The Lost Era: Well of Souls: Star Trek (28 page)

“What about when there are spies whom you know are spies? You know, diplomats, stuff like that?”

“The enemy you know,” said Glemoor, his long slender fingers inscribing an imaginary box in the air, “you hem them in, that is the expression, correct? You give them the illusion of freedom while keeping a close watch. What does not follow is to let the enemy inflict more damage before exposing, or eliminating him.”

Castillo opened his mouth to reply, but it was the Trill, Anjad Kodell, who spoke first. “That’s a very important point, Glemoor.”

All eyes swiveled to the chief engineer. Bat-Levi saw that most registered surprise. If Halak had been seen as secretive, Kodell was taciturn, socializing with no one. Worse than she was. At least, she made an effort. It helped that her duties now—as acting first officer—left her no choice. On the other hand, Tyvan was forcing the issue. She wondered if Kodell was required to report to Tyvan. Well, she reasoned, they all were, or would be at some point. That was the psychiatrist’s job, after all: doing a mental exam, like a physical only with talk. And what did Kodell talk about? Bat-Levi’s eyes strayed over the chief engineer’s face. Kodell had chocolate-brown spots sprinkled on the skin of both his temples and down either side of his neck before dipping beneath his collar. Idly, she wondered if the spots continued over his chest, or along his back, and if so, just how far they went. Kodell was thin, though not lanky like Tyvan, or graceful like Glemoor who moved with the ease of the panther he resembled. No, Kodell’s face had a chiseled, hollowed look, as if he’d lost a lot of weight and never properly filled out again. His hair was the color of ripened wheat, light and brown. He was a carefully neutral man, yet Bat-Levi saw that his dark brown eyes were closed somehow, as if he sheltered some inner pain.

“What point was that?” she asked.

Kodell regarded her with a mild expression. “Why didn’t Starfleet Intelligence act sooner? Maybe their findings have no veracity. But just like you have to move to contain your enemy, people act to contain themselves, the things inside that they perceive to be the enemies they’ve collected over time.”

Castillo blinked. “I. don’t get your point.”

“We all have secrets. There are many things people do when they’re desperate, things they do that feel right at the time but which they regret later. Just because something is partly true doesn’t mean it is the whole truth. Maybe there are some things about his past Halak felt he couldn’t share, or didn’t want to.”

“Well, that’s what I’m
saying
,” said Castillo. “He was hiding stuff.”

Kodell looked toward Bat-Levi, then back at Castillo, and his lips moved in a small, and she thought, sad, smile. “And so do you, I’m sure. Everyone has secrets. They may have nothing to do with right or wrong, legal, illegal. Maybe, for Halak, the price of letting anyone peek into his past was, simply, too great. But,” said Kodell, his gaze now wandering over everyone else, “we’re still dancing around the real issue, right? If Starfleet Intelligence is right, Halak’s a murderer. I don’t think anyone’s said anything about that. But why? Why won’t we discuss murder?”

Murder: The word hung in the air like a bad odor. Castillo dropped his eyes. Glemoor gave a slow, solemn nod. Bulast, who had finished his food, sat listening, with his elbows propped and fleshy chin cupped in his palms.

Bat-Levi spoke first. “Yes, murder changes everything, doesn’t it?”

“Of course,” said Kodell. “Murder means passion. Sure, you can kill. We’re all trained killers, right? Sometimes our duty is synonymous with death—a last resort, usually, but still there. But murder is different. When there’s murder, there’s passion.”

“And so the question is,” said Bat-Levi, “that if Halak’s a murderer—if he
did
kill two crewmen—why?”

“There is no
if
,” said Glemoor. “We know. He killed that Bolian.”

“No,” said Kodell. “You see? Even you use the euphemism. He
murdered
the Bolian. The Bolian murdered Batra, and Halak murdered him. But that murder we forgive and even understand.”

Castillo cleared his throat. “Look, this hasn’t got a thing to do with emotion. What Halak did with the
Barker
crew was cold and calculated and pretty damned ruthless. The way I see it, Halak was afraid he’d be exposed. That’s what SI said. They know the facts, so that says something, right?” He looked over at Bulast who was staring at spot on the table just in front of his plate. “Right?”

At Bat-Levi’s left elbow, Bulast inhaled and blinked, as if his mind had been a million kilometers away. “I don’t know that I have an opinion,” he said.

That was a first. Bat-Levi turned in surprise. Bulast always had something to say. Come to think of it, this was the first complete sentence he’d uttered for the entire meal.

“An opinion on Halak?” she prodded. “Or SI?”

Bulast spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “On anything. I don’t know about the rest of you, but this is probably the worst thing I can ever remember happening on any ship I’ve served on. Oh, sure, people
do
shoot at us, and they think they have good reasons: territorial disputes, self-defense. But I can’t get past the fact that one of our friends is dead, and another person, a man I might not think of as my closest friend but our XO, might be nothing more than a cold-blooded killer. And none of us caught it. Not the captain, not anyone.”

Kodell said, “Bulast, who can know what’s true, what we should have caught and didn’t? Maybe there was
nothing
to catch. All we have is SI’s word. That’s it.”

“And evidence,” said Castillo.

“Yes, with SI providing it all. But I’m not talking about that.” Clearly frustrated, Kodell clamped his lips together. “I guess I’m just not making myself clear. Isn’t it funny that each of us can
understand
the impulse to kill for revenge or self-defense, but that none of us is willing, for one second, to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who feels cornered, or that he has nothing to lose? Maybe Halak
did
kill those two crewmen. I, for one, don’t know. But I
am
willing to try to put myself in his place and try to understand why his reasons felt like good ones.”

“That’s because murder’s murder,” said Castillo.

“No,” said Bat-Levi. Instinctively, she understood what Kodell was saying. “Sometimes you kill because you don’t have a choice. Or because you don’t
think
there’s a choice—a no-win scenario. You think you’re in the classic
Kobayoshi Maru.
But there’s always a choice. It’s simply that you don’t like the choices you have.”

Kodell stared at her for a long moment. Then he nodded. “Precisely.”

After a few moments, Kodell excused himself. Bat-Levi and Glemoor left a short while later. Castillo lingered a moment with Bulast who sat, chin in hands.

“Hell.” Castillo blew out. “You ever hear such crap? Pretty black and white, you ask me.”

Bulast’s shoulders hunched, fell. “I can understand the point.”

“Something wrong?”

“Just thinking.”

“About?”

“What Kodell said,” the Atrean’s eyes slid toward Castillo, “about secrets.”

Castillo’s lips moved in a quizzical smile. “Secrets?”

“Yes. He’s right. Everyone’s got secrets.” Bulast paused then added, “Even you, Richard.”

Castillo’s lips parted, and he felt a wave of cold dread flood his chest.
Oh, no.
“Me? What are you talking about, Darco?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about ... no,” said the Atrean as Castillo opened his mouth. “Don’t say it. Don’t say anything.”

Bulast stood then and slid his tray, the plastic loudly
scouring the tabletop. “I know your secret, Richard. I know,
exactly,
what you did with Ani.”

He shouldn’t have talked so much. What had gotten into him? Kodell hurried along what seemed to be the interminably long corridor curling from the mess hall to the turbolift. The corridor was more crowded than usual, or so it seemed to Kodell, who spent most of his time in Jefferies tubes, fussing with the warp core, or doing systems’ checks in engineering. He preferred machines. Machines didn’t talk back. (All right, the computer did, but it never started a conversation. Well, a warning, maybe. That didn’t count.) But he
had
talked. What was more, he’d actually enjoyed it.

This won’t do.
Sweat crawled down his back.
This simply won’t do.

He was a Trill, with secrets. And was it simply that fact alone that accounted for his reluctance to mingle? True, the Trill had
their
secrets, in more ways than one. A lucky point-one-percent of the population carried a secret in their bodies. But then there was everybody else, and then there were Trill like him.

It’s eating you up, Anjad.
Your
jealousy, your hurt, and you say you love me, but I know the truth, I know you really want me dead.

Th’leila, how can you say that? I love you.

No, Anjad. You
don’t know what you love more: me, or what’s inside
...

No.
Kodell forced these thoughts back into the black box in his mind where he kept them.
Stop this.
He wouldn’t think about Th’leila, and he wouldn’t think about Bok, nor would he think of Th’leila Bok: as they were, together, closer than lovers, and how much he loved and hated them both because Th’leila had been lucky, and he had not, and how Bok—Kodell’s heart twisted with grief and longing—how Bok had been his,
his
for a brief, precious moment, joining
in the conductance fluid medium of the tank, their thoughts entwining, and Bok had been
his
symbiont, before there ever was a Th’leila.

Th’leila’s body, her skin slicked with sweat from their love-making, the long golden river of her hair curling around her breasts, and the way she cried out, arching, reaching for him. “Love me, Anjad, show me how you love me
...
”

Just ahead, Kodell spied three enlisted straddling the entire width of the corridor. Kodell dodged left while clearing his throat, loudly. The enlisted on the far left jumped as if he’d been shot with a phaser. He flinched aside, crowding his two companions who bunched to the right, along the bulkhead.

“Sorry, sir. I didn’t see ...”

“Fine, fine.” Kodell just waved a hand and shot past. “Carry on.”

Bat-Levi. Kodell strode purposefully for the turbolift. Bat-Levi had gotten him started. But she didn’t look anything like Th’leila Bok, a woman with hair as golden as liquid sunlight and deep brown eyes and lips so full he never
could
resist catching the lower one between his teeth when they kissed. So what was it? Why now? Kodell clenched his fists, tight, tight. Why was he plagued by thoughts of Th’leila—and Bok—now?

Kodell saw a gaggle of crewmen waiting at the turbolift and suppressed an urge to curse.
Take a Jefferies, get some exercise.
Cooped up in a ship all day, crawling around the Jefferies tubes was a relief. Maybe a little like one of those blind, naked Draken mole rats, but still a relief.

Then he heard a woman calling his name, and his stomach did a little leap of dismay. For one brief instant, petty as the impulse was, Kodell debated. He could pretend he hadn’t heard then dart right down the near corridor, jog to a Jefferies tube that would take him all the way to Deck 22, and then jump on a turbolift there.

Ahead, he saw a crewman turn his head and then look at
Kodell, who’d hesitated one millisecond too long. “I think she’s calling you, sir,” the crewman said, helpfully.

“Yes,” said Kodell, knowing he couldn’t avoid Bat-Levi now. He gave the crewman a tight smile. “Thank you so much, crewman.”

He turned, and watched as Bat-Levi approached. He noticed, as if for the first time, that she was fairly skilled in compensating for her prostheses. Her movements weren’t clumsy, though she lurched a little to the left. Probably the right knee joint needed readjusting; nothing five minutes with a tefloflex spanner wouldn’t solve. And she had to do something about the noise. Those servos sounded like the high-pitched chirping of a flock of Meprean grackles. Strange she hadn’t upgraded. Most people cared about those things. On the other hand—his eyes took in her scar, the way her once-pretty face twisted to one side, that streak of white skittering through her black hair like an errant lightening bolt—Darya Bat-Levi clearly wasn’t most people.

“Commander,” he said as she came to stand before him. Kodell put his hands behind his back, as if coming to attention but really giving himself a warning not to get too comfortable. He noticed then that when she stood, she kept her left hand—the artificial one—tucked, out of sight, at the small of her back.

“Commander,” she said, her tone betraying some surprise at the use of her rank. She gave a tentative smile, and he saw how the right side of her mouth was so tight, smiling pulled her lip down in a grimace. He thought it must be painful.

“I just ... you left so quickly, I didn’t have a chance to tell you.” She seemed to flounder for what she wanted to say, and he let her. “I just wanted to let you know that I liked what you said. I don’t remember ever hearing you talk so much before and ... sorry, that didn’t come out right.”

“No,” said Kodell, her obvious chagrin making him warm
to her despite his internal admonitions. “But, if I were insecure, I’d wonder if you were keeping score.”