Chapel folded her arms before her. “In the absence of any other information, my best guess is some sort of crash genetic engineering program. Recombinant DNA. Note the opposable thumbs on the feet. That wouldn’t be a difficult tweak to make to the human genome, and the extra hands would be useful to people who spend most of their lives in variable gravity environments.”
“And the tree-bark skin?” Sulu said, laying a hand against the gray being’s rough thorax.
Chapel shrugged again. “It’s not impossible. Other species have similar, naturally occurring traits. Nasats, for example, are equipped with plates of biologically generated armor. They can withstand even hard vacuum for quite a long time.”
“A trick like that would certainly have come in handy [176] today,” the captain said in a low tone. Chapel wondered if he was thinking of the dead alien, or Lieutenant Docksey and the phaser specialists who had been blown out into space when the Neyel attack breached the hull.
“This is crazy,” Burgess said, shaking her head. “Human genetic engineering has been forbidden ever since Khan Singh was banished at the end of the Eugenics Wars.”
“Surely you’re aware that not everybody always follows the rules, Ambassador,” Chapel said. She was convinced that Burgess’s unauthorized revelations to the Tholians had not only led to Kasrene’s death, but also endangered Excelsior.She was gratified to see a spark of anger—mixed, perhaps, with guilt—appear in the ambassador’s green eyes.
Sulu seemed to be studying the dead being’s face. “Human, yet not human,” he murmured thoughtfully. “We can guess the ‘how.’ The real question is ... why? And what are they doing out here?”
“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.”