Vonda McIntyre - The Entropy Effect

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 sensed not the faintest response from her brain.

Her eyes, which had been an unusually intense shade of green, had turned silky gray. Spock had seen the same film begin to thicken over Jim Kirk’s eyes as they carried him off the bridge.

“The danger is past,” Spock said. He looked up, and met the gaze of each security officer. “The web has ceased to grow. Commander Flynn is dead.”

al Auriga turned away; Neon snarled low in her throat. Spock wondered if he would have to defend Mordreaux.

Neon settled back on her haunches. “Revenge,” she whispered wistfully, then, in a stronger voice, “duty. Faithfulness, oath, duty.”

Spock stood up. “Where did you capture Dr. Mordreaux?” he asked Flynn’s second in command.

“We didn’t,” al Auriga said dully. Slowly, reluctantly, he faced Mr. Spock again. “He was here. He was locked in. Mandala—Commander Flynn ordered me to have the ship searched. For a double.”

Spock raised one eyebrow. “A double.” Before he considered that unlikely possibility he had to explore the probability that security had slipped up. “Who was on guard?”

“Neon. It was Jenniver Aristeides’ watch, but she’s in sick bay—Mr. Spock, I’m sorry, I don’t really know what happened yet. I just found out she was ill and I thought it more important to start the search.”

“Indeed. What other orders have you given?”

al Auriga took a deep breath. “The guard’s to be doubled. What I want is what Commander Flynn wanted all along—to move the prisoner to a security cell. Do the orders to keep him here still stand? Is the captain capable of giving orders?”

“No, Lieutenant, he is not. But those are my orders, and they still stand.”

“After what’s happened—” The resentment burst out in al Auriga’s voice.

“The captain understood my reasoning,” Spock said, all too aware that somehow his reasoning had proved faulty.

“This is crazy, Mr. Spock. He got out before. Even with a doubled guard, maybe he could do it again. He could retrieve his gun from wherever he hid it. The description we got was a twelve-shot semi-automatic, so he’s got ten more of those damned slugs ... somewhere.”

“The orders stand, Mr. al Auriga.”

He heard footsteps and glanced over his shoulder before the sound came within the range of human hearing. A medical technician came pounding around the corner. He looked harried and stunned. Blood smeared his tunic.

He fumbled his medical kit open even before he slid to a stop beside Mandala Flynn’s body. Kneeling, he felt for a pulse and looked up in shock.

“For gods’ sakes, don’t just stand there!” He jerked a heart stimulant out of his bag, to begin resuscitation.