn’t show, and started for the exit.

  “You know,” the engineer called after her unexpectedly, “you don’t have to go. Not right away, I mean.”

  His voice sounded funny . . . louder, more expansive somehow. As if it were filling the entire intensive care unit . . . or maybe filling her head, Coquillette couldn’t tell which.

  He looked at her with those bizarre, silver orbs, not quite eyes anymore, and she felt panic. After all, if he could manipulate the Valiant’s helm controls, what might he not be able to do to a human being?

  “Actually,” she blurted, “I do.”

  And she left him there.

  Jack Gorvoy was studying his monitor screen when Coquillette showed up at his door.

  The woman looked pale, frightened. It got his attention immediately. After all, Coquillette was the steadiest officer he had.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s him,”
Coquillette whispered, sneaking a glance back over her shoulder. “Agnarsson.”

  Gorvoy looked past the medic. From what he could see of his patient, the man was reading the book the doctor had given him—nothing more. Still, he didn’t want to dismiss his officer’s feelings out of hand.

  “Close the door and sit down,” Gorvoy said.

  Coquillette did as she was told. Then she described the change she had seen in Agnarsson’s hair color.

  The doctor frowned. He had examined the engineer less than an hour ago, and he hadn’t noticed any graying.

  “I’m not imagining it,” his officer insisted.

  “I didn’t say you were,” he told her. “Can I see your bioscanner?”

  Removing it from her belt, she handed it over to him. Gorvoy called up the scan Coquillette had just done on the device’s readout. Then he called up the earlier scan on his computer screen.

  “Well?” she asked.

  I’ll be damned, he thought. “You’re right. Agnarsson’s changed. And I’m not talking about his hair color.”

  Coquillette got up and circumnavigated his desk to get a look. “What else?” she demanded.

  Gorvoy pointed to the screen. “The neural pathways in his cerebellum have reshaped themselves. They’re getting bigger.”

  She looked at him, her face as drawn and grim as he had ever seen it. “And his powers?”

  “May be increasing,” he said, completing her thought. He sat back in his chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Congratulations. Your discovery puts mine to shame.”

  “Your discovery . . .?” Coquillette wondered out loud.

  Gorvoy nodded. “I figured out why Agnarsson and the others were affected by the phenomenon when no one else was . . . why Agnarsson, of all of them, survived and mutated.”

  Don’t keep me in suspense, said a voice—a huge, throbbing presence that seemed to fill the doctor’s skull.

  Obviously, Coquillette had heard it too, because she whirled and looked back at their patient. Beyond the far end of the corridor, Agnarsson had tossed his blanket aside and was getting up out of his bed.

  Gorvoy’s mouth went dry. I’ll be glad to fill you in, he thought quickly, knowing the engineer could “hear” him in the confines of his mind. You don’t have to leave intensive care.

  I’ve had enough of intensive care, Agnarsson replied, not bothering to conceal an undercurrent of resentment, and I’ve had enough of people talking behind my back.

  The doctor glanced at Coquillette. “Leave,” he said.

  She shook her head. “Not if you’re staying.”

  “Someone’s got to tell Tarasco what’s going on,” he insisted.

  Coquillette hesitated a moment longer. Then she opened the door, left Gorvoy’s office and darted to her left down the hallway, heading for the exit from sickbay and the nearest turbolift.

  In the meantime, Agnarsson had gotten out of bed and was headed toward Gorvoy’s office. The medical officer rose from behind his desk and went to meet his patient halfway, thinking that would be the best way to make him forget about Coquillette.

  It didn’t take long for him to find out how wrong he was.

  “Where is she?” Agnarsson demanded impatiently.

  “She’s got nothing to do with this,” Gorvoy argued as they got closer to one another. “This is between you and me.”

  “That’s what you’d like it to be,” said the engineer. “But I’m tired of listening to you calling the shots—you and your friend, the captain. Now where is she?”

  The doctor stopped in the middle of the corridor. “Why is Coquillette so important to you?”

  Agnarsson’s silver eyes narrowed. “She pretended to be nice to me, but I heard her talking to you. She’s just like everyone else. She’s scared of me.” He laughed an ugly, bitter laugh. “And who can blame her?”

  Only then did Gorvoy realize the extent of the transformation that had taken place. It wasn’t just the engineer’s hair and nervous system that were changing. It was his personality as well.

  Quite literally, Agnarsson wasn’t himself anymore. He was something else—something dark and dangerous, despite what McMillan and Hollandsworth had said about him. And the doctor would be damned if he would let such a thing walk the Valiant unchecked.

  “Out of my way,” Agnarsson snarled.

  “We can help you,” Gorvoy told him. “We can help you cope with what’s happening to you. You just have to go back to intensive care.”

  The engineer lifted his chin in indignation. “You like it there so much? Why don’t you go there?”

  Before the doctor could do anything to stop him, Agnarsson grabbed him by the front of his uniform and sent him hurtling headlong toward intensive care. The last thing Gorvoy saw was the engineer’s blanket-draped bed as it rushed up to meet him.

  Then, mercifully, he lost consciousness.

  Dan Pelletier hefted the laser in his hand as he made his way toward engineering . . . and hoped that he had guessed correctly.

  As soon as he heard from the captain that Agnarsson might be getting belligerent, the security chief had led a team down to sickbay—and discovered Dr. Gorvoy slumped at the base of a biobed, bleeding freely from his nose and mouth. Pelletier wasn’t a physician, but he knew a concussion and a set of broken ribs when he saw them.

  At that point, Agnarsson had gone from being a misguided fellow crewman to a dangerous and potentially deadly fugitive. And when that fugitive could manipulate objects with the power of his mind, where was he most likely to go . . . other than a place where the slightest manipulation could place the ship in mortal jeopardy?

  Especially when that place was where he had spent most of his waking hours over the last few years.

  With that theory in his head, Pelletier had used the intercom to get Gorvoy some help and left a man there to look after him. Then he had taken Peavey and Marciulonis and headed for the engine room.

  “Remember,” he told his men, “fire only on my command. We don’t want to blow the warp core with a stray shot.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Peavey.

  “Aye, sir,” Marciulonis chimed in.

  The doors to the engine room were open. Signaling for his officers to fan out on either side of him, Pelletier darted straight ahead, laser pistol at the ready.

  When he got inside, he looked around quickly, hoping to find Agnarsson and take him down before the man realized he was there. But all the security chief saw were the surprised faces of McMillan and his engineers.

  Agnarsson, it seemed, wasn’t there.

  Carlos Tarasco paced behind his center seat, wondering if Pelletier and his people had caught up with Agnarsson yet.

  He saw now that the security chief had been right. Agnarsson was too dangerous to remain in a medical bed. He had to be incarcerated, for the good of everyone on the ship.

  And even that might not be enough, the captain reflected. If the man’s powers kept growing, if he became too big a threat, they might have to consider even stronger measures.

  Is that how you treat a man who followed you out into space? someone asked, his voice echoing wildly in Tarasco’s head.

  The captain whirled and saw a strapping, blond figure standing at the threshold of the open lift compartment. Somehow, its doors had slid open without Tarasco’s hearing them.

  “Don’t look so surprised,” said Agnarsson, stepping out onto the bridge. “Pelletier’s security teams were looking for me everywhere else. This was the only place I could go.”

  Knowing that the engineer could read his mind, Tarasco tried not to think about the weapons he had secured for himself and his bridge officers. He tried not to think of how those officers would be slipping the pistols from their belts to use them against the man who had been their comrade.

  But he couldn’t help it.

  Agnarsson must have caught the captain’s thought, because he whirled in Gardenhire’s direction. The navigator had already drawn his laser and was aiming it
at Agnarsson.

  With a sweep of his arm, the engineer sent the weapon flying out of Gardenhire’s grasp. But by then, Womack had drawn her laser as well—and while Agnarsson was disarming the navigator, Womack was pressing the trigger.

  A bolt of blue laser energy speared the engineer in the shoulder, spinning him into the bulkhead beside the lift doors. Agnarsson lifted his hand to strike back at Womack, but a second beam caught him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him.

  A beam from the barrel of Tarasco’s pistol.

  Fighting to stay conscious, Agnarsson glared at the captain with his gleaming silver eyes. I won’t forget this, he thought, each word a reverberating torment in the confines of Tarasco’s head.

  Then Womack fired a second time and Agnarsson slumped to the deck, looking woozy and deflated.

  Tarasco stayed alert, just in case his adversary wasn’t as disabled as he looked. But before he could even think about squeezing off another shot, he saw something happen to the engineer’s eyes.

  Miraculously, the silver glow in them faded. They became the blue of summer skies, the very human blue that Agnarsson had probably been born with.

  For a fraction of a second, Tarasco wondered if they might have cured the engineer of his affliction—if all it had taken to drive the phenomenon’s energies out of him was a good laser barrage.

  Then the light in Agnarsson’s eyes returned—and with it came a restoration of his incredible strength. He planted his hand against the bulkhead and tried to stagger to his feet, shrugging off the punishment his body had absorbed.

  But Womack wouldn’t have any of it—and neither would Gardenhire. They fired their laser pistols at the same time, knocking Agnarsson senseless. And when he crumpled this time, Tarasco was ready.

  “Take him to the brig,” he ordered.

  Instantly, his officers moved to comply.

  Chapter 4

  Captain Tarasco was standing in the corridor outside the brig, watching Pelletier activate the force field that would keep the temporarily sedated Agnarsson under wraps, when Coquillette arrived.

  “How’s Gorvoy?” the captain asked.