Return to Part Three
“Captain, I…” Lieutenant Beth Arista stopped dead in her tracks when she caught a glimpse of the material her commander was reviewing on the viewscreen on his office desk. “What are you watching?”
Sulu belatedly switched off the Sagron IV monster battle simulation he’d borrowed from Lian Rendell’s betting partner. “Part of the third act of a very odd Kabuki drama.”
“Sir?”
The Drake’s captain gestured for the Science officer to sit down in the chair opposite his desk. “I wanted to get an update on the sentience studies for Sagron IV.”
“We’re still working on them, sir,” Arista replied apologetically. “I’m sorry they’re taking so long.”
Sulu steepled his fingers thoughtfully. “They are, aren’t they?”
“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant’s cheeks colored slightly. “But they are…”
“…Absolutely necessary, I know,” he finished for her, giving a reassuring wave of his hand. “Must be completed before we can go any further. I understand completely. But you’re running into some trouble?”
“They are taking longer than expected,” Arista admitted.
“Much longer.” The captain tapped his viewscreen. “So much longer that it’s causing you some personnel problems.”
“Sir?”
“To catch up on these studies, you’ve had to transfer some team members over that you wouldn’t normally have working on them. And they’ve started getting... a little creative in their approach to the material.”
Aritsta frowned as two and two began to add themselves together inside her brain and gradually come together to equal a faint glimmering of the Virtual Monstermania Betting Pool that had been operating under her radar for a couple weeks now…
“I’m not criticizing you or your team members,” Sulu held up a hand to forestall any further speculation in that direction that could get him in trouble with the Monster Fight Board of Directors. “I’m just trying to get my arms around some unique aspects of the situation on Sagron. For example, these creatures… We keep calling them 'monsters'…”
Arista’s frown deepened. “A hazardous pejorative, Captain.”
“It’s because they’re aggressive. But that aggression is an indication of their high intelligence, isn’t it?”
“High intelligence plus limited resources plus a certain density of population...”
“That’s what’s bugging me,” the captain interrupted. “The high density. There’s a lot of these super predators. The war that effectively ended the Calumbrian Empire can account for the limited resources. The best adapted would tend to survive. But there are a lot of them fighting it out for those top spots. So many that it took you by surprise. And how many of this type of planetary surveys have you done by now, Beth? Hundreds?”
Arista acknowledged his assertion with a nod. “Bio-warfare would speed up evolutionary processes…”
“…But we’re only talking about five hundred years here. How many generations is that?” Sulu reactivated his viewscreen and called up the specs on the pair of combatants. “How advanced are these creatures? It seems like they’ve suddenly been pushed about as far forward in terms of intelligence as they could go.”
“Sir, upper limits on intelligence are only theoretical,” Arista corrected in a very stereotypical Science Officer sort of manner. “But if you’re saying that a remarkable number of these species have made incredible gains in sentience in breath-takingly brief span of time…”
“I am,” her captain confirmed. “And how many of these species have seemed to have rolled the dice in the exact same sort of way to become a top predator in that same very short period?”
Arista tapped her lips thoughtfully. “Even algae…”
“How likely is that kind of radical evolutionary process to be the purely accidental outcome of chemical warfare?”
“Not very,” the lieutenant replied, then qualified, “It’s possible, sir, but not at all probable.”
The captain leaned back in his chair. “What is probable, then?”
“That before the war…” The Science Officer stopped, uncomfortable with where this line of speculation was leading. “Are you thinking that we should investigate the possibility that before the war there was some sort of tampering with the gene pool of a wide range of Sagron IV’s native life forms?”
Sulu nodded.
“Sir…” Arista began slowly. “I know you’ve floated the idea of Haven involvement…”
“…And you don’t think the Havens would do something like this,” the captain finished for her.
“No, sir.” The lieutenant shook her head adamantly. “If not for ethical considerations, then from a purely business standpoint – They would know the potential outcome of genetic tampering on this scale. It could – and largely has proved to – ruin Sagron as a fully viable planetary asset.” “
Yes, but don’t forget what that “T” in the HTE stands for.”
“Trading?”
“If you want to buy something badly enough, the Havens will connect you with a seller.” Sulu gestured at the stars streaming past the viewport of his office. “And there are sellers out there for whom ethics do not enter into the equation at all.”
“The Orions…” Arista concluded.
“If the Calumbrians had a poor understanding of how genetic manipulation works and just assumed that evolving as many species as possible to their highest potential for intelligence would be a good thing…”
The Science officer closed her eyes in horror at the thought. “Oh, my God…”
“Maybe they were…” The captain spread his hands. “… oversold.”
“And the Orions wouldn’t give a damn.” Arista grit her teeth angrily. “They’d just walk away as soon as they got their money.”
“Yes.”
“And even if the Havens could see what had happened, their fleet and their scientists aren’t equipped to intervene directly on a planetary scale to reverse that kind of damage in the same way we in Star Fleet are. It’s not an approach they would normally choose… They might even have complex contractual obligations that would prevent them… Oh, my God…”
“You do it to yourself,” Sulu murmured quietly. “They just put a frame around it and watch.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “So does that give you enough to work on, Lieutenant?”
“More than enough, Captain,” Arista replied, with a new note of determination in her voice as she rose.
Sulu grinned ruefully. “Which was your main problem when I called you in, wasn’t it, Beth?”
“Actually, yes.” Arista gave him a crooked smile as she paused by his door. “When you put it that way, thanks a lot, sir.”
“Good luck.”
“We’ll have something for you soon, sir,” she assured him as she exited.
“I hope so,” he said, as his smile faded and he re-activated the viewscreen so he could return to his own musings as he watched fearsome creatures clash in a strange ballet of mutual destruction.
“You have to let me see Del!”
Dylan Paine was, in Lian Rendell’s opinion, one of the most human-y Humans of her acquaintance. He was the opposite of Cajun and Kam, who, from the time that they were divinely dangerous black-eyed boys, had manners and miens that lulled one into falling into normal conversation with them – feeling pleased with one’s self when one could bind them a little closer with minor obligations that might mean nothing to them but one felt had to appeal to a certain innate, though perhaps illusory, Haven-ness about them.
No, in stark contrast, one was always acutely aware of Paine’s almost exaggerated Human-osity. He looked Human. He sounded Human. His emotions were so, so, so, very Human…. Perhaps that was it. Paine was loaded down with an overabundance of the quality that Havens found the most puzzling and frankly repellent – enthusiasm.
Even the taste of the alien word made one long to cleanse one’s mouth with a bracing rinse of Black Scotch.
Unfortunately, though, Rendell had not barricaded her office against a full Paine assault this morning and had to settle instead for pouring herself a cup of the black coffee she kept on hand in case of a visit from the ship’s captain.
“Oh?” she asked, frowning a warning to the young man that he was initiating his request for access with the worst of many options he could have chosen. “Is that what you want?”
“Yes!” Paine stood leaning eagerly forward over one end of her desk like the overgrown puppy
DelMonde often accused him of being, his limpid blue eyes wide and desperate.
“Then here he is.” The doctor switched the view on the screen before her so that it displayed the feed from inside the sensory deprivation chamber. “Resting peacefully.”
Paine blinked and his mobile features went blank for a moment.
The view had to be more than a little surprising. DelMonde was completely divorced from any meaningful context as if he were a lovely sleeping statue in a computer program instead of a living being.
It didn’t take the ensign too long to recover, though.
“I need to be with him,” he demanded urgently. “Just for a minute!”
Rendell tilted her head and smiled cynically. “How did I know that whatever I offered, no matter how generous, was going to be insufficient?”
“Please,” the young man begged, ignoring her mockery. “It’s been so long…”
“He’s in isolation,” she replied, switching off the feed – since Paine had not been properly appreciative of that courtesy. “So, no.”
It was now the ensign’s turn to start frowning. “For a broken wrist and a sprained ankle?”
“Since you are not a medical professional, I’m not concerned about your evaluation of my treatment,” she replied with a falsely pleasant smile. “And since you are not the Lieutenant Commander’s next of kin, I have no obligation to disclose any further information to you about his condition. In fact, he gave me explicit instructions that I was to discuss nothing with you other than his wrist and his ankle. And since you have a very good idea how extremely explicit his explicit instructions can be…”
“What you’re attempting…” Paine shook his head at the blank screen. “It’s very dangerous.”
Sensing a rare dropping of his mask, Rendell leaned forward. “Dangerous for whom? Dangerous in what way?”
But the disguise was once more so firmly in place, she couldn’t be sure she’d seen the outlines of it.
“I just want to be with him!” the young man pleaded pathetically. “Please, doctor! Just for a minute! It’ll make him feel better to know that I’m here and that I care about him, I swear…”
The doctor placed her finger over the call button of her intercom. “You have thirty seconds to get out of my office or I’m calling Security.”
The thing that Lian Rendell liked the best about Star Fleet was that you didn’t have to be all that rich or powerful to have full access to the talents of a highly skilled Enforcer like Tara Ryan. All one needed one’s rank and some decent networking skills… and, of course (since it was Star Fleet and they were a little picky sometimes), a just cause… However most days of the week, Dylan Paine was annoying enough on general grounds to represent a sufficiently just cause to get himself tossed out on his ear with no questions asked.
“Doctor,” the ensign protested, “I just need to…”
“Twenty-eight,” the Haven counted down mercilessly, “twenty-seven, twenty-six…”
Paine held up his hands in surrender as he backed warily to her office door. “I’ll… I’ll come back later.”
Rendell released a long breath as he finally exited. “I know that you will,” she said ruefully, then pressed the intercom button. “Nurse Blake.”
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Go to the Dispensary and bring me the blue bottle on shelf R-9a,” she requested, rubbing her aching temples.
“The one marked “For Pain”?”
“Yes.”
“The one where you spell “pain” with an “e”?”
Rendell closed her eyes and nodded. “Most definitely -- yes, Rajana.”
“Orions?”
“Oh, Jerel...” Sulu sighed as he gratefully shut down his latest abortive attempt at a letter to Jeremy Paget… which he’d been using as an excuse to put off looking at the stack of reports he just couldn’t make himself focus on. He glanced up from his office desk apologetically at his first officer. “My bratty brainchild had a sudden growth spurt.”
Courtland genially inclined his head in a good-natured manner as if to indicate that he was not at all offended to have found out about the latest development in the captain’s thinking through his well-cultivated grapevine rather than directly from Sulu himself. “Into a diplomatically awkward adolescence, it would seem, Captain.”
Sulu sighed deeply once more as he gestured for the Equian to take a seat. “If evidence backs up my suspicions and the upper echelons decide they wish to confront the Havens about a particularly bad business deal that they probably will never acknowledge their ancestors brokered around five hundred years ago, then yes. Very awkward.” He took in another breath and determinedly picked up the latest set of reports from the Chem labs. “However, compelling our allies to confront the sins of their dubious past is not on the already very long list of difficult objectives we have been given to complete on this mission.”
Despite the deep gravity of the situation, one side of the Equain’s mouth quirked slightly with something akin to gentle amusement. “I’m sure there are those in the upper echelons who will be gratified that you have so interpreted your orders.”
Sulu raised an eyebrow. “Jerel, you’re making it sound like I’m getting a reputation with HQ for coloring outside the lines.”
“I don’t know about that, sir,” Courtland replied neutrally, “but were it not for Lieutenant Arista’s avowed dedication to pacifism, I feel she is currently in the proper mindset to enact some of the more swashbuckling traditions of retribution associated with the original vessel from which the Drake derives its name.”
“We’d better keep her away from Lian Rendell for a few days, then,” the captain replied, then reconsidered ruefully. “On the other hand, maybe a session with the dear doctor is just what she needs so she can experience on the micro level exactly the same sort of charming but firm negation all this is going to draw from the Havens… if it is ever allowed to surface at all…”
The Equian was silent for a moment, his large eyes watching his captain, full of quiet understanding.
“Sir,” he said, at last. “None of us can re-write history. We can only move forward doing our best. If your suspicions about Orion tampering with the ecosystem on Sagron VI are correct—then, no, there is nothing we can do to punish the dead who did that great wrong. But, also, yes, there is much we can do to make the present existence of the current inhabitants more viable and productive. We will be helping to return to them a rightful inheritance that their forefathers unknowingly or foolishly bartered away.”
“Thank you, Jerel,” Sulu said, giving him his first genuine smile of the morning. “That’s very much what I needed to hear today. “
“Thank you, sir,” The Equain said, rising. “I consider telling you things you need to hear – pleasant and unpleasant – a very important part of my daily mission.”
“And you do it well,” his captain complimented him, returning back to the work of the day with renewed vigor.
Courtland permitted himself a smile as he exited his commander’s office. “I do try.”
Reality was indescribably heavy.
The only good thing about that was that it let him know that this was reality not the incomparable ineffable weightlessness of a fairy-light sensory-dep dream. The air around him was like billions of scratchy lead weights skidding and bumping across his sandpapered skin. Everything that could emit light was scalding his groaning eyelids. Everything that could produce a smell was assaulting his aggrieved nostrils. He automatically attempted to throw off the needle-infested blanket someone had spread over him, but the attempt at movement set off a cascade of painful sensation down one sleep-atrophied arm. The other wouldn’t move at all.
“Shh, shhh,” a voice comforted him, although the whisper near burst his dormant ears. “It’s all right. You’ve been asleep. You fell and broke your wrist and I put you to sleep for a couple days so you could heal.”
Although his brain didn’t immediately supply a name, he had a good general idea of where he was and who was talking to him. It all seemed very positive. Honestly, even under the best of circumstances, coming out of deep sleep in an SD chamber was always more of a controlled crash than a smooth landing. Doing it in a sickbay under the supervision of a Haven doctor seemed an optimal choice.
“You’re still sedated, so don’t worry if you can’t quite wake up right away,” his physician assured him, still speaking quietly and moving carefully to avoid touching him. “That’s all we’re going to do today. Just slowly orient yourself. Nap and allow yourself to gradually return bit by bit. Do you think you can do that?”
Del nodded fractionally, but even that sent ripples of sensation that made him wince.
“Don’t force anything,” the doctor cautioned. “Just relax. After you wake up a little more, we’re going to get this casing off your wrist. Probably itches.”
Entire medical treatises could be composed on the spectrum of exotic sensations his tormented right wrist was undergoing at the moment that were not covered by the bland descriptor of “itches.” He intended to fully inform his physician of them all… just as soon as he had a handle once more on some minor issues… like what her name was… and how talking worked…
“This is plenty for now.” A hypo hissed an almost unbearable, technicolor dreamscape of pharmacological pulchritude into his upper arm. “Just drift back off.”
A Haven doctor in an SD crash, he decided as velvet blackness claimed him once again. You just couldn’t ask for much better than that…
Finally giving in to the impulse that had been nagging him for hours, Sulu hit the intercom button on his desk. “Sickbay.”
Rajana Blake’s features lit the tiny viewscreen. “Yes, Captain?”
“Nurse, what is Lieutenant Commander DelMonde’s status?”
“Um…” she replied with uncharacteristic hesitancy as her brown eyes darted to a point beyond his field of view. “He’s asleep.”
“No change in his condition?” he pressed suspiciously.
The look on the nurse’s face left no doubt in her captain’s mind that should the Drake ever decide to hold a poker tournament, Rajana Blake would be out in the first round.
"That would be difficult to say, sir.”
“Difficult because Dr. Rendell is standing in front of you giving you the evil eye?” Sulu suggested.
The nurse gave a nervous laugh. “That would cause some difficulties, wouldn’t it, sir?” Someone grumbled, “Saford’s hell” off camera and Blake made an abrupt exit to be replaced by the unsmiling visage of Lian Rendell.
“There’s nothing I can tell you yet,” the Haven announced.
Sulu frowned. “He’s been asleep four days.”
“Yes,” the doctor confirmed easily.
“That seems like a long time.”
“I’m sure that it does.” Rendell nodded in a manner that was firm but not unsympathetic. “And even after we start to wake him up, I will not be able to make an immediate determination about the success or failure of this course of treatment…” She drew in a deep breath before continuing. “And it will be very important that you – in particular -- stay far, far away for some time.”
The captain scowled in a very Del-like manner at the idea that he could do anything that would prove harmful to the Cajun. “It will?”
“Most definitely,” the Haven replied adamantly. “And the Paine too. Be a dear and arrange that for me.”
Sulu made a face. “What do you want me to do? Throw him in the brig?”
“That would do nicely,” Rendell agreed seriously. “And, of course, I am always in favor of tossing him out the nearest air lock… Or you could just let him shoot at something. He seems to enjoy that… Hopefully not at me, though.”
“Oh?” Despite everything, Sulu had to smile at the note of ruefulness in the suggestion. “Feeling like a target these days?”
“Beth Arista has been growling at me,” the doctor admitted.
“Has she?”
“No idea why,” Rendell reported with a diffident shrug. “Something about a betting pool…”
“About which you know nothing,” the captain speculated knowingly.
“Absolutely mystified.”
“Mr. Singh is in your office, Doctor,” Rajana Blake announced off camera, right on cue. “Needs to speak to you about a debt?”
“Of gratitude, no doubt?” Sulu guessed.
“No doubt,” the Haven confirmed without missing a beat. “That’s what I enjoy most about Star Fleet. It is so very rewarding.”
His second bounce into reality was a great deal less jarring than his first. That was the way these things normally went. He’d floated up to the surface of consciousness a few times without breaking through the thin membrane of actual wakefulness… or at least he thought he might have… His brain was still rather sponge-y. Thoughts fuzzed out into a nice fog past a certain point…
“We’re going to be a little more ambitious this time,” a woman’s pleasant voice warned him.
He decided that he was sufficiently ambitious to open his eyes a fraction.
The room was lit dimly in soft blue and green tones, but there were enough blinking lights and illuminated gee-gaws to immediately give the place away as being a Sickbay isolation ward. His pretty Haven doctor had chosen to have his bed positioned so that he was propped up – which was quite surprising. It seemed like he’d been flat on his back for so long, he might just stay that way forever.
“Drink this.”
She had a cup with a straw in it on a little tray in front of him. He frowned at it. It was one of his general rules to never drink things from straws. However he was so parched that his arm and mouth mutinied against him without pausing for parlay. They had already successfully conspired to suck down a greedy half-glass before they would allow him to rasp out, “Whazizziz?”
“Fruit juice,” Rendell answered, her eyes checking the readings on the charts behind his head. “If you’re a good boy and drink it all, I’ll add bourbon next time.”
He shook his head, although his traitorous body was gulping down the rest of the drink like it was heaven-sent ambrosia.
“No?” She lifted an eyebrow as she beckoned her nurse forward to offer him a refill.
“No.” He discarded the offensive straw and knocked the next round back like a straight shot of whiskey. “A mix make it into a girlie drink.”
“Whatever is your preference.” The doctor gestured for the nurse to keep the refills coming. “As long as you drink this fruit juice for me now, I promise to reward you later with a beverage choice that will not compromise your masculinity.”
His bone-dry body allowed him just enough leeway between gulps to scowl at the Haven and assure her, “Bourbon work jus' fine.”
“Drink your fruit juice,” she ordered, making notions into her chart. “Then we’re going to listen to some remarkably insipid music and look at some pretty colored lights.”
Del frowned as deeply as one could while sucking down fruit juice like a dehydrated madman. “That a head-shrinker test.”
“Yes,” Rendell confirmed solemnly as she ran a scanner in a wave-y benediction over him. “We’ve been shrinking your head. Getting it down to standard dimensions is out of the question, of course, but we do want to see if it’s back to something roughly approaching a manageable size.”
“Sweet Mary, Li,” he sighed, rolling his eyes wearily. “You gonna hafta let me sober up a li'l so you can stop talkin' t' me like I a stoned three year old.”
“Don’t worry,” she reassured him as she signaled her nurse to set up for the tests. “We’ll try to have you conversing at your usual drunken fifteen-year-old level by the end of the day.”
“Is Del awake?”
As would come as no surprise to Lian Rendell, Dylan Paine was preparing to shoot things -- or to shoot blanks at things, at least. Sulu thought that upon his return, DelMonde might have some choice words to say about the extent to which his obstacle course had been converted into a firing range by the ensign.
"I don’t know,” he answered. “Sickbay wouldn’t confirm.”
“But you have the feeling he is?” Paine grinned at him from where he was perched on the shoulder of one of the exoskeltons, adjusting a rocket launcher. “I know… I’ve been getting that feeling too.”
“Listen, Dylan,” the captain said, as the ensign swung down the frame of the droid like it was a big metal tree. “It may be a good idea to give Del some space while he’s recovering…”
Paine frowned as he hit the deck. “Is that Dr. Rendell’s idea?”
Sulu expected that the young man would be disappointed, but there was an extra note of hostility he’d not anticipated. “Is that a problem?”
The ensign returned the tools he’d been working with to the workbench instead of answering him directly. “You really trust her, don’t you?”
Sulu raised an eyebrow. “You don’t?”
“She’s a surgeon,” Paine pointed out, picking out a new set of parts from a container before turning to face him. “I’m not sure what she’s treating by knocking him out for four days, but it’s not his broken wrist.”
The captain crossed his arms. “What are you trying to say?”
“Captain, it’s an open secret that you’ve been investigating Haven connections to the origins of the problems on Sagron IV,” Paine replied bluntly. “Del is a telepath. He’s also friends with Rendell. What if there’s something that she doesn’t want him to find out? Or, more precisely, her government doesn't want found out. What if it’s in the Havens’ best interests for him to be out of the picture until this mission is over?”
Sulu took in a deep breath. He’d been turning over so many dark thoughts in his mind in the past few days that the suggestion didn’t chill him. It just made him feel very tired.
He gave the ensign a weak smile. “I’d say you’ve been watching too many espionage holos…”
“Sir..” Paine protested, his too-blue eyes eloquently pleading his misery.
“…And that you’re very concerned about someone you care about very much,” the captain continued, relenting. There was something about the almost unnatural blue-blue-ness of those eyes that just stabbed you right in the heart every time…
“Yes, sir.”
‘"I’ll see if I can get Dr. Rendell to ease up and let you in to see Del,” Sulu promised. “But don’t rush in there until you get the go ahead from me… And that’s not advice, ensign. That’s an order. Understand?”
Paine gave a chagrined sigh. “Yes, sir.”
“And let’s keep this theory of yours between the two of us,” the captain continued firmly. “Whatever happened on Sagron, happened a very long time ago. The Havens are our allies now.”
"Yes, sir." The ensign gave a cynical half-laugh as he turned back to his work. “Until they’re not.”
Until they’re not. The phrase sounded so authentically Haven, Sulu imagined it might have its own special title – The Grand Caveat… or something to that effect.
"Until we’re not,” he could imagine Lian Rendell saying as she blew him a sweet kiss goodbye. “Now be a dear and forward my winnings to the Leather.”
He sighed and shook his head as he turned towards the exit. “Until they’re not.”
“Half th' time, these tests not work on me worth shit, Li.”
Lian Rendell decided that DelMonde’s tele-empathy was definitely not functioning. No one with an ounce of giftedness could possibly ignore how close she was to strangling him right now.
“’Sides,” the Cajun grumbled obliviously. “These damned barbs you got me on is so strong I can barely feel th' end o' my nose, let alone t'ink straight…”
Rendell frowned at the readings on the viewscreen in front of her on the small desk near the doorway of the isolation wardroom door. DelMonde was correct in that he was such a unique neurological specimen that standard testing was next to useless in helping to determine his current state of mental health in regards to his extra-sensory powers. It was also true that he still had enough chemicals in his system to inhibit those gifts to a certain extent. The lack of sensation in his face, however, was probably due to the generous portion of bourbon he was happily consuming on a radically empty stomach – Not a practice approved by Star Fleet Medical by any means, of course. However the last testing session had run long, and the bribe had gotten everyone through the experience alive.
“That will be all for now, nurse,” she said, dismissing Blake and pouring herself a very small portion of the wretched stuff.
The doctor was caught in a quandary. For fear of re-injuring his brain, she didn’t want to lower the dosage on the chemicals she was giving the engineer to inhibit his gifts – if they were still there at all -- until she had some definite signs healing had taken place. However it didn’t look like there was any way to determine he’d healed other than seeing him use his powers… which could put them all back at square one… if not in a much, much, much worse situation…
“I guess Sulu still mad at me,” the Cajun speculated glumly.
“Don’t you know if he is or not?” Rendell asked exasperatedly. Surely, given the vehemence of their mutual emotions, he could scrounge enough residual sparks of empathy for that sort of reading.
“Whatever you been givin' me has got me numb as a post,” the Cajun asserted uncooperatively.
This, Rendell knew, was another barrier. Like the victim of a painful fall, even if he could use them, it was probable DelMonde was going to resist using his gifts to avoid putting himself in situations where he might be hurt again. She couldn’t say she blamed him for avoiding the pain, but it certainly wasn’t making determining the success or failure of the risky course of treatment she’d committed to any easier…
The engineer favored her with a narrow look over the top of his cup of bourbon. “What did you do to me?”
Sensing an opening, (and perhaps a little reckless from the shot of whiskey) she lowered her shields enough to serve as a dare and an invitation. “What do you think I did?”
The telepath was sucked in like a feather into a wind tunnel.
“Jesus H. Christ on a Crutch, Li!” the Cajun exclaimed, his mouth dropping open and his black eyes going wide with surprise. “You went an' done a cold reboot on my telempathy…!”
Rendell smiled and drank a triumphant little toast to herself. “Is it so different from a solution you would have tried?”
“Well, it worked,” she said, turning back to her viewscreen to fill in those obstinate blanks in her report that had been plaguing her for the past forty-eight hours.
The Cajun crossed his arms and frowned. “Or so you hope…”
“So far, so good,” she replied, closing down the screen with a few firm clicks.
“You still got me so barbed up, who know th' head from th' tail yet?” DelMonde grumbled.
“How’s your eyesight, Cajun?” she asked, crossing to him.
“Good as ever, I guess,” he replied. “No need to press th' reset on that.”
She held her arm up in front of him. “What color is my skin?”
“Sparklin’ Haven gold.”
“And since you were a teenager, to whom have you gone to score the purest and truest?” To underline that this was not merely a question but a threat, Rendell plucked the empty cup from his hand.
“Hey!” the engineer protested.
“Hmm?” she pressed.
He sighed grudgingly. “I withdraw my previous comment.”
“I should hope so,” she replied, rewarding him with enough bourbon to make the Surgeon General’s head spin.
“You gotta admit you do got me pretty doped up, though,” he was brave enough to insist only after the cup was safely once more in his hand.
“Question my pharmacological expertise once more,” she warned, “and you’re going to find yourself working your way through Sensory-Dep crash on weak Federation aspirin and happy thoughts.”
“Oh, is that how it is?” the Cajun asked with the imitation of a gracious smile.
“This is soooo how it is,” she replied in kind.
“Have I ever mentioned how beautiful you are, Lian, my darlin’?” he asked, holding his cup out for a refill. “An' smart?”
“Now might be a good time,” she advised.
“Orions?” Commodore Jose Mendez’s normally dour features were folded into an even more querulous expression than usual. “Are you sure?”
Sulu had known the speculations they were making were bound to cause a sensation at Star Fleet Headquarters. However, the fact that he’d gotten this call immediately upon receipt of their very carefully and conservatively worded preliminary reports was a mark of how potentially politically explosive this five-hundred-year old scandal had the potential to be.
“There are quite a few tests we can’t run until we make planetfall, sir,” the captain replied. “But, even absent that, our Science Officer is putting the possibility of direct genetic manipulation at around 87% right now and making the odds that these mutations are the product of well-known Orion techniques and technology in the high seventies. I’ve been looking at chromosome models and retro-evolutionary projections all morning and…” Sulu gestured at the stacks of data tapes on his desk that were probably visible to the commodore. “Well, she makes a very compelling case.”
“Compelling?” Mendez’s frown deepened. “Sulu, the word you’re looking for is “inconvenient.” Extremely inconvenient.”
The captain of the Drake sighed. “I can imagine.”
“No, you can’t,” the commodore assured him flatly. “Not unless you’ve got some kind of score to settle with the Havens.”
“Other than the fact that Sagron was part of the HTE when all this may have taken place,” Sulu hastened to add, “we have no evidence of any direct involvement of the Havens.”
“Other than that…” Mendez gave a short, humorless laugh. “And the fact that I assume two plus two still equals four in that sector of the galaxy, Captain?”
“Other than that, sir,” the captain had to concede, fighting the same overwhelming sense of fatigue that had been dogging him since he’d hit upon this idea that the Havens may have helped the Calumbrians stupidly pay the Orions to destroy their ecosystem. It worried him deeply to see these boon companions of his youth possibly face so much trouble for the consequences of something it would have been completely in character for them to have done. The idea of playing Prince Hal to their Falstaff was somehow unbearable…
“Not much of a fan of espionage holos, are you?” Mendez asked, breaking into these thoughts.
Sulu gave a mirthless laugh of his own. “I was accusing one of my junior officers of exactly that yesterday…”
The commodore’s expression on his viewscreen suddenly became focused and sharp. “Really?”
The captain winced mentally. Walked right into that one, didn’t you?
“Our CMO is a Haven,” he explained aloud. “He feels like she knows more about all this than she’s saying.”
“And you don’t?”
“To be fair, sir,” Sulu replied. “Whatever took place happened around five hundred years ago. The HTE was big then. It’s bigger now. Probably their primary involvement in the Orions’ genetic manipulation of lifeforms on Sagron is that it was a deal that they brokered. The Haven version of the old Roman maxim 'Caveat Emptor' is more than a proverb – It has near religious significance to them. So although the results of that manipulation were devastating to Sagron and, by our standards, criminal on the part of the Orions, the affair simply may not have been important enough to have
been very memorable for the Havens.”
Mendez’s features remained impassive. “Or they’re just not telling us anything.”
Sulu had to sigh again and concede, “Or that.”
“Keep your ear to the ground, Captain,” the commodore advised. “The Havens seem to like you.”
Sulu spread his hands in protest. “Sir, they don’t tell me anything they don’t tell anyone else.”
“Maybe.” Mendez’s features folded into a cynical smile as he leaned forward to reach the button that would deactivate his viewer. “But they don’t tell you in a much nicer manner. Mendez out.”