by Peter David
“Lieutenant,” he said with a slight nod of his head.
“Lieutenant Commander,” she replied. Then she saw his small smirk. “What?”
“How nice that you are still capable of acknowledging ranks.”
She didn’t look at him. Instead she stared fixedly at the door even as she said, “I know what you did. Last night. To me.”
“To you? I was in my quarters,” said the Selelvian. She didn’t have to see him to know that he was smirking. “Why, did something happen to you last night?”
“You threatened to kill me.”
He sounded dumbfounded when he said, “What are you talking about?” He was certainly one hell of an actor.
“You threatened to kill me. Other people know. So if anything happens to me, suspicion will fall on you.”
“Let it,” he said flatly. “Let it fall where it will, because I would be exonerated should anything transpire, since I’ve no intention of killing you or anyone. I certainly hope you’ve no intention of spreading even more vicious rumors about me than you already have.”
The doors opened. “My intentions are to step off this turbolift and go about my job.”
“If you’re so unhappy here, Lieutenant, you can always apply for a transfer.”
That caused her to turn and face him. “You’re not going to force me to run,” she said. “That’s not going to happen. I won’t run.”
“As you wish. Of course, you could consider walking very, very briskly.” And the doors closed, obscuring his smiling face.
EXCALIBUR
I.
MARK MCHENRY WAS SCREAMING as loudly as he could, but he was the only one who was hearing himself.
He could hear himself produce sentences. He heard his voice calling out the names of every single person on the ship that he could think of. He gave the Federation Oath of Allegiance. He began reciting everything he remembered from the Starfleet Handbook for Cadet Protocol. He sung every song he knew, which happened mostly to be show tunes. He began rattling off the names of planets and star systems, and that took him a good long while. He did it all for two reasons: in hopes that someone would hear him, and to keep him from going completely out of his mind.
The former was not occurring, and he was beginning to have serious doubts as to the latter.
The oddest thing about his predicament was that he was able to see. He didn’t know how that was possible, considering that he sensed his eyes were closed. Nor was he able to move a muscle of his body. Yet he felt as if he were outside of his body and inside all at the same time. But he wasn’t so far outside that he was able to move from where he was.
He could “see” the sickbay all around him. He had been staring at it helplessly for a couple of days, seeing all the injured crewmen brought in and treated by an increasingly exhausted medical staff. People kept glancing over at him, staring at him as if he was some sort of truly piteous thing. Then he sensed himself being lifted up, relocated to another part of sickbay ... probably so his continued presence wouldn’t keep upsetting people. He could see all around sickbay, but he could not see himself. And McHenry was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, that was a fortunate thing. These were Starfleet veterans, after all, accomplished and experienced crewmen. So if even they were daunted by his looks, then he must have looked pretty damned unpleasant.
Only one individual, aside from Dr. Selar, regarded him for any length of time, and that was—of all people—Moke.
Moke had approached him early on in McHenry’s imprisonment, staring at him thoughtfully. It was as if Moke was trying to see past the shell that was containing McHenry, and into the man who was trapped within. McHenry had never noticed before how deep, even endless the boy’s eyes appeared. He seemed to have what once would have been called an “old soul.” McHenry called Moke’s name as loudly as he could, and just for a moment he thought there was a flicker of recognition from the boy. But the recognition, if it was there, was quickly replaced with a look of caution. McHenry had no idea why the boy was reacting that way. It was almost as if he was afraid that someone might notice.
Then Moke walked away, and McHenry screamed after him. Then he began to sob piteously in frustration, and he’d never been more glad and relieved that no one could see him or hear him.
He lost track of the amount of time that he’d been there, trapped, restrained. Once upon a time, back in the dark ages of humanity’s medical knowledge, a person could have something called a “stroke.” A blood vessel in their brain would burst and they would become virtual prisoners in their own bodies. Cybershunts, of course, had long ago cured such physiological mishaps, relegating them to the same bin where other ailments such as smallpox, cancer, and AIDS had been deposited.
It gave McHenry a feeling for what it must have been like to live back then and suffer such hideous mishaps. He wondered how in the world anyone had ever lived their lives, knowing that at any moment they could be transformed into this ... this state of nonbeing.
McHenry lost track of time. He had no clue how long he had existed in this twilight state, or whether he would continue to do so. He did, however, begin to notice a few things as he turned his attention inward.
He wasn’t breathing.
His heart had stopped beating.
I’m dead ... oh my God, I’m dead ... well, this just stinks.
But it made no sense. If he was dead, why was he still lying around in sickbay? Since when had sickbay become a morgue? Were they ... were they going to shoot his body off into space? Was he going to just float around forever in the depths of the void, an eternal prisoner in his own corpse? The airlessness of space would likely preserve his body under eternity. Of all the ways he had envisioned his demise and final fate, somehow he had never seen this.
For some reason, he’d always imagined that he would die while having sex. He wasn’t sure why he’d thought that. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking. Have one’s heart give out at just the right moment. Go out with a bang. It was the sort of stuff of which Starfleet legends were made. He was wistful for the days when he thought his passing would involve something as trite as that.
Day turned into night and into day and into infinity, and he was suffering from both a lack of, and too much, sensory input. As always, he was able to divine his literal place in the universe. The Excalibur was definitely moving. It was doing so slowly, cautiously. He began to get the feeling that the great starship was being towed, although he wasn’t certain how he knew. He made some mental calculations, visualized their course and where it would take them, and concluded that they were heading toward Starbase 27. They must have been fairly badly hurt if they required aid at a starbase. Furthermore, he knew Captain Calhoun. Calhoun was a proud bastard; if he admitted that he needed help, they must have taken quite a pounding.
What had Artemis and her pals done to them?
“We gave you a beating, you pack of ingrates.”
Mark McHenry let out a yelp and jolted in shock and jumped up ... all in his head, of course. In reality, his body remained exactly where it was, unmoving, unresponsive. His thoughts were scrambled after days (weeks? months?) of lack of focus, and it took him a few moments (minutes? hours?) to string together words into a coherent sentence. “Who is that? Is that you, Artemis?”
“Of course it is. Who else would it be?”
“You bitch. If I could just get my hands on you, I would—”
“You would what?”
He had no sight, and yet she moved into his sight line. She was smiling at him, looking as strikingly beautiful as she ever had. Her more-than-human beauty still chilled him, although it was a far colder chill than he’d known in his youth. When she had first come to him, he had found it all exciting and amazing. He’d been too young to understand, and then when he’d become a teen and she had introduced him to other “aspects” of male/female relationships, he’d been filled with a sense of wonder and amazement.
Now she just scared the crap out of him ... althoug
h there was a large measure of anger in him as well. Because of her and the other Beings, he was in this predicament. ...
“Because of us, you are all that you are,” her voice came, penetrating deep into his mind. Her lips didn’t move. Her eyes were luminous, her thick hair cascading around her shoulders. “The great Apollo lay with your ancestor, and his godhead is carried within you. You do not truly think you would have achieved your current greatness and position if the aura of Apollo did not surge within you, do you?”
“My current greatness and position? My current position is prone, and my greatness is somewhat dimmed by the fact that I’m DEAD, YOU BITCH!”
She circled him, and for some reason no matter where she was standing, his viewpoint of her was exactly the same, unchanging, unvarying. “You’re not dead, my love. Not exactly.”
“Well then what, exactly, am I?!”
She was smiling. The charming facial expression would have chilled him to the bone, had he been able to feel any sort of sensation. “Why should I tell you, dear one? After all, you’d have no reason to trust me, would you. That is what you told your own captain, is it not? That my kind are not to be trusted. Of course, you are an extension of my kind as well, so what does that say for you?”
“Artemis ... if you can get me out of this ... please ...”
“Offering me prayers?” She laughed softly. “My, my, that does bring back a wave of nostalgia. And tell me, Marcus, honestly,” and she leaned in closer to him. He would have felt her warm breath upon him provided he could feel. He wanted to scream, to claw his way out of this ... this shell of whatever he was. But all he could do was lie there and continue to die, if that was indeed what was happening to him. “Tell me ... aren’t you the least bit interested to know what it’s like to be prayed to? It’s quite a heady sensation, you know. It lifts you up, it makes you grateful to be alive ... provided you are, indeed, alive ...”
“What do you want?” he said coldly.
“To help you. That is all.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
“Simplest thing in the world, Marcus. All you need to do is give yourself over to us, freely and of your own will. It’s such a little thing, really. In fact, I can’t believe that you’ve delayed this long. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. You know that, don’t you?”
“Be one of you, you mean.”
“Yes, of course.”
“One of a group of creatures who assaulted our ship?” he said, and he wasn’t sure if his voice was getting louder, rising with anger, but he certainly felt angry enough to be causing that to happen. “Who put a hole through us? Who killed us? And why, exactly, should I join with a bunch of murdering bastards like you?”
Her face darkened. Literally darkened. He could see shadows creeping across it as her quiet fury grew. “Need I remind you, ‘my love,’ that you are not in the best position for displaying such an attitude. I am the one who is showing generosity at the moment. I could leave you to rot. Perhaps that’s what I’ll do. That would do you some good, I think. To just lie there, unmoving, trapped for all time. Caught in a stasis of your own making, that you’ve neither the puissance nor the knowledge to comprehend. Or better still ... I could end you right now. I’m not certain which would be preferable. Leave you to your condemned uncertain state of helplessness, or ...”
“Leave him alone!”
The unexpected voice jolted both of them. McHenry didn’t turn—that wasn’t an option—but it was as if his mind’s eye shifted around, and suddenly he was looking at a boy. For a heartbeat he didn’t recognize him, and then he saw it was Moke. The captain’s adopted son was standing perhaps three feet away, still favoring his injured leg even though it was mostly healed by this point. He was trembling, although McHenry couldn’t immediately discern why, and he was pointing straight at Artemis, and shouting, “Get away from him! You ... you get away!”
“Moke!” McHenry’s desperate mind reached out. “Moke, can you hear me?! Tell them I’m alive! Tell them to do something! Tell them—”
Moke gave no sign that he had heard McHenry’s silent plea. Instead he was still looking at Artemis, and he was advancing on her, his pointing finger shaking without letup, and he cried out, “You’ve hurt him enough! You’ve hurt all of us enough! You just ... you leave him be! Leave all of us be!”
Her attention attracted by his shouts, Dr. Selar came over to him. Her face was impassive as always, but her voice carried with it a distinct sound of annoyance. “Moke, you should not be back here.”
“Make her go away!” Moke demanded, and he was continuing to point at Artemis.
Artemis appeared completely disconcerted. Seeing her that way was something of a first for McHenry. Until then, she had always been completely in control of whatever situation she had thrust herself into. By rights, if Moke was any sort of irritant to her, she should have been able to dispose of him with a wave of her hand. Instead she was rooted to the spot, staring at the dark-eyed boy and apparently unable to do a damned thing about him.
Selar’s frustration was mounting, although again she kept it in check. “Moke ...”
“You will be worshipped, Marcus,” Artemis said, sounding arch even though there was a tinge of desperation to her voice. “You will be worshipped with us ... or cast adrift on the byways of space, to spend eternity as you are now. Those are your only choices.”
“Make her go away!” Moke repeated.
“To what ‘her’ are you referring?”
“Her! The god lady! She’s standing right there, in front of Mr. McHenry!”
And something within Selar, some fundamental intuition, told her that these were not simply the ravings of an annoying child. Her eyes narrowed, her interest obviously piqued, as slowly she said, “What god lady, Moke? Where? Describe her to me.”
“She’s gone.”
And indeed she was. McHenry felt at once a swell of depression, and yet a simultaneous glee in that Artemis had apparently been chased off by this ... this kid. “Great job, Moke!”
Moke did not respond. He was frowning at the air where Artemis had been, but he was not reacting in any way to the silent shouts coming from McHenry. Again and again, the frustrated navigator tried to get the boy’s attention, but there was nothing. Not the slightest acknowledgment that McHenry was there.
Here McHenry had felt a brief swell of hope, only to see it being crushed as Selar said, “What about Mr. McHenry. Do you see anything unusual about he himself? Or just the woman standing near him.”
“There is no woman,” Moke said. He was tilting his head slightly, like a dog trying to home in on the distant trill of a sonic whistle. It might have been that he was, on some level, perceiving McHenry’s cries for help, but was unable to discern exactly what they were. “And he’s just ... lying there. I think.”
“Yes. Yes, he is,” Selar said, looking with detachment at McHenry. “Moke ... we shall reexamine that leg to ascertain the quality of the healing, and then we will speak to the captain about what you think you saw.”
“I know I saw her,” said Moke, but he allowed himself to be led away, leaving Mark McHenry crying to the emptiness within himself.
II.
For Robin Lefler, it was as if her life had moved into slow motion.
First, it had taken seemingly forever for the Excalibur to be towed into drydock. Once there, the damage to the ship had been so comprehensive that additional crewmen and members of the engineering corps had been called in to aid in the rebuild. They’d been laid up for two weeks as it was, and the estimates for bringing the ship back up to working order were elongating.
Some of the ship’s personnel had been put on temporary transfer to the Trident, which was continuing to patrol the area. Apparently the Beings had not shown their collective glowing faces again in the immediate vicinity. That, however, did not automatically mean anything. Who knew what they were up to?
As for Robin, there was an emptiness within her that she simply could no
t shake. She spent most of her off-duty hours in the team room, staring vacantly into glasses of synthehol and making polite chitchat with those people who opted to swing by and extend their condolences. A small, quiet ceremony had been held for the mortal remains of a supposedly immortal woman, Morgan Primus Lefler. Her body had then been placed into a photon torpedo casing and fired into the vastness of space. By this point in time, Robin imagined, it had been caught in the gravity field of a star and likely been pulled in. So ... that was that.
Except it wasn’t. She felt as if Morgan was still there with her, watching over her, whispering consoling words to her as she dropped off to sleep. She would have hoped that it would have eased her loneliness; instead it made it all the more painful.
With her off-duty hours stretching to infinity in the team room, Robin began spending more and more time at her post. Her continued presence started eliciting comments, but Robin turned a deaf ear to them all. At Burgoyne’s urging, Calhoun considered ordering her to take time off. Ultimately, he decided against it.
“Everyone deals with grief in their own way, Burgy,” he had said. “Who am I to decide what’s right and wrong for Robin Letter? Besides, we’re stuck here at starbase. It’s not as if we need her at peak performance because we’re about to head into battle. We have some margin for error.”
And so the bridge became Robin’s second home as she did all she could to try and bring operations systems back up to speed. During those times where repairs called for the ops station to be offline, she would just sit there and stare out at the emptiness of space, picturing her mother’s coffin tumbling away toward its fiery fate at the heart of a star.
“Wake up.”
The words jolted Robin from her reverie. She rubbed her eyes and leaned forward at her post, realizing to her chagrin that she had indeed fallen asleep. Robin turned in her seat to see Soleta staring down at her with that vague Vulcan annoyance she so easily projected. “Ohhh God,” muttered Robin, stretching her arms. “Falling asleep at my post. I’m turning into McHenry.”