Chapter Seventeen
There was a long moment of silence as we all stared at her. I looked at the pilot as she staggered backward, and something inside of me broke loose. The tension that had been building within me the past several months suddenly overflowed, and I began laughing uncontrollably. It was infectuous; within a few seconds everyone except Spock and the self-appointed Admiral Shailin began laughing as well. Tex, wiping a relieved tear from his eye, stepping forward.
"Well, Cap'n, I guess we don't hafta worry 'bout how hard it'll be tuh win this battle." He reached for Shailin's hands to restrain her, and was suddenly met with a fist in his gut. He doubled over instantly, the wind audibly escaping from him as she brought a leg around and knocked his feet out from beneath him. He crashed to the deck, and was instantly hauled back up with his hands bent painfully far up behind his back. It happened so suddenly that none of us had even moved. We stared in shock as she used a free hand to grab his hair and pull his head back.
"Tha's a bad idea," she slurred. "I may be drunk, but…" she belched again, "I can still fight." She released him, throwing him toward the bulkhead. He reached forward instinctively and caught himself, sucking in deep breaths of the putrid air. "Now," Shailin said with a grin, "you want rescued or not?"
The so-called bridge of the garbage scow reminded me of something one might see on a Klingon Bird-of-Prey, except smaller. It smelled a little bit better than the actual cargo hold, but not much. We sat patiently while Shailin injected herself with a hypospray – the modern equivalent of drinking a lot of coffee. Within a few seconds, she was somewhat sober. She moved to the captain's chair at the center of the bridge, and stood beside it. Though she was not slurring as much now, it was readily apparent that the drug she had just taken was not an instant cure. She would need some actual rest, and probably a lot of it, before she could be considered to be operating within normal parameters. Nonetheless, she looked considerably more ready for whatever lay ahead of us than she had a moment before. She rose to her full height, clasped her hands behind her back, and began to speak.
"I am sure that you are all wondering why I want to help you. Let me make that perfectly clear for you; I don't. I don't even like humans, much less have any desire to help them out of a difficult situation. Especially one which puts my poor ship in danger." She put one hand on the seat next to her, either to caress it fondly or to lean on it for some stability – or both.
"But, Commander V'Eral and I are…old friends, and I owed him a favor. I guess he didn't have time to tell you that part. That, or he just likes putting me in difficult situations. You can never tell about those Remans. Interesting lot. Anyway, I can't get you to the Federation; my life would not be worth more than the garbage I'm carrying if I did that. But I can get you to Romulus. You'll have to figure things out from there."
"How do you propose to get us to Romulus?" Spock asked. "Surely your warp capability is not nearly that of a battlecruiser, and I doubt very much that we will not be pursued, if we are not already." Shailin grinned.
"You Vulcans and your logic. It just so happens that I know a way of eluding their sensors and getting there faster than them. Call it a shortcut," she said. Spock raised an eyebrow.
"There are very few 'shortcuts' in space. The shortest distance between two points is…"
"Yes, yes, a straight line," she said impatiently. "You really don't know where you are, do you?" All of us shook our heads in tandem. "Well," she continued, "this particular region of space is not very conducive to 'straight lines'. The course we're going to take is a little more dangerous than the Remans normally do. They will more than likely be looking for us to be heading directly for the Neutral Zone, which we will not be doing. Besides, if I know V'Eral, he's already working on creating false tracks for them to follow. We should get to Romulus without much difficulty. It will be getting out of there that will be tough, for you and for me."
"Why for you?" Picard asked.
"Because security is not what it once was," Shailin said with pain in her voice. "It used to be that if you wanted to do something illegal and escape, all you had to do was bribe the right official. But ever since the assassination of the Senate a few months ago and that whole Shinzon mess, things are different."
"Bribing is no longer an option?" I asked.
"Oh no, it's an option. But it's a lot more expensive. Ridiculous cost these days, bribing." She sighed. "I miss the good old days. People don't have the ethics they used to."
"I see," Picard said wryly. "Well, if you can get us to Romulus, I can promise you that I will speak on your behalf to the Praetor herself."
"Oh, that's quite all right," she said, a mortified expression on her face. "Let's just say I've had too many…questionable transactions over the last few years to want to be noticed by anyone in the government."
"Oh," Picard said simply. Spock chose this moment to speak up.
"Might I inquire as to the nature of the…cosmetic difference in your ears?" Shailin stared straight forward, glaring at the viewscreen.
"Elective surgery. I was very young and drunk, and I don't care to discuss it." I looked at Spock as one eyebrow arched subtly over the other. Next to him, Picard stifled a grin.
I moved to the back of the bridge and stood next to Tex, who looked a little worse for the wear.
"Looks like we're going to make it out of this one intact," I whispered to him.
"Yeah," he whispered back, rubbing the back of his head, "well you didn't just get yer ass whipped by a girl."
Shailin stepped around and flopped down into the captain's chair, pulling a squeaky side-console over the right armrest and locking it into place.
"We'll be activating the singularity drive now, so I would advise that you brace yourselves."
"Brace ourselves?" Weston said curiously. "Why would we need to do…"
In an instant, all of us tumbled to the deck as the ship entered the Romulan equivalent of warp speed. The shock receded instantly, but it was a few seconds before I moved, for fear of another tumble. I rolled over and propped myself up on the palms of my hands.
"What the hell was that all about?" I asked. Shailin shrugged.
"Not every ship has perfect inertial dampers," she said calmly. Picard got up, dusted himself off, and tugged at his uniform.
"Commander…" he began.
"Admiral," she said, correcting him.
"Sorry. Admiral, what exactly is this shortcut of yours?" he asked. She grinned an evil grin.
"I'd prefer to keep it a surprise," she said. "The Romulan name for it is Shek'dal Sor." Picard looked to Spock, who shrugged.
"It means 'bone cruncher', Captain."
