Being Human

by Peter David

“They’ll move.”

  “Fifteen seconds.”

  “They’ll move.”

  The warp section of the Excalibur, in a deep-space game of chicken, hurtled toward the Greek ships.

  “Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .” Morgan was counting down.

  The ships were closer, closer still, and Calhoun was certain he could actually see people moving around on the open deck, people in togas similar to Artemis’, but other outfits as well, some with a Viking look to them, some Egyptian . . .

  “Seven . . . six . . . Captain, they’re moving!”

  Sure enough, the vessels were suddenly moving to either side, getting out of the way.

  And Calhoun, at the last moment, spotted the gods, arrows at the ready, on either side.

  Just as he’d expected.

  “Y axis, down angle, forty-five degrees!” shouted Calhoun. “Go! Go!”

  The warp section angled away as the arrows were unleashed. At point-blank range, they could not miss.

  They didn’t. The ships struck each other, enveloped one another in waves of energy that ripped through every plank, every oar. The sails went up in electric flame, and the gods vanished in an eruption of energy that was nearly blinding.

  A roar went up on the battle bridge, and Calhoun smiled wryly.

  “Excellent maneuver, Burgoyne,” he said.

  “Excellent maneuver, Captain,” Burgoyne replied. “McHenry, bring us around to—”

  And suddenly Calhoun knew. Or rather he sensed it before he knew it for himself.

  “Hard astern!” he called, and the warp section whipped around . . .

  . . . as Soleta’s sensors told her the situation at the same time as Kebron’s tactical array.

  “Something’s happening to the ships!” she called out.

  And there it was, up on the screen. The smashed-apart ships, glowing in the darkness, were being gathered up by the remaining vessels, and they were joining with one another, fusing, growing larger and larger as they did so.

  “Mr. Kebron!” called Burgoyne. “Lock phasers on target—”

  “—and fire!” Calhoun ordered.

  The photon torpedoes blasted out of the warp section, tearing into the rapidly evolving construct, as the—

  —saucer section’s phasers blasted through it. And it did no good at all. The ships came together, and then they were as one, and behind the ships, hanging there in space, impossibly, was the face of Artemis, sneering contemptuously at them. Through the vacuum, she spoke to them, and she said . . .

  “Did you think it would be as easy as all that?”

  The vessels came together as one, and the damned thing, Calhoun realized, was almost as large as the saucer section. The battering ram, pointed and potentially devastating, gleamed as if lit by inner energies. There was that hideous face painted onto the ram, the eyes cold and merciless, and when the oars were raised upward—as absurd as such a sight should have been—it made the vessel look like a huge bat bearing down upon . . .

  “The saucer section!” Calhoun called out. “ Burgoyne—”

  “—it’s going for the saucer section!” Calhoun still had the headgear on that enabled him to see through the eyes of his hologram, but he was still physically on the bridge of the saucer section, reacting vocally to what he was seeing.

  Burgoyne realized it about the same time as Calhoun did, and s/he ordered, “McHenry! Evasive maneuvers!” There was no point in giving McHenry specifics; there was no one better at getting the hell out of the way of something than Mark McHenry.

  Except he couldn’t.

  Not that he didn’t try. He cut the ship hard over, and the saucer was able to get out of the direct path of the now dreadnought-sized vessel coming straight at them. However, the Excalibur saucer was bound by the laws of physics, able to maneuver only just so fast and no faster, while the godship moved to laws all its own. The monstrous trireme adjusted with miraculous speed, and Burgoyne realized with horror that the pointed and fearsome ram was coming straight at them, and there, in the depth of the void, they were out of space.

  “All hands, brace for impact!” shouted Burgoyne, and for just a moment a part of hir stepped back and commented, We seem to be saying that a lot lately. Got to work on that whole maneuverability thing.

  The ram slammed into the underside of the saucer section, a third of the way in from the forward rim. It punched through the remaining shields as if they weren’t there, and lanced upward and through, driving a hole through from the point of entrance up through where it emerged on the other side. Several hundred feet further in, and it would have hit dead center and punched right up through the bridge.

  The Calhoun hologram came to a complete halt. Like a puppet waiting for someone to pull his strings, he simply stood there, staring into nothingness, fritzing occasionally. The Morgan hologram did likewise.

  “Bring us around,” ordered Goodwin. Lieutenant Beth, who had taken up her emergency post on the battle bridge, walked through Morgan. She did so without hesitation and with an utter lack of squeamishness, knowing that this wasn’t the actual person. “Let’s nail these bastards.”

  Since they were somewhat distracted by the activities of the Beings, the crew on the battle bridge didn’t notice when Morgan’s hologram vanished.

  iv.

  Xyon was in a complete state of panic. He was bolting through the corridors, faster than Moke had ever seen him move. “Maaaaa!” he was screaming. Moke had never been more sorry that he had taught him that damned word than right now. Xyon wanted his mother, that was all there was to it, and it was going to be impossible to explain to him that they were in the warp section while his mother (and father, for that matter) were over in the saucer section. Add to that the shaking that the ship had endured in the past minutes, the blaring klaxon of the red alert, the general air of emergency, and that had been more than enough for Xyon to get himself worked up into a total fit.

  Xyon darted around running crewmen, continuing to screech “Maaa! Maaaa!” the entire time. He had darted out of the children’s center when the trouble had started, and Moke had been chasing him all over the damned ship for the duration of the emergency. He would have asked someone for help, but he understood that this was a battle situation. Certainly Calhoun had schooled him on what that circumstance met. And given everything that was going on, it just wasn’t reasonable to think that security personnel could or would drop whatever they were doing to help track down a panicked child. Which meant it was up to Moke.

  At least Moke wasn’t in danger of losing him altogether. The transponder beneath Xyon’s skin saw to that. It meant that although Xyon could keep ahead of him, Moke would never lose track of him. So it was just a matter of time until he managed to rein in Xyon. Either that, or else until Moke collapsed from the strain of chasing the toddler all over the place.

  He kept an eye on his tracking device and then, miraculously, he saw that Xyon had stopped moving. Finally, Moke had caught a break. He kept running, because he didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to actually catch up with the child, and if Xyon went into motion again, the whole thing would start all over. But fortunately enough, he still wasn’t moving, and then Moke suddenly blinked in confusion because—according to the tracker—he had somehow gone right past Xyon.

  He turned and looked around, confused for a moment. Then he saw: a Jefferies tube. “Well, that figures,” he said to no one in particular. He was more amused and relieved than anything else.

  Moke stood at the bottom of the Jefferies tube and called up into its dark recesses, “Xyon? You up there?” He knew, in point of fact, that Xyon was. He hoped that perhaps if he gave the child the opportunity, the child would come down on his own initiative. Such, however, did not appear to be the case, for Xyon didn’t stir.

  This made Moke slightly nervous. What if Xyon had gotten himself into some sort of trouble? Something life-threatening? With no further hesitation, Moke clambered up the ladder inside the Jefferies tube, moving def
tly hand over hand until he achieved the top. He craned his head and looked around, suddenly wishing that he’d brought a flashlight.

  Cross-junctions and cramped work areas lined the area at the top of the tube. They were different from the ones he’d had to wiggle through to get Moke that last time, but it was still the same general design. He certainly knew what he shouldn’t touch . . . namely, anything. “Xyon,” he whispered. “Xyon . . .” He wasn’t in the immediate area, but the tracking device told him that Xyon was extremely nearby, practically on top of him . . .

  Directly on top of him, actually.

  Moke craned his neck, leaning as far back in the tube as he could while still holding on to the ladder, and he looked up.

  There was Xyon, staring down at him from an incredibly narrow catwalk overhead. Xyon smiled lopsidedly.

  And suddenly the Dark Man was right behind him. Despite how impossibly small the space was, despite the fact that Xyon should have reacted to him but didn’t, there was the Dark Man, looming, staring down at Moke, and then he was reaching around Xyon, who still didn’t seem to notice, and he was reaching for Moke . . .

  The boy let out a shriek of pure terror and, in doing so, lost his grip on the ladder. He toppled backward, his feet slipping off the rungs, and he tumbled down the Jefferies tube. Moke bounced from one side of the tube to the other, cracking his skull on a rung, ripping up his back on piping and consoles, and he tried to find something he could grip on to, but there was nothing, it was all happening too quickly.

  And then Moke hit a rung once more, bounced off, and crashed to the floor of the corridor. He lay there, stunned, staring up into the darkness, his body shaking, although whether it was from the impact or in fear, he couldn’t tell.

  Something was moving in the Jefferies tube. It was the Dark Man, coming toward him. He knew that with absolute certainty, and then the Dark Man was just going to . . . to suck his soul, that was all. Suck his soul right out, because Moke was an evil boy who had hurt people, and the Dark Man was here to punish him, punish him for eternity.

  The shadows dispersed around the fast-moving form, and that was when the stunned Moke saw that it was Xyon who was descending the Jefferies tube. Moving with the speed and assurance of a chimp, Xyon was on the ground next to the unmoving Moke, touching his face, looking concerned and frightened.

  Moke couldn’t feel the lower half of his body. It frightened him as he lay immobile on his back, and he wanted to get up but couldn’t.

  He saw the Dark Man upon the stair . . . and he wasn’t there.

  “What do you want?!” screamed Moke. “What do you want?!” But he wasn’t there again. For the moment, he had gone away.

  And Moke, his fear growing as he started to feel colder, trembled and shook as he said to a wide-eyed, confused Xyon, and wondered, “Am . . . am I going to die?”

  v.

  There was smoke everywhere, and out of all the situations she’d been in in the past, Soleta had never been so convinced that she was going to die as she was at that moment. Energy was crackling everywhere, relays hopelessly overloaded and blown out. Smoke was stinging her, causing her eyes to water. She was lying on the floor and when she tried to move, she felt a sharp stabbing pain in her chest that made her conclude she had a busted rib. Soleta choked back an angry sob as she tried to orient herself, tried to figure out just where the hell she was. She remembered being thrown across the bridge from the impact, and then there was nothing, darkness, smoke everywhere. She coughed violently, stayed low to the floor, trying to find air to breathe, because Vulcan or no, her lungs would collapse as readily as anyone else’s.

  She heard moans from all around her, and there was debris all around her. She realized belatedly that she’d been damned lucky; a foot to the left and she would have been crushed by a fallen lighting array. The emergency lights were on, but even some of those were out, and the entire bridge was a ghastly, spectral array.

  “All . . . all hands.” She heard Burgoyne’s voice through the darkness, coughing. “All hands . . . report in . . . bridge crew . . .”

  “Here,” Soleta managed to get out, her voice sounded ragged. She put her hand to her forehead to shove her hair out of her face, and came away with green blood on her hand. She told herself, in as calm and dispassionate a manner as she could, that head wounds tended to bleed a lot and that it wasn’t necessarily related to the severity of the injury itself.

  “I’m here,” came Kebron’s voice. Several others sounded off as well. But she didn’t hear Burgoyne. Nor did she hear Morgan or McHenry.

  The smoke started to clear ever so slightly, and she was able to see a figure standing in it. For one heartstopping moment, she thought it was a Borg, and then she realized it was Calhoun, still wearing the connection helmet to the hologram.

  Then she saw the viewscreen. Astoundingly, it was still functional. The picture was filled with static, but she could see it nevertheless. And what she saw on it did not give her cause for comfort.

  The gigantic ship was coming around again. The ram had been withdrawn from the saucer, and she could only assume that the entire saucer hadn’t been torn to shreds through explosive decompression because the fail-safe shields had snapped into existence over the rents in the hull. But it wasn’t going to make much of a difference in a few moments, because they weren’t moving and the ship was heading straight for them.

  “Morgan! Move to intercept!” came Calhoun’s voice, and she realized he was speaking through his holo avatar on the warp section. “Yes, Goodwin, I’m back on line!” He coughed fiercely, then pulled his attention back immediately. “Morgan . . . where’s Morgan? Where’s her holo . . . ? All right, Beth, plot a course! Goodwin, arm photon torpedoes . . . !”

  There was nothing in his voice that betrayed any nervousness. He was utterly focused. But Soleta had seen how quickly the Greek vessel was moving, had calculated the distance, and been forced to the conclusion that there was simply no way that the warp section was going to get there in time, or any difference that the photon torpedoes would make.

  And then the saucer lurched, and for one moment Soleta—along with everyone else on the ship—thought that they’d been hit. But quickly she realized that it couldn’t be, that the sailing ship wasn’t there yet. For there it was, on the screen, except the angle was shifting and the saucer was being pulled away from it, faster and faster, and suddenly the Greek trireme was being hit from overhead by a lethal combination of phaser fire and photon torpedoes. Then photon torpedoes exploded from the other direction as well, and the dreadnought trireme didn’t know where to look first.

  Another starship, flew through Soleta’s mind, and then she realized: the Trident. Even as the thought went through her mind, the voice of Captain Elizabeth Shelby crackled through the bridge’s com system. “Excalibur, this is Trident. We’re a little early for our rendezvous, but somehow I don’t think you’re going to mind. We have you in our tractor beams and are pulling you out of harm’s way.”

  “Much obliged, Captain,” said Calhoun. He was bracing himself against the railing, which was partly bent in half. “Don’t let down your guard! Keep firing! Don’t let up for a second! And if a giant hand or face should appear, don’t let it rattle you.”

  “I didn’t copy that, Calhoun. Did you say a giant—?”

  “Hand or face, yes.”

  “Who the hell are these people?” Shelby’s voice demanded. “Greek sailing ships that can punch a hole in a starship? What’s going on? You know what . . . on second thought, save it. They damaged you. We’re going to kick their asses now and settle for answers later. And I know we can.”

  Soleta, making sure that no one else could see her, smiled slightly at the bravado.

  “Mac, they’re breaking off,” Shelby said abruptly. “Apparently they’ve had enough.”

  And that did indeed appear to be the case. The dreadnought had veered off, and was suddenly retreating. The remaining smaller ships surrounded it. At first Soleta was concern
ed that it was some sort of trick, that they’d come back and take a run at both the Trident and the warp section of the Excalibur before turning and finishing off the saucer section.

  But that seemed not to be the case. Instead the ships kept going. Soleta staggered over to her science station. Several of the sensory devices were down, but enough was functioning for her to be able to say, “They’re definitely gone, Captain.”

  “Oh gods . . . no . . .”

  It was Burgoyne’s voice. It was weak and in pain, but it was hir, and then she heard hir call out, “Bridge to sickbay!”

  “Selar here. Burgoyne, where is Xyon? Everything happened so—”

  “He’s on the warp section with Moke, he’s fine! Selar! Get people up here . . . fast! Now! Now!”

  And Soleta had a sick, awful feeling she knew what it was. She moved quickly, stumbled and fell over some fallen debris, and felt another jolt of pain through her torso even as she moved around to the front of the bridge.

  Burgoyne was lying on the floor, and even from where she was standing Soleta could see that hir left leg was broken. But Burgoyne didn’t seem to notice, or care. Instead s/he was looking in dismay at the two bodies at the front of the bridge.

  McHenry was sitting there, eyes open, staring at nothing. He was slumped back in his chair, his head lolling to one side. The conn console was utterly fried, as if massive bolts of electricity . . . or something else . . . had come leaping out of there like contained lightning. The front of his shirt was completely blackened, as if a spear of energy had slammed through. The back of his chair was broken clear off.

  Morgan was slumped across him. She wasn’t moving. Her body was completely blackened, as if she had been roasted alive. Her uniform was crumbling away, her skin was puckered and blistered.

  It was clear what had happened: Some sort of power, beyond comprehension, had come leaping out of the conn unit. Morgan, seeing it, had instinctively thrown herself in front of McHenry to try and protect him. As a result, she had borne the horrific brunt of it.