Takahashi remained standing, his brow furrowed, as everyone else sat. She walked toward him and stopped a foot away. “You’re putting in for a transfer?”
He looked uncomfortable. “Yes, Admiral, but I don’t see how—”
“—it’s my business? Well, since I oversee the sector you’re currently in, it crosses my desk first. And I stuck it in a drawer.” His jaw dropped as she continued, “You have problems with your CO? You damn well work them out. I appointed you to this position because I think you’re an asset to this vessel, and you have been, and you will continue to be. You leave when I say so, and no sooner. Got that?”
“Admiral, with all respect—” Hash began.
“We can discuss this in more detail later.”
“Later?” said Ambassador Fox with curiosity. “Are you going with the Trident to Ares IV, Admiral?”
“No, Ambassador Fox, I’m not. But, as it so happens, neither are you.”
“What? I…” He glanced at the two aides who had accompanied him, but they simply stared blankly back at him. They had no more clue than he did what she was talking about. “I don’t understand.”
“You’re getting off here,” Shelby said patiently. “The Stingray is going to be along within the next twenty-four hours. I’ve arranged for her to bring you to Ares IV.”
“The Stingray? I’m not familiar with that starship…”
“That’s because she’s a cargo vessel.”
“What?”
“Crew of twelve, room for two passengers, so it might be a little tight. But the crew’s friendly. Just don’t play cards with them or you won’t have a credit left to your name.”
“This…this is an outrage!” sputtered Fox. “You can’t do this!”
“And yet it’s done.”
“Captain!” Fox turned to Mueller. “This is your ship! Certainly you’re not going to stand by and—”
Mueller spoke in a tone so conversational she might have been relating a tale about a date that had gone horribly wrong in her teen years. “As it turns out, Admiral Shelby has assumed command of the Trident. I’m afraid I don’t have anything to say in the matter.”
“Oh really,” said Fox. His hand rested on the command chair. “Well, as it turns out, I do. And I would venture to say that Starfleet will have something to say about it as well.”
“I venture to say you’re right,” replied Mueller. “And you can tell them all about it en route to Ares IV. Lieutenant Arex, escort the ambassador and his party to the transporter. I have a yeoman bringing your belongings to the transporter room even as we speak, Ambassador, so you needn’t worry you’ll be leaving anything behind.”
“We are not going anywhere!” said Fox, remembering the lessons of his grandfather. “I demand that you contact Starfleet Command this instant so that they can set you straight on what your priorities are supposed to be!”
“Ambassador,” Shelby said with clearly waning patience, “you have a choice here. You can either head down to the transporter room willingly, be beamed over to Bravo Station, and continue on your way to Ares IV without embarrassing yourself any further. Or I can order Captain Mueller to have the transporter room beam you directly out of here to Bravo Station. Now what’s it going to be?”
Fox said nothing, being too busy trembling with silent indignation.
Shelby shrugged, turned, and nodded to Mueller. Mueller tapped her combadge and said, “Captain to transporter room. Lock on to—”
“All right!”
Doing everything he could to maintain his dignity, Fox headed for the turbolift, Arex leading the way. He stepped in, turned to Shelby, and snapped, “There’s just one thing I want you to know, Admiral. You—”
At which point the lift doors slid shut, cutting off the rest of what he was about to say.
The bridge crew looked at Shelby, and then Mick Gold said from conn, “Setting course for Sector 221-G, I take it, Admiral?”
“You take it correctly, Mr. Gold.”
“Aye, Capt…sorry,” Gold quickly amended, looking chagrined. “I meant Admiral…”
“Oh, don’t be too hard on yourself, Mr. Gold,” said Shelby with a heavy sigh. “By the time Starfleet is through with me, you may well wind up outranking me.”
New Thallon
i.
Kalinda felt growing discomfort as she moved through the wreckage of buildings and bodies that constituted the town of Gravis, a smaller suburb outside the capital city of New Thallon. It had been pounded particularly hard by the shelling that Fhermus had unleashed upon the planet, and it was a picture of misery and sadness.
The discomfort she was feeling had little to do with the misery she was encountering in the form of homeless or wounded (or both) Thallonians. They looked up at her with begging, pleading eyes, and they asked for whatever succor she could provide. The requests were for everything from food and water to the simple touching of the hem of her garment as a means of drawing strength. She granted the latter because it cost her nothing, although the proximity to the dying or wounded creatures put her on edge.
But the main aspect of her discomfort lay with Si Cwan.
They had separately surveyed damaged parts of the region, but Si Cwan had insisted on going out once more, and further insisted that she accompany him. She had tried to talk her way out of it, but Si Cwan had been quietly insistent. He was resolute in his belief that her people wanted and needed to see her. That her presence would go a long way toward buoying the battered Thallonian spirit.
“Shouldn’t you be busy planning retaliation?” she had demanded.
“I am,” he had assured her. “But it’s important not to lose sight of the damage that’s already been done. We need to buoy the people’s spirits, Kally, and a mutual visit to the citizenry is the best way to accomplish that.” Unable to find any way to talk him out of it, she graciously acceded to his request…which was really more of an order than a request, but she chose not to make an issue out of it.
The sun beat down upon them and the weather was parched. Kalinda didn’t do especially well in heat, but she did everything she could to cope with it. Trying not to stumble, she stepped gingerly over fallen chunks of debris, occasionally having to balance in ludicrously ridiculous postures. She spoke to each and every individual who approached her, no matter how wretched and pathetic they were. She listened to their unhappy tales of how they were simply minding their own business, and all of a sudden their long-standing homes were no longer standing. She did her best to console them and assure them that they would be avenged, no matter how long it took or how costly the campaign that was to come.
The entire time, though, she was convinced that Si Cwan was watching her every move. Even when he appeared to be looking elsewhere, she felt as if his eyes were upon her. But whenever they made eye contact, Si Cwan smiled at her warmly and nodded in approval of how she was handling things.
At one point he walked over to her as she was comforting a small boy, still weeping for his lost parents. “You’re doing well, Kalinda,” he said.
“Am I?” She stroked the child’s bald pate. “You seem to be…I don’t know…watching me with great concern.”
“Only in the sense that I hope this isn’t all too stressful for you.”
A worker came over and extended her arms to the boy. Kalinda gently urged the child toward her, then turned back to Si Cwan. “It’s a bit late to worry about the stress it may have on me, isn’t it? I mean, if that happened to be a serious consideration, you wouldn’t have brought me here in the first place.”
He looked at her askance. “Are you saying you’re not up for it? Kalinda, I’ve never known you to flinch from a challenge.”
“No, of course not. I never have,” she said quickly. She rubbed the bridge of her nose and forced a smile. “I’m sorry. I just…I haven’t been sleeping well lately.”
“Since the attack?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
He stepped toward her, looking very concern
ed, and draped an arm around her shoulder. “Are you seeing them?”
“Them?” she asked.
“The dead, I mean.” He waited for her to respond, but when she gave him merely a slightly befuddled look, he prompted her. “It certainly wouldn’t be unusual for you, what with your sensitivity toward such things.”
“No, it wouldn’t be unusual,” she conceded quickly.
“Can you see them now?”
She looked across the terrain before them, with its shelled-out structures and citizens with haunted looks. “Yes. Of course I can see them. Can’t you?”
“I mean the dead.”
“The dea—”
Kalinda immediately stopped talking. Instead she closed her eyes, reaching down, down into the recesses of the cerebral cortex that she had emulated. The wretched creature buried it. How did she manage to bury it? She can actually commune with the deceased. Hear them, see them. See the energy auras that they’ve left behind them. Something that important…how was she able to keep it from me?
“Of course I can,” she said, hoping that so little time had passed between Si Cwan’s question and her response that he wouldn’t have noticed it. She looked out at the vista in front of them. Nothing. No spirits, no shambling corpses on the run from some sort of sphere from the beyond. She knew intellectually what she was supposed to be seeing, but she could perceive nothing.
But Si Cwan was looking at her expectantly.
“So sad,” she whispered. “Such…sadness. Look at them. Many of them…cut down in their prime. Doing no one any harm, and…and this is what happened to them.”
“What do they want?”
“Revenge,” Kalinda assured him. “They want revenge upon those who did this to them. Revenge on Fhermus. Revenge on all of them.”
“And they shall have it,” Si Cwan said firmly. “Let them know. Let them all know…they shall be avenged.”
She smiled at him graciously. “They can hear you…or perhaps sense your dedication. They are grateful to you, Si Cwan. Ever so grateful for your steadfastness. And they’re counting on you to do right by them.”
“They needn’t be concerned. The scales to be balanced are in good hands.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Let’s go home.”
Letting out a sigh of relief, she followed Si Cwan. As she did so, she cast a final glance behind her at the little boy whom she had been comforting. Although he was being led away in the other direction, his gaze was still fixed upon her. And she noticed for the first time that there was fear in his eyes as he watched her.
Children are so difficult to fool, she thought. I must remind myself to track that boy down and kill him before he says anything.
ii.
Into the late evening hours, Si Cwan sat in his chambers, staring at the far wall. Thoughts swirled in his mind like a cyclone. He had already determined what to do about the current situation and had moved beyond that into determining what the likely repercussions were going to be due to his actions.
He closed his eyes for a moment, summoning his inner strength and force of will. Then he sent word through his aides that he would like his sister to join him.
Some minutes later, Kalinda entered, rubbing her eyes, her gossamer robe draped carelessly around herself. “You summoned me, my brother…?”
She looked around toward his accustomed place, the mat upon which he often sat cross-legged and in deep contemplation. He wasn’t there. She entered, the door shutting behind her, and just as she was about to speak again, she suddenly felt the touch of a sharp blade against her throat. She gasped, intaking her breath, and the blade pushed against it more firmly.
From almost at her ear, Si Cwan’s voice whispered, “I believe you need to be disabused of a notion you may be holding.”
“My…my brother, what—?”
“Stop calling me that, or I swear I’ll cut your head off even if it means you can tell me nothing.”
Obediently she shut her mouth.
He stepped forward a foot or two so that he was now within her peripheral vision. He was holding a long, fierce blade by the ornate handle. “This has been in my family for generations,” he said conversationally. “A bit antiquated by today’s standards of weaponry, I know. But it has spilt the blood of many an enemy of the House of Cwan. And since you may be among the greatest of enemies we’ve ever encountered, I thought it appropriate that you should face it as well.”
She managed to force a nervous chuckle. Making sure not to address him as “brother,” she said, “Are you…are you still asleep, and caught in the throes of some sort of nightmare…?”
“A nightmare, yes, assuredly that,” said Cwan, “but very much a waking one. Not that your disguise isn’t brilliant. It is. Nevertheless, the only reason it fooled me for as long as it did was because others saw through it first. I refused to believe that others could possibly know my sister better than I. That others…particularly Xyon…could penetrate your imposture with facility, while I was fooled. I was determined to prove that I was right and he was wrong, even at the cost of lives. The lives of Fhermus’s son, of Ankar, of my people helpless before an onslaught that you aided and abetted.”
“I…I don’t know what you’re…ackkkk.” The sword had now pressed firmly enough against her neck that she was aware of a faint trickle of blood dribbling down her throat. Wisely, she made no effort to reach up and brush it away.
“And I continued to deny that I could possibly be taken in, even though my own wife tried to point it out to me,” he continued as if she hadn’t tried to interrupt. “Such was the height of my towering ego. But she is gone now, and Ankar is gone…whether he was a dupe or a willing accomplice, I cannot be certain. Xyon is gone. It is very quiet here, like a mausoleum, everyone walking softly lest they tempt the wrath of our enemies. And with all the quiet, I’ve had time and distance to give the matter much thought, and to realize the string of incidents which make no sense. Then when I watched you closely today, I could tell you were attempting desperate fabrications. The way my sister acts when the dead are about…it’s like nothing else. As if she’s in a waking trance. You brought nothing to your disguise with that little attempt. You couldn’t even begin to approximate the way she acts at such times, as if she’s slipped a little into the land of the dead herself.”
“Si Cwan, this…this is madness…”
“Yes. Madness that I didn’t see it for what it was sooner. You disabled our planetary defense system somehow. It wasn’t poor, pathetic Topez Anat. You did something, Kalinda, or whatever your true name is. And I want to know who and what you are, and what you’ve done with Kalinda.”
Kalinda made no response…at least, not orally. But she dropped all pretense, looking at Si Cwan with a glare of unbridled hatred.
“Was it the Priatians?” demanded Si Cwan. “That’s it, isn’t it. This is some plot of the Priatians to…”
Si Cwan was so focused on her face and upper body that he didn’t even notice the slight movement below her waist until it was too late. But suddenly there was something long and slender and fast-moving emerging from beneath her shimmering robe. It batted the sword away from her throat, sending it clattering across the room. For a heartbeat, Si Cwan was caught off guard, and that was when Kalinda’s arms morphed into tentacles, gray and slimy and dripping.
He had known he was dealing with something that wasn’t Kalinda. That didn’t stop him from being caught flat-footed. One tentacle lashed around his arm, the other around his leg, and Kalinda threw him across the room. He landed with a shuddering crash at the far end.
“You,” she informed him, “have proven far more trouble than you’re worth.”
There were other tentacles emerging from beneath her gown as well. She glided forward, the lower tentacles making soft, sucking noises as they propelled her across the floor. Kalinda reached out and snagged the fallen sword. She lifted it up and examined it thoughtfully, whipping it back and forth. “A fine blade,” she commented.
Si Cwan scrambled to his feet, balancing himself, ready to move in any direction. Even as she swung the sword, Kalinda grabbed a nearby heavy chair and hurled it at Si Cwan. He vaulted to the right, landing with a shoulder roll, and came up to one knee just as Kalinda swung the sword straight at his face.
Si Cwan, in a move so fast that Kalinda didn’t even see it, slammed his palms together. It was perfectly timed. Kalinda’s eyes widened when she saw that Si Cwan had caught the blade in his hands, momentarily immobilizing it.
“That’s mine,” snarled Si Cwan. He made no effort to twist the blade out of her grasp; she was, after all, holding it in a tentacle, and he correctly realized that the sword would simply turn in her grasp while she continued to hold it. Instead, taking a huge risk, he lunged and grabbed at the sword hilt. The tentacles grabbed at him, trying to pull him off, and their strength was formidable. It was all Si Cwan could do to hang on, struggling mightily.
“What did you do to her?” Si Cwan howled in fury. “Tell me!”
“Why would I do that?” Kalinda said contemptuously.
Still Si Cwan refused to let go. There were tentacles wrapping around both his legs, around his arm, around his throat. The ones below him were prepared to tear him apart, break him like a wishbone; the ones above were starting to choke off his air. He gasped, gagged, and still his hand held tightly to the sword hilt as if it were his last salvation.
“Why?” Kalinda asked again. “When it is far preferable to have you die in ignor—”
The world was graying out around Si Cwan, and strength surged through him that may well have been his body’s last-ditch effort to keep him alive. Just as Kalinda was about to rip him in half, Si Cwan twisted the sword around, overriding Kalinda’s strength through sheer, furious desperation and determination. The sword sliced around and neatly bisected the tentacle that had been wrapped around Si Cwan’s throat.