Kansas 2 - excerpt from Chapter 31
For those who might be interested, a quick peak into a future chapter.
This time he came through Customs and was not the least surprised to see Ivanova waiting for him. They usually sent the feisty commander to deal with him, in a pathetic effort to catch him red-handed, should he try to scan them without their consent.
As if they could discover his more subtle moves!
Right now he had no intention to make any of those moves, though. He had to build up a certain level of trust - as far as they could ever trust him, which, frankly, wasn’t very far - if he wanted to be let in to their plans. And, considering the fact that this time they had asked for his presence, he could expect to be given at least some information, in exchange for whatever help they wanted.
He got through Customs, followed by the oh-so-predictable death glare of Mr. Garibaldi’s gorillas and walked up to Ivanova with a smile, delighting in her discomfort.
“Commander, what a pleasure to see you again!” he exclaimed.
“Believe me, it wasn’t my idea,” she muttered grimly.
The young woman accompanying her laid a placating hand upon her forearm.
“Please, Commander, try to be civil. We need him,” she turned to Bester and inclined her head politely. “Mr. Bester, I am Ensign Crisa Jurot. I’ll be your aide during your visit.”
At first she seemed completely human, but Bester could feel at once that she was not. Her exotic features and jewel-like eyes gave her a vaguely oriental look that was perhaps more a common trait of her species than any personal advantage. She was definitely an alien, although Bester couldn’t even guess what species she might belong to. He had never heard of any aliens that would look so completely human.
“I’m a Betazoid,” she said with a smile, and he realized that he’d carelessly allowed his stray thoughts to escape. She had to be a telepath, then, if she was able to pick them up.
“Yes, I am,” she smiled again. “Nothing compared with you, of course, but Captain Janeway thought you’d feel more comfortable around me. I’m trained to keep my thoughts to myself. You won’t be bombarded with them all the time.”
He couldn’t resist. He just had to test her shields, very, very carefully… but she caught him doing so anyway. She had to be a lot stronger than he had expected.
“Go on,” she said, still smiling. “I don’t mind. Telepathic communication is something my people do all the time.”
He followed the invitation, trying to be as unobstrusive as he could. There was no need to tear into her mind if she was offering information willingly.
In the next moment she understood why she was doing so: she belonged to a race that consisted entirely of telepaths!
“We are not the only ones,” she said out loud, for Ivanova’s sake. “It’s on behalf of one of the others that we need your help. He had a severe mental trauma, due to overextending his powers. We hope that somebody who’s an equally strong telepath can help him.”
“I’ll try, of course,” Bester wasn’t a man of philantropic nature - far from it, in fact - but the chance to study alien telepathy previously unknown was too good to let it slip through his fingers. “I assume he’s in your MedLabs, then?”
Ivanova nodded. “Ensign Jurot will escort you to the patient. I have to return to C&C.”
With that, she left and Bester followed the exotic-looking young alien to the intensive care area of the MedLabs. In one of the small cubicles lay a dark-skinned man with pointy ears; save for those, too, looked entirely human, but Bester could feel that he wasn’t, either. Just how many new alien species had Sheridan and his band of rogues made first contact since his last visit to Babylon 5 anyway?
At the unconscious man’s bedside two women sat. One of them seemed barely more than a child, also with pointy ears, huge blue eyes and a blonde pixie cut. She looked a bit like the Flower Fairy, sans the butterfly wings. Another alien then.
The other one was doubtlessly human, wearing the same coverall-like uniform as Ensign Jurot. A mature adult, too, with slightly hard features, a tight bun that made his scalp hurt in sympathy, and surprisingly stable shields for a mundane. She was clearly used to telepaths and the necessity of keeping them out of her thoughts.
“Captain Janeway, this is Mr. Bester,” Ensign Jurot reported crisply.
The older woman looked up - and stared at Bester in obvious shock.
“Admiral Chekov?” she asked in a deep, somewhat scratchy voice. “But… what are you doing here?”
A quick scan revealed that she was honestly believing him to be somebody else - a person he had never heard before.
For those not familiar with either Star Trek or Babylon 5 (or both), the joke is in the fact that both Pavel Chekov and Alfred Bester were played by actor Walter Koenig - with a decade or two in-between, of course. *g*
This time he came through Customs and was not the least surprised to see Ivanova waiting for him. They usually sent the feisty commander to deal with him, in a pathetic effort to catch him red-handed, should he try to scan them without their consent.
As if they could discover his more subtle moves!
Right now he had no intention to make any of those moves, though. He had to build up a certain level of trust - as far as they could ever trust him, which, frankly, wasn’t very far - if he wanted to be let in to their plans. And, considering the fact that this time they had asked for his presence, he could expect to be given at least some information, in exchange for whatever help they wanted.
He got through Customs, followed by the oh-so-predictable death glare of Mr. Garibaldi’s gorillas and walked up to Ivanova with a smile, delighting in her discomfort.
“Commander, what a pleasure to see you again!” he exclaimed.
“Believe me, it wasn’t my idea,” she muttered grimly.
The young woman accompanying her laid a placating hand upon her forearm.
“Please, Commander, try to be civil. We need him,” she turned to Bester and inclined her head politely. “Mr. Bester, I am Ensign Crisa Jurot. I’ll be your aide during your visit.”
At first she seemed completely human, but Bester could feel at once that she was not. Her exotic features and jewel-like eyes gave her a vaguely oriental look that was perhaps more a common trait of her species than any personal advantage. She was definitely an alien, although Bester couldn’t even guess what species she might belong to. He had never heard of any aliens that would look so completely human.
“I’m a Betazoid,” she said with a smile, and he realized that he’d carelessly allowed his stray thoughts to escape. She had to be a telepath, then, if she was able to pick them up.
“Yes, I am,” she smiled again. “Nothing compared with you, of course, but Captain Janeway thought you’d feel more comfortable around me. I’m trained to keep my thoughts to myself. You won’t be bombarded with them all the time.”
He couldn’t resist. He just had to test her shields, very, very carefully… but she caught him doing so anyway. She had to be a lot stronger than he had expected.
“Go on,” she said, still smiling. “I don’t mind. Telepathic communication is something my people do all the time.”
He followed the invitation, trying to be as unobstrusive as he could. There was no need to tear into her mind if she was offering information willingly.
In the next moment she understood why she was doing so: she belonged to a race that consisted entirely of telepaths!
“We are not the only ones,” she said out loud, for Ivanova’s sake. “It’s on behalf of one of the others that we need your help. He had a severe mental trauma, due to overextending his powers. We hope that somebody who’s an equally strong telepath can help him.”
“I’ll try, of course,” Bester wasn’t a man of philantropic nature - far from it, in fact - but the chance to study alien telepathy previously unknown was too good to let it slip through his fingers. “I assume he’s in your MedLabs, then?”
Ivanova nodded. “Ensign Jurot will escort you to the patient. I have to return to C&C.”
With that, she left and Bester followed the exotic-looking young alien to the intensive care area of the MedLabs. In one of the small cubicles lay a dark-skinned man with pointy ears; save for those, too, looked entirely human, but Bester could feel that he wasn’t, either. Just how many new alien species had Sheridan and his band of rogues made first contact since his last visit to Babylon 5 anyway?
At the unconscious man’s bedside two women sat. One of them seemed barely more than a child, also with pointy ears, huge blue eyes and a blonde pixie cut. She looked a bit like the Flower Fairy, sans the butterfly wings. Another alien then.
The other one was doubtlessly human, wearing the same coverall-like uniform as Ensign Jurot. A mature adult, too, with slightly hard features, a tight bun that made his scalp hurt in sympathy, and surprisingly stable shields for a mundane. She was clearly used to telepaths and the necessity of keeping them out of her thoughts.
“Captain Janeway, this is Mr. Bester,” Ensign Jurot reported crisply.
The older woman looked up - and stared at Bester in obvious shock.
“Admiral Chekov?” she asked in a deep, somewhat scratchy voice. “But… what are you doing here?”
A quick scan revealed that she was honestly believing him to be somebody else - a person he had never heard before.
For those not familiar with either Star Trek or Babylon 5 (or both), the joke is in the fact that both Pavel Chekov and Alfred Bester were played by actor Walter Koenig - with a decade or two in-between, of course. *g*