Bloodthirst (14 page)

He looked about. The park was a real one, not one of those artificial underground simulations (though he suspected the moon was the result of an engineering feat) and while the planet's surface had been terraformed, the atmospheric temperature was not carefully controlled. The night breeze was cold, and Adams was already becoming chilled. He stamped his feet, water squishing in his boots, then leaned over to wring water from his dripping pants.

The park was deserted. Maybe nighttime would work against him after all. Everyone was probably crowding the bars; he ought to find a dimly lit one and find someone on leave from a ship.

“Whoever's manning your transporter must have already had too much fun on leave.”

Adams started at the sound of the husky feminine voice. He turned to see a tall, cloaked figure behind him.

The style of the cloak was Vulcan, but the woman inside it was definitely not. She had light brown skin and hair the same color. Adams decided the hair was curly; certainly, it defied gravity, streaming in all directions like a medusa's. The woman wore a lopsided smile; obviously, she had already visited the bars.

Adams smiled back in the hopes there was a uniform beneath the cloak. A uniform meant a ship, and a ship meant freedom. He rubbed his arms and let his teeth chatter a little.

“You can say that again.” He stamped his feet. He was still wearing his beige lab coveralls. Hopefully, she would mistake him for a technician or a maintenance worker. “They didn't tell me about the nights being so cool. Guess I ought to find someplace warm”

“Guess you ought to beam back up and change your clothes.” She had a smugly drunk expression on her face.

“If I beam back up, they'll just put me to work. I barely managed to get away as it is.” He shivered in earnest. “I need to get out of this breeze.”

She leaned closer and squinted at him. “You certainly look overworked. Here.” Her shoulders shifted as she slid out of the cloak. Underneath, she wore a black satin tunic, black pants, and pearl-gray cowboy boots with pink handstitching. A matching belt that held a large, sheathed hunting knife was slung low on her hips. Hardly regulation. Adams felt a surge of disappointment until he realized that the black pants were Fleet issue, and the belt had a communicator and phaser strapped to it, along with a few other devices of questionable legality. Border patrol, then. He fought to keep his grin from inappropriately widening.

She held the cloak out to him. “Go on, take it” Even in the faint light, it was clear the cloak was custom-made. The fabric was deep scarlet velvet that shifted to iridescent silver blue where the light caught it.

“I can't,” Adams lied. “It's beautiful. I'd hate to get it wet.”

She shrugged. “It can be dried. It's up to you.”

He took it without further pretense. It was a little too long, since she was about two inches taller than he, but it was perfect. If he pulled the hood up, he could walk out in daylight, once he got his eyes accustomed. “Much better, thanks. It's very warm.”

“You here for long?” She lowered her lids and glanced at him sideways with an exaggerated smirk. It was the standard pickup line. Adams abhorred drunks, but then, the woman was attractive. It wouldn't hurt to play along. He could get her alone, distract her enough to get the phaser from his pocket, and force her to take him up to her ship.

“Long enough,” he told her.

“Good. I know a place where we could be alone for a little while. And it's warm.” She smiled and patted one of the devices on the belt. “And I've got a little something to ensure some privacy. Even our ships couldn't track us down unless we wanted.”

“That would be nice,” Adams said, trying not to sound too eager. “Is that one of the sensor scrambling devices?”

She grinned affirmatively. “Comes in handy when you have to hide from the enemy or your friends. Someone could walk right by you with a scanner and never know you were there.”

He felt a rush of euphoria. The amulet had definitely brought him luck tonight.

They started walking; she was weaving a little. The fountain became open grassy field, turning into trees where the park bordered the city.

“What ship?” she asked finally.

He gave the first name that entered his head. “The
Enterprise
.”

“The
Enterprise
,” she repeated approvingly. “Well, if you're given to spit and polish, I suppose you could do worse.”

“You?”

“The
Uncommon
. She's a small scout vessel.” She said it with great pride. “I'm second-in-command of a crew of thirty-two.

Thirty-two. Adams' heart sank. Even with the scrambler, he would be too easily detected on a vessel that size. He needed something larger a starship.

She was still talking. “Say, I don't even know your name. Mine's Leland. Red Leland.”

“George Minos,” he lied. There was no point in getting up to her ship. He would just as soon leave, but he had already decided to keep the robe.

“George. That's a nice name. I knew a man named George once, on Rigel Four.”

She chattered on, Adams giving an occasional grunt or replying briefly. The night grew brighter as they moved toward the city. Adams began to think about pulling up the hood of the cloak to protect himself. Besides, the woman was beginning to stare suspiciously at him.

She laid a hand on his arm and moved her face closer to his. It was all he could do not to pull back from the overwhelming smell of liquor. “To tell the truth, George, you look kinda peaked.”

“I told you I'm overworked.” He turned his head in an effort to get fresh air.

“Now that I can see you better, you look sick. You don't have anything catching, do you?”

“Don't be ridiculous.” He started walking faster, dragging her toward a copse of trees.

“Hey, slow down.” She pulled her arm away and stood, swaying. “Look, let's just forget it, okay?”

He kept walking.

“Hey, I'm not going with you. And I want my robe back.”

He stopped and faced her; he would have kept on walking if he hadn't feared she would draw her phaser and shoot him in the back.

“I need it just for tonight. I can return it to your ship tomorrow.”

“We're warping out tonight. Besides, I'm not sure I trust you. How do I know you're really from the
Enterprise?”

Her hand hovered over her knife. Adams was amused that she seemed to prefer it to the phaser on her belt.

“You don't.” Beneath the cloak, he drew his own weapon. He barely had time to set it on stun before she had the knife in her hand. She would have thrown it at him if he hadn't fired first, and he had no doubts it would have killed him.

Red collapsed into a lanky heap on the soft grass.

Adams berated himself silently. Setting the phaser on stun was foolish; the second had nearly cost him his life. But he had his reasons for wanting her body intact. After all, there was the scrambler, and what looked like a small subspace transmitter attached to her belt. Perhaps the transmitter was strong enough to broadcast into the heart of the Romulan Empire itself.

And he could certainly use the knife.

LISA SAT ON the fountain's edge with the painting in her lap and watched the iridescent blue water leap against the night sky. The moon was false—too perfect a match for Earth's—but the rest of the surroundings were authentic, which soothed her. The grass was native and imperfect, growing in irregular clumps, and the night air was a little too chilly to be comfortable. She closed her eyes and felt the cool spray against her face. Probably the best thing about it all was being alone.

She had wanted to be alone ever since she'd heard from Rajiv. Seeing him again, even in a taped message, had brought on a sweet sense of melancholy. She wanted to sit for hours thinking of what he had said. Thinking of him, of his serene dark eyes, of the way he looked when he smiled. Yet at the same time, the decision he had asked her to make brought a sense of pressure and panic.

It was a decision she did not want to make. She felt both touched and resentful that he had asked her.

The memory of him brought with it thoughts of Paolo, Zia, and Rakel. The month in the Colorado mountains was one of the happiest memories Lisa had of her life. Of trees, and riding horses in the new snow. They had seemed like a family then.

Lisa had never had a family. Her parents had separated after their two-year contract expired. Lisa lived with her father and never heard from her mother, a researcher who volunteered for a deep-space mission. When he died a few years later, Lisa was shuttled from relative to distant relative. If her mother had ever asked to see her in that time, Lisa was not told. Even now, she did not know if her mother was still living.

She had loved Colorado. She would have done anything to go back to it. Or so she thought, until Rajiv's letter.

He was leaving the Fleet, he said, to join the group, and he was asking Lisa to do the same. The others had consented to welcome her. Group marriage, a built-in family. Zia was expecting her first child in September.

Lisa was thrilled at the invitation—until she realized exactly what he was asking. He was asking her to come to Colorado, to the ranch, to live. Everyone had decided that the family would consist of permanent members, for the sake of future children. Surely Lisa of all people would understand that.

He was asking her to give up Starfleet.

He might as well have asked for an arm, or a leg. Starfleet had been more than a natural choice for those without families, or those who sought to be rid of what families they had. For Nguyen it was an opportunity to gain a sense of pride in herself. A chance to accomplish, to bolster self-esteem. And it had occurred to her that traveling across the galaxy might increase her chances of hearing news of her mother.

Lisa shivered. The combination of cold spray from the fountain and the night air chilled her. A walk would warm her up; perhaps she would walk through the sparse bit of forest, and pretend she was walking through tall mountain pine.

She stood up and sighed, putting the painting under one arm. There seemed to be no way of making a choice. She couldn't give up the family, and she certainly couldn't give up Starfleet. Any attempts to plead with Rajiv to consider letting her be an occasional member would be met with those quietly disapproving eyes. He was willing to leave the Fleet. He could ask no less of her. And surely she understood how unfair it would be to the others.

She started walking toward the trees, careful not to stumble over the uneven clumps of grass. Even though she was glad no one else was out enjoying the evening sky, she thought it odd that the park was deserted. Everyone else probably preferred the warmer bars. Since she wasn't going to come to a decision tonight, she might as well look for Stanger and Lamia. Maybe she should confide in the Andorian about it. Lamia seemed hotheaded and irresponsible sometimes, but that was just Andorian biochemistry and culture. She had a sensible head on her shoulders. But Lisa hadn't wanted to bother her, in her less cynical moments figuring that Lamia was just putting on a good show about getting over that business with her family.

The grass grew sparser near the stand of trees, and the light of the city filtered through, throwing long shadows. Lisa stopped and put her hand on the first tree she came to. The bark was rough and fibrous, and she leaned forward to smell it. A clean pungent scent, but nothing like Terran pine. She began to pick her way slowly toward the city. The patch of forest grew thicker, until she could not see her feet. The ground was still uneven, and she shuffled her boots so that she would not stumble.

Halfway through, her right boot struck something large and yielding. She threw an arm out to steady herself against a tree and winced at the
thud
as the painting hit the ground. Slowly, she prodded the object again with her foot. It moved a little, then fell back heavily against the soft ground.

It was a body. She almost panicked, but scolded herself back to rationality. Just a drunk, from one of the bars, passed out. She would have liked to ignore it and keep on walking, but the only right thing to do was to be sure that the drunk was all right. For all she knew, it could be Lamia or Stanger. She squatted down next to the body.

“Are you okay?” She would have felt better if she could have heard snoring, but there was no sound at all. She fumbled for a wrist. From the feel, she judged it to be human and female. But she could not get a pulse.

That did not frighten her particularly; she knew it was sometimes difficult to get a wrist pulse on a female. She crouched down closer and felt for the neck.

Her hand found the head and very gently followed down the side of the face, past the ear, under the jaw. When she got lower, she felt something warm and wet. She pressed down, feeling for the artery, and her hand slipped and touched something hard. A sensation of extreme cold traveled down her spine as Lisa realized she was feeling the woman's exposed trachea.

She drew her hand away, sickened. It was not the blood or even the gaping wound in the woman's neck that made her shudder, Nguyen was resolutely stoic about such things. It was the fact that someone had been able to do such a thing to another living being. In the feeble moonlight, she couldn't see what covered her hand, but she knew nevertheless.
Calm. Calm. Be calm.
She wiped it on the grass, stood up, and reached for her communicator.

A steely arm encircled her neck before she could flip the communicator grid open. She was too surprised to feel panic. She threw her arms up and tried to pry the arm away until something cold and hard was pressed to her temple: a phaser. Nguyen dropped one hand to her belt and realized the weapon against her head was her own. She stopped struggling.

The voice speaking directly behind her head was male, calm, not unpleasant.

“You're from a starship.”