Captain's Peril

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Captain's Peril Page 12

by William Shatner


  “Two acts of sabotage, you mean?”

  Picard nodded.

  “I think there were three,” Kirk said.

  Picard apparently hadn’t been expecting that. He counted them out. “The energy cell that killed Nilan. The surge that burned out this communications gear. And…?”

  “The surge that destroyed the rest of the camp’s power systems.”

  Picard’s brow furrowed. “Didn’t the power system fail when Nilan was killed?”

  “If it did, I don’t see how,” Kirk said. “Presuming the cell-charger pulled enough transtator current to kill Nilan, then there couldn’t have been enough current left over to burn out the rest of the grid.”

  Picard waved a hand at the fused circuitry in the open console. “But there was enough current to burn out this equipment.”

  “Exactly,” Kirk said. “Which makes it even more unlikely that a single surge was responsible for Nilan, the communications gear, and the power grid. There’s just not enough current to go around at the same time.”

  Kirk wiped sweat from his forehead. Though the fabric bubble tent shielded them from the sun, the air within it was unmoving. The effect was to magnify the heat.

  He watched Picard think over the possibilities, and, evidently, arrive at another, given the odd look of embarrassment on his face.

  Kirk spared him the effort. “And before you ask, yes, I know enough about this kind of equipment to be confident about my conclusions.” Transtators and subspace radios had been around for a long time; the theory behind their operation hadn’t changed. And to tell the truth, Kirk thought, there wasn’t a great deal of technological difference between the state-of-the-art Starfleet gear he was used to, and these Bajoran and Cardassian antiques.

  Picard shrugged. “Just wondering. I know how you feel about technology these days.”

  “I’m not a complete Luddite, Jean-Luc. Technology has its uses. I just prefer that I remain its master.”

  Picard gave him a sly smile. “I would enjoy hearing you explore that philosophy with Data.”

  “Right now—so would I.” Kirk picked up a small, white cloth from the workbench and wiped the soot from his hands. “I’ve seen enough here. We should get our driver to show us the body.”

  Picard sighed. “No way to attempt any sort of communications?”

  “Not unless there’s an emergency distress beacon packed in with all those Federation emergency supplies. And I suppose we could always check out the boats and the dive platform. They might have some kind of communicator. Even an underwater system we could modify.”

  “If they did,” Picard observed, “I’m certain one of the archaeologists would have used it immediately after Professor Nilan was killed.”

  Kirk tossed the cloth, now streaked with black, back to the workbench. “So either there aren’t any other communicators…”

  “…or the killer made sure to sabotage them as well.”

  Kirk pushed aside the bubble tent’s flap entrance, stopped to catch the fleeting breeze the movement caused. “Does that mean you’re convinced there is a killer?”

  “Three…possibly four acts of sabotage. Pardon the expression, but it does seem to be the logical conclusion.”

  Kirk was pleased Picard had reached the same conclusion he had. “Then let’s go check the victim’s body.”

  He ducked out through the tent’s entrance, immediately squinting in the harsh light of the afternoon sun. Picard followed him a moment later.

  “Still no sign of anyone?” Picard asked.

  Kirk was as troubled as Picard by the continued and inexplicable absence of the archaeologists. He scanned the camp and noted the large, open-air cooking center set up near a long wooden table shaded by a faded orange awning. At least, the braziers and scattered cooking utensils were items common to a cooking center, but there was no food cooking, nor any signs of meals under preparation. “Not even the cook,” Kirk said thoughtfully. “Or Corrin Tal.”

  “What about over there?” Picard was referring to the bubble tent closest to the cooking center.

  Kirk saw what he meant. Something appeared to be striking the interior wall of the tent. The movement was erratic, but was pushing the faded fabric outward in the same two places, about a meter above the sand. “A dog wagging its tail?” Kirk might not know what else would be causing the odd, randomly timed impacts, but he was certain it was something alive.

  Picard started for the tent, cautiously. “The indigenous dogs of Bajor aren’t domesticated.”

  “Then by all means,” Kirk said, “you go first.”

  Picard drew aside the tent flap. Both captains were prepared for anything—including a wolf—to charge them.

  But the only thing that happened was that whatever was hitting the tent wall, stopped.

  Kirk bent down and stepped through the opening. “Hello? Corrin?…Lara?”

  Then, even in the relative darkness of the tent’s interior where everything was suffused with the pale-orange light of daylight filtered through the sun-bleached fabric, he immediately saw the culprit. Seconds later, so did Picard.

  Seven years old, Kirk guessed, with a dirty smudge under a small nose stepped with Bajoran ridges. Short dark hair, raggedly cut. A simple shift of coarse brown fabric. The same style as that worn by the camp’s cook.

  “Good afternoon,” Kirk said gravely. “Dr. Rowhn I’deer?”

  The young girl was lying on her stomach on a narrow cot, a dented children’s padd before her, with her bare feet positioned perfectly for kicking the tent wall. She didn’t move when Kirk spoke to her.

  “No,” she said, and her tone was not friendly.

  Kirk crouched down beside the girl’s cot. “You’re sure?”

  The girl’s sidelong glance implied strong distrust of her questioner’s sanity. “Well, what is your name?” Kirk asked. “My name is Jim. And my friend’s name is Jean-Luc.”

  The girl looked up at Picard, then back to Kirk, her gaze fixed on his nose.

  “Oh, right,” Kirk said, stroking the smooth bridge of his nose. “We’re from another planet. Where everyone looks like we do. Funny, huh?”

  The girl stared at him, as if nothing but a catastrophe could explain such a deformity.

  She drew back, startled, as Kirk reached past her to slide her children’s padd around so he could access its encyclopedic functions. “I bet we can find a lot of different people from all sorts of worlds in here. With lots of different noses.” But when he saw the picture the padd displayed, he didn’t erase it. Instead, he held it up for Picard to see.

  “The cook,” Picard said.

  Kirk nodded. But there were three people in the picture. One was Lara, the woman they had seen watching them furtively from between the bubble tents. She looked younger in the image, transformed by her infectious smile. It was easy to see the reason for that smile, as well. The camp cook was holding up this same child, perhaps four years of age, Kirk judged, when the image was recorded. The little girl’s hair was tied in a queue like the woman’s. Both their faces were clean. Happy. And beside what were presumably mother and daughter, a young Bajoran male in a military uniform, proudly beaming. His dark eyes were the same as—

  Kirk pointed to the man in the uniform. “Is this your father?”

  The girl nodded and rolled over to sit up, to take the padd from Kirk.

  “Is he here with you?” Kirk asked.

  The girl shook her head as she hugged the padd close to her chest, and that was all Kirk needed to know the rest of the story.

  “Where is he?” Picard asked the girl, before Kirk could stop him. His friend most certainly did not mean to cause the child distress, but he was no expert in reading children’s moods.

  “With the Prophets,” the girl said, as Kirk knew she would. The evenness of her voice as she spoke of her father’s fate telling him that her faith was strong. Or, at least, her mother’s was.

  “How about your mother?” Kirk asked, with a warning glance to
let Picard know he would take it from here. “I think I might have seen her earlier, when my friend and I arrived.”

  The young girl was silent.

  Kirk tried again. “Can you tell us where all the grown-ups have gone?”

  The girl gave a small cough, covering her mouth as if she’d been taught to. But she did not answer him.

  “We only want to talk to your mother,” Kirk asked. “We aren’t here to harm anyone. We’re friends.”

  The girl chewed her lip as if trying to make up her mind about their sincerity. “Are you Kehdassian?”

  Kirk blinked. “You mean, ‘Cardassian?’”

  The girl nodded, her dark eyes serious.

  “No, no, no,” Kirk said. “My friend and I are from a planet called Earth. We’re Earthlings.”

  “Or Terrans,” Picard added. “Have you heard of Terrans?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “Or…Earthers?” Picard tried again.

  Suddenly Kirk changed course, scolding himself for missing something so obvious that easily explained the girl’s reluctance to talk to them. “Are you supposed to talk to strangers?”

  The girl shook her head emphatically.

  “And we’re strangers, aren’t we?” Kirk said.

  Just as emphatically, the girl nodded yes, then shook as she was caught by another short, harsh cough.

  “We should probably just keep looking,” Kirk said to Picard.

  But Picard seemed reluctant to leave. “Jim, why would the adults just…leave a child here? And an unwell one, too?”

  The girl coughed again as she studied them, still without speaking.

  Picard had a point, Kirk thought. Wherever the adults of the camp had gone, this child had been left behind, either because she was sick, or because she was still recuperating from some ailment obviously deemed inconsequential enough to leave her alone. Though Kirk did not approve of their having left one so young behind, he had to admit the girl did not seem to feel she had been abandoned. To the contrary, she had seemed perfectly content—not distressed—when he and Picard encountered her.

  “She’s probably just getting over something minor. You know how kids are,” Kirk said to Picard.

  “Actually…no. I don’t.”

  Kirk patted Picard on the shoulder. “There’s plenty of time yet. Let’s head—”

  The girl started to cough again and this time didn’t stop.

  For an instant, Kirk froze as he saw the girl twist back onto her cot, arms rigid, hands clenched, chest heaving as she wheezed for breath. For one heartstopping instant, all he could see was his own son, Joseph, in trouble.

  Then Kirk’s paralysis shattered as he burst into action. “Water!” he said.

  He dropped to his knees and reached out to the girl, pulling her upright to lean forward in his arms, so her trachea would stay clear of whatever she was trying to expel from her lungs.

  He heard Picard tear the bubble tent’s furnishings apart, then exclaim as he found a canteen. As his friend rushed to his side, he audibly sniffed the canteen’s contents before thrusting it into Kirk’s hand. “Water. But maybe there’s some medicine…”

  While Picard quickly returned to his search, Kirk placed the canteen against the girl’s lips, trying with difficulty to tilt her head back. The girl’s small rigid body was in the full throes of convulsion.

  Kirk had seen death many times in his life among the stars. He had held dying crewmen, dying friends, and on the dark streets of old New York…Edith…the woman he had once loved above all. And each time he had functioned through his grief. Each time some part of him was still able to review the situation, make plans, call on the best of his Starfleet training.

  But a dying child? What part of anyone could stay removed? In each child were the seeds of an unknown future, and Kirk’s own life was nothing if it was not to protect and enable all possible futures.

  Water trickled down the girl’s pale lips. Then her eyes rolled back.

  In that terrible, timeless, moment, Kirk understood he was what every parent feared most of all—helpless.

  “Medicine!” Picard suddenly cried out. He brandished an orange ceramic cylinder, no larger than an old universal translator. It was prominently marked with the open hand of the Bajoran Guild of Healers.

  As Picard twisted the cap on the cylinder, liquid sloshed within. He held the cylinder high, studying it intently.

  “Jean-Luc?” Kirk said, not understanding the delay.

  Picard looked worried, cautious. “It’s probably medicine, but how do we know it’s hers?”

  A spasm threw the girl back against Kirk’s chest, her small warm body solid, shuddering. He held her closer, safer. But he had no answer for Picard. There was no time for methodical investigation. “Are there ingredients listed? Instructions?”

  Picard’s tense voice betrayed frustration. “The label’s been removed.” Quickly he lifted off the cap, sniffed the contents, winced. “Jim…it’s seawater…”

  Kirk knew that couldn’t be right. He struggled to hold the gasping girl upright, to help her fight for breath. “You mean, it smells like seawater.”

  Picard jabbed his finger into the cylinder, tasted the liquid on it. “High salt content…coppery, like Vulcan seas. But the smell, Jim…this is Bajoran seawater. I’m sure of it.”

  The girl arched for an awful instant, then went limp in Kirk’s arms.

  If only I could call for McCoy, Kirk thought, desperate to help the child. But that’s impossible. He would have to make his own medical decision.

  “Give it to her.”

  “Jim…” Picard hesitated. “It’s not medicine.”

  Kirk heard his own voice thick with emotion, determination. “It’s in a healer’s cylinder. And if it is just seawater—it won’t harm her.”

  “But you can’t know that.”

  Kirk knew he could not lose this argument. “No parent would leave dangerous medicines around a child without safeguards. A thumbprint cap. A sealed medicine chest. Her mother would protect her child.”

  The girl was barely breathing now. Her fight coming to an end.

  Kirk held out his hand for the cylinder, this time demanding, not asking. “Jean-Luc—worst guess, that liquid won’t be harmful. Best guess, it might help.”

  Picard’s voice conveyed his indecision and his anguish. “Guessing isn’t good enough.”

  The girl suddenly convulsed again, startling Kirk with the ferocity of her spasm. Her head smashed against his face, making him gasp. He tasted blood where a tooth had cut his inner cheek.

  “We have no choice,” Kirk shouted. “We have to do something!”

  “No!” Picard said angrily. “We have to do the right thing, and we don’t know what that is!”

  The time for debate had ended. Kirk grabbed the cylinder from Picard.

  “Jim—no!”

  Kirk maneuvered the child into position. He brought the cylinder to her lips. He saw blood there, but whether it was from her lungs or because she had bitten her lip or her tongue as well, he had no idea.

  “C’mon, sweetheart…” he whispered to the child. “Is this what your mother gives you…?”

  “Nooo!”

  The high-pitched cry startled Kirk.

  He looked up to see the camp’s Bajoran cook charge at him from the tent’s entrance. She tore the cylinder from Kirk’s hand and pulled her daughter close to her.

  “She’s sick. I shouldn’t have left her.”

  “We were trying to help,” Kirk said, but the woman wasn’t listening. She was shaking the orange cylinder vigorously.

  Kirk and Picard watched as the woman emptied the cylinder into the palm of her hand. Then, with a clear liquid streaming from her fingertips, she carefully anointed her daughter’s earlobes, before tracing a line from the center of the child’s forehead down the delicate ridges of her nose.

  Kirk exchanged a look of commiseration with Picard. They both had been right, they both had been wrong. The cont
ents of the cylinder were medicinal and for the child, but they were not to be taken internally.

  “Will she be all right?” Kirk asked.

  “For now,” she said. The woman had given them all the answers they had a right to ask of her. Kirk understood that neither he, nor Picard, were needed or wanted here.

  “Is there anything we can do?” Picard asked.

  “Just leave,” the woman said.

  Kirk took Picard’s arm to direct him away, but then Picard turned back.

  “Could you tell us where everyone else has gone?”

  “To the burial,” the woman answered, her daughter held close, the child’s thin arms and legs slack against her.

  “The burial?” Picard repeated.

  Kirk was one step ahead of him. “Professor Nilan.”

  The woman nodded.

  There would be no body to examine.

  Picard stepped from the tent and took a breath to steady himself, remembering again how Anij had taught him to capture eternity in a moment. He needed to find an oasis of peace, because for a different moment in the tent, he had felt himself come perilously close to striking Kirk. It had been another instance of Kirk’s putting too high a priority on taking action, instead of taking stock.

  “Something’s not right,” Kirk said.

  Picard thought it unlikely that Kirk was referring to his actions in the tent. “You mean, burying the murder victim.”

  “Maybe our driver was the only one who thought what happened to the professor was a murder.”

  Picard knew that in the absence of other evidence, that had to be a possibility. “That could explain why Corrin Tal was out driving in the desert by himself. Everyone else accepted the professor’s death as an accident and went to bury him. Convinced it was murder, Corrin took it upon himself to be the lone man looking for justice.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Kirk agreed.

  Of course it does, Picard thought, but refrained from saying so. When would the idea of one man taking action not make sense to you?

  “Except for all that evidence of sabotage we found,” Kirk continued.

  Picard looked around the camp, still deserted. “Maybe our expectations led us to the wrong conclusions,” he said.

 

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