Captain's Peril

by William Shatner

  But seeing the divers’ condition, he wondered about the time of death. “Exsin,” he said.

  The young man looked up, relieved to be distracted from his grisly task. “Sir?”

  “Check the rebreathers for me. See when they stopped functioning.”

  Exsin wiped his hands on the wet soil, awkwardly stood, then went to the rebreather that lay by itself. Taking hold of the mask still attached to the device, the young Bajoran adjusted a small mask control, then frowned. “This one’s still functional,” he said.

  Exsin moved to the next rebreather. Its mask was missing—clearly the one the camp’s cook had arrived with—but he adjusted controls on the regulator housing where the air hose connector coupling was located. “So’s this one.”

  Kirk looked back at the two drowned divers. Both lay sprawled, naked, unshielded from the continuing rain, but Kirk refused to think about the possible indignity. Whatever life force had animated those bodies, those minds, had made them Arl Trufor and Arl Kresin, heroes willing to risk their lives for a person they did not know…that life force…that essence…was no longer there.

  “No marks,” Rann said.

  “Nowhere,” Freen added.

  Kirk pointed to the body of Arl Trufor. The dead Bajoran’s eyes were closed, his pallid face calm in repose, as if he had simply fallen asleep and not struggled with panic and fear as seawater filled his lungs. “Open his mouth,” Kirk said.

  None of the three Bajorans moved.

  Kirk used the tone of voice he had learned at the Academy and had honed during his days of command. “Open that man’s mouth now.”

  As if a switch had been thrown, all three complied as Kirk talked them through the procedure for the information that he needed: turning the body, applying pressure to the chest.

  There was no water in the diver’s lungs.

  “What does it mean?” Exsin asked.

  “It means he didn’t drown,” Kirk said. Beyond that, for the moment, he still couldn’t connect the puzzle’s pieces.

  Surprisingly, Exsin’s colleague, Rann, disagreed. “I’ve been on dives before, sir. There’s something called ‘dry drowning.’The throat constricts, the victim dies of cardiac failure, and water never enters the lungs.”

  But Kirk had been responsible for the lives of thousands of crew over his career. He knew all the ways of death they had faced. And what the young Bajoran student was suggesting, though accurate, didn’t apply here.

  “Among humans, dry drowning is rare,” he explained. “One, maybe two times out of ten. But it’s always accompanied by spasm, muscular contraction, brought on by shock or struggle. Look at those men. Open hands, relaxed faces. They didn’t struggle. They didn’t drown. They just…stopped living.”

  Rann and Freen looked doubtful, but Exsin took up Kirk’s argument. “Their rebreathers are still charged.” He pointed out to the others. “And there’s no sign of them having been torn off.”

  That was a question Kirk hadn’t thought to ask. “When the bodies were found,” he said now, “were they still wearing their equipment?”

  None of the three Bajorans could give him the answer. “Lara found them this morning,” Exsin said helpfully. “She’ll know. But when we arrived, the equipment was right where it is now.”

  Kirk had learned all he could for the moment, but he made himself look along the shore one last time for any sign that Picard’s body had been washed up, as well. Nothing.

  “I’ll go talk to Lara,” he said, relieved, then began to walk slowly away, favoring his bandaged leg.

  “Wait! Sir!” It was Rann calling him back. “What do we do with them?”

  Kirk stopped without turning around. He was aware the bodies would have to be kept until the Enterprise arrived, even though there were no facilities for doing so. Though decomposition would inevitably set in during that time, he had faith in McCoy’s abilities to examine the bodies with skills and expertise which no other doctor in Starfleet had yet matched. So, in the end, as long as the bodies were not cremated, which did not appear to be the Bajoran way, it didn’t matter what happened to them.

  Which left only one answer for Rann’s question.

  “Mourn them,” Kirk said. In the end, that was all the living could do for the dead. And it was never enough.

  “Melis is sleeping.” Avden Lara said those words accusingly, as if Kirk had come to her tent with no other intention but to disturb her daughter.

  “I wanted to talk to you,” Kirk said softly.

  The Bajoran woman frowned at him. “In the rain?”

  Kirk pulled his rain-soaked robe closer around his shoulders, no longer feeling chilled. Only tired. “If we can’t talk in your tent, then we’ll have to talk outside.”

  Lara’s brow furrowed. “A minute.” Then she let the tent flap fall shut, leaving Kirk in the cold.

  Two minutes later she slipped out from the tent, wearing a stiff, hooded cloak of oiled, lavender-colored leather. The rain rolled off its slick surface. “What do you want?” she asked.

  “Odd,” Kirk said as they began to walk among the tents, “you don’t look Klingon.”

  Lara stared at him.

  “It’s how they say hello,” Kirk explained. “Klingons.”

  She still stared.

  Kirk saw he wasn’t going to slip past the woman’s defenses with whatever charm he still could muster. He changed tactics. “Sedge Nirra believed you killed Professor Nilan.”

  Lara gave no reaction. “I’m not surprised. Nilan Artir deserved to die.”

  “Why?”

  “What does it matter to you?”

  Kirk stopped walking, held her gaze. “I believe whoever killed Nilan also killed Sedge. And the murder of Sedge led to the death of my friend and Arl Trufor and Kresin.”

  “Trufor and Kresin…they were good men. I’m sorry they’re dead.”

  “And Jean-Luc Picard?”

  “I didn’t know him. Other than he tried to hurt my daughter. As you did.”

  Kirk sighed heavily. The only way he had been able to function today, the only way he could continue to function, was to not think about the fact that Picard was gone. It was an ability he had had to develop years ago, when he had first learned that his decisions could—and did—send trusting men and women to their deaths. An ability he had taken for granted until this nightmare had engulfed him…and Picard.

  “Your daughter,” Kirk said, “she was alone in your tent. She went into convulsions. We tried to help her.”

  “You almost poisoned her.”

  Kirk didn’t see how that was possible. “With the same substance you rubbed on her?”

  “Not substance. B’ath rayl,” Lara said as if Kirk had the attention span of a Pakled. “It’s very…powerful. Absorbed by the pagh. If you drink it, it can kill.”

  Absorbed by the pagh, Kirk thought. The Bajoran term for life force. Whatever was in the cylinder wasn’t medicine at all. Merely distilled prayer. And probably about as much use to the child as a blessing from Prylar Tam.

  “We didn’t know,” Kirk said.

  “But still, you interfered,” the young Bajoran woman replied bitterly. “That’s the way it is with you offworlders. Always thinking you know best. Always meddling where you don’t belong.”

  Kirk avoided the urge to lecture Lara, reminded himself of the purpose of his meeting with her. Information. Vital information. Absolutely necessary if he were to make sense of this nightmare, find justice for the death of—Kirk wrenched his thoughts under control again. “Why did you want Nilan dead?”

  “I didn’t want him dead. I said he deserved to die.”

  “And I asked, Why?”

  They had come to an intersection of tents. Lara paused.

  “My daughter is…not well,” she said.

  “I know,” Kirk told her. “F’relorn’s disease.” Sedge had told him on the boat.

  Lara shook her head dismissively. “Offworlders know nothing.”

  Kirk wouldn’t f
ight with her. “If not that, then what?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.” The camp cook spat on the ground, then began to move off as if she were about to abandon him.

  Kirk knew he would have one chance to shock Lara into having a real conversation with him, and he took it. “You’d be surprised. I know the importance of following my father-in-law’s advice in the matter of gathering bateret leaves.”

  Lara stopped in midstep, pushed back her oiled leather hood so she could look at Kirk as if seeing him for the first time.

  Kirk gestured to the cloud-filled sky above. The constellation of stars called Five Brothers hadn’t risen yet, and would not be visible behind the clouds if it had, but he trusted Lara would understand his inference. “That’s the reason for the third brother’s exile, is it not?”

  For a moment, to Kirk, it seemed the young Bajoran woman was not convinced by his demonstration that he knew the most obscure details of Bajoran culture. But then, so quickly Kirk had no time to step back, Avden Lara reached out to squeeze his left earlobe. Painfully.

  Kirk’s eyes watered as Lara seemed intent on ripping his ear from his head. Wonderful, he thought. She’s reading my pagh. That’ll be worthwhile.

  But surprisingly, Lara’s expression softened, and her hold on Kirk’s ear became gentler.

  “He was your friend,” she said, as if she thought every word Kirk had said until now had been a lie. “I didn’t know offworlders were capable of such feelings.”

  Loathe to say anything that might interfere with this sudden change in her disposition, Kirk remained silent, unsure if Lara’s new attitude was genuine. Was it the result of some kind of latent ESP talent heretofore undocumented among Bajorans? Or, more ominous, was she merely manipulating him as a calculating killer might?

  Without seeming to need a reaction from him, Lara released his ear, straightened her cloak, glanced up at the clouds. “We should get out of the rain,” she said, and she chose the direction that would lead them to the center of camp and the cooking facilities. She took his arm to hurry him along, guiding Kirk toward the table beneath the canopy.

  Once at the table, Kirk stripped off his robe, let it hang on a chair beside him, dripping. As Lara took off her own cloak, she revealed that beneath she was wearing the same loose-fitting coarse garments he and Picard had first seen her in, when they had arrived in the camp with their Bajoran rescuer, Corrin Tal.

  While Lara busied herself at the sheltered grill, telling him she would make him some tea, Kirk gratefully took a seat at the table, right leg stretched out.

  He decided to try again, staying focused on the present, not the painful memories of the past. “Can you tell me what’s wrong with your daughter?”

  “The Prophets have found her unworthy.”

  Lara’s flat statement puzzled Kirk. He had no sense that the Bajoran religions had ever viewed the Prophets as anything other than benevolent beings. Incomprehensible, perhaps, definitely unpredictable, but never vindictive.

  “How can a child be unworthy?” Kirk asked.

  Once again, Lara spoke succinctly, without passion. “It’s a Bajoran concept. The sins of the father are visited upon the child.”

  Kirk had spent enough time studying Klingon culture to be familiar with all the works of Shakespeare, including The Merchant of Venice.“It’s a human concept, as well. But one I take exception to.”

  Lara stopped her preparations to regard Kirk seriously. “Be careful to whom you say that, offworlder. Your words would be blasphemy to some of us.”

  “How?”

  “To commit a sin against the Prophets does exact a price. To attempt to escape that price…to even think of such a thing…that is denying the will of the Prophets.”

  Kirk remembered the image Melis had been looking at on her padd. “Your daughter had a picture of…a happier time.”

  Lara nodded. “The occupation was over. The Cardassians gone. It was a good time to be a soldier on Bajor. Victory.”

  “But the soldier in the picture…”

  “My husband,” Lara said with a far-off, but proud look. “Trul. Father of Melis.”

  The sins of the father, Kirk thought. “And he denied the Prophets’ will?”

  “My husband was headstrong,” Lara said with a shake of her head. She returned to preparing tea for Kirk. “He had served on colony worlds where the old ways are not remembered and the Prophets not revered. He returned to our home and spoke against the texts. Said they were folktales, not actual historical fact. The prylars of our community, they tried to talk sense to him, to make him see his error. But…”

  Kirk frowned. He had assumed the man in the image had been killed. Perhaps he had merely been ostracized from his religious community.

  “They made him…go away?” Kirk asked.

  “They made him resign from the Defense Forces. How could he defend Bajor when he was unwilling to defend the Prophets?”

  Kirk said nothing.

  “And then…they found him with Cardassian latinum in his pockets.”

  Kirk didn’t understand. “Found him where?”

  “The spaceport in Lharassa. A small inn. For offworlders.”

  “And…?”

  Lara’s back stiffened, her posture became rigid. “He was dead. He was dealing with Cardassians, and they killed him after he had given them what they wanted.”

  “What did they want?” Kirk asked.

  Lara’s shoulders slumped, as if her loss, like Kirk’s, had happened only the day before. “The investigators wouldn’t tell me.” He watched as her hand reached up to touch the silver chain that dangled from her ear. Her voice lowered until Kirk could barely hear her words. “But he died without his d’ja pagh. He denied the Prophets. A month later, Melis was stricken, and the prylars were not surprised. Trul escaped his fate, and so Melis must pay. It is the will of the Prophets.”

  Lara turned to face him, eyes bright with unshed tears. She held a glass of tea which she now placed in front of him.

  Kirk placed his hands around the glass, cupping its heat. At least he understood her pain now, her bitterness. But he had no strategy for pointing out the truth—that her husband’s transgressions in dealing with the enemy could have no possible connection to her daughter’s health.

  “May I ask another question?”

  Lara sat down facing him. He took the gesture for acquiescence.

  “When you found Kresin and Trufor this morning…” He saw her tense, catch her breath. “…were they still wearing their diving masks and rebreathers?”

  Lara nodded again. “I thought they were resting. Until I reached them.”

  None of this was making sense to Kirk. How could divers die without drowning, without a mark? How could a creature that did not exist pull Picard to his death? How could a murder victim be considered a murder suspect?

  “Drink your tea,” Lara said quietly. “It will warm you.”

  Kirk dutifully took a sip of the hot liquid. Then he settled back in his chair, heard it creak, the familiar sound only making him picture the inexplicably slow workings of his mind this morning. “Lara, do you know what’s happening in this camp? Do you know any reason why someone would want to kill Nilan and Sedge?”

  Lara frowned. “Sedge worked with the Cardassians. During the occupation years ago, and during the Dominion War. Many people would want to kill him.”

  “How about Professor Nilan?”

  Lara bit her lip.

  “If you don’t know who is responsible, then at least tell me: Why did he deserve to die?” Kirk took another gulp of hot tea as he waited for her answer.

  “My daughter can be helped, but Professor Nilan wouldn’t let her get the help she needed.”

  “What would help her?”

  “B’ath rayl,” Lara said, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.

  “The liquid you rubbed on her?”

  Lara nodded. “But what I have, it isn’t pure. It isn’t strong enough. It slows the progr
ession of her disease, but cannot stop it. But pure b’ath rayl…”

  Kirk felt the stirrings of a call to action. Finally, something that he could do to help. In two days, the most sophisticated starship in the fleet would be in orbit of Bajor. There was nothing the Enterprise could not accomplish. “Tell me where b’ath rayl comes from, and in two days, I will get it for you.”

  Lara’s face showed sudden hope, then distrust. “Why?”

  Kirk understood, spoke in reassurance. “The reason we offworlders are sometimes considered to meddle, is because we truly do wish to help. I have a child. I know how I would feel if his health were threatened.” He reached out a hand to Lara. “Let me help.”

  She looked to the sea. “B’ath rayl. It comes from the sea. From that sea.”

  The connection exploded in Kirk’s mind like a phaser burst.

  “From the rayl fish,” he said. Why had he not thought of that until now?

  Lara shook her head forlornly. “More than that. The b’ath rayl.”

  Hearing the name again, it was doubly familiar to Kirk. But why? Then he remembered. The smallest, dimmest star.

  “B’ath b’Etel. The brother who stole a Tear of the Prophets.”

  Lara’s hope was reignited. “Then you do know the stories.”

  Kirk decided honesty was best. “Not all of them.”