Lost Era 05_ Deny thy Father - Jeff Mariotte [59]
John touched his chin and nodded. “It certainly is,” he said.
“I guess I should go back up then. To my own cabin,” Kyle said.
“I suppose. When this is all over, we’ll have a drink and laugh about it.”
“It’s a deal,” Kyle agreed. He climbed back up to his own deck and found his own cramped quarters. But should I bother going in? he wondered, half-panicked. Should I run? To where? Surely they’ve already scanned the ship, they know there are only two human passengers aboard. If I ran, all I could do would be to get myself lost, but I couldn’t hide from them for long.
He sat down on the edge of his bed, breathing deeply and trying to calm his fears. The captain hadn’t specified that the fugitive was human, had she? Starfleet might have any number of reasons for seeking out anyone on board such a big vessel. And at least he hadn’t begun having Tholian flashbacks again, he realized with some satisfaction. There was that much to be grateful for.
But he couldn’t shake the certainty that they had come for him. He was still sitting there, trying not to think about what the Starfleet Security team might have in store for him, when there was a knock at the door to his room. “Come in,” he said, and the door hissed open.
Two uniformed security officers, one an average-sized human female and the other a yellow-skinned being so tall he had to stoop his shoulders to avoid hitting his massive, shaggy head against the passageway’s ceiling, peered at him through the open door but didn’t enter. “Mr. Barrow?” the human woman asked.
“That’s right,” Kyle said.
“Mind if we ask you a few questions?”
“That depends,” he answered, plastering a quick grin on his face to defuse the defensiveness of his response. “What about?”
“Did you know the man who called himself John Abbott?”
Kyle picked up on the past tense reference right away. “What do you mean, ‘did’ I? Of course I know him.”
“How well?”
“Has something happened to him?” Kyle demanded.
The shaggy yellow creature spoke for the first time, his voice deep and rumbling with menace. “Please just answer our questions, Mr. Barrow. It’ll be easier on everyone.”
The woman flicked her eyes toward her partner, and Kyle got the impression that their working styles were not always in smooth confluence. “I’m afraid that Mr. Abbott took his own life,” she explained, sounding sympathetic. “When he heard we had come for him.”
“Took his own life? Why?” Kyle asked, already forgetting the tall one’s warning.
The woman blew out a sigh. “How well did you know him?” she asked again.
“Just casually,” Kyle replied. “We were the only humans on the ship. We had a few drinks together, had a chat from time to time. I didn’t know him before we met during the trip, and wouldn’t consider him a friend. But I’m sorry to hear that he’s dead. Was he in some kind of trouble?”
“You could say that,” the tall yellow officer said. “Abbott was a killer. In his cargo, we’ve found parts belonging to at least a dozen different bodies. But the captain of this ship says that a couple of her crew members have gone missing in recent weeks, and now she’s worried that he might have been continuing his spree on board.”
“You don’t mind if we have a look around in here?” the woman asked. Her tricorder had already appeared in her hand.
Kyle stepped away from the door to let them in. The yellow alien had to bend over uncomfortably far to fit beneath the low jamb, ducking like a palm tree in a hurricane, or a snow-laden fir. “Not at all,” he said, his mind racing to determine if there were anything in the room that might point to his real identity. As long as they didn’t try to access his padd, he thought he’d be okay.
Both officers ran their tricorders across the room-scanning for body parts, Kyle guessed, though he couldn’t be sure if any of their outlandish story had even been true. When they were finished they locked eyes and shared a shrug.
“You’re not making this up?” Kyle asked. “About Abbott and the bodies?”
“It’s not our job to tell spooky stories,