Free Star Trek V: The Final Frontier by J. M. Dillard Page A

veered from his body at an entirely unnatural angle. The attached note assured the reader that the child had died easily.
    So very, very easily.
    Talbot was first to find him; Talbot was the one obliged to inform the child’s mother. It was Talbot’s first real brush with crushing failure, with shame, with defeat.
    His career went downhill overnight. He sank into alcoholism and despair—again, ever so easily.
    He preferred to drink bootleg liquor, when he could get it. Romulan ale appealed to him because it was stronger, and it was untreated, so that it would damage his liver, kill his brain cells, and give him horrendous hangovers. Talbot had concluded that he deserved to suffer.
    More accurately, he had concluded that he deserved to suffer and
die,
except that he was too much of a coward to kill himself outright. And so he was content to kill himself slowly.
    After all, the ale did a most marvelous job of fogging his memory.
    Talbot stared at the bored guard standing in front of the exit and thought that this situation might be the answer to his prayers. Perhaps the Vulcan-Romulan leader of the rebels would interrogate them and thenkill them. Talbot’s mind emphatically refused to contemplate the possibility of torture.
    A poetically just way to end the career, Talbot reflected, for him to be taken hostage. He could not feel sorry for himself or for Korrd. The two of them were spent, washed up, waiting to die. The best part of their lives was years past.
    But for Dar he felt great pity. Her death would be a horrid waste. He looked over at her, as she sat beside him, staring at nothing in the far distance. He could feel a subtle emanation of warmth from her, no doubt due to her higher body temperature. She was young, strikingly beautiful, clearly brilliant, full of an intense determination Talbot found more alluring than any physical attribute.
    If I were twenty years younger,
Talbot told himself wistfully, and stopped. Age had little to do with it.
More aptly, if I were not a wretched, wasted, sottish excuse for a human being. . .
    He ceased all thought as a second soldier—dirty-faced, dressed in rags rather than a uniform, but possessed, like the guard, of an expression of such fanatical devotion that outward signs of his allegiance were unnecessary—entered the room and pointed the barrel of his rifle at Dar’s smooth, unlined forehead.
    “Let her alone. I’ll go first,” Talbot said quietly. He rose.
    Caithlin began to protest, but the soldier interrupted. “Suit yourself,” he said to Talbot, and gestured with the rifle for Talbot to go ahead of him through the exit. The other guard silenced Dar with a wave of his gun.
    Talbot studied the guard’s face. He consideredbolting, pretending to make an escape attempt, to get it over with quickly, but again, cowardice won out. He could contemplate death as long as it lurked some where in the future, but he could not face it at that precise moment, staring down into the black void of a dirty pipe-gun barrel,
    Besides, if his current run of luck held, a blast from the gun would probably only wound him, which would be even worse.
    He paused in the doorway to turn and smile tremulously at Dar. “Farewell, my dear. Just in case . . . I’m quite sorry it turned out this way, sorry that your career was cut short. I should have enjoyed working with you. If I don’t come back, would you tell Korrd when he wakes up that I said good-bye?”
    “The leader is a Vulcan,” Dar said matter-of-factly, but her eyes were troubled. “You’ll come back. He won’t kill you.”
    A Vulcan who smiles,
Talbot thought,
may very well be a Vulcan who kills.
Dar knew that, of course, but for Caithlin’s sake, he did not say it aloud.
    “That would be a shame,” Talbot said cavalierly, as the soldier prodded him in the back with the rifle. He stepped forward into the darkness.

Chapter Five
    T HE ANCIENT PROBE hurtled aimlessly through the blackness of uninhabited space. Its