by Diane Carey
“Aye, aye, sir,” Carlos called back, then retreated somewhere among the machinery behind the shattered and scattered crates.
So the two of them were alone again, listening to Carlos clacking and tapping back there.
Robert perfectly well knew from experience that there was more than just cantankerousness keeping George silent. Though disturbed, the captain couldn’t bring himself to regret his decisions or his actions.
Somehow, he knew, his lack of regret was coming across in his tone, and he tried to curtail it as he turned to his old friend and again tried to douse the burning thatch.
“George,” he prodded softly. “George, we’ve known each other a long while. Your sons are my godsons, our wives have become friends because they both knew they couldn’t pry us apart . . . you and I have trod together through passages I wouldn’t wish on a pair of geese slotted for a harvest table. Please let’s not have this one be our tide level from here on in, eh?”
He waited for a response, but received only blustering cold, so he shifted, wrapped his aching arms around his knees, and tried again, lubricating the moment with that poet’s touch he kept in not very tight reserve.
“Oh, don’t do this, George,” he went on. “You’d have put a staying hand on me as well, had the score been reversed. Isn’t it better, after all, to err on the side of caution? Be a bit canny on these things?”
“There’s a difference between being canny and being downright tentative,” George chopped. “Everybody out in space is somebody’s son or daughter. Jimmy’s probably dead, and I’ve accepted that, whether you have or not. If the situation was reversed, I’d be advising you, not taking over, even if sometimes I advise with my fists instead of my head. Advise is different from what you did to me. Everything’s different now.”
He stood up in a manner clearly abortive, then loomed down at Robert.
“From now on,” he finished, “I won’t know which decisions you’re going to allow me to make. It’s dangerous, Robert, damn dangerous. And I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Hey, Dad! Got the oars?”
“I got oars, I got sandwiches, I got the rods and reels, you name it, I got it. You, me, Sam, the Upper Peninsula, Hiawatha National Forest, canoeing the Millecoquins and a whole lot of places with really old names! What d’you say we hit the skylanes and get there before noon?”
“I say go, go, go!”
“Get your brother out of his book and let’s fly.”
Go, go.
Warm rubber underneath. Fresh water lapping on the canoe’s side. Dunes backdropping the fishing trawlers. Then home again. Always home again too soon.
“Sometimes I think you’re all better off without me than with me . . . Sometimes I think I can be a better example for the boys at a distance. Sad clowns don’t look very good close up. . . . I know I’m rash and brusk—”
“And temperamental.”
“I just admitted that, didn’t I?”
“And caustic, and unsatisfied, and always on a slow burn—”
“Thanks, Winn, I got a faceful of it tonight. I don’t need to hear any more from you. I always take care of the three of you, don’t I?”
“Yes, you do. You always have the boys’ best interest in mind. I tell everybody that, George. I can’t help it if you take every glance and look from our family and friends and my colleagues as some covert attack. If we didn’t live in such a rural place, you wouldn’t notice. It’s just that almost everybody here is home most of the time—”
“And everybody out in space leaves their family to go do what we do out there! When I’m in space, I feel like I should be home. When I’m home, I feel like I’m dumping my duty on somebody else. How come I don’t feel right in either place?”
“Shhh. The boys’ll hear us.”
It was a hot world with cold sheets to lie on. Acrid smells rolled in the air, confusing the nature of dreams and guiding them in wrong directions. Was he at home? Was he canoeing in Michigan?
Sam? Mom? Dad . . . Dad? Are you there? . . .
“Did you see the look on Jimmy’s face today? I never saw that look before.”
“George, you’re imagining things.”
“Like hell I am.”
“Will you at least keep your voice down?”
“What difference does it make now what he hears? He hates my guts, Winn . . . my own son hates my guts.”
Air clogged in his throat.
He choked.
I don’t! Dad! Dad!
Had he yelled the confession out, or was it still itching in his throat?
Dad, we’re not better off without you—
Now there were more voices, the voices of strangers, and Jimmy knew he wasn’t at home.
“He’s coming around. Back off.”
“What do you drag him around the ship for? Why did you fail to kill him when you had the chance?”
“We need a hostage.”
“We need no hostage! We have shields and in minutes we’ll have engines again. We’ll haul the Fleeters into the Blue Zone and crush their meat.”
The venom of contempt dripping through Jimmy’s veil made him rouse to reality. The veil was unconsciousness again. He recognized it from the last time. He was still alive?
A bestial growl and a dirty body odor told him there was a Klingon bending over him. The other voice, unsolicitous and grim, was the one he’d heard before. Roy John Moss.
He didn’t open his eyes. He just listened to the acrimony in the voices and made his deductions. A plan started to form in his clearing mind.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here to tell me all about dinnertime on Klingon, Dazzo. How many times have we said that, only to have them pop up with some new trick? Oh! I forgot. If you learned from mistakes, you’d still be in the Klingon fleet instead of scraping a living off the Federation’s garbage pail lid, wouldn’t you?”
“You smell, boy.”
“Lick it, Dazzo. You can’t do anything to me and you know it.”
The contempt wasn’t just for the Starfleet people who had foiled the scavengers’ plans. These two had open and obvious contempt for each other. A sour excuse for crewmanship.
Jimmy hadn’t heard anything like this from anyone in Starfleet, so he clung to it as something he might be able to use.
As he breathed and his battered ribs expanded and contracted, he forced himself to deduce where Veronica’s fake hand was pressing against his breastbone, inside the partially open front of his suit. Where were his own arms?
Eyes still closed, keeping his face passive, he twitched his fingers imperceptibly, just to see where they were. Right arm almost straight out to his side, left arm kinked between his side and the Klingon’s boot.
On his left. He made calculations in his mind. Rehearsed his plan a couple times, then—
“Yaaaaaaaa!”
His shout took the two other by complete surprise—and there’s nothing as grotesque-looking as a surprised Klingon.
The Klingon, the one called Dazzo, was a lot more surprised when an Earth teenager vaulted at him from flat on the floor, drove him back against the wall, and clamped an artificial hand at his throat.
With all the force of his legs and body driving against the shocked alien, Jimmy gritted his teeth, thrust his bent elbows forward on either side of the Klingon’s head, pushed his hand into the fake hand’s wrist cowl, and cranked.
The Klingon’s wolfish howl of shock and fury was cut into a gargling choke as Veronica’s fingers popped the skin of his throat and clamped together on the inner side of his esophagus, then clawed it apart.
Air and pink blood sputtered and spat all over Jimmy Kirk and the astounded Roy Moss behind him. He knew Roy was there, but he also knew he had a chance of fighting a human close to his own age, and no hope of fisting down a Klingon in a fair fight. The Klingon simply had to go first, and he would take his chance with the other one.
The plan was pretty good, and Jimmy missed only one element that didn
’t hit him until the splatter of blood hit him too: He hadn’t ever killed anybody. Certainly not with his bare hands.
The blood surprised him almost as much as he had surprised Dazzo, and he thrust off the Klingon’s sinking form. Dazzo scraped down the wall, clutching with frantic ferocity at the artificial claws deep in his throat, but there was no getting the thing loose. He reached toward Roy for help, but the other teenager did nothing but stand a few paces back in nothing but mild disgust, watching the Klingon gag to death.
Gasping, Jimmy also sagged against the opposite wall, and let his best chance for another surprise sink away. His hands, his bare hands . . . Veronica’s wonderful miracle, used to murder . . .
Roy moved a few steps closer, as though fascinated by what was happening to Dazzo. The Klingon lay in the crease between the wall and the deck, gawking up at Roy and reaching for him with one hand, while the other hand clawed uselessly at the thing at his throat. Every time he pulled at Veronica’s hand, his ripped windpipe bowed out and gurgled.
This didn’t go on very long.
Roy enjoyed every second and all but licked his lips when the last rattle came out of the Klingon and Dazzo’s pleading arm fell to the deck.
Finally, Roy backed off a pace.
“Hmm,” he huffed. “Darwin would understand.”
Jimmy collected the bland profundity of it from Roy’s smirk and the fact that these people weren’t willing to put themselves on the line for one another.
Roy watched a few seconds longer, then without taking his eyes off Dazzo’s intriguing remains, he drew an electrical stunner from his belt pack of tools.
Even though Jimmy hadn’t seen one like that before, the shape of the little weapon and its pronged business end had a very obvious purpose.
“This’ll knock you buzzy,” Roy said, “so don’t try anything. You might not have the rocks to go through with what you start, but I do.” He looked up and down at Jimmy’s now-filthy suit, with its burgundy trousers, white shirt, and brown waistcoat, and said, “What do you call that Star-fancy-fleet uniform? Doesn’t look like one.”
“It’s an off-duty uniform,” Jimmy said caddishly. “You wanted me in standard issue, didn’t you? So you could show me off? Tough luck, bub.”
With only a rude glower, Roy snipped, “It doesn’t matter! Now, turn around. Walk in that direction. I’m going to parade your little Federation butt in front of my father.”
TWENTY-SIX
“That ship’s getting closer.”
“No, it ain’t.”
“Like hell it ain’t,” Big Rex Moss insisted. “Look at that screen!”
“You’re lookin’ at magnification,” Caskie told him. “It’s all bollixed up. Visual’s banged up inside.”
“Get Dazzo to fix it, then!”
Jimmy heard the voices and measured them as argument long before he was forced up the ladder at the point of that stunner of Roy’s, through a hole, and onto what was apparently the bridge of this Frankenstein ship. Unlike some of the other parts of the ship, the bridge hadn’t been taken off any type of vessel that he recognized, and it was manned by a mismatched gaggle who had nothing in common but the dirt on their clothes.
Roy Moss shoved up behind him and pushed his way in front.
“Dazzo’s dead,” he said.
The gaggle of subhumans all turned to look at him.
The announcement was taken with accusative glares that made him shrug and add, “Death by stupidity. It was just evolution at work.”
By their expressions, the others let out the little secret that they were pretty sure he was crazy.
An enormous man, enormous in every possible direction, grunted out of the command seat and hoisted around to glare at the chunky boy who had just stepped out from behind Roy.
“Who’n hell is that?”
“Prisoner,” his son crowed. “I found him. Said I would, didn’t I? I can find anything. See what he’s wearing?”
The big man lumbered a step closer and bellowed, “What about it?”
“That’s a Starfleet off-duty suit.”
“Looks like a who-cares suit to me.”
Ignoring the sting, Roy pointed at the Starfleet cutter on the screen. “That ship is getting closer.”
“It’s not getting closer. We’ve got malfunctions.”
“Picture, but bad readings,” a wide-shouldered man on the upper deck grumbled down.
Keeping to one side in a place where the odds were too much against him, Jimmy bit his lower lip to keep his mouth shut, but noticed that the ship did look awfully close.
Could’ve been just enhancement on the flooey, but . . .
The bridge seemed undermanned by the five hands on it, and he assumed they were down on manpower and couldn’t watch everything. The way this tin can was put together and the way it had been torn apart in the past twelve hours, nobody could watch enough to know what was really going on inside the mechanics.
Over to one side, at what might be part of the engineering section—never mind that the whole console was smashed in and stinking with moist gore from some poor dead stooge—Jimmy shifted his eyes to the submonitors and tried to read the ones that were still working.
Picture, but no readings? No numbers? He tried to add up what he knew about graphic readouts to what was going on around him, tried to remember the hours he spent reading the monitors Carlos Florida had given him to watch, and tried to pick out which of these just might be the distance between this ship and the Starfleet cutter.
Could have been either of two, he decided. One of them showed no changes at all. But the other one . . . the numbers were slowly decreasing. A few decimals per minute.
Maybe the cutter was getting closer. How? Had his father and Captain April figured out something new? Found a way to make use of the extra minutes he’d yanked out of nowhere for them?
Maybe his father was trying to get over here!
A father whom he had once thought didn’t care.
Everything he’d done, and his dad was still taking crazy chances, risking everything to get to him.
If it was true, then these people were misreading their own gadgets—or maybe they just didn’t trust one another to know what was going on. He thought he heard that in their voices. If so, was there a way to keep them guessing? Prevent them from trusting one another?
Possible with these others, but Roy Moss was smart enough to notice the statistics sooner or later. Roy was definitely the smartest kid in class.
Not if I keep him distracted. Needle him, irritate him, don’t let him think—
“Well, kill him. Break his neck.”
Jimmy snapped back to the moment as he heard those words, because he knew they were about the wrong “him.”
“You’ll like it,” the huge man said. “It feels great to break a neck with your bare hands.”
“We haven’t won yet,” Roy argued. “Until the Starfleeters are dead, we might need a wild card!”
“The tail might be right, Rex,” the wide-shouldered man said. “Keep the punk around. Hostage.”
“Mind your own party, Munkwhite.” The man called Rex didn’t even turn around to toss the comment back. He glared at Jimmy with the look a hungry bear gives a turkey with a broken leg.
“Fine,” Munkwhite gruffed. “Do what you want.”
He turned back to the battered controls.
Jimmy felt as if he’d been abandoned, even though he would gladly have stuffed a shoe down any face in there, including one that suggested they keep him alive.
The man called Rex, the one apparently in charge, had to use both hands to hoist himself up the step to Jimmy’s level.
“Yeah,” the big man said, “I think I’ll exercise my grip. C’mere, kid. I want to teach my boy something.”
Jimmy backed up, but there was nowhere to back to. The head of this crew was enormous, outweighed him by two hundred pounds easily, and intended to use him to show Roy how to murder.
“No!” Roy st
epped between Jimmy and the approaching mountain.
Rex Moss jolted. “What’re you doing?” he bellowed at his son, jowls shaking.
“It’s too good a chance!” Roy countered. He extended a hand toward Jimmy. “Look at him! He’s a snot-nosed whelp! He’s a cherub! A kid! They’ll try to save a kid! Don’t you get it?”
“If you’re not man enough to do it,” the father said, “then move aside, ponytail.”
Roy did step aside, but only as far as a particular panel with an open mechanical cave under it. He reached down under there without taking his eyes off the big man, and did something with his fingers.
Plink—
“Deflectors just went off again!” Munkwhite wailed. He spun at Roy. “You peach-ass punk! We’re almost into the Blue Zone!”
Then, from the hole that led to engineering, an Orion popped up and hoarsely howled, “What happened to deflectors! Get deflectors back! Blue Zone is right here! We’ll crush!”
“Turn ’em back on, tail,” the man called Rex said. “Don’t you defy us.”
“Not until I get my way,” Roy countered. “I’m not giving him up. He’s my prisoner. He’s mine. I found him. If you kill him, fix the shields yourselves.”
Rex’s small eyes turned catlike, and he leered at his son.
Even from the side Jimmy recognized the kind of anger. He’d seen it broiling under his own father’s skin—but there had always been control.
There was no control here.
“You pick a pretty piss-poor way to try to be a man,” Rex rumbled. “I’m not gonna forget this.”
Roy twitched, but didn’t back down.
“We’re getting awful damn close to that Zone,” Munkwhite ground out. Again he glared at Rex. “He’s your kid . . . you do something about him!”
Apparently affected by the hint that just maybe some of this was his fault, Rex forced himself to back off a step. But he never took his eyes off his son.
“Keep your pet hamster if you want to,” the huge man said, “but you mind him and keep control of him. Now, turn your shields back the hell on.”
Jimmy caught Roy’s eyes at the last second as the tall young man stooped enough to put his hand under again, and did his magic.