drew back, revealing hir fangs. Morgan, who had just been in the process of offering psychoanalysis as to why s/he had never been happy on hir home world and never truly fit in with other Hermats, and because of that hir entire relationship with Selar was doomed to self-destruct from the very beginning, looked startled as Burgoyne came straight at her.
S/he swept hir claws across Morgan’s face, across her chest, and a huge flap of skin was suddenly hanging down from where Burgoyne’s claws had shredded it, and a chunk of her torso was naked and exposed, blood pouring from it. S/he swung hir claws again, slicing across Morgan’s throat, severing the jugular, and Morgan staggered, clutching at it, her eyes wide with confusion and yes, there was even terror mirrored there for just a second, just an instant.
Burgoyne spun, rebounding off the edge of the turbolift, and came right at Morgan again.
And she was gone.
Burgoyne went right through the space that Morgan had been occupying and banged into the far wall. S/he landed in a crouch, hir head snapping around, and then s/he heard Morgan’s angry voice in the turbolift.
“That was not funny, Burgoyne. Not funny at all. We were not amused.”
“Get back in front of me,” s/he snarled, “and we’ll see how much more I can not amuse you.”
Abruptly the distant sound of the phasers ceased. Burgoyne looked around, hir fangs already starting to retract. Had s/he somehow managed to—?
“I stopped because I didn’t want to deplete the phaser banks entirely. You may need them. I’ve turned the ship around and you are now departing New Thallonian space, very, very slowly.”
Burgoyne’s voice was gravelly, and s/he felt like hir body was engorged with blood. S/he was having trouble bringing hirself down from the killing instinct that had briefly seized control of hir. “You did this so that they’d come after us. So that they would try to destroy us.”
“There was only so long I could have kept the imposture of Calhoun going,” she admitted. “This was going to have to happen sooner or later. I chose to make it sooner. And I will give you the same opportunity that I provided Calhoun: to die on the best possible terms, fighting for your lives against overwhelming odds. I mean, you could give up, I suppose. But I don’t expect you to surrender any more than I expect Mac to. That was part of the deal I made.”
“Deal?”
“Nothing that need concern you,” her voice said offhandedly. “You could have easily been destroyed, and so too could Mac. But you’ve all earned far more than that. So I’ve arranged it all for you to die the way you should: bravely and in action. I could do no less.”
“You,” said Burgoyne, “are not Morgan Primus, if you ever were. And we will cut you out of the Excalibur like the cancer that you are…”
“Now, now,” she scolded him. “You’re not exactly in a position to be issuing threats, Burgoyne.”
The turbolift suddenly jolted and started heading in the opposite direction from where it had been going.
“I’m bringing you back to the bridge,” Morgan’s voice informed him. “I suspect you’re all going to have a great deal to discuss. I wish you the best of luck.”
“If the ship is destroyed,” Burgoyne said, “you’re going to go with it.”
“That would be silly, if I was going to let that happen. Of course I’m not going to go with the ship when it’s destroyed. I’m immortal, my dear. It’s funny,” she mused, “I was immortal for such a long time, and I became so sick of it. All I wanted to do was die. And then I became what I am, and now all I want to do is live. Funny, isn’t it.”
“And yet I’m not laughing.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to see the humor of it,” she said. “Maybe in your last moments, you will.”
With that, the doors of the turbolift opened and Burgoyne emerged into chaos.
Starfleet Headquarters, San Francisco
A Short Time Later
Edward Jellico had just returned from chaos.
As head of Starfleet operations, he had stood before the Federation Council and withstood a storm of criticism and interrogation as to the barbaric and catastrophic actions taken by the starship Excalibur and her captain, Mackenzie Calhoun. One after another the questions were flung at him like a barrage of hailstones: “Has Calhoun lost his mind?” “Why didn’t his psych profile predict this?” “Was this part of a Starfleet plan to instigate an interstellar incident?” “Was the entire