Sulu took his seat again, emotionally deflated. “What do you think I should do, Pavel?” he said, keenly aware of the enormous responsibilities that both he and his old friend now shouldered. Unlike those long-ago days when they’d served literally side by side aboard the Enterprise ,no senior officers were behind them, ready to make the hard decisions. Whatever was to come next, success or failure, plaudits or blame, life or death, depended on them.

On me,Sulu thought, feeling desolate inside.

Chekov’s anger appeared to soften as well, and a reassuring smile replaced his scowl. “You see the Neyel as sundered members of the human family, so you feel responsible for what they do, and for whatever happens to them. It’s understandable that you might think you owe them something. Save them if you can.”

Sulu nodded. “That’s exactly what I intend to do.”

“I know, Hikaru. But just remember that taking responsibility for a family member sometimes means having to decide against them when they go astray.”

Then Chekov turned and exited, leaving Sulu alone to wrestle with his conscience.

Chapter 16

“Watch out for the tail!” Akaar shouted.

Boyer managed to roll to the side just ahead of the angry whipcrack of the Neyel’s rear appendage. Rogers, who was a split-second slower, went sprawling across the corridor, where he lay unconscious beside his phaser.

Akaar leveled his own weapon at the creature’s midsection and fired. The Neyel recoiled slightly, but continued running away down the corridor and straight into an open Jefferies tube. Though the tube was extremely narrow by Capellan standards, Akaar threw himself into the upward-sloping crawl space without hesitation. Glancing upward, he saw the Neyel’s tail disappear around a corner as the creature hastened away.

Still following, Akaar pulled out his communicator. “Akaar to Gold Team. Fugitive has gone to ground in Jefferies Tube Eight-Eleven on deck Twelve, just beneath the port-side impulse engine housing. I am right behind him. Seal off sections K and L, and you will corner him.”

“Acknowledged, Lieutenant,” said Ensign Cahill, one of the security officers Akaar had assigned to the Gold Team.

Pocketing the communicator, Akaar clambered quickly upward, following the Neyel. Around the corner, the well-illuminated Jefferies tube leveled out and widened. Power relays and EPS conduits ran behind metal grillworks set [199] along the floor, walls, and ceiling. Though the space was now considerably wider than the tube’s entryway, Akaar still had to stoop to avoid smacking his head on the ceiling.

Moving forward, he looked up and saw that a meter-wide section of the overhead grating had been pulled aside. The Neyel was obviously trying to slip out undetected, possibly by doubling back the way it had come, only this time concealing itself by crawling along the top of the ceiling grate.

Something clanked behind Akaar, and he turned toward the sound, phaser at the ready. No one was visible.

An object struck him in the back, hard and painfully. Akaar stumbled forward, his head bouncing off the grillwork of one of the walls. His massive body landed on the floor, and he found himself without enough room to reorient himself. His phaser skittered away, falling through a gap in a deck grating. Akaar turned his head and saw the snarling Neyel advancing on him. It shouted something that he thought he almost recognized.

Then a phaser beam sliced the air, striking the Neyel full in the chest and filling the air in the cramped chamber with the acrid stench of ozone. The creature jumped back a meter before it came to rest on the floor and lay still, a smoking scorch-mark inscribed diagonally across its rough gray thorax. Akaar turned his head toward the origin-point of the beam.

Lojur stood in the Jefferies tube, a phaser clenched in his bone-white fingers. He must have picked up the weapon Rogers dropped,Akaar realized.

With considerable effort, Akaar pushed himself into a crouch and slowly regained his feet. With a brief sidelong glance, he verified that the Neyel remained immobile. However, a slight oscillation of its chest revealed that the creature was still alive. That is a relief,Akaar thought. The captain needs him interrogated, not executed.

“I saw what happened when you fired on it,” Lojur said. “Heavy stun didn’t even slow it down. It seems to take the [200] kill setting just to knock it unconscious. And that makes me think that the disrupt or dematerialize settings should be able to send this horror back to whatever hell it crawled out of.”

Akaar looked into Lojur’s eyes, which remained fixed on the insensate Neyel. The Halkan’s face was a study in pain and grief, bordering on madness.

“Lojur, what you are doing mocks everything your world stands for. You cannot take part in such an act.”

Lojur laughed, an unpleasant sound in Akaar’s ears. “I already did ‘take part’ during the battle, didn’t I?”

“That is different. You and everyone else who manned a battle station acted to save the ship, as well as the lives of the people the Neyel were attacking. What you are contemplating now is vengeance.”

“The Elders of my village never appreciated such fine distinctions, L.J.” Lojur raised his weapon. “Maybe they were right about me all along.”

“Please, Commander,” Akaar said, extending a large hand. “Give me the phaser.”

“I will, L.J. After I’m finished with it.” With a flick of his thumb, Lojur changed the setting on the weapon. Akaar could see from the weapon’s flashing red telltale light that he’d turned it all the way up to its maximum energy output.

“The captain wants to question this creature,” Akaar said, keeping his deep, voice level and calm. “If you fire that weapon, you will vaporize him.”

“That’s the idea, L.J. He’s part of what took Shandra from me. And for that, he’s going to die.” Lojur’s hand trembled noticeably.

Akaar walked slowly toward his friend. His large frame made him impossible for the weapon to miss should Lojur attempt to make good his threat.

“Stop right there, L.J. That’s an order.”

Akaar paused, then continued moving forward slowly. [201] “No, Lojur. You cannot pull rank on me when I am acting on the captain’s direct orders.”

“I’m going to rid us of that thing.” Lojur’s voice sounded brittle, like a rotten tree limb about to snap in a stiff wind.

“Then you will have to kill me, too.” Akaar continued his advance, slowly but relentlessly. He recalled the stories his mother had told him of his late father’s killer and first successor, Maab, who had also once challenged a phaser-wielding man. That man, a treacherous Klingon soldier named Kras, had burned Maab down where he stood. Akaar felt that to show less courage than the usurper Maab would dishonor his father’s memory.

Lojur’s hand and voice both shook visibly. But the phaser remained aloft and deadly. “I don’t want to hurt you, L.J. I don’t—”

“Neither my birthworld nor yours are Federation members as yet,” Akaar said as he came to a stop less than a meter from his friend. “Capella remains unready to enter the fold largely because of vendettas such as this. Your people, however, do not wish to join because they cannot condone the Federation’s willingness to defend its interests.” He paused and smiled before continuing. “I think our respective peoples would agree that we have both assimilated very well to this culture’s extremes of war and peace.”

The quaking in Lojur’s gun-hand grew steadily more pronounced. “Stop trying to save this ... monster.”

“Except for my duty to follow the captain’s orders, this creature’s existence is incidental to me,” Akaar said, shaking his head. “The only one I am trying to save right now is you.What would Commander Chekov say if he could see you now? Or Shandra? Look me in the eye and tell me that she would have wanted this.”