Текст книги "Well of Souls"

Автор книги: Ilsa J. Bick

Соавторы: Ilsa J. Bick
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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

Suddenly, there was a sliding noise as Batra lost her balance, and then the sound of rock scraping against rock. Batra gave a single sharp cry. Halak jerked around in time to see her tumble to her knees. He moved toward her.

“Stop,” said the Bolian. “She can get up on her own.”

“Please,” said Halak, “let me help her.”

“Absolutely not. Stand clear.”

“Sorry,” said Batra. Halak heard tears edging her voice. Her face was turned back over her shoulder toward the Bolian, and Halak couldn’t see her expression. Her left hand clutched her left foot. “But I twisted my ankle. I don’t think I can stand.”

“Get up,” said the Bolian. He twitched the pulse gun. “Now.”

Her sobs tearing from her throat, Batra made some feeble scrambling motions. “I can’t.”

“Let me go to her,” Halak repeated.

“No.” The Bolian watched as Batra rolled onto her right side and then got most of her weight onto her right knee. “Come on.”

“Almost,” said Batra. She was panting. “Almost there,” she said, trying to balance on her right foot. But she slid, and spilled onto the rocks again.

Halak clenched his fists in frustration. “For God’s sake!”

“Stay where you are,” said the Bolian. “Keep your hands up where I can see them!” Cursing, he scrambled over the rocks until he was standing over Batra. Bending at the waist, he reached across his body with his left hand and grabbed Batra’s left bicep.

“I said,”he seethed, hauling her upright, his feet slithering on rocks, “stand up…”

Suddenly, Batra exploded in motion. Surging up, she brought her right arm whipping around, and Halak caught the flash of something long and metallic.

The knife. His mouth gaped in astonishment. The knife she’d taken from the men that afternoon.

And then he remembered: She’d tucked it into her waistband.

With a wild screeching howl, Batra jammed the knife into the Bolian’s left flank. The Bolian arched and screamed. The sudden movement threw them both off-balance on the rocks, and Batra, still howling, had the knife in her hand, and as the Bolian lurched backward, she threw her weight forward, driving the knife in deeper. Halak saw them stagger and nearly fall, and then he saw the Bolian’s face twist with rage and pain, his right hand jerk. The hand with the pulse gun.

“Ani!” Halak shouted. It was as if he’d been in suspended animation and suddenly snapped back to life. He sprang forward, his hands outstretched, trying to get there in time. “Ani, Ani, the gun, the gun, look out for the gun!”

The Bolian fired. There was a flash, a sizzle. A sweet smell that reminded Halak of burnt pork.

Batra shrieked—once.

“Oh God, no! What have you done?”Halak was rocketing toward the Bolian, even as Batra’s body sagged to the rocks. “What have you done? What have you done, what have youdone !?”

Halak slammed into the Bolian. Matsaro’s breath whooshed from his lungs, and Halak’s momentum lifted the Bolian from Batra’s body and brought him crashing down onto his back. Halak heard a ripping sound, and his mind registered, dimly, that his back wound had torn open again. Pain rippled like liquid fire down into his hips and up to his right arm, and in another instant, Halak felt a warm stream of his own blood drizzling down his skin, pooling at his waist.

But then the moment passed, and Halak barely felt his own body. It was as if that single bright point of grief—that instant when Batra had screamed and Halak had known that she was truly, irrevocably dead—had burned his brain clean, searing into his consciousness until his mind boiled with a single, awful purpose: vengeance.

Beneath him, Halak felt the Bolian twitch, then heave as the knife was driven in up to the hilt. He heard a hitch in the Bolian’s breathing and the harsh rasp of the Bolian’s breath in his ear, and he was dimly aware that the Bolian still had his pulse gun clenched in his right hand and was struggling to bring his arm around.

Halak’s fingers scrabbled over an edge of sharp stone, and then his right hand closed around the rock. Rolling atop the Bolian, he straddled the Bolian’s chest, planting his knees on either side of the Bolian’s head.

“No, no, no!”Halak screamed and brought the rock smashing down. The impact of rock against hard bone shivered up Halak’s arms; there was the sound that a ripe melon makes when it’s been thrown against a wall, and Halak felt the Bolian’s body jerk and flop beneath his body like a beached fish slapping against a dock.

“No, no!” Clutching the rock, he raised both hands above his head and brought the rock down again and again. “No, no, oh God, no, no…”

Halak kept on long after the Bolian had stopped twitching. He kept on until the sound the rock made as it crushed through skull and flesh and tore through brain became soft and wet, and he kept on until his arms burned with fatigue, and the rock was so slippery that Halak couldn’t hold on anymore, and the rock slid from his fingers.

Halak slumped over the Bolian’s body. His breath jerked in quick, sharp paroxysms, and his hands were slick with the Bolian’s blood. His own blood oozed along his skin and pattered to the thirsty earth, like a slow, steady rain.

And then—he wasn’t sure when, or how—Halak was hunched over Batra. She lay on her back, her arms outstretched. There was a ragged burned patch over her left breast where the blast from the pulse gun had seared her skin, ripped into her chest, and ruptured her heart, and in the light from the headlamps that fanned the darkness he could see that her eyes were open and her lips peeled back from her teeth in a death rictus.

“Ani,” he said brokenly, reaching for her face. This time, her skin wasn’t cool. It was icy, the warmth leeching away under his fingers even as he knelt beside her.

“Oh, Ani, Ani, Ani.” Halak gathered Batra’s limp body into his arms. He folded her to his breast and dipped his face into her hair. He inhaled the scent of jasmine and lemon, the scent that was his beloved Ani. He wept, alone, under an alien sky.

Then he carried her to the shuttle. The shuttle was small—only big enough for two—and there was no place for him to lay her out properly. In the end, he settled for detaching a restraining harness from one of the shuttle’s two chairs and strapping her body in place along the deck, looping the harness around her legs and chest and buckling the harness to a plate that ran the length of the shuttle’s starboard side.

He stood over Matsaro for a few minutes. The Bolian didn’t have a head anymore: just a misshapen, pulpy mass of smashed bone and flesh and blood. Stooping, Halak pulled the pulse-gun from Matsaro’s dead fingers and stuck it into his damp, bloody waistband, and he retrieved his phaser. Then, grabbing fistfuls of the Bolian’s shirt, Halak hauled him back along the rocks and then hoisted the Bolian into the aircar. The Bolian slithered along the length of the front seat, his body twisted and his left hip jutting up, so that what was left of Matsaro’s head hung down, out of sight.

Halak was seized with a sudden wave of dizziness, and then nausea. He slumped against the side of the aircar, turned his head to one side, and vomited. When he was through, he clung to the cool metal of the aircar, fighting to stay conscious.

Lost a lot of blood.Halak ran his tongue over his lips, but his lips were numb and didn’t feel right. His legs were wobbly, and his vision was narrowing to a single point. Lost a lot of blood, that’s all, and…oh my God, oh my God, Ani, Ani…

He couldn’t lose consciousness. Halak’s brain moved slowly, and he felt sluggish, stupid. He had to stay conscious. He shook his head from side to side, and it felt as if his face was as gluey as molten taffy, his movements slow and languid. Slowly, he reached in and punched in a new heading. He heard a click, then a whine as the aircar’s engine caught.

Stay focused—Halak programmed the aircar’s speed and angle of descent– one thing at a time.

On an afterthought, he tossed in his phaser and the pulse-gun, heard them clatter against something metallic and disappear into the well in front of the driver’s seat. Best not to have them on him. Then, reaching up with both hands, he forced the doors of the aircar down and shut. The movement made the pain in his side much worse.

“Please,” he panted, pushing down hard on the door until he heard the lock engage. “Please, please, please, God, please.”

Staggering back, he watched as the aircar shivered, then rose on its column of compressed air. The aircar turned, and Halak felt air puff against his face, and a chill rippled through his sweat-slicked skin. The aircar turned a lazy circle and then began its climb, heading east. The aircar’s lights dwindled then winked out.

They might not find the body for a long time, if ever. Halak turned and began to trudge back to the shuttle. Every step made his stomach lurch and heave. He didn’t know how long it would take the aircar to sink, but with the speed at which the aircar would slam into the sea, there might not be much left to sink anyway. Probably not much of a body left either. That would be good for Arava and give her some time to get away.

Inside the shuttle, he found a flashlight. Then, he went back out and crawled along on his hands and knees, feeling and looking for the explosive. He found it, finally, nestled at the very back of the port nacelle, attached to the outside of the hull and rigged to detonate as soon as anything other than short-range communications was accessed. They would have disintegrated the instant they hailed Enterprise.

It took him an hour to reach hailing distance. During the flight, he hadn’t looked at Batra’s body, because he had to work hard on the simple act of flying the shuttle. That, and staying conscious. He’d figured out how to bypass the preprogrammed flight path not because he needed to—the computer lockout was programmed to drop as soon as the shuttle’s sensors told the computer that the ship was out of Farius Prime’s space—but because it gave him something to do. He felt drained, dull. Empty. Dead.

Halak opened a channel. “Enterprise,”he said, slurring the word, “Enterprise,this is Halak. Enterprise,this is an emergency hail, this is…”

His gaze fell on Batra’s body, and then it was as if he peered through a pane of flawed glass.

She never answered.Grief balled in his throat, and it was as if a giant fist had reached in, taken hold of his heart, and squeezed. She never really answered the question, and now she never can. Never will.

“Enterprise,”Halak said again. Tears crawled along his cheeks, but he didn’t care if they knew he was weeping. “Enterprise.”

Chapter 13

“Captain, I’m busy,” Marta Batanides protested. Her coiffed pillow of brown hair was showing the strain; errant tendrils feathered her neck. “I don’t have time to argue with you about this.”

Captain Rachel Garrett gave a short bark of derisive laughter, though none of this was funny in the slightest. She was so angry the muscles in her neck were taut as Vulcan lute strings, and her shoulders hurt. She knew she’d pay for this later—a migraine to beat the band for sure. Just as soon as she had the time and luxury to have one.

Thank God, she was in her ready room (where she seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time these days, tending to business). When the Vulcan warpshuttle had come alongside Enterprisean hour ago, Garrett had such a heated exchange with the Starfleet Intelligence officer onboard—a Lieutenant Laura Burke—the Enterprise’s bridge hummed with tension. After that, she decided that it was better to do battle with Starfleet Intelligence in private, with the gloves off: mano a mano,as it were.

“You don’t have time? Gee, that’s too bad. I suggest you make it, Marta.” Unlike Commander Batanides, Garrett didn’t take refuge behind formalities. The two women had known each other—albeit briefly—when Garrett had been on a layover on Starbase Earhart in 2327. Garrett had been heading back to the Carthage,where she was XO. Batanides was fresh out of the Academy. Batanides was a striking woman then—a lean brunette with a long neck and wide, almost oval-shaped blue eyes—and Garrett had seen nothing in the face that stared out of her companel to change her opinion. The two women had struck up a casual friendship; Garrett wasn’t there long enough for more than a few drinks in the bar. Garrett remembered Batanides as a somewhat anxious young ensign waiting for her first assignment. There were two others from her class, she recalled, close friends that Garrett hadn’t met at all, though she’d heard through the grapevine that there’d been a bar fight the day after Garrett shipped out: a couple of Nausciaans and one of Batanides’s friends. The friend was unarmed, and so, of course, one of the Nausicaans pulled a knife. Stabbed Batanides’s friend in the back, right through the heart, or so Garrett understood. It figured; Nausicaans were never known to worry about little things, such as fair play.

Well, as far as Garrett was concerned, it would be fair play all the way as long as she was in charge of Enterprise:everything on the up and up, and out front, something Starfleet Intelligence wasn’t exactly famous for.

“Now,” Garrett said, taking aim with her right index finger, “either you deal straight with me, or your people are going to hang in space a long, long time, and I mean it, Marta. I’ll take this as high as it needs to go. I am not going along with this until I understand why the hell they’re here in the first place. They show up unannounced, noadvance warning, nocontact from Starfleet Command, nothing. I don’t get a single communiqué; no one’s on the horn to me. Last time I checked, our communications systems were working just fine. So I’ll just chalk it up to an oversight on your part. But you want cooperation from this moment forward? Then you damn well ask me for it. Now, on whose authority is Burke here?”

To her credit, Batanides sat through Garrett’s diatribe without a squeak of protest, though Garrett could tell by the way that Batanides’s lips thinned until her mouth disappeared that the woman was not pleased.

“Burke has authorization from Starfleet Intelligence,” said Batanides.

“Meaning you. Sorry, Marta, not good enough.” Garrett wagged her head from side to side. “That’s not the way things run on my ship. Icall the shots, not Starfleet Intelligence, and in case you haven’t noticed, Commander,you don’t outrank me. The way I see it, you’re asking for a favor I don’t have to grant. Okay, fine. You want me to do you a favor? Then you goddamned make the time and tell me why the hell Starfleet Intelligence is so interested in Halak– myfirst officer, might I add—or I send your people packing.”

“Captain, don’t force me to…”

“To what?” Garrett interrupted. Batanides didn’t know, but Garrett didn’t respond well to threats, and was just as likely to come out swinging if Batanides so much as twitched. “Go to a higher-up? Great. Do it. The more higher-ups involved, the better.”

“Whyare you being so antagonistic?”

Maybe because I got to be the lucky one to give notification to Anisar Batra’s mother. Maybe because these aremy people.“Let’s just say I don’t like people who make their living working in the shadows. I prefer things straight on. I like to know whom I’m dealing with. Now I know there’s good and valuable work that SI does,” Garrett said, not believing a word but knowing she had to give Batanides something, “and I understand that intelligence operatives have their place. I’m not naïve, and I’m not particularly pugilistic.”

(Oh, really?)

“Really,” Garrett said, as much to Batanides as that little voice in her head. “But, you know, my plate’s a little full right now. In case you haven’t noticed, one of my officers is dead, and my XO is being held pending an inquiry. I don’t need your people running around on my ship. Starfleet Intelligence comes aboard, I have a whole new set of headaches, and I sure as hell don’t have time to baby-sit your people.”

“No one’s asking you to,” said Batanides. “All I’m asking is that they pursue their own investigation and sit in on the inquiry.”

“Why? And into what?”Garrett jabbed the point of her index finger into her desk. “Damn it, Marta, you’re presuming a lot. I’ve been on the up and up with you. I filed my report, and I’ll hold an inquiry, thanks. Everything will be by the book. Presuming there’s sufficient evidence to press specific charges—and that’s putting the cart before the horse, you know, because we haven’t had the damn inquiry—I’ll remand Commander Halak to Starfleet Command for further disciplinary action, ifit’s needed. You can get a crack at him then. What’s so important about the inquiry that you people want in?”

Batanides’s tongue flicked over her lips. “Look, Captain, you’re asking the impossible. I can only say that we’re interested in Commander Halak’s story.”

“Story?” There was something about the way Batanides said the word that made Garrett uneasy. “Are you saying you don’t believe my first officer?”

“I said we were interested.”

“May I ask why?”

Batanides blew out, backhanded a wisp of hair fluttering along her cheek. “Captain, I can’t.Please understand my position. Most of what you want is classified.”

“At what level?”

“Need to know.”

“And you don’t think I need to know.”

“No, you don’t,” said Batanides, with such bluntness that Garrett blinked. “I’m sorry, but if the gloves are off here…”

“Please,” Garrett held up her hands, palms out, “don’t pull punches on my account. The gloves are off and…?”

“And the simple truth is, Captain, you and your crew are unimportant. You are not part of the bigger picture.”

Ouch.Well, at least the woman got to the point. “Bigger picture.”

Batanides dragged in a deep breath. Exhaled. “Lieutenant Laura Burke is part of an ongoing covert investigation into certain aspects of, shall we say, governmenton Farius Prime.”

“Government.” Garrett chewed the word. “A euphemism for?”

“The Asfar Qatala and Orion Syndicate.”

“Organized crime. Okay.” Garrett spread her hands, hiked her shoulders. “So what? What about them? It’s not like they’re some sort of secret.”

“But it’s not every day that a Starfleet officer chooses to go to a place where organized crime substitutes for law and order.”

Garrett had known that; in fact, she had a couple questions of her own about Halak’s choices. Still, she shook her head. “It’s not a proscribed world. Commander Halak didn’t break any rules.” She decided not to add that she thought Halak’s judgment stunk. Need to know, Marta.

“We’re aware of that aspect of the case. But he might be.”

“Be what? Involved? Halak?” Garrett had a sudden inspiration. “Does this have anything to do with that flap over the Ryns eight months back, before he transferred here?”

“Possibly. I’m sorry,” Batanides said quickly, in answer to Garrett’s grunt of exasperation. “That’s all I can say. Really. Try to understand myposition. Just how covert would anything be if I, or any other intelligence operative, had to explain every nuance, every move?”

She had a point; Garrett gave her that. “And the Vulcan?”

“Lieutenant Sivek, yes. We have enlisted the cooperation of Vulcan’s security agency, V’Shar. Sivek’s on loan.”

“Why is Vulcan interested?”

“Same reason as the Andorians, the Threllians, the Pythagos Clans. They’re all Federation worlds, and the Federation, as a whole, is more than a little concerned about red ice.”

“Red ice.” Garrett searched her memory. “A genetically altered opiate.”

“Right. At first, it showed up on a colony or two, none of them Federation. It may seem cold and calculated, but the Federation has enough to worry about. Playing the universe’s policeman means your resources get stretched, so you pick and choose what to worry about.”

Garrett knew it wasn’t fair, but she said it anyway. “So as long as red ice killed other people—non-Federation worlds, of course—then it was okay?”

“I’ll just let that pass,” said Batanides dryly. “Two years ago, red ice started popping up on Federation colonies. The remote ones, mainly, as if whoever distributing it knew that bypassing busier worlds would keep them in business longer. The Federation wants to stop the spread of the drug; they’ve asked for our help.”

“Fair enough. What does this have to do with my first officer?”

“We just want to listen to what he has to say. He’s been on Farius Prime; for whatever reason, he became a target. We want to know why. Other Starfleet officers have been to the planet and left without incident. Now Burke and Lieutenant Sivek are trained investigators and excellent intelligence officers. I… we’dlike you to give them access to Commander Halak’s ship.”

Ah, the royalwe. “For what purpose?”

“First, a complete and thorough search. Then the inquiry, and it’s more than likely we’ll want to ask Commander Halak some questions. Maybe have a few revelations of our own. Then, depending on what we… youfind, we go from there.”

“We.”

“Yes, Captain, we. We will consult with one another; we,in conjunction with other Starfleet officers, will decide what to do.”

“Just how much weight will myopinion have?”

For the first time, Batanides smiled. “Don’t you think that depends on what we find, Captain?”

And, with that, Garrett had to be satisfied. After Batanides rang off, Garrett punched up the bridge, and gave the appropriate orders at which point Bulast informed her that Dr. Stern wanted to see her in sickbay. Now.

“Actually,” said Bulast, “the way she said now…”

“Meant yesterday.”Garrett sighed. Stern was probably the only person aboard she let boss her around—to a point. “I got it. Tell her I’ll be right down.”

Great.Garrett ducked out of her ready room, bypassing the bridge, and scuttled down the hall toward a turbolift. The doors swished open; they hissed closed; and, as if on cue, Garrett’s migraine thumped to life. This is just turning out to be another great day in a string of great days.

The Enterprise’s chief medical officer, Jo Stern, eyed her captain as Garrett stepped into Stern’s office in sickbay. “You look like hell,” Stern said.

“Thanks,” said Garrett, dropping into a chair across Stern’s desk. She winced, blinked against the overhead lights. “You always keep it so damn bright in here?”

“Headache?” Stern depressed a control and the clear soundproof glass door to her office hummed shut.

“Worse.” Propping her elbows on Stern’s desk, Garrett washed her face with her hands. “Migraine.”

Stern commanded the lights to half. “Want something for it?”

“No.”

“Good, I’ll have some, too.” Stern pushed back from her desk and crossed to a thermos she kept filled with hot coffee for precisely these occasions. She siphoned out two gray stoneware mugs’ worth and popped the top of a container of chilled cream. “Too early for a drink, so coffee will have to do. Lucky for you, caffeine does wonders for migraines. That’s cream and two sugars, right?”

“Yeah. Thanks,” Garrett said, accepting the mug of steaming coffee from her friend. Stern’s brew was nearly as good as her own. Garrett inhaled, blew then sipped. She sighed, this time with pleasure. “You don’t know how good this tastes.”

“Bet I do,” said Stern, sliding behind her desk again. She eyed Garrett through the steam rising from her own mug. “You ready to talk about that call from Ven yet?”

Stern was an old friend and knew about Garrett’s divorce and the agony Garrett felt over her and Jase having to live apart. Still, Garrett wasn’t really in the mood to rehash it all. So, instead, Garrett sipped, swallowed. “Not really. Thanks, though.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Anyway, that’s old news. A lot’s happened since then.” (The call had come a few days ago, but Garrett felt like she’d aged twenty years.) Garrett cradled her mug in both hands, enjoying the warmth that came through the stoneware. “So what’s on your mind, Jo? You gave Bulast the impression that this was some sort of emergency.”

“In a way.”

“Halak?”

“You could say that.”

“How is he?”

“He looks like hell, too.” Stern had a smoky voice that always reminded Garrett of dim bars. This was apt: Stern, like Garrett, took her bourbon neat. “But I’d say it’s a toss-up who looks worse, you or him. Of course, Halak’s got a lot of reasons. On the other hand, so do you. Other than the reasons we all know, like worrying about crew morale, having to make notification to next of kin, and whipping your acting first officer into shape…how is Bat-Levi doing, by the way?”

“She’s good,” said Garrett. “She was good at ops, and she’s good at being the XO. But I have to admit, I was a little concerned at first.”

“You mean, because of her looks.”

“Sure. But I was thinking more about her mental stability.”

“Another good reason for us to have a psychiatrist aboard this time out,” said Stern. “Anyway, the Vulcans have vouched for her. So has Starfleet Medical. Still, she’s a strange duck, though she’s damned sharp, I’ll give her that. But that’s why you look like hell? Worrying about Darya Bat-Levi?”

“No. Starfleet Intelligence.”

Stern groaned. “An oxymoron if ever there was one.”

“That’s a really old joke.”

“About what you can expect from a really old wreck.” Stern was fifty-one, ten years Garrett’s senior, and there wasn’t a thread of gray anywhere in the shock of wheat-colored hair that she habitually wore pulled back from her face in a tight ponytail that brushed the nape of her neck. A woman of strong opinions and acerbic wit, Stern was lean and wiry, with a square face and wide mouth. She wasn’t beautiful and knew it; she didn’t mourn that either. She had what she called her man’s hands: large, capable, adept at manipulating a laser scalpel. “So what do they want?”

Garrett filled Stern in on her conversation with Batanides. “So we’re to cooperate with Lieutenants Burke and Sivek, no matter what. I don’t get it, frankly. What could Halak know that could possibly interest them?”

Stern looked thoughtful. “It might be nothing more complicated than what Batanides told you. Maybe they just want to debrief him, hear what he saw or heard.”

“Then why search the shuttle? We already did that anyway.”

Stern made a face and drank from her mug. “You got me on that. So there’s another agenda. You get any clue about what’s between the lines?”

“Something about the Orion Syndicate and some other crime family, the Asfar Qatala, and red ice.”

“Red ice?” Stern ran a blunt finger around her mug’s rim. Her nails were flat-cut. “That’s bad business. And they think Halak’s involved?”

“How could he be? Anyway, it’s Starfleet Intelligence’s time to waste.” Garrett gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “So what’s going on with Halak?”

“Well, I think you can hold your inquiry in a couple of days. We have to wait for your two SI types to finish with their little dance anyway, right?” When Garrett nodded, Stern continued, “You know he might feel better if his captain visited.”

“Thisis why you called? Wondering why I haven’t been mopping my first officer’s feverish brow?”

“Partly.”

Garrett ducked her head over her coffee. “I’ve been busy.”

“That’s crap, Rachel,” Stern said mildly. “Sure, you’ve been busy. Hell, we’ve all been busy. But he’s your goddamned XO.”

Garrett felt a wave of heat rise in her neck. “I know that.”

“And?”

“And nothing,” said Garrett. She picked up her mug, put it down without tasting, picked it up again. “What?”

Stern’s face was impassive. “You want me to say it, or are you going to?”

“Say what?” (Stop playing dumb.)“Say what?”

“Cripes, Rachel, for a smart lady, you can be pretty willfully stupid sometimes, you know that? I’m talking about how you keep beating up this poor guy because he’s not Nigel Holmes.”

Garrett went rigid. “That’s ridiculous.”

(Liar, liar, liar.)

“Oh, crap,” said Stern. “You can tell yourself that if you want to, and since you’re the captain, I guess you can do any damned thing you please. But you’d have to be brain-dead not to notice that the two of you aren’t exactly chummy.”

“Chummy. I’ve beenan XO, remember? There’s no need for chumminess. It’s a job, Jo, just a job.”

“With responsibilities and delegation of duties based upon mutual respect and trust.” Stern held up her hands in mock surrender. “Hey, don’t get on my case; it’s in the manual.”

“Did it ever occur to you that our lack of chumminess might be mutual?”

“Is it?”

“Yes.” She had to admit that Halak was more than competent, and she had developed a grudging fondness for the man, though he could be exasperating the way he argued.

(So can you.)

They’d always argued in private, but still. Halak had a savage intensity she found disturbing. Never outright subordinate, but…Halak seemed to be watching her. Weighing her against some internal scale, judging her ability to command the respect and loyalty of her crew before deciding whether or not she was worthy of his.

(Or maybe it’s mutual. After all, Halak’s no Nigel Holmes.)

And she missed Nigel. Nigel Holmes had been with Garrett from the moment she took command of the Enterprisefour years before. She’d trusted Holmes; he’d saved her life on two occasions; and then she’d failed to save his. The Enterprisehad been too far away from Holmes’s shuttle when it came under attack from renegade Klingons, and Nigel had died.

Aloud, she said, “I think we’re like two porcupines, Jo. I’m prickly about Nigel, and Halak’s got whatever ghosts he’s carting.”

“So you haven’t made the poor guy’s life any easier.”

“I think I just said that.” Garrett felt the muscles of her jaw and neck tighten. “If you have a point, make it.”

“I thought I just did. Even before all this with Batra, it’s safe to say that you didn’t exactly trust or respect the man. I know, I know,” Stern held her palm like a traffic cop signaling a stop, “things aren’t looking too good for him right now. Frankly, when I tell you what’s on my mind…”

“There’s more?”

“Don’t get snide. All I’m saying is that you might be right not to trust him, but that’s not my point. My pointis that if you treat someone like a visitor you’d just as soon boot out the airlock without a helmet, it shouldn’t be a surprise if the guy feels he can’t come to you for help, or advice. Answer me this,” Stern leaned on her folded forearms, “did you ever, once, invite this guy to have dinner with you? Once?”