“What the hell is going on?” she said, just loud enough for them to hear. “Mordreaux is loose and you’re all standing around like—like—”
Beranardi al Auriga, stooping to peer through the observation port of the V.I.P. cabin’s new security door, straightened up. He was head and shoulders taller than his superior. He saw the blood spreading between her fingers and down her arm and side.
“Mandala—Commander, what—? Let me help you—”
“Answer my questions” Flynn could just barely feel the heat of her own blood. The pain had gone.
“Mordreaux is right here, Commander,” al Auriga said. He unlocked the cabin so she could see. She looked inside.
Lying on his bunk, braced on his elbow as if he had just been awakened, Mordreaux gazed blearily out at them.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “What’s all the commotion?”
“Neon,” Mandala said, “lift, portal, guards?”
“Commander,” Neon said in her silvery voice, “prisoner, cell, Neon, intersection; alarm.”
“What...?” Flynn’s confusion was not because she did not understand Neon’s unusual English. Neon had said not only that Mordreaux was in his cell, but that Neon had been guarding him when the alarm sounded.
“Prisoner, bridge, separation,” Neon said.
Flynn shook her head, trying to clear her mind of an encroaching grogginess. Any number of possibilities spun through her consciousness. An android duplicate. Clones. Clones, hell, maybe he had a twin brother.
“Barry, get everybody— everybody, roust the night watch out of bed—and search this ship. Double the guard here, and put a watch on the shuttlecraft and the airlocks and dammit even the transporter.” She gasped: she felt short of breath and dizzy. “Mordreaux just shot Captain Kirk on the bridge—or if it wasn’t Mordreaux it was somebody doing a damned good impression. Be sure to warn them that he’s armed.”
“Aye, Commander.”
“Where’s Jenniver?” Flynn said. That should have been her first question: she must be going into shock. Her vision blurred for a moment. She closed her eyes and held them shut. “Jenniver’s supposed to be on duty this watch, where is she?” She opened her eyes again, but her vision had not cleared.
“Sickbay,” Neon said.
“I’m all right,” Flynn snapped, knowing that was not true.
“Jenniver, sickbay, illness, intersection,” Neon said patiently. “Mandala, sickbay, intersection; instant.”
Flynn nodded. Neon spoke precisely, even though the only part of speech that matched between her language and English was the noun. If Jenniver had been hurt in an escape attempt that is what Neon would have said. But Jenniver had taken ill, and was in sick bay. Neon thought Flynn should be there, too, quickly. She was right.
“Jiffy,” Neon said.
Flynn closed her eyes again. She felt herself losing her balance and tried to catch herself. She flung out her left arm but it moved only weakly; her hand would not work at all. Pain shot across her shoulders and back and vanished into the numbness in her chest and belly; she staggered against the wall with another jolt, and began to slide toward the ground.
Need both hands, she thought dully. That’s it.
Her right hand would not move.
Startled, she opened her eyes and looked down, blinking to try to see clearly.
She moaned.
Delicate silver fibrils, glittering through the gray fog, entwined her fingers like silk, binding them to her shoulder. In a panic she ripped her hand away. The fibrils stretched and popped and twanged, like the strings of a musical instrument. The broken ends writhed across her shirt, and the free strands tightened around her hand.
Neon came toward her, making a high, questioning noise.
“Stay back” Flynn could feel the tendrils growing and twisting inside her, spinning themselves like webs around her spinal cord. Neon and Barry came toward her, trying to. help her. “Neon, Mandala, separation, separation! Barry, don’t let anybody touch me without a quarantine unit!” Her jaw and tongue began to grow numb, as the threads crept up into her brain. She struggled to get a few words out. Her knees collapsed and she fell forward and sideways, hardly aware of the impact. A film of fast-growing tendrils blinded her.
Now she knew what kind of gun Mordreaux had used.
“Hurry,” she whispered. “Barry . . . tell McCoy . . . spiderweb . . . Captain Kirk ...”
The tendrils reached Mandala Flynn’s consciousness and crushed it out.
Spock forced himself not to submit to his body’s reactions to what had just happened. Though he understood the human concept of soul, and spirit, his perception of what made a living creature intelligent and self-aware was wholly Vulcan, too subtle and complex to explain in human terms or any human language. But he had contacted that concept, more deeply and intimately than he had ever probed a mind before, and he had watched, no, felt all but the last glimmer of it die. If Jim had not broken the hypnotic connection, giving Spock back his will and all the strength he had tried to channel into his friend, Spock too would now be comatose and brain-damaged under the tender, brutal ministrations of Dr. McCoy’s lifesaving machines.
“Mr. Spock, what happened? Please let me help you.” Uhura came toward him, not reaching out to him, but offering her hand half-raised. Spock knew she would not touch him without his permission.
Pavel Chekov leaned over his console, crying uncontrollably with shock and relief, for like the other humans on the bridge he too thought Captain Kirk was going to live.
The emotions raging around Spock were so strong that he could sense them without the aid of touch, and in his weakened state he needed to get away from them. He could not think logically under these conditions and it was essential that someone do so now. A great deal needed to be done.
Though tears flowed slowly and regularly down Uhura’s face, she seemed unaware of their presence; outwardly she looked calmer than Spock himself felt.
“Lieutenant—” He stopped. His voice was as hoarse as if he had been screaming. He began again. “I do need your help. Page Commander Flynn and order her to sick bay immediately on my authority. There is reason to think she has been wounded far more seriously than she believes. She must not delay.”
“Aye, sir,” she said. As the channels signalled ready, she glanced at Spock again. “But you, Mr.
Spock?”
“I am not physically damaged,” Spock said. It took every bit of strength he had left to walk steadily up the stairs. Behind him he heard Uhura page Mandala Flynn. “Lieutenant, she’s down here.” Beranardi al Auriga’s voice crept close to the edge of hysteria. “At Mordreaux’s cell. She collapsed, but she ordered us not to touch her. She’s been shot with a web-slug, dammit, Uhura, she thinks Captain Kirk was, tool”
Spock slammed his hand against the turbo lift controls. As the doors slid closed, every crew member on the bridge looked up at him in shock and horror and terror-stricken surprise.
The lift fell, shutting them away. Spock sagged against the wall, fighting for control of his shaking body.
A spiderweb: he should have realized it from the first, but it was so peculiarly human in its brutality that he could never have conceived of anyone’s using it.
Away from the other members of the crew, he succeeded finally in calming himself. When the doors of the lift opened again, he walked out as steadily as if he had not been an instant from oblivion.
As Spock turned the corner and approached Dr. Mordreaux’s cabin, Beranardi al Auriga punched the controls of an intercom.
“Where the hell’s the med tech”
By now the medical section must know about the spiderweb, Spock thought. Sick bay would be in chaos.
Light shimmering on her scales, Neon crouched over Mandala Flynn as if she could protect her with ferocity. Spock knelt beside the security commander’s crumpled body. Alive, she had given the impression of complete physical competence and power. It was an accurate impression, but it was the result of her skill and self- confidence, not her size. She was a small and slender woman; life had seeped out of her, revealing the delicacy of her bones and the translucence of her light brown skin. She looked very frail.
“Don’t—” al Auriga said as Spock reached toward her. “She said not to touch her.”
“I am not under Commander Flynn’s authority,” Spock said. He reached toward her, but hesitated. His hands were covered with Jim Kirk’s blood. Spock brushed his fingertips across Flynn’s temple. The wound in her shoulder still bled slowly; the individual cells of her body still maintained a semblance of life. But she had no pulse, and he
