Broken Bow - Diane Carey [29]
Dimly lit except for the surgical lamp shining down on the dead intruder, sickbay was almost like it had been during those terrible moments of attack. Phlox’s gloved hands were busy inside the opened chest of the dead creature. He picked enthusiastically through the entrails as Archer watched, unmoved.
“Mr. Klaang was right about one thing,” the doctor said. “He’s a Suliban. But unless I’m mistaken, he’s not an ordinary one.”
Archer’s throat tightened. How could he tell that this Suliban was special if he had no experience with what an ordinary Suliban was? And he didn’t feel much like taking biology lessons. Were there short answers?
“Meaning?”
“His DNA is Suliban ... but his anatomy has been altered. Look at this lung. Five bronchial tubes. It should only have three. And look at the alveoli clusters. They’ve been modified to process different kinds of atmospheres.”
“Are you saying he’s some kind of a mutant?” Archer asked, going for those short answers as deliberately as possible without discouraging information he might need.
“Yes, I suppose I am. But this was no accident, no freak of nature. This man was the recipient of some very sophisticated genetic engineering.”
Like a kid in a candy store, Phlox almost giggled with delight at his discovery. He activated a tiny instrument with a thin red beam and shined the light on the Suliban’s dappled face.
“Watch this.”
He moved the light, revealing that the skin had changed color, perfectly matching the hue and intensity of the red light.
“Subcutaneous pigment sacs.”
He tapped a control on the little instrument and the color of the light changed to blue. He shined it on the Suliban’s clothing this time, instead of its face. The clothing also adapted to the new color. The clothing?
“A biomimetic garment!” Phlox piped, delighted.
Archer didn’t even bother trying to control his amazement. The skin he could understand. How did these people make their clothing biological enough to do the same thing?
“The eyes are my favorite,” Phlox went on. He lifted an eyelid on the corpse, exposing a superdilated pupil that glowed nearly phosphorescent. “Compound retinas. He most likely saw things even your sensors couldn’t detect.”
Like my sheer anger? Archer thought. Even a dead guy should be able to pick that up.
“It’s not in their genome?” he asked.
“Certainly not. The Suliban are no more evolved than humans. Very impressive work, though ... I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
No more evolved than humans. Yeah, we’re still practically microbes compared to all you demigods out there.
Determined to raise the veil of ignorance even if he had to kick somebody out of the way, he asked, “What do you know about them? Where do they come from?”
“They’re nomadic, I believe,” Phlox said, apparently not catching the fact that his captain was about to reach down his throat and pull the information out physically if it didn’t start coming faster and more voluntarily. “No homeworld. I examined two of them years ago. A husband and wife. Very cordial.”
The word stuck in Archer’s craw. He couldn’t imagine cordiality at this particular moment, from the Suliban, from himself, or anyone else. He didn’t even want any.
“Look, Doctor,” he began tersely, “I’m not in a pleasant mood. I don’t want to hear about anything nice or cordial or even intriguing right now. I want to know where the Klingon went, how the Suliban got onto this ship, and how they got off it. Something tells me they didn’t jump out a space hatch and go for a random free-float. They went someplace. I mean to find out where. None of the answers to those questions is bound to be nice, so you don’t have to feel obliged to smile or twinkle at me anymore.” He jabbed a finger at the body on the bed. “You have the only piece of concrete evidence we own. I’m giving you my permission to get ugly.