U.S.S. Enterprise
Stardrive Section
Cloud Complex Zedra
“Commander,” Boyce said, “the baby has a banana.”
“What?” Startled, Una turned to see the Rengru back in the middle of the cell, contemplating the yellow fruit in its grasp. “Oh, I didn’t know that was in there.”
“Ensign Zepton likes his bananas,” Colt said. “Probably had it in stasis all year, and brought it out to celebrate getting the warp drive working.” She shook her head. “He won’t like this.”
Una stared at the creature. “Is it me, or is there something off about that?”
“Well, that’s not how you eat a banana,” Boyce said. “Those pincers are just poking holes in it. He’s going to make a mess.”
“No,” Una said, squinting. “Computer, reduce room lighting eighty percent.”
When the room dimmed, the others saw what she had seen. “Are—are the spots on the banana glowing?” Colt asked.
Boyce chuckled. “I guess they are. We were just speaking of photosynthesis, weren’t we? Banana spots come from the degradation of chlorophyll. They’re harmless—but they also fluoresce in ultraviolet light.”
“Yeah,” Colt said, “but where is ultraviolet light coming from?”
Una stared. Then insight struck. “The Rengru isn’t just touching with its appendages. It’s seeing.” She took back the slate from Boyce and found the proper image from the earlier transporter scan. “The ‘palms’ of its ‘hands’—each pod breaking down into smaller limbs—they’re bioluminescent. We can’t see the light it’s emitting because we’re human.”
Colt held up her tricorder. “And this device can’t see it because of the force field.”
“But things fluoresce in the visible spectrum,” Boyce said, “which means we can see the spots.” He looked to Una. “Does this mean the Rengru can’t see us?”
“Very possibly.” Una restored the room lighting. “Our audio’s piped into the cell beyond the force field so we can converse with prisoners. The fact that it’s never responded could mean that it can’t hear—but it also just might not know who’s talking. And since it can’t see us out here, we wouldn’t be able to run any of the first-contact visual language protocols we’ve got.” She looked to the guards. “Can we take the UV blocker out of the force field?”
“I don’t know,” one replied. “I don’t think so.”
“We’ve got a ship full of engineers,” Boyce said. “Surely somebody can come up with something.”
“Probably not without deactivating the force field,” Colt replied. “I guess we could beam it someplace else and then back.”
This is too much, Una thought. We’ve been running for months. We have to take a chance sometime.
In a firm voice, she said, “I’d like everyone to step back to the doorway.”
Boyce gawked. “What?”
Colt stared at her, stupefied. “You’re not suggesting letting it out?”
Even the guard who had spoken earlier shook his head. “Commander, that’s not a good idea.”
Una put up her hand. “I know what I’m doing. If I’m right, the Rengru has no context within which it can place us.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” Boyce said.
“Enterprise was its target—and those Boundless warriors. I don’t look like either one. There’s a chance if it gets a good look at me, I’ll be no more interesting than Ensign Zepton’s pants.”
“He dragged those across the deck!”
Una fastened a phaser to her belt. “Philip, we’re never going to be able to search for the captain and the others—much less get home—unless we get past the Rengru. Not this one, but the hordes out there. They haven’t given us any peace. Somebody has to take a chance. It’s on me.”
Boyce prepared to object—and then the wind went out of him. “Fine. But get Pitcairn on standby, ready to beam that thing back into space.”
“Done,” she said, picking up another device. “I’ll let it have a look at me—and then run it through the universal translator’s sequences. All the batteries—audio, visual, sensory. Maybe there’s something it responds to.”
Rank having won out, Colt and the guards retreated, with Boyce right behind them. Una stood several meters back from the Rengru. She brought her mind to rest and deactivated the force screen.
The Rengru immediately noticed—and noticed her. For several moments, it remained in position, facelessly facing her.
“My name is Una,” she said, holding the translator in one hand, with her left near to her phaser. “I am a commander of the U.S.S. Enterprise of the United Federation of Planets.”
Several of the Rengru’s limbs lifted from the deck and pointed in her direction, their pincers splayed.
From the doorway behind the guards, Colt reported what her tricorder was seeing. “I can’t believe this, but it just started emitting low-power ultraviolet laser beams at you. From its hands.”
“Echolocation. Lidar—radar with lasers. It’s harmless.” Una brought her free hand away from her phaser and raised it to the air. “I am not your enemy. Do you understand me?”
If the Rengru had coiled its body in an attempt to spring, she did not see it. She only saw it launch itself across the space between them, and the phaser blasts from the doorway ripping through the air. The universal translator clattered away as she lost her footing, knocked backward by a being that was heavier and more energetic than she had imagined.
“Tell them to beam it out!” she heard Boyce shout.
“Don’t shoot!” Colt yelled. “You’ll hit her!”
The Rengru writhed with her on the deck, trying to envelop her with its dozens of limbs. The whole thing was a hand, she realized, with hands at every fingertip. It existed to grasp and to hold—even as the guards and others tried to pry it off her.
“What the hell is keeping Pitcairn?”
“I can’t get a lock!” a voice said—
—then she felt it. A sharp lance at the back of her neck, near the base of her skull. She felt her hair grow wet with blood.
“No!” Colt screamed.
The world swam—and then her whole body sagged against the frame of the Rengru. It had become a second spine, its limbs wrapped around her midsection and growing tighter by the second.
“She’s losing consciousness,” she could hear Boyce say.
Colt, again. “We’ve got to get this thing off her!”
“It’s a dead weight!”
Una didn’t recognize the speaker. She didn’t recognize anything anymore. She felt intoxicated, dizzy, drained—a dozen emotions at once, all connected to fatigue in one way or another. She only wanted to sleep—and she knew she would have her way, perhaps forever.
But not before her eyes opened long enough for her to speak a single word to her companions:
“Wait.”