Fire On High (25 page)

Are you happy that you know, now, Robin? Are you happy?"

"Mother," Robin was shaking her head. "Mother, look, I . . . I know what you said about Dad . . . and how he didn't believe . . . but I . . . This is so much to try and handle. This is . . . It's . . ."

"Preposterous?"

"Yes."

"Absurd?"

"Completely. I think . . . I think maybe you should see someone. There are people who can help you."

"Would you like to see something?" she asked.

"Uhm . . . sure. If you want me to."

"All right. I'm going to show you a trick."

She turned around away from Lefler's view, and there was a sound like a snap. When Morgan turned back, she was holding up a knife. The blade, three inches long but extremely sharp, glinted in the light.

"Mother, what—"

And very quickly, very efficiently, in one smooth move, Morgan held out her right wrist and drew the knife down it. She slid it lengthwise down her forearm, opening up the vein, and blood began to well out, thick and red.

"Oh my God!"
shrieked Lefler. Immediately she sent an emergency call to sickbay.

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"Don't worry," Morgan said calmly. "I've done it before."

"Mom, oh my God, Mom!" Lefler cried out as she leaped toward her mother, clasping her hands frantically around the fountaining forearm. She tried to apply pressure, to stop the bleeding, but the blood was leaking out between her fingers. "Mom, how could you? How could you?!"

"About five seconds," Morgan said calmly.

"Four . . . three . . . two , . . one . . . let go. You can let go."

"I can't let go! You'll bleed to death! You'll—"

With an impatient noise, Morgan pushed her daughter aside. She called to the guard, who was still outside as he awaited backup from the sickbay medics. "Do you have a towel on you? A cloth?"

"A . . . a cloth?"

"Never mind," she said, utterly calm. She lifted up the cushion that they were sitting on and used it to wipe away the blood. "Just send for a new one of these, okay? This stuff stains."

"Where's the medical team!?"
Lefler fairly shouted.

"Where the hell is the—?"

And then Morgan extended her arm, practically under Lefler's nose. Robin looked down , . . and couldn't believe what she was seeing.

The blood flow had completely stopped. Where there had been a vicious cut only moments ago, there was now simply a thin pink line standing out against the tan of her skin. And even that was already disappearing. Lefler looked in stupefaction as the pink skin of the freshly healed wound changed color and matched the tan of the rest of her arm.

At that moment the medical team came charging
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up. They saw the blood collected on the floor and staining the mattress, and they looked around in confusion to find the person who was apparently bleeding in such copious quantities.

"Thank you for coming by, gentlemen," Morgan said calmly, "but I'm afraid it was a bit of a false alarm. I was just showing my daughter here a magic trick—a rather sanguinary one, I'm afraid—and the dear guard here overreacted to what he was seeing.

I'm terribly sorry to have wasted your time. Although if you gentlemen would be so kind as to send someone to clean that up"—and she pointed at the blood—"I would be most obliged. Robin," she said, taking Robin by the shoulders, "you look somewhat shaken.

Perhaps you'd best go on about your business now.

Don't you think that would be wise?"

"Yes," Robin said, clearly still in shock. "Yes, that would be . . . be wise."

The guard shut down the forcefield long enough for Lefler to leave and for a cleaning crew to come in and attend to the mess on the floor. And Lefler put as much distance between herself and the brig that was holding her mother as she possibly could. She paused only briefly to glance over her shoulder, and caught a glimpse of her mother, looking rather serene in her cell as if, all of a sudden, she didn't have a care in the world.

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XIII.

THEY'RE HERE.
. . . THEY'RE HERE. . . .

Her lover cries the warning to her, and she strokes it for the confrontation that is to come.

"There's no one here."

Calhoun rose from the command chair and walked over to Zak Kebron's tactical station as the world of Ahmista turned beneath them. "What do you mean?"

"I mean preliminary sensor sweeps indicate no humanoid life-forms."

"None?" Calhoun asked incredulously. He turned to Soleta, who was already at work at her science station. "Soleta?"

"Scanning. At this point, confirming Mr. Kebron's analysis. Although the ecosystem is capable of sup-215

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porting life, and there appears to be some minimal animal life, there are no humanoid organisms."

"It's the wrong planet," Shelby suggested.

"But it's right where Si Cwan said it was," McHenry pointed out from the conn.

"Could there have been some sort of . . . of war?

They wiped each other out?" Calhoun said.

"There are no traces of lingering radiation, no burned areas, no pollutants from toxins or germ warfare; none of the usual indicators that a war sufficient for the annihilation of all life upon a world has occurred," said Soleta. "Furthermore, Si Cwan described the populace of this world as being fairly low on the technical scale. They very likely would not possess the type of armament necessary to do away with every man, woman, and child on the planet."

"Well,
grozit,
Lieutenant, where are they, then?"

"Unknown at this time, sir."

"Perhaps they're all hiding somewhere and waiting to pop out so they can say 'Surprise,' " Calhoun said humorlessly. "Soleta, I want you to scan every square foot of that planet if necessary. If there's so much as a campfire burning, I want to know about it. Bridge to Si Cwan."

"Si Cwan here," came back the ambassador's voice quickly.

"Mr. Cwan, kindly join us on the bridge. There's a question or two that could use your attention. Calhoun out." Without missing a beat, he turned to Kebron and said, "Have security escort Morgan Primus up here as well."

Robin Lefler turned at her position at Ops. "My mother?" she asked.

"Unless there's another Morgan Primus on the
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ship, Lieutenant, yes. Why, is that a problem for you?"

"No," Robin said quickly, suddenly becoming incredibly engrossed in her instruments. "No, that's no problem for me at all."

Moments later, both Si Cwan and Morgan had emerged from the turbolift onto the bridge. Calhoun noticed that Robin was carefully endeavoring not to meet her mother's gaze. Something had happened between the two of them, something since the time that Robin had appeared to be making inroads with her mother. He knew that there had been some sort of odd incident in the brig. The report he had received had been extremely confused and confusing: An attempted suicide, except that, although there was blood everywhere, there was no sign of any sort of wound on either Lefler or Morgan, who had been the only occupants of the cell at the time. It made absolutely no sense at all. It was just one of a number of matters that needed addressing.

"We have a bit of a curiosity," Calhoun said, circling them. "You, Morgan, told us that the trail of the Prometheans indicated that this world was the place where you might be able to connect with them. I notice that you never told us how, precisely, you knew this. Would you be so kind as to enlighten us now?"

"Comments we heard in our investigations. Writ-ings buried in assorted rare texts. A long process that—" Then she saw the way he was looking at her, and for the first time since he'd met her, Morgan actually seemd less than certain of herself. "Ultimately," she admitted, "what it came down to is that Tarella and I . . . we just . , . knew."

"You just knew."

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"Yes."

"That's the best you can do. You just knew."

"It's not impossible, Captain," Soleta commented, never taking her eyes away from her scanner. "Remember my experience with the similar disk. There may be some sort of connection to a greater whole."

"You're saying they're like the Borg, but little disks?" Calhoun said skeptically.

"Well, that's certainly less threatening in any event," said Shelby.

"Ambassador," Calhoun turned to face Si Cwan,

"do you have an estimate as to the number of people in residence on Ahmista?"

"I couldn't say for sure, no," Si Cwan replied.

"Five . . . maybe six billion, I suppose."

"Would you like to know how many there are now?"

"One."

The reply came from Soleta, which naturally captured the immediate attention of everyone else on the bridge. Calhoun crossed quickly to her station. "You found someone?"

"Took a while longer since the population was so sparse—well, sparse being a generous term, I suppose. I have managed to detect a single humanoid life-form down there."

"A single one?" Si Cwan asked, sounding appalled.

"That's . . . that's absurd! Where is the rest of the population?"

"That," Calhoun said, "is what we're going to try and find out. Commander," he turned to Shelby, "I want an away team composed of yourself, Si Cwan, Lieutenant Soleta, and Mr. Kebron to head down
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there and see just who or what it is we're dealing with.

I want everyone armed on this one, because we have no idea what it is you'll be facing."

"Even me?" asked Si Cwan.

Calhoun paused only a moment, and then he nodded. "Even you." He heard a dissatsified growl from behind him indicating that Zak Kebron was register-ing a complaint about his captain's decision. He judiciously chose to ignore it.

"What about me, Captain?" Morgan asked.

"What about you?"

"I brought us to this planet," she said. "If anyone is entitled to go down there and see exactly what's going on, it should be me."

"Perhaps in the way you see matters, yes, but that's not the way I see it," replied Calhoun. "I'm afraid I don't have quite enough confidence in you, Morgan, to send you down there while my people have to be watching their backs. For ail I know, they may have to watch their backs where you're concerned as well."

"What about the old saying, Captain? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

"I'm not altogether sure we're enemies, Morgan.

Still, you raise a valid point. I will keep you here, where I can keep an eye on you."

"That's not what I meant."

"Yes, I know, but it's what we're going to do anyway." He nodded to Shelby. "You have your orders."

The named away team headed for the turbolift and, as they left, Morgan calmly walked to Shelby's chair and, with utter confidence, sat in it. Calhoun eyed her coolly. "I did not say you could sit there," he said.

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They stared at each other for a moment.

"Would you care to sit there?" he asked.

"I'd be honored. Thank you for the consideration."

"You're welcome," he replied as he returned to his command chair. And he was unable to help but notice how completely comfortable Morgan looked in the position of second in command.

Burgoyne had never felt quite as frustrated as s/he did at that particular moment.

S/he had been going over file after file, experiment-ing with dozens of scenarios using the computer to plot out the likely outcome of each one. And not only was s/he unable to find any direct reference to having such a creature firmly ensconced in one's warp core, but every single plan s/he designed for the purpose of getting the damn thing out of the engine ended in there being a likelihood that the ship would wind up being destroyed. It wasn't a consistent likelihood.

Sometimes it was as high as ninety-nine percent, but other times it was as low as eighty-three percent.

Somehow, though, s/he didn't think that even the low-end odds were going to go over too well.

S/he looked at the warp core and could see the thing pulsing slowly within the clear tube of the core. In what could only be termed a desperate measure, s/he stared at it with a very, very angry glare in hope that Sparky would sense the overt hostility and flee in terror.

Sparky did not appear to notice.

"Burgoyne."

Selar walked up to hir, looking as efficient and removed as ever. "Doctor," Burgoyne said neutrally.

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"I thought you might wish to know. I have taken several tests and I am most definitely pregnant. I felt it was not wise to rely solely on my inner instinct for such matters."

"Well, that's . . . that's great, Selar. I'm very happy for you."

"I am . . ." She took a deep breath as if plunging into something. "I am ... happy for us."

It took a moment for the comment to sink in on Burgoyne, since s/he was still rather distracted by Sparky. But slowly it penetrated, and Burgoyne turned and looked at her with clear surprise on hir face. "I'm not sure which I find more surprising, to be honest," noted Burgoyne. "The part about being happy, or the part about us. I was unaware that there was an 'us.' "