by Peter David
I’m definitely going to hear about this later. Chakotay glanced back at the two-person transporter platform in the rear of the flight deck just long enough to see that their guest was humanoid and appeared to be alive. Then he piloted the ship away from Evek, who was retreating out of the Badlands, prompting Chakotay to go farther in.
“Pod is aboard,” Tuvok said.
I’m sorry, Chakotay thought at the other pod’s occupant. I wish I could’ve saved you both.
“Bak’rikan is leaving the Badlands, on a course for Alliance space,” Tuvok said.
“About time,” Seska muttered. More clearly, she asked, “Can we go home now?”
“Uhm—exc—excuse me?” a voice sounded from behind Chakotay before he could answer.
Chakotay turned to take a closer look at their guest. Years in the mines had exposed Chakotay to a goodly number of the Alliance’s subject species, and the last year in the rebellion had done the same for his knowledge of those outside the Alliance’s sphere of influence, and none of them looked like this little person.
He was quite small—about the size of a Ferengi—and seemed male, judging by his build. The top of his head was covered in dark spots, and his skin was yellow at the temples. He had a fairly long mane of hair and a few tufts under each cheek. As for the alien’s face, he had a bulbous nose, beady little eyes, thick eyebrows, and pale skin (apart from the spots). He was also bleeding from a gash on his forehead. Chakotay reached under his seat for the first-aid kit.
“My name’s Chakotay. This is my ship—Geronimo. We rescued you from capture by the Alliance.”
“Well, I—I appreciate that, Captain Chakotay, truly I do. And—and the technology you used to bring me here—it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. But I—I must ask—were you able to rescue the other pod?”
As he moved to apply a bandage to the alien’s forehead, Chakotay said, “I’m afraid not. The occupant of that pod is in Alliance hands now.”
“Thank you,” the alien said as Chakotay applied a bandage. “I’m—I’m sorry, but what is this—this ‘alliance’ of which you speak?”
Seska said, “If you ask me, Chakotay—”
“—you think he’s a spy,” Chakotay finished. “If he is, we’ll beam him back out there. What’s your name, alien?”
“Ah—I am called Neelix, and I must once again ask about this alliance.” Neelix was starting to sound a bit more coherent, probably by virtue of no longer being in a ship coming apart at the seams. “You see, the occupant of the other pod is someone rather dear to me, and I went to a great deal of trouble to rescue her from the Kazon-Ogla, and—”
“Who are the Kazon-Ogla?” Chakotay asked.
Neelix laughed at that. “Oh, very droll, Captain, very droll. As if anyone from this region of space doesn’t know the Kazon. Although”—and now he looked thoughtful—“I must confess to not having seen creatures quite like you before, and I do not recognize your technology, either, especially that miraculous teleporter of yours. Are you strangers to this space?”
“You’re the one who’s the stranger, friend.” Chakotay wasn’t liking the sound of any of this. From the looks of it, this Neelix, whoever he was, was very lost. “As for the person in the other pod—if it is someone dear to you, you’d best pray to whatever gods you worship that the Alliance is quick with her.”
Before the conversation could continue, the intercom beeped. “Flight deck, this is engineering.”
Touching a control to complete the comm, Chakotay said, “Go ahead, Annika.”
“Chief, Kate wants to know if you’re going to be abusing her engines further, or can she take the deuterium injectors offline for a bit.”
Chakotay bit back a response, having long since given up explaining to Annika Hansen how much he hated being called “Chief.” In truth, he suspected that she continued to do so precisely because it annoyed him. There were times when Chakotay believed that he kept Tuvok around because he was the only member of the crew who didn’t give him a hard time.
Annika went on: “We’re also going to have to leave the Badlands in order to do it—the plasma storms are playing merry hell with the things.”
Smiling, Chakotay asked, “Why doesn’t Kate ask me herself?”
“Because she’s up to her arms in plasma conduits, and she doesn’t trust herself to say something she won’t regret later. She did ask you not to take the ship into the plasma storms until she could realign the injectors and warn you of dire consequences should you not heed her sage advice.” Chakotay could almost hear Annika Hansen’s mischievous smile.
“When she climbs out from under the conduits, tell her to take it up with Gul Evek. If he hadn’t come after us, we wouldn’t have had to go back into the Badlands so soon.”
“It was Evek after us? Again? Doesn’t he get tired of losing?”
“No,” Seska said, “it just makes him more determined.”
“He must be the most determined gul in the Alliance.”
Chakotay sighed. He didn’t particularly want to exit the comparative safety of the Badlands. But he also didn’t want to argue with Annika—or, through her, Kate. From the sounds of it, his engineer was already pissed at him. There was no percentage in tempting fate with the woman primarily responsible for maintaining Geronimo’s engines. Besides, if I countermand her now, I’ll be sleeping alone tonight, and that simply isn’t going to happen. He set a course. “All right, we’ll head out of the Badlands, but let me know the instant we can go back in. Evek might try to sniff around again, and I’d rather be elsewhere.”
“Won’t be more than an hour, Chief. Out.”
Tuvok put in, “Exiting the Badlands.”
Chakotay nodded as the storms cleared and the stars could be seen through the viewport. “Holding position.”
“Oh, no.”
The shock in Neelix’s voice caused Chakotay to turn back to face the small alien, who was staring at the viewscreen with eyes as wide as they could go. “What is it?”
“The stars—they’re—they’re all wrong!” He shook his head and looked away. “No, no, it simply cannot be.” Looking up at Chakotay, he asked, “Captain, may I see your local star charts?”
“Don’t let him, Chakotay,” Seska said.
But again, Chakotay ignored the Cardassian woman and called up the local charts on the screen.
Neelix peered at the display. “No, no, no, no, no, no, this is all wrong. Where’s Oblissa or Rectilia? The Vidiian stars—no, no, this is wrong.”
Frowning, Chakotay said, “I don’t recognize any of those names, Mr. Neelix.”
The alien seemed to be ignoring Chakotay, preferring to mutter to himself. “Nothing is where it should be. A red giant where the Komar Nebula should be—a stellar nursery where I know for a fact that Trabar is.”
“I believe I have a theory,” Tuvok stated suddenly.
“Of course you do,” Seska said with a sneer. “This is pointless. We should beam him into space and get on with our mission.”
“What’s your theory, Tuvok?” Chakotay asked, studiously not looking at Seska.
“You will recall that I detected a coherent tetryon beam. Tetryons do not occur naturally in the Badlands. However, it is possible such a beam could be part of an interstellar transporter.”
Chakotay frowned. “That sounds a little far-fetched.”
“Actually, it isn’t.” To Chakotay’s surprise, those words came from Seska, who spoke them with what sounded to Chakotay like the most extreme reluctance. “I remember reading a report about some attempts being made by Alliance scientists to produce an interstellar transporter, one that would work over many light-years. Tetryon particles were part of that.”
Tuvok went on. “If Mr. Neelix is speaking the truth, it is possible that he was brought here by an interstellar transporter, which would account for his lack of recognition of the local stars, as well as his inability to recognize so common a piece of technology as a transporter.”
“The
Caretaker,” Neelix whispered.
“The what?” Chakotay asked.
Waving him off, Neelix said, “It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got time. It’ll take my engineers at least an hour to realign the injectors. It might even be less, but we’re not going anywhere until they’re finished. So you have that amount of time to give me a good reason not to beam you back out into space to die.”
At that, Neelix’s eyes went wide. “You wouldn’t—”
“Mr. Neelix, all of us on this ship are on the run from a very large interstellar empire that wants nothing less than our violent deaths. We have limited resources, and in all honesty, I need a compelling reason to waste food, air, and a bunk on you.”
Neelix took a long breath. “Very well, Captain. If I could trouble you for something to drink? Some fruit juice, perhaps, or—”
“Give him some water,” Chakotay said to Seska.
Seska glowered at Chakotay for a second, but then Neelix surprised all of them by saying, “Water? You have water?”
Frowning, Chakotay said, “Of course we do.”
“That’s incredible!”
Seska had gotten up and gone to the port-side water spigot. Grabbing a plastic cup, she poured it full of water and handed it to Neelix. The alien admired the cup for a moment. “It comes from the walls. Amazing.”
Tuvok raised an eyebrow. “Curious.”
Neelix drank it down and then set the cup aside. “Thank you, Captain. That you would provide so valuable a commodity to an unfamiliar alien bespeaks a nobility that belies your intention to kill me. When you hear my story, and learn of the wonderful woman these alliance people have captured, I’m sure that you will come to my aid.”
“I doubt it,” Seska muttered.
3
Gul Evek, I think you should come down here right away.”
Evek looked up at the communiqué from the Klingon doctor and sighed. The very sound of the woman’s voice irritated him. “Doctor, can’t this wait?”
“No.”
Snarling, Evek rose from his command chair. Of the glinn at the helm, he asked, “Estimated time to Elvok Nor?”
The helm officer took several seconds to reply, a lapse in discipline that Evek once would have severely punished. “Maybe thirty hours or so. Give or take. Uh, sir.” That last was added as afterthought.
Letting loose with another, louder snarl, Evek departed the bridge. He didn’t bother to instruct anyone to take command of the bridge. He didn’t trust any of them to do a proper job, and better no command than bad command.
I could enforce discipline, but what would be the point? They’ve sent me the worst of the worst.
Damn that woman!
As he traversed the corridors of the Bak’rikan to the infirmary, he cursed Seska. She had been his right hand, his first officer, his most valued subordinate. And she betrayed him—not just with her defection, but with her constantly aiding the thrice-damned rebellion to cut away at the Alliance.
Suddenly, the rest of Evek’s crew was reassigned. After what happened with Seska, he was told that it would be best if his crew was split up, to make sure that they could be kept under surveillance individually, rather than be able to gather in a group and possibly spread the contamination of Seska’s sedition further. Had Evek been in any position to argue, he would have pointed out that, if the rest of his crew was also made up of turncoats, then sending them to other posts would just make the situation worse—but then, that was not why they were reassigned in the first place….
“Ah, there you are,” Doctor B’Oraq said as Evek entered the infirmary. “You’re not going to believe this.”
And then the final insult, a Klingon physician. Such a concept was practically a contradiction in terms. True, B’Oraq had actually studied medicine on Cardassia, but she still came from a medical tradition where the treatment of a wound was to hack off the injured body part with a d’k tahg and the treatment of a disease was to kill the patient.
Unwilling to look for long at the auburn-haired Klingon woman who now occupied his infirmary, Evek instead turned his gaze to her patient. It appeared to be a female of some kind, with the smooth face of a Terran or Vulcan, but with ears of a type Evek had never seen on either species. “What is she?” he asked.
“I have no idea. Her life-sign readings don’t match anything in our computers. And yes, I checked twice.”
“No doubt a computer malfunction,” Evek said dismissively.
“I don’t think it is. Her DNA sequence isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen.”
Impatiently, Evek said, “Doctor, I fail to see how—”
“The fact that she’s an alien isn’t why I called you down here,” B’Oraq said quickly, tugging on the auburn braid that hung down over her left shoulder, one of the Klingon’s many annoying habits. Evek listed breathing at the top of that particular list.
“Why, then?” Evek folded his arms.
“When I scanned her brain, I found tremendously elevated levels of psilosynine—that’s a neurotransmitter that is produced in telepaths.”
Evek’s arms dropped to the floor. He’d been mostly ignoring B’Oraq’s words, instead coming up with entertaining ways of skinning the doctor alive, but the word telepath caught his attention. “Are you saying—?”
“That she’s a telepath? I don’t know. More tests need to be run, but I don’t really have the facilities here. She’s sedated right now while her injuries heal—she’s been beaten very badly—and I’d rather not wake her up and find her reading my thoughts.”
Nodding, Evek said, “Run the tests you can here.”
“I already have—the brain scan I did was the extent. If this was a Klingon ship, I could map the brain more thoroughly, but Bak’rikan doesn’t have that equipment.”
“Some Cardassian ships do,” Evek said bitterly.
“Either way, we need to get this woman to a facility that can examine her properly and determine if she really is a telepath. If she is …”
B’Oraq didn’t need to finish that sentence. The Terran Empire had wiped out every known telepathic species in the quadrant a century ago. A true telepath would be a valued commodity, one the Alliance would reward the procurement of.
“Are we on course for Elvok Nor? They have a much more complete infirmary there, and Doctor Dorkan is a fine—”
“No,” Evek said. “That is to say, we are currently on course for the station, but we will not be for long. Gul Jasad is in charge of Elvok Nor, and he would quickly take the credit for the discovery of this alien.”
Again, B’Oraq tugged on her braid. “I have a suggestion that you probably won’t like.”
“Then don’t bother telling me,” Evek said, and turned on his heel.
“You could set course for Ardana.”
Evek stopped in his tracks. He knew that Ardana was a former subject world of the Terran Empire, and was once the prime source of zenite for the Alliance before it was mined clean, but little else beyond that. “Why would I do that?”
“Because there is a research facility on Ardana. Some of the top minds in the Alliance are working there, including Crell Moset, Kurak, and—”
Evek turned around. “Kurak is a Klingon name. You expect me to believe that one of the top minds in the Alliance is a Klingon?”
“Believe what you want, but the head of the base is a woman named B’Elanna. She’s an old friend of mine, and—well, let us say she is one who can sympathize with your own position. She used to be the Intendant of Cestus III, until she failed to quell an uprising. Her mother is a high-ranking adviser to the Regent, so she was spared the usual fate of such failure. Instead, she was exiled to an outpost of scientists. I can assure you, she would be a valuable ally.”
For several seconds, Evek said nothing. Finally, he asked, “Why are you suggesting this? What good would it do you?”
B’Oraq had mostly been avoiding eye contact; Evek had been doing likewise. Now, however, she stared right at
him. Evek tried to return the stare, but found himself looking away. “I grow weary of being part of your punishment, Evek. I didn’t study medicine on Cardassia in order to serve on a Cardassian ship and aid in the embarrassment of a disgraced Cardassian gul. I studied so I could bring better medicine to Klingon worlds. I would have thought our alliance would bring about shared practices, but such has not been the case. Klingon medicine is barbaric—you’ve said so yourself, mostly about my own work, despite the evidence to the contrary—and my desire is to improve it. I can’t do that while wasting away serving as an object lesson to you for being too incompetent to hold on to your officers.”
Evek strode forward and raised an arm as if to strike the doctor. “How dare you?”
Her smile grew wider. “Oh, do, Gul. Strike me, so I may challenge you.”
“This isn’t a Klingon ship, woman—your tiresome notions of duels and honor do not apply here.”
“They apply to me. Section forty-seven of the treaty signed by both our peoples seventy-five years ago states that any Klingon officer who is challenged on any Alliance vessel will be subject to Klingon rules of conduct. If you strike me, I have the right to challenge you for your command.” She stepped close to him. The scent of her breath was vile, doubtless from that wretched raw meat she insisted upon eating right there in the mess hall, and Evek’s stomach roiled with nausea. “I am quite proficient with the d’k tahg, Evek, and as a doctor I know precisely where to strike to cause the most pain. You cannot afford to deny me my rights under Alliance law, not in your current state of disgrace. And when I kill you, I will claim the telepath for myself.”
Evek was sorely tempted to go through with it and damn the consequences. The worst that could happen was that he would lose and finally put an end to an existence that had been a misery.
No—I am no Romulan who falls on his sword as if that meant something. One thing Cardassians and Klingons—and Terrans, if it came to that—shared was a loathing for suicide. His ship was named Bak’rikan: “no surrender.” Once a symbol of his tenacity in battle, it now represented his stubborn refusal to let his disgrace ruin him.
