STAR TREK: NEW EARTH - CHALLENGER Page 12

  In front of Keller, Lake’s neck muscles tightened and sweat broke out on the tiny hairs. His shoulders flexed inward.

  Resisting the urge to step forward, Keller abridged, “Caution is a tactical maneuver recognized by Starfleet. We just came out of a battle. We mistook you for the enemy.”

  “I see,” Shucorion accepted, quickly digesting the message. “Captain Lake, my men . . . our ship is compromised.”

  Lake frowned. “What? Oh, your crew, right. How bad’s your ship?”

  Incredulous that Lake didn’t know the degree of damage he himself had inflicted, Shucorion controlled himself valiantly. “We have massive systems failure and our engines were fused by your direct hits.”

  “Ah, that’s too bad. Well, you’ll have to dump it out here and ride with us. Keller, put all his men in the hangar deck, under armed guard. They’re prisoners of war.”

  A ripple of shock ran around the bridge, expressing itself in a dozen tiny movements. McAddis slumped back on the edge of his console, clearly sickened that their captain could take so lightly the destruction of an other man’s ship at his hands. Keller’s own stomach turned inside out. He fought to stay at Lake’s side.

  “Prisoners?” Shucorion braced slightly in amazed insult. Quietly he reminded, “We have made alliance with you. . . .”

  “I don’t know you,” Lake repudiated. “I’m sure not about to trust you offhand. Mr. Keller, take charge and lock ’em up till we find out if their story’s a fake. Take this man down to auxiliary navigation and see if he’s lying about moving through Gamma Night.”

  “Aye, sir,” Keller muttered. If only he could go back to the salad days of second matehood. How much sweeter, how much neater those had been, with Derek Hahn sturdily buffering the hard stuff. Chugging around the ship, fussing with station bills, fielding crew complaints, securing the decks, staying off the bridge except during the lovely little hours when almost everybody else was off duty . . . ah, the rambling rivers and the wide open prairee . . . some guitar twanging . . . of course, somebody else would have to play it . . .

  “Anyway, I hate country music,” he mumbled as he edged toward Makarios. “Anton.”

  Makarios flinched. “What now?”

  “Hush,” Keller warned, glancing back at the captain, who was suspiciously scouring the helm for readings over a nervous Hurley’s shoulders. “Tell engineering to fix that wreck with a low-warp towing engine with a remote autopilot and point it toward Belle Terre. It’ll show up eventually. We can use the parts for something. No point wasting it.”

  “Be three weeks before that thing limps in on automatic.”

  “Waste not, want not.”

  “Okay, Nick, okay. I don’t care anymore.”

  “Oh, now, we’re getting through it. Concentrate on the ol’ job there.” Keller turned to Shucorion and motioned to the companionway hatch. “Come with me, please.”

  In silence they crossed the bridge, moving slowly, even stiffly. Keller breathed a tight sigh of relief when they climbed down and left the bridge behind, left its captain, its tension, and at the same time he sharply wished he were back up there, guarding the rest of the crew from Lake.

  With some effort, Shucorion followed him down the ladder to the next deck. From here they’d be able to get a turbolift that was working. “This way,” Keller invited again, and started down the corridor.

  The ship was only half lit, conserving energy, still on yellow alert. Beside him, Shucorion pushed the long single braid of his brown hair over his shoulder to the middle of his back, where it hung almost to his waist, and touched a purple bruise on his face, but made no complaints.

  “So you’re the people called the Blood?” Keller asked.

  “Yes. We are Blood.”

  Keller offered him a glance that might have been sympathetic. “You took the wrecking of your ship a little better than I would have.”

  Shucorion’s expressive eyes returned the glance. “How would you have taken?”

  “Boiling mad,” Keller grunted.

  “Mad serves no help. The wrecking is done. The suffering will make us stronger.”

  “How many, uh, of your men . . .” Just asking this question caused Keller’s chest to constrict. He couldn’t finish it.

  With a comprehending expression, Shucorion looked at him. “We suffered no deaths this time, Mr. Keller. We sacrificed our ship, hoping there was some mistake occurring, that your captain was simply being cautious . . . as you said.”

  Humiliated, Keller shifted his feet. “He’s kept us alive that way. The past few days, that’s the first time he’s lost any crewmen in action for over ten years. I’m sorry to do this to your crew . . . the hangar deck isn’t the most comfortable place on board—”

  “We will be warm and have food,” Shucorion said, in something that sounded like gratitude.

  Did that make any sense? Gratitude? Offered to the people who had destroyed his ship in an unprovoked and unjustified flagrant attack?

  “We’ll provide you with as much as we can,” Keller offered, thinking about what comforts could be afforded to “prisoners” without touching off the captain’s attention.

  “You have provided survival, Mr. Keller,” Shucorion granted. “It is always appreciated.”

  Embarrassed, and perplexed by the graciousness of his guest, Keller sighed. “Yeh, well, least we can do.”

  “This is space. Misunderstandings will—” Shucorion’s words broke as he stumbled and clutched at his left thigh. He tried to recover, but fell against the wall. As he struggled, a smear of dark blood appeared on the bulkhead.

  “Holy—” Keller caught the other man’s arm and felt a shimmer of pain rush through Shucorion, who only winced and buried the rest. “You’re wounded! Why didn’t you say something?”

  “What should I say?” Genuinely puzzled, Shucorion glanced up at him, then caught his breath against an obvious spasm. A short gasp got out, but otherwise he clamped his lips.

  Giving him support for the bad leg, Keller tried not to sound guilty. “I’ll take you to our sickbay. We’ll send medics to the hangar bay for your crew. I wish you’d said something.”

  Shucorion drew back some. “But I should begin the work of guiding your ship to our cluster.”

  “No hurry on that. We just came out of Gamma Night. We’ve got twenty hours. Plenty of time for some rest and treatment.”

  “But I rested yesterday. . . .”

  “No, no, you come with me. We’ll see about that leg. Let me give you a hand here.”

  “Please—” The Blood man held back firmly now, pressing one hand to Keller’s arm to stop the attempt to help him too much, and the other to the inside of his left knee. “Your captain will resist. I must earn his trust first. We must go to your auxiliary bridge and do our work. He’ll know otherwise.”

  Keller paused. Should he admit that Shucorion had Lake pegged already? Or keep being the flak jacket? “At least let me have a medic sent up to stop the bleeding.”

  “If it comforts you.”

  “It does.”

  They moved on, much more slowly. “How did you perceive,” Shucorion asked, “to drop the shields?”

  Some light fishing going on.

  “We picked up your attempt to beam over,” Keller told him. “The decision was made to drop shields and allow you in. It wasn’t that much of a risk, considering the ID code you sent.”

  Shucorion nodded thoughtfully. “And you managed to calm the situation without humiliating your captain. This was artful of you.”

  “Naw, that’s not what happened. Does Captain Kirk have a hypothesis about who’s stealing the olivium?”

  “He hasn’t spoken to me of any theories. I believe he’s waiting for others of Starfleet before he makes his thoughts known. I suspect Kauld.”

  “You think the Kauld are stealing it somehow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Got a reason for thinking that?”

  “Their motivation. With olivium, when th
ey learn to use it, they can annihilate us, you . . . and all. Even this ship and the starship together will not be able to stand against a Kauld fleet so fortified.”

  Keller indulged in a canny little smile. “Oh, I wouldn’t make any bets just yet.”

  “I make no bets,” Shucorion declared. “Among my circle, I alone believed things could turn in our favor. For months I allowed myself to believe Blood could prevail, not be crushed under Kauld conquest, even after we had the dynadrive—you call it warp power. This was dangerous thinking, because I had once accepted that ultimately we would be destroyed and our energy was best spent in putting off that unavoidable time. When your Federation reached out and made me believe that people had come who wanted to live in our cluster but didn’t want to dominate us . . . Blood had never heard of such a thing. Many of my people were afraid of this idea. Somehow the concept of Kauld conquest was easier to live with . . . but I began to reach out, just to see if the touch would burn me. I believed I was chosen to lead my people in a new direction. The Kauld turned in that direction too, and now they will possess this bright new power source, and with it they will slaughter us all. It’s my fault that the Kauld have captured the olivium.”

  “Wait a minute—” Putting out a hand to stop their forward movement, Keller gazed at the deck and blinked at what he’d heard, went over it a couple of times, but couldn’t get the meaning. Looking up, he faced the other man squarely. “I don’t follow that. How is it your fault?”

  The Blood captain’s shoulders sagged as for a moment he let down his own shields. He let himself drop back against the bulkhead, flexed his aching shoulders, and rubbed his injured leg. His neck muscles twitched some, rippling the blue skin of his jawline and somehow calling attention to the simple gray tunic he wore. He was like a shadow come to life, waiting for something to slip behind.

  “I dared to hope,” he said.

  Dared to hope.

  What could that possibly mean? And why was it bad?

  There was something about Shucorion that Keller liked, and something about him that he didn’t like. But which was which?

  No matter how he tried to relax, something about the day’s strange happenings had set his inner sensors on overload and he couldn’t shut them down.

  He wanted to call Hahn and ask what to do, but that would be extreme long-distance. He’d signed on as second officer for an easy ride, with the plan of rotating back with the Enterprise. Suddenly he was a ship’s first officer, unsure of his captain, heading into a war zone, half blind. Rats.

  Damage control was under way, but the ship was a mess. Six decks had been evacuated or partly evacuated, two shut down completely, pending a well-deserved shutdown and repair cycle once they reached Belle Terre. Crew members were doubled and tripled up, rotating bunks off watch, four or five to a quarters instead of two.

  He missed having a roommate. Now he and Lake were the only ones on board with private quarters. Even the guests had to share.

  Even Zoa.

  Problem number six hundred and one.

  But who’s counting?

  As the shower gurgled around him, private shower in private quarters that for some reason he suddenly felt guilty about, Hahn’s quarters, firstofficerland—off on another tangent, brain. Cut it out.

  He closed his eyes and tried to relax his shoulder muscles. With an ill-arranged flex he discovered a pulled tendon in his right arm that somehow went all the way up and was attached to his right ear.

  Ouch—all the way around to the left ear. Lake’s behavior had twisted him all the way around in the wrong direction.

  He turned so the hot water would strike the left side of his neck. Keep the eyes closed. He was lucky. The Peleliu hadn’t been refitted with those newfangled sonic showers. Hahn had gone on about how great it was that ships wouldn’t have to bother with tanks and heating and piping systems anymore.

  Keller didn’t like it. No water? Just sound waves? No splashy massage descending from On High? No steam expanding into his lungs, clouding up the stall, making his skin tingle and his hair plaster down? What good was that? No hot water sheeting down his back, taking some of the ache out of his thighs? Better enjoy it while it’s still here.

  There. One good reason to go out to Belle Terre. Water showers. Hold that thought.

  Banish memories of first-officer troubles. Savannah’s little complaint this morning, for instance.

  “Nick, do something. She’s a pestilence. She sits on the desk and watches me while I sleep. She says it’s rude to sleep in somebody else’s presence. It’s like one of those paintings that follow you around with their eyes. Hasn’t she ever shared a room before? When she sleeps, she locks me out of my own quarters for hours. She doesn’t want me watching her. And my two Tau Epsilon scorpions? She ate them. She thought they were snacks. Remember what it took to clear them through customs? Well, do you? I know we’ve only got a few days of this left, but you better change something with this walking gargoyle before I unbraid her hair the hard way. My scorpions were perfectly behaved.”

  Mmmmm, rushing water, scalding heat, melting muscles, keep the eyes closed, breathe, breathe, breathe. In the nose, out the mouth. He winced at the mental picture of Zoa and the Tau scorpions. Hold the mustard.

  Three days, maybe, and they could be at Belle Terre. This nightmare voyage could be over. Shucorion’s navigating had kept them moving, though slowly and in choppy jumps, through Gamma Night into the Sagittarian Star Cluster. Two accidents with minor collisions of space matter had stalled progress, but the ship was so banged up already that a few more dents and scratches didn’t matter at this point. Get there, get there, get there.

  Once there, what about Lake? Things seemed to have gotten better. He seemed all right. Talk of moving him out of command had faded down to glances. Some of the crew were ashamed they’d brought it up. The intensity of those moments, though, still burned Keller under the skin. Dr. Harrison insisted the captain’s physical state turned up nothing unusual. Tim McAddis still wanted Lake to face some kind of treatment.

  At whose order? Could Keller, McAddis, and Dr. Harrison, as the remaining senior officers, muster a competency hearing out in the middle of nowhere? No council of Starfleet supernumeraries to stand in judgment? James Kirk was an admiral in real life . . . but a captain here and now.

  The idea of handing over their internal problems to somebody else—that was like cheating. Keller rubbed his wet face and scratched his fingernails through his hair to wipe out the idea. Lake was his to handle.

  First officer for a handful of days, and now this.

  A gush of cool air hit him in the back. Fate?

  “What—” His eyes shot open in the shower spray and he whirled around. The stall door stood open—all the way open, gaping into the also open doorway to the single room of his quarters. Blinking the water out of his eyes, he reached to close the stall door, but somebody was holding it open. Out of the steam a rigid form took shape.

  Zoa. Her banded leather outfit had a sheen of steam on the straps, and her blue-pea eyes were completely unimpressed. The landscape of tattoos down her arms and up her shoulders and neck looked markedly darker in the steam.

  Keller blurted a blank expletive. The Rassua woman blinked—which she didn’t do very often—and stood still, waiting. He turned his back. Not much better.

  “Can I help you?”

  “You left me an message,” she said bluntly. “You wish to saw me.”

  The water was still going, the steam not providing a very amiable shield. His hair was down in his eyes, draining. He didn’t like anybody to see his hair wet.

  “Ah . . . got the message, then?”

  She said nothing else. Still standing there, wasn’t she? Holding the stall door open?

  “Em,” he tried again, “pardon me, but . . .”

  From over his shoulder her accented words were as staccato as the water pummeling his face and neck. “I have tolerate much.”

  “Have you?”

/>   “It is impolite to turn an back on one speaking.”

  Order the water off? Leave it on? Was the steam much camouflage? At all?

  Keller let out a miserable sigh. “Hooo-kay . . .”With a flop of his arms, he held his breath and turned to, so to speak, face her.

  “Ring says you speak to me,” she announced. “Speak now.”

  Try to act natural. Yep, this is the way we have conversations where I come from.

  “As a member of the diplomatic corps,” he asked, “don’t you study the customs of other cultures?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Just asking.”

  “I knocked. You came not.” She looked around, without really moving much. Her legs remained locked, one arm at her side, the other holding open the stall door. “I disturb nothing. What have I miss?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “I know thy customs. I knock the door. You say ‘come in.’ I come in.”

  “But I didn’t say ‘come in.’ ”

  “Because my knock fails.”

  “Ah.”

  “I tolerate much from you.”

  “From me?” Keller wondered.

  “Humans.”

  “Oh, yeah, us.”

  “These.” From the floor near the toilet she scooped up one of his boots and held it out to him as a demonstration of some sin or other. “You wear shooms.”

  Eagerly he took the boot and held it where it did some good. “We like to keep our toes covered.”

  Disapproval crossed her inexpressive face briefly, then disappeared. She didn’t seem to notice anything particularly ridiculous about the situation. Might as well say what he had to say.

  “Well,” he began, assuming what she expected, “Ring wants you to stop watching her while she sleeps. That’s one thing humans consider rude.”

  “I must be in an quarters,” she said. “I have no purpose.”

  “Purpose? You mean a job on the ship?”

  “Yes.”

  Keller shrugged. “I’ll give you one.”

  She nodded once, stiffly. Problem solved.

  “And don’t eat her pets.”

  Another nod.