Star Trek

  With an inarticulate roar, Calhoun lashed out with his right leg. His foot slammed into the computer screen, smashing it in. Sparks flew as it tumbled off the table and clattered to the floor.

  He tossed his few belongings into a suitcase and headed out, stopping very briefly to inform the associate dean’s office that he was returning home to Xenex on an emergency leave.

  “No one’s dying, I hope,” he was asked.

  To which he replied, “No. But I haven’t gotten there yet.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Now

  Calhoun stood on the bridge, watching intently as the Enterprise floated nearby, facing them. She seemed near enough to touch. The rest of the bridge crew was watching uneasily.

  He knew his people. They had followed him into battle against space monsters, fanatics, and gods. But the notion of going head-to-head with the flagship of the fleet was not a pleasant prospect. If it came to a pitched battle, an us-versus-them situation, there was no upside. If they triumphed, then they would be the outlaw vessel that had crippled or even destroyed the Starship Enterprise. If they failed…

  We’re not going to fail, he thought.

  “Captain,” said Morgan. “We’re being hailed.” Even the normally ebullient Morgan Primus seemed unduly sedate.

  “I rather suspected we might be. Put him on screen.” Not “them,” meaning the callers as a group. Not “she” or even “it,” referring to the ship. “Him.”

  He appeared on the screen, his expression possessing that odd combination of severity and compassion that Calhoun knew only too well.

  “Captain Picard.”

  “Captain Calhoun.”

  “Good to see you.”

  “Yes,” said Picard. “The circumstances, however, could be more generous.”

  “I agree.”

  “Mac…it seems we have a situation on our hands. And the primary cause of that situation appears to be you.”

  “It would appear that way, yes.”

  “So. What are we going to do about this?”

  “Well, Jean-Luc…I was thinking that I’d explain to you that you’re a pawn in a much larger game, and why you should take yourself off the board. And then I was hoping you’d do the right thing.”

  “The right thing.” Picard shook his head in disbelief. “How in the world is precipitating an interstellar incident remotely the ‘right thing’?”

  “Special circumstances.”

  Picard fixed a piercing gaze upon him. “Mac…a Selelvian ship is coming directly here. Not the simple transport vessel that had been en route to rendezvous with the Trident. I mean a warship. The best in their fleet, so I’m told.”

  “Better than you?”

  “That’s hardly the point, and no,” said Picard stiffly.

  “What about the Trident? Have they been dispatched here as well?”

  “Obviously not. Starfleet didn’t want to be in the position of forcing a wife to attack her husband.”

  “That’s how much they know,” Calhoun said. “Most of the time I have to talk her out of attacking me.”

  “You’re stalling for time, Calhoun.”

  “I prefer to think of it as opening a line of communications for as long as I can possibly keep it going until something else presents itself.”

  Picard did not look amused. He excelled at not looking amused. “You said something about ‘special circumstances’?”

  “That’s right. I did.”

  “Would this have to do with your contention that the Selelvians are somehow manipulating the Federation?” He shook his head. “Admiral Jellico already informed us of your ‘theory.’ Frankly, Captain, I have trouble believing the horrifying risk you’re taking over a hypothesis.”

  “It’s neither a hypothesis nor a theory, Captain.”

  “Then what would you call it?”

  “A hunch,” said Calhoun with a wry smile. “I was once told that captains learn how to play their hunches. That’s how they become captains.”

  “Really. What shortsighted fool told you that?”

  “Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Stargazer.”

  “Things change, Calhoun,” Picard told him. “People change. Even you. You must know that you’re going to cost yourself your command if you maintain your present actions. The concept that the Federation is being manipulated by one of its member races…”

  “And if I came to you in desperation, told you that you were my last hope, and informed you that Starfleet personnel had been infiltrated by controlling alien parasites…would you have helped me? Or dismissed me as a lunatic and allowed a conspiracy to flourish?”

  Picard’s scowl darkened. But then he glanced in Riker’s direction and said, “Touché indeed. All right, Calhoun. I’ve only been hearing pieces of what’s been transpiring, and Admiral Jellico wasn’t forthcoming much beyond the concept that he wanted your head on a pike. So, since we have a little time until the Selelvians show up…tell me what the bloody hell is going on.”

  Calhoun told him.

  He told him everything he knew, every step of the way, starting with Gleau’s alleged mistreatment of M’Ress, through Gleau’s murder, Janos’s connection to the crime and subsequent rampage, and everything he knew, thought he knew, or vaguely suspected about the Selelvians.

  “It would explain why they’ve done all they can to keep the Knack under wraps,” he told Picard. “They know what a powerful tool it is, but it’s in their best interests to make certain others don’t learn of it. That may well be one of the reasons that they want Janos in their custody as soon as possible.”

  “Why?” When Calhoun didn’t have an immediate response, Picard pressed once more, “Why, Mackenzie? Why can it not simply be that the Selelvians want justice for one of their own people?”

  “It’s not justice. It’s vengeance.”

  “Granted,” admitted Picard. “And it is tragic that they seem to care more about that than they do about our notions of justice. But still—”

  “Oh, God,” blurted out Soleta.

  The exclamation immediately caught the attention of all concerned, as Soleta stared off into empty space directly in front of her. Calhoun knew that look. Something was going through her mind, some sort of connection that she was just drawing. “Lieutenant…?”

  “I am an idiot,” said Soleta, and in a burst of annoyance she slammed her open hand on the console in front of her. “I am an idiot!”

  Picard was staring at her in confusion from the screen. “Are you quite sure she’s Vulcan?” he asked.

  “She’s…a little out of the ordinary,” said Calhoun.

  “Is there anyone on your ship who isn’t?”

  Calhoun didn’t reply, probably because Picard had a point. Instead he said, “Soleta…what’s happened? Why—?”

  “Gleau shouldn’t be dead.”

  “You mean he’s alive?”

  “No, no, he’s dead as last year’s toast,” Soleta assured him. “But he shouldn’t be. How could I have not realized?”

  “Realized what?”

  “Gleau would have wanted to live. He wouldn’t have wanted to be murdered.”

  “I think that’s fairly obvious,” said Calhoun…and then he realized.

  Picard did so at about the same time. “If Selelvians are able to influence thoughts…to compel people to do what they desire…then certainly Gleau would have been able to influence Janos not to kill him.”

  “But he failed to do so. His corpse is evidence enough of that,” said Soleta.

  “It could be that he was just panicked,” Picard pointed out. “That he wasn’t thinking straight and therefore Janos was able to strike.”

  “Perhaps,” said Calhoun. “Or perhaps there is something in Janos’s mental or chemical makeup that enabled him to resist the Selelvian influence. And they want to make sure he is dead because of that. Maybe analyze him, dissect him, see how he did it. Either way, that’s why they would be so anxious to get him.”

  ?
??It’s possible,” admitted Picard. “But it remains conjecture. And we cannot fly in the face of the Federation’s will based on conjecture. We need proof.”

  “That’s not always possible, Picard, and you know it,” said Calhoun. “As I said before…as you said before…sometimes you can only follow a hunch.”

  “If everyone follows hunches, Calhoun, you have anarchy,” Picard said. “We live in a world of order and rules…”

  “Bull, Jean-Luc!” shot back Calhoun. “We live in a galaxy of chaos! Of infinite probabilities! We layer our orders and rules atop them, pat ourselves on the back, and tell ourselves that we have a handle on it all. We don’t. We just enjoy pretending that we do. But every once in a while, the sheer unpredictability of this insane, demented galaxy catches up with us. And we either do what needs to be done, or we cling to rules like children to their mother’s apron strings and act like everything’s okay when it’s not. And when that happens, that’s when those who thrive on chaos sneak in and tear us down, little bit by little bit. There’re two ways to respond to them, Jean-Luc: either roll over and give them what they want, or fight them no matter what the risk. Which option are you going to embrace!?”

  Picard could have been carved from marble for all the emotion he displayed. A full ten seconds ticked away, and then he asked very conversationally, “Are you quite through?”

  Calhoun’s mind raced, and then he shrugged. “For the moment.”

  “Brilliant. While you were declaiming, we finished scanning your ship. Janos isn’t on it. Turn him over to us. Now.”

  “Mother,” said Robin, “were they scanning our ship?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Well,” said Morgan as if it were self-evident, “the captain was declaiming. You don’t interrupt a captain while he’s declaiming. It’s…tacky.”

  “Thank you, Morgan,” Calhoun said, feeling very tired.

  “Am I correct in assuming he’s on the planet below?” inquired Picard. Without waiting for Calhoun to respond, he turned and said, “Mr. Data…begin scanning planet surface for life signs specific to…”

  “Morgan,” Calhoun said, “would you be good enough to raise our shields and lock phasers on the Enterprise, targeting her engineering and saucer dome.”

  The order brought dead silence. The routine noises of the devices on the bridge, normally ignored by those who had become so used to them, now sounded deafening.

  As dispassionate as a computer could be, Morgan replied, “Targets locked, Captain.”

  “Never quite understood that,” continued Calhoun in a surprisingly pleasant tone. “Placing the bridge in a dome right at the top of the saucer. Might as well paint a large bull’s-eye that says ‘Shoot us here.’ Morgan, bring us to weapons-hot, please.”

  Picard finally found his voice. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “You have no idea how many people who are now dead have asked me that,” said Calhoun.

  “Phasers at full power, Captain,” Morgan announced.

  “Shields up!” said Picard. “Charge phasers, target Excalibur! Do not fire except on my order.” He shook his head even as the defensive and offensive capabilities of the Starship Enterprise were brought on line. “I know what you’re doing, Calhoun. As long as our shields are raised, we can’t beam Janos up from the planet’s surface.”

  “Indeed. A rather clever strategy for someone who’s lost his mind.”

  “Yes,” Picard said grimly. “But it all hinges on my belief that you would truly attack us. If I lower my shields…”

  “Then I will blow you to hell.”

  “You’re bluffing,” said Jean-Luc Picard.

  “Call me,” said Mackenzie Calhoun.

  Then

  i.

  All during his journey to Xenex, Mackenzie Calhoun kept going back and forth in his own mind as to whether he was going home or leaving it. By the time he arrived, he had come to a simple conclusion.

  He had no home.

  Starfleet Academy was the place where he engaged in his studies. Xenex was the place that he had left behind him because he felt he was no longer needed there. But someplace that he felt was genuinely his?

  Well, there had actually been one such place in the past few years.

  It had been the simulation on the holodeck for the Kobayashi Maru. When he’d been standing there on the bridge of a starship, even a facsimile, he had felt for the first time in a long time that he had discovered someplace he belonged.

  But that place seemed very far away now. He wondered if such a place would ever actually be his. And he found himself not caring very much whether it was or not, because Shelby wasn’t going to be with him.

  He forced himself not to think about her. It was simply too painful, too much to deal with. He imagined himself taking a laser torch to that part of his soul that she had occupied, slicing it out, cauterizing the wound, and dumping the excised matter in a waste-disposal unit.

  He had sent word on ahead to the shaman of his village, the aged and wizened B’ndri. Calhoun was intending to respond to a blood challenge. Discharging such an obligation was B’ndri’s responsibility, and Calhoun wanted the matter to be settled as quickly as possible.

  When he arrived at B’ndri’s hut, the shaman was waiting for him. That did not surprise him. What did surprise him was that his brother, D’ndai, was there as well. They embraced quickly, but not particularly warmly. D’ndai looked much older than he’d remembered. But he’d left Xenex only four years earlier. Could endeavoring to rule their world have taken such a toll on him?

  “I was given to believe,” said Calhoun, stepping back from D’ndai, “that there’s been some dispute in terms of our people’s future. That your own position here was endangered.”

  “There are factions,” said D’ndai dismissively. “There are always factions. C’n’daz leads one of them. He’d consider it quite a coup to dispose of the great former warlord.”

  Calhoun thought D’ndai sounded bitter when he’d said that. But before he could ask about it, D’ndai had taken his jaw in one hand and was turning his face this way and that, scrutinizing him as one would a prize animal one was about to purchase. “You look very polished,” he decided. “If it weren’t for the scar, I might not recognize you. No wonder C’n’daz took offense.”

  He batted his brother’s arm away. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? That I deserved this somehow? That it’s a positive thing that this imbecile challenge has been thrust on me?”

  “Perhaps it is positive,” said D’ndai, stepping back and rubbing his arm where Calhoun had struck it. “Does it hurt to be reminded from whence you came? Of your roots? Is it really in your best interests to pretend you’re something you’re not?”

  “How would you know what I am or am not, D’ndai?”

  “Oh, believe me, M’k’n’zy, I know what you are.”

  “And what would that be?” demanded Calhoun.

  “You’re the shadow I lived in my entire life.”

  Of all the things Mackenzie Calhoun might have expected to hear, that wasn’t one of them. He had always suspected his brother felt jealousy for him, but had never wanted to believe it. Nor did he comprehend it. “Why would you feel that way?” he asked, sounding a bit less strident. “We fought for a common goal.”

  “If you have to ask, you will never understand.”

  “That’s no answer—”

  B’ndri interrupted them with an impatient rapping of his staff on the ground. “If this must be discussed,” he growled in his aged voice, “then it will be discussed later. C’n’daz awaits in the Arena of Challenge. It is there now that we must go.”

  “Fine,” snapped Calhoun. “Anything to get this over with.”

  ii.

  The Arena of Challenge once had been a great, grand structure. Challenges in the ancient times of Xenex were issued with such regularity that they had become a form of entertainment among the ancestors of curr
ent Xenexians.

  Over the centuries, the number of such challenges had dropped off drastically, and the arena had fallen into disrepair. The stone walls were crumbling, the center was filled with clutter. Nevertheless it was there that C’n’daz and his seconds awaited the man variously known as Mackenzie Calhoun or M’k’n’zy of Calhoun.

  Calhoun entered from the far end of the arena, D’ndai directly behind him, the shaman bringing up the rear. But they were not the only individuals populating the arena, not by a long shot. Word had gone out throughout the entire region known as Calhoun, and anyone who was capable of any sort of locomotion had shown up, packing in the stands, taking up every possible square inch of standing room.

  Despite the pounding his public image had taken in recent years thanks to his departure, the legend of the Warlord M’k’n’zy of Calhoun still rode high in people’s hearts and minds. And as Mackenzie Calhoun glanced around at the cheering and waiting throngs, he realized that was exactly what irritated C’n’daz. In some ways, C’n’daz was like his brother, residing in Calhoun’s shadow and unable to bring his own individual style to the rule and guidance of the population of Xenex.

  In Starfleet Academy, he’d been taught that in order to deal with an opponent, one had to understand the opponent. Perhaps in that understanding (so went the philosophy) it would be possible to avoid full-blown conflict.

  Mackenzie Calhoun understood his opponent all too well. That did nothing to deter his desire to pound C’n’daz’s face into a fine paste.

  The shaman had now moved forward to the center of the amphitheater. Calhoun noticed that elaborate weapons lined the arena’s edges. Large cutting implements, devices that were part sword or part spear or part axe. All of them were lethal. All of them, he presumed, would be utilized in the lengthy and elaborate ritual that a blood challenge required.

  “C’n’daz,” he intoned. “You are the Summoner. Step forward.”

  C’n’daz did so, moving with a confident swagger that was mirrored by his seconds. They hung back a respectful distance.