“Great Bird,” Hopman said, looking stunned.
“Lieutenant?” Sulu said. All eyes turned to Hopman.
She recovered her composure a moment later. Pointing to the still form on the table, she said, “Thisis the reason Ambassador Kasrene was killed. She must have already known that the Neyel were a variant of the human species.”
To Chapel, that sounded like quite a leap.
“So you think that thisis Mosrene’s ‘sensitive information,’ ” Sulu said, his brow furrowed as he considered Hopman’s idea. “That might explain Tuvok’s insistence that Kasrene wanted us to receive her information just as much as she wanted it kept hidden from the other Tholian castes.”
“I’m not really sanguine about placing my trust in a Vulcan metaphysical experience,” Burgess said.
“Then you obviously haven’t spent enough time around Vulcans,” Sulu said dryly.
Touché,Chapel thought, suppressing a grin.
Burgess held up a hand in a gesture of surrender. “All [177] right. Assuming for a moment that your science officer is correct, then why would Kasrene want us to know that the Neyel are human while simultaneously trying to hide that fact from her own people?”
Sulu smiled. “Isn’t it obvious? Tholians are about as peaceful as piranha, Ambassador, their current efforts at détente notwithstanding. If their warrior caste got wind of what we’ve just discovered, they’d likely be swarming across the Federation border in a heartbeat.”
My God,Chapel thought. She’d been so caught up in the labyrinth of the Neyel’s genengineered DNA that she hadn’t spared a moment to consider the galactic geopolitical chessboard. The Tholians have had thirty years to refine the weapons that once nearly destroyed theEnterprise. Now they might discover they have a legitimate reason to use them in anger against Earth.
The group exchanged sober looks, and even Burgess was beginning to appear convinced. Turning his back on the inert Neyel so that he could address Chapel, Hopman, and Burgess all at once, Sulu said, “So how do we prevent the Tholian warrior caste from making the same discovery we just did?”
“We may have a more immediate problem,” Hopman said, pointing.
Seeing movement out of the corner of her eye, Chapel snapped her head toward the table. The Neyel’s heavily shuttered eyes were open now, and he was rising to his rough-skinned, prehensile feet.
Before anyone could react, the creature charged straight for Chapel, its powerful, clawed fingers seeking her throat.
Chapter 15
Sulu bellowed loudly as he leapt toward the Neyel, hoping to distract it.
The gambit worked, at least well enough to allow Dr. Chapel to dive for cover behind a rack of shelves stacked with instruments. She narrowly evaded the rough-skinned humanoid, who came within centimeters of grabbing her neck, apparently intent on twisting her head off. Using one of the lab tables to brace himself, Sulu launched a brutal two-legged kick straight into the Neyel’s tree-like solar plexus.
He might as well have attacked one of the bulkheads. Sulu landed hard on his left shoulder, upending the cart that supported Chapel’s portable scanning equipment. As quickly as he could manage, he rolled to his feet, nearly tripping over a tricorder as he did.
“Clear the lab!” he shouted, trying to focus past the star-burst of pain in his shoulder. “Hopman, call security.”
Snarling, the creature advanced on Sulu, even as Hopman hustled Burgess out the door, speaking into a handheld communicator as she did so. From the corner of his eye, Sulu noticed that Dr. Chapel hadn’t yet left the lab; instead, she was moving toward the creature’s rear, a hypospray in her hand. Christine, you and I are going to have a talk later.
Sulu jumped over a table, trying both to evade the Neyel [179] and prevent it from noticing the doctor’s approach. At the same time, Chapel dived at the Neyel, throwing an arm around the middle of its back while trying to administer the hypo with her free hand. The Neyel turned its head quickly, swatting her with its tail. She fell heavily to the deck, where she lay in a dazed heap.
Taking advantage of Chapel’s momentary diversion, Sulu kicked at the creature again, this time connecting solidly with one of its knees, which gave way with a satisfying crunch. Evidently the Neyel had yet to engineer away every weakness inherent to human anatomy. The Neyel howled in agony, throwing roundhouse punches that Sulu saw coming in plenty of time to evade them.
But what he failed to see coming was the end of the creature’s prehensile tail, which struck him like a club across the back of the head. Sulu sagged to his knees, his head swimming, darkness threatening to engulf him. Behind him, he heard the hiss of the sickbay doors opening, then closing again.
Some inestimable interval later he noticed Chapel standing beside him, a shiny purple bruise beginning to blossom across her face. She helped him to his feet.
“Doctor, was there anything ambiguous about my ‘clear the sickbay’ order?” he said, rubbing his aching shoulder. His head was pounding.
He saw no contrition in her cool blue eyes. “In my medical judgment you needed help more than you needed blind obedience. Besides, Hikaru, this is mysickbay, not yours.”
He considered a biting retort, but held his tongue. Chain-of-command discipline was not a hill he wanted either of them to die on at the moment. “Granted. But what the hell happened? I thought you said your ‘patient’ was dead.”
“So did I. Evidently he got better. So much so that he just checked himself out.”
“But he was dead,Chris. You scanned him down to the cellular level.”
[180] “I scanned him all the way down to the molecularlevel.”
“And you didn’t happen to notice that he was still alive?”
Her blue eyes flashed with an irritation she didn’t bother to conceal. Sulu knew they’d known one another too long to have to hold such things back. “I didn’t expect to find a humanoid capable of surviving prolonged anoxia and vacuum exposure. As far as I know, it’s unprecedented.”
“All right, Chris,” Sulu said, raising a placating hand. “I didn’t mean to second guess your medical judgment.”
Her expression softened immediately. “I didnotice some residual metabolic activity in his cells, but you always expect to see some of that immediately after the body’s major systems suffer a fatal crash. The cells don’t suddenly commit mass suicide the moment the heart and lungs stop functioning. Looks like our Neyel friends have more in common with the Nasats than any of us thought.”
Sulu nodded, shuddering inwardly. The idea of humans being genetically engineered to survive even a limited exposure to hard vacuum—the way a naturally armored, insectile Nasat could—was hard to accept. If the Neyel reallyare of human stock, then they must never have learned the lessons of the Eugenics Wars. Or is it possible they simply chose to ignore them?
“Our guest is damned lucky I hadn’t got around to laser-cutting into that thick hide of his yet,” Chapel said. “He just missed the messy part of his autopsy.”
Sulu followed the trail of wrecked and upset shelves, tables, and instrument carts that stood between him and the lab’s exit. A moment before he reached it, the doors opened again, admitting Lieutenant Akaar and six armed security officers.
“Put Excelsioron full security alert, Lieutenant,” Sulu told Akaar. “A member of the Neyel ship’s crew is loose aboardship. He’s extremely dangerous, but he’s to be taken alive. We need to communicate with him.”
[181] “Understood, sir,” Akaar said. Turning smartly on his huge heel, he led his people back out into the corridor.
There has to be a reason that our ... cousins would attack an apparently harmless Tholian colony world.
Sulu crossed to the bulkhead, where he thumbed the companel. “Bridge, this is the captain.”