Possession - J.M. Dillard [5]
“Consider me … your business partner. There are things you will share with me that will profit us both.” The weapon dug deeper into Skel’s back.
“If you leave now,” Skel said, modulating his voice into the calmest, most emotionless tones, “you will be able to successfully make your escape. No damage has been done. I give you this opportunity.”
“There are opportunities unlimited in this room,” the intruder hissed. “And you will give them all to me.”
“I will not assist you,” Skel informed the stranger. He had never meant anything more sincerely in his life. He had already faced a greater fear than most sentient beings would ever know. There was nothing this intruder could to do coerce his cooperation.
“Oh, you will, Master Scientist. You will assist me in all that I wish …”
Skel felt the power of the blast envelop him, felt his body lose control, felt himself falling like a stone to the floor. And then, blessedly, he felt nothing at all.
Chapter One
SHIP’S COUNSELOR DEANNA TROI stood uneasily in Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s ready room. She’d placed herself almost directly between the captain, who was seated behind his desk, and the chief medical officer, Dr. Beverly Crusher, who stood, arms crossed, several meters away.
“Doctor,” Picard insisted, in his clipped, most precise tone, “you have yet to answer the singular question: Why?” His hazel eyes were narrowed disapprovingly not at his medical officer, but at a report on his computer screen—an autopsy report.
“I’ve told you why, Captain,” Crusher said wearily; beneath the exhaustion was a clear undercurrent of anger. “You’re just not listening.”
Deanna winced, inundated by waves of powerful emotion from these two strong-minded people, but, of course, that was why she, a half-Betazoid, was here: to sense their conflict and help resolve it. However, this time, she doubted whether she had any answers. Death and the raw anger and grief it evoked were, of all things, most difficult to explain.
“It was an accident,” Beverly explained again, in a tone so exasperated it bordered on insubordination. She ran a careless palm over her pale forehead as if to soothe the thoughts there, in the process sweeping back a lock of copper hair. “Crewman Janice Ito either forgot—or deliberately disregarded—safety regulations when she went into the power fluctuation in the plasma stream. She went alone, with minimum equipment. No power neutralizers, no safety shields. Just herself, a handful of tools, and a tricorder. She wasn’t experienced in working in such a small place with major power conduits, and the shock killed her instantly.”
Picard looked up from the report at last and gave a terse shake of his head, as if casting off the very notion that such a thing could occur. “What happened to her training? Where was the senior officer working with her? How could an intelligent twenty-year-old ensign, in the top ten percent of her Academy class, do something so damned stupid?”
Beverly straightened, bristling—every bit as angered as the captain, Troi knew, by the needless death; perhaps more so, since she had fought vainly in sickbay to resuscitate the young woman. And Beverly’s frustration and grief were about to well over and cause her to say something she would later regret.
What is stupid here, Captain, is your refusal to listen.
Troi smoothly intruded, before Crusher had the chance to give the thought utterance. “I believe, sir,” Deanna said calmly, “that that’s why it’s called an ‘accident.’ “
Picard turned his scowl on her. “This is the Starship Enterprise, the flagship of the Federation. We’re not supposed to have ‘accidents’—especially not senseless, fatal accidents with promising young officers.”
He rose, straightening his uniform, his actions as taut and precise as his speech, and stepped around his desk. “I will tell you this: there will not be another. I’m ordering a complete shakedown of the crew. I want training