by Diane Carey
By the time Reed made his next two shots, Jones and his crew clearly smelled the scam. But the bet was already made, lying there on the table’s rail, just waiting to see if Reed was incomparably lucky or a king’s own liar.
Reed’s shots grew more complicated. He avoided the easiest shots now and openly displayed a penchant for banked shots and double sinkers, until finally the acreage of green felt was cleared of all its colors. It was the last shot that destroyed Reed’s chances of ever being accepted as an easy touch again—the three and the seven dunked at opposite ends of the table by a shot that banked the poor cue ball three times.
“He fleeced us, Scratch,” the third man said.
“I did warn you,” was Reed’s weak defense.
“You reekin’ fraud,” Jones accused as Reed put down the cue stick and stuffed the assorted currency into his boot cuffs. “Put it back. You’re gonna play us again. And this time you’re gonna play me.”
Reed straightened and waved his hands in calculated decline. “No, no, no, two-dimensionals, I can’t do it. I’ve got to go. On duty, you see. I’m going to be in deep disgusting trouble.”
He had been backing toward the door, none too gracefully, when Chainsaw lunged at him and got him by the throat again.
Reed squirmed. “Look, I’m not done healing from the last time—”
“You’re not gonna be done healing for a long time, swindler.”
“See here, gas weed—take your flippers off my flesh!”
Jones raised his Rigellian dagger to Reed’s eye level. Crusted blood flaked across the blade like some ignoble sash of conquest from the last time someone felt its bite. What planet, what situation, what defense, none of that mattered; all that remained was the dried blood. Blood that looked quite human.
With the hiss of the door panel, a flurry of hits broke up the attack. The security commander rammed his knee into Reed’s ribs to bring [11] him down, then grasped Reed’s arm and twisted it behind his back, and held Jones and his men off with the hand-cannon extended in a no-fooling stance. “Neutral corners!”
“He cheated us!” Chainsaw protested instantly.
“All I see is armed assault,” the chief snapped back. “If you want me to forget I saw it, you’d better be off this starbase in ten minutes!”
Reed twisted to look up at the officer. “I can explain, your officerness—”
“Name, mister.”
“Francis Drake Reed, sir. I can explain—”
“Explain in the brig. You’re up to your privates in infractions. Out the door.”
Jones took a step forward. “But he’s got our—”
The hand-cannon stiffened at the end of the chief’s arm, a none-too-subtle reminder of the chief’s fighting prowess that even Jones hesitated to challenge.
“Ten minutes! Flat!”
The door breathed open as the chief dragged a wincing Reed through it, then closed again. Left behind, in Scratch Jones’ oily hands, a pool cue snapped in two.
Reed gasped in relief as the security chief led him into the turbo-lift, then leaned against the lift wall and rubbed his side.
“You okay?” the commander asked him.
“Jesus on a hill, George,” Reed responded, his expression wounded, “you hit me.”
George brushed a lock of rust hair from his forehead and leaned forward, glaring. “Are ... you ... okay?”
“Well, considering that you might have made your appearance a thought earlier—”
“Then shut up. And hand it over.”
Reed punished George with another wince as he pulled the currency from his boot. George took it and gave it a rough count.
“Looks like Jones had a good month,” he said, brows raised in appreciation.
“All muscle,” Drake scoffed. “No talent. You really came in like Moco Jumbie dancing the bamboola. Antic terrible.”
“Here’s your half. And you can keep whatever’s in the other boot.”
Looking insulted, Drake straightened. “What makes you think there’s anything in the other boot?”
[12] George tried to resist the grin tugging at his lips. “Drake, you are not an honest man.”
“Oh, tut. Honesty is a matter of interpretation, George. I told Jones the truth from the very beginning.”
“Sure, but you engineered it so they wouldn’t believe you.”
“I’m a simple man of little ornament.”
“You’re an opportunist with an innocent face, is what you are,” George pointed out, giving Reed’s tawny cheek a tap. “You lie like a rug.”
“I protest.”
“You’re a rogue with a cute accent. Admit it. You sound like a Trinidad priest and you know how to use it.”
“This from the man for whose pocket I risk my life.”
George gazed down at the handful of Federation-acceptable notes and bonds and chips, feeling guilty about taking ill-gotten booty. But only a little. After all, the gains he held really belonged to whoever Jones had bilked it out of to begin with. At least it would be spent for a kindness and not on cheap alien rotgut. “Thanks, Drake. This means a lot to me. I could never put together this much by next month.”
“Great minds, George, great minds. We work together like a steel band on Dimanche Gras.”
The lift door opened and the two men crossed the corridor to the security office. The first thing George did was check the pool-hall monitor—sure enough, Jones and his men had taken him seriously enough to vacate the area. People like Jones didn’t cross Starfleet security if they could avoid it; there were considerably more problems for them in losing starbase privileges than in losing a bet, even if the sacrifice was three men’s pay for a whole month. All quiet.
“You’d better get back in uniform before somebody walks in here,” George suggested.
“How can it matter? My best friend is security commander.”
“Don’t press your luck, pirate.”
Drake Reed immediately went to a closet and began systematically donning his security harness, jacket, and weapon. Even fully armed, he still looked like the priest George had accused him of imitating. “You’ve not yet told me what it is you need the money for, Geordie.”
George settled into his seat at the monitor station and picked up the magnetic writing board again. The faint light glowed through several layers of paper, making his own handwriting leap up at him. “I’m going to buy Jimmy a birthday present. I told you that.”
[13] “Certainly you did, and very vaguely indeed. What present?”
“Well ...”
“A woman of his own, yes?”
“He’s not a midshipman yet, you know,” George complained with a grin.
“Then what does he want for his grand number ten?”
“He wants ... well, he wants a sailboat. That’s what I get for taking him to museums, I guess.”
“In Iowa, he’ll need a horse to pull it. Did you think of that?” Drake reminded as he joined George at the console.
George’s hazel gaze came up without a blink. “It’s not going to Iowa. It’s going to Ontario. The boys visit their aunt every summer on Georgian Bay. And this year, Drake, you whitewashed racketeer, there’s going to be a pretty little sailboat waiting for them with Jimmy’s name on the captain’s hat.”
“And sailing lessons, I hope to God.”
George’s eyes lost their focus. The writing board in his hand blurred before him. “What I wouldn’t give to be there holding its leash when they arrive ...”
“Leash?”
“Rein, rope, whatever grows off a sailboat. Don’t confuse me.”
Drake held up a scolding finger. “These details are critical to island men, George. What will Geordie Junior think of all this, hmm?”
George raised his brows. “What should he think? After all, the whole bay’s got his name on it. My boys aren’t competitive, you know that. Georgie’s the practical type, like me. No imagination at all. He just wants to know how things work. It’s Jimmy who’
s the idealist. He wants the universe in order.” The memories flooded back and drove George reaching for his pen once more, lapsing into silence as he reread the last few lines of his letter.
Drake’s voice shook his reverie. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Write letters. Would the boys not rather look at your face on a screen and see their papa talking to them? And it costs you a ransom every time you send one of those all the way back to Earth. Why not just make a recording?”
George sighed. “You know I can’t think and talk at the same time.”
[15] “Don’t make it a sad letter, George.”
George looked up into Drake’s eyes, shaded by that awning of umber hair that reflected his West Indies heritage. Drake was doing his priest thing again, but this time it was no sham.
“How do you know it’s a sad letter?” George asked. A sudden shiver ran down his arms.
Drake sat on the console and gazed down at him. “I see your face.”
George’s complexion, normally peach-pale, flushed russet. “Hang you.”
“End the letter before it gets sad, George,” Drake pressed.
For a moment George’s eyes grew cold, his brows flattened over them, and the threatening look he’d used on Jones returned. Don’t tamper with my privacy, the look warned. It’s all I have.
“Love ... Dad,” Drake prodded. He pointed at the paper.
Indignant and embarrassed at being so transparent, George felt the sting of regret. He tore his gaze away from Drake and dragged his attention back to the paper. If only he could allow his family to know him so well. If only.
His fingers were stiff as he wrote the final words.
He folded the paper immediately, then again, as though the act would seal out any invasion. Knowing Drake was watching, he slipped the letter into a Starfleet envelope, slid his fingers along the pressure [16] seal, addressed it sloppily, then opened the communications chute and dropped the letter in. The sound of automatic suction told him it was gone. Two weeks from now his boys would be reading it. And it was too late for him to catch it back and change anything. The commitment made him nervous. He closed his eyes for a moment and covered his mouth with a cool hand. Strange how just writing a letter ...
“You always get surly when you write to your puppies, Geordie,” Drake said as he folded his arms and shifted against the console. “You have the temper of a resting alligator, you know, and I’d like to hear you admit it freely.”
George glanced at him briefly and let his indignation flow away. He fiddled with the monitor equipment. “I’d rather sleep with a Romulan.”
“You might. You don’t even know what a Romulan looks like.”
“I don’t have to.”
“George, you are a bigot.”
“I know.”
Without the slightest warning, the office door slid open. That in itself was a surprise; the security office doors weren’t supposed to open except for cleared personnel, and the people who entered, two men and a woman, didn’t seem to be wearing any of the coded clearance badges for the computer sentry to read. How had they gotten the door open? George swiveled around slightly in his chair, just enough to get a good look at the woman, who was in the lead. All he had time to register were her grape-green eyes and the color of her shoulder-length hair—like a wheat field just after dawn. Biscuit-blond.
She took two measured steps into the office, followed by the two nondescript men, and without a pause asked, “George Kirk?”
The answer was automatic. “Yes?”
The two men lunged around her, one heading for George, the other for Drake.
Drake was taken by surprise, training or not, and his attacker managed to pinion his arms before he could draw his hand-cannon. The woman moved in instantly and pressed a moist cloth over Drake’s nose and mouth. Drake’s eyes widened in terror and disgust at the stifling medicinal odor in the cloth, and his arms and legs turned to putty in the grip of his attackers.
George had had that extra second necessary to raise his feet and kick off the other man’s first lunge, and by the time he rolled to the [17] floor and came up, he had managed to draw his weapon. Lacking time to aim and fire it, though, he simply brought it upward in a sweep and butt-stroked the stranger’s jaw. Had he not been startled by Drake’s sudden collapse at the hands of the woman, he might not have been overtaken. But when Drake went down, the second man moved in on George and kicked him hard across the pelvis. Stunned, George fought the numbness and tried to keep his balance, but the only way to do that was to lean on the hand that held his cannon. The two men grabbed his arms and held him as he writhed and tried to kick back, and the woman moved in.
George bellowed an animal protest as the cloth closed in on his mouth, and the woman had a fight just getting near his face. Something about her told him she was a professional. She seemed to know the moves he would make as he twisted and tugged against the two strong men, and she anticipated him enough to force the odorous narcotic into his nostrils. His muscles turned to jelly, and the room to sizzling colors. A tunnel began to close around his vision, snuffing out the colors. He felt himself sinking. The cloth pressed tighter over his mouth, and the heavy drug drowned his universe. A black, black universe.
Chapter Two
THE ONLY TANGIBLE sensation was that of unreality. Not tangible ... but identifiable, at least. The uncomfortable dream gradually gathered itself into the feeling of a hard floor beneath his shoulder blades. There was a faint vibration along his spine. The air itself was an oppressive weight.
George came around slowly. He tried to lift his arms, but they wouldn’t come up. His eyes wouldn’t open. And the arms definitely wouldn’t come up. Somehow the drug had left him stone blind and paralyzed.
Don’t panic, he warned himself. Panic kills. Do something else. He thought about his right shoulder, his right arm, his right hand. With hard concentration he willed the arm to trace an arc along the floor. It tingled and ached, but it moved, and it struck something solid. His hand slowly closed around the object—a leg, or arm. Warm.
“Drake,” he whispered. He concentrated now on opening his eyes. Nothing. He closed them again, opened them a second time, and yes, this time there was a sensation of light. Instantly his muggy brain registered the yellowish glow of shipboard running lights at the edge of the ceiling. That explained the steady vibration—engines.
Urgency shot through him. He was being taken somewhere against his will. That meant he had to move, and soon.
The next project was lifting his head.
[19] “If I turn over,” he murmured, clinging to the sound of his own voice, “I could use my arms and maybe ... sit up.”
He gave up trying to focus on the yellow lights and instead thought about rolling over onto his side. As if thinking about it wasn’t enough of a strain, he rearranged his legs and pressed the floor until the whole ship moved. Was he ... yes, he was on his side now. When he blinked his eyes again, a streak of darkness clouded one of them. Redness. Blood on his eye?
Pushing the panic down like a rung on a rubber ladder, George brought a hand up to his eye and fingered it. Hair. Was his hair that red? He turned his head toward the running lights and got a clearer view of a cinnamon strand. Yes, it was his hair. He wasn’t bleeding after all.
That left him free to move without worrying about his head falling off unexpectedly. He got his shoulder under him, arranged his legs again, and heaved himself over.
And his head fell off.
He grabbed it with both hands. “Oh ... God ... damn! Ow!”
“George?”
“Dammmmmn—”
“George? I say, George?”
“Yeah,” he gasped. “Yeah ... don’t sit up fast, whatever you do.”
“George,” the voice replied, “did you hit me again?”
“No, I didn’t hit you. Of course I didn’t hit you. Somebody drugged us. Don’t move. It’s all right. I’m coming over there.”
The journey to Drake was exhausting. George hoped he was moving in the right direction under the distorting effects of yellow lights and double vision. His arms and thighs trembled with effort, but every movement brought him closer to regaining control. He moved toward the red and black blur of Drake’s Security Division uniform, found Drake’s rib cage, and palmed along it until he found Drake’s shoulder. Judging from the Indies complexion made sallow by the running lights, this was indeed Drake and not just another corpse that happened to be lying around. “Corpse” was a good word for this feeling.
“Come on.” George wrapped his hands around Drake’s arm. “Try to sit up. Slowly.”
Pulling Drake up against the bulkhead made George dizzy, but it [20] also got his blood running. He flopped down beside the other man and breathed deeply, and gradually his sodden brain cleared.
“What’ve you done now?” he grumbled.
“I? I?”
“This must be your fault.”
Beside him, Drake shifted. “My fault? My fault? And when they asked for George Kirk, was I supposed to answer?”
“They could’ve killed us, but they didn’t,” George thought aloud. “Why didn’t they?”
“Small favors. Let’s not remind them, eh? Oooh ... I feel like a gutted calabash.”
George gazed around their cramped prison, taking in the configuration of the bulkhead structure and colors. “Starfleet vessel ... but old. And small. Maybe a personal transport of some kind.”
“It’s a Hubble VXT interstellar runabout, actually.”
George blinked and turned to Drake accusatively. “What?”
“Interstellar runabout.”
“How do you know that?”
“It says so right on the wall here. Construction contract number 116-B ... commissioned January of twenty-one-sixty—”
“All right, all right.”
“Second-generation warp drive—”
“Enough, Drake. On your feet.”
“I have no feet left, George. They’re gone. I tried to find them, but they’re gone.”