by Glenn Hauman
“As my pulse thunders, I come to you, guided by a flame that burns in my heart, a fire taken from the heart of a star.” Esther reached for a flower vase.
“And as I reach for you…”
She picked up the vase and threw it at him.
Chapter
7
Fabe nodded. “Okay, got it. We’ll check it out. Thanks.” He started to tap his combadge, then paused. “Wow, I’m an idiot.”
“No argument there,” Sonya’s voice replied. “But what was it this time?”
“I was about to go let Tev know what you just told me, by having one of the bridge viewscreens display an array of shooting stars whose trails formed letters.”
“Clever.”
“Maybe, if the computer would let me pull that whole ‘letters as shapes’ trick twice. But then it occurred to me—I was able to call you just fine, and vice versa.”
“Sure. So? Oh.”
“Right.” Fabian rubbed at his leg. “If you can call me, you can probably call Tev, which saves me from having to orchestrate this whole elaborate light show just to create a terse sentence or two. But it took me this long to realize that. Hence, idiot.”
“I’ll call him now,” Sonya told him. He heard her tell Shabalala to connect to Tev, but then lost the connection. Apparently the holosuite would let her talk to either of them, but not at the same time because that would mean he could talk to Tev through the shared link. Smart program.
A minute later, Sonya called back. “I told him, and he said he’ll speak to her.”
“Great. Thanks, Commander. Alex and I’ll tail Tev, and I’ll let you know what happens.” He signed off, and hopped off the desk, gesturing to Sparks where he sat nearby. “Come on, Alex. Time to go haunt some corridors.”
Tev heard the door chime and automatically straightened, running one hand absently down his chest to make sure his shirtfront was perfectly smooth. “Enter,” he called out, and the door slid open. The young woman stepped inside, and blinked uncertainly until she spotted him. Tev knew that many people felt interrogations were best performed under bright light, to make the suspect squirm and have problems focusing, but he preferred the opposite. With the lights in his rooms set low, the cadet would have a hard time seeing him, and that would make her uncomfortable and keep her off balance.
“You wanted to see me, Captain?” She stepped a little closer, but Tev gestured for her to stop where she was. No sense in letting her get close enough to focus her eyes again.
“That is correct, Cadet Sturtze. It has been brought to my attention that you may be responsible for the Hyperion’s recent difficulties, and for the dangers you and your classmates have faced.”
“M-me?” The girl—Tev remembered that her first name was Tanya, though of course he would not use it—looked surprised, but she also looked scared. And a little guilty. One thing Tev loved about humans was that their faces were so easy to read.
“Yes, you. Did you not file a complaint one month ago, accusing your classmate Ian Gymis of stealing your thesis notion?”
“He did steal it,” she snapped, anger overcoming fear for a moment. “He claimed it was just parallel development, but that’s a load of crap! Ian’s a damn freeloader, doing as little work as possible and stealing anything that isn’t nailed down. He’s been ripping off classmates for years. But this time he tried it with me.”
Tev frowned at her. “These are serious accusations, Cadet. Yet the review board cleared Mr. Gymis of all charges.”
She shook her head. “Sure they did. Ian’s a slouch, but he’s not completely stupid. He’d change just enough details to make it look like he could have come up with it on his own, and they bought it. He doesn’t even understand half of what his so-called thesis says, but he stood there and told them it was really his and they went for it.”
“You must have been livid when you discovered that he had also been chosen to participate in this exam.”
“What, you mean because he’s a slouch and a thief but conned his way into a test meant only for the best in the class?” Her lips peeled back in what, in a feline of any sort, would have been a definite snarl. “You’re damn right I was mad.”
“And so you rigged the exam, hoping he would be injured during these exercises.” But Tanya was shaking her head.
“I’d love to see Ian fail, sure, but I wouldn’t hurt anybody. Not even him.”
“So you did not tamper with the program?” Tev watched her closely as he asked this, and could see the guilt. If she claimed that she had never touched the systems, she would be lying.
But Tanya apparently knew that she’d been caught, and her shoulders slumped. “Okay, yes, I tinkered a bit. But nothing drastic. I bumped up the risk factors a little, and told the computer to add random twists here and there. Ian doesn’t think well on his feet—he only understands half of the stuff he’s stolen from other students. So when there’s a crisis and he has to have all of the knowledge on hand, he chokes. I wanted everyone to see that. And I did set up one prank.”
“Which was?”
She actually grinned up at him. “The synaptic scrambler. I knew Ian wouldn’t have a clue what to do about it, and I wanted to see him walking in circles and bumping into walls.” Then she sobered. “But that was the only thing I added. Honest.”
Tev grimaced at her, and leaned forward—it was an old trick to make him look bigger and more threatening, and it apparently worked, because Tanya curled in on herself and took a hasty step back. Then he straightened and nodded.
“Very well. Professor Sparks will deal with your interference after the test has ended. Now return to your duties.”
“Yes, sir.” She turned and walked away, and back out the door. Tev waited until she had gone before speaking to the apparently empty room.
“She was telling the truth,” he informed the air. “She is not the one responsible.”
The lamp near the couch blinked on once. Then it flickered, and a thick stream of smoke rose from it. The smoke had twists of dark gray among the light, and the dark twists slowly formed words:
WILL CALL GOMEZ. KEEP LOOKING. THIRD PARTY?
Tev nodded. “Clearly, if not the students it must be a third party. But no one from outside the suite has had access since we started the exam. It is a conundrum. Now go away—I wish to sleep, and I have no desire to share my room with a pair of invisible observers.”
The smoke puffed once and then faded, and Tev washed up. They were no closer to finding out who was behind the recent problems, or figuring out how to get everyone back out safely. Still, he had used his temporary rank and position to bully a cadet, so the day hadn’t been a total loss.
“Thanks for the update, Fabian. Hang in there—we’ll figure it out.”
Sonya signed off, shaking her head. The girl, Tanya, was clean—well, not guilty of rigging the recent death traps or locking Fabian out, anyway. And none of the other students had anything else on file that would give them reason to hurt one of their classmates. But if they weren’t behind all this, who was?
One of her first suspects had been the only nonstudent non-S.C.E. inside the suite: Professor Sparks. But Fabian had assured her that he had nothing to do with it, and he’d been working closely with the man for the past two days, so she believed him. Which meant yet another dead end. Besides, why would a Starfleet instructor want to hurt his students?
She paced as much as she could within the narrow confines of her room, tossing the question back and forth. Why would anyone want to hurt a student? Then she stopped midstride. What if nobody had?
What if hurting the students hadn’t been the goal at all? She’d assumed it was, because the threats seemed to be targeting them, but the only other people inside were Fabian, Tev, and Sparks. The students outnumbered them, so by statistics alone they’d be the victims more often. What if that was a mere coincidence? Perhaps whoever had set all this up hadn’t wanted to seriously hurt anyone—so far the only real injury was Fabian’s, and
there was no way anyone could have planned that one.
Then she took it one step further. What if the point wasn’t injury at all? What if that was merely a bonus—or an unexpected side effect?
The door chime interrupted her musings.
“Come.”
The door opened, and Soloman stood there. “Commander, I have finished the security upgrades to the da Vinci. Would you like a detailed list of the changes I have made?”
“Yes, please.” Then, when he opened his mouth, she hastily added, “Write it up and send it over, okay? That way I can add it to the ship’s maintenance records.”
Soloman nodded, though she thought he looked a little disappointed. “Of course. If I may say so, I’m quite pleased with the changes. In particular, I was able to tighten our access protocols.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, during the diagnostics I discovered that anyone with a sufficient Starfleet clearance could gain access to our entire system. While I realize this is a Starfleet vessel, the likelihood of anyone needing to effect repairs without at least one of us present is extremely low. So I installed a subroutine, preventing Starfleet personnel from gaining access to the higher functions without at least one member of the crew tapped in as well. And then I set up safeguards to prevent anyone from entering the lower-priority system branches and then sneaking through into the more restricted sections.”
Sonya managed to fight back the smile when she saw how serious he was, and how proud. “Do you really think,” she said finally, “that Starfleet officials are going to try tapping into our systems and modifying our ship’s programming without our permission or assistance?”
Soloman shrugged. “I would not expect it, no. But I have seen many strange things during my tenure on this ship, and irrational human behavior is one of the most common. It seemed better to eliminate the chance, especially since, if someone had gained such access, it would have been easy for them to then alter the code so that they could regain that access at any time, no matter what new security measures we added.”
“Right.” Sonya nodded. “A back door. Thanks, Soloman.”
He nodded and turned back toward the door. “I will have the report within the hour. I have also completed most of my work on that holographic model, and should be done with that shortly as well.” But she was no longer listening.
“Could someone have been aiming for one of you?”
Fabian glanced at Sparks. They were back in their office again, and Commander Gomez had just contacted them. Kendra was already connected to her—the presentation was done for the night, though she did have to go over tomorrow’s with her colleagues in a few minutes. Fabian had finally convinced his old friend that he’d live and that he didn’t hate her forever, at which point Gomez had asked the question that had prompted her call.
“Aiming in what way?” he asked her. “I got hurt getting one of the students out of the turbolift—nobody attacked me directly, and he was in more danger than I was.”
“Yet you’re the one who got hurt,” she replied. “That’s not what I meant, though. It’s not physical. Forget about the specifics of each problem, and pretend that the students aren’t behind it, but they aren’t the targets, either. Could anyone want one of you to fail?”
“I don’t see why,” Sparks commented. “What would anyone gain from this test’s failure?”
“Well—” Kendra sounded a little guilty, almost. “I suppose some of my co-workers might gain a little. I mean, if the Hyperion fails, that’s one less design for Starfleet to consider, which improves the chances for the competing designs. The only problem is, nobody else has a pet project for this slot. Oh, we’ve got a few other designs in the works, but none as far along and none more than a few tweaks on existing ship patterns. Even Felder’nar’s not that hooked on his own design—he entered it, but I doubt he seriously expects it to be approved. I actually think he only did it so that he could show he was working on viable projects instead of goofing off and watching those horrible docudramas all day. So taking mine out of the running might not help anybody.”
“Anyone at work have any personal grudges against you?” Fabian asked.
“No, I get along pretty well with my coworkers.”
He believed it—she’d always been good at that, even back in school. Most of their classmates had envied her ability, but no one had hated her for it, and everyone she’d worked with on a group project had been thrilled to have her on the team.
“Okay. Professor Sparks? What about you?”
“Call me Alex, please.” He waved one hand as if brushing away the formality. “I don’t really have any enemies, I’m afraid. I get along well with the other instructors, and with the dean.”
“Do you have tenure?”
“Yes, I got it several years ago. I’m still one of the junior faculty members, though. Most of my peers have seniority on me.”
“Okay, so no professional reasons for anyone to go after you. Personal ones?”
He frowned. “No, as I said, I get along fine with the other instructors.”
“Fabian, what about you?”
He shrugged, even though Gomez couldn’t see it. “I don’t see how. I haven’t been back here since our last trip home, and that was months ago and I was only on Earth for a few days. And before that it was the previous downtime, and the same before that—I’ve spent maybe a month here in the past three years. Who’d even know me to hate me?”
“You’re sure there isn’t anyone? It could be work-related or a private matter. An old grudge, perhaps?”
Fabian started to shake his head, then stopped. “Wait a second.”
Alex leaned forward, and Fabian could almost hear the other two doing the same. “What? Did you remember something?”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. I do still know one other person here, and he’s not too fond of me.”
“Crawfish,” Kendra replied, and they both laughed. It was still funny, even now.
Of course, Gomez and Alex had no idea what they were talking about.
“Crawford Pressman,” Fabian explained after he’d calmed down. “He and Kendra and I all went to Rigel for engineering.”
“You called him ‘crawfish,’” Alex said.
“Yeah, well, that was his nickname.” Fabian chuckled a bit, thinking back. So did Kendra. “He was long and disjointed and a bit sticky. Plus his whole face turns bright red any time he lies or fails. Or gets annoyed. Or seriously embarrassed. Ken and I used to torment him constantly.”
“He was an easy target,” Kendra said. “And now he’s one of the senior instructors here. He helped me get this whole test set up.”
“Which meant he had access the entire time.”
“Sure, but so did the rest of the instructors. Maybe one of them did it.”
“Well, let’s check.” Alex pulled up the suite’s activity logs—the computer was allowing them passive access to the programming levels, so they could look, they just couldn’t touch. “Aha.”
“What aha?” Fabian limped over to peer over his shoulder.
“Right there.” Alex pointed at a spot in the records, and Fabian nodded.
“Crawfish accessed the program, all right,” he told Gomez and Kendra. “About an hour before the exam started. And it looks like he added some new code. We can’t tell what, though.”
“That bastard!” Kendra snapped. “Sure, we picked on him, but that was harmless, and it was years ago! And now he’s trying to kill you, and everyone else in there, because we made fun of him? I’ll bite his head off, just like a real crawfish!”
Fortunately, Gomez was able to stay calm. “Let’s talk to him before we start plotting revenge. For all we know, he added some safety measures, or a test of his own, or simply a monitoring program so he could see how the students were doing.”
“The commander’s right,” Fabian said. “Crawfish was a pathetic little twerp, but I don’t remember him getting nasty. We’ll—” he paused as the Hyperion’s alarms soun
ded. “Whoops, got another crisis here. Alex and I’ll check it out. You two go ahead and check in with Crawfish. Just ask him what code he inserted, and see what he says. Don’t bite his head off just yet.” He signed off and headed out of the office, but not before he heard Kendra muttering something about hot sauce.
Chapter
8
“Ambassador, this is unprecedented,” Gold said.
Lantar merely sat at his desk, facing Gold and his wife, his fingers interlaced together at the first knuckle, and saying nothing—as he had for most of the conversation. Behind him, the same workmen who had repaired the lights earlier were busy polishing the wood and checking for any other imperfections in the office.
The captain went on. “Centuries ago, the ceremonies of the Klingons were much more fluid, tailored to each individual. So creating a ceremony that’s specific to Khor and Esther is traditional.”
Lantar raised an eyebrow. “It is traditional to forgo tradition?”
“It is traditional for nothing to stand in the way of two Klingon hearts who have chosen to join,” Gold replied.
“Go on.”
“And the old ceremonies honored family, faith, and strength. Our family is Jewish, and ours do the same thing.”
“I am confused about one thing, Captain. I had always believed your people not to have any spiritual traditions.”
Gold managed to restrain himself from saying, Some ambassador you are. “Not at all—it’s just that there’s no one faith. Some have plenty, some have none, and regardless, it’s up to each individual. We recognize the equality of all religions, and welcome them all. In the case of our family, it’s Judaism. If you ask ten other humans, you’d probably get ten other answers.”
“If not more,” Rachel added.
“I understand,” Lantar said, though Gold wasn’t entirely sure he did.
“Then you understand that we value and honor the same traits that you do. And that incorporating some of the elements of a traditional Jewish ceremony shows respect to another ancient tradition, to those who have gone before.”