“I’ve never given it much thought,” said Calhoun.
“Well, you are in luck,” Krut said, “because I’m going to give you the opportunity to anticipate it.”
And just like that, just that quickly, Krut’s hand was in motion, moving toward the large-handled weapon he had hanging from his hip.
Calhoun reflexively moved for his own gun, and there were shrieks from the patrons of the tavern, who threw themselves this way and that in order to try and get out of range. But before anyone managed to do so, Krut’s gun was already in his hand and leveled right at Calhoun’s chest. Calhoun’s weapon had not even cleared the holster, was not even fully drawn.
Krut’s gun didn’t waver so much as a centimeter as utter quiet draped over the tavern like a funeral shroud. “Fingers off your gun, Majister,” he said calmly, and Calhoun did exactly as he was told. It was obvious to everyone in the tavern that Mackenzie Calhoun was staring death in the face. If he was at all intimidated, if he feared death in the least, he certainly didn’t show it. In fact, he wasn’t looking at the weapon at all. Instead, he was staring squarely into Krut’s eyes, as if trying to get a measure of Krut as an individual, as to just how likely the green man was to squeeze the trigger and blast Calhoun’s innards all over the wall.
“Impressively quick, wouldn’t you say?” Krut asked cheerfully. “Observe.” He slid the gun into his holster and then pulled it out again, the movement such a blur that it seemed as if the weapon literally leaped from the holster into his hand of its own accord. “One more time?”
“You’ve made your point,” Calhoun said quietly. “Are you going to shoot now?”
“Cut you down with no warning, as you did Krassus?” Krut looked almost disappointed at the notion. “No, no … this is where we get to discover which is worse, Calhoun. The moment of death … or the anticipation. You will have the rest of this day, this evening, and much of tomorrow morning to think about what’s going to happen. And at noon tomorrow, you will meet me out on the street, and there we will have a little duel. At which point, I will draw my weapon, far faster than you will be able to pull out yours, and shoot you down.” He smiled, clearly taken with the mental image. “I will send you to the afterlife, where you and Krassus will be able to continue your disagreements throughout eternity. You could, of course, go on the run. If you do that, rest assured I will hunt you down, kill you, take your head and bring it here to display, so that all the residents of this little city that you wish to protect will know their protector for the coward that he is. I trust we understand each other.”
“Perfectly,” said Calhoun.
“Until tomorrow, then,” said Krut. He bowed slightly and then exited the tavern, keeping his gun leveled on Calhoun, backing up so that his eyes never left him. Calhoun kept a level gaze fixed upon him, even staring at the door long after Krut had departed through it.
“You sure tricked him, Majister!” Moke said, breaking the silence that followed.
There were puzzled looks at the boy from all around. He looked at the confused adults, not remotely understanding why they were failing to grasp the obvious. “The Majister drew his gun slow so that the green man would think the Majister wasn’t as quick! But tomorrow, you’re going to see something! Right, Majister?”
His voice was filled with boundless enthusiasm … which was curbed slightly when Calhoun, even though saying, “Right,” allowed something to peer through his eyes that Moke recognized instantly, and which froze his thoughts. That something peering through was concern. Genuine concern.
The green man was faster. Much faster.
And the lawman known as Mackenzie Calhoun clearly didn’t have the faintest idea how to deal with it.
GARBECK & SHELBY
IT WAS SOME HOURS LATER, long after the two fleets had returned to their respective worlds, when Shelby found Garbeck, exactly where she thought she was going to find her: down in the Ten-Forward Lounge. Just walking into the place reminded Shelby of the fact that, on the Excalibur, many people referred to the equivalent spot as the Team Room; a name picked up from the old space program. It was a term that, for some reason, Calhoun had preferred.
Garbeck was staring at the empty glass, looking rather dismal as she did so. Shelby sat down at the table without being invited. “So, how drunk are you?” she inquired.
“Depends. Are my eyes open?” asked Garbeck thickly.
“Yes.”
“Then the answer to your question is, ‘Not enough.’ ” She signaled for the waitress to bring over another shot of whatever the hell she was having. Since she was off duty, Shelby didn’t feel the need to remonstrate with her for straying from the more accepted synthehol. The waitress brought the drink, but rather than ask what it was, Shelby picked it up before Garbeck could down it. Garbeck didn’t appear to have enough energy left to complain; she just stared blankly at Shelby, as if the captain had suddenly appeared in a burst of light, like a member of the Q continuum.
Shelby sniffed the drink and gasped. “My God! What did they do, drain this from a warp core? You could power a starship with this.”
“Private stock.” She snapped her fingers to gain the waitress’ attention and, once she had it, made a tilting motion with her arm that signaled she wanted an entire bottle brought to the table. The waitress complied, bringing a bottle about half-filled with the potent liquor.
Shelby read the label. “Big Bang?” Garbeck nodded, a bit too enthusiastically, and she almost slammed her head on the table before Shelby caught her by the shoulder to prevent her from doing so. “Where’d you get this stuff? Romulan space?”
“Pocatello, Idaho.”
“I hear they’re very similar.” She put the bottle down gingerly, not wanting to jostle the contents lest she accidentally cause the thing to explode somehow. “Thank you for interceding, by the way, when that scientist endeavored to rearrange my face.”
“Not a problem,” Garbeck told her. She was trying to lean on her elbow, but it was wobbling viciously. She tried to solve the problem by steadying the table, which actually hadn’t been moving at all.
“Just out of curiosity,” Shelby said, encompassing both Garbeck and the bottle with a gesture, “may I ask … why?”
“Because you’re my captain. I figured it was in my job description somewhere …”
“No, I meant, why are you crawling inside a bottle?”
“I resent that characterization, Captain,” Garbeck said in a very arch tone. “I am not crawling. Babies crawl. I am an adult. Adults walk. I am walking inside a bottle.”
She rolled her eyes. “Garbeck …”
“The whole way,” Garbeck said suddenly, and she leaned forward, clutching the bottleneck as if it were the sole object that was preventing her from falling and thudding her chin on the tabletop. “The whole way, down to the transporter, they begged me. Begged me and begged me and begged me. Begged begged begged beg—”
“I get the picture, Garbeck,” Shelby interrupted her. “They begged. And you found that upsetting.”
“Of course I found it upsetting! Wouldn’t you?”
“Yes. But if I had found it upsetting … wouldn’t you then think that I was deficient somehow in terms of personal strength?”
Garbeck didn’t answer immediately. As a matter of fact, she didn’t answer at all. She simply stared off into space, and for a long moment Shelby thought she had fallen asleep. She leaned forward, put her fingers in front of Garbeck’s face, and snapped them a couple of times. This, apparently, was enough to rouse Garbeck back to full concentration, and she looked a bit accusingly at Shelby, as if annoyed that Shelby had dared to disturb her rest.
Shelby ordered, and got, some synthehol for herself. She felt like keeping her faculties focused.
“I should have been stronger,” Garbeck said suddenly, and there was something in the increasing strength in her voice that caught Shelby’s attention. “I knew what I was doing was right … what you were having me do was right. You had no c
hoice, really. And they did do what they were accused of doing. They’re not denying that … well, they are, but it’s a bit too late. The problem is that their leader … and Shuffer’s brother … is not being held to account for his actions.”
“Unless you count for the fact that he basically had to give up his own brother.”
“I don’t know that we count that at all. For all we know, they never got along. He might have been glad to see his brother depart.” Garbeck shook her head in disgust. “I should be … immune to it, wouldn’t you think? But I’m not, apparently. I’m furious over the fact that the Ferghut is getting away with this.”
“The Ferghut isn’t exactly ‘getting away’ with anything,” Shelby reminded her. “His world is still being crushed by overpopulation. And the Makkusians are no doubt watching every single move, trust having been replaced by vigilance.” She took a sip of her drink, but then put it down, preferring to nurse it. Garbeck, on the other hand, simply threw back another shot.
“I have a hollow leg,” Garbeck told her, but considering the way Garbeck was going through the bottle, Shelby had a sneaking suspicion that everything from the neck down was, in fact, hollow. It seemed the only way she could possibly contain that much liquor.
“Tell me,” Shelby said abruptly, as if she were changing subjects. “What if we encountered a world that had a newly minted, planet-wide disaster. And let’s say that I suggested to you that we slingshot back through time, go to a point before the disaster, and head it off. What would you say to me?”
Garbeck didn’t even have to give it a moment’s thought. “I would say that if you attempted to utilize the Exeter in such a blatantly inappropriate manner, against all temporal regulations of Starfleet, then I would personally do everything I could to relieve you of command.” Then she blinked in surprise, and actually looked pleased with herself. “How about that! That sounded like the old me! I was getting worried!”
“Yes, that was certainly a close one,” Shelby said dryly. “And once upon a time … I would have, one hundred percent, had the exact same reaction. But when it actually happened, well …” She shrugged.
Garbeck looked at her in amazement, even through the drunken haze hanging over her. “When it … happened? You mean, you … ?” And then she realized. “Calhoun.”
“Thaaaat’s right,” said Shelby. “If he’d tried it when I first came on as his second-in-command, I would have been all over the ship trying to get everyone and his brother to help me stop him from doing something completely insane.”
“But when he did do it … ? Did you … ?”
“Stop him?” She laughed softly. “In a lot of ways, Garbeck, Calhoun was more like a force of nature than a starship captain. Trying to stop him was like trying to throw yourself in the path of a tidal wave. Most of the time, you just wound up looking all wet.”
Garbeck regarded her commander with quiet amusement. “And you want to be like that, don’t you?”
“My, my. The drink is making you remarkably insightful today.”
“It’s so much more exciting to be a force of nature than to be a regulation-bound pencil pusher, right, Captain?”
“I never particularly thought about it in those terms.”
“Maybe not consciously. But unconsciously …”
“I think the unconscious gets an unfair rap,” remarked Shelby. “It takes more blame for negative outcomes than God.”
“It’s true, isn’t it, though? Someone like Calhoun, he’s more exciting to watch in action than a captain who does everything right.”
“Right? Is that what it comes down to, Garbeck? Right and wrong?” She shook her head. “What are rules, in the end? They’re things people come up with to guide them through those things that they know. The problem with space exploration is that, over and over again, you come up against those things that you don’t know. That no one knows, or has any experience with.”
“And because of that, rules should go out the window? Izzat what you’re saying, Captain Shebly?”
Shelby smiled. “Shelby. It’s Shelby.”
“Where?” Garbeck turned and looked over her shoulder.
“No, I mean …” She waved it off. “Never mind.”
But Garbeck fought through the confusion in her addled brain and realized. “Oh. I said ‘Shebly.’ Sorry.” She licked her lips. “I think my tongue’s swollen to twice its normal size.”
“In some situations, that could make you very popular,” said Shelby with wry amusement.
“The point is,” Garbeck said with renewed emphasis, thumping her hand on the table, “Without rules, we’re … we’re all Calhouns. Running around, doing whatever the hell we want. It’s anarchy. It’s chaos. It’s not a smoothly run organization at all, and most of all … there’s no sense of responsibility. No one would have to answer to anyone else. Actions must have consequences.”
“I agree.”
“There, y’see?”
“But you’re presenting only two extremes. There has to be a middle ground, Garbeck. And I wish I could tell you that I knew what it was, but …” She sighed. “I don’t. But part of me wonders whether—by this point—I’ve become too much like Mackenzie Calhoun.”
“Captain Shebly,” Garbeck said with effort, “we may have had our differences, but I can assure that—no matter how extreme our disagreements may have become, and no matter how much I think you’re mucking things up—you are not, and never will be, anything like Mackenzie Calhoun. And, if I have anything to say about it, neither will I.”
“You’re certainly right about the latter, in any event.”
“Thank you,” she said proudly.
“For one thing, Calhoun could hold his liquor.”
“I can hold my liquor!” Garbeck said indignantly. She picked up the bottle and cradled it, a bit unsteadily, in both hands. “See?”
Shelby laughed. “I’m very proud of you, Commander. Very proud.”
“Thank you.” And then her mouth drew taut, and Shelby was certain that Garbeck was fighting back tears. “I’m always going to hear them, you know. Those poor bastards. Set up by their leader … one of them by his own brother. Crying for mercy. Begging, pleading. Three of them told me they had children, did you know that? Wanted to go back to them. I had to ignore them, ignore it. But it was a clear Prime-Directive situation, you know. Textbook. Absolute textbook.”
“I know. It was,” agreed Shelby. “And when you led them away, I heard the begging, too.”
“They were only following orders.”
“Yes.”
“Just like we do.”
“Yes.”
“They didn’t deserve what happened to them.”
“But they performed certain destructive actions. Actions, so I’m told, have to have consequences, lest we descend into anarchy.”
Garbeck looked up at her in confusion. “Who said that?”
“You did. Five minutes ago.”
“Oh.” She shrugged. “Well … what do I know?”
“About as much as any of us knows, Number One. About as much as any of us knows. And somehow … it’s never enough.”
They sat there and stared into the bottle as the long evening hours stretched on, waiting for the screams and pleadings for mercy to die in their heads. And it never quite happened.
RHEELA
THE TIMING OF THE ARRIVAL of the Circuit Judiciary couldn’t have been better … or, at least, so it seemed. With Krut having issued his challenge, and the distinct possibility that, as of the morrow, there might not be a Majister, at least the pending case of Kusack could be attended to.
The Judiciary—who, by startling coincidence, had arrived mere hours after Krut’s ultimatum—was an unassuming but learned individual. Word of his arrival had spread quickly. Rheela was on her way into town anyway, because Moke had bolted home after witnessing the confrontation between Calhoun and Krut, and she had felt the need to go to him, to see if she could offer any aid or encouragement. It was a
nonsensical thing to contemplate, really. What could she do? What could she truly hope to accomplish? Just make a damned fool of herself, most likely, but that still wasn’t going to stop her from making her best effort.
But when she had arrived in town, she had discovered people crowding into the central meeting hall, almost tripping over one another in their anxiousness to cram inside. Rheela had pretty much figured it out before she even got near. There had been no meeting scheduled, no natural disaster had occurred that she, at least, could discern. Thinking about what could possibly have incited such reactions, she quickly came to the (very correct) conclusion that the Circuit Judiciary had finally made his presence known to the small city once again.
She managed to ease her way in through two rather heavyset individuals, gliding adroitly between them while they were hesitating and trying to figure out which of them was going to give way so that the other could pass through (since their walking in side by side was unworkable). She managed to find a seat at the far end of one bench. No one glanced her way, even though she recognized a couple of them from the crews who had been coming to restore her house. She tried to figure out whether being cold-shouldered was a good thing or not.
There was the Circuit Judiciary; a reedy man who was learned about everything, except about not acting insufferably pleased that he was learned. The Praestor was in the process of informing the Judiciary just exactly what had happened to land Kusack in gaol, and the further circumstances surrounding the death of the previous Majister, Fairax. Kusack stood before the Judiciary, his hands securely tied, his head hung so that he didn’t have to look the Judiciary in the eye. Calhoun was seated in a single, freestanding chair nearby. Rheela immediately noticed something different in Calhoun’s expression, as opposed to everyone else’s. Calhoun was watching the Circuit Judiciary very carefully, as if he was waiting for the Judiciary to say something important. But there was something in Calhoun’s face, something about his expression that gave Rheela pause. It made her wonder what he knew that no one else in the room did.