Surak's Soul - J.M. Dillard [0]
Weakened or not, the alien produced a small object—a utility knife, Archer thought—and lifted it upward with the clear intent of disconnecting the oxygen hose that fed from the body of the suit to Hoshi’s helmet.
Archer had no way of knowing whether the knife could pierce the strong fiber of the hose, of knowing whether the alien could do her any serious harm. He responded out of pure instinct—drawing the phase pistol from his utility belt, putting his gloved finger on the trigger, aiming and preparing to fire.
But before he could do so, another’s phase blast, painfully precise, caught and illumined the alien in the instant before he could bring down the blade.
Archer and Reed reached Hoshi’s side at the same time; she sat up, grimaced, and rubbed the back of her skull—in vain, since her helmet kept her from any hands-on contact with the injured area. “I’m fine,” she told the captain ruefully. “I tried to say that we were here to help, but the alien…He didn’t seem sane.” She looked up at the crouching Reed. “Thanks for stopping him.”
“I didn’t shoot,” Reed admitted; actually flushed. “I didn’t have time.”
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
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Acknowledgments
I am most humbly indebted to editor Margaret Clark for cheerfully giving me the opportunity to write this novel, as well as a great deal of support and information while I was doing so. I’d also like to thank her for remaining blessedly patient when I was a month late in delivering it.
I would be remiss if I failed to mention the two most responsible for helping me in the day-to-day writing of this tome: Hershey and Sweetie Pie. It’s a well-known fact that we writers have a tendency to addiction, and I have developed an overwhelming one in recent years. I simply cannot work well without one Labrador stretched out snoring beside me, and another draped over my feet. There are certain disadvantages to this, such as numbness and tingling in the extremities, and then—well, it is avocado season here now, and the dogs have learned to stand on their hindquarters and pick the fruit from the trees. I leave it to the reader’s imagination to conjure up the difficulties faced in close quarters with large canines who have eaten heartily of California’s fresh produce. The situation may have affected my concentration at times but, I hope, not the quality of storytelling herein.
—Jeanne Dillard
Late July 2002
SURAK’S SOUL
One
Captain’s Starlog, Supplemental. While mapping an area of uncharted space, we have encountered a populated planet—which is sending out a beacon that our Universal Translator has garbled. Communications Officer Ensign Hoshi Sato is currently trying to decipher what she can.
JONATHAN ARCHER SAT in his command chair on the bridge of Enterprise and stared at the image of the Minshara-class planet on the main viewscreen before him: the larger-than-Earth globe, blue-speckled with large verdant islands rather than continents, rotated lazily.
Frankly, Archer was grateful for the signal, and suspected