by Peter David
Although the disruptor blast had not killed her, the impact had been severe enough to injure her to the point of being life threatening. But as long as she was receiving treatment, she would survive what she had endured.
She floated in and out of consciousness, her body numb from the neck down thanks to the medications being administered by the healing devices.
Kalinda heard a soft footfall near the door. She didn’t open her eyes at first; she found she didn’t especially care who it was. So much had happened so quickly that she was, to some degree, still in shock over it and having a difficult time processing it all. Eventually, though, she sensed that there was someone standing near her. Slowly she opened her eyes, very narrowly, to see who was there.
“Oh,” she said.
Robin Lefler was standing there, staring at her. “Oh? That’s all you have to say to me? ‘Oh?’”
“What else—” She stopped. The pain was starting to overcome the meds. Her chest throbbing, she took as deep a breath as she could, and then began again. “What else would you have me say? You won. You and your allies. You won. You got the ship. You got it because you…” Another pause for pain, and another start. “You got it because you used me as a club against my brother. And now he’s dead.”
“Dead?” Robin was surprised and didn’t make any effort to hide it. “Si Cwan is dead? I thought they agreed to leave. I heard—”
“What you heard doesn’t matter,” said Kalinda. “I know he is dead.”
“How do you know that?”
Kalinda stared glumly at the ghost of her brother, at the ghosts of the other members of the crew, drifting through the sick lab. “I just know.” Then she fixed her attention back on Robin. “Does that matter to you? Aren’t you happy about it?”
“I’m not like you,” Robin replied, clenching her fists as if trying to contain herself. “I don’t enjoy killing people for no good reason.”
“Nor do I.”
“You enjoyed treating Elizabeth and me like we were trash. Like we were garbage. You never gave a damn about us.”
Regarding her as if she had started speaking in tongues, Kalinda winced her way through another wave of pain and then asked, with no trace of irony, “Was I supposed to? I mean,” she added, “you and the other…Elizabeth…you’re Terrans. Am I supposed to give a damn about you? I’m sorry if I sound callous, but…nothing in Si Cwan’s attitude…or even yours…indicated to me that I was supposed to give you even the slightest thought. Was I wrong?”
“Were you…?”
Robin didn’t know what to say.
She had just come from the chamber where the null sphere was contained. She had not descended into the chamber, however. Instead, once all the fighting and shouting had died down, she had finally summoned enough nerve to make her way toward the chamber. She wanted to catch up with Elizabeth, to find out what was going on, and perhaps even—if she could summon her courage—help.
Instead she had discovered Elizabeth’s corpse lying in the duct.
She had screamed upon making the discovery, but no one had heard her. Or, if they had, they simply hadn’t given a damn. With tremendous effort, she had taken hold of Shelby’s body and dragged her, foot by agonizing foot, back to the shabby place they had shared for so long that Robin was unclear how much time had passed. Elizabeth had left a trail of red behind her that had progressively thinned out as her body had run out of blood.
Once they had returned “home,” Robin had propped Elizabeth up into a semi-seated position and just sat across from her for a time, staring at her as if wondering whether somehow, miraculously, her body was going to return to life—destroyed skull and all. Unsurprisingly, that did not happen.
All the time she sat there, she berated herself for not coming along with Elizabeth, for not being there to guard her back. Although the truth was that there wouldn’t have been a single thing that Robin could have done to save Elizabeth Shelby, that didn’t prevent her from second-guessing herself and blaming herself. As she did that, she listened with one ear to all the noises of the angry crew being forced to depart the ship. When all had lapsed into silence, she had dared to climb out of her hovel, certain that Soleta’s declaration that all of Cwan’s people had to leave the ship couldn’t possibly have applied to her.
She had then walked around the ship aimlessly. She wasn’t sure why she was doing it or what she expected to find. She just wanted to experience what it was like to be in a ship without worry over being cuffed, beaten, or dispatched to do menial tasks.
All the time she did that, she wondered why she hadn’t listened to Elizabeth. There were indeed Terrans who dreamt of more than just this half-life they were living. They were fighting to make the world the sort of place that Robin only imagined. And the fact was, she realized, that Elizabeth had been right. Dreams are all well and good, but sitting around dreaming them only went so far. Sometimes one had to seize the opportunity to make those dreams become reality.
It was at that point that she heard the steady droning of medical equipment and wondered if anyone had been left behind in the rush to vacate the ship. Her jaw had dropped almost to her knees when she’d opened the door and discovered Kalinda, sister of Lord Cwan himself, lying there helplessly.
Her first impulse had been to bash in her brains, but she decided against that as being too premature. First she wanted to talk to her. Then she’d bash her brains in.
So now she had spoken with her.
And the young woman—hell, the girl—had been so naïve, so incapable of being disingenuous, that she had asked a simple question to which Robin had no answer. Except that wasn’t quite true. She did have an answer; it was just one she wasn’t fond of.
“You were wrong,” she said, feeling exhausted, “that we didn’t matter. But I can…I can see how you would have thought that. That none of us matter. That I don’t matter. I can see, if that’s all you know…” Her voice trailed off.
Kalinda glanced around the sick lab. “Where is the other woman? The one you’re usually with? Elizabeth? Where is she?”
Lowering her head, Robin was about to tell her, and suddenly Kalinda said, “Oh. Never mind.”
“Never mind?” Robin felt a flare of temper. “What do you mean, never mind?”
“I mean I know. And I am very sorry for your loss. Very sorry.”
The words stunned Robin, cut her to the very fiber of her being. Without even realizing she was saying it, Robin replied, “And I am sorry for your loss as well.”
“No, you’re not,” Kalinda told her. There was actually a hint of slyness around the edges of her mouth.
“Well then…I suppose you’re right.”
“Odd how I derive no satisfaction from that.” She had lifted her head slightly to get a better look at Robin, but now lay her head back on the bed. Staring up at the ceiling, she said, “You were thinking of killing me, weren’t you.”
Robin was taken aback at the statement. Not that it was without foundation; it was, in fact, true. But hearing Kalinda say it aloud the way she had made the…the immorality of it more stark somehow. “No,” she said quickly.
Kalinda chuckled, and then coughed and gasped because the laugh had pained her. “Are all Terrans as terrible liars as you?”
“Most aren’t, actually,” she admitted.
“I suppose that’s good to know. If you…” She looked back to Robin, and there was sadness but also understanding in her eyes. “If you think that killing me will make things better somehow…go ahead. Death holds no fear for me, and life holds very little of interest. Do what you will.”
“I don’t need your permission to kill you if I’m of a mind to,” Robin said.
“That’s very true. Very well: Please don’t kill me. I don’t want to die,” she said in what sounded vaguely like a plea. Then her voice returned to normal. “Is that better?”
“Oh, just…just stay here and heal,” Robin snapped at her, and she stormed out of the medical facility.
<
br /> Kalinda watched her go, then slumped her head back once more, shook it, and sighed, “What an odd species.”
23
Bragonier was a member of the royal house of Danter. His face was on the viewscreen of the Stinger, and he could not have looked more shocked as Soleta laid out for him, as clearly and succinctly as she could, all that had transpired.
“And you owe it all,” she concluded, “to him. To this man. A Xenexian,” she added, making sure to underscore the last words. She gestured for Muck to step in next to her. He said nothing, but did as she bade, and gazed balefully at Bragonier.
The older man was shaking his head in astonishment. “This…this is quite extraordinary. And you’re now in command of the ship, you say? What of this…this McHenry?”
“He remains in the null sphere for the time being.”
I’ve no desire to leave. It’s far more peaceful here.
“He is…content there,” Soleta continued, giving no indication that McHenry had said anything to her. Once again she cast a sidelong glance at Muck, but he remained inscrutable. It would have been easier to get readings off a black hole.
“I see. And…a Xenexian. What is your name?”
“Muck,” he said.
Bragonier looked skeptical. “That doesn’t sound like a Xenexian name to me.”
“I was…” Muck hesitated, and then said slowly, carefully, as if he was out of practice and had trouble remembering, “M’k’n’zy. Of Calhoun.”
The name clearly resonated with Bragonier. Possibly without even knowing that he was doing so, he got to his feet. “M’k’n’zy. Son of Gr’zy, brother of D’ndai.”
Now it was Soleta’s turn to be surprised. “You know him?” She turned to Muck. “He knows you?”
“Listen to me, M’k’n’zy,” Bragonier said quickly. “What happened to your brother and your father was not my fault. What happened to you was not my fault. No one told your brother to rebel. No one told your father to do the same, thus condemning you to whatever hell the Romulans put you through.”
“I know,” Muck said very quietly.
Bragonier looked incredibly relieved to hear Muck say that. So was Soleta, who said, “So…now that you know your allies are—”
“However,” Muck continued, interrupting Soleta as if she hadn’t been speaking, “I’m going to kill you anyway.”
Soleta’s head snapped back around. “What?”
“Me?” said Bragonier. “But I told you, I had no direct hand—”
“Not just you,” said Muck in a voice that was deathly cold and devoid of anything even resembling pity. “All of you. McHenry…take them. Take them all.”
The Stinger shuddered as the great cannons beneath her opened fire on the planet surface.
“Muck!” screamed Soleta, and then she cried out, “McHenry!”
Yes, Soleta?
“Stop it! Stop it this instant!”
I can’t. It’s really important to M’k’n’zy that all the Danteri die, and I have no desire to disappoint him.
“Oh my God!”
She ran straight at Muck, shouting, “You have to stop! You have to stop this, now!”
“They don’t deserve to live. They destroyed my life. They destroyed my people’s lives. They deserve to die.”
“All of them?” She grabbed at his shirt. “Men, women, children who know nothing or contribute nothing to any of their policies? People who want nothing but to live their lives in peace? What have they done to deserve to die?”
“They were born.”
“Muck—!”
“What did I do to deserve it?” There was cold anger in his voice. She almost would have felt better if he had lost control and screamed at her.
“Nothing. But that doesn’t excuse you if you kill everyone down there.”
“I don’t care.”
“Muck, this is wrong! This is—!”
He grabbed her hands, holding them immobilized. “It’s not wrong,” he said, and Soleta knew that if she could ever hear a dead man speak, this is what he would sound like. “It’s the beginning.”
“The beginning of what?”
“Of the mission.”
“What mission? What are you talking about?”
He took Soleta firmly by the shoulders and pointed her toward the screen. She watched helplessly as the Stinger’s weapons continued to pound relentlessly upon the planet’s surface. “We’re going to destroy all life upon Danter. All of it. They all deserve to die because of what they did to me and to Xenex. And after that, when we’re done…we go to Xenex…and we destroy all life there as well.”
“What? But they’re your own people!”
“My people? How are they my people? None of them spoke up on my behalf. No one interceded. My father despised me the entire time that I lived there, and they all followed his lead. I had year upon year of torment. They knew I was powerless. They called me coward. They said I lived in fear. Now they will get to live in fear, for the short time they have left to live, as the sky rips open and death rains from above. And then…then, Soleta, once we’ve accomplished that, we will go to Romulus and destroy all life there as well.”
Not for a moment did Soleta believe they would be able to accomplish that. Annihilating all life on helpless worlds was one thing. Slaughtering the inhabitants of the Romulan homeworld, which would be protected by Romulan war vessels, was impossible. “Why?” she whispered. “Why would you possibly want to commit to this…this insanity?”
“Because it’s not insanity,” he told her with conviction. “It’s the only way that we can possibly be free. I know it’s a tremendous risk. But if we can accomplish it, we’ll be free from everything that bound us to our old lives. The people who wronged us, the situations that frustrated us. All gone, all ties severed. We will travel the galaxy as angels of death, bringing pain and destruction to every living thing…because they all deserve to die. All of them.”
“You’re dead,” she whispered.
He looked at her in amusement. “Is that a threat? You think to kill me?”
“No, I…I mean that inside, you’re dead. All the rage, all the anger you feel…it’s burned away everything else. And you’re determined to carve out a reality where the outside matches your inside.”
“Maybe. Or maybe…I’m simply right. About all of it. Maybe this entire universe deserves to die. Maybe we all do.”
She looked deeply into his face, seeking some hint of the man she had known, or at least thought she had known. If she could have seen behind his eyes, she would have realized he wasn’t looking at her at all. There was the memory of a dead woman, Elizabeth Shelby, occupying that space. But she couldn’t know that, and one final time, she said, “Muck…stop the attack now.”
There was clearly so much he wanted to say to her.
But all he said was, “No.”
She rested a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.
Muck’s head snapped to the right, his eyes widening. His body trembled and he did everything he could to pull her hand away from him. Everything, in this case, amounted to nothing, and Muck went over like a felled tree.
She stepped back and stared down at the unmoving Xenexian. No other Romulan knew or understood or would have been able to apply the Vulcan nerve pinch. But she was like no other Romulan.
“McHenry,” she called out.
Yes, Soleta?
“Stop the attack. Now.”
Unfortunately, I promised M’k’n’zy that I would only cease the attack if he requested. Not anyone else.
“If he…” She stopped and looked down with a growing sense of helplessness at his prone form. “McHenry, he can’t tell you to stop! I just dropped him with a nerve pinch! He’ll be out for an hour!”
All right. Ask him to speak with me in an hour.
The guns of the Stinger continued to hammer at the targets far below.
At that moment, Robin Lefler walked in. She started in surprise as she found Soleta standing the
re, staring at her. Neither said anything for a short time.
Then Soleta said, “Do you wish to be of use?”
The answer clearly caught Robin off guard. “I…I suppose.”
“Good. Watch him. Make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.”
Confused but game, Robin eased herself into a nearby chair and stared at the unconscious Muck. Meantime Soleta headed for the nerve center’s exit. As she did, she paused to look at the blossoming explosions decorating the surface of the planet like lethal flower buds.
“Shit,” muttered Soleta, and walked out.
24
She had no idea what it was that brought her to the sick lab to speak to Kalinda. Perhaps it was something as simple as feeling the need to talk to someone, and Kalinda was just about the only one left outside of Robin—and Robin had looked at her with accusation and a deep sense of guilt in her eyes, so Soleta didn’t think she was going to be of much help.
She entered the sick lab and, as she did so, overheard Kalinda talking with someone. The problem was that there was nobody there.
Kalinda stopped talking at that point and turned her attention to Soleta. “Yes?”
“Who were you talking to?”
“No one,” she said, and then added with what sounded like a rueful afterthought, “Literally.” She tilted her head slightly. “What do you want?”
Deciding to get right to it, she said, “Well, McHenry is in the process of destroying every single Danteri.”
“Nonsense,” was Kalinda’s flat response. “It’s impossible. To destroy the crew of this ship, the people who exploited him, kept him helpless—yes, I can see. But millions—billions—of people who have done nothing to him? He wouldn’t do that. I know him.”
“You know him? How can you say that? He’s been a blank slate for however long you’ve been the chief engineer here.”
