The planet's high reputation for hospitality is well-deserved, thinks Jag, depositing his holdall on the bed of his hotel room. Ever since the shuttle landed, the visitors have been treated like royalty. The Sashwe, it seems, are genuinely pleased to see them; and he has no doubt that this is something quite different to the professional and superficial pleasure that so many in the hospitality trade can switch on and off like a light bulb and with about as much feeling. A past master at that himself, he can recognise it instantly when he sees it.
No wonder their politicians are useless at being wicked. To use a quaint old Americanism, they're behind the eight-ball right from the start.
Traan prides itself on being 'cosmopolitan' as far as visitors go. There are all sorts of species in evidence, especially up on the space station. Humans are not a novelty, but nobody would suspect this from the reception they've received; they had been practically fêted when they'd got off the hover-car in front of the hotel foyer. Free drinks had been pressed into their hands before they were through the doorway, and every member of the staff they've encountered has been at pains to emphasise how pleased the hotel is to have their custom, and how any requirement they may have will be attended to instantly.
Jag bounces once or twice on the bed and grins. He has one requirement that springs to mind quite readily, but unfortunately that will have to wait. Leo has given them twenty minutes to freshen up, and then they are to meet up in the foyer and go out to check out the ground. He'd be quite willing to pass up on the wash if he could corner a particularly obliging and indubitably female member of staff for a lively encounter in the horizontal position, but that might draw attention, especially if he got carried away and forgot the time.
Well – the wash, then. He strips off his top; it will do no harm to wash his hair and give himself a quick rub down, and Phlox has given him a lotion to rub into his the skin of his hands to help the healing process. The full works will have to wait till later.
The bathroom is small, but immaculate. He glances automatically at his reflection, and isn't sure who's looking back at him. Under the glinting recklessness, there is still something else.
Somebody else. Weighted down with responsibility and grief.
"Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there–"
The photocell works instantly. Warm water gushes into the polished stone sink. He plunges his hands into it. The sound of his voice echoes off the walls, sing-song and mocking.
"He wasn't there again today –
Oh, how I wish he'd go away!"
He gets barely a split second's warning, and that born more of his own instinct than anything else. For that reason alone he gets three fingers under the cord before it closes around his neck. But the pressure on it is atrocious, and three fingers aren't enough to pull it loose. A heavy body smashes him into the sink, pressing him down while the cord saws into his throat, his own fingers crushing his larynx.
By the bitterest of ironies, it's the water that saves him.
Maybe if the water wasn't there, bubbling and sparkling mere centimetres from his face, he'd give in and die. It's his phobia that sends him mad, turns him from a choking victim into a crazed animal with more strength and viciousness than any human has a right to possess. He brings his legs up and kicks off the wall, hurling himself away from the sink even as he flings his head violently backwards. The top of his skull slams into a jaw and something breaks, teeth or bone, he doesn't know and doesn't care, but the cord suddenly goes slack and the air is like champagne, except that no champagne he's ever tasted has filled him with such wild exhilaration and sick hatred. The wicked little knife strapped at his thigh springs into his hand as though it has a life of its own, and without bothering to turn he plunges it behind him repeatedly, jerking upwards and twisting as the blade sinks in.
His attacker makes a smothered sound of agony and tries to push him away, but they're up against the shower cubicle now and Jag braces his feet on the floor and keeps pushing backwards, using the knife again and again. The hands drop the cord and begin tearing at his hair, his face, trying to find his eyes.
That's a mistake. He has teeth as well as a knife, and moments later bone is grinding between his jaws, blood running sweet and salty across his tongue.
His other hand's free now, having torn the cord loose and flung it away where it can do him no more harm, and he's bringing it up to defend his face when something crashes into the side of his head, bringing a darkness he falls into momentarily. There's the sense of toppling against the sink again, though he manages somehow to keep hold of the knife, but a heavy body pushes past him and lurches towards the door, breathing ragged with pain. The door opens and closes, and he's alone, dazed and wheezing and shaking but alive, staring into the still cheerfully bubbling water into which he's now dripping red.
He dips a hand into the water and splashes some over himself in the effort to clear his senses. It runs off darker red; his scalp is bleeding, as well as his face. Now that he has attention to spare for the mirror again, his reflection looks back at him, scratched and pale and shocked, with the ligature mark already ugly around part of its throat. His assailant must have been hiding in the shower cubicle, which is built into the wall at right angles, the top half of it just deep enough to provide such a hiding place; the scent of recently-used cleaning agents masked any trace of his smell. There's more blood on the floor, pools of it around his feet. He feels rather apprehensively around his body, but there are no injuries there, though the base of his ribs is badly bruised by the impact with the front edge of the sink.
Awareness comes back, and with it anger and fear. Stupid, stupid, to have been so criminally complacent! He fumbles for the small spare button attached just under the waistband of his jeans, and presses it three times; then waits, his finger trembling slightly on the small innocuous surface. It feels like an eternity before four answering vibrations come through it.
His door is locked of course, but Spots has no trouble getting through that. Moments later the rest of the team are crowding in through the bathroom door. His gaze rakes them for evidence that they too have been targeted, and with a nauseous sense of relief finds nothing.
They sit him in the shower and clean him down, while he presses a handful of clean tissue-paper to the bleeding lump on the side of his head where a marble vase from a nearby niche was smashed into it. Paw runs the scanner over the blood on the floor before she wipes it up with more tissue-paper.
"Nausicaan," she says succinctly. "You were lucky."
"I think you mean 'good'."
"No, I mean 'lucky'. He cared more about getting away than finishing you off."
"Shouldn't be too hard to track the blighter, though, what?" Stripes is so concerned he's turned his hat around so the darn is on the right hand side. This is very nearly unprecedented.
Jag looks up at him wearily. "Cut it out, you bloody daft git."
"By Jove! It's a sure sign you're feeling better, dear boy. I always know you're not on your death-bed as long as you can still curse." This is, of course, outrageously ironic, because the pilot can curse like a navvies' ganger himself, and invariably does so when anyone takes a pot-shot at the ship, which he regards as his personal property.
"We won't find him." Leo is methodically sorting through the first-aid kit that has been hidden at the bottom of Jag's holdall. "We can't afford to draw attention to ourselves by getting the police involved, and I'd rather not call a doctor unless we have to."
There is an oblique question in the second half of that sentence, and Jag answers it with a shake of his head. "I'll be fine." Not very fine, and not just yet, because the movement is enough to send a wave of dizziness over him that makes him rather glad he's sitting down, but he'll be 'fine' enough to manage.
The hypospray brings him some relief, and he sits impassively enough while Spots cleans the minor wounds and sutures the one in his scalp. The ligature mark around his neck, however, is too high to hide beneath his clothes, and far too distinctive not to attract unwelcome attention.
"Here." Paw has disappeared for a few moments, and now drops a scrunched-up bundle of silky blue material into his hands. It's a scarf, shot through with strands of silver thread. All but one of these are absolutely harmless. Only the closest examination reveals that the one is actually nylon cord, supple as water. Applied in the right way, it will cut like cheese wire.
Considering that, it perhaps isn't the best thing ever to have wrapped around his neck, but as long as he can avoid anybody getting hold of the ends and yanking them, it will at least provide concealment. He takes it with a word of thanks and wraps it gingerly in place.
"Just your colour," simpers Stripes. "And it's so 'this season'."
Jag responds to that information with a hand signal that suggests he isn't particularly fashion-conscious.
When the world has steadied somewhat, the team dry him off, help him back into his bedroom and get him lying down.
Leo frowns down at him. "I think you need to rest for a while. Stay here. Will you be okay on your own?"
"Fine." Not wholly ungrateful for the respite, he submits. He's pulled a phase pistol out of a concealed, scanner-resistant pocket in the base of his holdall, and now lays it on the bed beside him, within easy reach. "I'll have that if I need it. Don't worry about me."
"Why should we?" asks Spots, with more than a touch of sarcasm. "You just got jumped by a Nausicaan and nearly strangled, and just as a finishing touch he tried to bash your brains out with a bathroom ornament. Nothing to worry anybody there."
Jag colours with vexation. He's already acknowledged his own complacency and carelessness to himself, but doesn't want them made the subject of a general discussion – and certainly not one involving his rival. "He got the drop on me. He won't do it twice."
"He might if you fall asleep."
"I won't. And besides, I put enough holes in him. He'll have more than me to think about for a while."
"You don't know that there isn't more than one of them here."
"We'll discuss this further later, when you're feeling better. In the meantime, we've got to check out the ground. Paw, stay with him." Leo's decree is final.
Oh, for–! Jag doesn't argue – arguing with Leo is a waste of breath – but he punches the bed in frustration. Her, nursemaiding me!
To judge by her glare, Paw isn't much more delighted by the pronouncement. "We don't know what's behind this. There could be other attacks planned on the rest of you!"
"If there are, there'll be more than one of us to deal with it. I'll see you in a couple of hours." The team leader nods at them both, turns, and leaves the room. Spots shrugs, raises his eyebrows helplessly, and follows him.
"Toodle-pip, chums!" says Stripes, and skips after them, whistling tunelessly. Though not before putting his hat back the right way around.
There is a small silence. Then Paw drops into the chair by the desk, beating a tattoo on its arm with the base of her fist.
"So now what do we do?" she demands.
"You could always sit on my face," he suggests crudely, driven more by a cruel impulse to goad her further than by any supposition that she might even contemplate such a thing.
"Only to suffocate you."
"Yes, I love you too."
"I didn't ask you to come back!" She rounds on him savagely. "You left, remember? You were too good for the likes of us. You went up in the world, right? Now you've found you can't hack it and you're back here whining for sympathy. Well you're not getting any from me!"
Jag sits upright with a jerk, tearing the scarf from around his neck. In the mirror opposite, the marks on his skin stand out in stark contrast to the pallor of his sudden fury. "I'm not justifying myself or my actions to you, and you can take your sympathy and shove it! I was in this team when you were slow being potty-trained, and let me remind you I did step up. I'm a Starfleet officer, and you'll show me the appropriate respect!"
"You're forgetting something, Lieutenant. I'm not one of your damn ensigns and I don't have to jump when you bark!"
Far back in his mind, a cold raw flame ignites. Usually this precedes a death, but she's part of the team – though she'd better not trade on that too far or too often, not when he's in this frame of mind. "You can call me what you like and take your chances, but you'll keep a civil tongue in your head when you refer to the crew of my ship. Or I'll kill you where you stand. Is that clear?"
"Don't worry, I feel sorry for them. They joined the pride of Starfleet and ended up taking orders from a Royal Navy reject."
There's a long, aching silence. Then he slowly lies back down again. The grin that writhes across his face is murderous, promises retribution at his convenience. "You were left here to look after the Royal Navy reject, Tail. Enjoy." And he turns over, settles himself down on the bed, and to all intents and purposes goes to sleep.
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