by Peter David
He struggled for leverage, found it, and drove a knee into Taine's gut. Taine grunted, didn't quite double over, but the wind was knocked out of him. He did not, however, lose his grip on his disruptor.
Ling Sui was trying to get close to help, but she was moving warily, keeping an eye on the barrel of the disruptor. It fired again and she barely managed to get out of the way.
One of the lower struts of the shuttle struck a dune, flipping the shuttle around. It sent Sulu and Taine tumbling, crashing into Ling Sui, and all three of them went down in a tumble of arms and legs.
For a moment they were frozen there, the three of them, and Taine and Ling Sui were snarling into each other's faces. Then Ling Sui head-butted him. He rolled back, clutching at his face, and Sulu yanked her to her feet.
In Ling Sui's hand was the disruptor. She swung it around and aimed it squarely at Taine.
"No!" shouted Sulu, yanking her hand wide, the disruptor blast exploding against the far wall.
She looked at him in shock. Sulu didn't bother to exchange words with her, because with the Peregrine hurtling wildly out of control, now was not the time to discuss the relative morals of the situation.
Taine lunged at them. Sulu sidestepped, gripping the disruptor firmly, and slammed the butt into Taine's head. It opened up a vicious gash in Taine's head, blood flowing from it and blinding him. Sulu shoved him aside, spun, and fired short, fast, and concentrated blasts at the top and bottom of the door. The door swung open, hanging loosely by strips of metal, and Sulu had a brief glimpse of the ground whizzing past.
Snagging Ling's wrist, he started for the door, apparently ready to hurl himself to his death. For the briefest of moments Ling hesitated, and she looked into Sulu's eyes.
And for the first time since the whole mad adventure had begun, something seemed to "lock" between them. As if in seeing each other, they actually saw each other for the first time.
She gave the slightest nod of her head, and moved with him. Sulu charged forward and slammed into the door, ripping it free from its moorings. For a moment Sulu and the door teetered on the edge, and in that moment he swung Ling Sui around so that she grabbed on to his back. And then the door fell clear of the hurtling shuttle, Sulu lying flat on his belly and Ling Sui holding on for dear life.
The door hit the desert sands and continued moving at the same clip as the shuttle. It was like being a child and riding on a sled, which would have brought back fond memories for Sulu if he'd grown up somewhere other than San Francisco. Sulu, however, was nothing if not a fast learner.
His fingers held fast to the underside of the door, the sand ripping his knuckles. He gritted his teeth, oddly reluctant to give in to his impulse to cry out. Ling Sui's body, curiously enough considering the circumstances, was relaxed against him. Maybe she had utter confidence in him. Maybe she had just shut down her mind so as not to deal with the still-imminent possibility of their mutual demise.
The door fishtailed around, slowing, and then suddenly it flipped completely over. And now Sulu did yell, an alarmed yelp, and he lost his hold on the door. They tumbled off, but fortunately they had slowed enough so that they were able to roll to a stop with only a few more bumps and bruises on them.
"You all right?" Sulu shouted.
"Yes. You?"
"I'm fine!" he shouted.
"Good!" She raised her voice. "Why are you shouting!?"
It was because his head was still ringing and his hearing was thrown off, but there was no need to go into details. Instead Sulu, his sleeves ripped, already feeling aches in his joints that would only get worse as time passed, looked after the hurtling shuttle.
It was moving so quickly that it was already a speck on the evening horizon, vanishing behind a series of dunes. Then suddenly there was a burst of light, followed moments later by the sound of the explosion.
Sulu and Ling Sui watched for a long time as flame danced across the miles-off dunes, smoke curling lazily into the air.
"Is he dead, you think?" asked Ling Sui after a while.
"We're not," Sulu pointed out.
"Yes, but we're the good guys."
"Are we?" Sulu propped himself up on one elbow and looked around, surveying their situation. The sun had almost set, which was actually the most positive thing they had going for them. Because the fact was that they were out in the middle of the Sahara with no supplies, no conveyances, and no way of covering the distance back to the city except on foot.
"What do you mean, 'Are we'?"
"We'll discuss it later."
"Sulu …"
"Later," he said firmly. "Come on."
"Come on where, exactly?" She looked around. "I can't see Demora from here. And we flew so far, so fast, I have absolutely no idea where the hell we are. Which way do we go?"
He paused a long moment, then looked up to the sky. The long red fingers of the setting sun were almost totally withdrawing, replaced by the twinkling of the stars.
"Wait," he said.
"Wait for what?"
He put up a finger and repeated patiently, "Wait."
She opened her mouth, but then closed it again, deciding to wait and see what this most curious of gentlemen was up to.
The sun vanished, the coolness of the nighttime desert settling in. Sulu continued to stare upward, as if communing with the stars. Ling found herself watching him with rapt fascination.
When he spoke it was so abruptly in the silence of the desert that it made her jump slightly.
"That way," he said, pointing.
She squinted, trying to imagine what in the world he might be pointing at. There was no sign of the city from this distance. "How do you know?"
He smiled confidently and held up his palm. "You might as well ask me how I know this is my hand. I look to the stars, and the stars guide me. People can be deceitful. People can tell you one thing and do another. But the stars don't lie."
She didn't say anything, merely shrugged.
Without another word, Sulu set out, with Ling Sui falling into step behind him.
Chapter Eleven
THEY TRAVELED QUICKLY, and in silence, for the first hour. There was the unspoken understanding that it was important to try and cover as much distance as possible. Traveling during the day would not be a terribly pleasant experience with the desert sun beating down on them. Night was the time to cross the sands.
Sulu glanced at her every so often to make sure that she was keeping up. She seemed to have no trouble. At one point she stopped, removed her boots, and then continued walking. She actually moved faster barefoot. So much faster, in fact, that she passed him and Sulu quickly became aware that she could probably outdistance him with little trouble. She realized it at about the same time, apparently, and slowed down so that Sulu could keep up. She glanced at him as they drew side by side, and there was a degree of impishness on her face as they trudged up one sand dune and down another.
"You're very quick," he said finally, the first words spoken in over an hour.
She stopped and raised the soles of her feet for inspection. They looked hard as shoe leather. "I do a lot of walking," she said.
"So do I. Every morning. Although not barefoot, and not in conditions like this."
"I've crossed a desert or two in my time," she said.
"And what else have you done in your time?"
They got to the crest of a sand dune and Sulu slipped a bit going down it, but righted himself before he could fall over. "Well?" he said.
She looked at him curiously. "Well what?"
"Well what else have you done in your time? What's your time been spent doing?"
"This and that."
"And whatever it is you were ready to sell to Kelles … does that come under the category of 'this' or 'that'?"
She stopped walking and stared at him defiantly. "Don't be coy, Sulu. It doesn't suit you. You want to ask a question, ask it."
"All right. What is it you were trying to sell, and from whom did you ste
al it?"
Her gaze was level and she was quiet for a time. Then she said briskly, "None of your business."
He threw his hands up in exasperation. "Well that's helpful."
"The fact that you have to ask the question means that the answer is pointless."
"And the answer is—?"
"You won't believe me."
"Don't tell me what I will and won't believe." He stopped walking and waited. "Well?"
She kept walking. "I'm not going to tell you."
"I'm not moving until you do."
"Fine. Don't move then. To hell with you." She kept on going.
Sulu stayed exactly where he was, and was annoyed to find that he was admiring the sway of her hips and the way that her shoulder blades stood out against the back of her tight black shirt. Her hair swung pendulum-like as she strode away.
She got about a hundred feet, then came to a stop and sighed audibly. Then she turned around and walked back to Sulu, standing there with arms folded and reluctant amusement on her face.
"I don't know where I'm going."
"You mean short-term or long-term?"
She raised an eyebrow in a manner that eerily reminded Sulu of a certain Vulcan. "The latter depends somewhat on the former."
"True enough."
She sighed. "Okay. Come on."
He paused a moment to make sure that he understood her intent, and then he walked alongside her. As they continued their steady pace, Ling Sui licked her lips once—the only indication she gave that she was at all thirsty. "I'm freelance."
"Freelance? Freelance what?"
"Freelance whatever it takes. Freelance inventor, pilot, researcher, explorer … adventurer, for want of a better term. The technology I had to sell was invented by my current client."
"Your current client being—?"
"My current client being none of your damned business," she told him, although she didn't sound particularly angry when she said it.
"All right. Fair enough." They started up another sand dune. "Go on."
"My client had an assistant, name of Taine. I'm sure you remember him; he was trying to kill you a short while ago."
"He's somewhat fresh in my recollections, yes."
"Taine stole all the material related to my client's discovery. All the research, the findings … all of it. This is something one can accomplish when one is in a position of trust, as Taine was … although he's not anymore, as I'm sure you can surmise. This drove home to my client his vulnerability, not to mention the transitory nature of the exclusivity of discoveries. So he hired me to retrieve it: retrieve years and years' worth of computations, calculations, test results … more than my client could possibly have endeavored to reproduce simply from memory. Retrieve it … and line up a powerful buyer for it."
"If it was stolen, why didn't he just report it to the authorities?"
She looked at him in amusement. "You can't report matters to the authorities when there are questions connected that you'd rather not answer. Not all areas of research are 'approved,' Sulu."
"Was he involved with something dangerous?"
"By dangerous you mean would people become sick or die from it? No, not at all. Sometimes, though, things are forbidden. Once upon a time, it was heresy to suggest that the Earth revolved around the sun. But just because something is forbidden doesn't mean you don't have to investigate it anyway. Sometimes you do what you have to, even if the authorities would frown on it. Do you agree?"
Briefly Sulu's thoughts flew to the numerous times that James T. Kirk had stretched General Order 1 almost into unrecognizability. And yet somehow things had always managed to work out for the best, Kirk's instinct unerringly guiding them through the rocky shoals of Starfleet regs. Nor was Kirk unique; Mr. Spock (and who was more respectful of the logic of rules than a Vulcan?) had risked death to fly in the face of General Order 7.
But Sulu had never been in that position. He wondered what would happen if someday he was in a command situation and was asked to choose between orders and his sense of what was right and wrong. Indeed, it was only a matter of time before that did happen. He hoped he would do the right thing … or even be able to figure out precisely what the right thing was.
Yes … he knew he would figure it out. Because whatever it was, it would be the honorable thing. Right and wrong, rules and regulations—these things could be discussed and analyzed to death and even beyond. But honor was immutable. Honor was known. A question of honor was answered with as much clarity as the North Star.
"Yes … I agree," he said.
She looked surprised. "Hmmf. A Starfleet officer agreeing with that philosophy. Again you surprise me, Sulu. So … in any event, that's why I was brought into this. Because I wouldn't sit in judgment, and I wouldn't start quoting regulations or get involved in politics. I'd come in, do the job, and get out." She paused. "Except I didn't exactly do the job, it seems. I managed to steal the technology back from Taine, set up the meeting place for the sale to occur. And then the whole thing went straight to hell. Not your fault, though. Mine. Only mine."
"It was my fault, too. I …"
He paused, and she stopped walking and turned to look at him. "What's up with you, anyway?" she said in that slightly musical voice of hers. "There's something going on here, something you're not telling me. What is it? I've been as honest with you as I can . . . ."
"You'll laugh."
"Maybe," she agreed. "If it's stupid enough."
He stopped, sat down on a dune and pulled off his boots. Upending them, he watched sand pour out as he looked around their surroundings. "Is the entire Sahara like this?" he asked.
"Oh, no." She gestured. "This erg, for example …"
"Erg?"
"Sand dune. It's only, what? Ten meters high? There's ergs go as high as two hundred meters." At the expression on his face, she added, "Of course, it's not like the entire Sahara is nothing but ergs. After all, the damned thing's nine million square kilometers … as big as the United States. It's not all sand."
"No?"
"No," she said cheerfully. "Some places it's pebbles and gravel."
"Oh, well … that makes all the difference," Sulu acknowledged.
"So … what will I laugh at?"
"Oh." He'd hoped she'd forgotten. "Uhm … you're not going to find this easy to believe … but the whole thing back at the city? I thought it was a put-on."
"Put-on?" She shook her head, not understanding.
"I thought …" He sighed. "I was visiting with a friend … and I'd been complaining that there was no adventure to be had on Earth. That it couldn't possibly compare to the kinds of excitement that we encountered in space exploration. And what with the timing of all of this … and the outrageousness, the mysteriousness of it all … I was convinced he'd set it up. Demora is filled with people who are employees, or freelancers who are willing to be hired to perform some sort of bizarre adventure play. They were the evil villains, you were the mystery woman with the vague and exotic background. That's what I thought was going on here. Up until …" He paused and looked down again at the stain on his jacket that represented some of the remains of Kelles. "Well … I know better now."
"So when you went after Taine and the others that first time … you thought they were actors."
He paused, remembering. "Not when I first approached them, no. I thought they were following you to try and hurt you. It was only later, as matters escalated, that I thought it was faked."
"So you tried to help me initially believing that I was in trouble … and eventually, upon discovering your error, you then leaped to the rescue in a shuttle, engaged in a daring high-speed chase across the desert, battled hand to hand with a man who was trying to kill you, then hurled us to safety with a makeshift sled … and now you're concerned I'll laugh at you."
Sulu stared at her. "Well … I wouldn't have put it quite that way but, essentially … yes, that's right."
And to his utter astonishment she leaned over and
kissed him full on the lips. It was brief, sweet, and refreshing, like a summer shower that comes from nowhere, vanishes to the same place, and leaves you feeling invigorated.
She looked at him and he would have sworn that the twinkling stars from overhead were reflected in her eyes.
"You are so cute," she told him. Then she patted him on the knee. "Come on. Let's go."
"By all means," he said, and pulled his boots back on.
She took his hand as they started up the next erg. They made it to the top, slid down the other side, and continued walking, His fingers interlaced with hers as they kept moving, slowly but steadily.
Neither of them complained, both remaining stoic about the situation. But as hour piled upon hour, their progress was nowhere near as rapid as either of them would have liked, and the lack of water was starting to get to them. Plus unspoken was the simple fact that time was against them. Sooner or later, the sun would rise. No one was more aware of that than Sulu. As the sun rose the heat would begin to rise as well, the temperature driven upward, going as high as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. It was incumbent upon them to get as far as they possibly could during the night, but it wasn't as if they'd already had the most restful of days.
As they scaled and then slid down dunes, no discussion passed between them. During the plateaus, however, they would talk. Sulu discussed his youth in San Francisco, and his Starfleet career, which began in physics but then switched to navigation and helm. His family, his friends.
And Ling, for her part, listened. She didn't volunteer much in the way of her own personal history, and when he pressed her she smiled and demurred. "Oh, come now, Sulu. Don't you remember? The mystery woman. What good would be served by knowing too much about the mystery woman."
"But you're not really."
"Oh, but I am. At least, I am now. I rather like it, I must admit." She smiled. "Understand, I don't think of myself that way. I'm just a hard worker, with a background that would sound rather mundane if I went into it. But being a 'mystery woman,' well … that's an honor. Even a responsibility."