Gods Above

by Peter David

  “I do not trust them,” Si Cwan said immediately.

  “Logic would indicate, Ambassador,” Spock told him, “that your concern is colored by the fact that they endeavored to kill you.”

  Hash laughed in a way that bordered on the sarcastic. “And why ever would he allow his concern to be colored by that?”

  “I don’t believe anyone asked you, Mr. Takahashi,” Mueller said sharply, and then turned to Shelby. “Captain…I hope you’re not considering heading up this away team.”

  “It had crossed my mind, XO.”

  ‘With all respect, Captain,” said Mueller, the emphasis on “respect” so meticulous that Shelby couldn’t possibly have taken offense unless she had a chip on her shoulder the size of a moon, “the situation, unstable as it is, is not one that our commanding officer should be thrusting herself into.”

  “Even though the Beings could conceivably reach up from the planet’s surface and swat us at any time?” asked Shelby. “An argument could be made that no one is safe.”

  “I’m convinced,” Hash piped up. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Shelby ignored him, which was usually the best practice to follow when Hash was employing what he fancied to be his rapier wit. “Recommendations, XO?”

  “Away team consisting of myself, Ambassadors Spock and Cwan, and Lieutenant Arex.”

  “What about Captain Calhoun?” Mick Gold spoke up from conn.

  Shelby turned and frowned. “I’m not entirely sure how Captain Calhoun is relevant to the conversation, Gold.”

  “He’s only relevant in the sense that he’s here.”

  All eyes were suddenly on the monitor screen as, sure enough, dropping out of warp was the Starship Excalibur.

  “I was unaware the Excalibur had been assigned to this mission,” Spock said.

  “That’s because they haven’t been,” Shelby said tightly. She thought she heard a soft chuckle come from Mueller’s direction, but when she looked at her second-in-command, Kat’s face was purely deadpan. “Hash. Raise them.”

  An instant later, Calhoun’s face appeared on the screen. She noticed he’d shaved. Figured. She’d just gotten used to the beard. “Captain,” she said in as formal a tone as she could muster. “We weren’t expecting to see you here.”

  “Yes. I know. My understanding is that Starfleet is endeavoring to be circumspect in its broadcasting of orders these days.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Are you saying Starfleet ordered you to rendezvous with us at Danter?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t say at the present time,” Calhoun informed her.

  I’ll kill him, thought Shelby even as she kept a smile plastered on her face. “I think it best we get together, Captain, so we can make certain our orders aren’t in conflict with one another.”

  “Excellent idea, Captain,” replied Calhoun. “Your place or mine?”

  “Yours. I’ll be right over.” Shelby turned to Mueller. “Would there be a great deal of paperwork involved if we simply opened fire on the Excalibur and blew her out of space?”

  “I believe Starfleet would frown upon it, Captain.”

  “Damn,” muttered Shelby.

  “Captain,” Spock observed, “it would appear to me that you have some little antipathy for the Excalibur in general…or her captain in specific.”

  “He’s my husband.”

  “Ah,” said Spock. He paused, and then said, “In my day, captains were generally considered to be married to their ships.”

  “Those were good days,” said Shelby and headed for the turbolift.

  And she heard Spock say, “Indeed,” as the lift doors slid shut behind her.

  Excalibur

  i.

  MOKE WAS BECOMING ACCUSTOMED to having the ghosts around.

  He had given up trying to comprehend them. He didn’t know why they were there, or what they wanted. He was a flexible child, and so had decided that his new lot in life was to have shades of departed crew members or mysterious one-eyed men following him around.

  He didn’t see them all the time, and that was partly how he knew they weren’t just in his mind. After all, if they were, then he would have been seeing them twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They would have had no reason to be anywhere else. But because he only perceived them from time to time, he concluded that they had other things they had to attend to. What sort of things, he couldn’t begin to imagine. Ghost things. Shades of the departed things. Things he probably wouldn’t really want to know about, if given his preferences.

  The shade of McHenry had conveyed to him the importance of silence. Moke had done as he was bid, for several reasons. First, he had convinced himself that the secrecy was part of the ability to see them. If he started blabbing it, they would go away. He didn’t want to take that risk, because—much to his surprise, considering how disconcerted he’d felt in their initial encounters—he liked seeing them. He had become fond of being one of the only people on the ship who could see these rather odd ghosts wandering the corridors.

  The only other being, to Moke’s knowledge, who was able to see them was Xyon. He wasn’t sure at exactly what point the child became aware of what he was seeing. Moke simply noticed one day that Xyon was staring straight at the one-eyed man, and was even waving one of his chubby little fists at him.

  Moke was no doctor, no man of medicine. He had no clue why he and Xyon were able to perceive these shades whom everyone else on the Excalibur was walking right past, or even through. Perhaps it was a fundamental innocence on Xyon’s part which made him particularly susceptible to such images. Or maybe something in the genetic structure of his half-breed heritage enabled him to see past reality to the unreality.

  Maybe he was just damned lucky.

  Either way, the old one-eyed man waved back to him, which prompted Xyon to giggle and coo and bat at the empty air.

  Still, Moke was beginning to feel as if his withholding of information over what he was perceiving might have some sort of negative impact on everything his adoptive father and the crew of the Excalibur were experiencing. This was particularly the case when Soleta sat down with him in his quarters and gently began asking questions for which he did not have easy answers.

  She kept coming back to statements that Moke had made which indicated that he had seen McHenry wandering around the ship in disembodied form. She wanted to know more about that, wanted to comprehend exactly what it was that Moke was seeing and how it could be that he was seeing it.

  But Moke was very aware that both McHenry and the one-eyed man didn’t want their presence or connection to Moke discussed. And when Soleta made casual mention of “the others,” referring to the other godlike beings, Moke suddenly began to suspect just why the need for secrecy was so important to them. Obviously McHenry and the one-eyed man were concerned that these other “beings” might be listening in somehow to whatever Moke was saying. That for some reason, the Beings didn’t know that McHenry had broken free of the confines of his body, and might not even know that the old bearded man was walking around unseen on the ship. But if Moke talked about it, and they were “listening” somehow, then the secret would be out and there might be all kinds of trouble.

  Moke was not anxious for trouble. It wasn’t all that long ago that the Beings had attacked Moke’s spacegoing home and Moke had been quite, quite certain that he was going to die that day. He wasn’t anxious for a repeat.

  Besides, McHenry continued to make his wishes known. When Soleta faced Moke and said, quietly but firmly, “Moke…are you able to see McHenry? Are you seeing him now?,” McHenry was standing just behind her and wildly gesticulating and shaking his head.

  Moke, without even realizing he was doing it, shook his head in imitation of McHenry.

  “Have you seen any other…individuals?” she asked. When Moke again shook his head, she came as close to exasperation as she usually allowed herself. “Then why have you led me to believe that you did?”

  “I guess I wanted t
o believe I saw them. Maybe I thought I could help if I did, or it would make people feel better,” he offered. He didn’t think it sounded very convincing, and Soleta didn’t especially look as if she accepted what he was saying. Nevertheless, she didn’t push it much beyond that.

  His reluctance to be forthcoming, however, began to prey upon him. Finally he decided to speak with the one individual on whom he could always count: Calhoun. He figured that if he phrased his concerns in a vague enough manner, he might be able to get useful answers without giving away more than he should.

  Standing in the middle of his quarters, Moke said, “Computer. Where is Captain Calhoun?”

  There was a pause. That surprised him. Moke didn’t have all that much call to interact directly with the ship’s computer system, but even he knew that response was always instantaneous.

  He was even more surprised when the computer replied, “Why are you asking?”

  “I…” He blinked, trying to parse out what was going on. “I just…wanted to know.”

  “Why?”

  Moke put his hands on his hips, looking slightly defiant. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be able to ask me things like that! Just tell me where he is?”

  “Captain Calhoun is in conference lounge two.”

  “Okay,” said Moke, and he started to head for the door.

  He stopped in his tracks, however, as the computer said, “If you’re planning to go see him there, I wouldn’t advise it.”

  He knew that the computer shouldn’t be interested in advising him on anything. But that was less important to him than the reasons for the computer’s concern. “Why not?”

  “This would not be a good time.”

  “Why?”

  “Cover your ears.”

  Moke couldn’t remember when he’d felt more bewildered over something that should have just been a normal interaction with standard equipment. “Cover my ears?”

  “Yes.”

  “With what?”

  It almost sounded like the computer was sighing in exasperation. “With your hands, boy.”

  “Oh.” Feeling a bit sheepish, he obeyed.

  A moment later, the room was flooded with several voices. Moke thought Mac’s was one of them, but it was hard to be sure, because they were all shouting at one another, and it was clear that everyone was very irritated. Even though his hands were already over his ears, he pressed them together tighter, wincing at the oral barrage as he did so.

  Mercifully, it was shut off within seconds.

  Moke was stunned. “What…was that? Who was Mac fighting with?”

  “It wasn’t a fight. It was a discussion,” the computer informed him. “A very loud discussion…with some profanity mixed in. Adults do that on occasion.”

  “So do kids! And the adults yell at us when we do! So who yells at the adults when they do it?”

  “Other adults.”

  “I don’t understand,” Moke said in exasperation.

  “Don’t worry. When you grow up—”

  “I’ll understand then?”

  “No,” the computer informed him. “Adults don’t understand much more than children do. They just don’t understand it at a higher volume.”

  ii.

  “I don’t understand, Mac!”

  “I’m not looking to you to understand, Eppy!”

  “Well, you certainly got what you’re not looking for!”

  It was just the two of them in the conference lounge, which was why Shelby wasn’t holding back in the least. If other crew members were there, she would have forced herself to be far more reserved. As it was, she didn’t hesitate in giving vent to the frustration she was feeling at that moment.

  She knew Calhoun was as irritated with her as she was with him. The infuriating aspect of the man, though, was that he wasn’t showing it. He simply sat there with his fingers steepled like some sort of damned Buddha statue. Although he was speaking as loudly as she was, it seemed motivated less by anger than simply by the desire to make himself heard over her.

  She paced the room, running her fingers through her hair and fighting the impulse to start tearing it out at the roots…and the further impulse to rip out Calhoun’s hair instead. “Mac, the Trident is the ship that’s supposed to be here. Not the Excal.”

  “I was given no orders that told me to stay away from this world.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud, Mac, what’re you? Nine years old? You have to have everything spelled out for you as to what you can and cannot do, and if it’s not specifically forbidden, then you figure it’s fair game?”

  “Curious thing: On some worlds, I would be considered nine years old, when one allows for the amount of time it takes for the planet to complete its orbit around the—”

  Shelby stopped pacing and leaned forward, resting her knuckles on the table, her face only a few inches from Calhoun’s. “Don’t get cute, Mac.”

  “Cute works if you’re nine years old.”

  Her voice tight, she said, “Turn this ship around and get out of here.”

  Something in the air changed when she said that. She felt as if, for the first time since they’d entered the room and confronted one another over the Excalibur’s unexpected arrival, she had truly gotten Calhoun’s attention. And she wasn’t entirely certain that was a good thing.

  “Don’t try to give me orders, Elizabeth,” said Calhoun icily, his eyes like flint. “The Excal is here because we need to be here.”

  “Right, of course. You need to be here. Because you’re so convinced that the Trident can’t get the job done.”

  “Not everything that goes on in the galaxy is about you, Elizabeth,” Calhoun said, repeating her first name formally as if to drive home to her how far away his mind-set was from the usual, affectionate “Eppy.” It was odd. She had loathed the nickname, then grown to tolerate it, and now actually was a bit upset that he wasn’t using it. “My showing up here isn’t intended as a commentary on my belief as to whether or not you can handle a difficult situation.”

  “Well, that’s great to hear, Mackenzie,” she replied, choosing to be as formal as he was being. “Particularly when one considers that my ship saved your ass weeks ago. So whose ability to handle difficult situations is being brought into question?”

  The moment she had finished saying it, Shelby suddenly wished she could take it back. But the last thing she was going to do was back down or show weakness, because certainly Calhoun would never respect her if she did that.

  Then again, seeing the look in his eyes made her think that maybe he wasn’t going to respect her, no matter what. He was too angry. He looked like a volcano fighting its own eruption.

  “I see,” he said, knocking the ambient temperature in the room down by another ten degrees. “Well, then: How fortunate that we showed up here. That way, should we get into trouble, you’ll be able to get us out of it again.”

  “Mac, you’re being ridiculous…”

  And he was on his feet, and Shelby took a step back. For the first time in her entire life, she was genuinely afraid of Mackenzie Calhoun. She did not, for a heartbeat, think he was going to attack her physically or try to do her harm. Nevertheless, she saw what the residents of his native Xenex had seen…and, even more specifically, what the oppressive Danteri had seen when the warlord juggernaut known as M’k’n’zy of Calhoun would charge into battle against them. And when he spoke, his voice sounded like distant rumbling thunder.

  “This is not about you…or me…or our ships,” Calhoun said. “I have a man in sickbay who’s in some sort of stasis that none of us completely understands. I have a crew that was battered by a group of creatures that, again, none of us understands. And those creatures, those ‘Beings’ who did that to us, have chosen to take as their center of operations a world populated by the most notorious race ever to set foot on my homeworld. The potential for disaster here is gargantuan. Furthermore, if any of these Beings are capable of undoing the damage they’ve done, or somehow restorin
g McHenry to normal, then I owe it to the people they’ve killed and the people they’ve hurt to force them to do it.”

  “How do you intend to ‘force’ a race of entities who appear to be, to all intents and purposes, invincible.”

  “I’ll find a way. That’s what all good Starfleet captains do, so I’m told. They find ways. Unless you think me incapable of that, as well.”

  It was a loaded question and one that could easily lead to another half hour of arguing. But Shelby realized that such a means of passing thirty minutes would be counterproductive. “No,” she said neutrally. “No, I don’t think you incapable of that.” She licked her lips, since they suddenly felt bone dry. Then she took a deep breath and let it out unsteadily. “All right. Look. At the very least, we don’t need to be duplicating each other’s efforts. We certainly don’t want to give the Danteri the impression that we’re working at cross-purposes. If they think there’s divisiveness between us, that may well tempt them to try and exploit it.”

  Slowly he nodded. “Yes. That’s probably true.”

  She was relieved to hear him say that. It meant he wasn’t so completely over-the-top furious that he was blocking out everything she might be saying. “I’ve already selected an away team to head down, consisting of Mueller, Ambassadors Spock and Cwan, and Lieutenant Arex. Why not send several of your people in conjunction with our away team, instead of beaming down a separate group.”

  “All right. I’ll go down with Soleta and Kebron.”

  “Mac, I wouldn’t advise that you put yourself on the away team.”

  “Because I don’t trust the Danteri? Because I can’t approach the situation with dispassion?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “But you’re going anyway.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  She sighed and shook her head. “It’s your decision, Calhoun. Do as you wish. We’ll send over the coordinates for the transporter rendezvous and coordinate the beam-down.”