The Lost Era: Well of Souls: Star Trek by Ilsa J. Bick Read Free Book Online Page B

straightened, flashed a tiny smile to Halak, and turned on her heel, her long shank of hair flaring to reveal the small of her naked back. Halak’s head swiveled to watch her go.
    “Well, I want to know,” said Batra, reaching across and taking Halak by the chin. She pulled his head around but let her fingers linger over the raised ridge of a thin white scar that skittered over his left jaw. “And I want us to make it to Betazed in one piece.”
    Halak grabbed her hand and pressed his lips to her fingers. “We’ll make it. We would have made it faster if you hadn’t followed me.”
    Batra retrieved her hand. “But I have and we’re here. You want to talk about that?”
    Halak took a sip of the strong orange liquor, swallowed, and inhaled through his teeth against the burn. “Ani, if I had wanted to tell you, I would have. I know that we’ve been together now for some time ...”
    “Six months. Half a year.”
    “Half a year. But in every relationship there has to be privacy. Even telepaths have places in their minds they keep locked.”
    “Everyone has a right to privacy. But there’s a difference between privacy and secrets. The way I see it, this is about you keeping secrets.”
    “What secrets are you referring to, Ani?”
    “You want me to make a list?”
    Halak gave a mirthless laugh. “That many? We only have a week’s leave.”
    “Okay, then how about you and I? Where do we go from here?”
    Halak reached across the table and took her hands in his. “I know where I’m going—to Betazed with the woman I love. Now, as I recall, I asked you a question about two weeks ago. It was the same question I asked you several months ago. Both times, you said you wanted to think. Well, you’ve thought and I’ve waited. You want to tell me now?”
    Even through the haze, Halak saw the color rise in Batra’s cheeks. “No,” she said. Her eyes drifted to the table. “Or, maybe ... I don’t know. It’s so sudden. When you asked the first time, we’d only known each other two months.”
    “Ten weeks.” Halak gave her hands a squeeze. “Four weeks longer than I needed to know for sure. But I didn’t want you to think I was an impulsive guy.”
    “Oh, never that.” Her eyes still didn’t meet his. “No, I know you’re not impulsive, Samir. You may be opinionated, and you’re lucky Captain Garrett ...”
    “Let’s not talk about Garrett, all right?” Halak softened the admonition by running the fingers of his right hand along the back of her left. “We’re off duty, Lieutenant. Your hair is down, the choli’s on, and I’m sitting across from the most beautiful woman in the quadrant. Enterprise is far away, and I’d like to keep it there, if you don’t mind. This is supposed to be our time.”
    “And that’s precisely my point,” said Batra, freeing her hand. “This was ... this is our time. And yet we’re here, on Farius Prime, where no one in his right mind goes, not if he wants to stay out of trouble. But that’s your problem, isn’t it? That you’re always in trouble?”
    “That’s the rumor,” he said. It was as close a reference to his previous posting on the Barker —and the fact that he hadn’t been transferred to Enterprise under the best of circumstances—as she’d ever come. He’d given her the official version, but no one—not Garrett, or Batra, or anyone else on board—knew the whole story. Halak kept his face impassive. “You have a question?”
    “No,” she said, her teeth nipping at a corner of her lower lip. “Well, yes. I know you’ve told me about that Ryn mission, right before you were transferred. ...”
    “And?” he prompted when she hesitated.
    “And I know it’s not the whole truth. Don’t bother to deny it; I’m not really asking you to tell me right now. But that’s just an example.”
    Halak reached a hand to the scar along his jaw: a souvenir of that particularly disastrous mission. “An example of what?”
    “Of how you approach