Blind Man's Bluff

U.S.S. Excalibur, Orbiting New Thallon Ten Hours Later

i.

Everyone on the bridge of the Excalibur, without exception, turned to Calhoun in utter astonishment. Sitting calmly in the captain’s chair, he glanced around and said with just a touch of sarcasm, “Is there a problem?”

No one seemed to know where to start. It was Kebron who spoke first: “You’re going down by yourself, Captain?”

“I believe I recognized my own voice saying exactly those words,” said Calhoun.

Morgan, seated at her ops station, turned to face Calhoun. “I don’t know that that’s wise, Captain.”

“The Thallonians will see it as a sign of confidence and strength,” Calhoun pointed out. “That will give me greater leeway in the negotiations, as opposed to hiding behind a phalanx of security guards.”

“And I suppose that pointing out that this is contrary to Starfleet regulations would be a waste of time?”

“How well you know me, Morgan.”

“Captain,” said Tobias, “Mr. Kebron and Morgan are right. This is an extremely bad idea. Kalinda has already been going on about how dangerous the entire mission is. You heading down completely on your own…”

“Have I ever given you cause to think that there’s a situation I’m incapable of handling?”

“This isn’t about a vote of confidence, Captain,” Xy said from the science station. In recent days, Xy had been serving double duty as both science officer and temporary chief medical officer, until such time as Calhoun named a replacement for the late Selar. “This is about what’s best for you and for the mission.”

“I think I know what’s best for me, and the mission will take care of itself.” There was now an unaccustomed brittleness to Calhoun’s voice. “I was making a declaration, people. I wasn’t planning to open it to debate. This is not, last I checked, a democracy. Commander Burgoyne,” and he turned to look warily at his second in command, “do you wish to weigh in on this matter?”

“No, sir,” said Burgoyne.

Calhoun cocked an eyebrow. “Really. Because everyone else seems to have something to say.”

“I assume that you’ve already made your decision after some consideration, and that should be honored.”

“Good.” Calhoun nodded once and then rose from his chair. “Burgy, you have the conn.”

“Actually, sir, I’d like to talk to you on the way down to the transporter room.”

Calhoun did nothing to indicate that this would be the slightest problem. “Of course. Mr. Kebron, the conn is yours for the moment.”

“Yes, sir. Captain: Permission to keep a security team on high alert?”

“That’s good thinking, Kebron. You do that.”

Calhoun then walked into the turbolift, Burgoyne right behind him. “Transporter room,” Calhoun said, and the lift promptly angled downward and then across.

“So, Burgy, what did you want to talk to me about?” said Calhoun.

Burgoyne did not respond. Instead s/he stared fixedly at Calhoun, and hir nostrils flared slightly as s/he did so.

“Burgy? I’m not a mind reader, you know. Are you following up on our discussion of the other day? Have you been talking to Kebron to sort out your various issues? Or perhaps…”

Then Calhoun’s voice trailed off, and he sighed deeply.

The turbolift slid to a halt on the transporter room level, but the doors didn’t open. Burgoyne didn’t even glance around, as if this was something s/he was expecting.

“So what gave me away?” said Calhoun. “I mean, I know something did. There was a rapid change in your biometrics precisely eight point three seconds after the turbolift doors closed. I doubt this was prompted merely by being in proximity to me. Something has changed. I assume that somehow you saw through it.”

“I should have done so sooner. I would have, back in your quarters, except you wound up distracting me with all your comments about my state of mind and Selar.”

“That wasn’t to distract you. Well, not just to distract you. I really am concerned about you.”

“When did you install holotech in the turbolifts?”

“Oh, I manage to budget my time. You’d be amazed what I have the opportunity to do.”

“I would feel a great deal more comfortable,” said Burgoyne stiffly, “if you were to drop the façade immediately.”

“Very well.” There was no shimmering, no ripple of transition of any kind. One moment Calhoun was standing there, and then, just like that, it was Morgan who was looking at hir with a sad expression, as if she felt sorry for hir. “If this will make you feel better. I still want to know how you were aware, though.”

“Your smell.”

“Smell? I don’t—” She closed her eyes. “Of course.”

“All living things produce some manner of scent. Humans don’t have sharp enough olfactory sense to perceive it, but I do. If Ensign Janos or Lieutenant M’Ress were still aboard this ship, they would have noticed its absence immediately. In my case, well… I’ve let myself get sloppy. It took me this long, and this degree of proximity, to realize that you weren’t giving off any sort of scent whatsoever.”

Morgan looked mortified at the omission. “I’m a computer mind, for heaven’s sake. How could I not have anticipated that holograms have no scent, and that might be noticeable to you?”

“Obviously because you still have human limitations.”

She nodded in reluctant agreement. “That is certainly the case for now. But it may not always be that way. So,” and her mind already seemed prepared to move on to other matters, “what do you see happening now? I mean, you’re not trying to sound a red alert or some such.”

“I didn’t consider that a viable option since you’re in charge of the alert systems on the ship. You’re pretty much in charge of every aspect of the ship.”

“That’s very true.” She seemed quite chipper about it.

“I’m more interested in what your next step is,” said Burgoyne. “As far as everyone else is concerned, Captain Calhoun was last seen departing the bridge. People are going to wonder why he didn’t report to the transporter room.”

“Why would they wonder that?”

That was when s/he realized. “Of course. You, of all people, are able to multitask.”

“Yes, indeed. Which is why Captain Calhoun has already shown up in the transporter room and been beamed down to the surface of New Thallon.”

“Except it wasn’t him; it was you posing as him while you were talking to me at the same time.”

“Aren’t you at all curious as to where the real Calhoun is?”

“I’m assuming one of two things. Either you’ve killed him in his sleep and then disposed of his body…”

Morgan affected a look of positive amazement. “How could you possibly think I would do such a thing? To just kill him cold-bloodedly in such a way. After everything he’s done for me, and for Robin. What you must think of me, Burgoyne, to imagine I’d—”

“… or else you abandoned him on Xenex.”

“Okay, that I did do. But at least I gave him a fighting chance.”

“Fighting? He’s going to be fighting someone?”

“If the plan works out, yes, and I’ve no reason to think otherwise. It’s how he would want to die, don’t you think?”

“Listen to yourself, Morgan. Listen to the things you’re saying.” It was all Burgoyne could do to keep hir voice level and calm. S/he had to keep reminding hirself that s/he was dealing with a malfunctioning machine, not a human being. “This is not something that you would have said or done back when you were alive. You’ve lost all sense of conscience. You’re severing your ties to humanity.”

“Mac was the one who started it,” she retorted. “Talk about severing ties. He was the one who made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with me. That he wanted to explore ways to put an end to me. You’re saying I’m not human? What can be more fundamentally human than a desire for self-preservation? I ask you.”

“And how far will you go in that quest for self-preservation?”

“Meaning…?”

“Meaning where does the rest of the crew fit in to your quest for self-preservation? Here you’ve talked about how much you owe Mac, and the way you thanked him was abandoning him…”

“On his home planet, when I could simply have—as you pointed out—killed him. I think I was being generous.”

“So what about the rest of us? Those to whom you may not think you owe any personal debt?” Burgoyne continued to keep hir voice flat and even, not betraying so much as the slightest hint of the rising urgency s/he was feeling. S/he was determined to keep Morgan talking while s/he tried to come up with some course of action that Morgan might not expect. Unfortunately, nothing much was coming to mind, plus s/he was trying to outthink a computer mind. Yes, Morgan had been tripped up by the error of not considering body scent, but that was certainly no reason to think that any future mistakes would be forthcoming. “What happens to us? To them?”

“Do you really think I would just commit wholesale slaughter?” She sounded disappointed that s/he could even conceive of such a thing. “It saddens me that you’d think I’d do that. However…”

“However what?”

The red alert klaxon suddenly began to sound. Burgy looked around in confusion, thinking for a moment that the stopped turbolift had somehow triggered some manner of fail-safe. But that didn’t make any sense to hir.

Then, with hir superb hearing, Burgy detected a distant sound, a very distinct discharge of concentrated energy blasting away from the ship.

The big guns of the Excalibur’s phasers were cutting loose at a target. But nothing was shooting at the ship; s/he would have heard the blasts careening off the shields. If they weren’t under attack, though, then who the hell were they shooting at? He looked to Morgan questioningly.

“Well,” and now she smiled, and it was a smile without any humor, or compassion, or mercy, “you can’t make an omelet…”

ii.

In Tania Tobias’s quarters, Kalinda was lying on the ground, her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her legs. Her eyes were wide with shock and she was trembling.

Her voice was barely above a whisper as carnage was unleashed far below her.

“So many lives… so many dead… so many… I knew bad things would happen here… I knew it…”

She kept saying it over and over, and there was none to hear her.

iii.

“Shut it down! Shut it down!” Xy was shouting from the science station.

“Thank you for the advice. That would never have occurred to me,” Kebron shot back, keeping his tone flat and professional, even as he labored over the tactical board, trying to determine what in the world was going on. “Tobias, change our angle. Aim us away—”

“Already attempting to. Helm is nonresponsive. The entire navigation system has locked me out.” Tobias turned to the ops station and called out, “Morgan! Whatever’s causing this to happen, override it and shut it down.”

“I’m trying to raise the captain,” said Kebron. “He’s not responding. Transporter room can’t even get a lock on his combadge to bring him back up.”

Morgan was seated at the ops station, her hands resting lightly on the console, her eyes fixed on the front screen. On it, the bridge crew was able to see exactly what their instruments were telling them was occurring: The phaser banks of the Excalibur were unloading on New Thallon, causing untold, incalculable damage wherever they were striking. There was no one section that was being targeted. Instead the shots were being scattered all over the surface, in the hearts of major cities, hammering away at full strength. Tania almost imagined she could hear the screams of the dying coming from far below.

Morgan didn’t move.

“Morgan!”

Tobias was out of her chair, crossing to the ops station, and she shouted, “Morgan!” one more time and reached for her.

Her hand passed right through her. Morgan wasn’t even bothering to maintain the solidity of her holographic form. It was just sitting there as an illusion, nonresponsive. Tobias waved her hand through a few more times, as if she were trying to clear the air.

Kebron tried everything he could think of to override the weapons systems, but nothing was working. “As long as there’s power going to the phasers, I can’t shut it down—”

“Then we need to shut everything down,” said Xy.

Kebron realized what he meant. It was a majorly risky move, one that would leave the Excalibur disastrously vulnerable. A decision like this was normally above his pay grade. But the captain had left the ship and couldn’t be reached, and the second in command was MIA. The decision, and possible consequences, were on him. He didn’t nod because he had no neck and so nodding was problematic. Instead he simply said, “Do it.”

Immediately Xy called out, “Bridge to engineering!”

“Engineering!” came back the voice of Lieutenant Ronni Beth, the right-hand woman to Chief Engineer Mitchell. She sounded concerned, which was understandable. There were certain protocols that were always followed when the phaser banks were engaged, and none of them was being followed in this instance.

Xy could not have cared less about protocols at that moment. “Shut down the core and the power couplings! Shut down everything!”

“Everything?”

“Everything! Take us to black!”

He didn’t have to explain the severity of this decision to Lieutenant Beth; she knew as well as anyone how open to attack they’d be leaving the Excalibur. They would have as much offensive capability as a paperweight. And it would remain that way for as long as it took them to start the engines back up, which would be a process of some minutes since a cold start-up was courting disaster. But there was simply no alternative. “Initiating shutdown, aye,” came back Beth’s voice.

Seconds passed like hours as the phaser banks continued to punish the surface of New Thallon. The world had planetary defenses, big guns that were capable of returning fire, but the lack of assault on the Excalibur led Kebron to suspect that they had been the first targets. If that was the case, then that eliminated any possible theory that the attack was random. Then again, he had already come to the conclusion that there was nothing random about any of this. He had figured out who and what was behind it because it was the only thing that made any sense.

This was even further affirmed, as if he needed any further confirmation, when Beth’s voice came back from engineering: “Shutdown failed! Repeat, shutdown failed! The system is keeping us out! Every time we try to initiate the shutdown sequence, the system itself countermands it! It keeps changing all the access codes, even the prefix code! We’ve got nothing down here!”

Xy exchanged a look of growing hopelessness, even as he said, “Acknowledged. Keep trying and keep us apprised.” Quickly he left the science station and crossed straight to Kebron. In a low voice, or as low as he could go while still being audible over the red alert klaxon, “Morgan’s not a victim of whatever this is, is she. She’s the cause of it.”

“Yes,” said Kebron, reverting for once to his former terseness.

“What do we do?”

Kebron glanced at him without turning his head. “We wait.”

“For what?”

“For this to play out. This isn’t happenstance. There’s a plan being enacted, and all we can do at this point is bear witness to it, and hope we get a chance to make things right.”

“Make things right?” Xy’s face was grim. “How? Wave a magic wand and restore to life all the poor bastards who are dying down there?”

Kebron didn’t answer, because they both knew there wasn’t anything that he could say.

iv.

S/he knew it was pointless. S/he knew that nothing was going to be accomplished by it.

But after five minutes of being trapped in the turbolift with a smug computer entity that was pretending to be sympethic, deaf, dumb, and blind, knowing perfectly well that the phaser banks were unloading on the surface of New Thallon, trying to raise anyone on the crew via hir com-badge and getting absolutely nowhere, and finally, unable to take it anymore, Burgoyne unleashed a full-throated roar. Hir claws extended from hir fingertips, and hir lips drew back, revealing hir fangs. Morgan, who had just been in the process of offering psychoanalysis as to why s/he had never been happy on hir home world and never truly fit in with other Hermats, and because of that hir entire relationship with Selar was doomed to self-destruct from the very beginning, looked startled as Burgoyne came straight at her.

S/he swept hir claws across Morgan’s face, across her chest, and a huge flap of skin was suddenly hanging down from where Burgoyne’s claws had shredded it, and a chunk of her torso was naked and exposed, blood pouring from it. S/he swung hir claws again, slicing across Morgan’s throat, severing the jugular, and Morgan staggered, clutching at it, her eyes wide with confusion and yes, there was even terror mirrored there for just a second, just an instant.

Burgoyne spun, rebounding off the edge of the turbolift, and came right at Morgan again.

And she was gone.

Burgoyne went right through the space that Morgan had been occupying and banged into the far wall. S/he landed in a crouch, hir head snapping around, and then s/he heard Morgan’s angry voice in the turbolift.

“That was not funny, Burgoyne. Not funny at all. We were not amused.”

“Get back in front of me,” s/he snarled, “and we’ll see how much more I can not amuse you.”

Abruptly the distant sound of the phasers ceased. Burgoyne looked around, hir fangs already starting to retract. Had s/he somehow managed to—?

“I stopped because I didn’t want to deplete the phaser banks entirely. You may need them. I’ve turned the ship around and you are now departing New Thallonian space, very, very slowly.”

Burgoyne’s voice was gravelly, and s/he felt like hir body was engorged with blood. S/he was having trouble bringing hirself down from the killing instinct that had briefly seized control of hir. “You did this so that they’d come after us. So that they would try to destroy us.”

“There was only so long I could have kept the imposture of Calhoun going,” she admitted. “This was going to have to happen sooner or later. I chose to make it sooner. And I will give you the same opportunity that I provided Calhoun: to die on the best possible terms, fighting for your lives against overwhelming odds. I mean, you could give up, I suppose. But I don’t expect you to surrender any more than I expect Mac to. That was part of the deal I made.”

“Deal?”

“Nothing that need concern you,” her voice said offhandedly. “You could have easily been destroyed, and so too could Mac. But you’ve all earned far more than that. So I’ve arranged it all for you to die the way you should: bravely and in action. I could do no less.”

“You,” said Burgoyne, “are not Morgan Primus, if you ever were. And we will cut you out of the Excalibur like the cancer that you are…”

“Now, now,” she scolded him. “You’re not exactly in a position to be issuing threats, Burgoyne.”

The turbolift suddenly jolted and started heading in the opposite direction from where it had been going.

“I’m bringing you back to the bridge,” Morgan’s voice informed him. “I suspect you’re all going to have a great deal to discuss. I wish you the best of luck.”

“If the ship is destroyed,” Burgoyne said, “you’re going to go with it.”

“That would be silly, if I was going to let that happen. Of course I’m not going to go with the ship when it’s destroyed. I’m immortal, my dear. It’s funny,” she mused, “I was immortal for such a long time, and I became so sick of it. All I wanted to do was die. And then I became what I am, and now all I want to do is live. Funny, isn’t it.”

“And yet I’m not laughing.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to see the humor of it,” she said. “Maybe in your last moments, you will.”

With that, the doors of the turbolift opened and Burgoyne emerged into chaos.