The Rigelian looked at him thoughtfully. “You are referring to my ability to command a vessel in deep space?”
“Maybe that’s part of it,” the human conceded, “but not all of it. Just think for a second, all right? This United Federation of Planets they’re building... it’s not just about Earth. Technically, we humans are only supposed to be a small part of the picture.”
“A small part... yes,” said Cobaryn. His bony, silver brow furrowed a bit. “That is why Director Abute imposed a quota on the number of humans who can serve under us.”
Dane pointed at him. “Exactly. And if they’re encouraging us to include nonhumans in our crews and command staffs . . .”
For the first time, the Rigelian actually frowned in his presence. “You are saying I was picked to be a captain because I am an alien?”
“No,” said Dane, “you’re better than that. You’re an alien who’s demonstrated that he can work alongside humans—who’s demonstrated that he actually likes to work alongside humans. Do you have any idea how many people fit that particular description?”
“Only a few, I imagine.”
“A few?” The Earthman sat back on his stool. “You may be the only one in the whole galaxy! To the mooks who are engineering the Federation and its Starfleet, you’re as good as having another human in the center seat—which is what they’d really like.”
Cobaryn weighed the comment. “So I am a concession to the nonhuman species in the Federation? A token appointment, so they will not feel they have been ignored in the selection process?”
“Hey,” said Dane, “it seems pretty clear to me. But maybe that’s just the cynic in me talking.”
The Rigelian didn’t say anything for a while, though the muscles writhed in his ridged temples. Finally, he turned to his companion again. “I take it a human would resent the situation as you have described it?”
“Most would,” Dane confirmed.
A knot of silver flesh gathered at the bridge of Cobaryn’s nose. “And yet,” he said, “I find I do not resent it. Earth’s pilots clearly have more tactical experience than the pilots of any other world. And if a nonhuman is to work with them, why not choose one who has already shown himself capable of doing so?”
Dane drummed his fingertips on the mahogany surface of the bar. “You can find the bright side of anything, can’t you?”
“So I have been told,” the Rigelian conceded.
The human shook his head. “Pretty amazing.”
Cobaryn smiled at him again—or rather, did his best impression of a smile. “Amazing for a human, yes. But as you will recall, I am a Rigelian. Among my people, everyone looks on the bright side.”
Dane rolled his eyes. “Remind me not to stop at any drinking establishments on your planet.”
The Rigelian looked as if he were about to tender a response to the human’s comment. But before he could do that, someone bellowed a curse at the other end of the bar.
In Dane’s experience, people bellowed curses all the time, almost always for reasons that didn’t concern him. Unimpressed, he threw back his tequila and felt it soak into him. But before long he heard another bellow.
This time, it seemed to come from a lot closer.
Turning his head, the Cochrane jockey saw a big, balding fellow in black-and-gold Earth Command togs headed his way. And judging by the ugly, pop-eyed expression on the man’s face, he was looking for trouble.
“You!” he said, pointing a big, blunt finger directly at Dane. “And you!” he growled, turning the same finger on Cobaryn. “Who do you think you are to imitate space captains?”
“I beg your pardon?” said the Rigelian, his tone flawlessly polite.
“You heard me!” roared the big man, pushing his way through the crowd to get even closer. “It’s because of you two butterfly catchers that I wasn’t picked to command a Starfleet vessel!”
Cobaryn looked at Dane, his face a question. “Butterfly catchers?”
Keeping an eye on their antagonist, who was obviously more than a little drunk, the Cochrane jockey made a sound of derision. “It’s what Stiles and the other military types call us.”
Call you, he corrected himself inwardly. He had never had an urge to do a stitch of research in his life.
“Well?” the balding man blared at them. “Nothing to say to Big Andre? Or are you just too scared to pipe up?”
By then, he was almost within arm’s reach of his targets. Seeing that there would be no easy way out of this, Dane got up from his seat and met “Big Andre” halfway.
“Ah,” grated the balding man, his eyes popping out even further. “So the butterfly catcher has some guts after all!”
“Actually,” said Dane, “I was going to ask if I could buy you a drink. A big guy like you must get awful thirsty.”
Big Andre looked at him for a moment, his brow furrowing down the middle. Then he reached out with lightning speed and grabbed the Cochrane jockey by the front of his shirt.
“I don’t need any of your charity,” the big man snarled, his breath stinking of liquor as he drew Dane’s face closer to his. “You think you can take away what is mine and buy a lousy drink to make up for it?” He lifted his fist and the smaller man’s shirt tightened uncomfortably. “Is that what you think, butterfly catcher?”
Dane had had enough. Grabbing his antagonist’s wrist, he dug his fingers into the spaces between the bones and the tendons and twisted.
With a cry of pain and rage, Big Andre released him and pulled his wrist back. Then the expression on his meaty face turned positively murderous. “You want to fight me? All right—we’ll fight!”
“No,” said Cobaryn, positioning himself between Dane and the balding man. “That will not be necessary.” He glanced meaningfully at his companion. “Captain Dane and I were about to leave... were we not?”
“I don’t think so,” said a sandy-haired civilian, who was half a head shorter than Big Andre but just as broad. “You’ll leave when Captain Beschta gives you permission to leave.”
“That’s right,” said a man with a thick, dark mustache, also dressed in civilian garb. “And I didn’t hear him give you permission.”
Dane saw that there were three other men standing behind them, all of them glowering at the Starfleet captains. Obviously, more of Big Andre’s friends. Six against three, the Cochrane jockey mused. Not exactly the best odds in the world—and as far as he knew, the Rigelian might be useless in a fight.
“You want to leave?” the big man asked of Cobaryn, his expression more twisted with hatred than ever. “You can leave, all right—when they carry you out of here!”
And with remarkable quickness, he launched his massive, knob-knuckled fist at the Rigelian’s face.
CHAPTER
12
WHEN DANE SAW BIG ANDRE TAKE A SWING AT COBARYN, he couldn’t help wincing. The human looked big and strong enough to crack every bone in the Rigelian’s open, trusting countenance.
But to Dane’s surprise, Big Andre’s blow never landed. Moving his head to one side, Cobaryn eluded it—and sent his antagonist stumbling into the press of patrons that had gathered around them.
Big Andre roared in anger and came at the Rigelian a second time. Dane tried to intervene, tried to keep his new-found friend from getting hurt, but he found himself pulled back by a swarm of strong arms.
Fortunately for Cobaryn, he was able to duck Big Andre’s second attack almost as neatly as he had the first. Again, the human went hurtling into an unbroken wall of customers.
But Big Andre’s friends were showing up in droves and pushing their way toward the altercation. Some of them, like Big Andre himself, wore the black and gold of Earth Command. Others were clearly civilians. But they all had one trait in common—a rabid desire to see Dane and the Rigelian pounded into something resembling pulp.
“Surround them!” one man called out.
“Don’t let ’em get away!” barked another.
Dane tried to wriggle
free of his captors. But before he could make any headway, he felt someone’s boot explode in his belly. It knocked the wind out of him, forcing him to draw in great, moaning gulps of air.
Then he felt it a second time. And a third.
When his vision cleared, he could see Big Andre advancing on Cobaryn all over again. The man’s hands were balled into hammerlike fists, his nostrils flaring like an angry bull’s.
“I’ll make you sorry you ever heard of Starfleet!” Big Andre thundered.
“That’s enough!” called a voice, cutting through the buzz of the crowd the way a laser might cut an unshielded hull.
Everyone turned—Dane, Cobaryn, the big man, and everybody else in the place. And what they saw was the commanding figure of Dan Hagedorn, flanked by Hiro Matsura and Aaron Stiles.
Hagedorn eyed his former wingmate. “Leave it alone,” he told Beschta.
The big man turned to him, his eyes sunken and red-rimmed with too much alcohol. “Hagedorn?” he snapped.
“It’s me,” the captain confirmed. “And I’m asking you to stop this before someone gets hurt.”
Beschta laughed a cruel laugh. “Did they not hurt me?” he groaned, pointing at Dane and Cobaryn with a big accusing finger. “Did they not take what should rightfully have been mine?”
“Damned right!” roared a civilian whom Hagedorn had never seen before in his life.
A handful of other men cheered the sentiment. The captain had never seen them before either. Apparently, Beschta had picked up a few new friends in the last couple of weeks.
If the big man had been the only problem facing him, Hagedorn would have felt confident enough handling it on his own. But if he was going to have to confront an unknown number of adversaries, he wanted to make sure he had some help—and to that end, he glanced at his companions.
First he looked at Stiles, who knew exactly what was being asked of him. But Stiles shook his head from side to side. “This isn’t any of our business,” he said in a low voice.
“Like hell it isn’t,” Hagedorn returned. Then he turned the other way and regarded Matsura.
The younger man seemed to waver for a moment. Then his eyes met Stiles’s and he shook his head as well. “I can’t fight Beschta,” he whispered, though he didn’t seem entirely proud of his choice.
Hagedorn nodded, less than pleased with his comrades’ responses but forced to accept them. “All right, then. I’ll do this myself.”
Turning sideways to make his way through the crowd, the captain tried to get between Beschta and his intended victim. But some of Beschta’s new friends didn’t like the idea.
“Where do you think you’re going?” asked one of them, a swarthy man with a thick neck and broad shoulders.
Hagedorn didn’t answer the question. Instead, he drove the heel of his hand into the man’s nose, breaking it. Then, as the man recoiled from the attack, blood reddening his face, the captain collapsed him with a closed-handed blow to the gut.
If anyone else had had intentions of standing in Hagedorn’s way, the incident changed their mind. Little by little, Hagedorn approached Beschta, who didn’t look like he was in any mood to be reasoned with.
“Don’t come near me!” the big man rumbled.
The captain kept coming. “That’s not what you said when I saved your hide at Aldebaran.”
“I’m warning you!” Beschta snarled, his eyes wide with fury.
“You won’t hit me,” Hagedorn told him with something less than complete confidence. “You can’t. It would be like hitting yourself.”
“Stay away!” the big man bellowed at him, his voice trembling with anger and pain.
“No,” said the captain. “I won’t.”
For an uncomfortable fraction of a second, he thought Beschta was going to take a swing at him after all. He tensed inside, ready for anything. Then his former comrade made a sound of disgust.
“I thought you were my friend,” Beschta spat.
“I am,” Hagedorn assured him.
“They turned me away,” the big man complained. “The bastards rejected me. Me, Andre Beschta.”
“They were wrong,” said the captain. “They were stupid. But don’t take it out on these . . .” With an effort, he kept himself from using the term butterfly catchers, “... gentlemen.”
Beschta scowled at Cobaryn and Dane, who was still in the grip of some of his allies. “You’re lucky,” he said. “Had Captain Hagedorn not come along, you would have been stains on the floor.”
The Cochrane jockey had the good sense not to answer. Hagedorn was happy about that, at least.
The big man indicated Dane with a lift of his chin. “Let him go. He’s not worth our sweat.”
The men holding Dane hestitated for a moment. Then they thrust him toward Hagedorn. The Cochrane jockey stumbled for a step or two, but caught himself before anyone else had to catch him.
Off to the side, Beschta’s friends were picking up the man Hagedorn had leveled. He looked like he needed medical attention—though that wasn’t the captain’s concern.
“Come on,” he told Dane and Cobaryn. “Let’s get out of here.”
As they headed for the exit, the Rigelian turned to Hagedorn. “Thank you,” he said with obvious sincerity.
“You’re welcome,” Hagedorn replied.
As he left the place, he shot a look back over his shoulder at Stiles and Matsura. They were guiding the hulking Beschta to a table, taking care of their old wingmate.
A part of Hagedorn wished he could have done the same.
Hiro Matsura felt more torn over what he had seen than he cared to admit. In the heat of the moment, he had taken the side of one trusted colleague over another. And on reflection, he wasn’t at all sure that he had settled on the right decision.
Soberly, he watched Hagedorn and the two butterfly catchers leave the Afterburner. Then he negotiated a course to the bar.
“What’ll it be?” asked the bartender.
“Brazilian coffee,” said Matsura. “Black.”
The bartender smiled. “For Beschta?”
Matsura nodded. Obviously, his friend had made a name for himself. “Sorry about the brawl.”
The bartender dismissed the apology with a gesture and went to pour out some coffee. “It’s okay,” he said. “We haven’t had a good knock-down-drag-out in weeks.” Then he laid a hot, steaming mug on the wooden bar.
Picking up the coffee, Matsura paid the bartender and made his way back to Beschta’s table. Stiles had pulled out a chair opposite the big man and was trying to calm him down.
“Listen,” the captain was saying, “how long do you think those butterfly catchers are going to last? A month, Andre? Two, maybe? And when they’re gone, who do you think they’re going to call for a replacement?”
Beschta shook his head stubbornly. “Don’t patronize me, Aaron. I may be drunk, but I’m not an imbecile. I have no chance. Zero.”
“Here,” said Matsura, placing the mug of coffee in front of the big man. “This will make you feel better.”
Beschta glared at him, bristling with the same kind of indignation he had shown earlier. Then, unexpectedly, a tired smile spread across his face. “Some example I’m setting for you, eh, Hiro?”
Matsura didn’t know what to say to that. A couple of days ago, he had still thought of himself as Beschta’s protégé. Now, he was beginning to feel that he might be more than that. “Drink your coffee,” was all he could come up with.
The big man nodded judiciously. “That’s a good idea. I’ll drink my coffee. Then I’ll go home and sleep for a week or two.”
“Now you’re talking,” said Stiles.
Seeing that Beschta was all right for the moment, he clapped him on his broad back and went over to Matsura. “Hagedorn was out of line,” he said in a low voice.
“You think so?” asked the younger man.
Stiles looked at him with narrow-eyed suspicion. “Don’t you?”
Matsura folded his arms ac
ross his chest. “The more I think about it, the more I wonder. I mean, Dane and Cobaryn could have gotten hurt. What would that have proved?”
Stiles looked like a man who was trying his best to exercise patience. “Listen,” he said, “I didn’t want to see people injured any more than you. But this is war, Hiro, and those two butterfly catchers are the enemy.”
Matsura considered his colleague’s position. “If it’s a war, I’ll do my best to help win it. You know that. But standing there while Dane and Cobaryn needed our help... it was just wrong.”
His colleague considered him for a while longer. “You know,” he said at last, “I disagree with you a hundred percent. If I had to do it over again, I’d do exactly the same thing.”
Matsura started to protest, but Stiles held up a hand to show that he wasn’t finished yet.
“Nonetheless,” the older man continued, “this is no time for us to be arguing. We’ve got to be on the same page if we’re going to get the kind of fleet we’re aiming for.”
Stiles was right about that, Matsura told himself—even if he was wrong about everything else. “Acknowledged.”
His colleague smiled a little. “Come on. Let’s get Beschta home.”
Matsura agreed that that would be a good idea.
Aaron Stiles tapped the touch-sensitive plate on the bulkhead next to the set of sliding doors.
He desperately needed a workout—and it wasn’t because he was feeling even the least bit out of shape. Even now, in his middle thirties, he could outbox, outwrestle, and outrun just about everyone he had ever known.
So it wasn’t a physical need that had brought the captain here to Earth Command’s little-used South End gymnasium. It was a need to let off steam, to drain off all the anger he’d felt the night before, when he saw Hagedorn take the butterfly catchers’ part in the Afterburner.
Only then could he see the matter clearly. And only then could he decide what to do about it.
Starfleet Year One Page 11