Gateways 07_ What Lay Beyond - Diane Carey [36]
“You’re all beautiful,” he sighed.
Suddenly overcome, Zane Bonifay skipped down the deck steps, shot past Shucorion, and flung his arms around Keller. He tried to speak, but couldn’t. The embrace spoke well enough. He had been lost to them, and they knew how long the time had been and how small the chances for this moment to have arrived at all.
“Aw, the famous Bonifay true-blue cryptomorphic gypsy campfire bearhug,” Keller murmured. He smiled genuinely. The reddened skin on his cheeks and around his eyes crinkled into patterns. “Home on the Range.”
“Delytharen, how are ya?”
“Mr. Keller. My congratulations on your mission.”
“Thanks.”
“We have an agreement.”
“I know we do. Give me another minute.”
“I have already”
“You can wait another minute. Zane, come here.”
Nick Keller stepped forward on the bridge, away from everyone else, to a place near the stunning visions on the main screen where a bit of privacy could be culled off. He brought Zane Bonifay with him, and motioned Shucorion back.
Zane swabbed his eyes with his sleeve and made a heartwarming effort to regain officer demeanor. He wasn’t too great at it, but he tried. He wasn’t the type to care much about who saw his emotions when they bared themselves.
He leaned back against the end of the quarterdeck rail and took a couple of steadying breaths. “You look different,” he commented.
“Bet I do.”
Keller marveled briefly at the wonders of Bonifay’s doeskin complexion and navy blue sweater, but also controlled himself to say what had waited a year to be said. “There have to be laws. You did understand your rank and obligation. It was disrespectful to act on your own. What if there’d been a hundred crewmen on that Plume? Would you have left?”
“No, course not,” Zane admitted.
“The decision wasn’t yours to make. We can’t have two people on a ship making the same decision. For every man who acts on his own, there are a hundred more who think about it, and don’t. We can’t have crewmen rushing to escape when we ask them to stand. If every deck acts on its own, the ship falls apart.”
Zane simply folded his arms and nodded. Apparently he had been thinking about this too.
“We live in what amounts to a logging town,” Keller told him quietly. “Small towns are different from other places. We need help from Shucorion’s people. They have to be able to trust me”
“I get it, Nick.” Offering a gaze of surprising candor and maturity, Zane unfolded his arms and stood straight. “I said I wouldn’t die for nothing. I never said I wouldn’t die for something.”
The bridge winked and murmured its faint electrical song around them, so different from the disorderly crackle of Metalworld.
Deeply moved by this gallant change, Keller took a moment to appreciate Bonifay, and silently let him feel the admiration. That’s the spirit.
He took Zane’s arm and escorted him in some kind of personal propriety to the quarterdeck, to Delytharen.
“Avedon,” he addressed, “your prisoner.”
“My thanks.” Delytharen reached down with his one remaining hand to draw Bonifay up the steps, but Bonifay pushed the hand away.
“Don’t touch me. I’m a Starfleet officer and I’m coming with you. My word’s good, and so’s his.” He nodded toward Keller.
Delytharen seemed to respect that. “Very well. Our thanks.”
Keller turned to Shucorion. “You’re going with him.”
“I?”
“Yes.” He jammed his finger into Shucorion’s chest and warned,
“Make sure it’s fair. Make sure it’s quick.”
There was something in his eyes that rattled Shucorion to the bone, and made the others cold around them. Keller knew he had come back changed. He just hadn’t quite figured out which changes were permanent.
“What will you do with the Living?” Shucorion asked.
“I’ll decide that later.”
With all his crew watching him, he found his way to the command chair and ran his hand along the studded forest-green