by Rick Barba
“I don’t see it,” said Tikhonov, shaking his head.
“Hail the Valiant,” whispered Kirk. “Agree to the immediate cease-fire. Do it now! Offer to help secure their ambassador and let the Gold transports take all cargo, whatever they want, from Starbase Zeta. Let them have it, Viktor.”
“Okay,” said Tikhonov.
“Then hail the Nausicaans,” said Kirk. “You may have noticed they’re veteran pilots kicking our ass and Kerrigan’s ass. Find out what they want. Be tough, but fair. Why are they holding the Gold ambassador? Is it just ransom, or something more? Find out! Because today your objective is to save Titan from disaster, not punish pirates or humiliate the Romulans.”
Tikhonov gave him an odd look. “What Romulans?”
“I meant Gold fleet,” Kirk said quickly. He clapped a hand on Viktor’s shoulder. “Only you can pull this off, Viktor. You’re the man.”
He took a step back.
Tikhonov spun to Uhura. “Communications!” he shouted. “Hail the Valiant bridge, please.”
Kirk turned, then went straight to the turbo lift.
She stood on a transporter pad.
When Kirk approached, she dropped to one knee and buried her face in her hands. He knelt too and took her by the shoulders.
“So it was you,” he said.
“Part of it,” she said, nodding. She wouldn’t show her face.
“But why?” he asked.
“For peace,” she said.
Kirk slid his fingers up her neck and into her hair.
“But it was wrong,” she said. “It was hurting you. Even if it worked, it was wrong.”
“Why me?” he asked.
Now T’Laya looked at him. Her eyes were liquid gray. She slid a small data cube into his hand.
“This will explain everything,” she said.
Kirk held onto her.
“You can’t just go,” he said.
She smiled sadly. “They’re on to me. If I stay, I’ll end up in a Federation prison,” she said. “Or worse.”
Kirk glanced over at the transporter chief, Ensign Beck. The woman sat at the console, smiling off into space. She was clearly infected. T’Laya was thorough.
“She looks happy,” he said.
“The coordinates are locked in,” said T’Laya. “In all this ridiculous Zeta insanity, the signature of one small, cloaked Romulan science vessel won’t be noticed until we’re gone.”
“But I already noticed,” he said.
“Yes, you did,” she replied. “Good sensors.”
“So where are you going?” asked Kirk.
“In my training,” said T’Laya, “Nverinn didn’t prepare me for this sort of thing.”
“Who is Nverinn? And prepare you for what … fraternizing with the enemy?”
T’Laya shook her head. “We never saw you as the enemy,” she said. “But then, we never saw you as the spy’s first love, either.”
Kirk didn’t know what to say.
T’Laya kissed him lightly on the cheek, then took a step back onto the transporter pad. As she did, the turbo-lift door whooshed open and Samarra Caan stepped out. She leveled a phaser at T’Laya.
“You’re under arrest,” she called.
As Kirk spun to face Caan, T’Laya calmly knelt back down on the pad.
“Lieutenant Caan,” she said. She held up her right hand. It formed a sign: two crossed fingers touching the tip of her thumb.
At this, Caan slowly lowered the weapon. “Farr Jolan,” she said.
T’Laya nodded. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Peace awaits,” she said. Then to Kirk she said: “I do love you, Kirk. Remember tonight, when you look up at Gemini.”
“I will,” said Kirk.
T’Laya closed her eyes and said: “Energize.”
Ensign Beck happily disassembled her into a matter stream of subatomic particles, fed her into a pattern buffer, and sent her away.
Kirk stared at the empty platform. Then he turned to Samarra.
“She’s gone.” He felt phaser-stunned.
“I’m sorry,” said Samarra.
Kirk pointed at the platform.
“You let her go,” Kirk said, looking at her in amazement.
“If only I had gotten here moments sooner,” she replied, looking Kirk levelly in the eyes.
“Your secret is safe with me,” he said. “I couldn’t bear the idea of her in jail.”
Kirk and Lieutenant Caan stood in silence for a moment, then Kirk spoke.
“What … was that sign she made?” he asked.
Lieutenant Caan holstered her phaser. “Farr Jolan is the sign of the Jolan peace movement,” she said.
“Is it Romulan?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “We’ve heard that many Romulan scientists and intellectuals belong to the movement. Their goal is to avoid another war with Earth.” She gave Kirk a look. “Imagine that.”
Kirk nodded. This conversation was over for now.
Then he glanced at the ceiling and asked: “What’s going on upstairs?”
Lieutenant Caan smiled. “Zeta Day One is over,” she said. “So far, everybody won.”
Kirk smiled. “Good job, Viktor.”
“Yes,” said Samarra. “He followed your advice to the letter.”
Kirk frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Caan smiled slyly. She plucked the lieutenant commander rank insignia pin off Kirk’s uniform shirt and bent it to reveal a surveillance wire. Then she lifted her hair to reveal the earpiece in her left ear.
“You … bugged me?” asked Kirk.
“When I put somebody under surveillance,” she said, “I do it properly, Mr. Kirk.”
CH.13.13
Gemini Rising
Senator Tashal watched the Wasp gunboat land. Unlike her shuttle, it was an imposing military craft. But when the Praetor emerged, he was alone. Her own head of security, Merak, looked surprised. Tashal smiled. She moved across the Center’s docking bay to greet the head of the Romulan state.
“Welcome,” she said.
“This is quite a place,” said the Praetor, looking around.
“It is well-funded.”
“I’ll say.”
As they moved down the corridor to the same glass-domed atrium where Senator Tashal had lunched with Nverinn just days earlier, Merak followed. But when they reached the dome’s crystalline security door, Tashal turned to her guard.
“The Praetor and I will speak alone, Merak,” she said.
“I am tasked with your protection,” said Merak with a quick bow. In other words: no.
The Praetor, a short man—so many powerful men are not tall, thought Tashal—slid a small tablet pad from his tunic and tapped in a code. Then he turned it toward the security chief.
“This is a writ of imperial immunity,” said the Praetor, showing the pad to Merak. “It extends to your entire team as well.”
For a moment it appeared Merak would not back down. But the Praetor’s look convinced him otherwise. After another quick bow he spun abruptly, marching back across the docking bay. They watched him go.
“That’s how you reveal Tal Shiar people,” said the Praetor with an amused gleam. “They hate the writ. Works every time.”
Tashal smiled. She had long suspected that her state-assigned “security detail” served a dual purpose. Tal Shiar secret police had become less thuggish about spying on senators over the past century, but they could still be dangerous when thwarted.
She led the Praetor into Nverinn’s garden patio.
“My god, it’s lovely in here,” he said, admiring the view.
“I chose this place for a reason,” said Tashal.
“I imagine it inspires … frank dialogue,” he said.
She nodded. “Nverinn was a master of many things,” she said. “One of them was privacy.” She glanced up. “This dome is a magnetized quasicrystal lattice. Only Nverinn knows how it works. But it has some sort of diffraction pat
tern that blocks any type of surveillance. We have our own soundproof room.”
“Fascinating fellow,” said the Praetor with a nod. “Too bad we lost him, Senator.”
Tashal smiled sadly. “But he’s still with us,” she said after a moment.
As they both sat at the table under the willowy tree, the Praetor replied, “Really?”
Senator Tashal produced her own tablet pad and inserted a tiny data cube. Nverinn’s face appeared on the display. He looked both haunted and amused, a complex jumble of emotion, even for a Romulan.
“Hello, friend,” he said. “As always, this message is encoded for ionic dissolution. It will self-destruct, molecule by molecule, as it plays. So I hope you listen carefully.”
Tashal exchanged a glance with the Praetor, who nodded in admiration.
“As you hear this, I have been either assassinated or I’ve warped light-years away,” he said. “A fugitive to be hunted by the Tal Shiar for the rest of my life. It’s a romantic notion, isn’t it?”
Tashal smiled. Yes, it was.
“Let me clarify a few things,” said Nverinn. “First my Gemini agent at Starfleet Academy has been … well, deconstructed. The code will not trace back to the Star Empire. You are safe. However, I did not terminate T’Laya. She will join us shortly.”
Tashal uttered a light murmur of relief.
“Forgive my weakness,” Nverinn continued. “Her father, the great Vulcan ambassador, was a friend and ally to our cause, as you know. I swore I would consider his daughters as my own.”
Here, the young girl, Majal, leaned into the camera’s view and gave a quick grin. Nverinn chuckled and gently guided her back off-camera.
Tashal felt a warm sadness infuse her.
Nverinn continued: “Second, Gemini has always been an instrument of peace, not war or even espionage. I’m sure you suspected as much—I hope you did, anyway. Proclivity is genetic—you can be born with aggressive, warlike tendencies—but the brain is plastic. It is malleable. It can be programmed for peace.”
The Praetor smiled grimly. “Tell that to the Tal Shiar,” he said.
“Third,” continued Nverinn, “our Vulcan connection continues to flourish. Sympathizers gain strength, and I predict that the Vulcan-Romulan reunification movement will one day join our Jolan peace movement. Such a bond would be a powerful one. Based on data from Gemini, I’ve come to believe that Humans and Vulcans, despite their considerable cultural differences, are attracted to one another at some very fundamental level. I’ve seen the evidence of this.”
He paused to let his statement wash over his audience. And then he continued. “The same may be true of Humans and Romulans. So reunification would be a powerful weapon for peace in the galaxy.”
“Weapons for peace,” mumbled the Praetor. “I like that.”
Now Nverinn leaned toward the camera.
“And fourth,” he said, “you should know that I have agents now active in both the Military High Command and Tal Shiar. So the Gemini Project lives on.” He smiled. “For all you know, the person sitting next to you may be infected.”
Tashal and the Praetor exchanged another look. The Praetor grinned.
Finally, Nverinn bowed warmly—a familiar gesture—and said, “The final thing I wish to clarify is that I am missing you already.”
And the message ended. The data cube glowed briefly. When Senator Tashal removed it from her tablet, the cube was warm.
The Praetor placed his hand on Tashal’s arm.
“Farr Jolan, Senator,” he said.
She nodded, wiping a delicate rivulet of tears from her cheek.
They sat in silence for quite a while.
A few light-years away, Kirk and McCoy sat on a bench across from the Academy Shuttle Hangar. A steady stream of cadets returning from Starbase 1 poured out of the facility, both exhilarated and exhausted from two days of Zeta.
McCoy rested his elbows on his knees. “Good god, I hate shuttle rides,” he said.
Kirk was leaning back, staring up at the sky.
“I miss her already,” he said.
McCoy glanced at him. “Listen, Jim,” he said. “Samarra wants to check out some godforsaken sushi place over on Divisadero. Please join us.”
Kirk smiled. “I thought you hated sushi.”
“I do,” said McCoy. “I’m from Mississippi, for god’s sake. But if you’re there, I can slip you my tuna rolls under the table.”
“Okay,” said Kirk.
McCoy stood up. “We’ll pick you up in about forty-five minutes.”
Kirk nodded.
McCoy shifted from foot to foot, then jumped up and down a couple of times. “Feel that solid earth underfoot,” he said.
Kirk grinned as McCoy strode off toward the Medical College.
Another group of cadets poured out of the Shuttle Hangar exit. He recognized Marla Kerrigan, the Valiant captain. She’d done a great job. A budding Starfleet star. When she saw Kirk, she gave him a wave.
“Nice job, Kirk,” she called.
“You too,” he replied.
“Very clever deployment on day two,” she said. “You had me coming and going.”
Kirk waved this away. “Viktor did a great job,” he replied.
“Right,” said Kerrigan dryly. A few cadets with her laughed at this as they strolled away.
Kirk leaned back again and stared up at the Gemini twins.
T’Laya’s data cube explained a few things, but not everything. He understood how the neural code affected his brain. He understood its attempts to essentially duplicate his neocortex and his personal history, to create a kind of digital doppelganger of James T. Kirk for study. No harm was meant. Just research.
But she kept referring to herself and the code as Gemini, as if they were somehow one and the same. That, he didn’t understand.
“We wanted to grasp Human psychology at the most fundamental level,” she said. “But we went too far. We tried to mess with your wiring, trying to create an irresistible compulsion to seek creative, peaceful solutions in moments of conflict.” Then she looked at the camera with those shining gray eyes and said: “But as it turned out, you didn’t need rewiring. Those compulsions were already there.”
When the data cube self-destructed, Kirk realized that his only trace of T’Laya’s existence was gone. And so now he stared up at Pollux and Castor, the Gemini twins, and saw the constellation’s outline in the sky.
“Mr. Kirk?” said a voice.
Kirk looked over. “Ah, Mr. Chekov,” he said with a grin.
“Can I join you?”
“Please do,” replied Kirk.
The young Russian plopped down on the bench. They sat in silence for a moment, watching a gaggle of female cadets bounce out of the hangar, bursting with bright energy. Then Chekov turned to Kirk.
“I have a question,” he said.
“Shoot.”
“When did you first kiss a girl?”
Kirk thought. “I was twelve,” he said. “No, eleven.” He rubbed his chin. “Well … depending on how you technically define a ‘kiss.’”
“Oy, horosho,” Chekov said and sighed, looking forlorn.
Kirk grinned. He pointed up at the sky.
“It’ll happen, kid,” he said. “Just keep your eye on those two bright stars up there. They’re good luck.”
“Castor and Pollux?” asked Chekov, gazing up. “Ay, my favorites. I like to draw a mental line from the Pleiades star cluster in Taurus right through Regulus there, the brightest star in Leo.” He drew a line in the air. “See? That cuts right through the ecliptic.”
Kirk stared at him. “This theoretical first girl?” he said. “She’d better be an incredible geek.”
Chekov’s eyes suddenly gleamed.
“Ay,” he said. “I hope so.”
Turn the page for a peek at
another book in the Starfleet
Academy series:
THE DELTA ANOMALY The
Delta Anomaly
2 from The Delta Anomaly)
CH.1.12
Fogbound
In the summer of 2255, the San Francisco fog was like a living entity. Pushed ashore by ocean winds, it would creep and crawl over the city’s famous hills like a great white leviathan. Most nights that July, the city was smothered in the fog’s wet hide. Twirling white tendrils drifted down streets and alleys.
But if you could get above the fog layer, it was a breathtaking view.
At eight hundred fifty feet aboveground, the woman bound and gagged in the beacon cone at the top of the Transamerica Pyramid was well above the fog.
It was a breathtaking experience—quite literally.
Jacqueline Madkins—Jackie to her friends—was a tough gal. From her sensible shoes to her sensible haircut, she radiated a no-nonsense air that had served her well in her career. She’d been running security operations in the famous 286-year-old pyramid, the crown jewel of the San Francisco skyline, for almost ten years. She was one of only four people in the world with unrestricted access to the beacon cone.
So when SecureCam Omega went offline earlier that night, she’d groaned in disbelief.
Jackie was alone in the security control center on the thirtieth floor. Her security team, a crew of twenty guards, was making its regular rounds. It was quite an operation. She sat at a bank of monitors flickering live feeds from the building’s one hundred sixty surveillance cameras. She started tapping SecureCam Omega’s feed button on the camera control console.
Blank screen. It was as if the camera went dead, but Jackie knew that couldn’t happen. She shuddered involuntarily as a strange chill ran down her spine.
The top two hundred twelve feet of the Transamerica Pyramid was a hollow, translucent lumenite spire. Inside the spire, a steep staircase zigzagged up to the cone that housed the one-thousand-watt LED aviation warning light, a flashing red strobe. SecureCam Omega—the one that was apparently on the blink—surveyed the beacon chamber. Getting to it was a long, hard climb.
Jackie thought about that climb and looked down ruefully at her feet. “It’s not that I don’t like fabulous shoes,” she’d recently explained to her sister, Dawn, “it’s just that they are not exactly practical in my line of work!”