Star Trek: New Frontier: Excalibur by Peter David

Author:Peter David
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Inc

SHELBY

SHE WALKED THROUGH THE FOREST, barefoot, the grass cool against her feet, and she tried to remember how she had come there. She was not wearing her uniform. Instead, she was wearing a pair of blue shorts and a cutoff shirt that left her midriff exposed. Oddly, her hair was longer than she was accustomed to keeping it. She wondered why that was for a moment, but then gave it no further thought.

Small animals ran past her, pausing momentarily to look up at her in curiosity. A rabbit sniffed at her feet, a robin landed on her shoulder. And Shelby couldn’t help but notice how quiet they all were. Oh, the rabbit, sure, naturally that was quiet. How much noise do rabbits make, as a rule? But there was no flutter of the robin’s wings, no chirping as it studied her. Not only that, but she now began to notice that, although the wind was steadily blowing the branches, the leaves were not rustling. She wondered for a moment if she was going deaf.

A hand gently touched her shoulder. She turned and gasped, and didn’t hear herself do so.

Calhoun was standing there with a smile on his face.

She smacked him across the face as hard as she could. It made no noise.

“How dare you!” she choked out. “How dare you go and get yourself killed and leave me alone! You had no business doing that, Mac, no business at all!”

She noticed, almost as an afterthought, that he was naked. An instant later, so was she. She gave that no further consideration.

“No business?” Calhoun laughed lightly at that. “Eppy, it’s not as if I wanted to be a martyr …”

“Yes, it is! That’s exactly what you wanted, Mac. It’s what you’ve always wanted. Even when you were a teenager back on Xenex, running around, waving a sword and howling battle cries and fighting for your people, it was never about them! It was about you trying to be a martyr.”

“How would you know that, Eppy? You weren’t there.”

“I didn’t have to be, Mac. I know you better than you do yourself.”

He turned and walked away from her. Despite the frustration she was feeling, despite all the anger, she still had to admit to herself that—damn, he had a fine backside. Then she pushed those thoughts as far away as her subconscious mind would allow them to go. “Well?” she called after him. “Aren’t you going to deny it?”

He stopped and faced her. “Why should I? If you know me so well, then it’s really pretty pointless to deny it.”

“But … but I was expecting you to.”

“Then I guess you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

She growled in frustration at that. “Now you’re just being arbitrary, Mac! Saying and doing things like this just to frustrate me.”

“I guess I don’t have a hope of fooling you,” he admitted, looking downcast. But then that familiar smirk played across his lips, and at that point she was torn between an urge to kiss him and an urge to kill him.

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