Return to Part Six
The look on the engineer’s face as he climbed out of the cockpit was so stricken and uncertain it was as though someone else much younger and more vulnerable might inhabit his body.
“Look,” he said quietly, as he removed his headset, “I not know what you t'ink you know now, but…”
Paine shook his head, cutting off any attempt at a denial of what he’d seen. “Del, we’ve got to talk.”
The Cajun stared at him for a moment, then turned, and with long, deliberate strides, fled. Not expecting this much of a straight-forward and to the point method of evasion, Dylan was caught off guard enough to allow DelMonde enough time to escape the hangar. He eventually caught up with the engineer on the edge of the jungle next to the invisible force wall of the pressure dome. Only a string of metal posts marked the existence of the barrier. DelMonde sat on a large rock cradling his head in his hands. “Del!”
“Go away,” his lover growled without looking up.
“I deserve an explanation,” he said, knowing full well what the reply to that assertion was going to be in advance.
“You not deserve shit,” was the predictable reply.
“You told me…” Paine shook his head as if that could clear it of the echoes of the disturbing borrowed memories. “You told me you couldn’t do things like that… That telepaths like you can’t control minds…”
“An' that still true…” the Cajun asserted defensively.
“Zoe… She was like some kind of a toy for you…”
“You not understand…” The engineer buried his face between his fists again. “What you saw… It not real…”
“Are you trying to claim it didn’t happen? That those weren’t memories?”
“Well…”
“Because I don’t know how I know it, but I know what I saw was very real for you.”
“That not what I was sayin'…” the Cajun protested weakly. “About me controlling her brain… I mean, I not able to really… It just a sort o' a trick…”
Paine frowned. “Some trick.”
“I was sick.” The heels of the engineer’s hands pressed hard against his temples. “Not in my right mind…”
“That’s another thing I don’t understand – how all this relates to your “illness”… Whatever that was…” Paine said, then paused to read the reaction this got from DelMonde. “Oh, but you understand that, don’t you?” Again, the uncharacteristic amount of guilt his lover was dealing with produced an unmistakable and clearly readable physical response. Dylan got down on his knees so he could look the engineer in the eyes before pressing his luck and speculating, “And you have seen other “ill” telepaths control non-telepaths the way you were doing with Zoe?”
The Cajun couldn’t stop himself from flinching as though the accusation smacked a hot branding iron across his soul.
Paine sat back on his heels silently, making no comment that would give his lover an excuse to duck out of the confession he knew he must make.
After a long pause, the engineer finally gave in with a shuddering sigh. “There was always folks in New Orleans who assumed my father was a hitman,” he began, wiping some errant moisture from the corners of his eyes. “This is false. My father never made a credit off killin' nobody….”
It slowly occurred to Dylan that Del was not saying that his father had never killed anyone.
“My daddy’s not no telepath either,” the Cajun continued. “Not officially. I not t'ink he’d test more than 'gifted intuitive' on Brailly and ‘em’s scale… An' what he does do fo' a livin' is not none o' your business… An' you’d be wise not t' devote much thought to it… But I just gonna say this – no one can lie t' my daddy. When he on the scene, the truth gonna come out – though frequently it can be a grudgin' appearance… ‘Cause some time in the business he in, the truth not always your friend, mon ami. It not always set your ass free. Sometimes quite the opposite…. An', like I say, he not a strong telepath. Now me, I real strong. If I wanna slip inside your head, all you gonna feel is a li'l tickle at the most… But my daddy… If he gotta bear down to get what he want… you gonna feel it and how.”
There was another long, eloquent pause while DelMonde edited through the information necessary to tell his tale. From the expressions that crossed his lover’s face, Paine was very glad to not be a guest inside the engineer’s mind for these memories.
“Anyway, all this is to say that if you in a meld wit' somebody an' that person die while you all tied up in their head – even if you not know 'em much or like 'em – it will tear your ass up.”
What DelMonde was describing was a truly appalling situation. A telepath – albeit a relatively weak one – working as an interrogator for a criminal organization would be, as he had described, constantly in danger of improperly broken mind-melds in a whole range of circumstances, up to and including the untimely (and possibly quite messy) death of the subject…
Paine shuddered involuntarily at the thought. “And that happened to your father? “Ever' so often, he’d disappear after a job that had gone south… At least he never brought that shit home t' my mama.” The Cajun paused and gave a mirthless laugh. “After all these years, I guess I finally understand that much about th' old bastard. He never brought that shit into our house. He’d disappear down into Storyville fo' a couple weeks… Rent him some whores… Make ‘em do weird shit… I never understood…”
The other shoe dropped for Paine as he came to the sickening realization that Young Noel, who was a very strong telepath, from a tender age had received impressions of his father’s bad work experiences and their chaotic aftermaths…And apparently hated him for it and now hated himself for exhibiting the same weakness. “And you think that’s what happened to you?
“It the only t'ing that I know of that anyt'ing like what I go though…” DelMonde paused, then sighed again. “‘Cept for… Well… the Romulans… Telepaths that is…. They take unrequited love very seriously.”
Paine realized that he was half-expecting something about the Romulans to come up. There had been fragments of memories about Romulans and a woman with red hair. “They do?”
“Yeah, if you in a Bond that go bad or is all one-sided or somet'ing, you can get all…” The engineer used a Romulan phrase without translating it. “Them folks do all sorts o' weird shit. The worst t'ing – well, one of the bad t'ings they can do is that they’ll get themselves a li'l…” Again the Cajun switched over to the Romulan language. This time he caught himself, though. “Sorry -- A non-telepath… an' they start to play these games wit' their minds. They start doin' these deep melds like you’d do wit' another telepath… An' I not know if it stimulates latencies or just makes weird echoes in some folks or what, but it can make some non-gifts start actin' like they t'ink they telepaths… an' that just causes a world o' shit right there…”
“Is that what happened?”
“Not exactly… The deep meldin' shit, yeah… an'… I told myself I was never makin' her do anyt'ing she not wanna do… but… I mean, you get into one o' them deep melds an' you dealin' wit' the subconscious… an' you can start gettin' a li'l cute wit' them sorts o' questions, you know. 'Do you wanna do this?' an' 'Would you do this in a dream where there was never gonna be no consequences?' can sound like the exact same damn question to a person’s subconscious… so… I just not know… I was real sick… My mind was not right. My mind has not been right since that damned Romulan mission…” …When the woman with red hair died, Dylan concluded silently putting together bits of memory fragments. A Bond with a telepath that had a bad end…
“An' everybody was all up in my shit right an' left…” DelMonde was continuing. “An' I just went to Zoe fo' some help on paperwork – not'ing else… An' she was tryin' to explain some shit to me… An' I just was too damned tired t' get what she was sayin', so I went into her mind, but I slipped up an' melded too deep – like you would wit' another telepath, but there ain’t no point in doin' wit' a non-gift 'cause they not able to talk back to you down that deep, so it just a damned echo chamber down there… An' then I was too tired to get back out. So, I say, 'Girl, you wanna have some sex?' An' she was like, 'Sure, okay.' ‘Cause I was t'inking – now this is not not'ing I never read in no book, but sometimes if you meld too deep an' have trouble gettin' out, if you have sex with the person, you both get relaxed an' distracted an' your minds just ease apart naturally when it all over. It just somet'ing that usually work fo' me – they not no theory that Brailly done told me or not'ing behind it. It might be bullshit… but it usually work… an' at the very least, you get you some sex out of it.”
Paine raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“Well, sue me, but I like that part,” the Cajun retorted, sounding like his old self for a moment again, before heaving another heavy sigh. “Anyway, we havin' sex… an' it lit me up like I was plugged into a three-ton semi-trac generator. I never experienced not'ing like it. She goes to sleep an' I get up an' do three days worth o' that damned paperwork.”
“You weren’t worried about her?”
“She was just sleepin'. She was fine when I wake her up an' send her back t' her quarters so…I went in an' worked fo' eight hours 'fore I crashed. An' let me tell you, it wasn’t long 'fore I was t'inking, “Can I make that shit happen again?”
“And you could?”
“Oh, yeah.” The Cajun nodded. “I need to get her subconscious all stirred up an' then somehow I was able to siphon a charge off it. I never been able to do anyt'ing like it before… Never heard of anyone bein' able to do anyt'ing like it before… ‘cept for the cases I mentioned… People who were more than a bit sick in their mind. It were burnin' me out too. Old Zoe kept sleepin' it off an' bouncin' back, but I was dryin' up from th' inside out. If I not take that fall an' wind up in Sickbay, I might be dead or crazy by now.” The engineer shook his head firmly. “Never mind all that, though. It over now.”
“Is it?” Paine asked bluntly.
The Cajun glared at him. “Is it what?”
“Is it over now?” he repeated, undaunted. “You’re not sure why whatever happened happened. You’re not even exactly sure what happened. I’m betting you didn’t disclose any of what you’ve just told me to Rendell before she launched her miracle cure on you…”
“It none o' her damned business,” the engineer snarled, “None o' yours neither.”
“Don’t shut me down, Del,” Paine snapped back. “Jesus! You always treat me like I’m a kid.”
“It because you is a kid, cher,” the Cajun replied firmly, but a bit more gently. “An' when it comes to shit like this, if you had any sense you’d do ever't'ing in your livin' power to stay that way.”
He put a hand on the engineer’s thigh. “I’m just trying to help.”
“There ain’t not'ing you can do,” the Cajun replied, removing it.
“Look, I took some classes on this sort of stuff at the Academy,” he offered. “I was going to be a psych major at one point…”
DelMonde gave an incredulous snort. “All I need is a damned junior head shrinker…”
“You need…” Paine put both arms around him looked deep into those pain-filled black eyes. “…is someone to talk to. You may not be out of the woods yet with this thing. You’ve been obsessing about it all day. That doesn’t sound very 'over it' to me. And what you’ve just told me -- those aren’t things you feel like you could be comfortable telling Sulu or Rendell, are they?”
“Don’t meddle in my affairs, chiot,” DelMonde warned, sounding like a person whose father was a hitman for the Mob in a way that Paine had never noticed before. “You likely t' get hurt.”
“Let me help you,” he replied, pushing his lover’s wild black curls from his face and kissing him softly. “You’ve already confided in me. That didn’t kill you, did it?”
“The day is young, darlin',” the engineer retorted pessimistically as he relaxed into his embrace. “The day is still young.”
“A successful journey, Captain?”
“Uh…Yes, yes.” The Calumbrians, like any other large group of people, had a certain amount of internal conflicts. However, members of the High Council very much liked to present a united front when interacting with the individuals they considered official representatives of Star Fleet. Therefore, Sulu took a deep breath and braced himself for trouble when four of them approached him outside the hangar. “Very… enjoyable.”
“No problems?” A tall, one-eyed veteran named Grizak queried pointedly. “As with Lieutenant Vale?”
“No,” the captain replied, surprised that news of the Indiian’s difficulties would be of interest to them. “The lieutenant just got a little spacesick.”
The Calumbri elders looked as though they were 110 percent sure that was not what happened and were appalled that he would make such a patently false assumption.
“Captain, as you know, our knowledge of the Epiphany swords stands now as a broken chain,” another of the elders, a man named Mardag, began. “As Ga’Hai’lh DelMonde says, we no longer have full knowledge of the nuts of the bolts…”
Sulu opened his mouth to correct the metaphor but then reconsidered, deciding that Del could actually say “the nuts of the bolts” instead of “nuts and bolts” and he’d just never noticed before. It didn’t sound like something the Cajun wouldn’t say…
“…However much of the lore surrounding the Swords is still with us. It has always been our practice that the pilot teams before their first dive must make ritual time together. Do you understand? A time for meditation… to achieve equilibrium as a pairing…”
“The righting of any past wrongs between them…” Grizak tried to clarify. “A sharing time before the Sword-bonding…”
With all eyes on him expectantly, Sulu nodded as if he was following. “Oh.”
“We assumed your warriors had done so on your ship…?” Mardag said, making a gesture that invited the captain to fill in the confirmation they were seeking.
“Well…” Sulu began slowly. “We represent many different faiths… so participation in that sort of ritual would have to be voluntary if we did it…”
“Oh.” The Calumbrians exchanged significant glances. There was a moment of silence while they absorbed this information. Some looked puzzled. Some looked surprised. One fellow gave a distinctly, “I told you so” nod to his fellows.
A short, grizzled veteran named Grata barked a sharp laugh. “You are fortunate that your warriors are so pure of heart that they can Sword-Bond without inspiring a dozen blood feuds… Just a lover’s quarrel and a bit of 'space sick.'”
Although the humor of this remark went over Sulu’s head, it seemed to break the tension very well for the Calumbrians.
“Our warriors are good people,” Grizak agreed, shaking his head with a rueful grin. “But many come from clans that have warred upon each other. Some have done each other grievous wrong. We will retreat, Captain, and observe our old practices to cleanse our minds before the Swords make them bare.”
Mardag gave Sulu’s arm a somewhat patronizing pat before turning to leave. “No 'optional' for our people, sir.”
“We are your equals as warriors,” Grata declared over his shoulder to the general hilarity of his comrades, “but not in purity!”
Sulu put his hands on his hips and frowned in puzzlement as he watched them walk away. “Now there’s a bet I wouldn’t take…”
Dylan Paine, Del decided, was absolutely wrong in his idea that talking was going to make him feel better. He was feeling much worse now. It had him thinking about his father… which was never an improvement. And now no matter how late Del stayed in the now-empty hangar and worked tonight, Dylan was still going to walk in tomorrow morning and find him doing something completely normal as if nothing was wrong – because there was just no getting around that. Del had a job to do. Folks had to dive off cliffs in these galvanized gully-jumpers. He couldn’t lay in bed weeping and moaning when there was work to be done. The people here were depending on him to be their Grand Giddy-Up, or whatever the hell it was they called him…
But still, Dylan was going to walk in here and find him doing a visual check of the vertical alignment of the rear struts of these things… and it was going to be like when Del was a little boy and his daddy would disappear for a couple weeks – missing birthdays, anniversaries, events planned long in advance, and terrifying crises in his mother’s health – and then just materialize without explanation or apology. Del would walk in to find his father sitting at the breakfast table drinking coffee and reading the news as if nothing had happened.
It was one of the things the engineer held against the Vulcans. Acting like you didn’t have a full range of normal emotions did not make you all that enlightened or noble in his experience. He didn’t know what ol’ Surak was like at home on a weekday, but his father and grandmother could both suppress emotions like champs – and neither one of them was exactly the sort of person you’d want to meet in a dark alley let alone base your whole civilization on...
Del was so wrapped up in his own thoughts, he almost missed the approach of someone whose nerves were even more torn up than his own were – which, when he figured out who it was, was really saying something.
When it came to mental powers, Havens weren’t snobby smartypants like the Vulcans or flighty show-offs like the Antaris, but they were not to be under-estimated. They reminded Del of the gates around rich people’s houses in New Orleans – You could coo over how cute the ironwork gee-gaws were and smile at how clever the brickwork had been designed, but it still didn’t change the fact that a fence was a fence; the main purpose of which is always to keep your raggedy ass out.
Under normal circumstances, a lot of Havens could pull off this really lovely “Who, me, Officer?” stunt where you did not even see a hint of any mental defenses. All you got a sense of was a mind as cool and polished as duranium hull plating that really didn’t give a shit about much of anything -- let alone whatever piss-ant concern you were nosing around about.
The situation right now with the Drake’s CMO, however, seemed to be far from normal, however, for her brain was leaking the jagged edges of something approaching nervous hysteria about something.
“Cajun,” she said with a tight smile. “I had a crazy idea about how to stop the malfunction that was making pilots hallucinate during flights…”
“Oh?” he asked, sitting back on his heels. “Is that what happenin'?"
“Yes.” She thrust a clipboard into his hands and stepped back as if she half-expected it to explode. “I jotted down some notes.”
“You sure did.” The engineer blew out a long, impressed whistle as he began to page through the densely packed technical writing. “Girl, you jotted the hell out o' some damn notes… I not know you could jot like this.”
“Just some wild ideas…” Rendell made a vague gesture as he read and cleared her throat as if she were absolutely parched for some Black Scotch. “Made a few… notes...”
“Uh-huh. I see that,” the Cajun agreed absently as his eyes opened wider and wider at what he was reading. “The way you got it diagramed up make it look like… med-tech,” he said carefully, looking around with both his eyes and his mind to double-check that they were alone. “Old… Haven… med-tech.”
“You think so?” She glanced at what she was presenting as her own work and then gave a weak laugh. “I’m an old Haven medico, so…”
The Cajun paused to squint at her for this entirely unsatisfactory response. His experience as a freelance repairman during his Clave years had given him a depth of familiarity with Haven tech that most Federation engineers lacked, but the schematics she’d presented him with exceeded anything he’d ever seen in sophistication by several orders of magnitude despite their utilization of some glaringly outdated materials and procedures.
“Make it look like kinda…” He paused, frowned, and checked once more for eavesdroppers. “… a neural net sorta t'ing…”
She gave a very uncomfortable laugh and smiled up at the forbiddingly silent Calumbrian droids nervously. “The notes I made for disabe… I mean, reversing the malfunction…. We’ll have to do them all. Right away. Just you and I.”
“Oh, Sweet Mary…” Del blew out a long sigh, then retrieved his tool box and fished out the flask of bourbon he kept for these sorts of emergencies and other less existential crises. After taking a long pull, he remembered his guest. “I not have a glass,” he apologized, holding out the flask.
“Not a problem,” she said, receiving it gratefully.
“Pull up a boot,” he invited, gesturing her towards the droid’s gigantic nearby foot. “I gonna need a minute.”
“Undoubtedly,” Rendell agreed, shaking her head and sighing shakily as she found a place that could serve as a seat on the mechaniod’s foot as if she too were wondering what terrible thing she’d done to suddenly wind up in such an awful position.
The notes did, at least, firmly put to rest one question that had been nagging Del for the last several hours. They quite adequately explained how Dylan Paine had been able to read his thoughts. Telepaths had forever complained about his lack of adequate shielding and “leaky brain,” but up until today, he’d never had a problem with unknowingly broadcasting at random to a non-telepath. These notes made it clear that the Havens, clever bastards that they were, had the technology to create a neural net that would set up a line of mental communication between the co-pilots of the Calumbrian vessels.
Del had thought he had caught hints of Haven-ish choices in the Calumbrian tech, but the archaic eccentricities of the mechanisms had thrown him off the scent. The notes he held in his hand provided a Rosetta Stone, giving the necessary translations between old methodologies and new.
The Cajun cast a narrow glance at Rendell, who was pausing to make a face at the taste of his liquor before continuing to drain the flask. The notes were quite wondrously helpful and specific, seeming to take into careful consideration exactly the sort of knowledge that only he might bring to the project of sabotaging the Calumbrian droids.
Then again, who else could the Havens get to do this? Nobody else on the ship had the experience to do this kind of work as quickly as it would have to be done…. But would he do it? It was sort of treason, wasn’t it? Did they think so little of him that they would assume that he would just do treason for the hell of it or for the promise of some sapphire or some such shit as that?
He frowned at Lian, who instead of looking like she was getting ready to sell him on some sort of pitch, was staring up at the solemn silver face of the Calumbrian droid, looking as close as Havens got to guilty.
Del looked back down at the notes. Maybe the Havens knew that they didn’t have to sell him. Maybe they knew he’d already been through more than enough to know that the Federation was not ready for neural net technology that could make everyone and his mind-blind brother into telepaths. It couldn’t be that much of a secret that Del had been scarred and burned by his last encounter with Special Intelligence. He’d seen their corrupt treatment of telepaths up close and knew that even more deep rot existed. Maybe the Havens knew this and knew that he’d realize that sabotage was the only way of keeping this dangerous ancient tech out of their reach.
“You read all the way through these here notes you made?” he asked aloud, raising an eyebrow as he came to a certain set of entries that he didn’t think was intended for his perusal.
“Of course I read through my notes,” the surgeon replied defensively.
Del held up the screen and tapped it. “Even the part where you give yourself instructions on knockin' me out wit' a tranquilizer an' erasing parts o' my log entries?”
“Saford’s Hell…” The doctor buried her face in her hands miserably. “I swear, Cajun, we just don’t do things like this… I just don’t do things like this…”
The engineer’s heart was softened by the sheer amateurishness of the makeshift Haven espionage operation. It was a refreshing contrast to the brutal efficiency of Special Intelligence and the Telenate.
Maybe the Haven’s concern was purely mercantile. Most of their motivations were. If the Federation discovered their neural net technology here on this planet, then the metaphorical genie was out of the bottle. In practical terms, there would be nothing the Havens could do to protect their intellectual property. Even if they were immediately to stake a claim as soon as Sulu’s logs were posted, Federation scientists would be already be at work reverse-engineering the technology. Legal challenges would only bring more publicity and therefore more expert scrutiny to the mechanisms. Their exclusive rights wouldn’t be worth a damn by the time they won them back… if that ever even happened.
Whatever the Havens’ motivations, the decision to permanently disable the neural nets on all these silent silver giants was a big one. It was a decision that Star Fleet would say was far above his pay grade. Del supposed that there were folks who would be able to come up with some great and helpful things that having a neural net that made ordinary folks into telepaths could be used for. Having lived all his life with the horrible burden of being a telepath, Del could not think of a single worthwhile one.
And even if this did wind up costing him his career, he’d have the satisfaction of knowing that each neural net he erased was one that he ripped from the greedy, grasping hands of those Special Intelligence bastards who killed his Pelori.
“Well…” He took in a deep breath and turning to the doctor. “You pulled me through a real bad spell here recently, Li. I guess you callin’ in some o' your markers from me now, non?”
“Devri’s bright face bless your black eyes, Xaxbi,” Rendell breathed in relief.
“Huh?”
“Nothing.” She handed him back the near-empty flask. “Let’s get to work.”
A salty sheen of sweat beaded on Sulu's skin as he pushed through curtains of emerald vines to reach the small clearing just beyond the base camp's perimeter where DelMonde waited. The alien humidity clung to his body like a second layer, thick with the scent of rotting vegetation and something sweetly floral that made his sinuses ache. Above them, the Calumbrian giants stretched impossibly tall—their trunks smooth as polished metal, crowned with fronds that whispered secrets in languages older than Earth. Bioluminescent fungi pulsed along the bark in slow, hypnotic rhythms, casting ghostly blue shadows that danced with the filtered early morning light.
The captain greeted his subordinate with a frown, sweat already trickling down his neck. "I wouldn't have thought you had time for a chat right now."
"That I do not," the engineer confirmed readily, brushing a jewel-bright beetle from his shoulder. Its carapace caught the alien light like a living prism before it disappeared into the undergrowth. "But I got me some t'ings need sayin'..."
"You need to make it fast." Sulu pointed beyond the clearing where the jungle writhed with hidden life. Somewhere in that tangle of alien growth, thorned vines thick as a man's torso coiled around trees whose leaves dripped an oily, amber substance that pooled in strange geometric patterns on the forest floor. The undergrowth rustled with movements too large and too deliberate to be wind. Something massive shifted its weight from foot to foot, testing the perimeter. "Arista says some of her super-predators have been probing this area of the shielding for weaknesses."
The bio-filter dome's presence shimmered almost invisible around them—a faint distortion in the air accompanied by a low, thrumming hum that seemed to vibrate through their bones and set their teeth on edge. Occasionally, when something large struck the barrier's outer edge, electric blue lightning would fork across its surface like captured aurora, illuminating briefly the silhouettes of creatures that shouldn't exist.
"I not plan on takin' all that long." DelMonde assured him, absently crushing a patch of luminescent moss beneath his boot. The moss released spores that glowed briefly like tiny stars before dying in the humid air, leaving phosphorescent smears on the jungle floor.
"Fine." Sulu made a sweeping gesture, his hand disturbing a cloud of gossamer filaments that drifted from the canopy like alien snow. "Go ahead."
Given free range, the Cajun suddenly faltered. He opened his mouth and then closed it a few times, his eyes darting to where something serpentine slithered along a branch overhead, leaving a trail of bioluminescent slime. He took in a very deep breath of the oxygen-rich air and then blew it out with equal force. He looked up at the treetops for inspiration, watching as membrane-winged creatures flitted between the glowing fungi, then shook his head and chewed on his lower lip. Finally he settled on, "You not know ever't'ing 'bout me."
The captain put his hands on his hips. "Like what?"
"Like this." DelMonde held up a finger that promised a demonstration to follow. He then turned and headed to a fruit tree near the perimeter. The tree's bark rippled with an oily rainbow sheen that shifted color as he approached, as if responding to his presence. Its branches drooped under the weight of pendulous fruit, each one pulsing faintly with internal luminescence. The engineer selected three globes, each the size of an orange but with the taut, almost breathing skin. Garish pink and green stripes spiraled around their surfaces in patterns that seemed to shift and crawl when viewed peripherally, creating an optical illusion that made Sulu's eyes water.
DelMonde tested each small melon's weight, rolling them in his palms. They were heavier than Earth fruit, with a slight warmth that suggested some internal energy source still pulsing within. The surface had a texture like warm leather, and tiny veins of light ran beneath the skin like alien circulatory systems. Then, with unexpectedly practiced ease, he launched the first globe skyward.
The fruit arced up through the humid air, its stripes blurring into a psychedelic spiral that left rainbow afterimages. Before it could descend, the second globe joined it in a perfect parabola, followed immediately by the third. DelMonde's long fingers moved with surprising grace—catch, release, catch—keeping the alien spheres aloft in perfect rhythm. The fruits traced elegant arcs against the bioluminescent canopy, their warm glow competing with the ghostly fungi and creating shifting patterns of light that danced across both men's faces.
"You can..." Sulu's mouth fell open, his words lost as he watched the engineer perform this incongruously cheery act while around them the hostile jungle pulsed with predatory life. "...juggle?"
It wasn't that such dexterity was unexpected or that this was the best juggling that Sulu had ever seen, but somehow such... joyful frivolity was so stunningly out of character for the engineer that the captain's jaw nearly hit the sandy, moss-covered ground.
"Yep," Del drawled, sending one pink-striped globe particularly high. As it reached its apex, seeming to hang suspended among the alien fronds like a small sun, he smoothly passed another globe behind his back, never breaking the hypnotic rhythm. The motion was fluid, practiced, almost meditative—a tiny circle of normalcy in their hostile environment.
A distant roar echoed through the jungle—something large and hungry testing the boundaries of their sanctuary. The sound was answered by a chorus of clicks and hisses from deeper in the undergrowth. The bioluminescent fungi along the tree trunks pulsed brighter in response, as if the entire jungle were a vast organism communicating through light and sound.
"Where did you learn that?" Sulu asked, mesmerized despite himself as DelMonde's unexpectedly nimble hands kept those bizarre, striped spheres dancing through air thick enough to taste. The fruits caught and reflected the alien light with each rotation, creating a small constellation of movement above the engineer's head.
"Where you t'ink I learn it?"
"On Bourbon Street?"
"What you sayin'?" The engineer split his attention long enough to spare Sulu a narrow glance, never missing a beat in his juggling rhythm. The melons continued their lazy circles, warm light pulsing through their translucent skins. "You t'ink I learned this in a bar or som't'ing?"
The captain hazarded another guess. "From street performers."
"Oh... No." The Cajun snorted, catching one globe and immediately sending it skyward again. "Those folks work hard fo' a livin'. They not have time fo' no snot nose kid. An' my mama not let me hang 'round on Bourbon Street when I was li'l… That a good story, though. I gonna use that if th' question ever come up again."
Around them, the jungle seemed to lean closer. Vines curled with deliberate intent. Something with too many legs skittered across a massive frond above their heads, sending down a shower of luminescent pollen that sparkled briefly in the humid air.
"So how did you learn to juggle?"
"Oh, I watch one o' them how-to tapes on th' computer," Del admitted, the three glowing orbs continuing their hypnotic dance. Each catch made a soft, wet sound against his palms. "I was jus' a li'l boy. Ever year, my mama give a birthday party fo' my rotten cousin, Antoine. We have t' provide some entertainment fo' th' guests. One year we come up wit' a circus theme. I can do some card tricks too. They real impressive if you not know I a telepath."
"Which is why you don't do them anymore?" Sulu speculated, getting a bizarre vision of Del as a one-man traveling sideshow while the alien melons traced perfect arcs through the phosphorescent air.
"Yep." The striped orbs continued to spin in lazy circles around the Cajun's head, their warm glow reflecting off the moisture in the air. "Kinda ruins th' effect if you know I can jus' read people."
"I imagine so." Sulu's attention was caught by movement in the jungle beyond them. The shimmering green wall seemed to pulse with its own heartbeat, and he could swear he saw eyes—dozens of them—glowing in the spaces between the massive trunks. The bio-filter's hum grew more insistent. Something scraped against the invisible barrier with claws that sparked against the energy field. He shook off a shiver. "Okay, so I don't know everything about you... so?"
"Okay." The engineer sighed deeply as he allowed all three fruits to fall into his hands in rapid succession—plop, plop, plop—their alien warmth evident even in the humid air. "This conversation's goin' nowhere fast..."
"Del, if you have something to say, just spit it out."
The engineer again made several false starts short of just short of words. He crossed to where a tree had fallen nearby—its massive trunk covered in the same luminescent moss that carpeted much of the jungle floor—and took a seat. The moss compressed under his weight, releasing more of those glowing spores that drifted up around him like fairy dust.
"Me apologizin' t' Jilla not gonna be good enough fo' you t' stop bein' mad at me," Del finally articulated, staring dejectedly at the alien fruit in his hands. The spheres pulsed faintly with their own inner light, warm and alive in his grasp. "I already apologized t' her... I not know... twice? This might be th' third time?"
Sulu's mouth hardened into a stubborn line. "Those were joke apologies."
"She not take it that way." DelMonde countered, absently rolling one of the glowing orbs between his palms. Its surface rippled under the pressure, and the pink and green stripes seemed to flow like liquid.
This assertion was an irritatingly factual. Subspace communications to him revealed that Jilla had accepted every feeble excuse of an apology tossed off by the engineer as though it were completely heartfelt.
Sulu shook his head. "That's not the problem."
The engineer met his gaze evenly. "No, it not."
The captain's eyes narrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
DelMonde took a moment to reflect, knowing that he needed to proceed carefully on this subject. As he considered, the engineer began to absently juggle the fruit again—not in the elaborate display from before, but in a simple, meditative pattern. One orb, then two, then three, rising and falling in a gentle rhythm that seemed to calm something in both men. The warm light from the alien spheres pulsed in time with his movements.
"Jilla an' I have been through a lot together. We have white-knuckled it through some pretty hair-raisin' disasters—times when warp-cores near breached, transduction coils overloaded, …bein' friends wit' Ruth Valley in general..."
If the situation were less tense, Sulu might have laughed. Friendship with Ruth Valley definitely could be rated as being as on par with warp core breaches in terms of the potential hazards each scenario posed...
"I simultaneously love her t' death an' also wanna strangle her some days," the Cajun continued, catching the glowing orbs one final time and setting them down by his feet. They continued to pulse faintly against the moss, casting shifting shadows. "An', yes, I was wrong t' have popped off an' said what I did. I have said an' done other t'ings that I should not have said nor done. She an' I have settled that sort o' stuff between us befor' now… an' unfortunately I am sure we gonna have occasion t' have to settle stuff like this again in th' future. We got ourselves different personalities. We not always see eye t' eye."
A screech echoed from somewhere deep in the jungle—something with too many teeth expressing its frustration at the barrier keeping it from its prey. The bio-filter responded with a crackling surge of energy that lit up the clearing in electric blue.
Sulu frowned. "And you think this issue is settled?"
The engineer nodded. "Between her an' me, yeah."
"Then what's the problem?"
DelMonde met his eyes unflinchingly. "You."
The captain crossed his arms. "The problem is thatIdon't forgiveyou?"
"No.” The engineer took a deep breath before proceeding. “The problem is that you not fo'give yourself."
"That's..." Sulu shook his head. "That's ridiculous."
"No, it not." The engineer bent down and picked up one of the alien fruits, its luminescence illuminating his features with a pale pastel glow. "You hate that Jilla forgive me when you not t'ink I deserve it 'cause it put you in mind o' when she fo'give you when you not deserve it."
"That's..." Sulu’s automatic denial was smothered by a flood of bitter memories. Choking back the bile that rose in his throat at those reminiscences, he turned away and kicked at a patch of the luminescent moss near his foot. The disturbed fungi released a cloud of sparkling particles that swirled around his boot like liquid starlight. He fought to keep even one so much as one syllable of the name of the woman who had inspired his fall from forming in his conscious thoughts. Clearing his throat, he turned back to the engineer, closing a titanium door on the past with all the determination he could muster. "That's...."
"Yeah, this is like one o' them card tricks I can do, Sulu." The engineer’s tone was apologetic. Staying seated on the moss-covered log, Del tossed a striped orb into the air—just one this time, catching it with practiced ease. The motion was simple, almost absent-minded, but it held the captain’s attention like a crystal pendant dangled from a hypnotist's fingers. "It hits completely different you figure in that I can read minds an' emotions. If I was jus' your friend an' I was sayin' that I was figurin' that this was th' truth then… yeah, you could jus' tell me I was full o' shit an' let it go, but I am me an' I know what the truth is… an' you kinda have t' hate me fo' knowin' that wit' all th' fury you is hatin' yourself right now."
The alien fruit traced a lazy arc through the humid air, its pink and green stripes blurring into abstract patterns of light and shadow. Around them, the jungle watched and waited, patient as only truly ancient things could be.
Sulu gave a short, bitter laugh in the inescapable face of this biting truth. When would he ever escape the guilt of his betrayal of Jilla? Was he truly punishing the Cajun for the painful echoes of his own perfidy? Del was right. One might fool oneself forever, but one could only lie to a tel/empath about their true emotions for so long…
Instead of meeting his old friend's eyes, he watched the course of the striped melon traveling through the phosphorescent air — up, pause, down, catch, repeat. "Well...That's not exactly fair, is it?"
"Hell no."
Sulu swallowed hard, tasting the alien sweetness of the thick atmosphere. "I guess you think I should forgive one of us?"
"I t'ink it would be a good idea fo' you to fo'give both of us..." The alien fruit in DelMonde's hands pulsed faintly with their own inner light, warm and alive and utterly foreign. Somewhere in the jungle beyond their fragile sanctuary, something howled—a sound that spoke of hunger older than civilization. "But I not know how much o'hat your shit-fo'-brains can manage..."
Del was right. He couldn’t suddenly forgive himself for what he considered his unpardonable sin against his beloved. However, realizing that he was projecting some of the vehemence of his self-loathing onto the Cajun did make his white-hot rage in this instance make more sense. Of course, everything he felt was magnified by the frustration he felt in being separated from Jilla. Every day he spent away from her was tearing him up inside more and more… twisting his guts up into knots… making it easier for his demons to take control…
Coming to grips with the truth about how the division between them had escalated gave Sulu at least enough relief to be able to smile again. “There is that.”
“That there is.”
The captain sobered. “But if I have to be this honest with myself, then you need to come clean with me. Did you really get sick just because I got mad at you?”
Suddenly thrown off rhythm, the Cajun dropped one of the fruits. “Oh, Lord… Are we really goin' t' have t' get into that?”
“Why not?”
The engineer struggled to gather all fruit before they rolled away. “It jus' kinda… kinda…”
“Embarassing?” the captain guessed, interpreting his friend’s sudden obvious discomfort. “What makes it embarrassing?”
“It.. it…” DelMonde stopped, cleared his throat, and then defiantly spread his hands in a visible gesture to demonstrate how unbothered he was of discussing the topic. “All right! All right! Well, you know how telepaths bond wit' each other – an' it a big deal. You were part o' that t'ing where Jilla an' Ruth’s Vulcan had t' go through that big ceremony where they unbounded from each other befor' they could bond wit' other folks. Unbondin' or havin' that bond suddenly or violently snapped wit' somebody is a big deal. If it go wrong it can make a telepath sick or crazy.”
Sulu frowned. “How do you know about the unbonding thing with Jilla and Spock?”
“Jer told me.”
“I don’t remember telling him he could tell you.”
The Cajun shrugged and tapped his temple. “I might have jus' 'overheard.' Anyways… There are ways t' get over it… li'l' 'survival ' th' fittest' sort of techniques that some of us pick up here an' there that involve meldin' wit' non-telepaths. You go into their subconscious. I not know if th' energy comes from you or them, but it creates this kind o' 'dark side' feedback loop that can revitalize you. If you go too hard, though, an' get addicted to it, it burns you out an' starts t' eat you up. You change into this vampire-y kind o' t'ing…”
Sulu nodded. “That’s what Rendell was afraid of, wasn’t it?”
“I guess. I saw Romulans who had been through broken bonds get really messed up that way.”
“But you came through the thing with Ruth just fine…”
“I was not all that great.” The Cajun made a face and shook his head. “My relationship wit' Jer took a particularly weird turn there fo' a while….But you know ol’ Jer. That boy practically got a degree in weird turns. He got me through an' back on my feet. An' then I had that Romulan mission…”
“And the things you can’t tell me about…” Sulu said, thinking about the scattered information he had managed to gather about that ill-fated undercover mission.
“…Which included a broken bond…” the engineer confirmed grimly, “an' exposure to minds driven 'round th' bend by that kind o' madness…”
“All of which makes it seem like you were primed to fall into this type of 'broken bond' psychic illness,” the captain concluded, taking a seat beside him.
“Yeah.”
Sulu raised a dubious eyebrow. “That was then fully triggered by my getting mad at you?”
“Now that there is th' embarrassin' part.” The engineer pointed an accusing finger. “Puttin' it that way make it seem like th' two o' us is in love wi' each other --- which you know damned well we are not. We jus' friends.”
The captain smiled. “Sure.”
DelMonde growled. “That snarky wink-and-a-grin bullshit is why I not come t' you wit' this shit befor' now. You know th' hell that we jus' friends. You know good an' damned well I can barely stand your shit-fo'-brains ass. Th' best I can figure is that you have a strong psychic… 'potential'--- or whatever th' hell bullshit we gonna call it this week -- an' you pinin' like hell fo' your woman. 'Cause my mind is all weak an' messed up from th' legitimate shitstorms I done gone through an' you been waftin' 'round up in here yearnin' fo'…companionship or whatever, our psyches have gotten all wrapped up 'round each other somehow on some kind o' level an' done caused this weird-ass bondin' shit t' happen by sheer damned accident.”
“Well…” The captain nodded sagely. “That’s an unimpeachably scientific explanation, all right. I will be able to take that one straight to Brailly and the experts on telepathic phenomenon with no edits…”
“I no expert, but I do know that this kind o' shit can an' do happen,” the engineer retorted hotly. “Plus, you not satisfied t' jus' get mad at me on your lonesome – You gotta get two-thirds o' th' damned ship on my damned case. Th' second half of tel-empath is EMPATH as you may damned well remember. I can feel it when people not like me. When a LOT of people not like me all at once, I can feel it a LOT.”
“Calm down, calm down.” Sulu held up both hands. “As you very well know, I do know what empaths are. I am able to fully understand and appreciate what you are telling me.”
“Good!” the Cajun huffed.
“I perfectly understand that you are telling me that you got sick, had a mental breakdown, and almost turned into a psychic vampire and died,” the captain summarized with a straight face, “… because you had a crush on me.”
“Sweet Merciful Baby Jesus, Kam!” The engineer shook both his fists at the tropical sky in protest of this levity. “I hate you soooooo bad…”
A sharp crack echoed through the jungle directly behind them.
Both men froze instantly. In the sudden silence that followed, the wrongness hit them like a physical blow. The constant symphony of alien life—the chittering of insects, the distant calls of membrane-winged creatures, the rustling whispers of the canopy—had died completely. Even the bioluminescent fungi seemed to dim, as if the jungle itself were holding its breath. The unnatural quiet made every hair on Sulu's head stand at attention.
"That not no good," Del murmured, rising from his seat on the moss-covered trunk. His hand moved instinctively toward his phaser.
Another crack—closer this time, accompanied by the wet sound of something large crushing the phosphorescent undergrowth. Leaves dripped with that oily amber substance scattered in its wake, and the air filled with the sharp scent of broken vegetation and something else—something predatory and wrong. Emergency protocols drilled into every Starfleet officer kicked in simultaneously for both men.
"Base camp," Sulu said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper as he activated his communicator while backing slowly toward the clearing's edge. Around them, the bio-filter's hum seemed suddenly inadequate, a thin barrier between them and the hostile jungle. "Sulu to Security. We may have a perimeter breach in section—"
The creature burst from the tree-line like a living nightmare made manifest.
It stood nearly three meters tall on powerfully muscled hind legs, each foot ending in talons that dug deep furrows in the moss-covered ground. Its hide was a mottled green-black that shifted and rippled like liquid shadow—natural camouflage that had allowed it to blend seamlessly with the jungle's dark spaces between the glowing fungi. The beast's shoulders were broad enough to snap small trees, and its arms hung low, ending in hands that were disturbingly humanoid despite the razor-sharp claws extending from each finger like curved daggers.
But it was the head that truly marked this as an abomination. The skull was elongated, almost reptilian, but the jaw hinged wrong—opening too wide to reveal rows upon rows of crystalline teeth that caught and reflected the bioluminescent light like a chandelier of death. Most unsettling were its eyes: not the mindless orbs of a simple predator, but intelligent, calculating pools of malevolent awareness that spoke of the genetic tampering that had reshaped so much life on Sagron IV. Those eyes held knowledge, memory, and most terrifying of all—purpose.
"Son of a bitch!" Del breathed, his phaser already clearing its holster in one fluid motion.
The creature's head swiveled toward them with mechanical precision, neck vertebrae audibly clicking into place. Sulu realized with growing horror that this wasn't a chance encounter. The thing had been hunting them specifically, had used the jungle's natural sounds to mask its approach, had waited for them to move away from the camp's protective shields before revealing itself. This was no mindless beast—this was a predator that planned, that thought, that understood tactics.
"How the hell did it get through the perimeter?" Sulu demanded, his own phaser coming up to join Del's. The weapon felt pitifully small against something that size.
"Guess it found one o' them weak spots," Del replied grimly, his voice steady despite the sweat beading on his forehead. Behind the creature, more movement stirred in the shadows—they might not be facing just one opponent. "On three?"
The creature opened its impossible mouth and let out a sound that was part shriek, part roar, and entirely wrong—a noise that seemed to bypass the ears and strike directly at some primitive fear center buried deep in the human brain. The sound reverberated through the jungle, causing the bioluminescent fungi to pulse in chaotic patterns and sending waves of disturbed spores cascading from the canopy like alien snow. Then it charged.
The ground shook under its weight as powerful legs propelled three meters of engineered death directly at them. Its claws left deep gouges in the earth with each stride, and its crystalline teeth caught the ghostly light as it closed the distance with terrifying speed.
Both phasers fired simultaneously, twin beams of orange energy lancing through the humid air. The first beam struck the creature center mass, carving a smoking line across its chest. The second caught it in the shoulder, spinning it slightly off course. But the beast merely stumbled, its genetically enhanced physiology absorbing damage that should have dropped any natural creature instantly. Sulu could see the wound already beginning to seal itself, alien biology knitting tissue back together even as they watched.
"Tough-skinned bastard," Del cursed, his fingers flying over his phaser's controls to adjust the setting higher. The weapon whined as its power cells surged to maximum output. "These t'ings are even rougher customers than Miss Beth warned us they would be."
The creature recovered its balance with terrifying speed, shaking off the phaser strikes like insect bites. Droplets of something that wasn't quite blood scattered from its wounds—a luminescent fluid that glowed as it hit the moss-covered ground, leaving spots of sickly green light. It lunged again, this time in a calculated leap that would bring it down on both men simultaneously.
Sulu's second shot caught it mid-air, the beam striking just below its rib cage and eliciting another of those bone-chilling roars. Del's phaser fired a split second later, his beam carving a smoking line across the creature's flank and filling the air with the acrid smell of burned flesh.
But the thing was fast—faster than anything that size had a right to be. Even wounded, even burned, it covered the remaining distance between them in two powerful bounds that sent tremors through the jungle floor.
Sulu threw himself to the left, his shoulder slamming hard against the gnarled trunk of one of the massive Calumbrian trees. Bark scraped against his uniform as he rolled, and bioluminescent moss smeared across his back in glowing streaks. Del wasn't as lucky. As he tried to dodge right, his boot caught on a protruding root slick with the tree's amber secretions. His feet went out from under him and he went down hard, his phaser skittering across the moss to disappear into a cluster of glowing fungi.
The creature was on him in an instant.
"Del!"
Sulu's shout was nearly drowned out by another of those bone-chilling roars as the predator's impossible jaws snapped shut on DelMonde's left leg. The engineer's cry of pain and rage echoed through the jungle as three-inch fangs punched through the tough fabric of his Starfleet uniform and deep into flesh and bone. The creature's bite was so powerful that Sulu could hear the wet crunch of tissue being compressed, could see DelMonde's leg bend at an angle that made his stomach lurch.
Even as white-hot agony lanced through his leg, Del managed to fumble for a backup phaser with hands made clumsy by shock. His fingers closed around the weapon's grip. The engineer jammed it against the creature's ribs, pressing the muzzle directly against the beast's heaving flank.
"Get off me, you ugly bastard!" he snarled through gritted teeth, and fired point-blank.
The phaser's energy discharge burned deep into the creature's torso, the beam boring through hide and muscle to reach something vital. The beast released him with a shriek that shattered the jungle's unnatural quiet, staggering backward as smoke rose from the gaping wound in its side. Luminescent fluid poured from the injury, pooling on the ground in spreading puddles of sickly light.
Sulu stepped into the clear, both hands gripping his phaser as he took careful aim. The creature's head swiveled toward him, those intelligent eyes filled with pain and fury but still calculating, still dangerous. It tensed to spring again despite its wounds.
The captain fired.
This time his beam caught the creature square in the head, the orange energy boring through bone and into whatever passed for its brain. The predator's charge faltered mid-leap, its massive body crashing to the moss-covered ground just meters from where Sulu stood. It twitched once, claws scrabbling weakly at the luminescent earth, then went still. The glow from its spilled fluids began to fade, leaving them in the ghostly illumination of the jungle's natural phosphorescence.
"Del!" Sulu was at his friend's side in seconds, dropping to his knees beside DelMonde as the engineer clutched his mangled leg. Blood was seeping through his fingers at an alarming rate, mixing with the creature's luminescent fluids to create patterns of red and green on the moss. The smell of copper and something alien hung heavy in the humid air.
"Damn," Del managed through gritted teeth, his face pale with shock and pain, sweat beading on his forehead despite the jungle's warmth. "That smarts quite a bit."
Sulu was already activating his communicator, his free hand moving to apply pressure to the worst of the wounds. The fabric of DelMonde's uniform was shredded. Through the tears he could see puncture wounds that went deep into muscle and possibly bone. "Medical emergency! Dr. Rendell and a team to coordinates..." He glanced at the device’s display. "Seven-four mark twelve. We have severe lacerations and possible toxin exposure."
Around them, the jungle began to return to life. Insects resumed their alien songs, and the bioluminescent fungi slowly brightened to their normal luminescence. But Sulu couldn't shake the feeling that other predators might be drawn by the scent of blood and the lingering glow of the creature's spilled fluids.
DelMonde tried to sit up, then immediately thought better of it as the movement sent fresh waves of agony through his leg. The moss beneath him was soaked with blood, and his breathing was becoming shallow and rapid. "How bad?"
Sulu didn't answer immediately. He wished for a tricorder to scan the wound. What his first aid field training told him made his stomach clench with dread -- deep puncture wounds near major arteries, possible bone fractures, significant blood loss, and unknown contamination from the creature's saliva—which could contain any number of toxins or pathogens given the planet's history of genetic manipulation.
“Bad enough," he said finally, tearing strips from his own uniform to create makeshift bandages. The jungle around them pulsed with alien life, and somewhere in the distance, something howled in response to the scent of blood on the humid air. .