Oh, Kolk’r, he’s going to die … my dad’s going to die, thought Moke bleakly, even as he said, “Just … just lie down! Lie down!”
And he said it with such force and certainty that the man did exactly as he was told. It was as if, having no clear idea of what he should be doing, he accepted whatever suggestion was tossed out to him. He flopped onto the floor and just lay there, glassy-eyed. He was starting to shiver, which made no sense to Moke. Why should he be shivering if he’s so hot?
Realizing that simply standing around and chatting with the mysterious man wasn’t going to accomplish anything, Moke shut the door behind him and raced toward his house. He bolted into the house, looked around frantically for some sign of his mother … and didn’t see any.
“Mom!” he called urgently, panic starting to well up within him. What if the man died before his mother could help him? What if all of Moke’s efforts in this area failed? Even worse … what if this man were indeed his father, and he died … and his mother somehow blamed Moke for it? He could just hear her. You found your father and you let him die? How could you! It was an appalling thought. On how many levels could he possibly fail?
It was at that point that he suddenly heard his mother’s scream, and came to the frightening conclusion that he was about to find out.
Rheela was becoming frantic with worry.
She had looked all over the house, all over the immediate area, and there was no sign of Moke. She was beginning to think that perhaps she should install a tracer of some sort in him, so that she could locate him when she needed to.
Having no idea which direction to strike out in looking for him, she chose east at random and started walking, calling his name. Her trip had turned up nothing, and so she decided to head back the way she’d come. This took a terribly long time, and all during her walk she conjured up all the horrible things that might have happened to Moke. She tried to tell herself that she was being overly protective, and that Moke was most likely perfectly fine. Indeed, she knew on some level that she should stop nattering at the boy, stop being so frantic. Be willing to trust him, somewhat, to look after himself. For all that, though, she still couldn’t help but be concerned, and the longer he was gone, the more worried she became.
She noticed, however, that it was starting to get cooler. Which meant that the luukab would be far more willing to come out of its nice cool shed and provide her with a means of locomotion far more efficient and ground-consuming than her own legs. So, upon her return, she went straight to the shed and threw open the door, with the intent of getting the luukab and mounting up immediately.
Instead, she stopped dead in her tracks, frozen in the doorway, gaping at the man who was lying on the floor.
“Wh-who are you?” she stammered.
Slowly he sat up, and she immediately saw the differences in him from any other man she’d ever met. His skin color, his hair, were both wrong. He had to be some sort of … of genetic freak, capable of who knew what? Even more daunting was the way in which he got to his feet. It was with an economy of movement, as if he wanted to give an opponent no clue of just how fast or strong he might be….
Opponent … ?
This naturally brought her to the disconcerting realization that he was eyeing her as if she were some sort of enemy. There was a crazed look in his eyes, feral and ugly. For a moment, he had seemed to have trouble discerning just where she was, but now that he’d locked on to her whereabouts, there was clearly no question or hesitation for him. A low, raspy growl sounded from deep in his throat.
“Now, just … just … stay where you are,” she said, trying to gather her wits. She was still holding the door open.
“Danteri slime,” he snarled. “You killed my father….”
“I … did what? I’m … listen … there’s a … a mistake …” He took a step closer, into the light filtering through behind her, and she came to a realization as she saw him more clearly. “You’re not well. You’re sick.”
“Sick … yes … sick of Danteri monsters like you….” His legs wobbled slightly, and then he steadied them.
“I’m … not a monster … I …”
And suddenly he leaped right for her.
Rheela let out a shriek and belatedly tried to slam the door, with the hope of locking him in. But she had no chance. Her attacker smashed into it, knocking the door open with such force that it sent her tumbling back, her ankles going high over her head before she rolled to a stop. Before she could get up, the man was upon her.
She had never seen a more terrifying look in someone’s eyes before. He seemed to be looking right through her, perhaps at the ground, or perhaps at someone long gone. She slapped at his face, at his chest, but he didn’t even seem to feel it. For one crazed moment, she thought he was going to rape her, and then when his hands clamped down on her throat, she realized that he meant nothing less than to kill her.
He kept raging about “Danteri,” and she had no idea what in the world he could possibly be talking about. How pathetic, she thought, to die in ignorance. And then she thought of her son coming home and finding this madman, who would most certainly do to her son what he was doing to her. This thought was enough to give her renewed energy, and she fought with everything she had. Unfortunately, that still didn’t amount to much. Not in the face of such a demented attack by a much stronger opponent.
She couldn’t get air into her lungs, and her panic caused her to throw herself around in a desperate attempt to dislodge him. But it still was as nothing against his attack.
“Mom!” She heard Moke’s panicked voice coming from what sounded like a very great distance, and then he was right there, shoving at the man, trying to get him off her. The crazy man barely gave him a look, and instead swung his arm around, knocking Moke off his feet and sending him rolling. This, of course, caused him to release his grip on her, and Rheela tried to push him completely off. Her hand grabbed up some loose dirt and dust and she threw it in his face. The man let out a roar of fury, clutching at his eyes, reaching about at thin air, momentarily blinded. She lashed out with one foot, knocking him off her, and she clambered to her feet with every intention of getting away from him. She only got a short distance, though, and then he was back upon her. This time he landed on her from behind, slamming her to the ground. She cried out in despair, feeling that her one opportunity to survive this deranged encounter had just slipped away from her because she was too slow. She was going to die, and her boy was going to die, and there wasn’t a damned thing she could do about it. All this went through her mind even as his fingers clamped upon her throat once more. The world started to gray-out around her.
And then there was the distinctive grunt of the luukab, and suddenly—just like that—the man was off her. She sat up, her eyes wide, and if her throat hadn’t been in such agony, she would have laughed.
The luukab was heading away from the scene at a fairly brisk gallop, and attached to the creature’s tusk was one end of a rope. The other end was secured around the man’s ankle, and he was howling in fury as the creature hauled him around. Were the situation not quite so serious, it would actually have been funny.
Moke ran to her, and his words were tumbling out so fast that Rheela had trouble understanding everything he was telling her. It seemed that he was saying he was responsible for bringing the man here, and he was sorry, and the man wasn’t so bad when he wasn’t trying to kill you, and maybe he was Moke’s father, and wouldn’t it be okay if he stayed because he’d probably be much nicer if he wasn’t sick …
Then Rheela rewound part of the conversation in her head. “Your father … ?” she managed to gasp out, rubbing her throat and hoping that he hadn’t broken something in her during his assault.
That was when the luukab trotted up to them, looking at them in a rather blasé manner. The luukab’s burden was not in any condition to complain about the treatment it was getting, for the man was clearly unconscious. His clothes were now shredded, his face and upper bod
y bruised. His breathing was shallow, but steady.
A hundred questions tumbled through Rheela’s mind, but finally she managed to say, “We have to get the Majister.”
“The Majister! But he’ll put him in gaol!”
“He belongs in gaol, Moke!” Rheela told him. She pointed at her throat. “Listen to how I’m talking! Listen to how raspy! He did this to me! If you hadn’t thought so fast and tied him to the luukab, I’d be dead by now!”
“He’s just sick, is all, Ma!”
“We don’t know how he’ll be when he isn’t sick, Moke!” Quickly she went to the shed and came back out with a long knife. She cut the rope off the luukab’s tusk, and then took the rope and proceeded to bind the man as securely as she could. “We’ll get him all tied up,” she said, as much to herself as to Moke, “and then we’ll ride the luukab into town, get the Majister, have him put this … this crazy man into gaol, and that will be that. That’s the Majister’s job, after all. It’s his job to attend to hurtful people like this … not … not our job to fight them off.”
“He’s not hurtful! I know it! I—”
She turned to Moke and said, with irritation, “He’s not your father, Moke! All right? So stop talking about it!”
“He’s not?” The disappointment from the boy was palpable. “Are you sure?”
The naïveté of the child was almost touching, in its way. It almost made her laugh. Almost. “Yes. I’m sure.”
“Oh.” He sighed. “Okay.”
As soon as the man was tied up, Rheela dragged him over into the shed, secured the door, and locked it for good measure. Then she and Moke mounted up on the luukab and headed toward town as fast as they could.
And as they did so, the man with the purple eyes and fearsome scar dreamed of exploding ships….
SHELBY
IT WAS …
… so …
… quiet.
Shelby could scarcely believe it. She sat in her command chair, the steady flow of activity all around her, and she was reveling in it.
And it was …
… so …
… quiet.
It had seemed, back on the bridge of the Excalibur, that there was always someone chattering or going on about something that had nothing to do with anything. There would be Lefler, reciting one of her many “laws” about something or other that Shelby always suspected Lefler made up on the spot. Or McHenry, snoring—snoring!—at his post.
Then there was the time Soleta became obsessed with understanding the formulaic humor inherent in “knock-knock” jokes. After tracing “knock-knock” jokes back to a sequence in the Shakespeare drama habitually referred to (by superstitious humans, apparently, who considered the show jinxed) as “the Scottish play,” Soleta had tried out a series of knock-knock jokes on assorted crewmembers until everyone was sick of them, and pretty much of her as well.
Steady chatter, jokes, laughter, odd incidents, all manner of strangeness aboard the Excalibur, with Calhoun coming across less like a CO and more like a patient den mother. He bore up under the give-and-take with equanimity, and nothing ever seemed to bother him. In fact, he actually seemed to enjoy the oddities that were his crew’s hallmark.
And it was never quiet. Always there were odd moments, or strange statements, or arguments over matters of trivial importance. Always there was something going on. There had been times when Shelby felt as if she was never going to fit in with the rest of the crew. As if she was always going to be an outsider on a vessel that served as both her permanent place of work and play. It was a lonely way to be, but she couldn’t change her essence. She couldn’t find any sort of sympathy or preference for the way that Calhoun chose to do things.
But here, on the Exeter … it was so very …
… very …
… very … quiet.
The crew, handpicked by Shelby, went about its business with calm, certain efficiency. There was not a wasted word or moment. Everything her crew said or did directly related either to the current state of the Exeter, or to updates on the ship’s position while the powerful vessel continued en route to the planet Makkus.
“Her crew.” There was something about that phrase—“her crew”—that brought deep and abiding satisfaction to her. Yes, the Excalibur had been something of a family to her—but oftentimes it seemed a family to her in the same way that Alice considered the residents of Wonderland a family. In Wonderland, it was as if there was some sort of great, massive joke that everyone else was in on … except Alice. That was how Shelby felt. She was Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, and oddball residents like McHenry and Kebron were at either end shouting, “No room! No room!” while Calhoun sat serenely on a large mushroom, observing all the insanity around him with aplomb. She readily admitted to herself that she might be exaggerating her recollections. But if she was, it certainly wasn’t by much.
Now, this group, on the other hand, was far more her speed.
Alexandra Garbeck—whom Shelby had taken to calling “Alex,” but only when they were together privately—was studying several recent communiqués from Starfleet, wanting to keep herself abreast of the latest decisions and thoughts of her higher-ups. At the science station, Lieutenant Commander Chris Tulley was preparing a report on the atmosphere of Makkus, to make certain that the away team would not run into any trouble on the planet. Tulley, slim and waspish, was the youngest person on the bridge—understandable when one is so bright that he graduates from the Academy two years ahead of schedule.
At conn and ops were the two officers who had come to operate so smoothly together that many speculated they had been separated at birth. At conn was Matthew MacGibbon, tall and well-muscled, with thick, red hair. He had a ready smile and went about his duty with ruthless efficiency. Next to him, at ops was Lieutenant Althea McMurrian. She likewise had red hair, which matched MacGibbon’s in shade, but in contrast to MacGibbon, she rarely smiled, her mouth perpetually drawn into a tight pucker that seemed to convey constant concentration. If there was anything going on having to do with any part of the ship’s systems, MacGibbon not only knew about it, but solved it before having to report word one about it to Shelby. McMurrian and MacGibbon had worked together on two previous commands and, despite their basic differences in temperament, had developed such a seamless working relationship that they were occasionally referred to by the combined name of McMac. Amazingly, they actually responded to it. In times of emergency, Shelby could snap out orders by saying, “McMac, plot an emergency course out of here and signal all hands to battle stations.” It saved time, and there was never any hesitation as to who was to do what.
Situated directly behind Shelby, normally, was Lieutenant Naomi Basner, head of security. But Basner was undergoing some physical therapy after a shooting incident on Zeron III, so filling in for her was the next in line for the job, Lieutenant Karen Kahn. Shelby couldn’t help comparing Kahn to Zak Kebron, and couldn’t be more struck by the differences. Kebron was a massive Brikar, invulnerable to virtually anything thrown at him. He moved fairly slowly, but considering that he was a walking tank, he didn’t have much need for speed. Kahn, by contrast, was of mixed Native American ancestry, and was absolute lightning in a variety of martial arts. Shelby had watched computer video of Kahn doing a workout, and her hand and leg movements had been so fast that Shelby hadn’t even been able to track them. She’d needed the computer to give her a frame-by-frame playback, and even then she didn’t dare blink lest she miss something.
Her crew. Her people. Handpicked, carefully studied. Shelby knew that the composition of her command staff was absolutely vital, because a captain was only as good as the people she had directly supporting her. And if there was one thing that Shelby was convinced of at this point, it was that she had done as good a job as anyone could do in assembling her team. They were efficient, professional, knowledgeable … everything that she could possibly have asked for.
And …
… so …
… qu
iet.
Tulley broke the silence as he turned from his post and said, “Captain, atmosphere survey complete. Makkus’s air is a bit thinner than Earth standard, but should not present a problem.”
“Good,” Shelby said.
Garbeck turned in her seat to face Shelby. “Will you be handling the away team yourself, Captain?”
“I had intended to. Does that pose a problem for you, Number One?” Shelby had decided she liked that term. Picard had referred to Riker in that way, and it had a good sound to it.
“No problem, Captain,” replied Garbeck. “It is usually preferable for the first officer to lead such endeavors, but the captain does, naturally, have the option. And this does not seem to have a good deal of potential for personal danger. So I don’t see the harm.”
“I appreciate the permission, Number One,” Shelby said wryly.
Garbeck looked at her blankly. “I wasn’t offering permission, Captain. That wouldn’t be appropriate to my station. I was simply offering an observation.”
“I understand that, Garbeck. I was simply …” Shelby gave a small shrug. “… I was simply making a small joke.”
“Oh,” said Garbeck. That was it. That was all. No “I see,” or “Very funny, Captain,” or even “Not very amusing, Captain.” Just “Oh.”
Shelby glanced out the corner of her eye to see if anyone was reacting to the conversation she was having with Garbeck. No one was. They all seemed engrossed in their individual duties. Shelby decided that it would probably be a good point to let the discussion go, and she did.
Makkus … she was going to Makkus …
It wasn’t what she had been planning.
Somehow, Shelby had just assumed that, with the loss of the Excalibur, she would be assigned back to Sector 221-G—formerly known as Thallonian space. The Excalibur had been assigned there—a lifetime ago, it felt like—to try and offer humanitarian aid, and to stitch back together the fabric of an assortment of worlds that were operating independently for the first time in their collective history. With that mighty ship gone, there was no one to oversee things in Thallonian space.