Star Trek: The Original Series - 082 - Federation by Judith Reeves-Stevens, Garfield Reeves-Stevens Page B

chemicals flooding her system and distorted by the encircling elastic of her radiation headgear. Her bizarre countenance flashed red then yellow in the harsh glare of the spinning warning lights of the checkpoint barricade. She tapped again, harder, using the upper barrel of her fistgun. From her expression, if she had to tap a third time she’d use that upper barrel to launch an imploder into the Rolls.
    Sir John touched another control and the window slid into the doorframe.
    “Cards,” the zombie said. She slurred the word. Through the open window, Cochrane could smell a sudden onslaught of smoke and other burning things he did not want to think about. A few hundred meters off, a thin voice wailed, inconsolable. He passed his card to Sir John, who gave both to the trooper.
    The trooper slid each into the scanner on her shoulder, then read the output on the status screen on her fistgun. She snorted to herself, and without apparent conscious thought pulled the delivery tube from her medication kit and absently inhaled a dose of whatever concoction her duty roster called for. Cochrane watched with distaste as the mercenary’s eyelids fluttered.
    The zombie threw Sir John’s card back at him. “You’re old,” she mumbled. “Not optimum. “Sir John didn’t meet her gaze. He looked down at the floor of the compartment. His lips involuntar-ily trembled out of the mercenary’s line of sight.
    The trooper leaned forward, her radiation armor scraping against the edge of the window. She stared at Cochrane, then at the status screen. “Yank, huh?”
    “That’s right,” Cochrane said.
    “Passport?” Cochrane nodded at the fistgun. “It’s encoded on the card.” The trooper looked back at her status screen with a disbelieving expression. She tapped a control, blearily strained to focus on the screen, then snorted again. She pointed her fistgun at Cochrane.
    The preignition light on the lower plasma barrel glowed ready.
    “You wait here. Go anywhere, an’ you’ll be contained.” The trooper pushed herself back from the car, then lurched a~vay, heavy boots scraping the old asphalt street.
    “Contained?” Cochrane asked.
    Sir John frowned. “The movement’s polite term for murder. As in containing the spread of contagion.” He tapped his cane against the privacy shield between the driver and the passenger compartment. “Not optimum,” he hissed. “Bloody monsters.” The shield cleared. The chauffeur, a distractingly attractive young woman in a traditional black uniform, looked back at Sir John.
    What’s the holdup?” the old astronomer asked.
    “They appear to be running your guest’s card through an uplink,” the chauffeur replied lightly, as if commenting on the weather.
    ‘I see.” Sir John slumped heavily back in his section of the passenger bench. Cochrane heard the adjustment motors in the upholstery change their support characteristics to account for his change in position.
    “To be candid, Mr. Cochrane, it doesn’t look good. Not by a long shot.” Cochrane inhaled slowly. In his all-too-brief forty-eight years, he had already had a life no other human before him could have imagined. He had walked the lands of alien worlds so distant that Earth’s sun was only a twinkling point of light. He had seen healthy, happy babies born beneath alien suns, their very existence a promise for a future without limits. He had glimpsed the stars at superluminal velocities through some trick of physics that even he could not yet fully explain. Perhaps that was enough for any one person. Perhaps he had reached the end. He put his finger on the door control.
    “I should go,” he told Sir John. If he ran, the zombies would use their fistguns on him. He doubted he would feel a thing. “You can say I lied to you. The network will be safe.” “Monica!” Sir John said quickly. “Override!” Cochrane heard the door lock click beside him. He pressed the control, but nothing happened. “Sir John, I