Chapter 31: Blood
November 2413
“I don’t know who you think you found, t’Veras, but Doctor t’Nalah is dead. You hung her banner yourself, months ago.”
Admiral Tokkra leaned back in his chair, shaking his head dismissively. Aurelia tapped her wristcomm and waited. Barely a moment later, Kirina strode into the office and approached the desk. The Admiral was not impressed. Just the opposite, he tapped a button on his desk and called for security. “There are procedures for this sort of thing, t’Veras,” he said as two guards entered and took up flanking positions around Kirina, “Subcommanders do not return from the dead.”
“She’s been held by the Klingons,” Aurelia replied, “since Nimbus, Admiral.”
“And for all you know she was sent here to infiltrate our ranks.” The admiral shifts his gaze to one of the guards, “Get a medical officer to come down and verify her identity.”
At gunpoint, Kirina reported her experiences of the past year, irritation rising with each ridiculous question, the answers to which the Admiral clearly already knew. Aurelia paced around a bit, waiting. When the officer with the medkit finally arrived, Kirina held out her arm knowingly as he took out a hypospray and filled a small vial with a sample of her blood.
Before the medic reported the results of his scan, Kirina was already speaking, “Are you satisfied that I’m not some changeling infiltrator now?”
“Actually, no,” the Admiral replied smartly, “Changelings, and other such creatures, have beaten simple blood tests in the past.” Aurelia scoffed. Kirina gritted her teeth and held her hand out towards the medic. Tokkra nodded, curiously, and the man placed the vial of blood in Kirina’s palm. In an instant, she lunged towards the Admiral’s desk, causing the security officers to raise their weapons in a panic.
Kirina slammed her hand down, hard, on Tokkra’s desk, smashing the vial into tiny pieces. She ran her hand along the surface of the desk and the Admiral’s PADDs and even a photo frame, spreading green blood as widely as she could.
The guard shouted for her to step back, and she complied, holding up her hand, palm-open towards the Admiral. Her hand was cut and bleeding, shards of broken hypospray vial embedded in her skin. To the man’s credit, Tokkra managed to wipe the look of shock off his face fairly quickly.
“When that dries,” Kirina said with a cold fury, “you’ll have your answer.” She turned and unceremoniously walked out of the office.
The guards moved to stop her, but the Admiral silently waved them off.