by Diane Carey
Hoshi was picking and poking at her translator padd, frowning at the information on the tiny screen.
“What’s wrong?” Archer asked.
“The translator’s not locking onto his dialect. The syntax won’t align.”
Major faux pas—unaligned syntax.
“DujDaj Hegh!”
“Tell him we’re taking him home,” Archer said simply.
Hoshi struggled over the words, but she hesitated. The language seemed, to Archer’s ear, to be little more than coughs and hacks.
After a moment, she tried. “Ingan… Hoch…juH.”
“Tujpa’qul Dun?”
She frowned. “He wants to know who we are.” She didn’t add the obvious trailer “I think,” even though it was implicit in her tone.
Archer nodded, an equally simple gesture.
Hoshi turned to the Klingon. “Qu’ghewmey Enterprise. PuqloD.”
“Nentay lupHom!”
Hoshi repeated one of the words for her own benefit, then concluded, “Ship. He’s asking for his ship back.”
Or maybe he was asking to take possession of this one? Archer was reluctant to give him any kind of answer, because neither one would make the Klingon any happier.
“Say it was destroyed.”
“SonchIy.”
Klaang erupted in a raving protest and roared, “Vengen Sto’vo’kor Dos!”
Puzzling over this, Hoshi cocked a hip and screwed up her expression in confusion. “I’m not sure … but I think he’s saying something about eating the afterlife.”
“Try the translator again.” Frustrated, Archer tried to contain his impatience.
She worked with the padd. It didn’t help.
“I’m going to need to run what we’ve got through the phonetic processor.”
“MajOa blmoHqu!”
Archer turned to her again, but Hoshi could only offer, “He says his wife has grown ugly.”
He sighed. If the best translator he knew couldn’t do any better than this, what kind of primitive garble were they dealing with? What he needed was a Klingon who spoke English.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Hoshi said quietly. “I’m doing the best I can.”
He was about to give her a word of comfort when Phlox interrupted.
“Excuse me,” the doctor butted in as he took a scan of the Klingon. “His prefrontal cortex is hyperstimulated. I doubt he has any idea what he’s saying.”
“Hljol OaOqu’nay!”
“I think the doctor’s right,” Hoshi said. “Unless ‘stinky boots’ has something to do with all this.”
The ship shuddered under them, sending Hoshi wobbling against the Klingon’s bed. She shimmied away and Archer caught her arm and pulled her farther. The guy had spiked leg bands, after all.
“That’s the warp reactor again, right?” she asked softly.
“OaOqu’nay!”
Archer hurried to the nearest wall com. “Bridge, report on that.”
“We’ve dropped out of warp, sir,” T’Pol’s voice announced with a shiver of electrical static. “Main power is—”
A burst of static. The com went dead. The lights flickered suddenly—then, consoles all around sickbay began to go dark, one by one!
CHAPTER 7
ARCHER INSTANTLY CROSSED TO THE COM BOOSTER AND played with the controls, but all he could get was a ghost of the action on the bridge.
“T’Pol! Respond!” he attempted. “Tucker! Anybody?”
The com chittered, but there was no sense to it. “It might be the sensors going dark,” he muttered, thinking aloud. As he spoke, the sickbay went finally to total darkness. The Klingon raged on his bed. The security guard shambled about, though he didn’t know what to do. Archer heard them, sensed them, felt Hoshi’s rising fear, but couldn’t see a thing.
The com was completely dead. The ship was dark.
In his mind, he saw the action going on all over the ship—crew automatically going to stations, the procedures of emergency and safety snapping into place. He imagined them calling for him on the croaked com system. He felt the ship’s power depleting rapidly, felt the drag on his body as speed dropped. Around sickbay, Phlox’s zoo of pet alien organisms chirruped and whistled either in confusion or ecstasy.
“Where are the handheld lights?” he demanded. “Phlox!”
“I don’t know, Captain. I haven’t inventoried those yet.”
“They’ve got to be in a drawer or a cabinet. Feel around. We can’t do anything if we can’t see. Hoshi, look around for the beacons. Guard, you, too.”
“Aye, sir,” the guard rumbled.
Despite her fear, Hoshi started moving. He heard the clap of cabinets and drawers. A few moments later, she was the one who found them.
Instantly, sickbay glowed with red lights. Klaang continued to bellow his maddening protests.
Archer paused and forced himself to think. “Auxiliary power should’ve kicked in by now …” When the Klingon growled and spat again, louder now that nobody was paying attention to him, Archer added, “Do you know how to tell him to shut up?”
More nervous by the second, Hoshi swung to Klaang. “Shut up!” she shouted.
But it didn’t work. Diplomacy just wasn’t the way today, was it?
“Sedate him if you have to,” he snapped to Phlox. “I need to get to the bridge!”
“Captain!”
He whirled at Hoshi’s shocked cry. She was moving her beacon across the lateral bulkhead.
Why was she doing that?
Without waiting for him to ask, she hissed, “There’s someone in here!”
Archer glanced around the poorly lit room. “Hoshi …”
“I’m telling you, there’s someone—”
She stopped moving. Archer followed her beacon to the wall again—
A humanoid form!
Like a chameleon, the form had taken on the appearance of the background, complete with certificates and alien life-forms in jars on the shelves! It was barely visible, but now that he focused, there was no mistaking the intrusion.
Once discovered, the creature leaped from its hiding place back into the shadows.
On the biobed, Klaang fell to bizarre quiet. “Suliban!” he growled.
Archer spun, flashing his own beacon across the wall, trying to rediscover the—what was the word? Suliban …well, he didn’t need any help translating that. Boogeyman.
Another one! Perched high on the wall like a spider! But this one wasn’t camouflaged like the other. This one had blotchy skin, almost tie-dyed, with eyes that were clearly evolved for some kind of night vision.
“Crewman!” Archer shouted.
The guard’s rifle snapped up just as the Suliban leaped to the ground and met a third one darting from the shadows!
The guard fired. Plasma bullets flashed through the room in quick stroboscopic flashes. Now the action turned to rapid cuts illuminated by the strobes. Klaang yanking around in frustration and shouting in Klingon … Hoshi cowering low to avoid the gunfire, scanning erratically with her beacon … the guard swinging around to take aim again at something he sensed behind him—
And one of the Suliban leaping onto the big boy. The guard hit the deck, and so did his plasma rifle. The weapon rattled and skidded away.
Archer lunged toward the weapon, hoping he was going in the right direction, but lost his handheld beacon as he struck the deck. Hoshi’s beacon was gone now, too. Was she hurt?
The rifle fell into his hands, like a warhorse seeking a rider, and he whirled it toward the nearest Suliban. Taking an instant to be sure he wasn’t shooting at his own people, he opened fire.
The Suliban was hit, and flew backward into the wall.
At Archer’s right elbow, Klaang stared upward and spat an accusation. Suliban directly overhead! The creature dropped from the ceiling! Archer felt the hard strike of a heavy body on the back of his head and neck. He was driven to the deck under a crushing weight, the plasma rifle trapped under his ribs.
Hoshi’s little tremor squeaked from under the biobed.
“Captain …?”
Archer tried to roll over. This time he felt no resistance. Whatever had been on top of him was now gone. As he got to his knees, a surge of power thrummed up through the skeleton of the ship under his knees and hands. One by one, the consoles began to flicker and light themselves.
Warp power! It was coming back!
Good boy, Trip…
The guard was just sitting up, dazed. Phlox rushed to help him. Under the biobed, Hoshi found herself crouched beside the dead Suliban and squirmed suddenly away.
Archer staggered to his feet and looked around as the lights came back on all the way.
The biobed was empty. The Klingon was gone.
And so were the two Suliban interlopers who had survived the past few moments.
Violation. And kidnapping.
Not such a good day after all.
CHAPTER 8
A SHIPWIDE SEARCH HAD TURNED UP NOTHING. THEY weren’t onboard. Still, Klaang and the things he called Suliban had gone somewhere, because they weren’t here anymore.
Jonathan Archer paced the bridge, agitated. His ship had been breached, the engines temporarily shut down, then just as mysteriously repowered again; intruders had found their way both onto the ship and back off without being tracked. None of that made him feel very good at all.
“We’ve got state-of-the-art sensors,” he complained angrily. “Why in hell didn’t we detect them?”
Around him, the bridge crew was virtually sheepish with lack of answers. “Mr. Reed thought he detected something right before we lost power,” T’Pol said, as if she really did want to help this time.
Archer whirled on Reed, who was working his tactical and security console. After a moment, the lieutenant offered, “The starboard sensor logs recorded a spatial disturbance.”
Trip Tucker leaned over Reed’s shoulder. “Looks more like a glitch.”
“Those weren’t glitches in sickbay,” Hoshi noted sharply.
Archer turned to Trip. “I want a complete analysis of that disturbance.”
Trip responded by heading for the door, and Archer returned to Reed.
“Where do we stand on weapons?”
“I still have to tune the targeting sensors,” Reed admitted unhappily.
“What’re you waiting for?” Archer snapped at them.
Reed joined Tucker and hurried off the bridge to do the work that should’ve been done before they left Earth.
“Captain,” T’Pol began, crossing toward him.
He ignored her and swung instead to Hoshi. “The Klingon seemed to know who they were. See if you can translate what he said.”
That word … Suliban. Was it a Klingon word? An accusation or warning? Or was it what Archer thought it was—the name for those creatures?
“Right away,” Hoshi said, and also turned to go.
“Captain,” T’Pol attempted again.
Finally, with no one else to chew out, order around, or grouse at, he turned to hear what she had to say.
“There’s no way you could have anticipated this. I’m sure Ambassador Soval will understand.”
“You’re the science officer,” Archer blurted. “Why don’t you help Tucker with that analysis?”
“The astrometric computer in San Francisco will be far more effective.”
“We’re not going to San Francisco, so make do with what we’ve got here.”
“You’ve lost the Klingon,” she said. Though she sounded reasonable, he still heard that familiar superior attitude in her voice as she finished, “Your mission is over.”
He leaned toward her, broiling under the surface. “I didn’t ‘lose’ the Klingon. He was taken. And I’m going to find out who took him.”
“How do you plan to do that?” she asked reasonably. “Space is very big, Captain. A shadow on your sensors won’t help you find them. This is a foolish mission.”
“Come with me.”
What he really meant was something along the lines of getting her ass in here, but luckily he still had a little hold on the reins of decorum. He stepped into his ready room and almost instantly whirled on her.
“I’m not interested in what you think about this mission. So take your Vulcan cynicism and bury it along with your repressed emotions.”
“Your reaction to this situation,” she protested, “is a perfect example of why your species should remain in its own star system.”
He closed the small distance between them in an openly hostile manner. Did they have body language where she came from?
“I’ve been listening to you Vulcans tell us what not to do all my life,” he fumed.“I watched my father work his ass off while your scientists held back just enough information to keep him from succeeding. He deserved to see that launch. You may have life spans of two hundred years. We don’t.”
T’Pol was affected by his words, perhaps more by his passion, but she didn’t back down.
“You are going to be contacting Starfleet,” she said, “to advise them of the situation.”
“No, I’m not,” he said with a warning glower. He hoped his message was clear, because clarifying further wouldn’t be either polite or pretty. “And neither are you. Now get the hell out of here and make yourself useful.”
With nothing more to say, she had no choice but to simply leave. He couldn’t imagine Reed or Tucker welcoming her help or even her presence in their work. That was her problem, something she had set up for herself with her own lack of manners.
Archer stalked the ready room—which wasn’t much of a stalking space at all, but only a tiny excuse for an office where the captain might be able to be alone once in a while. He didn’t really like it here, but was determined to get used to it. The space came in handy just now, as a good place to chew out the sliver under his fingernail—namely, T’Pol.
Bitter and impatient, he struck the com on his desk. “Sickbay, Archer. Phlox, I’m coming down there and I want some answers ready when I arrive. Make them up if you have to, but give me something.”
Sickbay never responded. He never gave Phlox the chance.
Within moments he was stalking the corridors instead of his ready room, thumping down through the tubes and access ways directly to the sickbay deck. It wasn’t exactly faster than the turbolift, but at least he wasn’t standing still while the box rushed him around the ship. He didn’t lose many seconds, and he managed to use up enough frustration that, by the time he plunged through the doors into sickbay, he was ready to listen.
Dimly lit except for the surgical lamp shining down on the dead intruder, sickbay was almost like it had been during those terrible moments of attack. Phlox’s gloved hands were busy inside the opened chest of the dead creature. He picked enthusiastically through the entrails as Archer watched, unmoved.
“Mr. Klaang was right about one thing,” the doctor said. “He’s a Suliban. But unless I’m mistaken, he’s not an ordinary one.”
Archer’s throat tightened. How could he tell that this Suliban was special if he had no experience with what an ordinary Suliban was? And he didn’t feel much like taking biology lessons. Were there short answers?
“Meaning?”
“His DNA is Suliban … but his anatomy has been altered. Look at this lung. Five bronchial tubes. It should only have three. And look at the alveoli clusters. They’ve been modified to process different kinds of atmospheres.”
“Are you saying he’s some kind of a mutant?” Archer asked, going for those short answers as deliberately as possible without discouraging information he might need.
“Yes, I suppose I am. But this was no accident, no freak of nature. This man was the recipient of some very sophisticated genetic engineering.”
Like a kid in a candy store, Phlox almost giggled with delight at his discovery. He activated a t
iny instrument with a thin red beam and shined the light on the Suliban’s dappled face.
“Watch this.”
He moved the light, revealing that the skin had changed color, perfectly matching the hue and intensity of the red light.
“Subcutaneous pigment sacs.”
He tapped a control on the little instrument and the color of the light changed to blue. He shined it on the Suliban’s clothing this time, instead of its face. The clothing also adapted to the new color. The clothing?
“A biomimetic garment!” Phlox piped, delighted.
Archer didn’t even bother trying to control his amazement. The skin he could understand. How did these people make their clothing biological enough to do the same thing?
“The eyes are my favorite,” Phlox went on. He lifted an eyelid on the corpse, exposing a superdilated pupil that glowed nearly phosphorescent. “Compound retinas. He most likely saw things even your sensors couldn’t detect.”
Like my sheer anger? Archer thought. Even a dead guy should be able to pick that up.
“It’s not in their genome?” he asked.
“Certainly not. The Suliban are no more evolved than humans. Very impressive work, though … I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
No more evolved than humans. Yeah, we’re still practically microbes compared to all you demigods out there.
Determined to raise the veil of ignorance even if he had to kick somebody out of the way, he asked, “What do you know about them? Where do they come from?”
“They’re nomadic, I believe,” Phlox said, apparently not catching the fact that his captain was about to reach down his throat and pull the information out physically if it didn’t start coming faster and more voluntarily. “No homeworld. I examined two of them years ago. A husband and wife. Very cordial.”
The word stuck in Archer’s craw. He couldn’t imagine cordiality at this particular moment, from the Suliban, from himself, or anyone else. He didn’t even want any.
“Look, Doctor,” he began tersely, “I’m not in a pleasant mood. I don’t want to hear about anything nice or cordial or even intriguing right now. I want to know where the Klingon went, how the Suliban got onto this ship, and how they got off it. Something tells me they didn’t jump out a space hatch and go for a random free-float. They went some place. I mean to find out where. None of the answers to those questions is bound to be nice, so you don’t have to feel obliged to smile or twinkle at me anymore.” He jabbed a finger at the body on the bed. “You have the only piece of concrete evidence we own. I’m giving you my permission to get ugly. If you have to set up candles and a Ouija board and bring this corpse back to life, I want to know how they did what they did today on my ship. Do I have to say any of that a second time? Good.”