Star Trek Corps of Engineers: Ghost

by Ilsa J. Bick

“So why not access Jennifer’s files from your office?” Lense asked stubbornly.

  “I just told you. It’s easier to cross-reference correspondence that only she would’ve initiated at her workstation, and I can’t know what that is until I lay eyes on it—and that’s because your mother wasn’t the most generous person when it came to sharing hypotheses from the available data. And because this is the reality, Lizzie: Your mother is dead. Tragic but true. We were colleagues, not friends. The work has to go on, and I’ve spent almost two decades of my life living in your mother’s shadow principally because hers was the quicker mind. I don’t begrudge her that; she was a master, and I’ve not exactly suffered. Neither has Strong. But she’s gone, and I’m here now. Yet if you think I’m ambitious enough to somehow arrange for your mother’s premature demise, think again.”

  As Darly had talked, Lense had felt her skin tighten around her mouth, her eyes. “I’m curious. Just exactly who’s going to be named lead investigator?”

  Darly hunched one shoulder, let it fall. “I know I want the job. I suspect Strong does, too. Or the department chair may have other ideas that she’ll present to the grant committee. They’ll be looking for someone as skilled as your mother. Jennifer Almieri understood survival in academe: publish or perish. So for her? Cutting a few throats?” Darly gave Lense a wintry smile. “All in a day’s work.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Their lovemaking had been passionate and satisfying, and now Faulwell and Anthony lay side by side, hands clasped, sweat wicking away from their bodies in the slowly lengthening shadows as the day slipped toward dusk.

  Faulwell stared at the ceiling. He was keenly aware of Anthony’s body lying next to his, could feel his heat. He’d memorized Anthony’s body with his fingers, his mouth, his eyes, lingering over its tiny imperfections in a way he hadn’t before: a slash of white scar on the hump of his right elbow; a dimple coin of scar tissue on his left knee; a thin ribbon that unfurled the length of his pelvis below his navel. These had fascinated him, and he couldn’t tell if this sudden interest mirrored the inventory he’d taken of his own wounds just an hour earlier.

  So was he really seeing Anthony more clearly? Seeing himself?

  He was…uneasy. Was that a fair statement? His forehead wrinkled in thought. Yes, he thought it was. The easy camaraderie he’d enjoyed with Jolen was missing. At first, in the urgency of their lovemaking, he’d dismissed this. He’d simply needed. But now…

  Did I only imagine how close I grew to Jolen because it was the safe thing to do? Because I knew the da Vinci would leave and there was no risk?

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  He was so caught up in his own thoughts that it took Faulwell a second to place the voice. Faulwell felt the bed dip and rise then dip again as Anthony turned onto his left side, facing Faulwell.

  “I don’t know.” Sounded feeble. He tried again. “There doesn’t have to be anything wrong. I’m just…tired and what happened with Elizabeth—”

  “I know you’re not worrying about Elizabeth.”

  Faulwell said nothing. A second later, his skin flinched as Anthony’s fingers skimmed the scar to the left of his navel. “Is it about this?” Anthony asked. When Faulwell didn’t respond, Anthony added, “Why did you decide to keep it?”

  “Because…it’s a reminder.”

  “Of what?”

  “I don’t expect you to understand.” This struck him as stupid; Anthony had a few scars of his own, and besides lovers talked about these kinds of things. “I mean…almost dying. It was, well, kind of weird. And I don’t remember much.”

  “Tell me.”

  So Faulwell talked. He rolled onto his back and talked to a ceiling that grew blacker as the day waned; he talked about Stratos; the harmonics Fabian had responded to in the paintings; that first spike; and then that awful instant when Faulwell heard that whizzing sound and saw Fabian in the way…. As he talked, his right hand lightly traced his scar back and forth, up and down.

  “When I woke up, I thought I was going to die. I thought this was it, and I sure as hell wasn’t anywhere near ready to go. Maybe that’s why I made a promise to myself, or maybe it was a bargain with some kind of god, I don’t know.”

  “And what was that promise?”

  Now he did look at Anthony. “That I would do what you asked at the wedding,” Faulwell said. “For us to get married.”

  A silence. Then Anthony said, “Is that why you’ve kept the scar? To remind yourself?” A pause and then Faulwell could hear the smile he couldn’t see because of the gathering dusk. “I can understand that,” Anthony said. “I’ve got my own little reminders. And?”

  “And…” Why did it have to be this hard? Faulwell hesitated and then Anthony filled the gap for him.

  “You’re not sure.” There was no malice or disappointment in Anthony’s voice. Maybe that would come later. “You’ve had a chance to rethink your promise, and you’re not sure. Because of Jolen?”

  “Yes. Well…maybe. Or maybe I’m bothered by all the things I’ve told you.”

  Anthony laughed. “You haven’t told me a lot of things.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the night table where he’d put the box, not bothering to read the contents in their eagerness to make love. “You’ve written hundreds, thousands of words that I’ve never seen. Even if I read them, they don’t substitute for intimacy.”

  For some reason, Faulwell felt offended. “Then what exactly have we been doing? I didn’t notice you complaining an hour ago.”

  Anthony’s tone took on a hard, almost brutal edge. “Oh, don’t be stupid. We’ve been sleeping together. We’ve had sex, while you’ve spun castles in the air. Maybe that’s all we’ve been doing.” He rolled away, calling for lights and then, as Faulwell blinked in the sudden glare, Anthony said, “This is about him, isn’t it? Jolen?”

  “I…no, this is about us…me…”

  “You’re lying.” Anthony was already tugging on his clothes. “Don’t kid yourself that you’re doing me any favors either.”

  “Wait a minute.” Feeling suddenly vulnerable, Faulwell fumbled for his own clothes, cursed when he realized that they were still in a heap on the bathroom floor, and settled for yanking the top sheet free of the mattress. “You were the one who brought up marriage,” he said, cinching the sheet around his waist.

  “Yeah, and I drank a lot and then I kissed that doctor of yours, Elizabeth—and I enjoyed it and…”

  “Oh, I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to hear that.”

  Anthony shouted over him. “But it didn’t mean that I wanted her! Oh, don’t get me wrong. She’s cute. I like her, and I’m sure she’d be good in bed. But I prefer men.”

  “Gee, thanks. I was beginning to wonder.”

  “Oh, shut up.” Now fully clothed, Anthony turned and erased the distance between them in four strides. He came so quickly, his face so contorted with rage and hurt, that Faulwell took an instinctive step back, half-raised an arm to defend himself.

  Something in Anthony’s face seemed to break. “You really think I’d hurt you? You idiot, you…”

  And then, before he could react, Anthony took Faulwell’s face in both hands and gave him a fierce, passionate, furious kiss. Faulwell flinched back then surrendered to the embrace so that when Anthony finally pulled away, Faulwell was nearly breathless.

  “I love you,” Anthony said, his voice ragged, his blue eyes bright with tears. “Maybe this whole thing has been a big lie, a nice little fairytale of a romance. But this is reality, Bart, not a pretty picture or something you can conjure on a page, and this is about whatever future we’re going to have. And you know something?” Anthony ran his thumb over Faulwell’s lips, and then took a step back. “I’ve had enough of stories and lies. You’ve kept me at arm’s length with those letters. I’ve been something you can dream about and then tuck away. But real life is messy, Bart. So what I’m asking is this. Are you prepared for us? Are you ready to hear something that isn’t fan
tasy but the truth?”

  He heard the desire behind Anthony’s question; knew that all he’d have to do was say that, yes, he was ready—and then maybe this chasm opening between them would close. But he hesitated.

  And Anthony saw it. The light in his eyes—hope?—faded. Anthony’s face set into something approaching granite, and he turned away.

  But not before Faulwell saw the hurt.

  “Anthony,” he said. “Wait.”

  “No.” Then, at the threshold, Anthony looked back over his shoulder. “But you know what, Bart? You’re not the only one with secrets.”

  The door sighed shut.

  CHAPTER 7

  It was nearly nine local time and the sun was just slipping below the western horizon to her right when Lense pushed out of the commuter transport station on Washington Circle. It was like walking into a blast furnace. The air was stifling but too humid for her to sweat much; its sticky fingers dragged along her skin. Down the hill directly before her, she could just see the northern face of the Lincoln Memorial, its marble columns washed hot apricot by the sunset.

  Welcome to August in Washington, D.C.

  Turn to the right, a dispassionate computer voice murmured in her left ear. Right meant west, and when she’d made the turn, her PGS soothed, Proceed down Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest for point-two-six kilometers.

  Lense did what her Personal Guidance System instructed. Strong’s directions indicated that Jennifer’s apartment lay west off R Street in Old Georgetown and near Dumbarton Oaks, which meant she had to walk into the sun, squinting because of the glare. As she crossed over the bridge at Pennsylvania where the walk fed into M Street, a sudden flare to her right caught her eye. She stopped, eyeing the white-yellow plume of a suborbital shuttle arcing first west and then east. A moment later, the vessel’s rumbling roar caught up. She turned, following the shuttle’s trajectory.

  As the shuttle passed out of sight, her gaze skipped down and then over the faces of two or three other knots of people—probably tourists, judging from the sheer number of baseball caps with various D.C. logos and the adult-to-kid ratio—who’d similarly paused to gawk. Her eyes briefly touched on a man—athletic-looking, bearded, in jeans and a light colored shirt open at the throat, maybe a few years older than she—who quickly pretended that he hadn’t been staring, though his eyes soon drifted back and his lips curled into a tentative half-smile.

  She abruptly turned aside. A guy had to be pretty desperate to be making eyes at a woman with a blimp in her belly.

  In a few seconds, he passed her and when she looked again, he was striding down M and then turned into a café. Somewhere cool, she imagined, where he’d sip something icy and enjoy a nice meal.

  The kid suddenly twisted as if seconding that rest and food were terrific ideas.

  Well, okay, she could just go back to the Academy. What did it all matter? Jennifer Almieri was dead. And she really didn’t feel…anything. Certainly not grief.

  Her PGS nagged: You are off-course. Please execute a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn and head due west on M.

  Sighing, Lense did what the computer said. The thing was worse than the kid.

  Jennifer’s apartment was on the third floor of a renovated Victorian brownstone of ancient vintage. After eyeing her identification, the super led the way in silence, keyed in the master code to lower Jennifer’s privacy shield, and unlock the door. Then he gave her the code and left.

  She’d never been here. This was a Jennifer and a life she didn’t know.

  The apartment had that empty feel. The air was musty and laced with the aroma of tomatoes and basil and spoiled meat.

  The hush made her nervy. Her footsteps sounded too loud, like old-fashioned pistol shots, on the hardwood floors. Fishing about in one pocket of her maternity uniform—a blue parachute; every month, pull the ripcord—she came up with a canister of silicone for emergency use with burn patients. She applied the spray to either hand, waited for the polymer to dry, then flexed her fingers. Like wearing gloves. Just in case.

  The entrance hall opened to a large, elliptical room and an expanse of bay window that faced Dumbarton Gardens directly north. The room was chockablock with bookshelves crammed to capacity, several musical instruments—a Vulcan harp, a Bajoran bella-clavion—and artifacts everywhere: Hebitian lizardlike creatures of jeweled jevonite, a number of Vulcan gods and pictograms, a dizzying array of artifacts she did not recognize, as well as an extensive collection of Tholian multihued crystal-lattices.

  A pristine kitchen was down the left corridor leading off this main room. The interior was spotless, the countertops clean, every dish in its place in the cupboards she palmed open. On the table were red and white roses in a vase: She bent, sniffed. The flowers were fragrant, the water clear.

  She checked the ice-box next: an assortment of fresh vegetables—lettuce, celery, sliced Tyrolian purple carrots in a small container of water, half a tomato on a small plate—and fruit, including Kefarian apples, notoriously difficult to store for longer than three, maybe four days at the outside. She inspected the creamy yellow skin of one for bruises. There were none.

  Wait a minute…

  Her ship docks twelve days ago. She checks in at the Academy. What then? She’s a free agent. No one sees her, but she’s clearly going in and out. Fresh vegetables and fruit, cooking smells…something’s wrong.

  Her gaze wandered the counters again, coming to rest on a butcher’s block bristling with knives.

  The tomato. Those carrots. Innocuous anywhere else…only someone like me would know she didn’t do fresh food. She’d bark at a replicator on those rare occasions when she remembered to eat.

  She found a razor-sharp knife, with a nearly invisible rust rime between tang and pryolene handle. Wished she’d brought a tricorder. Idiot. But when she ran her thumb over the rime, the flecks were the color of old copper.

  Huh.

  Jennifer’s bedroom, at the far end of the other corridor, was bad. Getting there was awful, but in a different way. Here, the stink of rot was eye-wateringly strong, something the air repurification systems hadn’t totally eradicated. On either side of the hall were old-fashioned photographs.

  Walking the hall was a trip through a time warp, the pictures becoming older as she went. A tingle of surprise that she was there: graduation day at the Academy now eight years past. Her hair was a boyish crew cut, what she thought looked military, and she grimaced. Her eyes rested on the image of a slimmer, more optimistic-looking Julian Bashir two rows behind and a little to the right.

  No more of her. The rest were Jennifer’s various digs, and not just Drura Sextus on the fringes of Klingon space—the first and so far only Tholian site discovered on a Class-M planet, leading to the still-hotly contested theory that Tholians had seeded the Alpha Quadrant millennia ago when many of its planets were older, their suns much hotter. Livilla Darly—looking very much the same then as now—was in many of the pictures as was Preston Strong.

  Jennifer had been, yes, as beautiful as she remembered: that river of chestnut arranged in that queenly coil; a long, slim neck that gave way to ample breasts; brown-black eyes that were a tiny bit feline and added mystery. (Lense was her father’s daughter: a moppet of curls, a snub nose and a chin a tad too strong.)

  One thing she noticed: Strong’s hand resting on Jennifer’s left shoulder. Something between them? Strong was good-looking, sensual. A bit of a rogue.

  By the time she stepped into Jennifer’s room, she was convinced that Strong and Jennifer had been lovers.

  And So. Bloody. What.

  The bedroom was a horror.

  The king-size bed was unmade, the sheets purplish and stiff with purge fluids. And Jennifer had lost bowel and bladder control as she died.

  Lense was shaking. She’d done enough forensics work in her time to know that crews tore things up, leaving the clean-up to families. Steeling herself, she pointedly avoided looking at the bed and instead inspected the virtual collage of photog
raphs peppering the walls.

  Her stomach iced. Her eyes shifted to the next and then the one after that and then one more. She turned a slow circle, scanning each photograph in turn.

  She should’ve expected this. There was only one obsession upon which Jennifer would fixate. That it still hurt made Lense want to break something.

  The same person, from infancy through childhood and on into adolescence: The infant’s—and then the young boy’s—eyes were feline, glittery, deeply black, full of mischief. He also shared his mother’s hair, that long neck. His broad shoulders tapered in a V and muscular legs. Captain of the swim team…yes, four gold medals festooning his bare chest…then a fencer, and of course a star pupil, champion debater…

  Unable to bear any more, she turned away. Her chest was tight, hands fisted. Holding herself together.

  I refuse to get trapped here again, I absolutely refuse.

  But the pain was the same.

  Jennifer’s dresser drawers held neatly arranged T-shirts, jeans, work clothes. She felt embarrassed as she quickly inventoried Jennifer’s underwear and was relieved that nothing was anything but…well, functional.

  Nothing much on the dresser: a jewelry box that contained a collection of earrings, two or three necklaces…and her wedding band: platinum with tiny diamonds and Marlburnian rubies. The one she stopped wearing when Lense was sixteen and…

  She clapped the lid shut.

  What else? Three scented candles, a single bottle of perfume that looked as if it had barely been touched.

  She tweezed up the bottle between thumb and forefinger, uncapped the atomizer, sniffed. She must’ve been getting used to the smell of rot because she could detect an odor.

  Huh.

  Flowers in the kitchen, food in the ice-box, scented candles in the bedroom and perfume…Jennifer wasn’t exactly the roses and perfume type. True, there was only the one bottle, barely touched. (A wry thought: probably the same bottle she’d given Jennifer as a Mother’s Day gift twenty years ago.)