by Peter David
The security team fell back, retreating a few steps and continuing the barrage. And still Janos kept on coming. It almost seemed as if the longer he held on against the assault, the more his rage grew and the more powerful he became.
Then suddenly he lost his grip on the floor and was lifted clean off his feet, hurled back against a bulkhead. M’Ress held her breath, waiting to see if he was unconscious.
“Cease fire!” shouted Shelby, and the phaser barrage halted.
And then Janos was on his feet, looking irritated.
“Damn,” muttered Arex.
Very slowly, and with clearly a great deal of regret, Shelby said, “Set phasers for—”
“No,” Kebron suddenly said. “He’s my responsibility.”
“Kebron, wait!” Shelby called out to him, but it was far too late. Kebron was charging forward with the speed and power of an avalanche. Janos, now on his feet, let out a defiant roar and leaped toward him. He covered eight feet in one vault and slammed into Kebron. Kebron staggered but did not go down, and he grabbed huge fistsful of Janos’s fur and would not let go.
It was like trying to keep a grip on a white cyclone as Janos howled, bellowed in protest, and clawed everywhere on Kebron that he could reach. Kebron said nothing, merely grunted repeatedly, as Janos’s talons kept skidding off his hide. Within seconds his uniform shirt was reduced to tatters, and his pants legs were badly shredded as well.
“Janos!” he finally shouted. “Snap out of it!”
And then he began to shake him, as hard as he could.
Janos’s head snapped back and forth, and the noises that came out of his mouth were like nothing that M’Ress had ever heard, noises of such pure animal fury that it was impossible to believe that she’d shared her bed with him, or spoken with him, or done anything aside from trying to stay the hell out of his way.
Then Janos’s head speared forward and he tried to tear apart Kebron’s face with his teeth.
Kebron let out a yelp of alarm, and then with a roar that nearly dwarfed Janos’s own, he slammed the white-furred berserker up against the bulkhead. M’Ress could feel the impact from where she was sitting.
And then he hit Janos against the bulkhead again. And a third time, and then a fourth time, and then M’Ress lost count. She had never seen anyone or anything take such punishment, withstand such teeth-jarring, bone-rattling impact.
Kebron might not have been out of control, but he was close to it. He swung Janos to the left and the right and the left again, then down against the floor and then up against the ceiling. “Kebron, you’ll kill him!” shouted M’Ress, and then realized that if Janos somehow managed to defeat Kebron, the security guards would kill Janos.
Then Janos managed to get his feet planted as Kebron swung him up once more toward the ceiling, and he thrust downward, knocking Kebron off balance. Kebron went down with Janos on top of him, and Janos clawed at Kebron with renewed vigor.
There was only so much Kebron’s hide could withstand. Rips began to appear, thick black liquid oozing out like tar.
For an instant, Janos made a perfect target, and M’Ress saw the security guards aim their phasers to put an end to it. And then Kebron rallied, shoving Janos over, and the two of them rolled back and forth on the floor. A lethal phaser barrage at Janos might well mean Kebron’s demise as well.
And then Kebron was in the superior position, one knee pressing down on Janos’s chest, and he hammered him in the face, arms swinging like mighty pendulums. Janos’s head snapped to one side and the other under it, and his roars grew louder and suddenly…
…they were words.
“What the bloody hell is going on here?!”
Everything came to a halt as Janos’s eyes focused upon Kebron, but without the pure blinding animal fury that they’d possessed only seconds earlier. Instead there was only bewilderment mixed with confusion and outrage. And then, very slowly, it began to dawn on Janos that where he had been in his last recollection, and where he was now, weren’t matching up.
He looked around and saw M’Ress slowly getting to her feet. “Lieutenant,” he said softly, “you’re out of uniform.” Then he spotted the security force with their phasers leveled at him, looked at the wounds that Kebron had sustained, looked at his own talons with Kebron’s thick blood upon them, and the immensity of what must have occurred dawned upon him.
“I’m in even more trouble than I was before, aren’t I,” he said.
“Yes,” said Kebron, “and here I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”
Then
i.
Mackenzie Calhoun sat on the edge of the island, staring at the rolling green waters, and felt a chill down his spine.
Rather than his standard Starfleet uniform, he was wearing a one-piece jumpsuit that had various rations and survival necessities attached in pouches along the legs and arms, and a belt with devices such as a laser torch dangling from it.
He heard footsteps approaching, and recognized them without even needing to glance over his shoulder.
“What are you doing over here?” asked Shelby. Wexler, as was frequently the case recently, was next to her. They were both clad in outfits identical to Calhoun’s.
“Surviving,” replied Calhoun. “Isn’t that what this foolish exercise is all about?”
Wexler chuckled at that. “That’s what I love about you, Mackenzie. Here you are, nearing the end of your first year, and you’re just as capable of expressing disdain for the Academy curriculum as you were the day you started.”
“We all have our individual gifts, Wex,” Calhoun said.
The island’s name was Platonis. It was entirely man-made, fifty miles across, out in the middle of the Atlantic. Far from being any sort of tropical paradise, it was singularly inhospitable. Vegetation grew upon it, but it was not edible. One could drink from the streams that ran through it if one had a particular interest in enduring sustained intestinal cramps.
It was, in short, a failure as far as being able to support life went. Its creators, however, did consider it to be something of a success since it had been artificially created. It was named, Calhoun had learned, after a noted ancient philosopher named Plato, who had been among the first to preserve tales of a continent called Atlantis believed to have been swallowed up by the raging seas millennia ago. The creators of this particular island had a long-term goal: to create a small continent right in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Their work was called “the Atlantis Project.”
This, Calhoun had learned, was significantly different from terraforming, which was well within the capabilities of modern technology. Terraforming simply required taking inhospitable terrain on another world and changing it over into somewhere that humans could live. Building a continent from scratch in the middle of the ocean, on the other hand, was far more complicated. Not only did they have to construct an ecosystem that was just the right delicate balance for life to be sustained, but they had to be careful of environmental factors. They had to take into account everything from the impact upon local sea life to the water displacement for which a new continent would be responsible. One could hardly construct a new, “risen” Atlantis at the cost of flooding and sinking already existing terrain.
Although Platonis was a practical failure insofar as creating a livable environment was concerned, scientists did learn from it. A new island, Poseidonis, was under construction many miles away and was said to be going rather well. That left Platonis high and dry, so to speak, and aside from the occasional curiosity seeker cruising past in a low-flying shuttle, no one came to Platonis, and had not for many years.
That was why it was an ideal site for the Starfleet survival drills that the Academy engaged in at the end of the first year.
Calhoun had little patience for it.
He, along with twenty other cadets, had been dropped off on Platonis two days ago (other cadets having been brought to locations equally un-appealing). They were expected to survive there for a week. To pull togethe
r as fellow castaways. Calhoun had participated in the work involved, but he had done so in a distant and even vaguely contemptuous manner that a number of his associates found very annoying. “What’s your problem, Calhoun?” he’d been asked. Always he would simply shrug, mutter “No problem,” and go on with whatever task he was undertaking at that moment.
Now he sat on the edge of the shore, staring out at the water. Wexler and Shelby, standing several feet away, had stripped down to undergarments with the clear intention of swimming. The undergarments were hardly the norm for such items. They were made from stretchable, waterproof material designed to withstand floods, pouring rain, and other such soggy challenges that nature might decide to throw their way. Which wasn’t to say Calhoun didn’t think Shelby to be quite fetching in the blue one-piece outfit she was sporting. Plus she had spectacular legs.
“Mac, really…what’s bothering you?” said Wexler. His voice had that familiar ring of concern about it. Calhoun hated to admit it, but over the past year he’d actually grown to like Wexler. Certainly there were things about the man that were irritating, particularly his tendency to talk a far better game than he played, and to act as if the world was his by some sort of divine entitlement. But he was also a surprisingly good listener, had a sharp sense of humor, and didn’t treat Calhoun in any sort of condescending manner. Of course, the major problem was that Calhoun had to fight, on a daily basis, a deep, burning envy any time he saw Wexler with Shelby.
After all, Wexler could think about divine entitlement all he wanted. But hadn’t it been Calhoun who’d “seen” Shelby in a vision? Wasn’t she fated to be his? What sense would it have made for her to come to him while he was struggling to survive in the desert, only to be destined for another man? It didn’t make any sense, and whenever he saw them together, it came across as a mute commentary by the universe that nothing was fair and that anyone who had ever preached chaos theory knew precisely what they were talking about.
“What’s bothering me?” Calhoun asked. Normally he would have shrugged it off, but finally he decided to say something. “Look at the two of you. This is supposed to be survival training, and you look like you’re on vacation, enjoying a day at the beach.”
“We’ve done a hell of a lot of work at the campsite, Mac,” retorted Wexler. “As have you, I freely admit, before you get your knickers in a twist. Should we be held responsible if you choose to use your free time by being sullen while we grab some relaxation?”
“I’m not being sullen,” Calhoun said sullenly. “It’s just that this…that all this,” and he tugged at his survival gear, “it’s all nonsense.”
“How is it nonsense?” asked Shelby. “This is survival training. That’s survival gear. I’m not seeing the conflict.”
“Because survival isn’t about being dropped into hostile terrain equipped with everything you need to sustain yourself,” Calhoun retorted. “It’s about having nothing on hand except your wits and determination. It’s about lasting day after day after day, and when you’ve reached the limits of your endurance, you keep on going, and not dying for no other reason than that you’re just too stubborn to give the gods the satisfaction.”
“And you’ve had to do that, I suppose,” said Wexler.
“Yes,” Calhoun replied without hesitation.
“Do you want to tell us about it?” Shelby asked. She seemed genuinely interested. Perhaps he could even impress her somewhat.
But he shrugged. “Not much to tell. Someone tried to kill me. He failed. He left me this,” and he touched the scar on his face. “And I was dying in the desert…”
And saw you, and you were naked and smiling at me and you gave me something to live for, and why can’t you see that, why can’t you realize that we’re supposed to be together…
“…but I didn’t. Die.”
“And what did you have with you?”
“A sword. A laser welder, not too dissimilar from this one,” and he touched the one on his tool belt. “That was more or less it.”
Shelby knelt down a few feet away from him, her eyes wide. “A laser welder? How was that any good to you?”
“I took it off the body of the man who had cut my face open. It was bleeding fairly profusely. So I used the welder to seal the wound.”
“Bollocks!” exclaimed Wexler, but even as he expressed disbelief, he was staring at the scar on Calhoun’s face. Shelby was as well, and she reached toward it. Calhoun flinched back slightly. He didn’t know why he didn’t want her to touch it, but his response was instinctive and she immediately withdrew her hand. Wexler, amazed, came closer, his eyes like saucers. “You welded your face?”
Calhoun shrugged. He could still feel the heat, the searing pain. His hand trembled ever so slightly just thinking about it, but he wanted to sound nonchalant. “I couldn’t afford the blood loss,” he said. “I did what I had to do. You see,” and the tone of his voice changed, “that’s survival. Doing what you have to do. If they wanted to give us a true test of survival skills, they’d have dropped us naked on this island and said, ‘Good luck.’”
“Well, that would have been interesting. People would have been fighting to go on survival training,” said Wexler, grinning so widely that Calhoun couldn’t help himself and laughed in response. It was almost a relief. All this talk about what he’d had to tolerate in the desert, and the way he’d acquired the scar, had started to depress the hell out of him. “Although,” Wexler added, “what with this place being Platonis, we would all have been stuck with Platonic relationships.”
Calhoun stared at him blankly. “What?”
“Never mind,” Shelby put in, and she got to her feet, brushing dirt from her knees. “Look, Mac, no matter how little you may think of what passes for survival training in the first-year Starfleet curriculum, the bottom line is that we’re here, we’re doing what we’re supposed to do, and there’s no harm in having a little relaxation. Come swimming with us.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I grew up on a desert world. You figure it out.”
She folded her arms, her mouth twitching in annoyance. “You can’t tell me you don’t know how to swim. I’ve seen you in the pool back at the Academy. You swim fine.”
“I swim because I have to,” he replied. “I had to learn. I practiced when no one was around so I wouldn’t be flailing about like an idiot while everyone watched. But I don’t like it, and if given preferences, I’d much prefer to have ground beneath my feet instead of water. Besides…”
He stopped.
“Besides…what?” asked Wexler.
“There’s something…wrong in there,” said Calhoun, pointing toward the water that was lapping at the shoreline.
They looked where he was pointing, both of them shielding their eyes from the bright afternoon sun. “Wrong?” echoed Wexler. “Wrong how?”
“I don’t know. I’m just getting a ‘danger’ feeling about it.”
“A ‘danger’ feeling?”
“You know,” said Calhoun, sounding a bit put out, “you don’t have to keep repeating the ends of my sentences.”
“I think Wex is just trying to understand,” said Shelby. “I know I am. What do you mean you…”
“I mean,” said Calhoun, “that when there’s danger present, I have this sort of…I don’t know. A sixth sense. Just an inner warning. It’s not one hundred percent reliable, and it’s probably just my noticing something that I can’t realize for what it is, but I know it’s there just the same…. It may be nothing,” he said when he saw their looks. “But it may be something.”
“It may be,” Wexler said patiently, “that it’s stemming from your basic antipathy toward the ocean. Couldn’t that be it?”
“Maybe,” he admitted. “Still…”
“Mac, we’ll be fine,” Shelby assured him. With a toss of her short hair, she loped across the shore and splashed into the water. A moment later, Wexler joined her. They grinned and waved at Calhoun, and he n
odded and waved back. But he didn’t budge from his spot.
Outwardly he was the picture of calm. Inwardly he was scolding himself fiercely, even as Wexler and Shelby gallivanted in the surf. Here he was, talking so grandly about what it took to survive. And then, of course, there was his grand history as the warlord of Xenex. He had proven his bravery time and time again…
…and now, here he was, sitting on a beach, daunted by the ocean, while the woman he loved was playing in the surf with…
The woman he loved?
He ran the phrase back in his own mind. Was that really the case? Did he truly love her? Just from having a vision of her? Yes, he had spent much time with her, but in many ways he hardly knew her at all. How could he possibly believe that he was in love with her, especially when she had made it quite clear that her affections lay elsewhere?
It was foolish of him even to contemplate it. She probably even considered him to be beneath her. Yes, that was very likely it. Beneath her. Wexler, the far more polished cadet with the family history of service to the fleet, that was what she was interested in. She wanted someone with whom she had common ground, someone she could relate to. How could she possibly relate to an alien who, less than two years ago, had been so close to pure savagery (at least by Federation standards) that she likely wouldn’t have even recognized him?
He realized it would probably be better if he just tossed aside his feelings right now. It would only lead to disaster otherwise, make his time at the Academy even more uncomfortable than it frequently already was. Yes, best for all concerned if he…
He stopped, his mind suddenly registering something.
The splashing about had stopped.
Slowly he got to his feet, his attention fixed on the water, the surface of which was now clear and unbroken. Gentle waves continued to roll in, but there was no sign of either of the cadets who had been bouncing around in it as carelessly as children on holiday.
“Shelby?” he called out cautiously. “Wexler?” And then louder and with greater urgency, “Shelby! Wexler!”