by Peter David
She sighed at the convict. “I agree. Unless your alien visitor wishes to put in an appearance and say otherwise.”
“Let him try,” he said, and brought his lips down upon hers.
The Lyla
i.
Xyon brought his lips down upon Kalinda’s mouth, kissing her with unreserved ferocity. Then he pulled her clothing from her and she uttered one word and one word only: “Yes.”
All of this happened for the fifth time in the course of an hour, and all of it happened in Xyon’s head. The reality was very different.
“Can I get you anything, Kalinda?” he said. Even as he asked, he mentally kicked himself. He’d lost track of the number of times he’d made that query since she’d come aboard, and he must have sounded like a complete idiot by now.
If she shared that opinion of him, Kalinda didn’t indicate it. Instead, seated in the copilot’s seat of the Lyla, she smiled in a manner that nearly melted Xyon’s heart as she said, “I’m quite all right, Xyon. But I appreciate the offer. When do we rendezvous with the Ferengi smuggler?”
He was relieved that she had so promptly and deftly steered the conversation toward something practical. Normally he would have addressed the question to Lyla, who would have happily supplied the answer. But with Kalinda on the vessel, he was beginning to feel a bit self-conscious about Lyla’s presence, especially considering the uses to which he had put her. Granted, it hadn’t seemed to bother Kalinda, but still, it was…
“You could ask Lyla if you wanted. I don’t mind.”
The calmness in her tone was disconcerting. It was as if she had set up shop in his head. “That’s okay,” he said, and checked his chronometer. “I’ve got it at eighteen hours, twenty-seven minutes.”
“And the cargo we’re carrying?”
“The thousand bricks of gold-pressed latinum, you mean?”
“Yes.” She glanced at her feet as if she could see into the cargo bay. “It all belongs to the Ferengi?”
“That’s right.”
“And you’re returning it to him?”
“It was stolen from him. He’s paying me a finder’s fee for returning it.”
“As opposed to your just keeping it all for yourself.”
“That would be wrong.”
“So it never occurred to you to just keep it?”
He smiled. “I never said that. And once upon a time, I might well have done exactly that. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s a lot easier to take things from thieves than be a thief yourself. Besides, that would then make me a target for this particular Ferengi, and that’s not trouble that I need.”
“Can you trust the Ferengi to give you your share?”
“No. But I’ve taken the liberty of already stashing my share.”
“Where?”
“Sorry, my love. Need to know basis.”
“All right, Xyon,” she said calmly. She was always calm. It was almost unnatural; she might have been part Vulcan. Then, coyly, she said, “Can I see one? I’ve never seen a brick of gold-pressed latinum. Bars, yes, but—”
“Sure. I suppose so. Wait here.”
He disappeared into the cargo bay for a few minutes and when he emerged he was carrying a brick. Her eyes widened when she saw it. “Is it heavy?”
“It’s not light, but it’s not terrible. Here.” He handed it over to her. Standing, she lifted it experimentally.
“You’re right, it’s not too bad. It’s very pretty.”
She placed it carefully on the floor, then put her feet up on it as if it were a footrest. Xyon laughed and then settled back down into his chair.
They said nothing for a time, and then he was surprised to hear her say, “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? About what?”
“That I have not been more…how to put it? Demonstrative. Physically demonstrative.” She rested a hand on his and said, “I know that’s what you would like. What you were assuming was going to happen once I chose to come with you.”
“I wasn’t assuming anything—”
“Don’t lie, Xyon. You’re not terribly good at it, and I can see through it, so it’s a little bit insulting for you even to try.”
“I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“I know you didn’t,” and she squeezed his hand affectionately.
“You’ve been through a hell of a lot,” Xyon said. “I had no intention of pushing you on anything. After all this time, I’m just happy for the pleasure of your company.”
“That is so sweet. Not much more convincing than what you were saying before, but still—”
“Kalinda, for the love of—”
She brought his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles. He sighed when she did so, enjoying the contact. Then her kisses trailed up his arm to his throat, and then to his lips. She pulled away and smiled, caressing his cheek. “Soon,” she whispered. “I promise. I just need to get settled in, to feel comfortable.”
“Take all the time you need. I’ll be waiting. Because nothing is going to—”
Her head snapped forward so violently that it broke his nose.
“Kalinda! Grozit! What the hell—!?”
He leaped up from his seat, clutching at his nose, blood pouring from it sour>
She had been so calm, so reasonable, so very much the Kalinda of old, that he had managed to forget, or at least ignore, the reason that his father had summoned him to New Thallon in the first place. Now, though, he was being presented with irrefutable proof of her delicate state of mind, because she was clearly having some sort of fit and he was helpless to do anything about it.
“Kalinda,” he said even as he applied the cauterizer to the side of his nose and activated it. Immediately the bleeding stopped, although the lower half of his face was still a mess and his nose wasn’t going to heal anytime soon. “Kalinda, what’s wrong? Tell me what’s wrong. Everything is going to be okay—”
“The baby.” She sounded as if she were speaking from the next star system over. “The baby is in trouble.”
“Baby? What baby? You mean Robin’s baby?”
“Yes.”
He wasn’t about to ask her how she could possibly know this. He couldn’t help but think it was better to simply take it as a given and go from there. “What sort of trouble?”
“I don’t know. Something. He’s very agitated.”
“The baby is agitated?”
“Si Cwan is.”
“You mean Cwansi.”
“No, Si Cwan. My brother. We have to go, right now.”
“Go where?”
“I’m not sure. He will guide us.”
“Okay, Kally, you have to listen to me,” and he knelt down and gripped her firmly by the shoulders. “We can’t just go gallivanting across the galaxy because you say a dead man is whispering in your ear.”
“We have to—”
“We can’t! For one thing, my customer is waiting for this delivery. I’m on a timetable. If I fail to meet it, he’s going to assume that I’m doing exactly what you thought he might accuse me of, namely, trying to make off with his latinum. Trust me, that would be bad for both of us. It is in our best interest to get my cargo where it’s supposed to go—”
“We can’t. The baby—”
“Look,” he said patiently, “if you think there’s some sort of problem, then the easiest thing is for me to send a subspace message to the Excalibur. They can handle this…”
“Si Cwan says they won’t believe it. He says we have to go there ourselves.”
“Si Cwan says,” he repeated with growing disbelief. Son of a bitch made my life a living hell when he was alive. Now he torments me from beyond the grave. “Kalinda, this is insanity.”
“You have to believe me.”
“I believe that you believe it, but that’s as far as it goes. I am not going to change our route and risk winding up with an irate Ferengi bringing down all his angry relatives on my head. I haven’t survived in my dubious profession for as long as I h
ave by making enemies unnecessarily. Do you understand what I’m saying, Kally? Do you?”
She didn’t appear to see him. Her mouth moved but no words emerged, and then suddenly she slid sideways and hit the floor heavily. Surprisingly heavily, considering how little she weighed.
“Oh, wonderful,” he said with a growl.
He reached down and pulled her upward. She’d gone limp in his hands. He moved her over to the chair and sat her upright. “Unbelievable,” he muttered as he stared at her insensate form.
Xyon dropped into his own chair and put his face in his hands. “What the hell have you gotten yourself into?” he said aloud, and he had no ready answer. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time, but now he was hip-deep in problems. He had once again allowed his impulses, rather than what would be best for him, be his guide. Life was much simpler when it was just he and Lyla and open space.
The thing was, he was becoming bored with “much simpler.” He felt as if he had been ready to share his life with someone, and there was no one he wanted to share it with more than Kalinda. There was no point being irritated with Kally, even though that was his first impulse. He had gone into this with both eyes wide open and had no one but himself to blame for his current predicament.
The best way to go, as much as he hated to do so, was contact his father and tell him everything that had happened. Xyon wasn’t sure just how seriously to take all this business about Kalinda getting her marching orders from the ghost of Si Cwan. After all this time, Xyon was prepared to allow for the possibility that Kalinda had some sort of connection to the other side. He preferred to believe that, since the alternative was that she was simply delusional, perhaps even insane, and he didn’t find that particularly appealing.
He had instructed Lyla not to materialize unless explicitly summoned or if he were incapacitated. Obviously now was the time to summon her, if for no other reason than that he felt the need to talk to someone who wasn’t seeing things. “Lyla,” he said.
“Behind you!” came Lyla’s voice even as her holographic body flared into existence.
Xyon started to rise from his chair, turning to see what could have possibly alarmed her. It didn’t make sense; the only thing behind him was—
Something slammed into his head, something large and heavy, and even as his mind processed the fact that it was a brick of gold-pressed latinum, the floor suddenly leaped up at him. He slammed into it. He tasted something in his mouth, a familiar coppery taste. It was his own blood. Xyon tried to stand but his body was disinclined to cooperate. Kalinda stood over him, wielding the brick, and there was a look on her face that he had never seen there before. It did, however, seem familiar, that look of disdain and unconcealed contempt. He had just never seen it in her face.
“Stay down,” said a rough voice that was hers, but not hers, and it only served to motivate Xyon to double his efforts. Unfortunately, since his efforts were coming to naught, doubling them was simply doubly unsuccessful.
“It’s…it’s not…you can’t be…” Then Xyon’s thoughts lost coherency as the world went black around him.
ii.
Kalinda glanced down at Xyon’s motionless form and then tossed aside the latinum brick. It thudded to the floor, and she stepped over Xyon toward the controls. Lyla simply watched, making no effort to interfere. Kalinda quickly discovered why. The systems were frozen.
“Release command of the ship to me.”
“No.”
Kalinda rounded on Lyla and snarled in her face, “You are simply a machine. You do not have the option of refusing a direct order.”
“That’s true—”
“Then release comm—”
“—if the order comes from Xyon. Whoever you are, or whoever you think you are, you are not Xyon, and I am under no requirement to do as you command.”
“Fine.” Kalinda stepped back over to the brick of gold-pressed latinum and held it over Xyon’s head. “If you do not do as I command, he dies.”
Lyla was more than calm. She was actually sweet about it. “If you do that, then you will leave me no choice but to blow the hatches and vent all the air from the ship. You will be hurled out into the void—”
“I understand.”
“—where you will die from exposure in approx—”
“I said I understand. We’re at an impasse.”
“So it would appear.”
Kalinda drummed her fingers on her forearm thoughtfully. “Look, Lyla…a child’s life depends upon what we do next.”
“As does yours. Because I assure you that if Xyon does not wake up, you will not long survive him.” Lyla crouched next to Xyon, gently moving his head from one side to the other to check the damage. Then she reached over to the medkit and began ministering to his wounds.
Kalinda, meantime, watched the proceedings with a scowl. She focused her seething anger upon Xyon, ignoring the fact that Xyon would not be unconscious had it not been for Kalinda bashing his head.
“Know this, hologram,” Kalinda said in a voice that was not hers. “If anything happens to my son, then your master there is going to live to regret it. But not for very long.”
Bravo Station
“So you’ve rigged your ship to guarantee that no one can take it over if you are incapacitated?”
“That’s right. Got the idea from Xyon. Since he’s been on his own for so long, he’s had plenty of time to think about nothing except all the things that can go wrong.”
Admiral Elizabeth Shelby sat back at her desk, nursing a glass of Romulan ale. She did not even bother to make any comments about the ale’s illegality. It would have been a waste of time considering who her guest was, that her guest had brought it, and that her guest was—well—Romulan.
Soleta had removed her jacket and was sitting with her feet up on the desk. She threw back a glass of Romulan ale as if she were drinking water and poured herself another. “Have you heard from Xyon recently?”
“No. But things happen unexpectedly around here. I wasn’t anticipating hearing from you anytime soon either, Soleta.”
“Yes, well—”
“Well, what?” said Shelby, and when Soleta did not respond immediately, Shelby continued, “Look, Soleta, don’t get me wrong. I am thrilled to see you—”
“Are you?” said Soleta, and there was a coldness to her tone that Shelby was surprised to hear. “How thrilled can you be to see someone who was drummed out of the organization that gave you your high rank and command?”
“Come on, Soleta. You know that’s not fair. I would be dead if it weren’t for you.”
“And the injuries I sustained while saving your life were the reason that Starfleet medical discovered I was part Romulan. A Romulan/Vulcan mixed breed was simply unacceptable to the purity of Starfleet.”
The admiral scowled at that. “What flushed your career away wasn’t just that you were half Romulan. It was that you covered it up. If you had been forthcoming with Starfleet—”
“They would have kicked me out even faster.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you—” Shelby caught herself and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath through her nose and letting it out slowly between her lips, making a faint hissing sound as she did so. “Soleta,” she said, controlling herself, “we’ve had similar conversations before. I know my saying that I’m sorry about what happened doesn’t make a damned bit of difference. I fought to try and salvage your career. I did not succeed. What do you want me to do? Resign my commission?”
“Yes.”
Shelby blinked at that. “What do you mean, yes?”
“I mean yes. If you resign your commission, abandon Starfleet, then I will know that you sincerely regret what happened and are totally dedicated to evening the balance between us.”
“Let me see if I get this straight: If I resign Starfleet right here, right now, then you and I will be friends again.”
“Yes.”
“I am willing to accept that.”
It was Soleta’s turn to be caught unawares. “You…you are?”
“Yes, I am. I am willing to accept that we will never be friends again, because if you think I’m giving up my rank and command, then you’re nuts.”
A flush of green appeared in Soleta’s cheeks, and then—much to Shelby’s surprise—Soleta actually laughed. She had an almost musical laugh, reminding Shelby of just how much Soleta had changed over the years. When she had been aboard the Excalibur, she had been no different from any typical Vulcan. She had been humorless, serious, unflappable. Shelby hated to admit it, but Soleta’s discovery of her true nature had made her a lot more fun to be around. It was as if she had been liberated from years of stultifying discipline. It made Shelby wonder briefly if all Vulcans would prefer a simple life of exhibiting emotion over an intense dedication to the art of smothering one’s feelings.
“I suppose,” Soleta said once she had regained control, “that little would be accomplished if you took that action. Nor,” she added quickly, “would I truly desire that you do such a thing. I did not save your life so that you could throw away your career.”
“I appreciate that. And I have missed you, Soleta. I truly have. With that said—” and her voice trailed off.
“What am I doing here?”
“It is a reasonable question. Bravo station is not a typical port of call for the Spectre. You’re a freelance spy vessel.”
“Leading you to wonder if someone hired us to spy on you?”
“The thought did cross my mind.”
Soleta poured herself yet another glass of the ale. It didn’t appear to be affecting her. Shelby was starting to wonder if Soleta had a wooden leg, or two wooden legs, or perhaps she was simply wooden from the neck down. That would actually have explained a great deal.
“Believe me, Elizabeth, if the Spectre had been hired to spy upon you, I would not be here chatting with you in your office. You would never know we were here. Besides—and please do not take offense at this—you’re simply not all that interesting. Bravo station is not exactly a hot spot of Starfleet activity. There really isn’t all that much reason to spy on you at all.”
