Текст книги "Taking Wing "

Автор книги: Andy Mangels

Соавторы: Michael Martin
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Finished with him after only a few days, the military dumped him in Vikr’l, where he appeared to have been forgotten. He often wondered why they hadn’t killed him, and sometimes wished he had the courage to end his own life. But he had learned many things in the prison, not the least of which was the burning desire to pull his life back from the brink yet again, as he had done so many times before during so many harrowing battles against the Jem’Hadar.

Reman legend was replete with tales of Tenakruvek, a great warrior who had returned from the brink of death five times, only to grow stronger each time. He eventually ascended to the Reman afterlife, to become a part of the pantheon worshipped by those few Remans who still prayed to the harsh deities responsible for placing them on their barren world of ever-day and ever-night.

Although he knew that many would see it as blasphemous, Mekrikuk now sometimes fancied himself a modern successor to Tenakruvek. After all, he had survived the mines, the war against the Dominion, and now torture and imprisonment. “Only two more deaths left,” he often said to himself whenever he felt his spirits sinking too far.

Whether because of his large size or his heavily scarred body, the others in the cellmaze mostly left Mekrikuk alone. Some newcomers had offered themselves to him in exchange for protection; twice he had taken the offer, less from any carnal desire than because it was an expected trade, merely the way of the world. The two under his protection hadn’t been abused by any other inmates, and they worked to keep themselves as fit as Mekrikuk did. They also kept their ears open for interesting news or opportunities.

Especially opportunities to escape.

They were away now, as the guards brought another new prisoner down the hall, using their dazzling handtorches to light their way and blind any Remans who got too close. Many of the others pressed forward to the bars of their cells, but the smarter ones stayed back. The chance to see the newcomer would come soon enough, and those nearest the bars were often sprayed with caustic xecinin addition to having their light-sensitive eyes dazzled by the handtorches; Mekrikuk found it odd, but he knew that some of them had actually come to enjoy the burning and stinging sensation of the xecin,if not the blinding lights.

As expected, the guards ordered everyone back from the bars, then sprayed the chemical at any who were slow to comply. They dumped a slight, rag-clad body in the center of the cell block, then turned to leave. After the outer cell-block doors had clanged shut behind the retreating guards, the individual cell doors opened automatically, allowing the other prisoners to inspect the new arrival.

Mekrikuk looked over at the body as the others began to move in closer. He saw immediately that this was not another Reman. It was a dark-skinned Romulan. Despite the kindness Varyet and Delnek had shown him, the sight of the bedraggled Romulan stirred something very close to hatred within Mekrikuk, as he was sure it did with all the other Remans in the cell block.

He remembered gentle Varyet, and felt shame.

What has this man done to deserve this?Mekrikuk reached out with his mind, concentrating hard to read the man. His telepathic talents were limited, but he knew that the mind of a sickly or infirm person was often easier to “touch” than that of someone in full health.

Moving into the Romulan’s mind, he saw a Romulan woman and a family arrayed around her, but they were trapped behind a smoky wall. On the wall was a swooping symbol that Mekrikuk recognized as that of the Federation’s Starfleet Command.

Startlement. These aren’t Romulans. They’reVulcans .

He saw a dark-skinned Vulcan man sitting on the floor, his legs crossed, his crisp black-and-gray uniform clean and pressed. A small construct of sticks sat in front of him, intricate and fragile.

Mekrikuk looked at the pastel-hued walls that surrounded the dreamscape Vulcan, and saw images there of starships, of a group of officers in red tunics, another ragtag group of men and women led by a man whose face was tattooed, and a third group, dressed in uniforms identical to the one worn by the Vulcan who was seated on the floor.

The Vulcan looked up at him, and held up one of the sticks he had stacked before him. “Youcan help me complete my mission,” he said.

“Your mission is to complete this device?” Mekrikuk asked.

“No,” the man said simply. “My mission is to help those who wish to reconnect the Romulan Empire with its progenitors. It is not unlike the construction of the kal-toh.”

Suddenly, the walls seemed to come alive, the images and people displayed there disappearing. Mekrikuk saw that the walls were now covered with beetles, their chitinous mandibles and carapaces beating in an insistent rhythm. As the carpet of insects moved inexorably toward the Vulcan, he looked at Mekrikuk and said, “To help me would be logical, Tenakruvek.”

Mekrikuk shook himself out of his telepathic trance, the insect-covered walls dissolving into the harsher reality of the cellmaze. He saw the crowd leaning in toward the new Romulan, grasping and pulling, stealing from and bruising the unconscious man further. He was sure to be dead within moments.

“H’ta fvau, riud ihir taortuu u’ irrhae alhu kuhaos’ellaer tivh temarr!”Mekrikuk’s voice thundered through the cellspace, and his outburst had the desired effect. The prisoners, having just been duly warned that the next person to touch the new prisoner would be eaten for dinner that night, backed away, some fearfully, some sullenly, some respectfully.

Mekrikuk approached and knelt beside the far-too-warm man who lay on the stone before him. He turned the man’s bruised, battered head and felt his weak, thready pulse. Even though the man looked like a Romulan, he could see that this was the very same Vulcan he had seen in his mind-link.

The man whom he knew was not named Rukath, but Tuvok.

“I will help you,” Mekrikuk said, hoping that Varyet was watching him from the Halls of Erebus.

Chapter Ten

U.S.S. TITAN

“This isn’t exactly what I signed up for,” Kent Norellis said, watching the streams of green bubbles that rose like inverted meteor showers inside his glass.

Cadet Zurin Dakal looked up from his tray of sushi—an obsession he had acquired during his freshman year at Starfleet Academy—and was relieved to see that Norellis, seated at right angles to Dakal on the left, had apparently addressed the comment to no one at the table in particular. Dakal had feared that he personally would be expected to respond to the ensign’s newest complaint, and that was one challenge he was not yet ready to undertake.

All things considered, Dakal knew he should have felt honored to be here. Not only did he have the distinction of being the first Cardassian in Starfleet, not only was his Academy class the first to begin in the aftermath of the Dominion War, not only was he one of only four fourth-year Starfleet cadets privileged to fulfill his required field studies on a new starship at the start of its mission, but now he also seemed to have been unofficially adopted by what was quickly emerging as a tightly-knit and bewilderingly eclectic group of science officers and non-commissioned specialists.

But while he had accepted the group’s invitation to join them for dinner at the Blue Table—the crew’s nickname for the informal weekly gathering of members from the science department in the mess hall, a custom which had started a month prior, after the first of them had come aboard at Utopia—he felt guarded and wary among aliens his kind had so recently conspired to dominate. Dakal was far more comfortable sitting quietly and observing the group dynamics among the gathered scientists than he was participating in their discussions. It was only prudent, he believed, to approach this new experience as he had every other since leaving Lejonis—with caution.

“Kent, what are you going on about?” asked Lieutenant Pazlar, who was seated opposite Norellis, on Dakal’s right. A Martian aquifer fizz—naturally carbonated water drawn directly from the subsurface permafrost outside Utopia Planitia—and a Tarkovian broadleaf salad sat on the table before her.

“Romulus,” Norellis said. “It’s just not the kind of mission I expected this ship to go on, much less on its maiden voyage. And it certainly isn’t what I had in mind when I chose my scientific specialties at the Academy.”

Next to Norellis, Lieutenant Eviku, one of the ship’s xenobiologists, turned his hairless, swept-back head toward him. “Not this again,” the Arkenite said. “I thought we agreed you wouldn’t use these dinners as a venue for your complaints?” Eviku’s domed forehead dipped toward Norellis with a slight air of menace.

Norellis held up his hands. “Hey, I’m not complaining. I’m just feeling a little…impatient, is all. After all the emphasis the captain put into outfitting and crewing this ship for exploration, sending us to Romulus feels, I dunno, like a slap in the face. It’s like we’re all on hold until this political nonsense is over.”

“For what it’s worth, Kent, I don’t completely disagree,” Pazlar said. “Don’t get me wrong. Since I joined Starfleet, I’ve had to deal on the fly with everything from a major war to a full-blown, planetary-scale disaster. So I’ll cope with whatever weirdness Titan’s missions throw at us with only minimal griping. All the same, I’d rather be charting unexplored solar systems and new stellar phenomena than settling power-sharing treaties.”

“I second that,”Dr. Cethente said, situated next to Pazlar. Cethente’s simulated voice, translated from the bioelectric impulses that constituted its normal mode of communication, emerged from the combadge belted around the center of its unusual body with an undertone of wind chimes.

The only nonhumanoid scientist present at the Blue Table, astrophysicist Se’al Cethente Qas was also the one that Dakal found the most disquieting—though not for the reasons some of the crew seemed to be reacting to Dr. Ree or the other nonhumanoids aboard Titan,none of whom bothered Dakal at all. What troubled him was the fact that Dr. Cethente looked suspiciously like a lamp that had once belonged to Dakal’s paternal grandmother back on Prime. Cethente was a Syrath, whose exoskeletal body had the same fluted quality that was prevalent in Cardassian design. The astrophysicist was shaped, in fact, a great deal like a three-dimensional sculpture of the symbol of the Union: a high dome on top, tapering downward almost to a point before bottoming out in a diamond formation that Dakal knew was the Syrath secondary sense cluster. Like the primary cluster that was the dome, the diamond was dotted with bioluminescent bulges, glowing with the telltale green light of its senses at work, soaking up information about its environment omnidirectionally. Four slender, intricately jointed arachnid legs extended in four directions from the body’s narrowest point, giving Cethente a solid footing on the deck, while an equal number of tentacles emerged at need from equidistant apertures just under the dome.

In repose, and with its tentacles retracted, Cethente seemed quite the inanimate object. But to Dakal, the doctor looked so much like the lamp in his grandmother’s dwelling—and which had so consistently unnerved him as a child—that after first being introduced to it, Dakal briefly suspected the Federation of having sent a Syrath operative to spy on his grandmother.

Norellis took a sip of his bubbly drink—some form of synthale, Dakal suspected—and turned to the Bajoran who sat quietly at the head of the table, directly opposite Dakal. “You’ve been conspicuously silent on this subject, Commander.”

Without looking up from his salad, Jaza smiled and said, “I’m still collecting data.”

“Surely you have some opinion,” the ensign said.

Unhurriedly, Jaza set down his fork, took a sip from his glass of water, and looked thoughtfully at Norellis. “Someone once observed that ‘Worlds turn by politics as surely as they do by gravity.’ ”

Dakal’s chopsticks, holding a makiroll of dark red Ahi, stopped halfway to his mouth. He could feel his neck ridges flushing. The Bajoran wasn’t looking at him, but Dakal refused to believe his choice of words had been accidental.

Norellis’s brow furrowed as he tried to place the quote. “Who said that?”

Jaza had already recovered his fork and returned his attention to his salad. “Cadet?”

Suddenly all eyes were on Dakal. He swallowed hard, unsure how to proceed, and angry that Jaza had put him on the spot in this manner. Finally, he admitted, “It was written by Iloja of Prim, a Cardassian poet, over two hundred years ago.”

The revelation seemed neither to impress nor to incense anyone at the table. So far, so good.

“So what does it mean?” Pazlar asked Jaza. But when it became clear that the lieutenant commander would not be diverted from his salad again, the group’s attention refocused on Dakal.

“Ah,” he began. “Well, Iloja believed that the evolution of the sentient mind was merely a way for the universe to know itself, and that therefore no understanding of the universe can be complete without understanding sentient behavior.”

Norellis snorted. “That’s not science, it’s philosophy.”

Dakal was ready to launch into an elaboration of his point, but hesitated. His eyes darted briefly at Jaza, hoping for a clue as to what the senior officer expected of him. But the commander gave no sign that he was even listening.

And yet it would be a mistake to think that he is not. I’m being tested. Very well, then. I’ll rise to this challenge as I have every other.

“Iloja is best remembered as a serialist poet, but before his exile he was an eminent astronomer and natural philosopher,” Dakal explained. “As such, he understood that one’s vantage point affects one’s understanding of the observable universe. A different point of view may lead to a different understanding—or a deeper one, when taken in conjunction with one’s original observations.”

“Where does the quote about politics and gravity come in?” Norellis asked.

“In understanding first that Iloja was speaking as a Cardassian expatriate, having come from a world where politics was as fundamental a force as any found in nature. And second, in considering the possibility that his observation may not have been exclusive to his particular circumstances, but might have been applicable universally.”

“I’m not sure I see what any of this has to do with Titangoing to Romulus when we should be exploring.”

“But we areexploring,” Dakal said.

Norellis just stared at him blankly.

“Look at it another way,” the cadet continued. “Your fields of expertise are astrobiology, the comparative study of life and its origins everywhere in the universe, and gaiaplanetology, the study of planetary biospheres and ecosystems. Correct?”

Norellis smiled patiently. “A little oversimplified, Cadet, but I’m willing to accept those definitions for the purpose of our discussion.”

“Thank you,” Dakal said. “Can we also agree that the study of biospheres relates specifically to what may be described as the living zones within or surrounding a planet?”

“I suppose that’s close enough. So?”

“So isn’t the realm of politics merely another zone that has evolved to enclose a living world?” Dakal asked. “A ‘politicosphere,’ if you will. And Titanis about to begin the process of exploring that zone. And perhaps even experimenting on it.”

“Oh, I like this kid, Najem,” Pazlar said to Jaza, a smile spreading across her face as she turned back to Dakal. “I think Iloja wasn’t the only natural philosopher to come out of Cardassia. Tell me again, Cadet, why you’re training to be an operations specialist?”

Dakal shrugged his wide shoulders. “It seems to be where my strengths are, Lieutenant.”

“Then think again,” Eviku said. “Stick around long enough, Cadet, and we’ll make a scientist of you yet.”

Dakal smiled. “I’ll accept that as a compliment, sir. I do have a great respect for science, and I admire the enthusiasm of its practitioners. I’ve just never had much patience for the fine details.”

Norellis rolled his eyes. “Which is why you’re a far better candidate than I am to push buttons up on the bridge.”

Nodding, Dakal said, “With respect, sir, I preferthat you science specialists leave the driving to others.”

“Really,” Pazlar said dryly, at which point Dakal realized his misstep: In addition to her credentials in stellar cartography, the Elaysian was also one of Titan’s better shuttle pilots.

“Only so you specialists can concentrate on the reallyhard work,” Dakal added quickly.

“Excellent save, Cadet,”Dr. Cethente said. “You ought to make admiral in no time.”

“If Bralik were here, I’m sure she’d have a few choice thoughts on the subject,” Eviku said.

Pazlar chuckled appreciatively. “Bralik seems to have choice thoughts on everysubject.”

“Where isDoctor Bralik?” Dakal asked as he finished the last of his sushi. “I had thought she would be joining us.”

Kent nodded past Dakal. “A few tables behind you, slumming with the yellowshirts.”

“I heard that!” came the sound of Bralik’s voice from across the mess hall, which prompted laughter from around the Blue Table. Ah, of course: Ferengi ears,Dakal noted. I must remember that.

“I have to admit,” Pazlar said after the laughter had subsided, “I never would have thought of politics as a field of scientific inquiry. I never thought much about it before.”

“Then it should be ripe for exploration,”Cethente chimed, unexpectedly taking up Dakal’s argument. The Syrath was not eating—at least, not in any obvious way; Dakal suddenly realized he hadn’t the faintest idea how Cethente took its nourishment.

“As interesting as all this is,” Norellis said, “I’m still skeptical that what we’re doing on Romulus can have any relevance to our mission into the frontier, assuming we ever get there.”

“Everything is connected, Kent,” Jaza said, speaking up again at last. “Even when you think it isn’t. Sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s subtle, and sometimes it’s paradoxical. It may take generations to see those connections, and longer still to understand them. Or those things may simply come all at once in a flash of insight. You just never know. So don’t make the mistake of pursuing knowledge arrogantly. Keep an open mind.”

“Always good advice, Commander,” Norellis said with a nod, and drained his glass. Then he added with a grin, “But I’ll still take a subspace singularity over a Romulan political confab any day of the week.” He excused himself from the group, moving to join the table where Bralik was dining with Chief Engineer Ledrah and several members of the security department. Shortly thereafter, Pazlar, Eviku, and Cethente said their goodnights and left the Blue Table as well, leaving only Dakal and Jaza. Dakal decided this was the ideal opportunity to confront his superior head-on about his reference to Iloja.

“Did I pass your test, Commander?”

Finishing the last of his water, Jaza’s brow furrowed. “My test, Cadet?”

“You wished to see how I would handle a discussion of my culture, did you not?”

“No, I did not,” Jaza said mildly.

Dakal frowned. “Then why—?” Dakal stopped, realizing his emotions were taking hold. “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

Jaza leaned forward and, resting his elbows on the dining table, steepled his fingers before him. “Permission granted.”

“If you were not testing me, then why did you single me out as a Cardassian during dinner?”

“I didn’t, Cadet,” Jaza said calmly. “You’ve singled yourself out by constantly being on your guard against any sign of interest in you as a representative of your species. You deliberately avoid the subject, I believe, because despite Starfleet’s acceptance of you, you keep expecting the other shoe to drop.”

Dakal was familiar with the human expression; he’d heard it at the Academy. “Respectfully, sir, you should have discussed the matter with me privately rather than ambush me as you did.”

Jaza smiled. “The point was to have you deal with it publicly, Cadet.” The Bajoran gestured expansively at the rest of the mess hall. “Look around you, Dakal. Do you really think the people who choose this life are inclined to judge you based on your species? They’re more interested in youthan in your accidental relationship to a longtime foe of the Federation. And as you saw during the meal, we’re certainly capable of separating whatever lingering ill feelings we may have about the Cardassian Union from our interest in Cardassian culture, or in one Zurin Dakal.

“But I think you know that, or you’d never have enrolled in Starfleet Academy in the first place. Am I wrong?”

Dakal considered Jaza’s words, reflecting on the long road he had traveled from the refugee camps on the neutral planet Lejonis, the world to which he, together with his parents and siblings, as well as scores of other families, had fled after they had been perilously smuggled off Cardassia Prime five years prior, during the height of the Dominion occupation there. Raised in a culture that revered duty to the state above all other virtues, even familial devotion, leaving Cardassia behind at such a difficult time, culminating in the carnage that had marked the war’s costly end, had felt conflictingly like both treason and patriotism to the refugees on Lejonis. Treason because they had, in a very real sense, turned their backs on their homeworld during her darkest hour; patriotism because the planet of their birth had been distorted by corrupt opportunists and alien invaders almost beyond recognition. But dissidents and conscientious objectors had never fared well on Prime, even in the best of times, so the refugees on Lejonis had resolved to be patient, to preserve and stay true to the values and ideals that had first made Cardassia strong, in the hope that, one day, they would make her strong again.

Cardassia’s billion dead at the war’s end had shaken that hope among the refugees, but hadn’t extinguished it. Most of the families soon returned home to help restore their fallen civilization any way they could. But a small number—young Zurin Dakal among them—had reasoned that there was much good that could come from showing the rest of the galaxy a Cardassian face different from the one that had brought so much pain to the Alpha Quadrant. Those individuals—mostly academicians and artisans of one sort or another—had resettled on worlds throughout the Federation, teaching at universities, joining organizations devoted to the arts, or helping with the postwar rebuilding efforts. Dakal alone had elected to join Starfleet, though he had hoped others of his kind would eventually follow. In all but name those self-exiled Cardassians were Prime’s cultural ambassadors, hoping in some small way to begin healing a rift that they believed had grown too wide and too deep for far too long.

Perhaps Jaza is right,Dakal thought, and these last four years as a solitary Cardassian among all these aliens have made me forget the reasons I chose Starfleet. Perhaps I should not be reluctant to share my heritage with my shipmates, or to celebrate it. How better to prove my fears false? Or to confront any fears I may encounter?

“No, Commander, you aren’t wrong,” Dakal said. “In fact, you’ve helped me to remember a few things I should not have forgotten. Thank you, not just for your interest, but for inviting me to this evening’s Blue Table.”

Jaza smiled again. “It’s an open invitation, Cadet. Join us any time.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Dakal, suddenly experiencing a sense of home for the first time since separating from his family. Perhaps trust can turn worlds as well.

As he entered deck seven’s multipurpose mess hall–cum–recreation center, Ranul Keru tried to tamp down his mounting worries. For reasons he had yet to identify, recurring feelings of self-doubt had plagued him during his past few duty shifts. He wondered repeatedly if he was really capable of serving effectively as both chief of security and tactical officer.

Of course he still believed, at least intellectually, that he was the right person for this dual job. Though he had served in the far less action-intensive role of stellar cartographer during his first tour of duty aboard the Enterprise,he had also been trained in multiple techniques of unarmed defense, had achieved some of the highest marksmanship scores of his Academy class, and had already proven himself during real-world tactical crises on Trill, Tezwa, and Pelagia.

When he had returned to the Enterprisetwo years ago following an extended personal leave on Trill, he had transferred to security, joining the department that was then headed by Christine Vale. Had Lieutenant Commander Worf still been in charge of ship’s security then, Keru knew he couldn’t have worked under him; the Klingon officer was the one who had, albeit out of necessity, shot Keru’s lifemate, Lieutenant Sean Hawk, and then let his corpse drift off into trackless space.

No, it was theBorg who killed him,he repeated to himself for perhaps the billionth time. Worf was only doing his job, protecting the ship. Sean was infected with nanoprobes, and would have used them to assimilate the rest of us.

And yet, every time he made that argument to himself, he saw the face of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who had also once been assimilated by the Borg, only to be rescued later and cured of his nanoprobe infection. More recently, the long-lost U.S.S. Voyagerhad returned to Earth, bringing along a human woman who had also been successfully deassimilated from the Borg collective. Both Picard and the woman Voyager’s crew had repatriated had been nanoprobe-infected for far longer than Sean had been.

He could have been saved, too. Worf was too quick to sacrifice a fellow crew member, battle conditions or not.

It was an ugly doubt to be carrying around, but he had been unable to put it to rest for more than half a decade now. There had to have been another way. Sean Hawk would still be alive today if Worf had simply put forth a better effort to find it.

He knew that this nagging bitterness, this shard of blame that remained lodged in his soul like old shrapnel, was one of the underlying reasons that Keru had accepted the role of security chief aboard Titanwhen Captain Riker had extended the invitation. He had not said it aloud, but inside, he’d fairly screamed it: I won’t sacrifice anyone on my team. No one is expendable.

During the past few weeks, he had worked his security crew hard, probably harder than they’d ever been worked at the Academy. On the physical side, he had them running simulations in the holodeck, training in multiple exotic forms of hand-to-hand combat, including Vulcan V’Shan, Terran Tai Chi, and Klingon Mok’bara,while practicing with a medley of weapons that ranged from standard phasers to Klingon bat’leths to Capellan kligats to Ferengi energy whips. On the academic front, he had them immersed in language studies to free them from total dependency on the universal translator, and introduced meditation techniques from several different cultures in order to bring their minds and bodies into closer alignment.

He knew that some of them resented the extensive training, no doubt feeling they had already “made their bones” serving in their previous postings. He had even heard a few whispered comments about his own previous “cushy” job as a stellar cartographer. So he worked himself hard, right alongside his crew, doing everything they did, as long as his other duties didn’t call him away. Lately, even with the Romulan talks looming, he hadn’t had a lot to do other than continue drilling.

Now, even though he was off duty, he had decided to wear his uniform into the mess hall. Relaxed dress code or no, he felt he ought to at least set an example. Besides, he hadn’t really wanted to take the time to change clothes after the beta shift crew had assumed their stations on the bridge.

As he headed toward the mess hall’s food-service area, he surveyed the entire room quickly. The dining area had attracted a few small clusters of people, three to four per table. At one table, he saw flight controller Axel Bolaji and his very pregnant wife, Olivia, seated with two of his security guards, Rriarr and Hutchinson. He smiled and nodded, and Axel Bolaji smiled back. Keru noted that Rriarr and Hutchinson looked decidedly unhappy.

They must be self-conscious about my seeing them out of uniform,he thought, noting their civvies, which were perfectly acceptable in the mess. Guess I’ve given them good reason to see me as a hard-ass.

He neared the buffet area, and smiled as the various smells wafted toward him. Ebriscentil, Titan’s civilian Ktarian cook, had prepared another fabulous repast, as he had been doing since the ship launched. Keru was glad that Riker had requested a combined galley, bar, and recreational area aboard Titan;not only did it give the crew more encouragement to socialize, but it also allowed them a respite from replicated foods. Riker had apparently learned the value of such a venue in the Enterprise’s crew lounge.

Keru served himself some Kaferian apple-glazed Maporian rib-eye, a salad of Denuvian sprigs, and a breadlike Bolian pastry that came with a spicy dipping sauce. Hefting his tray, he remembered to snatch a handful of extra napkins; while eating, he always had a napkin handy to keep his bushy mustache clean.

Before looking for a seat, he sidled up to the bar. The bartender, a Mars-born human named Scot Bishop-Walker, was his favorite of those aboard who dispensed drinks. Not only was he one of the few humans who was almost as tall as he was, but he was easy on the eyes as well, with high cheekbones and a dark, neatly trimmed goatee.

“Ranul! What can I get you?” Bishop-Walker asked, a bright smile on his face.

“I’m feeling a little adventurous tonight,” Keru said, smiling back. “Give me a tankard of that dark Orion beer.”

The bartender raised an eyebrow. “One tankard coming up. But you’d better handle it with care.”