Bloodthirst (38 page)

“Love Dad,” Drake prodded. He pointed at the paper.

Beneath the smoldering indignation and the embarrassment he felt at being so thoroughly interpretable, George felt the sting of regret. If only he could allow his family to know him so well. If only

Before the rage boiled, he broke his glare away from Drake and dragged his attention back to the paper. His fingers were stiff as he wrote the final words.

He folded the paper immediately, then again, as though the folds would seal out any invasion. Knowing Drake was watching, he slipped the letter into a Starfleet envelope; slid his fingers along the pressure seal, addressed it sloppily, then opened the communications chute and dropped the letter in. The sound of automatic suction told him it was gone. Two weeks from now, his boys would be reading it. And it was too late for him to snatch it back and change anything. The commitment made him nervous. He closed his eyes for a moment and covered his mouth with a bloodless hand. Strange how just writing a letter

“You always get surly when you write to your puppies, Geordie,” Drake said as he folded his arms and shifted against the console. “You have the temper of a resting alligator, you know, and I'd like to hear you admit it freely.”

George glanced at him briefly and let the indignation flow away, disguising the change in fiddling with the monitor equipment. “I'd rather sleep with a Romulan.”

“You might. You don't even know what a Romulan looks like.”

“I don't have to.”

“George, you are a bigot.”

“I know.”

Without the slightest announcement, the office door slid open. That in itself was a surprise; the security office doors weren't supposed to open except for cleared personnel, and the people who entered, two men and a woman, didn't seem to be wearing any of the coded clearance badges needed for reading by the computer sentry. George swiveled around slightly in his chair, just enough to get a good look at the woman, who was in the lead. The only thing that he had time to register was her grape-green eyes and the color of her shoulder-length hair—like a wheatfield just after dawn. Biscuit-blond.

She took two measured steps into the office, followed by the two nondescript men, and without a pause she asked, “George Kirk?”

The answer was automatic. “Yes?”

The two men lunged around her, one heading for George, the other for Drake.

Drake was taken by surprise, training or not, and his attacker managed to pinion his arms before he could draw his hand cannon. The woman moved in instantly and pressed a moist cloth over Drake's nose and mouth. Drake's eyes widened in terror and disgust at the stifling medicinal odor in the cloth, and his arms and legs turned to putty in the grip of his attackers.

George had had that extra second necessary to raise his feet and kick off the other man's first lunge, and by the time he rolled to the floor and came up, he had managed to draw his weapon. Lacking time to aim and fire it, though, he simply brought it upward in a sweep and butt-stroked the stranger's jaw. Had he not been startled by Drake's sudden collapse at the hands of the woman, he might not have been overtaken. But when Drake went down, the second man moved in on George and kicked him hard across the pelvis. Stunned, George fought the numbness and tried to keep his balance, but the only way to do that was to lean on the hand that held his cannon. The two men grappled his arms and held him as he writhed and tried to kick back, and the woman moved in.

George bellowed an animal protest as the cloth closed in on his mouth, and the woman had a fight just getting near his face. Something about her told him she was a professional. She seemed to know the moves he would make as he twisted and tugged against the two strong men, and she anticipated him enough to force the odorous narcotic into his nostrils. His muscles jellified. The room turned to sizzling colors. A tunnel began to close around his vision, snuffing out the colors. He felt himself sinking. The cloth pressed tighter over his mouth, and the heavy drug drowned his universe. A black, black universe.

“Hello, children.”

The bridge of the cramped little runabout brightened at the sound of its master's voice in such a manner that seldom accompanies the reappearance of a captain on a bridge. True to the greeting, it was as if Dad had returned from a fishing trip. This wasn't their usual assignment ship; that was plain from the sparseness of crew and their unfamiliarity with the design. This was nothing more than a getting-from-here-to-there ship, and this time the “there” was top secret. No one but the captain himself seemed to have any concrete idea of where they were going or why.

The young man on helm turned immediately and said, “We have warp, Captain. Our e.t.a. is thirty-nine minutes.”

“Ah! Good,” the captain responded in his reassuring Coventry chant. “Thank you, Carlos. You always do such a magnificent job.” Clad in a sloppy Irish wool cardigan that hid much of his mustard-gold Starfleet uniform, the captain was a one-man destruction zone for the hackneyed image of Englishmen as stuffy and passionless. That was evidenced as he dropped his hand on the helmsman's shoulder. “Have you had your lunch? This is a good time.”

The helmsman looked up for confirmation and found it in the captain's offhand nod. “Thanks, sir thank you.”

“Not at all. Off you go.” He waved a hand at the thickset communications officer and said, “You too, Claw. Off you go. Dr. Poole and I can handle things up here for a short while, I ‘magine.”

The two junior officers gratefully left the bridge under the affectionate gaze of the captain. On the port side, a woman with dark blond hair folded her arms and said nothing, but merely watched the captain.

He was a gentle-faced man in his early forties, with brown hair sloppily palmed to one side, a slightly hooked nose, and powder blue eyes pouched with experience. Given to hanging his hands in the pockets of that non-regulation cardigan, he looked out of place on the tight little bridge. She remembered the time she'd pecked at him about the sweater, only to be informed by another officer that the captain suffered a rare blood deficiency that made him slightly chilly most of the time. While any other officer in Starfleet would feel obliged to wear a thermal layer
under
the uniform, this man simply slipped the sweater on and called it solved. Over several years of service, the sweater, like its master, had acquired a slight sag and a lot of respect, not to mention a professorlike image that smothered any vestige of his Starfleet accolades—considerable ones.

When the juniors were gone, the captain settled into the helm chair instead of his command seat and lounged back, shifting his gaze to the woman. She was still looking at him as though he needed looking at.

With a deep breath and an easy grin, he said, “Rolf tells me you knocked them out straight away.”

The woman shrugged with her eyes. “I didn't want to have to explain anything to them. I don't have the answers.”

The captain stuffed his hands into his old knitted friend. “I could give you the details of the mission”

She held up a defensive hand. “No, thanks.”

“You'll have to find out sooner or later, Doctor my dear.”

“No, I don't. The less I know, the less involved I have to get, and the sooner I can get back to the colony I've been assigned to. The one I
requested
and was
granted
by the Federation.”

The captain's thin lips curled in unmistakable amusement. He tipped his head. “It's a compliment.”

The woman leaned forward. “It's an intrusion. I have other work to do in another place.”

“Can't you see that you must be the most qualified person? You'll be the first, you know.”

“I'm sure there've been doctors on big boats before,” she responded dryly. “I don't know how you arranged to get my orders changed, but I intend to log a formal protest as soon as we get back.”

He chuckled. “Orders do change, Sarah. And this is an emergency mission, after all”

“You're not going to admit it, are you?” she accused.

The captain tossed his head and laughed. “In my experience, it's wisest never to admit anything to a pretty woman who's also smart.”

She grimaced, her ivory face made pasty by the poor lighting and given a green cast by the medical services smock. Only her dark brown eyes, as she narrowed them at him, seemed to have any substance in the unflattering light. She gave her head a shake as though to call attention to what she had once described to him as uneventful hair. “Don't smooth me, Captain. I'm over thirty. I've heard it before.”

“Obviously not sincerely enough.” He rolled back still farther in the wobbly helm chair and watched space stretch by at warp two. “At least I managed to convince the authorities to let me select my own command crew. And there was barely time for that. Well,” he said, giving the ship's navigation console an affectionate slap, “I'll explain it in full to you as soon as Kirk gets up here.”

Dr. Poole settled into the science station seat and told him, “He's not going to get up here. I locked them in the hold.”

“Oh,
that
won't make any difference.”

She blinked. “Houdini?”

“Stubborn.”

His rueful nod ushered in a silence that lasted several long, quiet minutes. Through the wide main portal, they watched space peel by with the kind of speed it takes time to get used to. It never ceased to be startling, or beautiful, or even a touch frightening, and none of it was natural. This speed was the accomplishment of inventive minds. In all the wonders of the natural universe, this wonder belonged to intelligence alone. It was nice for something to be marvelous because it didn't know any better, but to be marvelous by
design

The captain sighed and contemplated the miracles he would see in the next few days. Inside the pockets, his hands clenched with foresight and the quaking thrill of participation. In his eyes was reflected the passage of hope's foothills.

When the bridge entry panel opened and the floor vibrated, he knew the contemplation was over for a while.

“On your feet!”

The captain and the doctor turned and stood up to face the two men, the russet-haired one armed with a particle-cutter from a ship's emergency kit. Though Dr. Poole froze, the captain swung his arms out wide and said, “George! How good to see you! You look strapping. How're the boys?” He strode to them and gave George a pat on the arm, then turned to Dr. Poole. “I told you they'd be right along.” He gave George a little shake and drawled, “Ingenious fellow.”

George Kirk let his breath out in a gasp and sucked in a new one, staring fiercely at the captain, then the doctor, then the bridge, then the captain again. “R” He took another breath and tried again. “Robert!”

Behind him, Drake brandished the bent lighting panel they'd used to break out of the hold, still not quite convinced of the captain's jovial greeting.

The captain rocked on his heels, devilishly pleased with his reunion. “Didn't think I could be so clandestine, did you?”

“You” George began,
"You
kidnapped us?”

“Well, there simply wasn't time”

“There'd better be time now!”

“Oh, yes, plenty. A good eight or ten minutes yet, I'm sure,” the captain said, glancing at the chronometer.

George took a few uncertain steps around the bridge, his head still swimming with the ricochet, and demanded, “Where is everybody? This ship's practically empty. Where's the crew?”

“In the mess hall, I suppose, having a good lunch. There are only a few on board. Security reasons, you see.”

George narrowed his eyes. “Security what are you up to?”

“I want you to volunteer for a mission.”

“What mission?”

“I can't specify.”

“To where?”

“I can't tell you.”

“For how long?”

The lopsided grin appeared. “Sorry.”

“After I volunteer, then you can tell me?”

“Right.”

“And I'm supposed to just trust you?”

“I'd be so grateful.”

“All right. I volunteer.”

The captain's grin widened and he looked at Sarah. “Didn't I tell you?”

Sarah shrugged her innocence. “It wasn't my idea to drug them.”

“Yes, would you care to explain that?” George demanded, glaring at the captain.

“Well, you see, this mission is the ultra-top-secret response to an emergency situation, and decisions had to be made quickly. They finally allowed me to choose my own officers, so”

“Who did?”

“Starfleet Command.”

“You got Starfleet Command to authorize you to knock us out and kidnap us?” George shook his head. “I'd like to see that memo.”

The captain held his hands out wide. “It was the
only
way they'd agree to it.” Amused by Kirk's dubious expression, the captain suddenly touched his lips with one finger and said, “Oh, forgive me. I'm being inhospitable.” He gestured gallantly between them and the woman. “May I present Commander George Kirk, and over there is Lieutenant Francis Drake Reed. Gentlemen Dr. Sarah Poole.”