Bloodthirst (23 page)

And then it struck him. Could he program Old Yeller with a new message and send him to Jimmy? It might work.

His hope faded. It would take several days for Yeller to catch up to a starship, especially one as far out as the
Enterprise
. No, he had to warn Jim a lot sooner than that.

He needed a public comm. He walked as if guided by some higher consciousness out of his office, through the living room with its huge window. The fog was blinking with skimmer lights and the lights of sailing vessels on the dark water.

“Open,” he told the front door. It opened at the sound of his voice, closed, and locked itself after him.

He walked directly into the street. Their apartment”
his
apartment—was a separate building on the bay, not a cubicle in a hive. He refused to live like an insect. The air was fresh, but damp with fog. It drizzled softly on his face.

It was cool enough to go back for a jacket, but the chill helped him think. The nearest pubcomm wasn't far, down a rolling hill in Old Town San Francisco, on the treacherous original preserved sidewalks. The comm was at the bottom of the hill, where the fog had gathered so thick that Quince would not have found it if he hadn't known exactly where it stood.

He stood for several minutes before speaking into the comm to select the form and content of his message; and as he stood, a grin spread over his features.

Well, hell, he'd been looking for some excitement to alleviate the boredom, hadn't he? And this was just the ticket. Yet as he leaned closer to speak into the waiting computer, he hesitated.

Was he letting himself be paranoid over nothing? Would he feel like a fool tomorrow when Bili explained it to him? And then how would he explain this message to Kirk? God knows, he hadn't been on an even keel since Ke and the kids had left. Could all of this be a product of his wishful imagination?

Well, what's the worst they can do to you, old boy? Court-martial you? Maybe that's not such a bad idea.

The Vulcan
had
been monitoring his terminal. Someone was watching him, whether Bili was involved or not. Imagination had nothing to do with what was going on.

“Subspace radio,” he told the computer, and let it take his retinal scan before he gave it the call letters of the
Enterprise
. A written telegram, no voice, no video. But he had to phrase it so Kirk would know who sent it.

JIMMY: WHERE THERE'S SMOKE, THERE'S FIRE. GETTING TOO HOT TO BREATHE ROUND HERE

He didn't sign it. The computer would give the message's origin as a public comm in San Francisco, and that was incriminating enough. Besides, how many people got away with calling Kirk Jimmy?

Just so Mendez and Bili couldn't trace it. If he was right, he didn't want them going after Kirk, too.

He walked for a while in the fog, not wanting to go back to the apartment. He knew it was going to be a bad night. If he went back to the apartment, he would drink, and he wanted to stay sober tonight, to try to figure the damn thing out. Could it be a string of coincidences?

But who had sent the Vulcan to spy on him? Why hadn't Bili looked at that damn Tanis file? Something like that would have piqued the interest of a whistle blower like Bili. No, too many damn coincidences, one right after another. The Vulcan. Bili's lies to him, to Stein. Bili and Mendez, headed for Star Base Thirteen. The
Brass Ring
.

It was all true. He'd gone to Bili unsuspecting but how could he trust
anyone
at HQ? Who could he go to for protection?

An involuntary shiver passed through him.
Someone walking on my grave

By the time he got back to the apartment, the fog had begun to lift, and he was drenched in a cold sweat. He had an unshakable premonition that he was about to die yet at the same time, he felt oddly exhilarated. And he had a plan.

Even assuming his home terminal was monitored, maybe he could get away with it. He'd access the Fleet computer, ask it to list those with clearance to the Tanis file.

Anyone without clearance obviously knew nothing about it. If he could find a high-ranking admiral without clearance, that would just about clinch his case. It would prove that rank did not necessarily clear you to know about Tanis—only complicity did.

He'd call that high-ranking admiral and go to him with the information. Now, in the middle of the night, before Mendez would have a chance to react. He'd beam over to the admiral's before they'd even have a chance to realize what he was doing.

But first, another matter to take care of. If his instincts were right and something did happen to him, Jimmy would feel awfully bad about it. And if he didn't die, no one would ever know, anyway. He took the required few minutes to reprogram Yeller. He'd willed him to Jimmy anyway, so his lawyer already had the instructions.

When he was finished, he went to the terminal in his study and stood in front of it for an instant, catching his breath. He'd have to do this quickly, to give them as little time as possible to react. He grinned suddenly. If he was wrong, he'd get into more than a little bit of hot water, waking an admiral up in the middle of the night with outrageous accusations of conspiracy within the Fleet.

They could just bust him down to captain for being such a jackass, then.

“Computer. Names of those with access to Tanis files.”

Not very many names at all. Mendez, of course, and a few other admirals. Some of the names he recognized, some he did not. Tsebili's was among them.

Admiral Noguchi's was not. He called Noguchi's house, tried not to smile nervously at the admiral's petulant, sleep-drugged expression.

“Waverleigh? This had better be good.”

“It is, sir,” Waverleigh said seriously. “I need to talk to you, Admiral, about a conspiracy within the Fleet.”

Noguchi blinked at him for a moment, and then he said: “Come on over. Wait a minute—the transporter's not working. You know how to get here by skimmer?”

“Yes, sir. It's on the program.” The transporter.
Damnation!
He'd forgotten about the maintenance. That put an extra element of danger into this.
All the better then
, he told himself dryly.
You've been waiting for some excitement to come along, haven't you? Well, now you've got it.

Let them come after him. He'd outrun them any day.

He took the elevator to the roof and slipped into the skimmer. She was fast and sporting, not by any stretch of the imagination a family machine. Ke had so disapproved. He put the controls on manual, and took her up into the night sky.

Try and catch me, you sons of bitches!

He laughed out loud. For the first time in two years, he felt alive.

Good God, was he finally doing something that made a difference?

He rose out over the bay. The fog was clearing away rapidly now; if he wanted, he could have put the radar on manual, too, but decided to let the computer take care of it. If someone was tailing him, he wanted to know from the very first second.

But the skies around him were clear. He asked the program for the location of Noguchi's house; it was on the other side of the bay, barely a minute away.

As he drew closer, he felt his exhilaration fade into an odd sense of disappointment. They weren't even going to try to chase him. It was all going to be too easy.

He slowed his acceleration in preparation for landing. Already he could see the outline of the landing lights blinking on the roof of Noguchi's complex. The smile on his face began to fade. He was safe. “So much for excitement,” he said. The sound of his own voice surprised him.

He was still over the bay, but it was time to start descending. He eased up on the throttle to start bringing her down.

Still no one in pursuit.

The skimmer descended gently, gracefully, ready for the approach. And then the throttle shivered, began to move under his hand. He stared at it stupidly, then looked up at the control panel. She was still on manual.

The throttle was definitely moving now the skimmer shuddered and began to lose speed, and then altitude. Quince wrestled with the control, cursing the machine as the skimmer began its descent into the bay.

There wasn't much time to react, really. He felt a curious mixture of exhilaration and frustration instead of the fear he would have expected. Exhilaration that he had been right after all, that the danger had been real; frustration that he would not be able to warn Noguchi. There was just enough time to think two things: first, that he was glad he'd gone ahead and sent that message to Jim; and second, that there was gonna be one hell of a shake-up at Starfleet Headquarters, and he was sorry he wouldn't be there to see it.

IN THE DIM light of the isolation unit, McCoy stood over Chris Chapel's body, trying to gather his courage to do the unthinkable. There was no shimmer from a field suit to intrude on his vision; Tjieng had made good on her promise to have the vaccine ready today, and McCoy was one of the first to receive the untested inoculation. Since his blood was now producing the correct antibodies, he'd ordered the vaccine administered to the rest of the crew.

For Christine, it was a day too late. Her brain waves had remained flat for twenty-four hours. He tried not to notice the gentle, unbearably regular rise and fall of her chest as the life support unit breathed for her; it made her seem all too alive, and McCoy couldn't afford to think of her that way.

But he couldn't bear to think of her as being dead. She looked too alive, too beautiful.

Funny, he'd never let himself notice how really very beautiful she was. A classic, elegant beauty with her face in repose, flawless translucent skin framed by dark ash-blond hair. There was even a faint flush of color on her cheeks.
The bloom still on the rose
, McCoy thought painfully, knowing full well it was the result of a recent transfusion. The computer monitored her hemoglobin level, and the moment it dropped, blood was automatically delivered into Chris' veins.

Her body had been fooled into thinking her brain was still alive. It accepted the blood without complaint; the heart, artificially stimulated, pumped it through the veins.

But McCoy could lie to himself no longer. Christine's essence was gone, and he was doing her no favor by keeping the empty shell alive.

Nor was he doing himself a favor. He'd drunk enough to feel like hell today, but it hadn't been enough to make him sleep. He'd lain awake all night in a stupor, unable to push back anymore the realization that tomorrow he would have to let her go.

He'd thought a lot last night. Curious thoughts, like why he'd never bothered to fall in love with her. Why he'd never let himself register how beautiful she was

He had remembered the first and only time he'd invited her for a drink in his quarters. It was shortly after he'd come on board the
Enterprise
, and he'd decided it was a good way to get to know his staff. Only most of his staff hadn't been able to make it that night, and he'd wound up, to his discomfort, alone in his quarters and drinking with an attractive woman. It suddenly occurred to him, as he sat at his desk and poured her a shot from his coveted flash of Old Weller, that she might be expecting him to make a pass at her. The thought almost paralyzed him with fear, and led him to drink far more than he would have, especially when he was trying to make a good first impression.

Chris got a little drunk, too, probably because the exact same thought had occurred to her. He'd never even seen her drink before or after. She arrived looking tall and attractive but very cool, and, thank God, in uniform. If she'd worn anything else he probably would have dropped his glass.

They drank the first shot much too fast, but by the time McCoy was pouring the second shot, they'd relaxed. Something about the way Chris handled herself, even tipsy, made it clear she wanted nothing more from him than friendship something in the eyes, the tone of voice, the way she sat

By the third drink, he'd learned that she'd been engaged, but her fiancée was missing, presumed dead. She couldn't bring herself to believe it, still held onto the hope that he would be found. McCoy felt sorry for her, but at the same time, he felt incredible relief: so they had both been bitterly hurt, and neither was looking for another entanglement. He relaxed and told her a little about his divorce from Jocelyn, about his only child Joanna and the great sense of guilt he felt about not having had more of a hand in raising her.

Later, he was surprised at himself for confiding so much to Chapel, but she never made him regret it. She was not a lover, she was something McCoy needed much more at the time: a friend, a close-mouthed confidante. There were things he could tell her that he could never talk to Jim about. And things she, in turn, told him.

McCoy was not the type of person who opened up easily about his personal problems, and the ease with which he spoke that night to Chris amazed him. He must have somehow instinctively known that it was safe to talk to her; maybe he had recognized her need to do the same.

At some point that evening, they got to talking about the outbreak of infectious madness from Psi 2000 that had recently affected the crew. Blushing, Chris confessed that she'd been responsible for infecting Spock. The Vulcan had stumbled into sickbay, searching for the captain

“And I grabbed his hand and confessed my undying love for him. Isn't it horrible?” She gave a short laugh, the corner of her mouth quirking up in that self-deprecating way she had. “Frankly, I was as surprised as he was. I've been too embarrassed to look at him since then. I suppose he thinks I meant it. I'm surprised he didn't request an immediate transfer.”

"Did
you mean it?” The bourbon had warmed McCoy to the point where he dared to ask.

Chris was swallowing a gulp of her drink. It went down the wrong way, and she started coughing. “That's—ridiculous,” she gasped, between coughing fits. She wiped her eyes and held out her glass to McCoy. He filled it from the flask of Old Weller on the desk. “Why on earth would anyone fall in love with Spock?”