“Zanka,” Adulux said very quietly, with supernatural control, “you don’t know what you’re talking about. The Sentries . . . they believe I killed you . . .”
“You would have! Given the chance, you would have. You’d have done anything to stop me from leaving you!”
“That’s ridiculous. Kebron,” and he looked imploringly to Zak, “speak to her. Make her listen to reason. They did something to her.”
“When we get out of here,” Kebron told him firmly, “she lets the authorities know she’s alive. You’re clear. And then . . . that’s it.”
“What do you mean, ‘That’s it’?” There was something in Adulux’s face that seemed most unpleasant.
“I mean you leave her alone, from that point on.”
Adulux bristled openly. “Who do you think you are? You have no business telling me that. No right telling me that. You work for me. You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“Am I?” Kebron was not especially impressed by Adulux’s spiraling temper tantrum. Then again, when it came to anger, bellicose displays, or most methods of attack, Kebron was tough to intimidate.
“Yes!” Adulux was looking back and forth between Kebron and Zanka with increasing agitation. Yet to Kebron, it also seemed that there was a cold, quiet cunning that served up a stark contrast to that outward frenzy. “Yes, you’re supposed to be on my side! You’re supposed to be helping me! But I can see what’s going on here! It couldn’t be more obvious. You’re falling in love with her!”
“No,” Kebron said firmly, and he knew beyond question that his denial was candid. Whatever curious sensations he might be experiencing at the moment, there was not a shred of love in his heart for her. On the outside he might look like something else, but in his heart he remained Brikar. As a Brikar, this female simply held no interest for him.
At least, he believed that to be true.
Immediately, his mind recoiled at the passing thought. This wasn’t a matter of “believe.” This simply was.
So why was he holding her tighter against him? Doubtless it was from a desire to protect her. It came naturally to one whose main profession was to provide protection.
“Yes! You are! And you think I’m afraid to do something about it!”
“He knows you are!” Zanka said challengingly.
“You’re not helping,” he informed Zanka.
Pushed beyond all endurance, motivated by fear, lack of sleep, anger, and whatever else might be tumbling about in his head, Adulux made the spectacularly bad decision of coming at Kebron.
Kebron angled Zanka around himself so that she was standing behind him, out of harm’s way. The threat of an infuriated Adulux was not especially daunting to him. He might not have been what he was, but he still outweighed Adulux by a considerable margin, and also had been in more than a few fights.
He was not, however, prepared for the ferocity of Adulux’s charge. Under ordinary circumstances, Kebron could have knocked Adulux on his rump in less than a second. But the Liten had going for him unbounded fury, adrenaline (or at the very least the appropriate parallel chemical) pumping through his body, and a berserker fury at seeing Zanka so quickly and easily transferring all her adoration and ardor over to Kebron.
With all that taken into consideration, that was why Kebron actually required three seconds to knock Adulux on his rump.
It would not have been all that difficult even if Adulux had not come wading right into it. But he was paying no attention at all to style or finesse or intelligent pugilism. He simply wanted to get within range of Kebron so that he could start pounding on him. Although he did get within a few feet, that was as close as he was able to make it before Kebron’s fist swung in a very leisurely manner, catching Adulux squarely on the point of the chin. Adulux spun in place, then staggered for a moment as the world whirled around him. “You!” he bellowed in indignation, pointing in fury to a spot about two feet to Kebron’s left. “How dare you—I—you.” Then he fell back and hit the ground hard.
Zanka came from around Kebron’s back and hugged him tightly. “You were so brave!” she cried.
“No,” said Kebron. “Bravery requires a . . . threat . . .”
His voice trailed off as he saw the unexpected development that matters had undergone.
When Adulux had fallen, he had landed on something. That much was easy to see, because he was arching his back and moaning in annoyance, twisting about to try and pull whatever-it-was out from under his back. Then his eyes widened as he saw that it was some sort of heavy-duty blaster. It was not a design that Kebron recognized, but he had absolutely no reason to doubt that it did not present a threat.
Adulux’s eyes glistened in silent joy as he scrambled back to provide a bit of distance between himself and Kebron. Kebron took a step forward, but now Adulux had the blaster up and pointed squarely at Kebron’s chest.
“Get away from her,” said Adulux.
“No,” said Kebron.
“Do you love her?”
“No.”
“Are you that anxious to die for her anyway?”
“Not especially,” Kebron admitted.
Zanka let out an alarmed squeal. “Kebron! Don’t you care whether I live or die?”
He looked down at her, and the words Not really came to mind. But there was something in her face, something in her utter lack of guile, which stirred something within him. He had no idea what that something might be, but it was there no matter how much he would have liked to ignore it.
Kebron’s hesitation was all Adulux needed to see. With a howled curse that damned Kebron and all his ancestors going back several generations, Adulux squeezed the trigger. The Brikar had no idea at all what it was that blasted out of the gun’s muzzle at that point. All he knew was that it was energy, it was considerable, it was crackling and black, and it knocked him flat. He lay there, paralyzed, his body twitching, his mind numb, and Adulux approached him and placed the barrel of the gun squarely against his temple.
“I don’t like you,” he said, and pulled the trigger.
SOLETA
IN THE YEARS THAT SHE HAD SPENT on her own journeying around the Federation—and outside the Federation—Soleta had picked up more than a few tricks, made quite a few contacts.
In the past, her greatest achievement had been managing to make it into the heart of Thallonian space in a privately owned shuttle that had been a gift from her parents. However, the shuttle had been lost shortly before her assignment to the Excalibur during an unfortunate crash-landing incident on Risa. That world’s guidance computers had misfired and sent her on a collision course with a runabout that nearly shredded her. She’d been lucky to come away from it in one piece. They had made restitution, but she had not yet taken the time to obtain a replacement personal shuttle.
Besides, an individual shuttle might draw attention she didn’t want. Adis, a powerful and well-placed individual, had had more than enough time to see her and familiarize himself with her. It might very well have been that some of Rajari’s paranoia had rubbed off on her, but she could not help herself: She was concerned that Adis might have people watching the ports of Romulus. Or maybe he had circulated a picture of her, composed from memory or perhaps a hidden camera that she had not known about. Granted, relations with Romulus were cordial at the moment, but she was still a Starfleet officer and a Vulcan, and would be subject to intense scrutiny. She could, of course, try to sneak onto Romulus in a solo shuttle, but she doubted she would be able to elude the planetary detectors.
Her sneaking into Thallonian space had been quite an achievement. Getting onto Romulus on her own was doable, but carried with it a number of hazards.
So she had required help. Very special help.
After some casting about, she had wound up coming to a fairly experienced smuggler nicknamed “Sharky,” with whom she’d had some dealings during her wandering days. (It was a nickname that she absolutely abhorred, but he had chosen it himself and seemed rather enamored of it,
so there wasn’t all that much she could do.) She had bailed him out of a rather sticky situation and consequently earned a debt from him that she now decided to cash in. Sharky, unfortunately, was not terribly interested in being cooperative. He was a heavyset, dyspeptic human with hair that was matched in thinness only by his temper.
It had taken Soleta many weeks, but she had managed to catch up with him at a spaceport, holding court in his freighter. Sharky never emerged from the ship if he could help it. He was paranoid that someone would steal it, having formed an attachment to the vessel that could be described charitably as “interesting” and uncharitably as “obsessive.” He had a habit of addressing it occasionally, as if it were sentient. Others might have been concerned that it was evidence he was unstable. Soleta simply chose to find it peculiar.
“You can’t be serious, girl,” he had said. He always addressed her as “girl.” After the first dozen times that she had informed him that she didn’t wish to be addressed that way, she gave up. Obviously he was saying it just to get a rise out of her. If she did not respond, he would stop saying it. It was a nice theory. She’d stopped responding, and he’d gone right on saying it. She took some measure of consolation in feeling that at least she wasn’t wasting time trying to prevent him from saying it. “You want me to sneak you on to Romulus to run an ‘errand,’ wait for you to run it, and then take you off Romulus? It’s insane.”
“I am perfectly serious, Sharky. Thanks to me, you are still breathing.”
“And if I do this thing, then perhaps I won’t be still breathing, also thanks to you.”
“You owe me.”
“And that is supposed to be your most persuasive argument?”
“Sharky,” she said coolly, “I will be back on a star-ship before too long. A starship has tremendous communicative range. And I will assure you that, whatever port we go to, whatever planetary heads we may deal with, I will be certain to let them all know that you cannot be trusted in any transactions of any sort. Having a Starfleet officer badmouthing you throughout the quadrant cannot be good for business.”
He gave her an appraising stare, as if trying to figure out the likelihood that she did not mean every word she said. But the Vulcan reputation for veracity served her extremely well, and the dismissive scowl was replaced by obvious consideration as he gave thought to just how likely it would be that he could pull this off. “All right,” he said slowly, “let us put forward a hypothetical . . . since I have to remember that I am speaking with a Starfleet officer and wouldn’t wish to admit to activities that are frowned upon by your superiors.”
“You are being overcautious.”
“I’d rather be overcautious than under arrest.”
“Point taken. Hypothesize as you desire.”
“Let us suppose,” he said, fingering a few stray wisps of hair on his chin, “that I had a contact on Romulus who provided me, on occasion, with fine cargo of Romulan ale for certain customers of that rare substance.”
“Go on,” Soleta prompted.
“Let us further suppose that, although it would take some effort, an ale run could be scheduled in, say, a week’s time. All the appropriate clearances have been made, palms have been greased, latinum secured, and so on.”
“And there would be room in your cargo bay for a stowaway who would be able to attend to certain errands while you attended to yours.”
“A stowaway!” His ample chin now quivered with suitable indignation. “I am shocked . . . shocked and . . . and . . .”
“Appalled?” she offered.
“Yes, thank you. Shocked and appalled at the notion of someone successfully stowing away on my vessel! I would hate to hear of such criminal activities carried out under my very nose!”
“Far be it from me,” she said politely, “to cause you such angst and agitation. We will speak no more of it.”
“I should hope not,” he told her, straightening his jacket and recovering from the brief flurry of distress he so convincingly exhibited. “My vigilance in such matters is undisputed. Why, I would hate to think that if a would-be stowaway showed up here in precisely one week’s time at precisely 0800 hours, she would be able to sneak in while my back was turned. It would be almost as outrageous as thinking that there would be space for her in my cargo bay already set up, including sleeping and sanitary accommodations.”
“Unthinkable,” Soleta said. “I cannot even hazard a guess as to what had entered my mind.”
“See that it doesn’t happen again,” said Sharky.
The ship took off without incident, but then again, Soleta hadn’t been expecting any sort of trouble in that regard. The problems, if there were any, would most certainly occur once they were making their approach to Romulus. She couldn’t help but wonder just how many “palms” had been “greased” to make certain that passing through the Romulan Neutral Zone did not result in instant assault by several Romulan vessels. She reasoned that the patrol ships on the Zone border ran in some sort of scheduled pattern. It was the only reasonable assumption; the border was too wide, space too vast. Ships couldn’t be everywhere, it just wasn’t possible. So in order to pass through unmolested, all one had to do was be familiar with whatever the scheduled routes of the patrol ships were. The proper information from the right people on the inside could be obtained . . . for a sufficiently greasy palm, she surmised.
All of these, however, were details that Sharky had already attended to. That was, after all, what he was good at. Soleta had other considerations. As she crouched in the makeshift area that had been cleared for her in the hidden cargo bay in the ship’s bowels (Sharky being a smuggler, after all, so naturally the cargo bay would be concealed and shielded from scans), she once again opened the box that she had secured from Rajari’s apartment.
It was a remarkable heirloom inside. She picked it up and marveled at the weight and coolness of it. It was an ornately carved disk, with an odd pattern of rods crisscrossing its middle. It was solid silver and glistened even in the dim lighting of the cargo bay.
Not for the first time, she wondered once more why she was doing this. She had promised, yes, but she did not have to promise. And having made the promise, was she really obligated to keep it? Considering what this man was, what he had done . . .
And yet . . .
Soleta let out an uneasy sigh. She had thought about it, pondered it, meditated on it, and was reasonably sure she knew why she was doing it.
It wasn’t for him. It was for her.
Ever since her chance encounter with Rajari back on the Aldrin, Soleta had carried with her the knowledge and awareness of the circumstances of her conception. As unreasonable as it seemed, it had made her feel tainted. Unclean. She was not spawned from a moment of joy or desire, or even from a simple biological drive that had perpetuated her species for centuries. No, she was the product of a brutal, barbaric act. And because of that, because of the beast who had lain upon her mother and conceived a child, Soleta had felt as if she were a lesser being. She knew intellectually that what she was feeling was illogical. She had never felt any lack of self-worth earlier in her life. She had always serenely been certain of herself, of her capabilities, of her Vulcan heritage. That serenity had dissolved beneath the acid rain of Rajari’s chortling nostalgia for his savagery.
But Rajari had changed. He had found some higher power, he had wanted to redeem himself. His sacrifice to save Soleta had been part of that redemption, and the returning of the amulet in the box was the final step. Rajari was now purely a being of the past, a memory, and Soleta had been handed a means of purifying that memory. Well . . . perhaps not purifying it. That was taking it too far, certainly. She would, however, be able to lessen the sting of the memory somewhat. She was helping to set right something that Rajari had done wrong, and in doing that, she was reclaiming a bit of her own sense of inner peace. For if Rajari was not fundamentally and irredeemably evil, then that gave Soleta some hope for herself.
“You’re not evil. You
never were,” Soleta reminded herself, and she knew that to be true . . . up to a point. Who knew, though, what she was capable of becoming? After all, she had Romulan blood within her, and blood had a habit of betraying one at the oddest times.
She thought about one of her earliest classes in training in the Vulcan Way, when a rough voice interrupted her and said, “You look thoughtful.”
She glanced up at Sharky, looking at her with a mildly amused smile. “I was under the impression you did not know I was here.”
“I have extensive short term-memory problems,” he replied. “As soon as I walk out, I’ll forget I saw you. What’s on your mind?”
“I was recalling,” she said, “the First Three Rules of Vulcan Discipline.”
“And they would be . . . ?”
“The First Rule is: Know yourself completely. The Second Rule is: Rule One is Impossible.”
“That makes no sense. It’s totally illogical,” he said.
“That is basically Rule Three,” she said. “Rule Three is: To Know Oneself completely is to know that the Impossible is Illogical.”
“I’m completely lost.”
“Do not be concerned,” Soleta consoled him. “It is but a joke common at Starfleet Academy. Very common. And yet I believe there may be some truth to it.”
“You do?” he asked.
“After a fashion.”
He snorted derisively. “Y’ask me, there should be a fourth rule that says, ‘Ignore previous three rules.’”
“That’s the fifth rule, actually.”
Sharky stared at her for a moment, trying to see through the wall of inscrutability that she had thrown up around herself. And then he laughed once, very loudly and very coarsely, and slapped her affectionately on the shoulder. “You’re quite a piece of work, Soleta, you know that?”