Collision Course Read online

  He turned right at the corner, the water on his left, and made his way along the broad pedestrian walkway, his destination in sight: a food and entertainment emporium, its demarcation a red glow pulsing in the mist.

  At fifty meters, Spock could decipher the holographic letters above the entrance: THE GARDEN OF VENUS. The outlines of humanoid female bodies without clothing faded in and out of the floating letters. One silhouette had a blue cast to it, and antennae, as if to indicate that Andorian females waited inside with the others. Spock experienced a flash of contempt for humans and their appetites, but suppressed it at once. He was certainly not affected by the images, nor drawn by them. Logic had brought him here tonight and no other reason.

  The first set of doors opened automatically, and a warm gust of air engulfed him, carrying with it the scents of alien spices. Alien to Earth, at least. His sensitive hearing next detected an almost subliminal acoustic signal, the intermixed sounds of heavy breathing set in time to a cardiac rhythm. Spock’s heartbeat was much faster than the human pattern that was playing. With scornful amusement, he noted the supposedly erotic soundscape was actually relaxing to a Vulcan, then quickly suppressed that emotion, too.

  He walked purposefully into the entrance, each of his steps along the corridor precisely measured.

  As he neared a second set of doors, where a short line of patrons stood waiting by a greeter, Spock reminded himself to concentrate, to ignore the flickering wall displays of dancing females, their images no longer silhouettes. Vulcans could not be distracted, so neither could he.

  “I need some ID, kid.”

  Spock blinked in surprise. He abruptly realized he was next in line and that he had been distracted by the graphic wall displays.

  He reached inside his cloak, his hand brushing past the IDIC medallion he wore, then withdrew the ID case he had prepared for such a challenge.

  The greeter was a tall human, thickly muscular, garbed in a formal black suit, white shirt, and small black neck brooch. He thumbed Spock’s ID case, read the data display that slipped up from it, sneered as he handed it back. “Vulcan, huh?”

  Spock’s expression didn’t change, but inwardly he concluded the greeter was somehow visually impaired. How else to explain he hadn’t realized Spock wasn’t human?

  “Have fun, kid.”

  Spock couldn’t help himself. “Vulcans do not have ‘fun.’ I am on a field trip to research human mating patterns and—”

  The human cut him off. “Yeah, right. You’re also holding up the line.”

  Spock set aside his no-longer-necessary, carefully constructed cover story. A pity, since he had spent days perfecting it. Annoyed with himself for feeling regret, and then again for feeling annoyed, he tugged his cloak tight and entered the main room.

  The sudden shock to all his senses made him pause until the next people to be admitted pushed past him, making him stumble.

  How could any sentient being come to such a confusing environment by choice? Music blared with a thought-disturbing beat. Insufficient lighting escaped small glowing red orbs on each table. On elevated platforms around the multilevel expanse, females writhed in a manner that the crowd of gaping humans obviously regarded as erotic, stimulating. Not that he was stimulated.

  A flotilla of servers wove their way through the excited customers, guiding antigrav trays with food and drink—mostly drink, Spock observed—from table to table, with a constant clattering of glassware and a cacophony of conversations, each trying and failing to rise above the music.

  Spock resolutely recited a Surakian mantra of calm, and sensation by sensation closed down his senses to the chaos here. His teachers had told him that, in time, that ability would become second nature. Perplexingly, they had told him that when he had been eight, and he still hadn’t reached the required level of proficiency.

  Then, remembering his instructions, Spock swept his gaze along the outermost ring of tables, each inset into a secluded alcove on the upper level that ringed the room. As he had been told, his contact was waiting at the eighteenth table along. He made his way there, consciously avoiding looking at the dancers, though he couldn’t help noticing that one wore artificial ear pieces to make herself look Vulcan. She wore nothing else. Spock was appalled. Sometimes, humans were little more than animals.

  “You’re late,” his contact said. She also was human, perhaps twenty-five years old, Spock deduced, with butterfly make-up that could only be described as extravagant, and, he decided, unnecessary. Her features were quite regular, what humans would call attractive. Confusingly, even though the words the young human spoke were an admonition, she smiled warmly as she said them.

  Spock knew better than to make excuses. The Vulcan term was kaiidth. What was, was. He got down to business.

  “Do you have my money?”

  The young woman laughed and leaned forward, patting the banquette beside her. Spock’s eyes reflexively dropped for an instant from her face to the unfastened opening of her top garment that had yawned further open with her movement. When his eyes met hers again, she seemed even more amused.

  He sat down on the edge of the banquette, as far from her as he could, assailed by her cloying perfume, heavily laced with pheromones. He doubted any human male could resist her sexual appeal, and though such enticements were, of course, not an issue with him, Spock regretted not bringing his nasal filters, if only to cut the impact of the twenty-seven different aromatics that made up the main notes of her scent. Like any Vulcan’s, his sense of smell was exquisitely sensitive.

  “I’m Dala,” the young woman said. She held out her hand.

  Spock recognized the gesture, but declined to reciprocate. He had decided to act with utmost seriousness tonight. “I am Spock.”

  Dala’s eyes sparkled in the warm light from the iridescent orb on their table. She didn’t withdraw her hand. “I don’t bite.”

  Spock was taken aback. “Why would you?”

  Dala sighed and lifted her drink, a concoction of three separate liqueurs that formed distinct vertical ribbons of color: red, blue, and yellow. When she sipped from it, the colors mixed, then separated again when she replaced the glass on the table. “You’ve never done this before, have you?”

  “On the contrary.” Spock wondered if Dala believed him, but was unable to read her smile. It was quite unlike his mother’s.

  “I have your money. Do you have the item?”

  “Show me,” Spock said.

  The young woman idly ran one finger down her throat. “I could, but that’s not how this works.”

  Spock’s gaze automatically followed her finger’s journey, down to…

  He cleared his throat—irritation from the perfume, he knew—then removed a small, linen-wrapped object from his cloak. He placed it on the table, but did not let go. He wondered if he should try to analyze the dynamics of this unsettling meeting as if it were a chess game, but he had difficulty picturing the pieces on the board.

  Dala, however, nodded her satisfaction with his action and, in turn, put a credit wafer on the table by her drink. Stripes of colored light filtered by that drink fell across it. “Now you show me.”

  Spock pulled back the wrapping to reveal a red clay figurine, small enough to fit in the palm of even Dala’s hand. It was a crude, squat representation of a Vulcan seleth warrior, wearing a traditional tripartite helmet and holding a stylized lirpa to his chest.

  “May I?” Dala asked.

  Spock looked at the credit wafer. She slid it across the smooth tablecloth. When he reached for it, she at last took his hand and lightly ran her fingers over his.

  Spock froze, spoke hoarsely. “You may inspect the artifact.”

  “With pleasure.”

  Dala released his hand to take the figurine, but Spock did not pick up the wafer. He ran mantra after mantra through his mind, telling himself he was a Vulcan. But at his core, at least half of it, he was also a nineteen-year-old human male, and from that perspective this young woman was, at th
e very least, an undeniable distraction.

  Only when Dala ran a thin, pen-sized sensor over the figurine did Spock collect himself enough to check the balance on the wafer. Six thousand credits, as agreed.

  The young woman coolly read out the small data display the sensor projected on the tablecloth. “Three thousand years. Definitely pre-Enlightenment.”

  “Vulcans do not lie,” Spock said firmly. He had practiced saying that for days. Deception was very new to him.

  Dala turned her attention from the figurine to him. “This is very valuable, Spock. I’m sure you could be in a great deal of trouble when they find it’s been stolen.”

  “I have taken measures. The curators will think it has been misplaced.”

  “What measures?”

  “That is not your concern.”

  “It is. I’d like to do this again. With you.”

  “That would be satisfactory.” Spock felt pride at the steadiness of his voice, then just as quickly irritation with his pride.

  Dala slid closer to him, stopping close enough to remain out of contact, just. Spock could feel the heat of her.

  “Do I make you nervous?”

  “The state of being nervous is an emotional response.”

  Spock’s eyes widened as Dala’s finger lightly touched his cheek. “And Vulcans have no emotions, is that true?” she whispered in his ear. Her breath was warm and…

  Spock struggled to stare straight ahead. “That is not completely accurate. Rather, we do not allow emotions to control our actions.”

  “I see.” Dala’s finger parted his hair to reveal his pointed ear. She made a sound in her throat that to Spock sounded like a sehlat purring. “How sweet. What a shame you keep them covered up.”

  Spock’s tenuous control collapsed. Defensively, he turned to face her, then jerked back sharply. Her face was a finger’s width from his. Spock’s chest constricted until he thought he would pass out.

  “Your behavior is not appropriate.”

  But to his horror, not even his attempted emulation of his father’s implacable tone affected his aggressor. Dala only leaned closer, inhaled as if savoring a fine bouquet. “Oh, I haven’t even begun to be inappropriate…”

  “We should be discussing our business arrangements.”

  “That’s what I’m doing,” Dala said with a terrifying smile. “Let’s talk about all the different ways I can pay you for what you can do for me.”

  Spock swallowed hard. He’d run out of banquette. Another few centimeters, and he’d be on the floor. Surely there was a logical way out of this exceedingly unfortunate turn of events, but just for this moment, his grasp on logic felt exceedingly uncertain.

  3

  “I got it all worked out,” Kirk said, then pushed down on the controls.

  From the back seat, he heard Elissa gasp as the staff car suddenly dropped a dozen meters into an eastbound airlane.

  Beside him, his older brother braced his arms on the forward console. “This’ll be good,” Sam muttered.

  Kirk kept checking the nav screen—still no sign of renewed pursuit. He grinned and shot a quick glance back at Elissa.

  “Eyes front!” she shouted. “Front!”

  A slow transport had seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

  Kirk effortlessly banked around it, then began to descend along a merge airlane marked by a holographic grid projected on the front windscreen. “Listen up, kids. The overpass is two klicks ahead. I’ll pull in, park, and we scatter.”

  Sam nodded agreement, but Elissa wasn’t buying it. “Are you out of your mind? Our DNA’s on every surface in the car.”

  Kirk didn’t see her problem. “Look, it’s not like we’ve committed a crime.”

  Elissa grabbed his shoulders and shook him before letting go. “We stole a Starfleet staff car!”

  “So we’re giving it back, no damage, no trouble. They don’t bother with DNA investigations for that.”

  “How do you know?”

  Sam looked back at her. “He’s never been picked up before.”

  “Before?! He’s done this before?”

  Kirk shrugged. “I had to make sure the override worked.”

  Before Elissa could grab Kirk again, a brilliant white light blinded all of them and a loudspeaker voice thundered like a pronouncement from Olympus. “Unauthorized vehicle, you are being monitored by satellite control. Land at the next service apron.”

  Elissa slumped back in defeat. “Well, that’s it for me…”

  Kirk and Sam exchanged a look. “Satellite control,” Sam said. “They got us coming and going.”

  “They’ve got the car,” Kirk corrected him. “They don’t have us.” Then he twisted the controls hard enough to set off the stability alarms and automatically tighten the seat restraints as the car spun left into an oncoming airlane, breaking free of the pursuing searchlight.

  At once, the car’s interior was again plunged into darkness interrupted only by the strobing running lights of the other traffic flying straight for them, the hum of each vehicle’s emitters pulsing high then low as they rushed past.

  “Hold on!” Kirk shouted as he dropped the staff car nose down again, out of the airlane and into nothing but gray. The pinging of the ground proximity alarm, faster and louder with each second, changed abruptly to a high-pitched squeal a heartbeat before he straightened the car out with a bone-jarring bang.

  On a side street, late-night pedestrians scrambled out of harm’s way as the staff car skidded along the street, its forward air scoop scraping the polystone surface in a spray of sparks.

  The car spun around halfway, sliding backward, then lurched to a stop under a streetlamp. While it was still rocking, the tires rotated ninety degrees so the vehicle could slip sideways into a legal parking spot.

  Kirk slapped at the restraint controls and punched the button that opened all four doors. “Pizza’s on me!”

  The instant the seat restraints unfastened, Kirk, Sam, and Elissa were out the doors and on their feet in the once quiet street, staring up at the glowing fog overhead.

  “They overshot us,” Sam exulted.

  Kirk fumbled in his jacket pocket for his override. “They won’t turn back until they come to an exit lane.” The authorities were so predictable. He checked the override’s status display. “No damage.” He showed the display to a relieved Elissa. “They probably won’t even write up a report.”

  Kirk glanced down the street, saw a red holographic sign beckoning. “That place should be packed. Let’s go.”

  But before he could use the override to lock the car, Sam took him aside. “It’ll also be the first place they look.”

  “If they look,” Kirk said.

  Sam turned his back to Elissa, dropped his voice. “You can talk your way out of anything. But your girlfriend…?” He shook his head.

  Reluctantly, Kirk admitted Sam was right. “Change of plans. Elissa, you and Sam take off. I’ll dump the car back at the overpass where the satellites can’t—”

  “No.” Sam shoved the override back into Kirk’s pocket. “You’re good, but I know what I’m doing. There’s an old garage I can park it in, then take a tunnel to a train station. No satellite tracking, and Elissa’s back for curfew.”

  Elissa’s face brightened and she reached for Kirk’s hand to pull him away from the car and Sam.

  Kirk hesitated. “If they catch you…”

  “They won’t. Go.” Sam slapped his brother on the shoulder.

  Kirk made up his mind. He tugged the override from his pocket, used it to start up the staff car again. “Stay under the speed limit, and on the ground.”

  “No arguments. Go have fun.”

  Sam slipped back into the car.

  Hand in hand, Kirk and Elissa began walking down the narrow street toward the sign. Elissa started to look back as the staff car came to life, but Kirk nudged her on. “Hey, we’re just two pedestrians on a date. No interest in cars.”

  Elissa complied but squeeze
d his hand, hard. “A date. You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”

  Letters flickered through wisps of red-tinged fog.

  “It’s about to get better,” Kirk said.

  The sign read: THE GARDEN OF VENUS.

  4

  Kirk had four IDs in his pockets and pulled out the one that said he was twenty and old enough to enter the club.

  The burly, tuxedo-clad greeter eyed Kirk. “Twenty? On what planet?”

  Kirk replied to the challenge with a good-natured smile. “I get this all the time. You probably think I look fifteen, right? Check my place of birth. New City on Menzel V. High-gravity world. We’re all short for our age.”

  The greeter read the fine print on the ID display, frowning. “I’ve never had an underage kid not argue with me before.”

  Kirk maintained his easy smile. “You still haven’t. I’m not underage.”

  The man looked at Elissa, then back to Kirk again.

  “She’s twenty-two,” Kirk said helpfully. “You could call the embassy.” He patted his jacket. “I’ve got a communicator someplace…”

  Elissa followed Kirk’s cue and looked just as unconcerned as he did.

  “Do you have a telomere scanner?” she asked the man.

  Kirk nodded. “That’ll confirm our ages.” He held up his thumb. “Blood or skin sample?”

  It was late. The line behind Kirk and Elissa was getting longer.

  The greeter made his decision. He pushed the ID case back into Kirk’s hand. “Have a nice stay on Earth.” He stepped aside and waved them in.

  Elissa took one look at the writhing dancers and then fixed her gaze resolutely straight ahead. “Well, this is one for the diary.”

  Kirk took in everything, the dancers no more nor less interesting than the ever-changing mix of alien spices, pulsing music, and warm enticing light. He had never been in a place like it—at least, not one so large. “Just keep your clothes on and we’ll be fine,” he teased.

  “You do see what these people are doing, don’t you?”